Dia de Gracias

So thankful for:

Salvation in Christ. An amazing hubby whose love for Jesus guides his love for me and his attitude towards marriage. A sweet pup. Family that lives close enough to see on a weekly basis. Family that we can travel easily to see. A house we can call our own. A best friend I can now call my sister. A body of believers we can worship with and live life with. Employment.

I am richly blessed, even though I don't deserve it.

Amen.

Oh wait, where do you go to school?

That stinks, I WENT to Clemson :(

freshman year...our first photo together and first unofficial date

First snow at Clemson freshman year!

Freshman year...both of us very excited about Clemson!

Sophomore year- making the best of the upper deck with the future bro-and-sis-in-law

Junior year- representing Clemson at Big Ben in London!

Senior year- making the best of several rainy games

Senior year- one of the few times I actually sat on the hill and stormed the field..with friends that I used to see everyday..whaaaaa

Graduation for three of us ;)

Clemson friends at our wedding

 First game as alumni! Scored free tickets...in the last row of the upperdeck!

*click the link at the top to see some of Clemson's most awesome traditions
**thanks to Maria for sharing this link and making me miss my Clemson days...ya jerk

The smartest pup in the world!

If we are this proud of our pup I'm scared to see how into our kids we'll be ;)

Grady can officially sit:

Lay Down:

and shake:

 

We're also working on rolling over but he hasn't quite caught on to that yet :)

And by the way, has anyone noticed the patchwork blanket that's in just about every pic I've taken around the house? Nick's grandma made him that blanket and it's pretty much been attached to his side since birth. He slept with it all four years of college, cuddles with it on the couch, and even sleeps under it in the summer. It was months into our marriage before I got to actually use that blanket, especially if it meant him using another. He will deny it, but I have some pretty concrete photo evidence ;) I love that the blanket was handmade just for him and that even as an adult he still loves it! Keep your eyes peeled for more photo evidence of Nick and his Blanket!

What are some other fun tricks we can teach our pup?

So fresh and so clean

The first thing we tackled on the house was the struggling laundry room area. The laundry area is located in the garage, and was separated from the storage/car parking area of the garage by a thin divider wall that fell about a foot short from the ceiling. Here it is as we saw it when we first walked through the house:

Take a look at the struggling ceiling tiles and the popcorn ceiling under that.

 The paneling on the wall both in the laundry room and on the divider wall was rotted at the bottom and curling away from the wall, the pipes to connect to the washer/dryer were rusted, busted and leaking, and there was dryer lint, dirt and cobwebs EVERYWHERE.

This is after using a commercial vac to get up most of the dryer lint...

 Moving further into the laundry "room", there was a grimy outdoor sink and a wooden cabinet full of cobwebs and an old birds nest. The naked dirty hot water heater pipe and unfinished window completed the look:

 

The first thing we did (after my dad fixing all the pipes) was tear down all the ceiling tiles and scrape off the popcorn ceiling throughout the whole garage to get down to the raw plywood underneath. The ceiling tiles didn't take long but scraping the popcorn took hours. We also scraped up the patchy linoleum tile. Then we tore down the wimpy divider wall and all the paneling and used a commercial vac to vacuum up all the dirt, lint, and nastiness that had accumulated (including tons of acorns in the wall...some squirrel family might return this winter to find their whole life savings gone).

Then my dad and Nick got to work on rebuilding the wall:

Nick's first experience drilling

This has been the dirtiest work so far

After we got the bones of the wall up we put in beadboard in the laundry room and faux-wood paneling on the garage-side of our new wall. We did the faux-wood for two reasons: 1) it's a lot cheaper and easier than putting up a drywall wall, and 2) the rest of the garage is already paneled with faux-wood paneling and it's in good enough shape to not have to replace.

We'll paint this and the rest of the garage so the walls will match

We put in a light and painted the plywood ceiling (4 coats!):

My dad had to update the plug for the washer and install a vent for the dryer. He also added a heating/AC vent to make it more room-like. Then we added molding and baseboards, added molding around the window, painted the floor with an epoxy-coated floorpaint, painted the walls, and added a door:

I wanted to have a purple room somewhere in the house :)

Finally, we added the whole reason for the room: our washer and dryer (a Craigslist find!). We also added a few stand-alone cabinets we found on clearance at Home Depot for storage. Oh, and we cleaned up the grimy sink and put that back in, which is super useful for cleaning out paint brushes, etc.

So there you have it! Our first house transformation. We took a disgusting 'nook' and turned it into a super useful laundry room. We still need to add some hooks for hanging clothes but we're incredibly pleased with how it turned out and are so thankful to my dad for providing expertise and helping us make it happen!

Grady

Nick and I had been experiencing bouts of puppy fever the entire time we've been married but due to our last apartment not allowing dogs (a big wommmp-wommmp-wommmp) the fever was subsided over the last year. Well fast-forward to this past Friday night. Nick and I were eating tapas at The Kazbah and our conversation inevitably moved to the P word...when would we get a puppy? Nick agreed that we didn't necessarily have to wait until November when he started working to get one, and I agreed that we didn't necessarily just have to run out and get one tomorrow. We did decide it'd be fun to go check out the Humane Society the next day just to check it out, since we agreed that it'd be best to adopt a puppy.

So the next morning I decide to check out the puppies at the Humane Society on their website and see that an australian shepherd mixed litter had just come in a couple days before. They are ADORABLE, so I start freaking out and running around to get ready, convinced we are going to get a puppy that day. My reasonable hubby sees my eyes glaze over with excitement, and decides that it would still be a good idea to go to the Humane Society and 'look'. We both agree that I won't go expecting to get a puppy, while Nick won't go expecting to NOT get a puppy.

We walk in, see the litter I'd seen online, and I immediately pick up the black and white spotted puppy with an all black head. He cuddles right into my arms and lays down (where he pretty much stayed until we took him home). At one point Nick held out his arms and told the puppy to "come to daddy". I knew my reasonable hubby was completely smitten and that we weren't leaving without that puppy.

So we'd like you to meet our Little Man, Grady:

 

 

He is currently recovering from a stomach bug that he acquired from the shelter, and after spending the night at the vet last night he is like a new puppy. And my hubby is still pretty smitten...

watch out world..

The Crandalls are homeowners!! 

Stay tuned for more photos, details, and hopefully lots of fantastic before-and-afters! :)

Front-Row-Center Vanilla Mousse Cheesecake

Cheesecake is one of the hubby's favorite desserts. Over the course of our one-year-and-counting marriage I've tried to attempt his very favorite foods and so far I've tackled chicken alfredo, chicken fried rice, and ribs (in order of easiest to most difficult). Until recently I hadn't been brave enough to tackle his favorite dessert: cheesecake.

Why?

Well, funny you should ask. Way back in December 2006, when our relationship was in its tender first-month-getting-to-know-each-other-while-feeling-a-little-awkward-to-be-newly-dating-stage, my now sister-in-law and I decided to take a trip to visit Nick and Sean and their family in Bluffton for a weekend over Christmas break. Maria and I'd both only met Nick's family once or twice before that at a tailgate, so we were a little nervous about spending the whole weekend with them. Would they like us? Would they approve of us dating their sons? I decided that to show our appreciation of them letting us crash their house for a weekend and to prove that I'd be a valuable asset to Nick and the Crandalls as his girlfriend, I'd bake something for everyone to enjoy during our time there. So Maria and I headed to the store and settled on Nestle Tollhouse refrigerated fudge pull-apart-brownie dough with Christmas sprinkles. We even got a Christmas tin to put them in as a nice touch.

We baked those babies to perfection and headed down to Bluffton with our Christmas tin of brownies, looking forward to how impressed Nick's mom would be at our thoughtfulness and excited to see everyone enjoying our brownies all weekend. We got there and our brownies were received with a "thanks girls...yall are so sweet" and were promptly placed on the top of the fridge...where they stayed the entire rest of the weekend. The air was completely let out of our balloons. As it turns out, my mom-in-law Marcy is absolutely famous for her homemade brownies, so for the rest of the weekend I'd hear from Nick, "hey Lyndsey, I'm going to get a brownie...my mom's brownies are so good!!" which would be followed by Nick skipping in to the kitchen, pushing our brownies aside to reach Marcy's, and scarfing one down with a smile (at least that's how it seemed).

We still joke about it with them and the family, and Nick and Sean have come to find out that it's polite to compliment your significant other's attempts in the kitchen, no matter how good or bad...or how much worse than your mom's ;).

Ever since then, I've been a little weary about making anything that falls under the "my mom makes it best" umbrella...until recently! Nick's mom makes amazing cheesecake. Seriously. Nick's fave is her caramel praline cheesecake, and he requests that she make it for every major holiday or event celebrating him (including our rehearsal dinner). So when I saw a recipe for vanilla mousse cheesecake in a magazine, I knew it'd be the perfect dessert to try for the one-year-anniversary dinner I was going to make for him, but I was a little concerned it would turn out just like the Brownie Debacle of 2006. I made it and nervously cut Nick a piece for him to try, terrified I'd hear a phrase like "not quite...." or "you'll learn....", but to my surprise, Nick loved the cheesecake. While Marcy's recipes will always be well-received by the hubs' (and my) appetites, I'm glad to know mine have a place in his heart too :)

I'm happy to report that my cheesecake did not get banished to the back of the refrigerator! And really, I should get no credit for the deliciousness of this cheesecake. It's so easy to make, there's almost no way it could come out badly...

So here's the recipe for my Front-Row-Center Vanilla Mousse Cheesecake:

Ingredients:

For the cheesecake:
40 vanilla wafers, crushed (about 1.5 cups)
3 tbsp. butter, melted
3 pkg cream cheese, softened (8 oz. each)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp. vanilla
3 eggs

For the mousse:
1 pkg cream cheese (8 oz.)
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
8 oz. whipped topping, thawed

Heat oven to 325. Mix wafer crumbs and butter; press onto bottom of 9-in springform pan.
Beat 3 pkg. cream cheese, 3/4 cup sugar and 1 tbsp vanilla with mixer until well blended.
Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each until just blended.
Pour over crust.
Bake 50 to 55 min. or until center is almost set. Run knife around rim of pan to loosen cake; cool completely in pan.
Beat 1 pkg. cream cheese, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1 tsp. vanilla in large bowl until well blended.
Whisk in whipped topping; spread over cheesecake.
Refrigerate 4 hours. Remove rim of pan before serving cheesecake.
Garnish with fresh berries if your heart so desires.

Enjoy!

the good stuff

Nick and I have been looking forward to May for a long time. One reason was because two of our closest friends were getting MARRIED in May! Another reason is that our little brother, who Nick has obviously known his entire life and who I've known since he was a scrawny little 12 year old, is graduating from high school in May! But the other reason we've been so excited is that during this small window of time that is the month of May, our favorite little red berries would be ripe for the picking. So last weekend we took a break from the fast-paced big metropolis of Clemson where we live to enjoy a simpler way of life. We went to Hunter Farms in Easley, grabbed a bucket and got to pickin!

And then afterwards, we took our spoils back home where we gobbled up strawberry shortcakes. Amen.

you might be a redneck if...

...you take out your dentures and put them in your pocket because they're bothering you, then proceed to lose them and have to retrace your steps for the rest of the day, with the bank being your fourth stop along the way.

You might be even more of a redneck if...

...you loudly proclaim to the entire bank that you've misplaced your dentures after removing them because they were uncomfortable, and ask if anyone's seen them.

(Alternately titled: Welcome to Oconee county. Nothing could have prepared you. Run for the hills. Actually, stay put. This could make for a few great stories some day.)

our love story, according to nick

I was reading through a journal Nick gave me last Valentine's day (2010) where he wrote out his version of our love story. It made me smile in more ways than one, so I thought I'd share...

Our very first picture together- Nov. 2006

On October 11, 2006, outside Tillman Hall, Nick met Lyndsey! And, thankfully, Lyndsey thought Nick to be the cuter twin. After some hand-holding escapades, Nick and Lyndsey began dating on November 10 December 4, 2006. The next few years brought some amazing adventures. Winter Break 2007, Nick and Lyndsey went to New York City, where Lyndsey discovered how much she loves Broadway shows. Spring semester 2009, the couple embarked on their wildest adventure so far! Off to Granada, Spain (and Portugal and England), they traveled and studied away from home for 4 months. And, in between the traveling, was Wicked, seran wrapping, odd seatbelt rules, and so much more. Then, on July 10, 2009, Nick proposed after lunch at a beautiful spot on the water. Nick continued his love for making books with a proposal scrapbook, which did well, maybe even 
better than the first plan, parasailing. Now, the couple is planning their honeymoon and wedding on June (scribbled out number) 4! And they will live happily ever after.

THE BEGINNING... 

In the Sierra Nevada mountains in Spain-2009

 I loved the scratched out dates...hopefully after writing this he was able to remember when we started dating and our wedding date! :) Since February 2010, we've embarked on what is now our greatest adventure: marriage! We've traveled to Costa Rica and settled into our cute little apartment in Clemson. We thought we knew each other so well and loved each other so much in February 2010, but that was nothing compared to how much I know and love Nick today, on March 31, 2011. And today will be nothing compared to how much we will know and love each other when we're old and gray. As my sister-in-law Maria has said, I couldn't be more lucky or blessed to have made such a great decision at a young age: to marry my best friend and live life with him. I look back on October 11, 2006 outside of Tillman Hall and I can see now how the Lord was preparing us for each other and how He led us, grew us, and prepared us over the next 4 years to be husband and wife, all for His glory. Praise God!

Our very last date as an engaged couple...seeing the Greenville Drive the week before the wedding

double date

Nick, Dallas, Elizabeth and I went to the Clemson baseball game last weekend!

I actually really like watching baseball. Who knew?

Clemson beat Charleston Southern like 20-1. We left after the 5th inning to go get our free hotdogs at Beef o Bradys (thanks to Clemson getting 5 runs!)

We're ready for these two to join us in  married-folk land...only 2 1/2 more months!

After the game we watched the Clemson/Wake Forest basketball game and celebrated another Clemson win! It was a very sports-filled day, so in exchange, Nick watched a Jodi Picoult novel-turned-Lifetime movie with me on Sunday afternoon. Pretty even trade I'd say :)

Valentines

Let me just say that I love Valentines Day. Maybe it's because my mom has always made me feel special by surprising me with candy and little gifts each year, or maybe it's because I've had a pretty spectacular guy to call my Valentine for the past 5 years, or MAYBE it's just the fact that we can draw out the holiday season (including my birthday, my brother's, Maria's, and Nick & Sean's!) a little longer.

This year has been my best Valentine's day yet, because I got to celebrate it with my husband, instead of just my boyfriend or fiance. Nick took me to Greenville to spend some time and enjoy the beautiful weather on Saturday. We listened to part of Perry Noble's recent marriage series on the way into Greenville, and reflected on how God's been working in our marriage these past 8 months. Then we listened to the last few heartbreaking minutes of the Clemson/UNC basketball game. Nick decided to take me to the zoo--the only zoo we'd been to together was in London, so it was exciting to see Nick experience the Greenville Zoo for the first time and to reminisce of the times I'd been there on fieldtrips in elementary school. Then we went to one of our favorite restaurants, PF Changs, for dinner. Nick gave me a pedicure/eyebrow waxing/glass of wine package at a spa, which I can't wait to use! :)

On Sunday after church we headed over to the Botanical Gardens to walk around, which evidently was everybody else's Sunday afternoon gameplan, because it was pretty crowded! It was nice to get out this weekend, enjoy a break from school and work, and just hang out with each other. Sunday afternoon was spent baking for the bake sale we had at work today. I am the March of Dimes rep and this was one of our first fundraisers. I made brownies with heart sprinkles, Valentines funfetti cupcakes with pink icing, heart shaped funfetti cookies, Crinkles, and peanut butter balls.

Since I didn't have time to eat breakfast this morning Nick surprised me by showing up with a Valentine's smoothie (which is one of my favorite foods). I seriously couldn't ask for a better hubby!

I didn't take too many pics this weekend, but I'll try to upload some of what I took sometime soon! :)

Time to Ketchup

It's been awhile since I've blogged! Like many of our favorite TV shows, I took a break for the holiday season. This was more due to the fact that the week after my last post I started a 40-hr a week job and my free time has been drastically cut back. But I thought it might be time to pick back up on recording the events and experiences of my life as a 23-year-old not-so-much-anymore-housewife for future posterity. I mean, even Glee is coming back tonight after a few-month long hiatus, so I know it can be done!

Here's what we have been up to the past few months:

November

Celebrated my birthday with a zebra cake

Learned the ins and outs of canning

Made apple butter

LOTS of apple butter

Learned that our couch eats remotes

Learned how to rescue remotes from the dark pit of the couch

Celebrated at Ashton and Taylor's wedding

(Probably one of the prettiest weddings ever!)

December:

Nick re-learned how to tie a tie

And I was proud

Celebrated Maria's graduation

Decorated for Christmas!!

Celebrated Christmas on the 22nd by opening our ornaments to each other

Celebrated Christmas on the 23rd by opening our stockings to each other

Celebrated Christmas at the Crandalls in Bluffton

January

Played in the snow!!

Some of us tripped in the snow

Celebrated Nick's first day of his second semester in grad school

Had a wedding shower for Dallas and Elizabeth

Ate chicken fried rice for Nick's birthday

Celebrated Nick's birthday with a zebra cake!!

I worked on my lack of cake-decorating skills

Saw Clemson make a huge comeback for a win against NC State

Celebrated the 8th year of Emilie's life...

And the 12th year of Kate's life!!

So now you're all caught up! Nick and I had an amazing end to 2010 and beginning to 2011!