I’ve been so focused on what items to buy for my husband that I forgot about the gift of words that I could give him. Have you ever thought to give your spouse a Christmas card? We can write notes to our spouse on random occasions, or write them a letter for your wedding anniversary, or birthday. But I don’t think many of us use the opportunity of writing them a Christmas card or letter.

This post contains affiliate links to Amazon. What’s a “White Elephant” gift? It’s a silly gag gift usually for playing a White Elephant game! How does it work? There’s a pile of gifts, one per person who is playing. Everyone draws a number which decides the order they choose a gift from the pile. If you have 13 people/13 gifts, you’ll have numbers 1-13 to draw from. Starting with person #1, they will choose a gift from the pile to unwrap and reveal to everyone.

The joy I found in my marriage this week: cute banter :) We love being silly with each other, just like any other couple! Because it’s fun to tease each other, right? I gotta share a memorable one from this week :) Whenever I give my husband a piece of gum, he ALWAYS gives me the wrapper, haha. Sometimes it happens when there’s an obvious trash can near by or he has a pocket he can stick it in himself.

This picture from last October is one of the most fun moments with some of my family members. While the boys were taking pictures with the photographer, the girls were scheming and did a surprise silly string attack on them! It was really funny and it brings me to the joy I had this week. :) The joy I found in my marriage this week: Effortless, no pressure fun. That seems like something obvious, and yet it’s something that can be easily taken for granted.

The joy I found in my marriage this week: feeling a positive difference in our lives and our relationship. It’s a good feeling when both of you notice that your interactions and overall days feel different from the past few months. I think one of the biggest things that we both appreciated and found joy in was how we focused more on “listening to understand” when we discussed specific subjects. I’ve always known this principle but sometimes you just need to be reminded, right?

[sc name=“soundcloud” id=“282060156” ] So I got nominated to do that ‘Love Your Spouse’ Challenge, but I’m not going to do it. It might be surprising since I’m a huge advocate of marriage, and that I totally admire this challenge going around! It’s important to publically share your feelings about your spouse, acknowledge their talents and how they have influenced your marriage, etc. But I think there can be TOO much of that sometimes.

Watch the video, then proceed to the rest of the post below :) [sc name=“youtube” id=“BLpKabyYfds” ] Making your own marriage recipe So you have your ingredients list above, and now you need the directions to follow, but where do you find those directions to follow? 3 ways you find those directions: You study and learn through credible books, classes, and advice from others. You pull from your past relationship experiences of what worked and what didn’t work.

I love being right in the middle of a memorable moment when a certain kind of happiness overcomes me, and I can’t help but think, “I will never forget this.” Those moments are deemed “memorable” for whatever reason, and can stay in our hearts forever. As much as we wish they can be replayed over and over, they can’t be; unless you have a time machine in the form of a flying DeLorean, and your name is Doctor Emmett Brown.

FRESHLY MARRIED IS NOW ON YOUTUBE!!! Click on This button below to subscribe! I was feeling like I needed to be doing videos as another form of helping couples strengthen their marriage because we all learn in different ways.I think this is also a great opportunity for my personality to come out a little more, which can help our relationship feel more personable :) I’m all about relating to others because it allows you to better understand them and trust them.

I know pictures of food are annoying but there’s a reason I’m documenting it! We have obviously had to overhaul our meals with my food allergies, and it has been a whole bunch of trial and error. I’ve started to notice the affects in my body when I have even a little bit of something dairy here or there. I thought I could get away with cheating even just 2 tablespoons of ranch once a week but NOPE, haha.

Hi. We are married and we both wear pants. That sounded funny huh? Well I’m just making fun of the stupid saying “Who wears the pants in your relationship?” because I hate it. Last time I checked we both wear pants, except on Sundays when I’m usually in skirt or dress ;) But seriously, though! I know it’s said in a funny and teasing way, almost sarcastically. However, remember, the thing about sarcasm is that there seems to be a little truth beyond its intentions.

And by good things, I don’t just mean that it opens the opportunity for sex! haha. I think that by ending your night with a kiss sets you up for good feelings before you go to sleep. Good feelings or bad feelings can be the difference between staying up all night or having a beautiful sleep! Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying that if you don’t kiss your spouse goodnight that you are a terrible spouse, or that you’ll have bad feelings before you fall asleep!

Remember how I was so frustrated/annoyed/intimidated/scared of my iron? hahaha yeah so this started the very beginning of our marriage. It was actually my very first post, too! Basically, ironing was a stressful ordeal for me and became so much more difficult than it should have been. I was even more bugged about it because I felt like I NEEDED to ironing my husband’s dress shirts all the time, in order to be a good wife.

Click the play button to LISTEN to this blog post! [sc name=“soundcloud” id=“273872657” ] Back in college I had to do an assignment relating marriage and relationships to something. It could be an object or an action, we just had to explain why. I found a lot of similarities between hiking and marriage so I wrote all those down here for you! :) It’s a crazy, fun, stressful, scary, beautiful adventure together.

We chose to send out Christmas cards for the first time this year, and this was our little insert. I meant to post this way before Christmas, but we had some technical difficulties on the back-end of our website. So even though Christmas has come and gone, we hope you can still appreciate our well-wishes to you for the holidays! I’m not sure if a lot of you send out Christmas cards, but I want to share what we did for those of you thinking about doing it.

As you know, we moved into our first home three weeks ago. We are enjoying it a lot so far :) It’s been great to come home to our own place with a lot more space! (I’m cool because I rhymed.) There’s DEFINITELY some upgrades from an old apartment to a new home, that we’ve enjoyed. Like how my stove cooks chicken, and how my oven seems to bake things better!

A few weeks ago, I heard a stupid song on the radio. Well, goodness, aren’t most of the songs on the radio kind of stupid? At least the ones on the cheesy pop stations, are. (I really hate most of what is played on the radio and am baffled that our society actually enjoys them so much that they become a top 10 favorite, but that is an argument for some other time, haha.

Lately I’ve been seeing how great it can be to share things with your spouse! I had the reminder of this when I had consistent problems with my laptop computer that was junky, and Trevor suggested that I take over his personal macbook which was much much better than my PC. I’m sooooo grateful that I had someone else to rely on and offer to share with me, or else I would be without a computer and be stressed over finding the money to buy a new one!

On Saturday, Trevor and I were doing dishes together, and we had a funny conversation about something. I don’t remember all of the words that were said, but I think it was about how I almost pulled a “your face” joke on him. I know, I act like a twelve-year-old sometimes because I say “your face is a _____ “(fill in the blank), whenever the opportunity arises, haha. Well this opportunity, he knew it was coming after he created the perfect set up, so he said it before I could say it.

I remember reading an article last month on Huffington Post called, “Can We Bring The Holidays Down A Notch?” It’s a Mom telling about the stress that she feels comes with Holidays while feeling pressure from other moms who seem to make each holiday bigger than the last. I’m not a mom with kids who sometimes need to be pampered with gifts on holidays, but as a newlywed, I can relate to feeling that pressure as well.

The past three weeks, Trevor and I have felt like we’ve been bums, couch potatoes, or whatever you call it. I am just finishing a cold I have had for the past 3 weeks, so I haven’t had much energy to workout, or do extra things beyond the necessary chores. I’ve mostly been tired, while Trevor has also been tired from some adjustments in his new job. While he loves it, his brain can be on overload sometimes.

I didn’t think I would come across this dilemma so soon after marriage. I thought we were pretty great at this, and wouldn’t struggle with it as much as we have been lately. It’s something that I thought I might have a hard time with when we have kids, but nope. It’s already a struggle at 9 months of marriage. What is this problem, you ask? Meals. Yeah I thought you might laugh.

Let’s be honest here. Every now and then, date nights can get a little routine doing the same things we usually do. This happens with us newlyweds too, believe it or not! So new ideas for date nights are good to have on those nights we feel like being spontaneous, or just wanting to do something different. Well, this is an idea that you can do any day of the week, in any season.

My twenty-second year was the best year of my life. Yesterday, I told Trevor my feelings on this past birthday year, and how I think it’s going to be hard to top. He said, “Oh, don’t say that! We are together, so every year is going to get better and better.” I loved it. I think trials are bound to happen in the years ahead of us, because there is so much more that we get to, and need to experience.

We aren’t quite sure about how many kids we will want to have, when the time comes. The funny part is that Trevor wants two, and I think that I like three! What’s even more funny is that every now and then, we come across a scene that could give us a great reason to want as few kids as possible, haha. And when that happens, Trevor just holds up 2 fingers at me, and smiles.

Our dear, dear parents have paid for full insurances on our health, dental, and vision care all our lives… Until now. We’ve been getting our dental work in this summer, while we have insurance through Trevor’s company, and WOW! What a confusing puzzle insurance is. I never knew everything that goes into making sure you don’t pay a million dollars for small medical services. I mean, just in choosing a dentist, you have to carefully choose a great dentist, while also double-checking that they carry your insurance.

You don’t hear about many newlywed couples who have food storage, but we are now one of those couples. We’ve been planning since before we got married, to have a three-month supply of food storage, and we just reached that goal this week. No, this isn’t because we worry that a zombie apocalypse will occur. It’s because we fear the unknown. I know many of you think that the topic of food storage is one that older people are involved in.

Remember to cut the price tag off of your brand new blouse before you wear it to Sacrament meeting, in giving a talk at the pulpit, in front of a large congregation. It’s fine. My husband slyly pulled it off after I sat back down. Well, the time came, sooner than I had expected, that we were asked to speak in Sacrament meeting. To many of you, this may surprise you, but we actually enjoyed it.

We just bought a new iron two weeks ago. I was excited to play wifey with it, and iron things for my husband, just like the movies show wives and moms doing. (some of you might chuckle at that). So while Trevor went to run errands, I thought I would try it out on his dress shirts, and have them wrinkle-free for his Sunday-dress. You need to know two things before you judge me.