Mood Lighting

We moved into our house a little over a year ago and have absolutely loved it. But one corner of our kitchen is so dark. That's why I haven't been so good about cooking for Jacob :) We've wanted to change the lighting all year, and on Friday we went to Home Depot to look at track lighting to replace our long florescent lighting. But instead we came away with these cool little lights that attach to the underside of the cabinets. Jacob's dad came over, and they were able to do all kinds of electrical magical, and here are the results! Can I just say that it's nice to be married to such a handy capable guy :)

Without the lights...

...and with the lights!

And the magical underbelly of the cabinets. Part of the magic is that little black circle. That turns on the lights. And it has 3 levels of brightness. So yeah, you can create mood lighting in our kitchen. I think/hope it will inspire more cooking from me :)

Hmmm, Jacob just informed me that he actually still wants to replace the florescent lights. He said this was just a little weekend project to whet his appetite. I'm game as long as we can find some mood track lights :)

Fish Tank

Last year we were watching HGTV one day, and someone on the show had a fish tank in their wall. That got Jacob thinking, and before you knew it, he had found a cheap 125 gallon (6 feet long) fish tank on KSL, cut a hole in our wall, dug up a special sand out by the Great Salt Lake, and located a bunch of Lake Tanganyika fish. The front of the tank faces our living room. The back side of the tank butts out into our storage room, so Jacob was able to rig up an elaborate filtering system behind the scenes. It's been a lot of fun watching the fish, and some have even had babies. But last week the tank got a leak. Nothing catastrophic, but we decided the tank has run its course. We're hoping to put a cabinet in it's place, maybe a future place for toys. Anyhow, here are a few pictures to remember the fishies :)

Here's the tank in the wall. It was cloudy that day because Jacob had just put the sand in it. Since then he also framed it in.

Jacob put the lights on a timer. It looked pretty cool at night unless you were trying to sleep--which happened to a few of my family members who visited.

Here's one little couple. They're called cyprichromis utinta. This was when they first came to the tank, and over time their colors got much brighter. The male (in front) tail turned bright yellow and his body was a deeper blue. The female would store herfertilized eggs in their mouth. As the babies got bigger, her jaw would extend. The babies would even hatch in her mouth and she'd continue to hold onto them until she could find a safe place to spew them out.

Unfortunately, this handsome fish, a neolamprologus brichardi, would eat their babies as soon as they became available. But that was one blessing about the end of the tank. We were able to separate these fish from the others and see the mommas release their babies. The smaller striped fish is a juliachromis marleri. He could swim upside down.

And here's one of our "shellies." They like to live in the shells.

Ok, these aren't really from the tank. We took this picture when we went snorkeling in Cabo San Lucas last year. Isn't it cool!

Baby Girl!

It's been over a year, so there may be a few belated posts. First, and most important, is our baby girl. She arrived a little over two months ago, and we are so in love with her! It helps that she's a really good sleeper. The past couple of days she's gotten pretty good at holding her head up when she's on her tummy. Here's a few more photos.

The top photo and this photo were when she was about a week old.

This is proof that she isn't always a perfect angel. It's also proof that sometimes I actually let her cry. But we still think she's cute when she's mad. Check out those dimples! (They also appear when she smiles :)

But this is more like how she usually looks--bright-eyed and content.