Day 58–Feets, feets, feets

I went to the foot doctor on Thursday, and finally got my orthotics. Now, I get to wear these in my shoes for the foreseeable future. When I got there, and they put the orthotics in my shoes, they also gave me these beauties:

These would be my feet. The molds they took of my feet, and then they made these, to test the orthotic size on. They told me to hold onto these, in case we need them again. I don’t know why I would be needing these again, but I have them, just in case. I put them in my closet. Next to the shoes, of course.

Day 57–Where to Put a Dead Body

My nephew came over last night, and he wanted to play with Siri, on my phone. After trying to ask her questions, and busting up laughing every time, I finally asked him (I’ve made Siri a male on my phone, he seems nicer than that judgmental lady Siri) and the first thing I could think to ask (because I’ve seen it on Pinterest, lets not read into it) was “Where’s the best place to dump a body?” And his response had me laughing so hard. Of course I had to take a screenshot.

I laugh every time I see it.

Day 56–Phone Excitement

As I was studying for the upcoming test I’m going to take, Cookie was doing what she does best, and was smashing her body into my leg. Husband put his phone on her chest, and she immediately grabbed the phone, and looked like she was playing a game, full of excitement.

Or full of rage, and about to eat the phone, it’s so hard to tell.

Day 55–Memory Problems

I’m not that old. I’ll get that out of the way right now. I’m inching my way up the years, but I’m not so old that I shouldn’t remember small things. Monday night, I put some sodas into the freezer, to get them cold in a hurry. And then, I didn’t end up using the sodas, so I completely forgot about them. Then yesterday, as I was just minding my own business, for some reason, I remembered, oh my gosh! I left sodas in the freezer! I quickly ran there and rescued them from the freeze.

They were definitely, 100% frozen solid. I left them on the counter, and it took about 8 hours for them to get back to a liquid state. I just had to laugh at how I left them in there for a good long while.

Day 54–Oreo Cupcakes

Today, Chelle asked if I would help her out for her YW tonight, and make some Oreo cupcakes. I said sure, because, I’m pretty nice sometimes (only sometimes, let’s not make it an everyday occurrence) and got to work. They ended up ok, I think. I couldn’t eat one to try it, but the frosting tasted pretty good, and surely I didn’t mess up the cake, so I have confidence in these. Hopefully they’re enjoyed by all!

Day 53–SNAKE

Ok this is definitely not something that makes me happy. Not even a little bit. Not at all. But, I’m going to show you this anyway, and count it as a day. Even though, let’s make sure you get it, not happy. The other day, as I was walking to my door, I saw this.

Don’t see anything there? Don’t worry, as I stepped up to take a picture, it slithered away.

So there it was. I took the pic and it kept going on it’s way under the house. Then I came outside later, and it was still there. I called Husband to take a look, and he’s like, oh don’t worry, it’s just the skin, so it’s shed itself. So now, I have the skin of a snake just chilling by my porch. And I know it’s a garter snake and I can’t bite. And I understand that I should move the skin, because it’s not doing anything there. But I’m not going to touch it, and let me tell you why. GROSS. No thanks to touching dead skin of a snake. No thanks to making it easier for him to get in and out, since he seemed to be coming and going as he pleased. No thanks I say to that. Get out snake.

Day 52–M&M PB Cupcakes

I just wanted to make a treat today. I just wanted some cupcakes. (You know, you gotta be proud of me – I haven’t been to a cupcake shop in ages. I just make them myself now. Both bad and good.) So I decided to make M&M cupcakes – I had a bag lying around. I just made a simple chocolate cake recipe, and threw about a cup of M&M’s into the batter. Then I topped them with a peanut butter frosting (the same from the other day) and topped with some rogue M&M’s. They turned out pretty great, I thought.

Day 51–Memories

This is a weird thing for the Days of Happiness, but stick with me. Today marks the 1 year anniversary of my in-laws passing away. I can’t believe it’s already been a year – time flies. But as I was thinking of them today, I just think of all the memories we’ve made in the amount of time I got to know them. There are many good times with them, and I miss them. Hopefully they’re looking (down?) on us and knowing that we’re all doing our best to take care of each other, in their absence.

Day 50–Scouts

Holy cow, we are already 50 days into this! We’re halfway through! I’ve enjoyed the happiness, and I hope you have as well. Yesterday for scouts, we took the boys on a field trip. We went to the hospital and went into the boiler room, and learned how the heat and air, hot and cold water get around the place. It was interesting, and the kids had fun.

Field trips are the best kind of activity, and one that I think we all enjoyed.

Day 49–A New Hairstyle

I tried a new hairstyle yesterday/today. I found it on Pinterest, and while I didn’t think it would work, it actually kind of did. I know now how to make it work better for next time. So yesterday morning, I did this:

Start with damp hair. Not soaking wet, but some wetness. You put a headband on, and then, starting near one ear, you twist your hair (away from your face) and then loop it through the band. When it comes through, you add a little bit of hair, twist away, and loop it through. Continue on until your whole head is looped. It’ll look like that. Then, let it sit. Sleep in it, that’ll help. The next morning, take off the headband, and let the hair down. Wait for it to relax just a little (comb your fingers through it to break up the hair pieces) and you’ll get:

Some curls! Sadly, my picture doesn’t quite do it justice, but I wanted to get a pic of it. I thought it was really cute, and I can’t wait to try again, to see if I can improve it.

Day 48–New Cards

Tonight was Stamp & Chat, and as usual, it was a blast. The cards weren’t too hard, luckily, but one of them was a little hard. We had to use tape, ink the sticky side of the tape, and then tape it onto the card. Leave it long enough to get some ink off, and voila! We were left with a watercolor-looking card, and super inked fingers. But they looked cute, of course.

Day 47–Worshipping the Sun

Today I let Cookie outside, and then an hour later or so, I realized I hadn’t seen her in a really long time. I went out back, and couldn’t see her, so I went to the side door, opened that up:

She look perturbed that I disturbed her, so I shut the door, got my phone, and opened it again. Luckily she did the same thing, so I just snapped the pic, and left her alone. She hung out there for another half hour, and then came back inside. She’d gotten her warmth for the day.

Day 46–Sky Writing

It seems that when I’m anywhere, Disneyland, Disney World, someone chooses that time to do some skywriting. In Disney World, they wrote a whole bunch of stuff about Jesus, and how Jesus loves everyone, and this time, it was a simple heart.

I don’t know who did it, or who it was for, but I liked it. It brought a smile to my face.

Day 45–Cupcake ATM

Today, I went to a glorious place -

A cupcake ATM.

It was fantastic. It was the entire reason we went on vacation to Disneyland this past weekend, so I had been looking forward to it for months now. Finally, Sunday morning came, and I was ready to go. Unfortunately, none of the other people who came with us wanted to go, so Husband and I hopped in the car, and drove the hour to LA to go to it. Yes, I did drive an extra hour (each way!) to go to an ATM that dispenses cupcakes. I don’t regret any of it at all.

Here’s a photo play-by-play of how it works.

So, you step up, choose your flavor on the screen, and swipe your card. You wait for a few minutes, and then the little window opens, and *POW* your cupcakes are there! It was fantastic. I ate the cupcake I chose, a black&white one, and it was crazy delicious. I wish I had one of these nearer, I would go there all the time! But this was a fantastic trip, and I am so glad I finally got to experience this!

Day 44–Braids

For some reason, I am all about braids lately. I do them in my hair almost every day, and I love how they make my hair curly. Today, when we got to the park, my SIL asked me to braid her hair, and I obliged. Then when I was finished, I asked if anyone else wanted to, and my SIL’s sister did as well. I did another SIL’s hair, and a little later, did another. In the line for Midway Mania, I braided my own hair, and after I had done this and we were walking around, I realized that we did all have our hair in braids. Naturally, we snapped a pic.

I called us the Braidy Bunch, which I thought was terribly clever, and laughed at for like, 5 minutes. But I dig our braids. It’s almost the best hairstyle!

Day 43–Disneyland Rides

There’s just something about Disneyland that I love. It’s just fantastic. The food is awesome, the weather is great, and it’s an entire day of just having fun. I love the rides – mostly the  coasters, and the ones that drop you, but they’re all fun. I did a small collage of the ride pics, as my happy thing today.

Figuring out what to do for the picture is a fun part of the ride, too. Husband decided to do every pic as a grump, which we let him do until the last one, when we all joined in. That picture is my fav by far. These are really too small to see all of the faces, but you still get the gist.

Day 42–Super Snuggles

We left Cookie alone for the weekend when we were in Oklahoma, and it went about as well as you’d expect. Then when  we came home, we discovered the things she had done. Even though the door was open all weekend, and she could go outside, she decided to use the carpet as her bathroom, awesome. And then, she opened and ate half a bag of gluten free flour, for reasons I’ll never know. Needless to say, when we got home, we were received very warmly, in that she flipped her lid when she saw us. Then, for the next day or so, she wouldn’t leave my side, lest we leave her alone for a few days again. So as I was laying on the couch, trying to think of what to bake, she got on me like this:

She really wouldn’t leave me alone…for about a day, and then she really didn’t care about me at all, and spent all day sleeping on the couch again.

Day 41–One Skillet Wonders

I love an easy dinner. It’s just so fabulous to be able to throw something together at a moment’s notice. A few nights ago, we had this dish, and it was so good. Basically, you throw a pound of ground beef, 2 cups salsa, 1 15-oz can of tomato sauce, 2 cups of (cooked!) pasta, 1 tomato, 1 cup of corn, 1 cup of black beans and as much cheese as you’d like (I think I did a cup, and I would have added more) heat it all together, and serve.

It was delicious!

Day 40–Peanut Butter BrownieCakes

So today, I wanted to bake something. I didn’t know what, but I really did. Finally, after a day of thinking, I decided to make some brownies. I had a recipe that someone gave me at Christmas, and what you do is mix a can of coke with a brownie mix. I put them together, and it was waaay too runny. I had another box of brownie mix, so I threw some of that in there. It got to be too thick, so I threw some diet coke in there (True story). It got too runny, so I threw the rest of the brownie box in there, and then it needed something else to thicken it up, so I added a few tablespoons of flour. Of course, when you add flour, it makes it a cake, instead of a brownie, but I was just dealing with it as I went.

So finally, the mix was doable, and I scooped it into mini cupcake cups, and in the middle of each one, I put a piece of peanut butter cup, that I had chopped up earlier. Now! It was ready. I threw them in the oven, baked for about 13 minutes, and then took them out. After letting them cool, I topped them with a peanut butter frosting.

It made 72 mini cupcakes. You read that right, it made 72 of them. Anyway, there’s not really a recipe here, because it all happened so hard by accident. I can give you the recipe of the frosting, because that really did work out quite well. The browniecakes were good, of course, but the frosting really brought it home.

1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup butter
4 tsp vanilla extract
3-4 cup powdered sugar
4ish TB milk

Beat peanut butter and butter until smooth. Add the vanilla, and then sloooowly add the powdered sugar. Like 1 cup at a time slow. Then, add 1 TB of milk at a time until you dig the consistency. Mine was 4, maybe yours is less. I don’t judge, and I’m not here to tell you what to do. But this was crazy delicious, with a really good consistency of both cake and frosting.

Day 39–Souvenirs

I got all of my stuff unpacked this morning, and when I did, I looked at all the things I had gotten for myself. While in the cupcake shop on Saturday, I ended up getting more things than I had anticipated, but I am pleased with them all.

I bought a whole bunch of cupcake wrappers, some cupcake bandaids, and a stamp set of cupcake related items. I am so jazzed to use them all!

Day 38–Sleeping

Today, we were stuck in the airport for around 12 hours. Our first time out, we experienced mechanical issues, so we turned around. For about an hour, they worked on the plane, and then said they couldn’t replicate it, so we were probably fine. We went up again, and again, had the same problem, so we turned around and were grounded. Then, the earliest we could get out was 6:00 PM (It was around 11:30 at this time), so after securing seats on that plane, we just had to…wait. During the hours, some of us broke off to watch Pitch Perfect, and some broke off to watch a Tinkerbell movie. My SIL was roped into watching that one, and I could tell she was enjoying it, as I glanced over, and she was asleep. It reminded me of the previous day, when my other SIL fell asleep during the graduation ceremony.

Both made me laugh so hard. Of course I had to get pictures of them both! Teaches you to grab a nap, wherever you can get one.

Shenanigans in Oklahoma

Today, we’re in Oklahoma for the BIL’s graduation. After the ceremony, and the eating, we were taken on a tour of the campus by him. Here’s all the shenanigans that ensued:

We were taken to the library, which looks exactly like the library in Hogwarts. We saw the science building, we walked around a lot in the 97 degree weather. We went to a cupcake place after dinner, and they had an elaborate tea party set up.

And of course I enjoyed a cupcake.

Peanut butter cup – really good! I liked that place a lot. All in all, it was a pretty fun trip!

Day 37–The Graduate

My brother in law graduated from college today, with his master’s degree. After sitting through a super boring graduation in which 780,000 names were read, we got to go get some food finally.

It was pretty fun to get our picture taken with him, all fancied out, in a BBQ joint. Congrats to him!

Day 36–Pop Up

Ok I know I post a bunch about Cookie on here, and while I’m sorry, at the same time, I don’t care because this is my blog and I think that dog is a riot. No one is forcing you to read about Cookie but I bet when you do, you’re just jazzed she’s not your dog. And you probably laugh at her shenanigans. Today, after I finished working out, I was trying to find her, and I had no luck. She wasn’t anywhere. Finally, I start calling her name out, and all of a sudden,

There she was, hiding between my pillows. What a freaking loon.

The Woes of My Toes

Today I went to the foot doctor, and had many things done. First of all, we all remember when I broke my toe back in January, and I never went to a doc for it. They can’t do anything, so I didn’t see a point in even trying to fix it. The bruising went away, it stopped hurting so much, and all I had left was a bump on my foot, and a pain when I tried to bend my toe. Finally, I was going to the foot doctor for another issue, so I thought I’d see what they said about my toe. The doc saw the toe, and immediately knew what it was, but wanted some X-Rays to make sure. After getting those, he told me what the problem was. You know how you take a hammer, and you hit it really hard into a piece of wood, and it makes a big dent, with a few spidery cracks around it? Apparently, that’s what happened to my toe – it’s dented. Sheesh! So now there’s scar tissue there, and that’s what the bump is. So he’s given me some creams, and I get to rub those in, and then wear what I’m calling a toe sleeve:

Which is just a small compression band, that hopefully, with the help of the creams, will dissolve/get rid of the scar tissue. If that doesn’t work, I’m supposed to get cortisone/steroid shots, which I don’t want to get. So lets all cross my fingers that this will work.

The whole reason for my going was to ask the doc about my arches, which always hurt. He decided orthotics were a good idea, and I got fitted right away for my custom ones.

I can’t wait to see how these turn out. Of course, this sadly means I won’t be able to wear flip flops anymore, and that makes me sad. But on the positive side, now I can go buy some new shoes, to wear with my new orthotics!

Day 35–Toes

Today I went to the foot doctor, and when I sat down on the chair, I looked at the paper towel there, to protect the chair, and it just made me laugh.

Come on! It’s little toe families! I of course had to snap a pic. I hope it brings a smile to your face too.

Day 34 - Running

Running makes me happy. I do it every day, for varied miles a day, and it just makes me feel good, and helps me feel like I might not be gaining a million pounds after eating 3 cupcakes in a row. (It happens) Yesterday, they posted the pics from the race, and I found one of mine, and boy-howdy, do I look unhappy.

I look unhappy, and in pain, which I can’t remember being at this point. I remember wanting to be done, and being very hot (that race needs to start earlier, it’s too warm!) but I don’t remember feeling like I was dying! But that’s ok, this picture just makes me laugh!

Day 33–A New Shirt

About a week ago, my sister texted me from Washington to tell me she got me a present. I said cool, and immediately forgot about it. Then today, she asked if my mail was here yet. I went and checked, and indeed it had come, and inside was a package for me! I ran inside and opened it, and got a chuckle when I saw what it was.

This is a shirt, and I think its hysterical. I will wear it with pride as people see what an okay sister I am.

Day 32–Mint Oreo Cupcakes

Yesterday I made cupcakes for a family dinner. Saturday night, I made the cupcake itself, just a regular chocolate cake, and figured I’d dress it up with the frosting. It took me all of church to think of what to do, and then decided a Mint Oreo Cupcake would be a good idea. I came home, and got started. As I was creaming together my cream cheese and butter, I realized, I didn’t have enough powdered sugar in the house! I only had a cup! Luckily, one of my old scouts happened to stop by right then, so he went to his house and grabbed me a bag of powdered sugar. He was the hero of the day. Here’s what it looked like:

And here’s the recipe, in case you want to make it yourself. (Just of the frosting, the cake is regular chocolate cake)

1/2 C butter, softened
8 oz cream cheese
1 1/2 tsp peppermint extract
1 Tbsp milk
3-4 C powdered sugar
Green food dye
6 Mint or Regular Oreos, finely crushed (super finely crushed, so it can’t get stuck in your frosting tip)

Beat butter and cream cheese for 2 minutes. Add peppermint extract, milk and slowly add in powdered sugar until you reach your desired consistency. I added about 4 cups, I probably could have added more, though. Keep an eye on it. Add green dye one drop at a time until you like the color. (I tried to remember how many drops I did, but oh man I just forgot.) Stir in your crushed Oreos, but don't over mix or else it will start to turn the frosting grey. What I did here, was I started to mix it in with my mixer, but it was turning gray immediately, so I just unhooked the mixer, and mixed in the Oreos by hand, with a spatula, so you can just do that if you feel like it. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes and top with an Oreo for decoration, if you like.

Then I tried the cupcakes, and I really dug the frosting. I totally recommend this.

Day 31–How to Eat Cake

It was my nieces’ birthday party yesterday, and after opening presents (having a party for a 1 year old is weird to me. They have no idea what’s going on, they can’t unwrap presents, so what’s the appeal to them?) Her parents gave her a small cake for her to eat. She enjoyed it.

And I just got to laugh at her. It did make me want to shove my face into a cake, though. Bucket list item.

Day 30–A Good Receipt

Today I had a race, the Provo City 5K. It’s the Chase the Mayor race, but sadly, this year, I finished just right behind him. I finished pretty well, 25:22, and I was kind of glad, until I got to see how I fared. Something interesting this year, they printed off a race receipt for you, as soon as you were done:

So even with my pretty good time, I finished 6^th, so I’m really disappointed by that. And when I got home, I did better this year than last year, but I guess the mayor just got better as well. Oh well. But I’m glad I did my time that quickly, because it gives me hope for the rest of the races this year.

Day 29–Women’s Conference

Yesterday and today, I’ve gone to BYU Women’s Conference with Chelle. I got a picture of all of it as we were sitting down for a general session:

It was a pretty great 2 days, and I’ve learned some things, laughed a lot, and had a really great time with Chelle there.

Day 28–New Bedspread

Today, we got a new bedspread for the bed. Not because we wanted one, and saw it, and it was cute, but because our obnoxious dog decided to throw up on our nice, cream colored bedspread, and stained it. I washed it twice, and I couldn’t get the stain or the smell out, so we had to get a new one. Now, I’m angry at the circumstances, but I am happy to see this blanket, it really is very pretty.