Another client of TrustEd Designs is nearly complete! I’ve been working on creating a website for a friend of Amy’s who does historic restoration in and around Cincinnati. His company is called The Acanthus Group, and as of today we have the basis for their site online at www.theacanthusgroup.com. He pretty much knew what he wanted, and even had drawings of what the site should look like. This made it very easy for me to create exactly what he wanted. Check it out!

Last night I had my first taste of Chuck and Ed’s famous amber ale. While we were in Cincinnati over Christmas I helped Kim’s dad make some homemade beer. And after we left it went through the fermenting, bottling, and whatever other phases that beer goes through. This all led up to the big first tasting last night, which went over pretty well. I was honestly surprised by how good it tasted, and I definitely want to have some more before we leave to go back to Denver. My first attempt at brewing went really well and I hope to do it again. Maybe I should add a beer kit to the registry…

I’m in Cincinnati and the weather officially sucks! While Denver is a nice sixty degrees outside, I’m sitting near a window watching the mix of snow, rain, ice, etc. falling from the sky. We arrived in Dayton last night and immediately traded in the Ford mustang the rental car company gave to us for an Equinox which is nearly identical to the one Kim has in Denver. No way were we going to drive in a rear wheel drive car with the weather forecast for the next few days being as dreary as it is. If it is going to snow a ton, at least we could get some accumulation on the ground, but that isn’t the case so far. It’s just a wet sloppy mix.

We headed back up to the mountains this past weekend, with our friends Tracey and Jeff. We had an incredible weekend with snow falling nearly the entire time we were there. We spent the whole day Saturday on the slopes of Vail. After closing we drove back to our hotel in Silverthorne, which would be convenient for the next day’s adventures at Keystone. Our camera batteries were dead the first day, but Kim took some photos on the second which can be found here.

Silverthorne on Dwellable

Two weeks ago I added a couple of clownfish to my saltwater tank. Well I have good news, they are both still alive and both doing really well. These guys are pigs and eat most of the food before anything else can get to it. They are very active and swim all over the tank. They like playing tag, or establishing dominance, depending on what way you look at it. I think this is all a part of growing up, and I’m still hoping that I’ll end up with a mating pair when it’s all said and done. I finally took the camera out and spent a few minutes taking some pictures. They really seemed to like posing for me, so I’ll be sure to take more as they grow older. All of the pictures can be found in this photo album.

The real season of American Idol has finally started. It’s nice to have some television to watch again. Since we’ve been so busy recently, we’ve only been watching about an hour a night. So we haven’t seen all of the girls performances from last night yet, but will hopefully get to them tonight. Maybe we’ll even be able to squeeze in the results show too. Though the judges are calling this the most talented group they’ve ever had, I’m not really hearing it. Sure there are some good ones, but I feel like the majority of the performances I’ve seen and heard have been pretty average. Maybe it’s just first week jitters and the competition will heat up from here. That’s what I’m hoping.

I’m going to create a new blog category for wedding planning. Since this is going to consume so much of our time, as we are finding out, I may not have much else to write about for awhile. Monday night we went to a church in Denver to meet with the deacon who then told us all about the classes and such that we have to do in preparation for marriage. We also took a focus test, which was like 100+ questions that you either answered with agree, disagree, or uncertain. Kim and I both took the test, separately, and they will score our tests and compare the results. We requested to receive the results as soon as possible, so it shouldn’t be much longer.

Another thing we’ve been busy with is registering for gifts. This is quite a process, and what really stinks is that we already have so many of the standard things that people typically register for. We’ve been finding a couple of creative options that we are hoping to use, but we’ll still have some standard gift registries as well. Feel free to add any suggestions in the comments for something that we may not have thought about that would be a nice wedding gift. We could use a little extra help.

Over the weekend we also found the time to have breakfast at a new Denver area restaurant. This joins Lucile’s on our list of must hit breakfasts when visiting, though they are very different. The new place is called the Duffeyroll Cafe and their namesake, the Duffeyroll, is one fantastic cinnamon roll! I sampled both the mountain maple and the irish cream, along with a bite from Kim’s original style roll, and if I had to pick a favorite it would be the mountain maple, but they were all so good. I honestly cannot wait to have another!

In between wedding planning this weekend, we decided we had to get out of the house on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and headed for the zoo. This was our first visit to the Denver Zoo, but I’m sure it won’t be the last. I was honestly surprised by how big the zoo actually was! The first thing I saw when walking through the gates was a big male lion. With this guy so close to the front gates, I figured that there wouldn’t be much else to see. However, we spent the next three and half hours walking around the entire zoo. They had all of the usual suspects you would expect, and even some I have never seen before, at least not in a zoo: big horn sheep, arctic wolves, and Andean condors to name a few. I was highly impressed and this comes from a guy who went to zoos all of the time when growing up since my brother absolutely loved them.

It’s official, Kim and I are getting married!! I know, it’s about time, right? We actually started doing some planning for a wedding a few weeks ago. We decided that this year would be the year, so we had to start getting busy, and will continue to be busy up until August 30. I would have posted something earlier, but I wanted to wait until it was more “official.” So, last night I gave Kim a huge cubic zirconium engagement ring and fortunately she said yes. Her uncle owns a jewelry store back in Cincinnati, so we are going to get the real thing in a couple of weeks when we are back in town. That is unless I can convince her that cz is the way to go…