I gave in. Sort of.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Jacob and I have a married blog.

It's true. But it's not really about us. It's about things we love. Like The White Stripes. Check it out:

THE CHAPMAN PAPER SLEEVE

Yay for writing and music!

Big kids use frames

It has occurred to me recently that my blog has taken on an overwhelmingly "list-oriented" quality. It's one of the reasons I like blogs. It gives the writer permission to share updates and thoughts in a concise and measurable format. But I fear my (somewhat limited) gifts at writing may languish if they are used ONLY on lists. So I attempt a return to the essay format!

Today's subject: wall decor.

Here's my observation. I am a visually oriented person. I am a firm believer in "beautifying your space." As a single college student with an average of five roommates, and more especially as a poor one, this meant posters taped up with bits of scotch tape, magazine cut-outs stuck in mirrors, and gobs of sticky-tack on hand for whatever other bit of pleasing artistic flotsam struck my fancy.

But as Jacob and I have set up our home, gotten everything out of boxes, and finally gotten ORGANIZED, we've moved on to "beautifying." And I find I am resistant of any wall decor that is not framed.

I think in my head, I've decided that "grown-ups use frames." Single college students in dorm rooms are moving so often, and their home is not really their own, so why spend money on frames. But married people have "real" homes, and "real" homes have more permanent decor. Even though we're leaving this apartment in 6 months, I've refused to put up any of our six or seven AWESOME posters until we have poster frames. And do you know how much poster frames cost? At least the 24 x 36 inch ones we need? Like, ten bucks. Which is not a HUGE amount, but it is when you need six of them.

Sixty bucks to feel like a grown-up.

It seems like dropping $100 on car title, registration, plates, and insurance would make me feel grown-up enough.

Maybe I'll change my mind. But I'm also a big proponent of "cohesive-ness of form." Which means that if SOME things are in frames, EVERYTHING should be framed. (Or if the Pearl Jam poster is framed, then the Janis Joplin, Strokes, James Dean, Muppets, and guitar chords posters should be framed.) And a lot of things are framed.

For instance, I have a huge collection of black and white photographs, which includes film and music stars, some great photography in general, and other beloved figures. I still wanted it in our home, but because "grown-ups use frames," I gradually gathered gold/red hued frames of all shapes and sizes from the local thrift store and put them all up in a big frame gathering on the living room wall, with all the above-mentioned pictures in them. It's not quite done, but I think it looks awesome! I'm excited to add to it. I also like the feeling of "family" that it conveys. A friend who came by to visit recently said she liked it because you look at it and think "Oh, geneology. Cool. But...oh, it's Liza Minelli." Exactly what I was going for. =) (I'll post pictures of our little abode soon, then you can see for yourself what I'm talking about.)

Maybe I'll change my mind in the long run, about frames. Maybe I'll be pro-scotch tape and sticky-tack once more. But in the meantime, our posters are all rolled up in the closet, waiting for us to have enough money to buy frames for all of them. (For a while, they WERE scotch-taped up, just so I could decorate around them, and know what room they went in, etc. But after a day or two of constantly being frightened by the sound of a poster falling off the wall, we've moved them back to their temporary storage place.)

Pura Vida

PUBLISHABLE HONEYMOON HIGHLIGHTS:
• A steady diet of pineapple and mango, until it made us ill. After which we kept eating it in small doses, just accompanying it with larger doses of Tums, tic tacs, and Sprite. (Until Jacob decided to eat an entire mango in a fit of childhood indulgence, which he regretted later.)• Jacob’s dance of startle-ment/anxiety and subsequent attempt to “run away” when he stepped on a piece of seaweed in the ocean.• Gathering shells for a full morning before lunch one day—walking among tide pools during low tide, filling our pockets with shells to be made into necklaces, picture frames and other reminders of our time there• Laying around by the pool, sipping Sprite and watching people while my skin was warmed by the Costa Rican sun.• Iguanas! At least that big one that just sort of loafed around by the snack bar, looking threatening and occasionally scuttling over to snatch up bits of pineapple.• Waking up to howler monkeys. Which was actually kind of terrifying at the same time as cool. It was cool to be in a place where you’re awoken by monkey calls. But have you ever heard a howler monkey? They sound kind of scary. And by "kind of scary" I mean "like a prehistoric monster from the depths of hell." Honestly. Did you know their call was used to create the T-Rex's roar in "Jurassic Park"? Click here to get a taste of what I woke up to. I was terrified, but felt like a pansy for waking Jacob up to comfort me, so I just laid there, being terrified.
• Feeling beautiful for a whole week, without makeup or my hair done or a flattering outfit.
• Getting into the habit of having scripture study and prayer together every morning and evening.
• Waking up next to the love of my life every morning. (Often followed by telling each other our dreams. Highlights include: 1) a Pixar-esque adventure featuring an evil Zorro-like steer who was keeping everyone’s money, and who was eventually thwarted by Jacob and a justice-loving cow. 2) Beckah and I trying to one-up each other by what absurd thing we would do with the wedding bouquet if we kept it. Beckah won it by deciding she would have it make out with the head waiter of the drive-in movie theatre. 3) I was a Victorian con-woman and I looked like Rachel McAdams/Scarlett Johanssen—aka SMOKIN’ HOT—who faked affairs with oppressive married men so that their wives would find out and get so mad that they would leave the men who were holding them back and make their own way in the world. Slightly flawed plan/operation, but it was cool in my dream. I was a liberator.)
• Practicing Spanish. Which often involved teaching Jacob (who’s vocabulary is greatly improved under my tutelage, if I may say so myself), and more often involved me feeling like I just barely had any idea what was going on.
• 70’s/80’s Night @ the Amphitheatre. We didn’t actually attend, but our room was close enough to the amphitheatre to hear it. It didn’t seem to hold terribly strictly to the 70’s/80’s theme, but it was still fun. We were serenaded to sleep that night with such hits as “La Bamba,” “Cuban Pete” (from “The Mask”), “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Like a Virgin,” Abba’s “Rasputin,” Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy,” Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” and two medleys, one of Michael Jackson music, and one of songs from “Grease.”
• Our TAM tours representative. Or more specifically, her name. Jusy Wauters. Pronounced “Juicy Waters.” I always used her full name when we were talking about her, because I got such a kick out of it. On the last night we were in Costa Rica, Jacob dreamt that Jusy Wauters found out that we were laughing about her name, and murdered us in our beds with a kitchen knife.
• Our adventure of taking a taxi and going into town to find a pharmacy early one morning. We learned the Spanish word for “laxative.” Our souls agreed with Costa Rica, but our digestive systems put up a bit of a fight. The accompanying details of this several-day episode will be left up to your imagination, since I labeled this list “PUBLISHABLE.”
• Hilarity in the Houston airport upon return from Costa Rica on Saturday night. Jacob was sick, I was sick, he had barely slept, I hadn’t eaten in 13 hours, our flight was delayed and sent to San Antonio, then sent back to Houston. We’ve learned that the combination of lack of sleep/food/health with the addition of late night airport navigation makes both of us slightly drunk. I had no filter, we both found everything the other one did ADORABLE, and we laughed at EVERYTHING. And then we tried to get a hotel and a ride there and the hilarity transformed into gritted teeth and whispered obscenities in frustration.
• Photo Scavenger Hunt in the Houston airport on Sunday. Our connecting flight to Salt Lake for Saturday night was delayed until Sunday night @ 9:20 pm. We had to check out from our hotel at noon, so we had about 8 hours to just live in the Houston airport. So we came up with additional ways to entertain ourselves, aside from the average internet/reading/sleeping/eating. We collaborated on a list, armed ourselves with our cell phone cameras, split up and had one hour to find the following items:
- A green sweater (both found it)
- Someone carrying a guitar (both found it)
- A pen that costs more than $20 (there is surprisingly no such thing in airports. An ice cream cone is more expensive than a pen in an airport.)
- A tattoo that doesn’t include flames (both found it)
- Someone eating a pretzel (I hung out by “Aunt Annie’s Pretzels” repeatedly in hopes to find this one, but didn’t get it. Jacob attempted to get this, but I said that taking a picture of YOURSELF eating a pretzel didn’t count, or I would have done it. He was eventually awarded half points.)
- The book “Love in the Time of Cholera” (both found it)
- The doppelgangers of Scott and/or Carrie Chapman. Extra points if you got both of them in the same picture. (Jacob found one of Carrie and was therefore awarded half points)
- an iPad (I found this! It took me a long time, but I finally spotted a flight attendant sitting in a restaurant with one on her table)
- An adult 4’6” or shorter (both got this, but it’s hard to prove it in a photo)
- A pair of skis (no luck for either of us.)
- A handlebar mustache (Jacob got it. I could NOT find this! I kept thinking “I’m in TEXAS, for heaven’s sake! There has to be SOMEONE here with a handlebar mustache!” But no luck.)
- A Mormon (no find, at least not noticeably)
- Someone both wearing chocos and carrying a bedroll (neither of us found this…a lot harder than we thought)
- Dreadlocks (both got it)
- A sombrero (I found this! I couldn’t believe it! This kid just walked past me with one)
- EXTRA CREDIT FIND FOR LIZ: A genuine Louis Vitton or Prada purse (no luck.)
- EXTRA CREDIT FIND FOR JACOB: Soundgarden or Spoon paraphernalia (no luck.)
Jacob beat me by one point, having found 9 items out of the 15, and I only found 8. It was super-fun, though.
• Learning that Jacob is really funny in the morning, mostly because he doesn’t remember anything that happened during it until hours afterwards. On Sunday morning, we handed off alarm clocks several times, wrestled over blankets and sleeping positions, and briefly discussed the morning so far and him taking over the bed. And when I mentioned all of this to him later, he didn’t remember any of it.

• The zipline! With Francisco and Grabin, who were fun. We pretended we were flying and saw some lizards and butterflies and it was a BLAST.




• The Fantastic World. We never actually WENT there, but we drove past it several times. It was a huge area in the middle of a field on the side of the road, full of nothing but bouncy castles. Yeah.


• Costa Rica. In general. (Both of these pictures were taken from right outside our hotel room.)


• Finishing everything up with a trip to the ER! Everyone is well now, but Jacob had some serious intestinal blockage that was causing him a lot of pain, and it was bad enough that we felt we needed help. He'd been in pretty severe pain since Saturday morning, so when things weren't better by late late Sunday night, off to the University of Utah Medical Center we drove! We were grateful he survived until we could get someplace where English was more common...I'm afraid my Spanish vocabulary doesn't extend to medical terms. And the ER was bizarrely a lot of fun. Maybe because it was 3 in the morning, or because we were so glad to finally get help, or because everyone was so friendly, but it was a good experience. We told one person that we'd just gotten back from our honeymoon, and then every other person who came into the room said "How was Costa Rica?" with a big smile. It was bizarre to be in the Emergency Room, being congratulated over and over again on our recent marriage. But after 2 hours, one made up (and yet unfinished) story about a kid named Oscar whose teacher is an alien, one X-Ray, one incident of Jacob being told that he's "full of s**t," and one bottle of magnesium citrate later, we left for our hotel. Driving home to Rexburg a few hours later was an adventure, but we made it with no disaster!


And there you have it! Once our house is really finally put together, we'll take some pictures of that and post them, but in the meantime, we are loving not having to part ways at curfew, not worrying about roommates, not having to go into other rooms to change clothes, waking up and cuddling every morning, and all the other wonderful things marriage brings!

Thanks Dad and Mary, for an incredible week in paradise. =)

Dumbledore's Army

I know I promised blog-able honeymoon highlights, but before that happens, you need to bask in the awesome-ness that is my sister-in-law Camilla:



This is her senior photo.

And when I grow up, I wanna be as awesome as Camilla.

July 10th

What a weekend. One of the busier, crazier, more photogenic weekends of my life, and I loved just about every minute of it. Marrying Jacob was one of my better decisions, I feel. =) I wouldn’t have wanted to share this weekend with anyone else in the world. Aside from marrying Jacob in the temple and a few other non-blog-able highlights, here are some of my favorite memories of this weekend (that I feel like sharing on the internet…):

• Having so many friends and family members there to support us and help us make sure everything ran smoothly
• Playing “paparazzi” with friends (involves pretending Liz and Jacob are movie stars and assaulting them with cameras…it’s an actual game we developed a few years ago that we have yet to tire of. The pictures turn out awkward and hysterical. See below.)
• “Bohemian Rhapsody” interpretive ballet. There is very little in my life that has ever matched the epic-ness of this event. Each movement of the song added additional people and elements of expression in such a way that has yet to be matched.
• The way Jacob looked in his tux and converses.
• Opening our honeymoon gift and after waiting FOREVER (aka months), finding out that we were going to COSTA RICA
• Taking pictures outside of the temple. Which was awesome because of:
- Jesse and the megaphone
- Everyone’s enthusiasm and humor
- Being thrown into the air by a bunch of boys, which was scary but kind of fun (my husband was among them)
• The way the reception room looked when we showed up Saturday afternoon. (Mom and assistants. Holy cow. Words cannot describe. You took my vision and made it a reality far more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. Sigh. It was so perfect.) Later I'll try to find a picture that does it justice, but in the mean-time, here's a taste of how awesome it all looked:

• Feeling pretty. ALL DAY. Don’t think I’m being vain. But I’m a girl. And I really liked feeling pretty all day.
• Toasts. Beautiful things were said, embarrassing things were said. We felt loved. =)
• The dancing in general. My dad is awesome and insane. So is the rest of our family and friends. It made for a real good party.
• Cream puffs. I will forever be in love with cream puffs.
• Our send-off. I arrived home covered with flower petals and glitter. Which made me feel kind of like a prostitute. And not in a good way. Still, the car was fun. It identified us more clearly as newlyweds when we went through the snow-shack on our way home after the reception.
• Going through the snow-shack on our way home after the reception. Was pretty fun.
• Eric and Jacob’s grooves on the dance floor.
• Jacob.
• Bollywood fun (even though for the most part only I danced, but Jacob followed along, and very well too)
• Feeling proud of my cake! My own cake that I made myself! Even though everyone advised me against it, I knew it was simple and I set aside time to do it, and I knew I could, and it turned out great! A six-inch round, three layers of chocolate cake with strawberry whipped filling, decorated with whipped chocolate frosting and fresh flowers. It looked pretty and elegant, and not over the top, and which was my goal! Hooray!
(Interjection: I feel like I’m tooting my own horn a lot, which I apologize for. I worked so hard to make this day beautiful and fun, and I’m so glad it turned out well. But I couldn’t have done it without the help and support of so many creative people around me. I am so grateful to them!)
• The generosity of friends and family! We were pretty worried about being able to pay our bills for August, not having worked much during the month of July. But not only do we have a full-stocked kitchen and home in general, we're also able to pay our bills AND repair our TV and get me temple clothes! We are so flabber-gasted at everyone's generosity.

Of all the moments I will remember and cherish the most, kneeling across the altar from Jacob in the temple and making promises with him and with God is by far the most beautiful. It is a long journey to the temple, which somehow seems to get longer once you've found the person you decide to go with. But it is worth every difficult, demanding, patience-trying step of it. I am so grateful that Jacob worked hard and made sacrifices, and that I somehow was able to do the same, so that we could be married for time and all eternity, with God the leader of our relationship. The eyes of everyone in the sealing room spoke so much love and support that day. Without them, as well as the love and support of everyone else in our lives, Jacob and I would not be where we are. We love you so much!

I'm still working on collecting pictures/videos, but I will put them all online and make sure you have access to them too soon! Keep an eye out.

Stay tuned for honeymoon highlights! The publishable parts, at least. =)

Just so you know

The wedding was incredible--the temple, the family, the friends, the dancing, the cake, the interpretive ballets, the slow-motion fake knife fights. A day that will go down in history. Pictures, stories, videos, and highlights to follow, but after we get out of the Houston airport (where I'm posting this from), I'm just going to enjoy being in Costa Rica with my new husband.

Yeah. COSTA RICA. (My parents rock.)

And yeah. My HUSBAND. =)

And before I neglect to do this, a HUGE thank you to everyone who made Saturday not only possible, but incredible. We couldn't have done it without your hard work, creativity, and love. Thank you so much!

Saturday

Five long months ago, the most incredible man I've ever met asked me to spend a long long long time with him. It was an offer I was eager to take him up on. And now at last, at long last, we're getting married!

ON SATURDAY!!!!!

Hallelujah!

Words can't come close to describe how excited I am. So I won't even try. I'll just attempt to get my feet to touch the floor, pour myself a bowl of Honeycomb, and finish making wedding decorations. =)