VETERAN'S DAY

Guess what happened today? Tyler's uncle Jerry posted this picture of Tyler's grandpa from the olden days. Tyler had never seen this picture of his grandpa before and couldn't get over how much this picture resembles his own father. In the evening Matt and Nicole surprised us with treats: peanut butter bars. They are a Lynch favorite that I still had never had until this evening… boy I don't know how I made it this long without them. YUM!

SKETCHIN'

Tonight we had leftover mashed potatoes with a delicious homemade white gravy—yeah, we're cool like that. While we relaxed after dinner I came up with some ideas for our holiday card. We don't really have strong ambitions to get it out by Christmas exactly, but we do want it out around January. With that in mind, we're thinking of doing a year in review sort of card with a holiday photo of us. This was a pretty memorable and momentous year, TONS of things happened! It's got me all sorts of fired up to make this card.

OPTIONS THREE

Remember that owl I received earlier this week as a hand-lettering commission of sorts? This morning I finally had the time to get working on it and made some mock-ups to send to Renae for her opinion. I knew she was at a funeral today, but she was picking it up tomorrow, so I just texted her and said she could let me know at any time. I figured once she had it nailed down it wouldn't take me long to execute it. She ended up responding sooner than I'd planned and I had it done in no time. Tonight I wasn't feeling super great (shocker) and all that sounded good was mashed potatoes. Do you know what my super amazing husband did? On his way home from work he bought a bag of potatoes and made the creamiest homemade mashed potatoes for this little lady. What a lad I have!

THANKFUL TURKEY

Tyler and I have been having a rough couple of weeks—feeling like a couple of "Debbie Downers." We've been needing a bit of a pick-me-up and I declared tonight that we should make our thankful turkey. A "thankful turkey" is a Lynch Thanksgivingtime tradition that we have been meaning to implement into our little family for some time. You cut out a bunch of feathers and then take turns writing on the feathers, listing what you're thankful for. We finished in no time and decided to hang it on our front door so that we could see it as we left each day. We hope it will be a good reminder that things aren't all that bad and we really do have so many amazing blessings.

PIZZA BY THE ELEVEN

I left work a bit early to go and get my flu shot from my mom's pharmacy. As I waited for the pharmacist to administer the shot, I chatted it up with my mom. She told me that there had been a super sale on pizzas on Halloween and she went a little crazy. So crazy, in fact, that she had too many pizzas for her three freezers—they had pizza coming out of their ears! She told me that, as a Halloween present to Tyler and me, she wanted me to go and pick some pizzas. I ended up leaving with eleven pizzas! I then drove over to Lynchland for a little party; their ward fall social was at seven and they invited Tyler and me along. Tyler had to work tonight so I went along solo and enjoyed a delightful dinner and a wonderful message from my childhood stake president's twin sister. She talked about President Hinckley's nine BEs and in turn inspired me to hang them somehow in our home to see them everyday.

HOO HOO

I got an interesting call tonight from Suzanne who put someone she was at a dinner with on the phone. Turns out everyone loved the chalk things I did for the dinner she put on in September and she had a lady with her that requested my hand-lettering services. She is a teacher at an elementary and needed the words "Teacher Of The Month" lettered on this owl. It is giant, glittery, and bumpy, with little space for lettering. What a challenge, but I'm excited. Also, Tyler had an insane night at work that involved an old lady threatening everyone and their dog that she would strangle them, or hurt them in some way. Even though she is a frail old 70-pound woman and could do no harm, it frightened me nonetheless as Tyler told the story, laughing.

A SEVENTIES DESIGNER

My awesome co-worker Caroline recently inherited some sweet vintage graphic design things from her aunt who was a designer herself. I can't believe how gracious Caroline was to give me sheets of blinding neon paper in all sorts of colors and this lovely designer visual pad. This thing is filled with some old school examples of different drawing utensils on paper. Later tonight I received a wonderful phone call from the one and only Amber Richardson. We talked of cabbages and kings and maybe possibly working together in the future. Things are looking up.