Vieve's Place...Enjoy Your Visit
Today, I went on a trip to Colorado with Chelle. We were driving to Durango, a place I’ve never been before. We left this morning, and had a beautiful drive down. This is just a pic I took on the drive, because it was so pretty. 
I think this may have been in Moab, and I just thought it was awesome to see all this down there.
This morning when I woke up, I learned that our beloved family dog, Gretl had passed on. She was the best dog. She was a German Shepherd that we’ve had for about 15 years now. I love this picture I have of her.
This pic is her in a nutshell. She would snuggle up to anything, even if there was no space on the bed, and she would push you off of it. Adorable dog, and she’ll be greatly missed.
Today was my dear friend Michelle’s birthday. I was excited to decorate her desk, because I just love doing that. Afterwards, I took a pretty snazzy pic.
It was a Candy Crush-themed decoration. We had a fun day of breakfast, yummy lunch out, and many much treats. I hope she had an amazing day. Happy Birthday, Chelle!
Friday night, when I got home from the movies, I was straightening up a little, as one does as they’re about to be done for the night. Husband was out of town, on a scouting overnighter, so all that were home were myself and the sister. She went immediately went to bed as I was doing the kitchen. On my way out of the kitchen, and going upstairs, I saw the new tool box we just bought, sitting on the couch. I thought, I have time, I’ll put all the tools in there. Once the tools were in there, I thought, well, I’m in here, might as well clean all of the cupboards. And that led to me spending the next 2 hours cleaning up, instead of going to sleep. Worth it.
For VDay, I got a Perfect Curl. 
You put your hair in there, and it’s supposed to curl it with ease, and keep it curled! Last week, I tried using it. Unfortunately, and I don’t know if this is because my hair is really long, but my hair kept getting all tangled up in it. I had to break a bunch of my hair in the pursuit of curly hair. After it was all curled, instead of staying curled all day like it said it would, I had curly hair for all of an hour. Dang it, I was so excited for this, and it didn’t even work like it was supposed to!
Today we had a small power outage at work, and it didn’t last longer than maybe 2 seconds, but it’s just so annoying. You hope as soon as it happens that you had already saved everything you were working on. Then, the power comes back on and you have to go through the whole process of turning the computer back on, logging back into everything, and then opening everything that you were already working on. In those cases, I always think it would be pretty cool if it was a power outage, and then it lasted until the work day was over. I know, that would be a waste of time/money, but it’s just something that I’ve always wanted to have happen. Maybe someday.
I wanted to use some frozen chicken I had in the freezer today, and after searching my recipes for an idea, I finally came up with this. Crock Pot Fajitas. Of course, I didn’t come up with it, a gal on Pinterest did, but I took it fair and square. The recipe was pretty easy.
1 each medium green, sweet red and yellow pepper, cut into 1/2-inch strips
1 sweet onion, cut into 1/2-inch strips
2 pounds chicken breast, cut into thin strips
3/4 cup water
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
8 flour tortillas (8 inches), warmed
1/2 cup salsa
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
Place peppers and onion in a 5-qt. slow cooker. Top with beef. Combine the water, vinegar, lime juice and seasonings; pour over meat. Cover and cook on low for 8-9 hours or until tender. Of course, in my crock pot, it took 4 hours on low, so adjust accordingly. When cooked, scoop into tortillas, top with cheese, and enjoy. Add some sour cream or salsa, if you’d like.
These are really good! I was nervous that the peppers would be soggy and gross, but they really weren’t! I totally recommend them.
I was at Target this week, and looking through everything, as you do, and I noticed a really cute comforter set was on sale. When I looked a little closer to see what the sale was, it was like, 30-35% off, so I just had to buy it! It took another week to get it on the bed, though. I was just too tired at night! But finally, today, we got it put on there, and it looks pretty good.
That little guy in the middle is The Inspector, of course, he lives on our bed. But there it is, the new one. I love it, it’s so cute.
The idiot dogs in my house fight all the time. Seriously, they can’t get enough of it. And usually I ignore it, but when it gets to be this, I don’t like it.
All it takes is one of these idiots giving up and letting go, or pulling a bit too hard or something, and a dog will go over the railing and most likely die. These idiots just don’t understand what’s happening here. Hopefully that won’t happen, but still.
Tonight for scouts, we were working on our Traveler badge. For this one, we’re supposed to plan a trip, figure the miles, and how much it costs with gas, and then, if we can, take this trip. So for this one, we decided to plan a trip to a few fast food places, and get a small treat at each place. We started at McDonalds, and shared a few cheeseburgers. We made our way over to Wendy’s, and took advantage of the awesome drink machine there. We then went to In&Out for the fries (one of the kids, his favorite fries are there. I’m convinced he’s never had other fries, because the fries there are awful. We finished up at Iceberg, sharing a couple of shakes.
It was a lot of fun, going from place to place, and talking about traveling, and eating small treats. It’s a good idea to do with the kids, they seem to listen better when food is involved. It’s really hard to come up with fun activities to do every week, especially with the really boring badges come along. I don’t understand why some of these are even badges you have to earn, or what the point of it is. But I think that’s why I’m only an assistant leader, and not in charge of things.
Today is president’s day, and do you know what I did? Nothing. I spent the morning lounging about, and then, I spent the afternoon bowling, and then redoing a bathroom. (Blog entry with pics to come later). It felt a little bit like I wasted the day, but on the other hand, it was so amazing not to do anything at all. No expectations, nobody counting on anything, I just went at my own pace, and it was awesome.
Last week, when the legendary Shirley Temple (Black) died, we decided to pay tribute to her, and make some Shirley Temple drinks as we watched Cougar Town. To make a ST (I didn’t know this) you take some ginger ale; add a shot of grenadine (which is just cherry syrup) and a maraschino cherry. It was delicious! I think I’d like to drink this always. Also, to make it a Shirley Temple Black, you just make it ginger beer instead of ginger ale.
I went to Chili’s for lunch yesterday, and had what I think may be the worst lunch in the history of Chili’s. I’m usually not disappointed by anything there, but holy cow. I had a quesadilla, and there was basically no cheese, and the whole thing just tasted awful. When the waitress asked us how the food was, I told her I didn’t really care for it, but I don’t think that happens to her, because when I did that, she just looked at me, and then said “I’ll get some waters” and then walked away. Shoot. At least I know now not to get that.
It’s almost card swap time again, and since I had free get-out-of-church day with stake conference, I decided to go ahead and make them today. It took me some time, and many an idea, but I finally went with these, and I think they turned out ok.
Pretty cute, eh? Thanks, internet, for giving me some ideas. And now, I’m all set, and ready for the next batch...in a month or so, I need my creative batteries to recharge a little.
Happy Valentines, friends! I got some really awesome stuff from everyone that I love today, and of course, I have to share them.
I got an awesome scarf and cute umbrella (with its own matching scarf!) from Chelle.
And from the Husband, I got some flowers and candy.
And I got a Curl Magic, and I’ll blog about that later. It’s always so fun to share with the people I love on Valentine’s Day. I love that I have the opportunity to tell those close to me that I love them. Of course, I can do that all year long, but it’s nice to do it on this day.
We’ve had this box at the office for a few weeks now. It’s really really big, and it just sits there. Finally, someone pulled it out from where it was, and it’s just sitting in the middle of the room.
We decided it would be hysterical to have me climb inside it, and scare someone. We found the person that we wanted to scare, and she was sadly out of the building, so I climbed back out, and we waited. It was warm in there, so it felt like I shouldn’t be in it for too long, ha. So as I climbed out, and waited, while we were waiting for her to come back, one of our maintenance workers came and took the box, so we couldn’t even do it.
I was sad to have that happen, I was so excited to scare someone. Hopefully we’ll get another giant box, and I’ll get another chance.
Yesterday, my younger sister found out what the gender of her baby is. I know that right now, it’s a huge thing to do a HUGE gender reveal party, and invite everyone you know, and have a thing about it, but we’re just not those kind of people. But her husband is out of town, so I thought it would be cute if at the appointment, I found out what it was going to be and then she could find out at the same time as her husband, via Skype. So on Sunday, I made some cupcakes, one with blue in the middle, and one with pink in the middle.
So we went to the doctor, and I found out what it was, and no one else there did. I held the secret for the next hour and a half, until we all reconvened at my house. Then we set up the Skype, and called the husband, and she bit into the right cupcake. Here’s the face right when she found out what it was.
And, now that it’s all down, everyone knew what it was: a tiny baby boy in her stomach is growing. Good luck to them, and if anyone else needs me, I am available for more gender reveal parties. *wink*
I watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and it was pretty awesome! I don’t know who else watched it, but I really liked it. It was really weird, but I still dug it. It makes me sad when I see the countries where there is only one person from there. Like Mexico. One athlete, a 55 year old man. He looks pretty good, don’t get me wrong, but it makes me sad that there’s only 1 person to represent them. If that ONE person loses, the whole country does. Pressure!
I don’t know if anyone saw the moon last night, but it was awesome! There was a super-giant ring around it (I definitely couldn’t get a picture of it) and I googled to see why that happens, and it’s caused by weather. A ring around the moon means rain soon. Pretty cool to see, though!
I went to a new place this past weekend, a café called Café 300. When we got there, even though it wasn’t busy, the hostess walked past us 4 times, and each time, said she’d be seating us in a minute. Finally, we got seated, and then we got ignored. I was really looking forward to this place, but between the general feeling of being ignored, and the massive amounts of grease in my food, I just don’t think I’ll be returning. That makes me sad, I was so excited to try this place out. I don’t recommend.
Tonight, as we were cooking our dinner, (slow-cooker chili made with the ribs we had left over from Superbowl Sunday), we were also making some desserts. PJ has a pizzelle maker, which I’ve never used before, so we decided to have some delish. Pizzelles. Here’s what they look like:
We had planned to make some waffle cones, but boy, was I struggling. I couldn’t get them to work without having a giant hole in the bottom, so the ice cream would fall out anyway, so I gave up and just decided to make some waffle bowls. I used a cupcake pan, and just put them in there as soon as they came out of the cooker.
They kind of worked and kind of didn’t, but they were delicious either way. I had so much fun eating these and making these. I kind of want to get a pizzelle maker of my own!
When we were in Vegas last weekend, I bought something I had been looking for for a month or so now – a Snickers bar. And not just any Snickers bar – the foot long. Behold:
Look how big that thing is! I can’t wait to tear into that!
Tonight was our new night for cards – we’ve gone from meeting on Tuesdays to meeting on Thursdays, and tonight was the first night. I think it went pretty well. I tried a new recipe tonight – I tried some a Wacky Cake recipe, and I substituted the flour and sugar for the gluten free and sugar free kind, and it actually ended up working pretty well. Thankfully, they weren’t the worst things ever. I’m still going to create one that’s ok, and I’m getting closer with each recipe I try. Here are the lovely cards from this evening:
Adorable, right? Of course, all cards are. Ok, that’s not true. There are many a card that I see that I’m like, what are you thinking here? But in the end, I like them all.
We were hanging out around here, just chilling, and Cadence came up to me, and I was petting her a little, and I realized “this dog is smelly”. I don’t know what she smelled like, necessarily, but she just smelled bad, so I told my sister she should give her a bath. We decided to use the giant bath tub in my house to give them a bath, then maybe the little jokers could swim around. We filled up the tub with water, and then got the dogs.
We washed them, of course, with some baby shampoo:
And then when we were done, we wrapped them in some towels, and surprisingly, they didn’t struggle against the towels or anything, they just let themselves be dried off.
After we let them shake themselves off outside, they were basically dry. The good thing about having small dogs that don’t have any hair is that they dry off basically instantaneously.
So now, they smell nice, and I don’t mind having them around. And if she starts to smell again (Cookie never does, as I get her professionally cleaned pretty often) then we’ll just toss them into the tub again.
For scouts tonight, we had our Blue and Gold banquet. I don’t know what the point of it is, except to have a dinner for the scouts. I don’t know. I was in charge of the invitations for the event, like I have blogged about before. I showed up the dinner, and after a meal of walking tacos, we had an awards ceremony, like we do every pack meeting. Because the awards are for the boys, I never listen, I just clap when other people clap, and pay a little bit of attention if it’s one of my scouts. (I will admit freely, this part of the activity fully bores me)
This evening, I was just sitting there, sifting through a cup of pretzels to get the M&M’s out, and all of a sudden, I heard a whole room of kids and adults say my name, and I snapped my head up, and apparently, they had been calling my name for a little bit, so I ran up, and got what they were calling me for. Our entire pack earned an award, a Journey to Excellence award, and every person in our ward/pack got one. I also earned some Junior Mints for my service to my Webelos, and that’s fun for me.
Yesterday, I had a small Super Bowl party made up of family. Now, yesterday’s game was kind of boring, but we made if fun. Anytime anyone (Seahawks) scored, I would suck in an amount of helium, and yell touchdown, and it was so fun. Other than that, I basically just played Candy Crush when the football was on, and watched the commercials. I still had a great time.
For our Super Bowl, basically all we had in terms of food was: RIBS. And chips, and some veggies, but basically, we had 6 slabs of ribs, and that was tons. We ate all but 2 of them. One, we sent home with a cousin, and the other, we’ve left here to eat. In our excitement for ribs, we accidentally forgot to cook/eat the bags of chicken wings we bought. Oops. Those will be eaten soon, though, don’t worry.
On the drive home from Vegas, someone in the car got a wrong number text with a pic and the caption “Porch pic!”. We didn’t know these people, so we did what anyone would do, we sent them a pic of me with the caption “Car pic!”. They sent back another pic, and we chose another person in the car, and sent that. After that was sent, they didn’t text back anymore. Too bad, they were our new friends.
Today was made of traveling back to Utah (yes, we just drove down for the concert, slept, and came home). But we had a few hours in the morning, so we hit up the M&M store, and the Coca-Cola store. Just for fun, we did the Tour Around the World, where they serve you 16 kinds of Coke products from around the world. 
They serve it to you on a tray, and with each tray is included the drink name, and where it’s from. Some were really good, and some were so awful, we couldn’t take more than one sip. 
We are just getting ready to try them here – we’re still smiling because we haven’t tried the most awful one of all – the Beverly. It’s a Coke drink from Italy and it tastes AWFUL. A couple of people drank the whole cup on that one in a challenge and they immediately regretted it. It was a lot of fun, though. After we drank our fill of gross sodas, we hit the road, and made it back safely, and super tired and exhausted. It was a fun trip, can’t wait for my next one!
