Las Vegas!

Today, we left Utah bright and early and made our way down to Las Vegas. We were going for one reason, and one reason only:

TO SEE BRITNEY SPEARS IN CONCERT!

I have never been so excited for something! Ok, that’s not true. My level of excitement for my whole life is always pretty high, so to see this, I was even more excited. We made it down there in pretty good time, and arrived about 3:00ish. After checking into our hotel, we went over to the strip. We went to the Titanic artifact exhibit.

 

Also, I should specify here, we took a big group. Myself, Adam, Rory (my younger sister), Austin (bro-in-law), Chantelle (his wife), Danielle (her twin) and Tiffany (their older sister). We all were jazzed for Britney! Except for the guys, they were going to go to Ka, a Cirque de Soleil thing. After the awesome Titanic exhibit, we went to the Bodies exhibit (both gross and cool) and then over to Spears!

It was an AMAZING concert! Did she lip-sync? Absolutely. Were her dance moves lazy and clunky? You bet! But was it awesome? HECK YES. It was amazing. 90 minutes of screaming along to her music and dancing and having fun. Finally. we got out of the concert, and barely made it back to the hotel before collapsing in an exhausted heap on the beds. It was so fun – and something I have been wanting to do since I was a teen and started loving Britney.

Valentines Toes

Today, after work, Chelle, Mama G, and I went out for some nail business. Chelle and I got pedicures, and Mama G got a manicure. It was nice to have the feet pampered a little bit, even though it hurt my recently bruised toe a little. But it felt awesome, and they did a good job. At the end, we asked if we could get hearts on our toes, for Valentines this upcoming month, and the girl very confidently said that she could draw them on there. Unfortunately, we got them on there, and she wasn’t at good at drawing them as I thought she would be, but that’s just fine. They look good enough far away, and that’s all that matters. Here are my little beauties:

See? Totally ready for February now!

Renovations

I’m not sure if I’ve blogged about this before, because I blogged about a lot of things near the end of the world, but that’s ok. Before Christmas, Husband started to renovate the bathroom on our main floor. He just decided to, out of the blue, and he said he could do it cheaper than it would cost to hire someone. I’m sure that’s true and everything, but it just about sent me over the edge. The “2 weeks” it originally was going to take was almost 2 months – 2 months of the bathroom being out of commission, and 2 months of stuff permeating every inch of free space down there. Finally, we had to have the bathroom finished, having the baby shower last weekend, because that’s what people needed to use, plus no one wants things to look awful when you have strangers over! So finally, he finished, and it ended up looking really good. Of course, I didn’t even think to take ‘before’ pictures, so you’ll just have to settle for the ‘after’.

I took a panoramic pic of the bathroom, so you could see the whole thing at once, and one of the floor:

And now, it’s all finished, and finally, people can use it, and the house doesn’t smell like grout, or adhesive, or any of that stuff, and I’m so happy.

A New Way In

About a hundred years ago (Maybe not literally, but it certainly feels that way) we ordered some new doors for our house. And what a process that was. We went in to the local hardware store, and ordered some doors, after comparing doors, prices, colors, windows, etc. After we ordered the doors, they told us they wouldn’t order them until they had someone come out and measure stuff. So, a guy came out a few days later, and measured stuff. After he was finished, he told me that we needed to go back in to do the order, which I thought was weird. Why not just complete it for us? So, we went in, and tried to get an employee to help us. That itself was ridiculous. We couldn’t get a single person to help us. We implored other departments to find us the door guy, we asked and asked and waited. Finally, after we had been there for a long time, we got the help of the carpet guy, who admitted he didn’t know what he was doing, so we had to come back in.

After we came back, we FINALLY got the door order placed. They told us it would take about 2 months for everything to come in. I had basically forgotten we had ordered doors until last week; they called us to let us know they were coming Monday to install the door. Since my sister is living with us, we left her at the house (that sounds like she’s our pet) to take care of it, since she didn’t have to do anything except just hang out while the guy installed them. It took him about 6 hours to install the two doors, and they are looking really good.

See? Nice and fancy. Now, every time I see the door, because I am used to the white, I keep thinking the door is open or just not there, and it freaks me out for about a split second, until I remember. It’ll take me some time to get used to it, but I’m ok with that. I’m digging them.

Miscellaneous Monday

This past weekend, at card swap, I won a prize! We’ve had this contest going on, for the person who sends the most cards out, and this time, it was me! Here is my prize:

How fun! It was full of all sorts of cards/craft goodies, so now, I am super jazzed to use them all!

For the baby shower that I did Saturday, I was in charge of desserts, so I made like, 60 mini cupcakes. I figured, we had invited about 100 people, so probably 50 would show up. Well, only about 25 people showed up, so I am left with about 40 cupcakes. Sheesh. I need to just start heading to the neighbors, and handing them out.

I’ve blogged before about going to this newish store, Pop N’ Sweets. We can’t stop going there. I get like, 7 sodas when I go, and then drink them, and then head back. I’m going to get diabetes soon, probably. I’ve yet to get the same soda twice. I get all different kinds, usually a different root beer, because root beer is my favorite, and I like to find all sorts of different kinds. There’s one I got there the other day, it tasted like straight caramel in a bottle. But the rest, I’m digging. Still recommending that you guys hit that place up.

A Bruise

Yesterday I was co-throwing a baby shower for a girl in my ward, and I was just getting everything ready, and my co-thrower came over, with her 4 year old daughter. Her daughter sat down, and was just chilling, eating, doing nothing, and then we were kind of being silly together. There was a point that I was picking her up off a stool, and as I picked her up, she wrapped her legs around the stool legs (this I didn’t see) and then, when she was getting too far away from the chair, which was coming up with her, the stool dropped. It dropped on my toe, and that hurt! It took me a few seconds to react, and then, it was hurting a whole heck of a lot. I had to sit down, and laugh to keep from crying, kind of. It had a bruise when I looked at it right then, and then later that day, there was no bruise. When I took off my sock at the end of the night, this is what I saw:

Yeesh! That escalated! I had kind of limped all day, and now I see why. When I went to bed, I was careful with it, made sure it didn’t hit or snag on anything. When I woke up this morning, it still looks pretty bad.

Doesn’t that look bad? Oy vey. (Also please excuse the fact that my toes are in desperate need of a pedicure). It hurts today. Putting on shoes for church hurt, so that was an experience. I’ve been walking around without shoes today, but I wasn’t aware of how often I moved my toes, until today. All movement hurts, so I’m trying to limit that. Hopefully, that stops hurting soon, and my toe will get back to normal!

A Tall Ladder

Today, as I was sitting here, playing some candy crush and watching TV, I got a text from Chelle, asking if I had a ladder, a long one. There’s a smoke alarm in her house, that’s really high, that was chirping with the battery dying. There are many ladders I have access to, either through them being at my house, or at my in-laws, or any of my sibling-in-laws. After sitting and discussing it for a while, Husband and I decided it might be a good idea to go look at her house, to get an idea of what we needed. We checked out the situation, and then went to get the ladder.

We strapped the ladder to the roof of the car, and then made our way over to her house again. After unloading it, and getting it inside, we found that one of the legs wasn’t quite right – there was a thing on the bottom, that you put down to stabilize it, it was broken. So, Husband stayed down there, holding it, while I climbed up.

I got up there, figured out how to get the smoke alarm off the wall, figured out how to get the door off, and replaced the battery.

And it worked! The smoke alarm has a new battery, and we were done. We put the ladder back on the roof, and were done for the night. I was flying high from the adrenaline of getting up that high, and it felt pretty good to have lived through.

Foto Friday

A few weeks ago, we were at dinner, at CPK, and as we were waiting for our food to come to us, I wanted to see if it was easy to attempt a topknot. I tried one, and was holding it, since I didn’t have a hair elastic, and my sister took a picture of me, so I could see what it looks like. As she was taking the pic, I decided to make this face, since the face creeps her out, the way my eyes look. Naturally, the picture ended up looking really awesome.

Happy Friday!

An Invite to Scouts

Today, I finally finished an invite that I have been working on for a while. I had to make some invitations to my scout pack’s Blue & Gold banquet dinner. It took me a while to decide what it should look like, and then, to make 30 cards…that took a while. But it ended up looking really good, I think.

It’s a camping theme this time, and I think I got it going pretty good. Now that they’re done, I can finally pass them out, and get them out of my hair.

Stache Night

Last night, we took my nephews out for a dinner. We’ve been feeling like they needed an extra bit of attention, so all of us went out for a dinner at Tucanos. When we got there, the wait was 15-30 minutes, so to kill time, we went over to Blickenstaff’s, to look around. We found some mustaches, and wouldn’t you know it, there was just enough for all of us to have one! So naturally, we put them on, and went into dinner.

There was a lot of giggling as we passed by kids, and we got a lot of comments. We had to take them off to eat, obviously, but otherwise, we wore those all night. It was awesome.

Miscellaneous Monday

This past weekend, I went in for a haircut. I was debating between cutting off just an inch, to get rid of the gross dead hair, or cutting off many inches, and going shoulder-length. Finally, my own fear won out, and I only cut an inch. I just don’t know if I’m ready to cut it all off – it’s taken me so long to get this grown out! But now it’s all healthy and luxurious, and I like how it feels. It’ll be ruined before you know it.

I have a hard drive that I use often. I watch movies from it, I carry some things around on it, and I use it for entertainment purposes. On Sunday night, I was plugging it in, and it wouldn’t recognize, and wouldn’t do anything. So, I plugged it into my computer again, and this time, it came up and said that it needed to be formatted. Well, crap. That’s the kiss of death! So, I tried to use it again on a different computer, and again, it wouldn’t work so now I knew, I didn’t have a drive anymore. I consoled myself with the idea that I had just backed everything up, so I wouldn’t lose much! What a lie. I didn’t actually back anything up, turns out, so I am starting fresh, and lost EVERYTHING that I had on there. Alas.

Cookie has gotten so needy lately. I don’t know what her problem is, but she is literally following me everywhere I go. As soon as I get her in the morning, she follows me. She sits behind me as I put on my makeup, she follows me to the bathroom as I do my hair, she follows me everywhere. I don’t know what it is, but she’s driving me crazy. What a weirdo we have in our house.

Cowboy Casserole

After scouring the Pinterest boards for a dinner for Sunday night, I landed on this – a Cowboy Casserole. I accidentally forgot to take any pictures of the dinner, but I’ll give you the recipe nonetheless.

¼ cup diced onion
½ Tsp pepper
1 Tsp salt
½ Tsp Mrs. Dash
1 Lbs small red potatoes, sliced (about 4-5 potatoes)
1 can diced tomatoes with liquid
1 can Cream of Mushroom soup
1 LB ground beef browned and drained (or, like me, just put it in raw, whatever)
1 cup canned corn
1 can dark red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Put all ingredients into a crockpot and stir well. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours, or low for 7-8 hours. Sprinkle cheese on top for the last 30 minutes of cooking.

This was really delicious! I really liked it. It was really easy, too, which is always a plus on Sunday dinners. I wish I had taken a picture, but by the time I was getting my food, I was just so hungry, so I just ate instead of taking pictures. Make it for yourself, see how good it is for yourself.

Foto Friday

This is what I have to deal with every time I eat dinner, or sit here trying to avoid the dogs, or not paying attention to them at all.

It is the most annoying thing ever.

Two Fibs and a Truth

Last night, I went to my first RS activity in my ward. Yes, I have been in this ward for over 2 years, and this is my first time ever going. In my defense, I usually have stamp & chat this day, and this month, it’s different, so I took the opportunity to check out an activity.

It was a getting to know you activity, so we filled out a sheet of paper with 2 lies about ourselves, and 1 truth. It took me a long time to think of two lies that were believable with my truth, but finally I got it. Then, we had to get up in front of everyone (nerve-wracking!) and read the three “facts” and then people would guess on which one they thought was the truth. The less people you had vote for your truth, the better. So finally, they tallied up the votes at the end, and I was tied in third place – only 9 people had guessed which one my truth was. My winning prize was this:

Sadly, I can’t use this, because I can’t use lotions or soaps like this, so I gave it to my sister, she had come with to the activity. So the activity wasn’t too bad, and maybe in the future, I might go to more. We’ll see!

Jazz Fever

Last night, I went to a Jazz game with Chelle and a co-worker, Julie. We took the FrontRunner up, and it was so much fun! It was my first time ever riding it, and I think it’s a great form of transportation. We got up to the Energy Solutions Arena, and after a delicious dinner of a Big Mac (seriously, it’s been so long since I’ve had one, I had almost forgotten how delicious they were. Then, onto the game, and here’s our view:

The Jazz were playing pretty good, they were ahead for the most of the game. At halftime, we got these awesome and delicious huge ice cream cones:

It was so big, it took me the entire quarter to eat it, but it was awesome. The game ended with the Jazz winning, and then after another FrontRunner ride home, I arrived at my house near midnight. I went right to bed, seeing as how I had to be awake in about 6 hours, and then when I woke up this morning, I couldn’t see. My eyes wouldn’t work, I couldn’t read my phone to turn off my alarm, I couldn’t even read the clock, and that’s when I figured out – I slept in my contacts. So they were now STUCK to my eyes. I had to force my eyes open, drop some Visine in there to get them loosened, and then take them out. My eyes have been stinging all day! Hopefully my eyes will heal after today, and then I can wear contacts again. For now, I can’t imagine them going back in with the way they feel. But it was an awesome night, and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to go.

Miscellaneous Monday

I gave blood last Friday, and after filling out all the paperwork and getting set up, they laid me down, and stuck me with the needle. The guy told me it would take me about 6-8 minutes to fill the bag. I hung out, listening to everyone around me chat, and after 5 and a half minutes, I had filled the bag. He told me I was a quick bleeder. Which is good, unless I get stabbed, and then I’ll die quicker. I’ll just avoid getting stabbed.

Last week I went shoe shopping with Chelle, at the Sketcher’s outlet. After trying on many much shoes, and walking around the store, I finally found a good pair. Then because I liked it so much, I bought it in both colors, brown and black.

I’m pleased with my purchase. These shoes are crazy comfy.

I bit into a gold coin today, as a joke, to test if the gold is really real, like they do in old movies. Turns out, it was a real coin, of course, (One of those gold dollars) and instead of just testing the realness of it, it just chipped my tooth a little bit, so now it’s really sharp. It’s already cut the inside of my mouth and it smarts every time I run my tongue over it. What a dummy I am, now I have to go to a dentist probably. Ugh.

Gnocchi Bolognese

Last night, I was trying to decide what to make for dinner. All I knew I was going to use was gnocchi for sure, so I was browsing Pinterest for gnocchi recipes. I found one for a Gnocchi Bolognese that looked really good, and easy, so I chose that. There was a sauce it called for, napolentata, that I had never heard of, so I looked it up, and figure out how to make that, so my dinner had an extra step. To make the polentata, here’s how to do it (in case anyone wants to make this) (ps the measurements are in grams, so I just guessed how to do this):

1.5 kg very ripe tomatoes (I just used 2 cans of diced tomatoes, I wasn’t going to peel and cut my own)
2 TB olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped (I used ½ an onion)
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 TB tomato paste
1 Tsp white sugar
2 bay leaves

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Stir in tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, and bay leaves. Cover, bring to boil. Reduce heat to low. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour, or until sauce thickens. Season with salt and pepper. Remove bay leaves.

So, not too hard. The sauce never really thickened up for me, it just sort of...hung out, but that’s ok. Then, to make the Bolognese:

1 TB olive oil
1 medium brown onion, finely chopped (I used the other half of the onion)
500g beef mince (I used 1 LB ground beef, I assumed it was the same thing)
575g jar napolentata pasta sauce
500g potato gnocchi
Parmesan cheese

Heat oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add onion. Cook, stirring, for 3 minutes or until softened. Add beef. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon to break up the meat until browned. Add pasta sauce. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, and simmer for 5 minutes or until sauce has thickened. Meanwhile, cook the gnocchi according to package directions. Add gnocchi to meat mixture, toss with Parmesan cheese and serve.

Ok, so this was really good. I really liked it. Unfortunately, the onion in this was intense, there was just too much of it. And that was with me cutting it in half, so I wonder what it would have been like to have put in the entire whole 2 onions instead of just doing one. So if I were to make this in the future, I would probably just do the onions in the beef, and leave it out of the sauce. But other than that, it was really good. I’d make it again.

Flourless Chocolate Cookies

Now, with Chelle’s food adventure that she’s been on, I’ve been exploring ways to make treats that she can enjoy. We all remember the brownies that I recently tried that weren’t a great hit, but I had high hopes with this one. I made the dough, and it looked really sticky. I put together two cookies, and it was really hard to keep them together, and I couldn’t really do anything with it except get it all over my hands. So I thought, I know what to do! And decided to mix up the recipe myself. I added about a half a cup of coconut flour, and about a quarter cup of oil, and mixed it up, and it looked a little better, I thought. I rolled the dough into balls, and then cooked them. When I pulled them out of the oven, they looked really good, and I was actually really excited to try them. So, I put half a cookie in my mouth, and...HOLY COW it was a moisture-sucker! Every single bit of moisture in my mouth was sucked dry; it was REALLY hard to eat the cookie. I tried a piece of the regular cookie, without my additions (because I still baked the two I got out) and wouldn’t you know, besides it being the crumbliest thing ever in the world, it was pretty good. Maybe I should have kept it the way it was, but I couldn’t get the cookie to work! But now, my lesson is learned. Don’t try to fix a recipe because it doesn’t look the way you think it will. Here’s a pic of the cookie:

So now, I know how it works, and know how to make it better, and know well enough that if someone has made the recipe, maybe I should try theirs before I pretend I know better.

Foto Friday

Today, we had a little visitor to the office in Chelle’s niece, Miss B. When she arrived, we all couldn’t help but laugh – she and Chelle were dressed the exact same! I had to take a pic to celebrate this funny coincidence:

Isn’t that just the cutest? It’s like having a mini-me! Having Miss B around is always a treat, she’s just so cute! Today was no exception, and we all had a fun morning.

Miscellaneous Monday

Oh my gosh, you guys. There’s something big that’s happened this weekend. I am VERY NEARLY all the way caught up with TV. I don’t just mean the current stuff (which had mostly stopped airing for Christmas, and is about to pick up again) I mean the old stuff. The summer finales that I had put off watching, from September, I’ve watched those too! I have finally watched the Burn Notice finale, I have finally seen the series finale of Dexter, and I’ve finished a few other ones too. It helped that Husband is sick and can’t go anywhere coupled with me working on my cards, but I don’t care about the reason, all I care about is that my DVR is finally 73% free, and that’s the highest its been in a while. It’ll go back down when things start again, but right now, I don’t even care.

With the new arrangement of the upstairs, I now have more room for my scrapbooking things, and I was jazzed for the space, as I need some more of it. Of course, now that I have the space, I can’t find the storage I use anymore. I bought everything from Target originally, and now, none of it’s there anymore! I can’t find any of it! And that’s annoying, because the question is, do I get stuff that’s new, and is mismatched, or do I buy a whole bunch of new stuff, and change the whole storage system? It’s a conundrum, and one that I probably should solve soon. I need space up in here!

A few weeks ago, I had some chest/rib/side pain that wouldn’t go away, so finally, a couple of weeks ago, I went to the doctor, to make sure everything was on the up and up. After getting examined, and then had an ultrasound, I was diagnosed with costocongritis. It’s not anything bad, thank goodness, it’s just irritating. It’s painful, and makes some everyday things annoying and hurtful, and I’d like it to be gone. Unfortunately, it can stick around for a while. Anywhere from a couple of weeks to months…ugh. I’m hoping it’s shorter rather than longer, so everyone, wish me some get well thoughts!

A Set of Birthday Cards

For card swap this week, which is in less than a week, we have to do some birthday cards, one for each gender. I wouldn’t say I procrastinated these last two months, but Christmas was busy! I had a calendar to make, and that took longer than I thought it would, so I never had time for cards. But finally yesterday, I knew I had to hurry and buckle down, because there was no time at all. I worked on the boy one first, and it wasn’t too bad, I just followed the template. The hard part was trying to find colors to match the paper I had chosen, but I think I finally chose well. Behold:

And then the girls card, I would like to say was easier, but I had a whole other card in mind, then had to go with this, and then I had about 75 changes to it before it finally became this one. But I think it ended up being okay:

I just like how cheery it all turned out! Now I can rest easy for the next week, and next time, I am promising myself to be finished with them earlier!

Foto Friday

On New Years Eve, we were all sitting around, playing games and whatnot, and Husband was all of a sudden playing with Cookie, and said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we put pomade in Cookie’s hair?” Before any of us could do anything or say anything, he gets up and goes to get some. He came back, and got to work on her hair. After a few minutes, we had this:

Looking pretty cool, eh? She hated it, like, immediately. She tried to rub it off on every surface she could find, and I was stopping her from getting it onto anything. Finally after a little while, I got some wet washcloths, and tried to take it off myself, without giving her a whole bath, but that didn’t really work. And here we are, two days later, and her hair feels clean, there’s nothing in it, but it still sticks straight up if you play with it for a second. I’m going to have to give her a bath here soon, and I’m not looking forward to that at all. I just think she looks a little like Einstein right now.

Happy 2014!

Holy cow you guys! It’s already the new year! Out with ‘13, in with ‘14! I’m determined to make this a better year. Not that 2013 was a bad year, but I’d like to think that I could have a better one. Let’s check in with last year’s goals, to see how I did:

1. To make myself more aware of, and thus save, the money I spend.

I think I did this. Especially after a financial seminar I took, I tried to save things a little more.

2.Need to be healthier.

I’m not sure that I did this. I think I ended up eating less sugar near the end of the year, but other than that, not really.

3. Read 20 books

I did this! I finished with 34 books for the year!

4. 250 posts

Which I did! Barely, I finished with 250 on the nose, and that was hard.

And now, the goals for 2014!

1. I think this year, I’m going to jump the book number up to 30. I know I read more than that last year, but what if that was just a fluke? I’m going to keep it attainable, just in case.

2. I’m going to do at least 230 blog posts. 250 was a bit a much, I had to blog every single day for the last 3 months of the year to make it, and that was really hard to keep up, so I’m going to dial it back a little. If I happen to make 250 again, awesome, but I’m going to only try for 230.

3. A goal of mine is to get Husband on a vacation this year. We did go on a few vacations last year, and that was awesome, but since his parents passing, he hasn’t taken off a week to just unplug from everything. It’s always work, work, work, and he’s always there, and thinking about it. I just want to get him away, to not worry about anything, and just…be.

4. I want to increase my speed this year. Every race I ran, I ran a little slower than I did the year before; I think I’m getting slower. So I want to increase my speed, and try to get it back down, at least by 1 minute. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, but in running, that will be tough.

And that’s all for now. I know there are a lot of ways I can improve myself, but I just like picking a few. It’s like when you have many things to do – if you just focus on a few things, you’re more apt to get them done, than if you try to do the whole list at once. Yes, that’s a good way to describe it. Happy New Year, everyone, and good luck in the next year!