Landlording 101

Pop Quiz

Upon purchasing your first duplex you find that, on the day you purchased the unit, one of your renters was arrested. She is on a month to month contract. If she does not pay her rent within the next 10 days she will lose her contract. If she is convicted she must, by contract, be evicted.

While she waits in the county jail to be convicted (she faces 6 months in prison), a man claiming to be her uncle contacts you and offers to move all of her personal belongings out of her apartment.

What do you do?

All answers will be considered.

Happy Anniversary!

Last Friday Doug and I celebrated our first anniversary. It was such a fun weekend! We had plans to go up to the bed and breakfast we stayed in on our honeymoon and it just so happened that the morning before we checked into our room we got to go buy a house! We thought it was kinda neat that it worked out to happen on our anniversary.

Here's the whole story through pictures-

Here we are exactly one year to the minute of when we got married (we're such dorks, I know) That was right before we went in to sign for the house.


This is the bed and breakfast we stayed in- Castle Creek Inn. I love it. It totally brings out the 6 year old girl in me. I mean, staying at a CASTLE?! How fun!


This is our room- you can only see a little of it, but they decorate it so you totally feel like you're staying in a castle. Silk drapes, velvet pillows and all that. I love it. My favorite part was this couch. I think I talked about it all night. Poor Doug. You know you married a designer when you have to listen to the amazing aesthetics of a couch all night.


So, they have this snack bar full of things you can help yourself to. It was hilarious to me the difference between being just married and having just lived on a year of strict, house saving type budgeting. The first time we came I think we ate a chocolate truffle off the snack bar. This time however- it was free food! And GOOD food at that! We made a conscience effort to eat some of each and everything thing offered.


'Cutting the cake' again


Doug thought he was SOOO funny.


The small crumbs of cake he was able to shove in my mouth were all we ate. Our cake definitely had fruit throughout it so it was impossible to freeze just the cake... (all the wedding cake freezing experts tell you to take out any fruit before freezing... now I know why) Basically, the point of the story is, our cake tasted like rotten fruit. Disgusting.

I'm so excited to get thing out of our freezer! Just think of all the things we can fit in there now that we don't have to keep a large chunk of rotting cake!


Mmmmmmm.... treats from Kneaders. They catered our wedding reception so we figured it was only right that we went back and got the same things.


Here's our house! It's in the north part of Orem between I-15 and State St. We're so excited! It was a pretty great Anniversary present if I may say so myself.

The Wedding Factory: Results

In my last entry I talked about how I get addicted to projects. Well here's why! I don't think there's anything so rewarding to me as good, solid visual results.

Here's a bunch of pictures, including the things I couldn't keep myself from working on when I should have been doing things like filling out mortgage papers.

Becca and Marat coming out of the temple

One of the flower girls (Becca's niece)

Their wedding cake (That I got to make!)

Wedding cake close up. The fruits are in their wedding colors (chocolate brown- chocolate covered cherries, lime green- limes, linen- pears)
Doug and I literally cut hundreds of pieces of cake as fast as our little hands would let us!

These pictures are for those of you who ever wondered why wedding cakes cost so much. Just so you know, I literally worked on this cake for over a week. And that doesn't include finding the recipes, finding the proper cake pans or buying the ingredients, decorations and cake stand. Not to mention the fact that the decoration on this cake was just fruit- no fancy frosting techniques at all. Fancy piping could have easily added another week to the process. After finding out how time consuming this process really is, (sometimes I just think that people are complainers when it comes to projects. I'll never think that about a wedding cake maker ever again) I've officially taken myself out of the wedding cake business. I'm pretty certain this will be my first and last.


Here are all the cakes pre-frosted

And most of the frosting. Yes, that's right. That's an enormous mixing bowl full of frosting there on the left. Not to mention the six other containers taking up our shelf space and the other stuff over on the counter!
My cousin Lisa from the other side (it was kinda kinda funny to see both sides of the family at one wedding) catered the wedding. The food was AMAZING. They did a sandwich bar with amazing breads and different homemade spreads and fantastic meat. Her cooking skills are pretty much the best I've ever seen.

These last things were my favorite part to do. Probably because I've been doing so much graphic design lately. These were the invitations that I made her-

Then for the reception we made signs that coordinated with the invitations and put them all over.

I liked this one a lot. It was Becca's idea. They served a sandwich bar because it's Becca's favorite food. So, at the beginning of the table there was a sign with the bride and groom's favorite sandwich recipes so people could try them out.

These guys went with the cake when we served it to show the different flavors: dark chocolate with cream cheese frosting, sponge cake with lemon curd and sour cream frosting, and cinnamon vanilla cake with Mexican hot chocolate buttercream.

The Wedding Factory

About a year ago my cousin Becca got engaged. We were roommates the year before I got married and have stayed pretty close since. I talk to her a few times each week and I think every conversation we've had for the past year has been wedding related. I've been so excited to help with the reception

With that in mind, I feel like this photo really describes the last month or so of our lives. I don't think we've been able to eat at our dining table for weeks now... or really anywhere else for that matter. Every square inch of available working surface has been covered in our attempts to pack (we were scheduled to close on a house at the end of last month), unpack (the closing date fell through) repack (we thought we'd get kicked out of our apartment), and unpack again (we didn't get kicked out after all- which is really the best part of the story since we're not homeless!). None of them were a real ‘packing’ or ‘unpacking’ job, just a start of a bunch of boxes, and then us going through the boxes to get what we needed when we realized we weren’t leaving. Meaning that now we have a bunch of areas on our apartment with a bunch of stuff piled on top of a bunch of boxes.

This was of course all going on during the same time that Doug was working late every night to meet a deadline at work, I got a bunch of design work to do (which is great, but of course very time consuming), and our car broke down. Twice.

So what have I been doing during every moment of spare time during all this? Well, I've been making wedding stuff of course! Our tables weren’t just all full of half-packed boxes. They were also full of flowers and icing and wedding cake. Now, don't get the wrong impression. You might be thinking the bride was forcing me to do a bunch of stuff. If you are, it’s only because you don't know me well enough to know that I'm absolutely crazy. I just can’t stop doing projects. It’s like a disease. I'm certain at any moment I could have told Becca I didn’t want to do a single more thing and she'd be totally fine. But I just couldn’t stop. I know. I'm crazy.

The wedding was yesterday and it went perfectly. After making the wedding invitations, a wedding cake, flower girl crowns, a guest book, signs to go all over the reception that coordinate with the invitations, buying 16 patio umbrellas, ironing table cloths, setting up chairs… and, well, a lot of other things… I’m pretty excited to have a break from weddings.

So what will we do instead? Well, it’s looking like that house might go through after all. I guess we get to pack for real this time.