NEVER Leave the Dog Alone

So last night, I left Cookie alone in the house for a bit while we went to the store. I figured, we’re just going to run into Target, buy a few things, and then come home, so things should be just fine. Usually, when we leave her alone and not in her cage, she dumps all the trash cans over, and roots through them, and eats the tissues, so I try not to leave her alone, but I keep hoping that she’ll grow out of that, and act normal. (Weirdo) We took longer in Target than anticipated, but I thought we’d be ok, because I shut the door to my bedroom and the door to the basement, so there were only so many places she could be at. After Target, I ended up heading to the mall to get a tank top, and then Husband and I went shopping for costumes. The whole time, I kept hoping that Cookie would go against her better judgment, and do nothing.

When we finally returned home, the first thing I noticed was the leaves. On the ledge where my letters are, I have some leaves up there, to add some decoration, and they were hanging off. I then noticed that the letters were askew, and some were on the floor. What the heck did this idiot do?! So, immediately, I say her name, and ask her what she did, and she just BOOM, hits the floor, and basically tries to army crawl out of the room, because she knows what she did was wrong. I opened the door right away, and she ran outside as fast as she could, knowing she was in trouble. I left her outside for a while, so that she’d learn, but I doubt she did. I don’t know how to fix her of this, she so far she doesn’t seem to remember or care that it’s bad until she gets caught. Maybe that’s how all dogs are. Or maybe she just needs a little longer in our care; she hasn’t been with us for too long still. Hopefully, she can start to learn them, so that we can let her out of the cage by herself and don’t have to worry about her ruining the house.

New Polish, New Polish

I went and got a pedicure the other night – something I haven’t done since before I went to Germany. Everyone remembers my toes trauma in Germany, how the guys suitcase fell on my foot, and broke the toenail, so I was just waiting for that to grow out before I went back. I tried the same place as last time, hoping to get a new person, and thinking it was maybe just that one guy that I don’t like. Unfortunately, I got the same guy. It’s not a big deal or anything, but I really wanted to try someone new there. So I sit down, and he gets started, and again, he’s hurting me. Which I keep telling him, while pulling my foot away, and he just keeps saying reasons for why, there’s too much dead skin, blah blah but it was still hurting. And then I told him that I thought he cut them too short, and he argued with me! He tried to tell me that they weren’t, like I was in the wrong here. So he does his thing, and then when he’s painting the color on, I realize I chose the exact same color as last time. Holy cow how dumb am I that I didn’t realize I had chosen the same color?! In my defense, it had been over a month, so of course, I wasn’t really thinking, but I just wish I had taken a second to just LOOK at my toes to see what color they were. So now, I just have nails that look the exact same, but hopefully, when I go in again, I’ll choose a good color, and find a better place. Any suggestions, anyone?

Card Makin’ Time

So, it’s nearly card swap time again, which means, I made a card once more. This time, we only had to do one card, and our second thing is to do a neighbor gift. I haven’t quite nailed down what I’m doing there, but I’m furiously scanning Pinterest to see what I’d like to do. But here’s my Christmas card:

And I made a thank you card, for Chelle’s mom, and I think it turned out ok:

I know that my Christmas one is plain, but that’s ok, I really like it. Hopefully everyone else will too!

Miscellaneous Monday

As I was browsing the local Target this weekend, I saw these Oreos and immediately had to buy them. And I’m not sorry, they’re delicious.

Everyone, go get these. They’re awesome.

Yesterday, I took dinner to someone in my ward for the first time. I visit teach her, and she had a baby like, 4 days ago, and as her visiting teacher, I was assigned to bring her dinner last night. I never sign up for these things. Not that I don’t want to help people, but I get such anxiety even planning these things, that to save my health and sanity, I just decline. So I planned on a meal, and had Husband help me cook it all, and as soon as I delivered it and was done, a huge weight lifted off me, because it was finished, and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

This last Friday night, after dinner, Husband and I were walking around the Riverwoods, walking through all the stores, and I decided to hop into the Victoria’s Secret, just for funsies. As I was looking through things, I saw that they have new sports bras, and since mine have been discontinued lately (I can’t find them at the store, and I’m having no luck online) I tried one on, to see how it felt. Well, it was interesting, it was a completely different experience than I thought would happen with a sports bra, but I was trying it on and looking at it, and I called Husband over to ask an opinion on something, and I guess the sales girl thought this was an invitation for her to come in too, so she came in. And naturally, I did what anyone does when they’re wearing only a bra and pants, with no shirt on, I sucked in the gut and sucked it in hard. I did this until she left, and I don’t know why I did this. It’s not that I care what she thinks of me, but I panicked, and apparently, that was my first instinct. Finally, when she left, I could let it all go and breathe normally. PS I did decide to buy the bra, to see how well it works.

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

Today, I wanted to make a treat, specifically, cupcakes. I had wanted cupcakes last night, but was too lazy to get up and go by the time I wanted one, at 10:00 PM, so I didn’t worry about it, and then this morning, I watched Cupcake Wars, so my craving for them was high. After looking through my recipes, I found one that I wanted to make, Snickerdoodle cupcakes. They were pretty easy to make, so that was nice. Of course, I had just pulled the cooked cupcakes out of the oven, and was making the frosting, when I realized that I had forgotten to add the vanilla to the batter. Ooooops. But I think it evened out, because the frosting is pretty sweet (A buttercream cinnamon frosting) so it evens out. Anyway, in case you want the recipe:

3 cups flour (she wanted to have it be 1 ½ regular flour, and 1 ½ cup cake flour, but I don’t have cake flour)
1 TB baking powder
1/2 Tsp salt
1 TB ground cinnamon
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs
2 Tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together the flours, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. With an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until fluffy and pale in color. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down side of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla (guess I just straight up missed that, what the heck?). Reduce speed to low, and add in flour mixture, slowly. Add in milk and beat until combined. Divide the batter between the cups, filling each three-quarters of the way full. Bake about 20 minutes, or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Wait to frost them until they’re cool.

For the frosting,

1 cup butter, room temperature
3 3/4 cup powdered sugar
3-4 TB milk
2 Tsp vanilla extract
1 Tsp cinnamon

With mixer on low speed, blend butter until fluffy, about 30 seconds. Add sugar, 3 tablespoons of milk and the vanilla extract (this is when I realized this was the first time I used the vanilla), blend lightly. Add the cinnamon and continue mixing until sugar is incorporated. Increase speed and beat until fluffy. If the frosting is stiff, add the remaining tablespoon of milk.

So, that’s it.

They were easy, and they did end up being really good, but now I want to make them again, remember to add the vanilla, and see how much of a difference it makes. And I don’t really like the frosting tip I used here, it was my first time. At least that’s something I’m learning with all this frosting I’m doing.

A Recipe Book

Wednesday, March 15, 2012. This day, I had purchased some vital items that were going to be made into a recipe book. I was having the first of my many mouth surgeries, so I figured that with all the laying around I’d be doing, I would be able to work on my recipe book, and finally compile the recipes that I’d been collecting for the last few years. Up to this point, when I needed to use one of these recipes, I just grabbed the scrap of paper I had written it on, but now, they’d be combined and awesome. So...I never worked on it. I did other things during the recovery time of that surgery, and then, when I had others, I had other things that were more pressing, so I kept putting off the recipes. Finally, a few months ago, Chelle got some cute software for making recipe pages, and I decided it was time to finally get going on this project. A few weeks ago, I decided it was time to start typing up the recipes. It took me a few weeks to get it done, and everything put together, and then finally, yesterday, I printed off all the recipes, and today, I finally put them all together. After I put them all together, I separated them by genre:

And after I had them separated there, I alphabetized them, and then combined them into the sheet protectors. I had them in there, one for each protector, but then I had them 2 in every one, back to back. So after I got those all done, I put them into the binder, and then I had to print off the cover pages, and the tabs. Finally, I had done them all, and had the tabs in there.

So I was jazzed to have them all done, and then I got the final cover page finished, and this is what the binder looks like, totally complete:

And now, 1 year and 7 months after I bought all the stuff for this, I finally have finished my binder, and I am so jazzed to finally have it finished.

Foto Friday

Hopefully today’s isn’t too morbid or anything, but I wanted to share it anyway. We’ve finally gotten the headstone for Husband’s parents, and it looks really good. It took long enough, sheesh, but here it is:

I really like this, I’m so glad we finally have this up.

Throwback Thursday

I did the math, and learned that I have to blog every single day between now and the end of the year to be able to hit my goal of blogs for the year. Good golly, that’s a lot. I don’t even have that many things to blog about at all, so I probably won’t hit that. Oh well. In the good news, you guys get another picture of me as a young’un.

This was the house of my best friend in the whole world, Nicole. She sadly moved when I was in the sixth grade, to Cali. I’ve seen her like, once since then, and we’ve stayed in touch, but her house was the funnest. I guess this is some kind of swing she had? I can’t remember it, but look at how much fun I’m having. Good times for me, and my baby sister in the pic with me.

Pumpkin Carvin’

Last night, for FHE, we got together with Adam’s family, and carved pumpkins. So after a little lesson, we got started. Except, I hate to carve pumpkins, so I just watched as everyone else carved a pumpkin. I did help, though, by choosing the design I made him to, so I feel like I did my part. I just sat on the couch, offering moral support to people.

See, look at them working hard. Finally, the finished product came, and he did a really good job!

I’ve never used a template on a pumpkin before, but their family all had, so it was nothing new to them. The pumpkins looked really good though. Maybe some time in my life, I’ll get to carve a pumpkin, but for now, I’m happy to just watch.

Miscellaneous Monday

I have had enough of the dentist. I know I always say that, but lately, I have seen him way too often, and I think it’s time to stop. But unfortunately, I have at least one more visit, so I’m not done yet. After I got done with all my jaw surgeries, and my implants, I decided to do a tooth that was for purely cosmetic purposes. I’ll be honest here: out of my 4 front teeth, 3 of them were fake teeth. So I wanted to make the last real tooth up there match the others, so I started the process of getting it replaced. After I had the prep appointment, I got the permanent crown on there. Upon leaving the dentist office, and every day for the next week, I was realizing more and more that the two teeth were not the same color. The one that I got replaced looked like a weird dead tooth, so finally, I had to go back, and he took a look, and agreed with me that it wasn’t the same. So now, I have another temporary in there, and in another week or so, I’ll get the new permanent. Wish me luck that they’ll match this time!

I went to get a new rug for the bathroom after last weeks’ Cookie debacle, and decided that getting a new color of rug would be fantastic. So, I chose a new teal color, and I love it. These will probably also be better than my old ones, they were white, and got dirty often, so I was forever washing them. Of course, these will be washed as well, but luckily, they won’t look as dirty as quickly.

Speaking of Cookie, she has a new thing where she knocks over the garbage cans in the house, and just strews the contents all over. She keeps picking the bathroom garbage cans, so the only things in there are tissues, cotton balls, and Q-tips, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what she’s doing, or why. If anyone has any tips as to how to stop a dog from doing this, I’d be really appreciative.

Crockpot Orange Chicken

Sunday again, which means making something in the ol’ crockpot. I found this recipe a few days ago on Pinterest, of course, and after I looked through it, I decided to change it right up. It’s for Orange Chicken. See, the recipe has you combine the ingredients for the sauce, then cook the chicken, and in the last 30 minutes of baking, then you put the sauce in there, so that your food has a slight flavor, I guess? I don’t exactly know. So I made it my own. I started with these ingredients only:

Just like the recipe calls for. But after putting the chicken in the pot, I just put the sauce right on, to make it really orangey. So you put your chicken in the bottom of the crockpot, and combine 3/4 cup orange marmalade and 3/4 cup of the BBQ sauce, and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Stir well to combine, and put them on top of the chicken. The recipe called for letting the chicken cook for 4-6 hours on low, but I accidentally got started way too late, so I cooked it for 2 hours on high. Then I removed the chicken, let it cool down a bit, cut the chicken into pieces, dipped them in egg and then a flour/cornstarch mixture, and fried them for a minute to make them breaded. Then I returned them to the crockpot, the setting warm, so they could soak in some sauce. I wish I had had my wits about me to take pictures of everything, but I was trying to also make some lo mein, and some fried rice, I accidentally had WAY too many things going on to take them, and I regret that.

But! The end product was good, I really liked it. I’m sure it’s also good the original way, but in my head, Orange Chicken is a breaded chicken, so I wanted to make that change. This recipe was also ridiculously easy, in case anyone needs to make some good food with minimal effort.

A Lovely Day for a 5K

Today was a race day. It’s only a 5k, so I really didn’t prepare for it all that much, and I think that might have bitten me in the bum during the run. The race was put on by a local high school – the school that my sisters-in-law attend. They wanted to do an event for our family, to raise some money for a charity, in our name. So, they threw this together, and we showed up to run. The weather this Saturday, for those that weren’t outside, was FREEZING. I had on my running tights, my Under Armor shirt, and I was so cold still. I waited around for about a half hour, and then the race began.

My feet were numb. For the first mile, they were numb. I think it’s because I was standing in the freezing frost-ridden grass, but they hurt when I pounded the pavement with them. My hands were like ice, and the air was so cold, it hurt to breathe in. I struggled in this race, with the elements, but I tried my hardest, and ended up finishing 41 overall. Before we get too excited – there were less than 200 people, and I think that over 100 of them walked, so it’s not like I did really excellent. I finished first in my age group, but I think that those in my age group were only the members of the family, who walked, so it’s not all that impressive. But it’s still pretty cool. After I finished, and did my cool down walk, and my chest HURT. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to do nothing. I breathed into my hands, so that I was breathing in warm air, and after a while, that helped and the pain stopped. I asked someone to take my picture after I was done:

And then after the race, the whole family found each other, for a quick picture before we retreated to the warmth of our cars:

It was a fun race, and a really cool thing for the school to do for us. And I’m glad I got to experience a 5k in this weather – I’ve never done one before and now I know I never want to do one again.

Tex-Mex Casserole

With my new goal of eating more meals at home, today was no exception. I found this on Pinterest, and it turned out pretty good, I think. Recipe:

1 can 10.75 ounce Campbell's Healthy Request Cheddar Cheese Soup
1 can 10.75 ounce Campbell's Healthy Request Tomato Soup
1 cup chopped onion
1 lb lean ground beef
1 10 ounce can Rotel Mild tomatoes
1 15 ounce can Black Beans, rinsed and drained
1 15 ounce can Sweet Corn, drained
2 cups cooked whole wheat penne pasta
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
½ tsp onion
1 tsp garlic, minced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large skillet, add garlic, onion and hamburger meat. Brown hamburger meat, garlic, and onion until cooked through and the meat is no longer pink. Drain any liquid out of meat and return to low heat. Add Campbell's Healthy Request Cheddar Cheese Soup, green chillies, and Rotel Tomatoes to cooked onion, garlic, and hamburger. Add in 1tablespoon of chili powder, cumin, salt, and pepper. Stir on low heat for 3-5 minutes. In a medium sized bowl, add Campbell's Healthy Request Tomato Soup and ½ cup of water. Whisk together until well mixed. In a large stock pan (I used the same pan that I cooked penne pasta) mix together cooked pasta, Campbell's Healthy Request Tomato Soup with water. Stir until mixed. In a small bowl combine black beans and corn. Add 1 tsp chili powder and gently toss to mix. Pour pasta into the bottom of a casserole dish. Top with hamburger meat mixture and then add corn and black beans mixture to top. Bake casserole in oven for 15 minutes until heated through.  Add ½ cup reduced fat cheddar cheese on top before baking.

This was pretty easy, I won’t lie. I am a fan of this dish. It was pretty spicy, due to the cumin and so much chili powder, and the Rotel, but I think I handled like a champ. I recommend this, and I’m sure it’s really easy to take the spice out. Happy cooking!

Holidays Begin

Last night I was at Target, buying a replacement bathroom rug, and I walked past all of the Halloween stuff. I saw a really cute doormat that celebrated Halloween perfectly.

Cute, eh? So now with this purchase, I’ve officially started decorating for Halloween. Maybe I’ll start putting up other stuff, maybe I won’t. But this one thing says I’m ready for the holiday to start.

Miscellaneous Monday

I have officially started Christmas shopping. I didn’t even try to start the shopping, I was just shopping on Saturday, and I saw something that I thought would be perfect for someone, so I picked it up and kicked off Christmas Shopping 2013. It’s my goal to be done by December, actually, so wish me luck!

Yesterday, when it was raining really hard, I tried to put Cookie outside, and she took two steps out, felt the rain, and came back inside. I assumed that she probably didn’t have to go right then, so I brought her in, and started working on other things. After a little while, I realized I hadn’t seen her for a few minutes, so I got up to see where she was. Where was she? Oh, peeing on the bathroom rug is all. I immediately chucked her outside and threw the rug in the washing machine, and when it had washed and dried, I looked at it, and it is indeed stained. My white rug is stained, alas. Looks like I need to go get a new one, and force Cookie outside even when she doesn’t want to go.

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to any and all Canadians that read this (even though I feel fairly confident that there are none). Husband’s family have dual Canadian-American citizenship, but only the two youngest are considered “Canadian” because they were born there. But even if you’re born in a “foreign” country, if your parents are American, can you really be considered the other nationality? Or are you just an American, born in non-America? Discuss.

Chicken Taco Chili

I’ve decided to eat more meals at home. We eat out way too much, and I have had enough, so I went through all my recipes, found some good ones, and bought the ingredients for them, staple ingredients, that I know can hang out in the cupboard and not spoil until we make them, since I swear we seem to throw away a lot of food because we can’t get to it in time before it spoils. So today, in the first of many days of eating at home, I made Taco Chicken Chili. And it was delicious. The recipe, if you’re so inclined:

1 onion, chopped
1 16-oz can black beans, with juices
1 16-oz can kidney beans, with juices
1 8-oz can tomato sauce
1 16-oz can corn
2 14.5-oz cans diced tomatoes with chilies
1 packet taco seasoning
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp chili powder
3-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
Shredded cheddar cheese

Combine beans, onion, corn, tomato sauce, cumin, chili powder and taco seasoning in a slow cooker. Place chicken on top and cover. Cook on low for 10 hours or on high for six hours. Half an hour before serving, shred chicken and return to slow cooker for another 30 minutes. Serve alone, like a chili, or on top of rice if so desired, serve with shredded cheese on top.

So for once, I followed the recipe almost to a T, I only added in some green peppers, because I think those make any meal better. It was really good – but be warned of the times for cooking. In my crockpot, I put it on low for about 4 hours and it was done, and I even started with frozen chicken, so just pay attention to the soup is what I’m saying. But other than that, delicious!

(PS this chili here has some cornbread on top – it doesn’t look like that 100%)

Foto Friday

Last night, Husband and I were getting dinner, and it was late, a few minutes away from 9:00. As we were getting closer to the food place, Husband said he wanted to go to this dessert place for a treat for after dinner. As we got there, being so late, we noticed that there were some slim pickings. I told the gal at the counter I wanted one of each of the mini cupcakes, there were only 4. She then told us that someone had failed to pick up their order, so they had a few more mini cupcakes, if I wanted to get other flavors instead of what they had. So, she brings out the box, and it is a box full of cupcakes, literally. So then, Husband just straight up asks how much it is if we just buy the whole box. She tells us, after figuring things, so we just up and bought a whole box of cupcakes with about 30 cupcakes in it.

We took it home, I ate a couple, and they are delicious. I recommend this place – Decadence. I liked it.

Duct Tape Wallet

For scouts right now, the kids are working on their artist badge. For tonight’s activity, we made a duct tape wallet. I have never made one before, but I watched a YouTube video to learn, and felt confident I could do it. So, finally, 15 minutes after the activity starts, one boy comes, just one. I was almost about to call off the whole thing but then he came over, so we did the wallet. We watched the video as we made the wallet, with pauses where we had to catch up. My wallet didn’t end up being the length it needed to be, I did it too short, but you get the gist. I put a dollar in there, to see if it fit, and it did, the only thing I couldn’t get to work was the spaces for the credit cards – the wallet just wasn’t long enough. But it looks ok. Passable, I’d say. I don’t know that I’ll use it, but at least I know how to make one.

Throwback Thursday

I keep seeing this thing on all my social media sites, where you post a really old picture of yourself, tweet it, instagram it, Facebook it, or anything, and call it your “Throwback Thursday”. So I’m going to start it here, and just see how it goes. I know, this is literally the same thing as Foto Friday, so maybe I’ll have to cancel that, and do something else, we’ll see how it goes. In any case, here’s my pic.

I have no idea what’s going on here. I imagine I’m getting stuff out of the fridge, but I don’t know what. I don’t even know what age I am here, I’m going to guess anywhere between 7 and 10. But look at those bangs, so stylish. and that shirt, so amazing. Anyway, enjoy!

Creatin’ Stuff

Last night, we had Stamp and Chat, and it was a small group, only three of us, but it was still a blast. The cards were fantastic as well, of course.

It was a pretty short night, in part because it was only the 3 of us, and in part because we were really hurrying to get done, as Chelle was sick, and we didn’t want to infringe on her longer than necessary. I got my order from the last Stamp and Chat night, and luckily, had a new card box in there to make, and I made that too, because I didn’t have anything else to do. I needed a new ‘thank you’ card box, and here it is:

Now, I forgot to get new paper, so I used the paper that I had left over from when I made my last ‘thank you’ box, so now I have two basically identical looking boxes. Here they are, side by side:

 

 

But I’m ok with it. I’ll know what goes in these boxes, and now I won’t have phantom cards just floating around.

Organizing

This past Sunday, we gathered as Husband’s family to watch the second session of conference. I’m still not entirely sure why we did this. I mean, no one can talk during it, or else you miss the talks, so we all just had to sit there in silence anyway, but we all gathered. Before the session started, we were eating lunch, and cleaning up some of the house. It was finally time to clear out everything, so the oldest sister was cleaning out everything, and we were all divvying it up between all of us. We then spent a while with the youngest sister, dividing up random food things in the cupboard. Jell-O’s, spices, that sort of thing. They had loads of all of these things, so it took a long time to divide up everything, but I think we all walked away with pretty equal items. I took it home, and didn’t want to deal with it, so I just put it on the counter. Today, after I got home from work, I decided to finally tackle it. I laid it out so that everyone can see what it looks like:

So, I got to work. I rearranged everything to fit it in. I moved things around from cupboard to cupboard, and cleaned it all, and threw away things that I had bought when we first got hitched and hadn’t used yet, and finally, everything looked awesome, and things are in all new places. The best part about this is that I did it when Husband is out of town yet again, so I can’t wait for him to get home and not know where anything is. It’s the little things that make life worth living.

Miscellaneous Monday

This past weekend, I went to my first RSL game of the year. Yes, you read that right folks, I finally hit one up. It was like being home again; I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I had come back. Of course, it was freezing cold, but that’s ok, I had a blanket and a jacket, and the only thing that was cold was my hands. We were sitting in a part of the stadium that I’d never been before – the second tier. The view was pretty sweet.

At halftime, I was getting pretty chilly, so I decided that a hot chocolate sounded pretty good right about then. I grabbed PJ, and we went and stood in the line for the hot cocoa, which took FOREVER and finally, we got to the front of the line. As I placed my order of 4 hot cocoas, I was informed that they were out of hot chocolate. WHAT?! Oh man, I had waited for nothing, and I was still going to be cold.

After the second half started, I decided to take a swig of the drink Husband bought me. It was root beer, which generally I don’t drink during the game, but I wanted some root beer, so I gave it a shot. When I opened it, it EXPLODED all over me! It soaked my hands, my white long sleeved shirt I was wearing, and went all over my blanket. Shoot, shoot, shoot. There was a bottle of water nearby for me to be able to wash my hands a little, but I felt gross all night, and had to do laundry as soon as I got home. Yuck.

Conference Weekend

This weekend was General Conference. Since I think everyone who reads this already knows this and knows me (because I’m not deluding myself into thinking that strangers read this, but if there are any that do, hello! Welcome!) Then you know what it’s about – but in case one doesn’t, General Conference for the LDS faith is a bi-annual meeting for all members to listen to our prophet and apostles speak to us, to get new instruction, or to learn new things. As a kid, I loved conference weekend because it meant no church, but I hated conference weekend, because I thought it was just so boring. But now as an adult, I get more out of it, so I enjoy watching it now. This weekend was no exception – there were some really good talks and messages I heard.

Something that bugs me about this weekend, and I don’t know if everyone experiences it, but I have a few family members and friends, that aren’t practicing Mormons anymore, and that’s fine, I literally don’t care what you do with your life regarding religion (or anything else, really) but the thing that I care about is that they will watch snippets or hear about snippets and then proceed to spend the weekend bashing it via the social network. I don’t understand why they feel the need to take something that’s meant to help us, and make it about an issue, or turn it around into something ugly. The more I read that happen this weekend, the angrier I got at these individuals.

I’ve found recently that when people leave the LDS church, there are a few different ways of them doing so. There are the fade-away’s, the ones who just sort of go, and there’s not a fuss, and they leave us alone, and we leave them alone, and that’s that. And then there’re the types that when they leave, they feel that they need to denounce every single thing that the church has ever said or done, and they won’t rest until every single person they know feels the same way about everything. I just don’t understand, why can’t we all just live and let live, and let each other feel whatever way we want about religion? I mean, isn’t that what America was founded on, anyway? Freedom of Religion? Let’s keep this tradition going that our forefathers built this country on. So if anyone needs me, I’ll be over here, believing what I want to believe, and I’ll let y’all keep on believing what you want to believe, and we don’t have to worry about each other at all.

Foto Friday

Last night, when I got home from work, I was done for. I had a toothache that just won’t go away, a headache that popped up during the day that wouldn’t stop, and I was just exhausted. Husband was running errands after work, going to the bank, that sort of thing, and I asked him to get me some bananas whilst he was out. When he returned, he did have my bananas, and this lovely thing:

It’s a candy bouquet! Instead of getting some flowers that will wilt and die, he got me a bouquet of candy that will fill my stomach with happiness and sugar. I’m torn between being excited to eat this, and never wanting to eat the candy, and keeping it like this forever.

October Begins

You guys, I can’t believe it’s already October. Things are way too crazy, I don’t even understand where the time goes. As I was going through my New Years resolution list, I wanted to let you guys know how I was faring.

1. The money thing. I wanted to make better decisions on my money, and track it better. I won’t lie, I haven’t really done this. I’ll try and be better these last 3 months. I will.

2. Being healthier. I have been! I ate a lot healthier this year, and I didn’t eat nearly as many treats as I could have, so I feel like that’s a victory. Of course, with the holidays coming up now, this will go right out the window.

3. Read 20 books. I’ve done it! So far I’m at 25, so I passed with flying colors.

4. 250 posts. I’m 83 shy of it right now, so I only have 3 months to make that up. Which is basically a post a day. Which might not actually happen. Crap. I’ll do my best, though!

That’s my year wrap up so far, and now, I have 3 months to get better at these things. I can do this!