¡Vieve!

Foto Friday

2012-02-10T11:32:00.002-07:00

I’ve spoken of Stamp & Chat on here before, many a time. With all the cards that I make there (3 a month for many months now) I rarely give them away. I find them too precious, and I feel like not many people would appreciate all the hard work that goes into them. So as you can imagine, I have many cards. I keep them in a drawer, not really any kind of organization to them. Recently, I decided that I should keep them in boxes, organized by genre. So I found these boxes from Close to My Heart that you can decorate any which way you want, so I chose to make many of them. I’m only ordering a few at a time, of course, because I don’t want to overwhelm myself with boxes. Last night, I started my project, and made 2 of my boxes. It wasn’t too hard, thank goodness, but I keep my decorating really simple, since I’m not very good at creative things. So here’s a look at my two boxes:

In case you couldn’t tell, my birthday cards will be in the one, and my thank you cards will be put in the other. I can’t wait to get my whole line of boxes done, and then I’ll proudly display them. And add more every few months, since I still don't like to give away my cards. Maybe someday...

Miscellaneous Monday

2012-02-06T11:20:00.002-07:00

The first subject in my Misc. Monday will be a little risqué, so if you want to avoid it, you can skip on down to the next paragraph, and no one’s feelings will be hurt. The other night (Saturday, to e exact), I went to sleep in my regular pajamas of a t-shirt and shorts. I’m not the type to sleep in long pants, long sleeve shirts, I like to dress a little cooler, so I can snuggle right into my blankets. I woke up the next morning at like, 4 or so, a little chilly. As I was pulling my blanket up around me, I realized, in shock that I no longer had my shirt on. I sat up, and in my sleepiness state, tried to look around to find it, but no dice. What the heck could I have done with it, and also, why am I undressing in my sleep all of a sudden? I went back to sleep, and the next morning, found my shirt – it was on the floor at the foot of the bed. So as far as I can tell, sometime between midnight and 4 AM, I took off my shirt, THREW it across the bed onto the floor and just kept sleeping. What a weirdo.

Now that the weekends over, we can finally talk results! It was the Big Game this weekend – as everyone knows. I’d been getting ready all day, I made sure I was in front of the TV when it started, I didn’t want to miss a single moment. Puppy Bowl 2012 was a success. For those of you not familiar with the Puppy Bowl, I’ll break it down into real simple terms. What they do is take about 10 or so hyperactive puppies, plop them into a miniature football field with like, 5 chew toys. The object is to get one of the puppies to take one of the toys, and get it across the finish line. What the game actually is, is 10 puppies on a tiny field, fighting each other for chew toys, then some giving up, and lying down. There are water breaks, when they all stop and drink out of the water bowl that’s on the field. Of course, there are no real teams, its every man (pup) for themselves. My favorite puppy was Fumble. He actually won MVP of the match, good for him! He scored many touchdowns. There is no real score, I don’t even remember what it was anyway. But it was so awesome, and it made me really want a puppy. I’ve included a picture of Fumble, so you can see how cute he is.
Is that the face of a winner? It sure is.

Over the weekend, I saw a new movie, The Grey. It stars Liam Neeson as a fella who works at an oil rig-type place, and his occupation is to shoot the wolves that try to attack his fellow workers as they drill for oil. On a routine flight back to Alaska, their plane goes down, and the 7 remaining guys try to find their way back to civilization in the middle of an Alaskan winter whilst a pack of wolves are trying to eat them. This was a pretty good movie, very suspenseful, but there’s one thing it did for me. It pretty much GUARANTEED that I will never ever go camping. I get that it’s a movie, I see that. But the wolves in this freaked me out so badly, and now, even though I know it’s so unlikely, I think that when I go camping, wolves will come out and try to eat me. Irrational, I know, but now it’s all I can think about.

Vieve’s Videos

2012-02-05T15:59:00.001-07:00

It’s possible that everyone here has seen this already, but I’m posting it anyway. On Tuesday, abouts, this video hit the internet. I’ll give a little background, for those who haven’t heard of it. Kristen Bell (actress: Veronica Mars, When in Rome) loves sloths. Like, to an unhealthy amount. So recently, she went on Ellen to discuss a recent birthday she had, in which sloths were there. I don’t want to give too much away. Enjoy this video:

Kristen Bell Sloth Meltdown

I am almost obsessed with this video. I think it’s hysterical, and I’ve seen it, oh…4 times or so by now. My emotional state is really similar to hers – if things are too happy or too sad, I’m crying.

Anyway, so last night, we were at the Olde Spaghetti Factory, and there was a balloon animal guy walking around. He stopped by our table, and asked if we wanted anything. An animal, a flower…anything. So I want something, because come on, how many times am I going to get this chance? So Husband tells the balloon guy that I love sloths. I of course, died laughing, and he made me a sloth!

And there he is! He’s holding onto a tree, in case you couldn’t tell. And there’s a tiny face drawn on him, so cute. The guy did a really good job. Here’s a picture of me holding him at the restaurant last night.

We will be lifelong friends (or until he deflates or is popped). I hope everyone enjoys this video!

Cherry Coke Float Cupcakes

2012-02-01T10:23:00.005-07:00

Well, it happened again. Last night, it struck again.
I am, of course, talking about my baking bug, it bit me again after I found a delish recipe for cupcakes. I got this recipe about a week ago, and *finally* last night, I was able to make them. These are Cherry Coke Float Cupcakes.
A fancy name, right? But luckily for us all, they’re not that hard to make! I was setting out all of my ingredients, making sure I had everything, and I was really surprised to find that I didn’t actually have any baking soda in the house! It’s just one of those things that I never thought about buying. I mean, before I married, I lived with my parents, and since they took care of the groceries, we had simple things like that around all the time, but since I rarely use it, I guess it never occurred to me to get. When I discovered I didn’t have any, I didn’t really want to go to the store, so I called up (and by called, I mean, texted) my sister, and asked if she had some she could share. She said yes, and she was on the way. Huzzah! So I got to work on doing all the parts I could until I got to the part that required the baking soda. Finally she arrived, and I finished the batter. I poured the batter into the pans, and I was so careful about how much I put into each cup. After last times debacle regarding the overflowing, I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
I baked them, and when I took them out, they were small-ish. I guess with this recipe, I can afford to fill the cups up a little, but no matter, a small cupcake is still a delish cupcake. After I let them cool, I set to work on putting the cherries inside, the glaze on top, and finishing with the whipped cream frosting.

I really liked this recipe, it was really easy to make, and really good. Sadly, it doesn’t taste as much like coke as I’d like it too, but it’s still delish. And in case anyone was going to make it themselves (though I’m not really sure who does from my blog) I’d make probably a half a cup more of the frosting. The amount of whipped cream this recipe calls for barely managed to frost the cupcakes I had, and that was with me being really stingy on the frosting. So in the future, I’d make more of that. But anyway, here is my finished product:

And for those of you who would like it, here is the recipe:

Cherry Coke Float Cupcakes
For the Cupcakes:

1½ cups all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

½ teaspoon baking soda¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup granulated sugar

½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 egg

½ cup buttermilk

¾ cup Coke (don’t use diet)

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

1 (21-ounce) can cherry pie filling

For the Glaze:

¾ cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons Coke

For the Icing:

1 cup heavy whipped cream

4 tablespoons powdered sugar

Maraschino Cherries, for garnish
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line a standard muffin pan with paper liners; set aside. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl and set aside. In a mixing bowl, combine the sugar and butter and beat on medium-high until light and creamy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg and beat for an additional minute. In a large mixing cup or small bowl, combine the buttermilk, Coke and vanilla extract. (Make sure you wait for the foam to go down when measuring the Coke and don’t worry if your mixture looks curdled when you add the buttermilk.) Beginning with the flour mixture, add in 4 parts to the butter mixture, alternating with the Coke mixture. Beat each addition just until incorporated. Give the final mixture a good mix with a rubber spatula to make sure it is thoroughly combined. Divide the batter evenly between the muffins tins. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until the tops spring back when touched lightly and a toothpick inserted in the center cupcake comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Once cooled, use a paring knife to cut out a cone shape in the middle of each cupcake. Add a spoonful of cherry mixture (2 to 3 cherries) to the well. In a small bowl whisk together the powdered sugar and coke. Let sit 5 to 10 minutes to thicken. It should drip off of a soon very slowly. Using a small offset spatula, drizzle a little of the glaze onto the middle of each cupcake and then gently spread it over the top. Beat the heavy whipping cream in a chilled bowl with whisk attachment (or hand mixer), beginning on low speed. Once the cream gets frothy begin adding the powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, increasing speed as the cream comes together until you reach medium-high speed. Whip the cream until it holds stiff peaks (if you dip a spoon in it, the whipped cream should stay on the spoon when you turn it upside down). Pipe the whipped cream onto cupcakes as desired and top with maraschino cherries for garnish.

Miscellaneous Monday Mayhem

2012-01-30T14:28:00.003-07:00

On Saturday, Husband and I went to the mall; we were looking at sporting equipment for his office. I stayed and looked at treadmills, ellipticals, etc for as long as I could stand it, then I left him to get a pedicure. My toenails were looking quite shady, and they were sharp and pointy on one of them, so I was afraid I’d scratch someone (myself) with it. So I was about finished when Husband finally wandered on over to me, and had a seat in a chair next to me, to wait for me to be finished. As a joke, we (the pedicurist and I) told him that he should get one as well. After a little while, he actually agreed! He didn’t get any color on his nails (sissy) but he did get one done. I sneakily took a picture of him relaxing, before they touched his feet.Once she got going on his feet, he kept giggling, the entire time. That was actually pretty funny to witness. And maybe he’ll keep getting them…and next time, it could be color.

Today, my iPhone broke. It randomly turned off, but then it couldn’t turn on. So after a healthy amount of Googling, I was still at a loss, as none of those websites actually do anything for you. So then I tried to get onto apple.com, to see if there is any help on that website. The website wouldn’t actually help me until I put in my serial number. But…I can’t get to my serial number, because my phone won’t turn on. The site said the number was on the back of the phone. After much searching, I still couldn’t figure out which of the group of numbers was the serial number, so I gave up and called them. Of course, they had an automated computer voice at the beginning, who told me I couldn’t be helped unless I had a serial number, and again, I fought with the automated voice until it finally gave up and sent me to a live person. After explaining my problem, I was told I had to pay $30 to get help on the phone (since I didn’t buy a protection plan), or I could go to the nearest Apple store. The nearest Apple store, in case anyone is wondering, is in SLC, in the Gateway. I am not driving there, because I’ve done this before, at Christmas. I get there, and they inform me that since I don’t have the plan, they can’t help me either. I’m out, thanks. So I pay the money, since at this point, my phone had been frozen for about 40 minutes. So after explaining my problem yet again, we tried a few things, which I had already tried, and had told her I tried. But when I tried it again, it worked this time, which I thought was ridiculous, and the conspiracy theorist in me told me that they do this on purpose, just to get my money. But that’s crazy…right? The gal that was helping me asked me for the serial number once the phone turned back on, and I gave it to her. I asked where it was located on the back of the phone, since the website and computer-generated guy told me it was there. It wasn't! They are liars! They shouldn't tell you that it's on the back if it isn't! And I get that I should be glad that the phone is working, but still. The lies.

Foto Friday: Foto Blast

2012-01-27T09:30:00.005-07:00

Ok, what I have here today are just miscellaneous photos that I’ve found recently. Basically, they’ve all made me giggle, but there’s not really a story behind them, or anything I could really say about them, I just like the pictures, so I’m just posting them all on here, willy nilly, on one day.

I liked this, because even though I'm a runner and not a biker, cars are still douches.

Is that the cutest thing you've ever seen? I think I'd like to have a puppy.

Come on! A puppy winking and pointing at me?! Adorable!

I hope you can read the writing on the bottom part – this is the best ‘Missing’ flyer I’ve ever seen.

Well, I hope you enjoyed all of these pictures, and if not, meh, I’m not forcing you to read this. Ha!

Mock Nuggets

2012-01-25T09:34:00.004-07:00

On Monday, we had Meatless Monday again. We’re not as diligent in this as we’d like, we only do it like, every two or three weeks, but this week, I was like, lets do this! We decided on vegetarian chicken nuggets, since we had the veggie burgers last time. So at the store, a while ago, we had bought these:

because I thought they’d be a good idea. I like the veggie burgers that this company provides,so I assumed all of their stuff is delicious. No, I was wrong. These nuggets tasted really awful. They didn’t taste anything like chicken, they didn’t really taste like any kind of meat. There was a slight fish taste to them, which I thought was weird. I even tried it with different sauces. to see if that could help. I tried ranch dressing, I tried barbecue sauce. And while it did mask the taste a little, they still tasted awful. But I soldiered through it, I thought, I guess this is just what it’s like to be a vegetarian, you don’t really get to eat good food. (ha!) So we finish the meal, and I ask Husband how he liked the nuggets, and he didn’t like them, either. So, way to go, nuggets, you made everyone sad. At least now I know how they taste, so I’ll never have to wonder again. Also, I’ll never have to eat these again, so that’s another excitement. And, since Monday was National Pie Day (which I thought happened in March, but I read on MSN that it was Monday, so…) I got myself a slice of Key Lime Pie to celebrate, and to wash out the taste of the mock nuggets.

And that, my friends, was delicious.

Geechie Peachie Cobbla

2012-01-22T18:14:00.001-07:00

I felt like making a treat after dinner tonight. At first, I really wanted to make brownies, but alas, I was out of brownie mix. I could have made them from scratch, I know, but I didn’t really want to take a long time to make my treat, since I was doing other things, so finally, I decided on a peach cobbler, made from a mix PJ brought me from Louisiana. This is what the bag looks like:

Now, that is some definite spelling errors. And when I turned it around, to read the back, I was blown away by how they explain it. I’ve taken a picture, but since I’m not sure how well you’ll be able to read it, I will also write it on here.

Geechie Peachie Cobbla Instructions:

Git ya oven nice and hot (‘bout 375). Find ya best 8x8 pan greez ‘em up good. Pick ya some fresh peaches and put ‘em in ad bottom of da pan. (A can if ya trees been bare) Den put da mix on top da peaches. Pour 3/4 cup a milk on top of ‘em and stick ya spoon in da mix a couple of times so da milk can soak ‘em. Stick ‘em in da oven and cook ‘em til she good and gold (bout 30 min.), take ‘em out da oven and serve ‘em up hot wit some ice cream. Dis be so good ya ain’t gonna wanna share ‘em. Enjoy!

That’s how they tell you how to cook it. So I followed these instructions, and this is what they looked like when I pulled them out of the oven:

Yum! Sadly, I didn’t have any vanilla ice cream, so I couldn’t enjoy it that way, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. And now I know, I can speak Southern! (Because you know, that’s a language and all. *wink*)

Foto Friday

2012-01-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

This week was Stamp & Chat. I have spoken of it often on here, so I don’t think I need to recap it. Suffice it to say, it is definitely a highlight of my month (since it only happens once a month). This month’s Stamp & Chat was a blast. It’s always a lot of fun, but for some reason this month was especially fun. The giggling was pretty much non-stop, and fun was had by all. So for this week, I’m sharing my cards with everyone on here, so you can see how cute they are:

Now, I don’t know if you can tell, but the card in the left corner has roses in the corner of the card. I am not at all crafty, so when I made the roses according to directions, they actually all looked like torches, all that needed to be done was to set them on fire, and they would have let me through a dark cave. So Chelle had to fix them for me so they resembled flowers. It was tricky, considering how retarded I had made them, but she fixed them, of course. Other than that hiccup, I think I did quite nicely on my cards.

And in case you were wondering, here is my dessert:

Ice cream, so delicious, with 4 cherries on the top because I love them so. Yum!

Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes

2012-01-17T11:17:00.001-07:00

This weekend, the baking bug bit me once again. It has been a while since I’ve baked last, so I gave everyone around me a break for the time being. But then I found this recipe, and I just had to try it. I follow a cupcake blog on Twitter, and they sent out this recipe, and when they tweeted it out, they said that it was cupcakes, I remember this. Why else would they have sent it out? So when I finally set out to make them, I had my ingredients all set out on the counter, and then I noticed, the recipe actually says its a cake. So then I thought, how hard could it be to make this into cupcakes? So I gave that a go, and boy did that go wrong. I don’t know what the heck happened with this recipe, but I hated it. So I combined all the ingredients:

Fancy, eh? I got this mixer for Christmas from my mom and pop, and I only finally this weekend broke down and use it. I didn’t want to use it, it was so nice and fancy! But it works quite well, it was so smooth and awesome. So after I mixed everything together, I put them all into the cups. I didn’t know how full to make the cups, so I did about halfway full, maybe 2/3, depending on the cup. Then I noticed that they topping has to be put onto the top of the cake, and swirled in. While that is pretty easy for a cake, to do that for cupcakes? So hard! So I made the topping, and tried my hardest to swirl. This is what they looked like after that:
So now with the topping, the cupcakes were all mostly filled, pre-baking. I hoped that it would be ok, but sadly, it was not. When I baked them, they overflowed – and I mean in a big way. It spilled over the top, onto the pan, and all over the oven. :( I may have posted pictures of that, but when it happened, I was trying to clean up the mess, and it was a crazy few minutes happening, so grabbing a picture wasn’t really a top priority for me. So I cleaned it up best I could, and cleaned up the pans, and glazed the cupcakes. I waited a few minutes for the cupcakes to cool a bit, and I tried one while it was still warm, and… >>SIGH<< heaven. So good they were, despite the hellishness of trying to get them baked. They were also pretty delicious cold, but warm was really good, it tasted like a cinnamon roll. (which is the point of the recipe!) Here’s what they looked like, coming fresh out of the glazing process.

I don’t know that I’ll ever make this recipe again, or if I do, I’ll just make it as a cake, and not worry about trying to make it into cupcakes. In case you want it, here’s the recipe.

Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes

Cake:
3 C flour

¼ tsp salt

1 C sugar

1 ½ C milk

2 eggs 2 tsp vanilla

½ C butter, melted

Topping:

1 C butter, softened

1 C brown sugar

2 Tbsp flour

1 Tbsp cinnamon

Mix everything together except for the butter, until smooth. Slowly stir in the melted butter, and pour into a greased 9X13 pan.

For the topping, mix all the ingredients together until well combined. Drop evenly over the batter and swirl with a knife. Bake at 350 degrees for 28-32 minutes.

Glaze:

2 C powdered sugar

5 Tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

While warm, drizzle the glaze over the cake.

New Addition

2012-01-16T13:40:00.001-07:00

Everyone, I have a new addition to my tiny family. He’s brand new, we only got him on Saturday. It took a long time to get him, plus the choosing of the name took a long time as well. Finally, after we had picked him, dressed him, and named him, we paid for him, and took him home. Here’s what he looks like:

He’s a fox! A Jedi fox, which is more fancy. We got him at Build a Bear. For Christmas, we got a gift certificate to the Build a Bear store, which I had never been to before. I didn’t know how to do anything there, but luckily since it’s a store for children, it’s pretty explanatory and helpful. You’re supposed to choose your bear/animal first, and then get it stuffed, then choose the outfit, but for me, the outfit chooses the bear. So we took a long time, and finally, we (read: Husband) really wanted the Jedi costume, so we got that. Originally, I had chosen a light-colored bear for it, but then I passed by the fox, and I thought, holy crap, that’s a way cooler Jedi! In case you wanted to know (which I know you do) his name is Oobee Doob Scooby Doobi Benoobi. That’s his full name of course, and his nickname is Benoobi. Of course, because he’s so fancy, I don’t really play with him like I do with the Inspector. So he just sits on a shelf, with his birth certificate next to him:

So there he is, our new friend. Hopefully he’ll mesh well into our household, I’d hate to have conflicting personalities.

Foto Friday

2012-01-13T11:18:00.001-07:00

I stumbled across this picture on Facebook the other day, and I loved it. I really like the message it’s sending, you should let people know how you feel about them, because truly, you don’t know what could happen.

Can you imagine the horror of this little egg, realizing his mama is cooked? The horror!

Miscellaneous Monday

2012-01-09T14:30:00.001-07:00

Well, readers, it happened. Finally, I got sick. Husband has been sick for, oh, say, 6 months or so (ok, it probably isn’t quite that long, but holy cow does it feel like it sometimes) so its about time I got it. Plus I’ve seen everyone around me catch it, so I guess I could participate in the cold as well. It was an odd cold too, it like, came and went. The Thursday before the new year, I had a sore throat. Then I was good until the following Sunday, when I thought all day that I might die. Maybe not that extreme, but I didn’t feel well, and my body was dying, it seemed. Then I felt ok for the next two days, and then Wednesday, it returned with a vengeance. I had a headache, and my sinuses were all hurty, and I had the runny/stuffy nose, a cough, everything. I did not care for it at all. But slowly, my body has been healing, and today, I feel ok. My sinuses are better, nose is back to normal, and my body aches have gone away. The only thing I’ve held onto so far, is the cough. It is still here, and its actually worse now than it has been. I don’t understand that, but ok. Basically, I’m on a steady stream of cough drops right now. I’m trying to keep hydrated, and all that, but the only thing stopping the coughing is to have a drop in my mouth. I feel bad for Chelle, actually, because she has to sit next to me at work, but I’m trying to keep it under control! Luckily for me, my cough drops have inspirational sayings in them! “Go for it!” “You got it!” “March Forward!” that sort of thing. Its very nice to hear that from the drops.

As I have blogged of late, I am becoming slightly more crafty. Not that much, I’m not really very good at it, but I’m trying my best, and I’ve gotten a little better at it. So far, most of my creative juices have gone towards my scrapbooking, but I recently decorated a box, for a gift for a friend for Christmas. (I know it’s weeks after Christmas, but there’s a reason for it that lets me off the hook!) So I pulled all my resources together (and by this I mean, I finally got my nerve up to do it) and made my box. I watched a little tutorial on YouTube of a girl putting it together, and she told me the sizes of all the pieces of paper I needed as she went, and explained some of what she did. I didn’t do what she did, but I still put it together on my own, and I feel pretty good about that. So in case you wanted to see it too, here it is:

I like it!

Last night when I was working on the ol’ scrapbook, I was stamping some letters. After I’d finished, I took my stamps to be washed in the sink. I had many of them in my hand, and as I was cleaning them, I thought maybe one had slipped out of my hand, but when I looked down, I didn’t see any in my sink, so I wasn’t entirely sure of it. As I was putting the stamps back on the sheet, I noticed my T was gone, so of course, I knew right where to go for it. I went to the sink, and since I didn’t see it, I took the water-stopper out, and ta-daaa! There it was, right down the sink where I couldn’t reach it. So I tried a bobby pin, but it wasn’t long enough. I grabbed the longest thing I could see – Husband’s comb. *Technically, it used to be my comb, but after we got married, he started using it, and got all of his hair junk in it, so now I don’t use it anymore. I have to use a different one, that I don’t really like, and doesn’t do my purpose very well.* So I put the handle in the sink, and after some digging around, it came out! Huzzah! Of course, I did the right thing, and cleaned off the comb when I was done, because I am nice. And then I had to clean off the stamp, because my sink is apparently disgusting. But at least I got it back!

Today, Chelle brought me these muffins to work today:

I don’t really have a story about them, but I thought it was pretty nice, and wanted to share. They were pumpkin chocolate chip, and so delicious!

Song Re-Writes : Speak Now

2012-01-06T09:08:00.001-07:00

As I was driving to work this morning, I was listening to a Taylor Swift song, ‘Speak Now"’. For those of you that haven’t heard this song, please listen before you continue to read, otherwise, the rest of this blog won’t really make a lot of sense to you. (Sorry that this is a live version of the song. I had hoped there would have been an official music video, but alas, there is not)

Ok, still with me? Now, I don’t know who listens to Taylor Swift very often (I do, I really love her, I can’t help it) but there is a general theme between her songs. She always has a crush on a guy, and usually he’s with another girl, so by the end of the song, she has broken them up, because the boy has realized that Taylor is PERFECT for him, and all their years of friendship have just blinded him to the fact that they’re in love, but now he gets it, and they’ll live happily ever after. I’ve said if before (not on here, though): Taylor Swift likes to break up relationships. And in this song, it’s a wedding she’s breaking up! Anyway, what I was thinking this morning was, I bet that a song from the point of view from the bride-to-be would make an amazing song. I’m not really one for writing songs, but just think of it: there’s this innocent girl (lets name her…Sue!) , and its her wedding day. Sue’s finally marrying the man of her dreams, and she’s a little nervous for the day, I mean, every bride is! So as she’s getting ready for the day, with her bridesmaids and all, she’s reflecting on how the last few months have been a little crazy. Her fiancée, (lets call him Jake) has been acting a little distant lately. And Sue is just sure that one girl, Taylor, is to blame for it, she’s always flirting with Jake. So Sue’s getting ready, and she’s stressed, and one of her bridesmaids asks her a question, but oh man, Sue just got to the breaking point, and she’s snapped at the poor bridesmaid. Obvs she feels bad for it and apologizes. So Sue disinvites Taylor from the wedding, because if there’s a problem with someone, you don’t want them to maybe ruin your big day! Finally, the moment is here, and they’re walking down the aisle. Sue sees her Jake waiting for her at the end of the aisle, she’s so excited! She walks down, takes his hand, and the preacher starts the ceremony. He gets to the “If anyone has just cause as to why these two shall not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.” Sue holds her breath, hoping nothing goes badly, and… there! Taylor pops out from behind a curtain (Why is she here?! Why is she hiding?!) and addresses Jake, telling him to run now, he loves her, they should leave. And the gall! He does! He leaves Sue standing at the altar, in tears, in her beautiful wedding dress. Her wedding is ruined, her life is ruined, and her fiancée had been cheating on her all this time.

See? Wouldn’t that make an interesting song? I wish I knew how to write songs, because this would make a great one, and I would send it to Taylor Swift, telling her it’d make a great follow-up to ‘Speak Now’. She’d sing it, and make millions, and send me some of the profits from it. I can dream, right? I hope you enjoyed my song re-writes, and if I think of anymore, I’ll be sure to share them.

Miscellaneous Monday…Just a Day Late…

2012-01-03T16:13:00.001-07:00

I’m fully aware that I could make each of these their own blog entry, but really, that’s more commitment than I’m looking for right now. So here we go.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone had a good holiday. Mine wasn’t too shabby, so that’s always a plus. Husband took me to Disneyland as my present this year, and of course, it was fun as always. It was SUPER busy though, but I’m pretty good at knowing how to skirt around the busy parts. It involves patience, and a desire to truly do everything that Disneyland has to offer. (Which includes seeing Captain EO – amazing 80’s work!) We did every ride at least once, and some twice. I love all the rides, but Husband has a hard time with anything that goes up and down, so Tower of Terror was not a good ride for him. I took pictures of the pictures they took of us, so while they’re not the best quality, they are pretty funny.

I really hope you can see his face in those, because it is magnificent. The one on the left is the first time we rode it, and as you can see (he’s in the second row, the farthest on the left in the gray shirt) he is so not happy. In the second photo (In which he’s in the front row, furthest on the left in the RSL jacket), he went for a more “If I don’t believe I’m on the Tower of Terror, everything will be ok”. Don’t ask me what my face is doing in these photos, my ideas didn’t really pan out. In one of the times we went on Space Mountain, we had a little girl that was a first-timer, and her face alone makes our picture priceless:

She’s in the front row, as I’m sure you can tell. I died laughing at her face. But all in all, a good trip, I enjoyed the good times.

Yesterday afternoon, I was coming into the house after taking out the garbage. As I was entering the house, I turned to look at my shoes, making sure I wasn’t dragging anything in with me. As I turned my head and took a step into the house (And I will not know how I did this until the day I die) I somehow managed to smash my head right into the mantle. Of course, my New Years Resolution not to swear kind of took a back seat at the moment, as the surprise and severe pain I was in all of a sudden took over my brain, and I may have let loose a string of profanities while slamming the door shut. I went and looked at my head ASAP, and yup, a tiny dent in my forehead where I hit. It didn’t bleed all that much, just a little, but man did it hurt. The rest of the night I kept my eye on it, but luckily, it never got swollen. Now there’s just a tiny hole/scab where I hit, and it hurts to make facial expressions or if I try to brush my hair out of my face. Gah I’m an idiot.

The other day I came across a news article that talks about a guy who was accidentally texted, and kept it going, and it was just so funny. Read it here if you’d like. Anyway, then it links to his blog, to the specific posts that he wrote about these texts. Read the first entry here, and laugh. And then read the follow up, Part 2, here. And if you have time, read his fake blog for mommies, here. You’ll get the explanation about the mommy blog in the Part 2 blog, and it’s still just hysterical. I hope you guys like it as much as I do.

Mini Cheesecakes

2011-12-21T14:54:00.001-07:00

It’s almost Christmastime! Are you ready, readers? I hope so. We had our department Christmas lunch today, Taco Salad. Delicious! My assignment was to bring a dessert, so I chose mini cheesecakes. These were the easiest thing in the world, so I wanted to share the recipe. Here’s what they looked like right after I mixed the ingredients and put them in the fridge:

Looking good, right? I thought so too. *wink* So then I left them in the fridge overnight, and in the morning, I covered them with cherry pie filling. I would have liked to use raspberry too, but there was not a single can of raspberry pie filling to be found. My only options in the store were cherry, apple, and mixed berry, so I went with cherry. These are them with cherries:

Yum! So for those of you who’d like the recipe, here it is:

No-Bake Mini-Cheesecakes

1 pkg (8 oz) cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 tub (8 oz) Cool Whip whipped topping

12 Nilla Wafers or 12 Oreos

1 can pie filling (your choice)

Beat cream cheese and sugar until well blended. Gently stir in whipped topping. Place muffin cups into pan, place wafer or Oreo in bottom. Spoon cream cheese mixture into muffin cups until full. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Spoon pie filling onto each cupcake. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

These are really good, but they lose their shape, so the muffin cups look a little crazy. Still good though!

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-12-19T10:54:00.001-07:00

Well kids, its down to the wire. Christmas is in 6 days. I know what you’re wondering, ‘Vieve, have you completed your Christmas shopping yet?’ and the answer is no. But I’m close, I’m so close! I think I only have 2 people left to buy for, and 1 person left to finish the gift on (it’s homemade with love!) and THEN will I be finished. And after I do, I will throw a party for myself. And I will rock around the Christmas tree, at the Christmas Party Hop. This year was a lot less stressful for me than last year, for some reason, and for that, I am enjoying this year a little more than last year. My Christmas spirit is relatively here, and so far, I’m not completely dreading Christmas, which is a nice change! I hope all of you guys are feeling the same way.

I was recently watching The Polar Express (I love this movie) and as all the kids are in the North Pole, about to receive the first give of Christmas, I couldn’t help but think of how inaccurately this movie is representing things. These kids are at the north pole, standing around, chatting, with no coats on, just in their pajamas, and no one is cold? I mean, I’ve never been to the north pole, but I’ve researched the weather up there. And while during the day, it’s not too cold (it ranges in the 20s!) at night, which is when all the kids are there, it’s only 4 degrees! There is no way those kids are there, just hanging out and being totally fine while it’s that cold. Yes, I’m looking too much into children's movies. This is how I roll.

Yesterday, I finally broke down and made these treats that I found a recipe for on the side of the box of corn flakes. It seemed like a pretty easy recipe, so it didn’t take that long to make, woo hoo! I followed the recipe to the letter – I want to specify this. So I baked them, and took them out, and let them cool. As I was transporting the treats from the pan to a tupperware, they fell apart like crazy. The bottom half completely separated from the top half, leaving me with just a weirdo half of food. So to remedy this, I had to wrap the treats individually, so that they at least would travel well.

So there’s my treat, wrapped in the plastic wrap. I didn’t even eat any last night, because I was so mad at it (that’ll show it!) but someone else ate it, and told me it was good. And here’s what the treat actually looks like, without the wrapping.

And there it is. I don’t even want to share the recipe, because I don’t think anyone should ever have to make this monstrosity, at least not until I figure out how to fix it, I don’t know if the Corn Flakes people have never made this recipe, or just forgot to include something, because this is not what it looked like on the box.

I am a child-care provider

2011-12-18T21:00:00.004-07:00

On Wednesday night, I had a friend of mine call to ask what I was doing the following Saturday night. I don't really speak to this person a whole lot, so I was a little hesitant in telling my plans. (Which were...nothing.) So of course, he jumped on the opportunity to ask if I could see it in my heart to babysit his 2 children. Since I had nothing to do, I agreed to do so. And after I said yes, he asked if I could possibly find it in my heart to have them stay overnight. This made me step on the brakes a little. So I told him I'd have to talk to Husband, and I'd call him back.

I called Husband, and we talked about it, and he said, "Well, whatever you want to do, I'll back you up on." Gah this isn't what I wanted! I wanted him to make a decision for me, since I didn't want to make it! So finally I decided that we could do it, we could have these children sleep over. And don't worry, I did warn my friend that we don't even have any beds here, but he assured me that they'd be ok sleeping on the floor or couches. I was told that they'd be over on Saturday afternoon, these 2 children, ages 8 and 10 (one girl, one boy).

Saturday afternoon, here they come, and introductions made. (I should also point out, we had not ever met these kids. Woo!) We did a little tour of the house, and what did the kids zero in on? Our workout equipment. So of course, they start climbing all over the elliptical and the treadmill, and trying to work out. After a lecture about safety, we all just kinda hung out downstairs for a bit, and then the parents left. We let the kids work out for a while (they just wanted to...weird) under our supervision, and then we came upstairs. We watched a few minutes of TV, then the kids kept wanting to work out. They would go down, and we would listen to make sure everything sounded ok, and would go down to check it out every few minutes to make sure no one was dying. Then we got dinner - pizza of course, and then off to a movie. We let the kids choose, which meant we saw Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. It wasn't too bad, actually, I kind of enjoyed it. Those dang cute chipmunks!

After the movie, we came home and played MarioKart for a while. Well, the boy and I played MarioKart, I think the girl worked out more (what the heck, kids?!). So finally at 11, I was getting tired, so I told everyone it was bedtime, and off we went. This morning, we all woke up, and had breakfast - pancakes. We had to specially make the pancakes for the gal, she doesn't like thick pancakes. And for her, the definition of thick is anything over the thickness of a crepe. Finally at about 10, the parents came to get them, and our night of being parents was over, thank goodness. It's not that it was tiring, its just that they really mess up your schedule, kids. Maybe it's different if they're your own though, you don't have to worry that much about entertaining them.

There were a few funny things. I actually call Husband husband in real life, so at one point in the evening, the boy forgot his name, and yelled out 'Husband!' since that's all he could remember, it was funny. And the amount of sugar they ate...crazy. Of course, it's probably not a good idea that I gave them all the sugar, but they seemed ok still. But we survived, none worse for the wear. And I could be open to babysitting in the future - except I think I should tell the kids that really, I just want to watch movies...it's so much more low key!

Foto Friday

2011-12-16T14:00:00.001-07:00

This entry was supposed to be yesterday, but time sort of got away from me, so here it is today! Yesterday, the 15th of December was National Cupcake Day. As everyone knows, I think cupcakes are the best. I can’t quite explain why I heart them so. They’re just perfectly sized cakes, individual, so you don’t have to share unless you want to. I’ve been to cupcake places in a few states, I just like to try them everywhere. Sometime in my life, I’d like to have visited a cupcake place in every state. I know, I have humble goals. Anyway, Chelle and I celebrated by going to The Cocoa Bean Cupcake Cafe and getting a cupcake, yesterday I (as well as her, by coincidence) chose to eat the Party in My Mouth cupcake. So good!

How delish does that look? It was delish too,

Now, on Chelle’s blog at the beginning of November, she dared people who blog to write an entry every day, to celebrate National Blogging Month and on there, she says that if you accept the challenge, a cupcake courtesy of her would be yours. Of course I took the challenge, and challenged her right back, with the same reward. So naturally, I blogged every day, as did she, and yesterday, we bought the cupcakes for each other, for our reward. And of course, Chelle was amazing and wrote me a tiny note on my box she gave me:

I wasn’t going to put the box on here at first, since it’s my box and for my eyes, but I decided to share with the world.

Thanks to Chelle for buying me a delish cupcake and writing me such an awesome note!

How are People Vegetarians When Meat is so Delicious?

2011-12-13T16:45:00.001-07:00

Recently, I was reading an article in Runner’s World about taking one day a week to not eat any meat. ‘Meatless Monday’ they called it. Their claim is that the average American eats 8 oz of meat daily, which is about 45 percent more than the USDA recommends. Going meatless for one day a week will cut down on that a little, and you can cut back on your saturated fat while incorporating other proteins into your diet. So, being a runner, and always on the lookout to be a little healthier (while not cutting down on my treats that I love), I decided to join the Meatless Monday Movement. And since Husband is a (former) vegetarian, he’s the perfect guy to help me with this. It’s not that he’s morally against meat or anything, its just that he finds it healthier to not eat meat. But sadly, since we met and married, he’s started eating meat again since I do. Sorry, Husband.

Anyway, so last night was our first go at it. We decided to have veggie burgers, which I’ve had before – just the kind you get at the store. They’re not too bad, actually, they don’t really taste like meat, but they were pretty tasty. Husband decided (pretty last minute, actually) that he’d be making veggie burgers from scratch, with black beans. I was really really hesitant to try these, but I was going into this with a really open mind. So I parked myself into a seat, and watched Husband put them together. The whole time, I kept thinking, this is totally not something I would eat. He mashed all the beans, added green peppers, onions, garlic, mushrooms, some other ingredients and smushed them all together. Then he made little patties and cooked them. (I wish I had thought to take a picture last night of the burger, but of course, I didn’t) Of course, to make them taste ok, I added cheese, lettuce, all the regular things. So I put together my burger, and take my first bite.

It was so weird! It just tasted like a bean sandwich. Which maybe some people like, but I’m not all that into beans, so I was like, weird. I finished my burger, of course, because Husband worked so hard on it, and because I was going to do this Meatless Monday – no matter what. By the time I was finished, the taste had sort of grown on me, so I was used to it. And I’m not saying I’ll never eat a veggie burger again, I just think that the next time, I’ll make sure the beans are smoother…the stuff is mixed together more, and maybe mix something else into it, so that its just a little more delicious. Or I’ll buy the pre-made ones at the store. To celebrate my healthiness, and that I finished the whole burger, I ate a caramel apple covered in Butterfingers. So essentially I converted all my healthy points of eating that burger into eating the caramel apple. Delicious!

This is my thought on vegetarianism:

Because I sure didn’t.

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-12-12T14:06:00.001-07:00

Ha ha I’m the laziest, all I write is Miscellaneous Monday and Foto Friday. Oh well. Today as I was watching 12 Dates of Christmas off of ABCFamily, there’s a part in it where the main guy is leaving a message for the main girl. So she walks into her apartment, and hits play on her answering machine so that we all can hear what the message is. When this happened, I wondered, do people still have these types of answering machines? I know people have voicemail, because now almost everyone has a cell phone, and rarely do people have solely land lines that they rely on anymore. So my question is, outside of movies, who has these types of answering machines anymore? Anyone?

We decorated the second Christmas tree on Saturday night. I chose silver and red for the colors for it. When we finished, and looked at the tree, all I thought was…meh. Like, it looks good and everything, don’t get me wrong, it just seems…empty. But like, all of my ornaments are there and it’s a pretty full tree, but its just not grabbing me like my upstairs tree was. Here’s a pic, just so’s you can see:

So there it is. It’s a nice tree, and I am really digging the pine scent that’s going on all throughout the house, I just wish I loved it decorated a little more. Chelle gave me some decorating tips to do, to make the tree different and better, so I’m going to attempt those later, and see if it works. I’m also debating on putting on red garland, to see if that helps. I’ll decide later, I’m sure, but so far, that’s what it looks like.

Husband has a brother (Austin) on a mission. I haven’t met this brother (since our courtship/engagement was only about 6 months) but he comes home in about 3 weeks or so. We’ve chatted once or twice on the phone (just for a sentence or two, when he’s called home on Mother’s Day/Christmas) and we’ve emailed back and forth just a little, and from his emails, he’s a pretty funny guy, so I can’t wait to meet him. So this weekend, Husband and I were doing a little Christmas shopping, and we passed by this sign to meet a teddy bear named Austin! Of course I had to take a picture of it, so that I could claim that I met Austin early!

I think I’ll send this email to Austin, to let him know that we’d met.

Advent Calendar

2011-12-09T14:37:00.001-07:00

Growing up, I had an advent calendar every Christmas. For those of you don’t know, advent calendars are used to count down the days of from the 1st of December until Christmas Eve. You have a thing that looks like:

And on the package (even though you can’t really see it) there are 24 little doors, numbered, that you open every day. So on the 1st of December, you open the little door with the 1 on it, and you eat the candy inside. Sounds pretty easy, right? I always loved these.

So now that I’m married, I totally spaced that I needed to get one. You see, before, my mama always got them, and just gave them to me, and I happily ate all 24 pieces. But it wasn’t until PJ said something to me about her calendar that I was like, dude I haven’t even bought mine! So I went to the Target post haste, and alas, no calendars there. I checked all the local Maceys, (with mama’s help to get the south end of the valley) and alas, there are none to be found! I was so sad about this. My first year without an advent calendar, what to do? But then…Pops came through!

*this picture turned out a little weird, color-wise*

There it is! My very own advent calendar. Apparently he got it online, and its a way fancier one than I’ve ever seen. The ones I’ve gotten have been like, these little thin chocolates that you pull out of a plastic calendar. This one has little poems on every door, and the chocolate is a little wrapped present and its delicious. So thanks Pops! I’ll enjoy every one of these chocolates for the next 2ish weeks.

Foto Friday

2011-12-09T10:59:00.001-07:00

A month or so ago, my Aunt posted this picture on her Facebook page. I really liked it, and now I’m (finally) posting it on here.

I’ve never really slept with a teddy bear. I’ve had various ones over the years, and when I was younger I tried to sleep with it, but in the middle of the night, I would lose my hold on him, and he would end up on the floor, where I would find him the next morning. I think I’ve only had one bear, since I was about 3, and since then I’ve had like, stuffed animals, but no bears. I still actually have the same bear that I got when I was young. I wish I had thought to take a picture of him, too, but I forgot. He’s a little ratty now, and his eyes no longer glow like they used to (he hasn’t had batteries for years) but he’s still soft and cuddly. Now I sort of sleep with Inspector (whom you all should remember) but he doesn’t really sleep with me so much as he just sleeps on our giant bed where no one touches him so he can’t fall off.

This picture makes me want to get a little bear to keep near me too. And I’d like to equip him with a sword.

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-12-05T15:28:00.001-07:00

Again, we have a Monday here where I could probably write a separate blog entry for every one of these, but I just don’t want to. It’d probably take a while, plus how would I have a Miscellaneous Monday?! So here it is.

I decorated one of my Christmas trees yesterday. It sounds like I have a lot of trees, but so far, just 2. This will be my first Christmas being married, so it’s pretty interesting trying to meld together our own traditions/habits. Husband wants a live tree, which I’ve never had, but have always wanted to give a try to. Chelle had a (fake) tree that she was getting rid of, she got a new one, so she bestowed upon me her old one. This is the one I decorated yesterday. We were going to get the live tree on Saturday, but circumstances were out of my hands, so we didn’t get it. Hopefully we’ll get that tree tonight, and get it decorated. I chose to do blue and gold for the tree, and here’s what it looks like:

And there it is. I’m proud of it, it turned out pretty good. You can’t really see the star on the top, but it’s a gold star. It’s probably a little small for the tree there, but I don’t care, its what I have.

I had a dentist appointment on Friday, just a cleaning/checkup. Good news, no cavities! But my dentist told me to start using an electric toothbrush, because that would be better for my mouth. (Apparently I have what look to be signs of early gingivitis on one of my back teeth, so this will help. I feel close enough to everyone on here to share that bit of news) So on Saturday, I bought one. I finally opened it last night and it took me about 45 minutes to open it. I first cut open the packaging, then I tried to pry it open, no dice. I got some scissors, and with the way this was packaged, I had to cut, pry something out. Cut some more, pry pry pry. It took me a long time, plus I bled a little from a cut I acquired trying to get that dang thing opened. But finally, finally, I got it opened and used it. It’s a total different experience, using an electric one. Makes me feel all vibratey and weird.

I’ve been watching a lot of Hallmark Christmas movies lately. I love this season because of them. I try not to repeat too many movies, because of how many there are, but there are so many favorites that I do every year. So far, my favorites this year are A Christmas Wish (It was filmed at a favorite diner in Mapleton!), A Princess for Christmas, Trading Christmas, and A Holiday Engagement. I’m currently watching Desperately Seeking Santa. I really like these movies. You already know what’s going to happen, but still, it fills you with such joy when it happens. There are some that I love to watch every year – Recipe for a Perfect Christmas, Snow, Snow 2, Eve’s Christmas, for a few examples. And of course, I love to watch The Polar Express, and all the Santa Clause movies. I love watching the same Christmas movies over and over again.

Foto Friday

2011-12-02T13:19:00.001-07:00

Last night, I made Oreo’s for my ward Christmas party (that’s tonight!). I’m in charge of bringing 2 dozen cookies to this fiesta. So I get all my ingredients, and I’m making the cookies, and it’s taking a while, of course, because Oreo’s take a while. When I’m all done with the baking part, before I get to the frosting part, I surveyed all the cookies I had around the kitchen, it was like, 6 sheets full. I was like, dude, I have tons of cookies here, delicious! Then as I kept going, I remembered, all the cookies are in pairs, so that will reduce my cookies significantly. I got all done with the frosting (I used red and green frosting, for Christmas spirit) and put aside the number of cookies for the party. That left me with 4 Oreos. Only 4 cookies left, so I couldn’t even share with anyone like I was hoping. I realize now I should have made like, a double recipe to have deliciousness for all, but sadly, it didn’t occur to me at the time. But don’t fret, friends. Next week, I’ll probably be making treats again, this time to share with everyone. I already have a recipe too, I found one yesterday that I’d like to try. So just hold on for a few more days, and you’ll have something delish too!

* I was going to take the cookies out of the Tupperware for the picture, but that seemed like a lot of work. Sorry for the laziness.

Tweet Tweet Tweet

2011-11-30T11:10:00.001-07:00

Ok, I don’t want to say that I’m lazy, but today’s post is going to be a lazy one on my part. About a year or so ago, I joined Twitter. Originally, I joined for work purposes, but after a few months, I got into tweeting. I never say anything important on Twitter. It’s just a place I like to say random (sometimes funny, mostly weird) things to the 6 friends that I have that follow me on there. I like to think I provide a bright spot in an otherwise dreary day. So what I’ve done here is taken a few tweets that I’ve sent out in the last year, just as a “Hope you laugh at my dumbness” kind of post. Hope you enjoy!

I just had a sip of diet coke, so I should be awake until, oh…tomorrow morning or so.

Pretending to be my mother right now on the phone to get some information. The trickiest part is nailing the German accent.

Rebecca Black has a new single today! Great day, or greatest day?

I got all the way to work before I realized my Chapstick was empty. This will be a tough day.

Car in front of me has “Jimmerd” for a license plate. Is this an expression for getting cut off? Because if so, I totally just got Jimmerd.

If my last name was Crunch, I would absolutely join the army and work my ranking up to Captain.

You know what would be a cool job? Snail herding. So easy – plus, if your little guys make you mad, salt is the cheapest punishment ever.

I didn’t even get a cool bandaid for my shot at the doctors. :(

I ran of Superman bandaids this morning. Now what am I supposed to cover this cut with? Regular bandaids? Please.

I just walked by a guy that is considerable bigger than I, and all I wanted to do was jump onto his back like a spider monkey.

When you think about it, Taylor Swift sure likes to break up relationships.

If I see a generic repair van on the side of the road, should I assume it’s an FBI stakeout and drop by with cookies?

Sometimes, after I pull out the third Starburst, I just want to throw away the whole bag.

I snuck some Cheerios into the theater as a snack. I win, movie theater.

How mad would a biker get if I leaned out my car and pinched his bum? He should accept it as a compliment that I think his calves look nice.

A guy at work has a handkerchief hanging out his back pocket. I want to ask him if he’s a Jet or a Shark.

Full disclosure: I never eat the recommended serving size of cereal, I always eat a little more.

So there you are. Twitter is a fun way to communicate with people all over the world (Except most of my people are within about 50 miles of me) and it’s a great way to waste time. I love that you can follow celebrities on it, and get to know a little bit more about them, because some of them are genuinely funny outside of their movies (and some are incredibly boring, but that’s neither here nor there).

And now, this brings us to the last day of the month. I hope everyone enjoyed my blog-a-day, and if not, suck it, you didn’t have to read all of these. But I will be keeping up the blogging, just not every day, of course. Just when something happens that I can legitimately write about, so you don’t get stuck reading about my cookie cutters in the dishwasher. In a related item, I counted all of my cookie cutters yesterday.

I’m missing 3.

This is How I Load

2011-11-29T10:23:00.001-07:00

Many many years ago, I bought a cookie cutter set. The 100-piece cookie cutter tub by Wilton. When I moved out of my parents house, there are many things that I just didn’t grab right away, mostly because A: I just plain forgot it existed, and B: I didn’t have the room to take it right then. For example, Thanksgiving was a big day for remembering things I left there. Apparently, (and I hadn’t remembered this at all) I had forgotten some heated hair curlers in the bathroom. I swear I didn’t forget anything in the bathroom, but my brother reminded me that they were there, so I took them. Then, as we were all eating dinner, I looked up at the cupboard, and lo and behold, there are my forgotten cookie cutters!

*Note – my cookie cutters are only 100, but this is the only picture I could find of it*

I celebrated with a shout of hooray! and we got them down from the top. As I was looking at them, I noticed the lid was off (it’s hard to get the lid back on, with that many cookie cutters in there, you see) and the cookie cutters were all dusty, there were tiny dead fly carcasses, the works. So last night when I was looking at them, I googled to make sure they were dishwasher safe (they were! I was just being cautious) and then I loaded up the washer. There were already a few dishes in there, but I thought I could make all 100 of my cutters fit in there also. And I did! Barely. And with many that were overlapping just a little. But since they were only dusty, I thought it was ok if they were. This is what my top shelf of the dishwasher looked like:

Colorful, right? So now they’re all done, everything is washed. I haven’t attempted to take them out yet, fit them back into the tub, but at least they’re clean. I also cleaned the tub, so it’s all shiny and new as well, so I’m excited to see if I can get them all to fit again. And luckily, all the cutters stayed mostly where I left them, there were only a few that fell out and are on the bottom of the washer. But none broke, and none melted. Win!

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-11-28T12:08:00.001-07:00

The power button on my iPhone recently broke. On Friday night, it wouldn’t work at all. I couldn’t turn off the phone, I couldn’t lock the phone (I just had to wait for it to go to sleep by itself) so any time I needed to stop using it, I just had to hold it, I couldn’t put it anywhere, lest it accidentally do something. So on Saturday morning, I made an appointment at the Apple Store in SLC, and drove up (by my lonesome, since Husband couldn’t be torn away from his things apparently), and since the Apple Store was running on time (so he said) I only had to wait like 10 minutes! (That’s running on time?!) But it’s ok, I had iPhone, so I got to play games, etc while I waited. Finally a “Genius” came up to me, and I explained the problem. He took the phone from me and said he’d be right back. So then I had to wait…alone…with no phone to play with. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to wait with no phone, nothing to do to pass the time. It was very unnerving. As I was waiting, I thought, I should tweet this out, that I have nothing to do when someone takes my phone, but then I realized, I had no phone to tweet from. It was very strange. Finally he returned (it could have been 2 minutes, it could have been 15, it felt so long!) and told me that he’d unstuck it a little, so it worked now. And then he explained my options to me. Since my phone was no longer under warranty, I could either A: Pay $150 for a replacement phone, B: Pay $200 for an upgraded phone (instead of getting a iPhone 4, I could have an iPhone 4S. Fancy!) or C: I could just deal with the slightly broken phone. Since right now, I have neither $150 nor $200 to get a new phone, I’m with option C. So I’m dealing with it. It’s a little tricky to turn the phone off and on, but at least it sorta works, and I’m trying to see the positive in that. But if it breaks down more in the next little while, I’ll just have to deal with the money loss and buy a new phone. I’m hoping that won’t happen.

I recently saw Savior of the World at the Conference center on Friday. It was amazing – I really enjoyed it. We walked around the Conference center for a little while, waiting for our whole party to arrive. I love that place, it’s just so pretty. Seeing the play was pretty awesome. It started with a prayer – which at first threw me off. But then I remembered where I was, and went with it. It was pretty long for a play, which is fine, but I was a little tired from not having gotten that much sleep the night before, what with Black Friday and all. I encourage everyone to go see this play, if you can. Afterwards, everyone wanted to walk around Temple Square and look at the lights, but Husband and I were pretty drained from the days activities, so we gracefully bowed out. As we filled up the tank with gas, we got some caffeinated drinks, which may have been a mistake. I was sleepy-ish the whole time we drove home, but then after I got ready for bed and laid down, I was WIDE awake for another 2 hours. Curse!

I have some exciting news. Last night, Sunday night, at approx 8:45 PM, I caught up on my TiVo. Since Husband went out of town a few weeks ago, we’ve been at least one week behind on every single thing, but luckily, with this week being Thanksgiving, there’s been nothing on TV, so nothing has been recording. So with a bunch of laying around this weekend too, we got a lot of stuff watched, so we finally caught up. When I deleted the last thing yesterday, I did a little fanfare, and felt really good about myself. Of course, last night recorded some shows as well, which means I’ll never be caught up, but I’m psyched that it’s not full like it was.

And this is a tidbit – people need to go see The Muppet Movie. It was glorious. It’s hysterical. I saw it Saturday night, and I was laughing so hard, I wondered if the people around me thought I was a crazy person. I hope they didn’t, but it was so funny, I couldn’t help it.

Snapshot Sunday

2011-11-27T09:53:00.001-07:00

I forgot to have a Foto Friday this week (well, not really forget, but I didn’t have a picture to accompany the entry) so I decided to have a sort of one today. As everyone knows, I run races. I try to get at least one race in a month, no matter the length. I have a board that I pin my race bibs to when I’m finished with them. I have it hung in the room where my treadmill is, sort of as inspiration. With the recent edition of the Turkey Trot this past week, my board is now full:

And there it is. 23 races. 6 10Ks. 3 Half-Marathons. 4 4-milers. 10 5Ks. There are a few more races that I’ve run, but for one reason or another, I’ve lost the bib, and I have no clue how that would have happened. I am proud of all of my numbers, and I like that so far, I’ve not repeated a number. So here’s to a previous 4 years of running, and many many years of more to come.

Winter…is chilly. This message brought to you by Captain Obvious

2011-11-26T20:44:00.001-07:00

I have blogged (several times) on the heater in my car. Since 2009 (I didn’t even realize I had been this long!) It has spontaneously not worked. Sometimes, it works like a dream, and heat is flowing and everyone is warm, and sometimes, there is not heat flowing, and its quite chilly. (This also happens in summer, btw. It gets really warm in a car when there’s no air blowing cold on you) About 2 weeks ago, it stopped working completely. It went off one day, and never returned. After a week or so, after I mentioned it here, Chelle came to me with her can-do spirit and said we could look at it ourselves. I was impressed by her attitude and knowledge, and I was like, heck yes we can do this! So we googled some things, figured out where fuses were, etc., and went to my car to look at things. Since I was a little confused, we got someone at work to come and help me look at things.

*photography credit to Chelle here*

So we thought we had found the thing we were looking for, and thought that we should go to AutoZone to get a little help from a person there, to see if he could test the relay we found, to make sure it was still working, because we had figured it out that it was the fan that was broken. So we get there, and the guy comes out to help us. I super sneakily took a picture of him looking at my car with my phone.

So after looking in a few places, he took out my glove box and looked in there. He touched some fan in there, and boom! The fan started blowing! (It also almost took off the guys hand, I felt bad) We celebrated a little, he explained what the problem was, and how to fix it if it stops again (this involves getting someone to fix something in there, its something with the motor I believe) and we went on our merry way. For the rest of the car trip back, we kept turning on the air at full speed, to make sure it worked. It worked on the way home too, so I was so psyched!

And then…on Black Friday, I got into my car during the shopping-palooza and…it stopped working! What the heck, heater, you were supposed to be fixed! So now, I’m playing it by ear. It didn’t work Friday, but then today, it worked. So I don’t know what the deal with it is. It’s possible I just need to give up the hope that it’ll be fixed magically, and get it actually fixed. But for a brief, shining moment…I had hope.

We be shoppin'

2011-11-25T22:49:00.003-07:00

Happy Black Friday! (sing it with me...Black Friday...Black Friday...everyone loves Black Friday...) I am writing to you now, done with the shopping of the day, and pretty tired. Black Friday started a little earlier this year - stores opened at midnight. So at 10:30, we (PJ & I) bundled up, and got to Target at about 10:45, and waited.

The line was huge already. We were pretty far out, even though we were over an hour early. Finally, a pretty chilly hour, and some exciting happenings (my button fell off my coat! It's now lost forever), the doors opened at midnight and we finally made it into the store 15/20 minutes later. We quickly grabbed the things we were looking for (DVD's, mostly) and back out. We went to Best Buy...the line was too long to stand in the cold. We went to Kohls...the line there was so long! We then went to Old Navy...no pants in my size/preference there. :( We went back to Best Buy and success! We got in after minimal waiting, got our items, and out again. We went to Shopko, they didn't have any of the things we had seen advertised. It was a little after 3 in the morning when we all shuffled home, tired and sleepy. (Those might seem like they mean the same thing, but in this case, they do not.)

On the way home, as I was turning off of Center street onto Orem Boulevard, I accidentally (in my sleepy state) turned too early and was on the wrong side of the road! Of course, on that road there's that median thing, so I couldn't just swerve back into my own lane, I had to drive for a bit on the wrong side, panicking the whole time that a car might come and hit us. Luckily, there were no cars - phew!

I went to sleep at about 3:30, then woke up at a little after 9:00. Then Husband and I went shopping at about 10. We went to a few stores, bought an elliptical at Sports Authority (we got such the deal on it! Thank you sales) and then I tried to go to Gap to get some jeans for like, 70% off, but sadly, I was about 15 minutes too late, so I didn't get that deal. :( Apparently this was not my week to get new jeans!

Finally, at about 2:00ish, we came home. After a long day, and a lot of shopping, I was pretty tired. But all in all, a successful weekend. I won't lie, this year wasn't as good as others. I think it's because the shopping all started at midnight, so instead of having overzealous people getting up at like, 3 in the morning to go shopping, everyone was like, dude, I can stay up past midnight, so there were a lot of teens this year, whereas previous years, there are rarely any teens. But I survived, and am here to tell the tale. And some advice - always make sure to drive on the RIGHT side of the road.

Gobble Gobble!

2011-11-24T16:11:00.002-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope all of your holidays were amazing. This morning I had the standard Turkey Trot, the one I’ve done for the last 4 years. Thankfully, this year was way warmer than last year. Last year, the temp the morning of the race was 2 degrees. This year, about 30-40, so that was a world of difference, and oh so better. It was a good run, felt really good when finished. I went to my parents’ for dinner at 2:00 which was of course delish. One of their dogs (he is technically mine, I suppose, but I think he likes living there way more) has his own chair that he sits on. I was dying laughing when I saw him, I had to take a picture.

Isn’t that adorable?! Sarge is such a card.

I hope you spent the day thankful for any blessings you have. I did – I’m thankful for so much. I’m thankful for my family, my friends, the warm weather today, and my the computer I have to blog this from. ;) Of course, I’m thankful for many many things, but to list them all on here would just be crazy.

Happy Turkey Day!

Chocolate Treasures

2011-11-23T08:48:00.001-07:00

I got hit by the baking bug again. I don’t know what it is (actually, I think it’s the time of year. For some reason, in the fall/winter, I just want to bake all the time. Must be the cold weather) but here I go again. This time, I made Chocolate Treasures. I got the recipe in the mail. Ever since we moved into our house, the company that did our mortgage has sent us a little magnet recipe every month. The first month was some barley beef stew, then something else, and finally this month was a delicious dessert. So I set my heart on making it.

And those are them. For the recipe:

Chocolate Treasures

Brownie batter for 9x13 pan

(your favorite recipe or from a box)

48 Rolo Candies

2 Cup Chocolate or Vanilla Frosting

(your preference)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix brownie mix according to directions on the box. Spray mini muffin tins well, or line with small paper liners. Spoon the brownie mix into the muffin tins until 2/3 full. Bake for 13-14 minutes. Remove from oven and insert Rolo into the center of the brownie, the top (or tapered part) pointed downward. Let them cool. Remove cooled mini-cakes, and squeeze frosting on top, covering the candy using a piped star. Sprinkle with decorations.

So there it is. It’s really quite easy. I didn’t really look at the recipe before I got started, so I didn’t know that I needed to use mini-cupcakes. So I only had about 24 cupcake cups, which made for interesting times. Half of these got the cupcake liners, and the rest, I just sprayed the heck out of the muffin tin with cooking spray, and hoped for the best. Luckily, it worked out pretty well. They are pretty delicious, too, of course.

A reaction is priceless

2011-11-22T10:04:00.001-07:00

I have a friend at work, Dirk. (I originally was going to change his name, to protect the innocent, but meh. I don’t really care) He is funny. He’s quick with a joke, he’s witty and pretty clever. But he does A LOT of dumb jokes. He does puns, he does “dad jokes” (you know, the ones that when you hear them, you can’t believe you’re laughing at it for how dumb it is). So many times when he tells a joke, I am mad at myself for the short burst of laughter that escaped from my lips, but then, it’s already happened, so I keep laughing. We’ve recently started doing some ‘bits’ around the office, mostly so we can laugh like idiots, but Chelle also gets the benefit of laughing. Also, she thinks we’re really dumb, which is just funny too.

Here’s a picture of one of the things we do:

I’ll explain. Dirk will come over to our desks, and holy cow his hand has disappeared! He always has the reason why, he was over-zealous with a knife or scissors or something, or he just slammed it into a door and it came off. I will have the appropriate reaction, I will jump up in shock, will be looking around for it, etc, with a lot of over-reacting, and then after a second, he’ll pull out the hand, laughing that he just played a trick on me, it was up in his sleeve the whole time! Of course, I laugh hysterically, and say that I had no idea, I really thought that the hand was gone! Then we all chuckle while Chelle just laughs and call us dumb.

When I explain it like this, I realize just how dumb it sounds, and it is, but man do we have a good time with it. There are a lot that we do, foot lost (just up in the pants), an arm falling off, (which is just up in the shirt) and so many more. It’s all in good times, and a lot of the time we get a laugh, at the expense of a little of our dignity.

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-11-21T11:23:00.001-07:00

The heater in my car hasn’t worked for about a week now. I don’t know what’s going on with it. And I know, I could bring it in and have it looked at, but whatever needs fixing will probably cost money – and I really can’t afford to pay a lot of money right now for a heater. I should – because my car is so chilly in the morning/evening when I’m driving to and from work, but usually bundling up seems to do the trick. I’ve Googled my problem (since Google is like a magician) and so far, the answers are that either the fan is broken, there could be a fuse that blew, or my whole system is broken. (I’m banking on the first two – since they seem the cheapest) I’m really hoping that its just a broken fuse, that would be crazy cheap to fix. So maybe soon, within the next few weeks, I’ll get my car taken in. Hopefully before all the snow happens…

On my way to work today, I saw a stranger walking to work in the rain. I felt sad for him. Even though it wasn’t raining hard, it must be awful to have to walk places in the rain. Whenever I see anyone walking in the rain, I want to pull over and give them a ride. But then I realize that no matter how sad I am for them to be walking, I’d probably be sadder for myself if they killed me. And I realize that at 8 in the morning, my odds of getting killed by a person I pick up are pretty low, but still. I’d rather not have the chance. Plus, it’s not like they’re hitchhiking or anything, they’re just walking on their merry way, having accepted that they’ll walk in the rain. And good for them. I like the rain, don’t get me wrong, I just think I’d hate walking in it to work, getting there all wet and soggy and cold.

I have a real problem with cravings. It’s not like, I randomly crave things, necessarily, it’s that as soon as I see someone eating something, or I hear someone talking about something, or see a commercial, I’m very susceptible to wanting it. I’m an advertisers dream – their commercials work really well on me. So thins morning, for example, I’m watching something where someone is eating a sub sandwich, and I thought, boy would that be a great idea for lunch. A little later, I see someone eating some Nacho Cheese Doritos, and I think, that would be so good right now. It happens all the time, and for the most random things. I want cupcakes usually all the time, but I’m pretty good at only getting them once in a while, so that I don’t eat cupcakes all day every day. But usually, all day long I wonder, should today be a day I get a cupcake? Should I eat something else instead, to take the place of it? But usually, I abstain, and I eat a tiny candy bar instead. So far, thank goodness, those are the only 2 things I’m craving, a sub sandwich and Doritos. And luckily for me, they go pretty well together. And maybe I can make those things for dinner, and have my craving subsided. Provided, of course, that I don’t see something else I want more…

MLS Cup

2011-11-20T22:04:00.003-07:00

Well ladies and gentlemen, today was the MLS Cup game. An entire season boiled down to this one game - and RSL wasn't even a part of it. (Frowny face) LA Galaxy vs Houston Dynamo. I'm not really fond of either of these teams, but boy do I hate LA. Their team is my least favorite - mostly because I hate most of their players. Because I was barely interested in this result, I didn't even record the game, I just followed it via Twitter.

As I understand it from Tweets, it was a pretty boring game, until LA scored in the second half, in the 72nd minute. And then the scored stayed that way until the end, with LA beating Houston 1-0. I wish Houston had won. That's actually what I was hoping for. I wanted LA to lose. I can't even explain why I dislike LA so, I just do. When the game got over, I was really glad I didn't watch it. To watch 2 teams that I don't care about battle a scoreless tie? Boooring.

And there it is. The Cup is taken again, by a team I don't like. I'm hoping next year we can make it to the final game, that would be great. I want another championship for RSL. Go team!

Scattered Saturday

2011-11-19T23:05:00.004-07:00

So here we are, 19 days into the month, and here it is. My first time that I legitimately don't know what to blog about. I've thought about it all day. I've thought of a few subjects, even. But so far, they're all so short that they don't have more than a few sentences to say about them. It's almost like a Miscellaneous Monday, but I think I'll make this entry Scattered Saturday.

Today was Mama's birthday. So we took her to dinner to Golden Corral, her favorite place. The thing I like about those places is you can literally have the weirdest meals and no one judges you. I had mashed potatoes, mac&cheese, onion rings, a salad, and some fried chicken. Then an ice cream cone for dessert.

Husband and I were watching a scary show in our room, and just as we were at a particularly scary part, our bedroom door slammed shut and I almost peed my pants with scaredness. Turns out, the heater had just come on, and the introduction of air in there made the door shut. I was scared for about 20 minutes still.

I have been scrapbooking of late. It's nowhere near the quality of what good people do (mostly I compare myself to Chelle, as she is quite good) but I think it's going pretty well. I've been debating on showing them to people, but I don't want to be judged for how not good they might be. I'm so critical of my work on these sorts of things. I've gotten like 10 pages done in the last few days, and that excites me.

I couldn't believe it actually snowed last night. I thought it would be like the last snowstorm, and just sort of not happen, but boy howdy did this happen. Walking out of the theater into a really big snowstorm like that was pretty crazy. It made things so pretty this morning though.

I think that's pretty much all I've been thinking today. I hope you enjoyed these random (and dumb) thoughts. :)

Foto Friday

2011-11-18T14:58:00.001-07:00

I didn’t really have a photo for today’s Foto Friday. I haven’t really taken any pictures lately, so I had to go to an outside source. PETA has released this photo, trying to get people to eat healthier this Thanksgiving. No offense to any vegetarians, but I love meat. I love steak and chicken and pork and everything meaty delicious. So when I saw this photo, I just laughed. Really hard.

Uh…PETA. I want to tell you something. Putting a dog head on the body of a turkey creates a small monster that people want to kill and get rid of, not keep as a pet. It doesn’t make me think of a turkey as a dog, something I want forever, it makes me want to hurry up and eat that creature. So now, in honor of PETA. I will be eating my turkey with more pleasure than ever.

Vieve’s Videos

2011-11-17T10:30:00.001-07:00

A year or so ago, I posted a video about Marcel the Shell with Shoes on. I hope you saw the video, because I love it. He’s so cute. The other day, they posted a sequel – Marcel the Shell with Shoes on 2. (Fancy title, eh?) So now, in all it’s glory -

I think my favorite line from this is - “Guess why I smile a lot? Because it’s worth it”. I just like it. I hope you like this video too.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

2011-11-16T10:52:00.002-07:00

Well, I caved and did some bakin’ yesterday. This recipe is ridiculously easy, and I really like the end result. These bars (while hard to cut into then) are good when they’re still warm and gooey.

In case anyone wants to make them, the recipe:

1 (18.25oz) Box Plain Yellow Cake Mix

½ cup butter, melted

1 cup creamy peanut butter

2 eggs

1 (12 oz) package milk chocolate chips

1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk

2 TB butter

2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine cake mix, melted butter, peanut butter

and eggs into large bowl using mixer or spoon.

Press into a 9x13 pan, reserving 1 ½ cup of the mixture.

In small pot, melt chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk and butter until smooth. Remove from heat and add vanilla.

Spread chocolate mixture evenly over the pressed mixture in the pan. Crumble the reserved mixture on top evenly. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Cool completely before cutting into bars.

I cannot stress enough that you need to cool the bars completely. If you don’t, it’s dang near impossible to get through them, as it’s just gooey chocolate coming out. I had to just eat a bit with a spoon, it wouldn’t work the other way. But these are super good, warm or cooled. Enjoy!

Itchy. So very itchy.

2011-11-15T14:17:00.001-07:00

I have prided myself on not having any food allergies. I feel bad for people (Chelle) who are allergic to my favorite foods. To not be able to eat delicious things…oh man. That would depress me. I know that for the most part, they usually don’t know what they’re missing, but still. I like my wide open choices that I have for eating. But sadly, this, like all good things, has come to an end. Lets recap.

Last night, Husband and I made Chinese food for dinner. When we were at Target on Saturday, we tried a sample of this frozen Chinese stuff that was pretty good, so we decided to get it. The kind we sampled (orange chicken) was sold out, so we got a different kind (sweet&sour chicken). Husband made dinner while I was reading, and it was smelling pretty dang good, I was looking forward to eating it. As we were eating, there was something in the sauce that was making my gums sting. Right now, I have a little tear or something in my upper gum, behind my teeth, and sometimes, foods hurt it. But I just kept eating, despite the stinging. After dinner, I was sitting next to Husband on the couch, and he looked over and asked if I was ok. I’m like, yeah, totally fine, and he said that my skin around my neck was all red. My chest was itching a little, so I said that, and then, right before our (well, his, I can’t see myself like that) eyes, my skin itching and rash started to spread, and all of a sudden, my whole upper body itched. It was on my chest, neck, chin, arms, back, and it was itchy. There were hives breaking out, and I was trying not to scratch. After a few minutes more, my neck area had swollen up. This was panic time, since this is the first time this has ever happened to me.

We quickly went to the local Target, and got some allergy medicine. I took it as soon as we got home, and after a while, the itching subsided. After a while longer, the redness went away. I’m still not sure what was in the food that did this to me. I’ve eaten frozen Chinese foodstuffs before, but never this brand, so perhaps that was it. Alls I know is, I’ll not be eating this again. I should probably find out what exactly it was that I had the reaction to, but I’m not sure how’d I go about it. Read the packaging, and the ingredient list? Get everything on there, and try them, one by one until I find out what it is? Luckily for me, it wasn’t a super bad reaction (It could have been worse!) so I got through it with flying colors, and lived to tell the tale.

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-11-14T10:51:00.001-07:00

We have come to the time of the year when it’s chilly in the mornings when I come to work. It’s not freezing yet, thank goodness, but I do prefer to have the heater on in my car when I drive now. I blogged a little about this a year or so ago, and I’m still having this problem in my car. Sometimes, for no reason, the heater in my car doesn’t work. It’s not like it’s cold air coming through or anything, its that the heater doesn’t blow. So thank goodness, it doesn’t make me colder, it just doesn’t really make me any warmer, either. When I’m driving fast enough, warm air will blow through a little (I don’t understand that at all) so that’s nice.This morning was another morning in which my heater didn’t work. If I wore shoes, it probably wouldn’t be as big of a deal, but so far, I’m clinging to my flip flops.

Speaking of, since I still wear my flip flops, I still get pedicures. This is my one indulgence for myself. On Saturday, Husband decided to take a nap, and I decided to go get my nails done. There’s something about just sitting there, having someone give me a foot massage and then paint my toes pretty that just makes me feel awesome. I’ve decided, I know it’s almost winter now, because instead of my usual flower that I get painted on the big toe, I now have a snowflake. This is how I embrace the winter, painting a snowflake on my toes. It works out for me. (I was going to include a photo of it, but I couldn’t get a good picture that didn’t make my toes look super ugly. I don’t have very attractive toes)

This past Friday, PJ and I went to Tepanyaki for dinner. I don’t know if you guys have been there (which I’m sure you have) but I love it. A guy cooking my food right in front of me, making jokes and doing awesome things? Yes please! I love when the do the onion stack train. I love the choo-choo and the smoke coming out of it. I love all the pranks that they pull, and just how fun that place is. When we went, we were at a table with a family – a dad with his 4 teens, but they weren’t all that fun. PJ & I are like, egging the guy on, cheering, clapping, which is just how you have to be at these places. When it got near the end, the guy did the normal thing, and had us catch the shrimp in our mouths. I hate shrimp, but when he threw it at me, I caught it! I never catch it! Since I hate hate the shrimp as soon as I had it in my mouth, I quickly drank a bunch of water, and ate something good. Since we were so good at cheering the guy on, he started a little fire in a bowl in front of the two of us, and gave us marshmallows on chopsticks, so we could roast it! It was delicious and awesome.

Yesterday in church, there was a child a row in front, and slightly to the side of me. She had held on to her sacrament water cup afterwards (I don’t know why, but I love when kids do that. Maybe it’s because when I was younger, I was never allowed to hang onto my cup – no matter how hard I tried). For the rest of sacrament, I kept watching her, because she would take her bottle of milk, pour it (pretty slowly, because of the top of the milk) into the little cup, then take a “shot” of it. Then she would do it again. I was dying watching her, I was trying so hard not to laugh. She just kept going, though, until the end. That’s determination, my friends.

I have a problem lately. I am finding way too many recipes of things that I want to bake. So far, I’ve been abstaining from doing all the baking, but today, I am feeling the itch again. Except I just barely made stuff less than a week ago, and I don’t want people to be like, “Dude, is Vieve baking again?” Because I know I do it a lot, but its because there are so many things that I want to make! If only I would stop finding these dang recipes! As of today, I’m trying to decide if I should make these bars…it’s very tempting…I think I might…but I’m trying to decided…Eh, screw it. I’ll probably make them at some point this week.

Slow Cookin’

2011-11-13T18:58:00.001-07:00

Well, I finally did it. I broke down and bought a Crock Pot. I’ve wanted one for as long as I can remember, after reading recipes that called for it, trying others’ meals that they’ve done in one, and just hearing about the awesomeness. Finally, yesterday, I caved in, and bought one.

*Note: this is not the actual Crock Pot, just an image I got from the web*

I then bought all the ingredients to make a slow-cooked roast (I got the recipe off the internet, of course) and was excited to make it. So Sunday morning, we chopped up the veggies, concocted a juice of beef broth and spices, and turned it on. Throughout all the day, the house has been smelling delicious. I was really psyched to eat it. Finally, church let me out at 5, we came home, and ate pretty much right away.

It was delicious! It was all soft and tender, and the veggies were delish. There was an attempt to make gravy from juices, etc., but holy cow that did not go well. When I tried it, I couldn’t believe how bad it tasted, so I quickly threw it out. But the meal was good besides that. And now, I’m so excited to try other things. I’ve always wanted to try to make a slow-cooker chili, and so many other things. And now, I finally get the chance, huzzah!

My New Friend

2011-11-12T20:23:00.001-07:00

I have a new friend. I was introduced to him today. At first, he seems a little off, but then the more you look at him, the more you realize, he’s probably a nice guy. This is him:

This is Inspector General. You can’t really tell from his picture, but he’s a giraffe. His face suggests he has a kind heart. Husband bought this for me at the airport, as a souvenir of his recent trip. He’s really soft, and very cuddly, so I think we’ll get along great. I know his name is quite formal, but I like how formal and fancy his name is compared to him.

Anyway, that’s my new friend. Thinking of things to blog about every single day gets tough sometimes.

Foto Friday

2011-11-11T11:05:00.001-07:00

Last night, I had an interesting meal for dinner. As I was in the middle of eating it, I realized, of course I should take a picture, and show it to others! Sadly, I had already finished one part of it, but I can still describe. As I’ve said before, Husband has left me to my own devices this week. Usually, when we’re home together, we make a dinner, it has many food groups represented, and it takes time to make. For instance, the Monday night before he left, we had chicken, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Delish. Tuesday night, my first alone, I had a Totinos pizza (well, half of one) and a bag of steamed mixed vegetables, but I only ate about half the bag. Then Wednesday, I had a salad and a bologna sandwich. So last night, I thought I’d eat my leftovers, so for dinner, I ate leftover mashed potatoes, leftover vegetables, and the leftover 2 slices of the mini pizza. It was delicious, but a very odd combination. But I felt pretty healthy, having eaten vegetables for the 3 days while he was gone. Usually when I’m alone, all I eat is mac&cheese, so at least I’m growing up a little. Ha, that’s not true. Anyway, here’s my plate (minus the pizza)

Delish!

Chai Spice Cupcakes

2011-11-10T11:50:00.001-07:00

I found this delightful recipe on Twitter a week or so ago, and decided to make it. Husband is out of town right now, which leaves me with ample time to do what I’d like, one of them being baking. I could do it anytime, but I like to bake when I’m home by myself, and I can sing at the top of my lungs, and dance around the kitchen with no one to judge me. So I set my speakers on high, and got to baking.

This recipe called for tea – so I had to do something I’ve never done before, steep tea bags. For those that don’t know (and I didn’t, I had to Google it) steeping is when you put the tea bags into hot water (I used milk, for baking purposes of course) and then let them sit for a little, maybe even dipping the bag up and down. Doing that made my hands smell delicious, especially after I had to squeeze out the bags to retain all the milk.

Then you just make the cake like normal, and fill up the cups. I used a cream cheese frosting to round it all out, and it tasted pretty good.

After I had done all the baking, frosting, etc, I realized, I didn’t have any cinnamon! (Even though I SWEAR I had some, I couldn’t find it) So I set the cupcakes aside, and went to the store to get some cinnamon. The one I found had really big holes for the cinnamon to come out of, which made the ‘cakes look a little weird, but I still did those. And this, my friends, is the final product:

So there they are, Chai Spice Cupcakes. They are pretty good, but they’re a really dense cake, they almost taste like a muffin. The recipe made 24 cupcakes, plus about 10 mini cupcakes. I’m looking to give these cupcakes away – so I don’t have to eat them all myself. Because if I had the chance – I probably would.

Stamping & Chatting

2011-11-09T11:06:00.001-07:00

Every month, Chelle holds a Stamp & Chat. For those who have not heard of this, it’s a class in which she teaches those of us who come to make cards. It’s 3 cards that we make, and of course, there is a theme to the cards each month. I’ve blogged about Stamp & Chat before, long ago, but here I am, again, so deal with it. Chelle is freaking amazing at all things stamping, creative, card-making, etc, whereas I am like a 3rd grader. I have to helped along at every turn, and walked through everything, and she just zips along, so quickly at everything that I do slowly. But I improve, slowly, and I work at it still.

Last night was Stamp & Chat. It’s usually held on Wednesdays, but this time, we had it on a Tuesday due to conflicting schedules. It was a lot of fun, and the treats afterwards were delicious.

And these are the cards from last night. The theme this month is “Thanks”, which I love to make thank you cards, as I believe they will come in handy later. I don’t give out too many of my cards. I’ve been attending S&C for a while now, and I’ve only given out about a handful of these cards. Its because I work so hard on them, I don’t know that someone else will appreciate the effort I’ve done here. So I have my cards, and I hoard them like crazy. I keep thinking I’ll start to give them out, but so far, I still just like keeping them. I’m just selfish, I suppose…

Things I’d Like

2011-11-08T15:15:00.001-07:00

Well, we’re 8 days into the month, and so far, I’m already out of things to blog about. Doing this every day sucks all of the ideas out of me, but today, I have one that I just thought of. It took me a while, but I think I have a very interesting topic. It’s called: Animals I’d Like to Have.

The first one is a Munchkin Kitten -

Come on, how cute is this?! I don’t even like cats, but this is cute, so I would like one. But once it grows up, it might be a regular cat, and I wouldn’t like it anymore, but come on. This is a cute cat. I’m name him Mr. Mittens. (unless it was a girl, then Miss Mittens. Obviously she’s not married)

The second one is a turtle. But a specific turtle -

Its a small one! The size of a grape – which is too cute. Now, I fully realize that with an animal this small, the chances of me stepping on it or losing it are high, but if I kept him in a tiny cage, he’d be ok. I’d call him Tuttle.

And finally, we come to these two -

I would like to have penguins, but if I had them, I’d like to put them in tiny sweaters, like these. I know that they don’t necessarily need sweaters, being from Antarctica and such, but nothing makes a cute animal cuter than having clothing on. And on a slightly serious note, the reason these particular penguins have the sweaters on is because the little guys were involved in an oil spill. And the sweaters were knitted by an Australian Relief Society. I thought that was pretty cool – so I especially wanted these. I’d probably get 2 penguins, and I’d name them Zippy and Brigitte. What a fancy couple they’d make.

Now, I realize that all of these animals are just small and cute, but I like my animals small and cuties. When an animal is too big, I’m just like…meh. I get the appeal of the big animal, and sometimes, I like to cuddle with a big dog sometimes, but usually, I like my animals small and able to be held in my arms. So if anyone is looking for ideas of Christmas gifts for me…

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-11-07T11:22:00.001-07:00

Today, I woke up before the alarm went off. I couldn’t get back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. You know, doing the things that you usually do…fake that you didn’t wake up, in case your body can be tricked, I just lay there with eyes closed, not moving, hoping to fall back asleep. I didn’t want to look at the clock, because I didn’t want to know how much time I had before the alarm clock went off. If its too close to the time, usually I just say, screw going back to sleep, I guess I’ll get up. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally gave up and looked at the clock. Yup…4:30. I had at least an hour of sleeping before I had to wake up! So I tried…and tried…and I think I may have fallen asleep for a while. But dang it that I woke up in the first place.

I have finished with a little more of my house painting! Slowly but surely, I will finish it. This weekend, we finished painting the laundry room, and I finished painting the trim in the kitchen. Now all we have left is a stairwell, and a little section in the upstairs. Its so close…so close… I can feel it…

I got my towels back! I came home from grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon, and there they were, just sitting on the couch in the living room. Now, does this mean that they came into my house while I wasn’t there? Yes it does, but I’m not focusing on that, instead, I’m just glad that I got back my few bathroom towels, hand towels, and a few kitchen towels. (Seriously, how did they “not realize” that they had taken this many towels? And what were they doing with my kitchen towels anyway?)

Husband has a cold/flu right now that manifested itself yesterday. I had a tiny cold like, 2 weeks ago, so he claims that I must have given to him, but he’s wrong. He couldn’t really stand up (which means I braved church alone, what up? *high five*) and he was so out of it all day. And he kept cracking “jokes” that he thought were funny, so he’d say one, laugh at it until he coughed, then lay still like he died. And I was trying to be nice, and do things for him, get him things, but I was also avoiding him like crazy to make sure I didn’t catch anything. That’s a tricky line – helpful avoidance. I hope it wasn’t obvious what I was doing.

And that's the end.

2011-11-06T21:27:00.004-07:00

Well, tonight, RSL had the Western Conference final. They played against the LA Galaxy to see who would be going onto the MLS Cup. The game was at LA, sadly, and I just couldn't afford to go, but that would have been amazing. But I set the TiVo for the game, and settled in to watch.

The teams were pretty evenly matched. LA scored first, and we scored within 5 minutes. We stayed 1-1 until the end of the first half. When the game resumed, everyone was playing really well, and I actually didn't know who would win. After about 20 minutes, LA scored-dang it! Then a few minutes later, they score again- the score was now 3-1. RSL fought and fought and sadly, never came back. The game ended, LA 3. RSL 1.

It sucks that we lost, but at least we played well in the last game. I would have loved to go onto the final again, but this year it just wasn't meant to be. And now, the season is over. There are no more games - which is actually ok, because now its getting too cold to sit at games. But hopefully, we'll regroup in the off-season, and come back better than ever. And next year, we'll win the Cup!

If Only I Could Invent My Own…

2011-11-05T22:41:00.001-06:00

I love ice cream. Really, I love all sugary treats, (Well, for the most part. There are a few that I just don’t like) but ice cream…mmm. The great thing about ice cream is you can eat it even if you’re full, because it just kinda fills in the little cracks, because it’s all soft and melty. So even if you ate a big dinner, eating a little ice cream makes everything ok still.

I really like the Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, for many reasons, one of them being that they come in those little individual containers. I know, the serving size of one of those things says its like, 4, but really, its not for 4 people. Its for one, maybe two. There are a lot of delicious flavors, but I really like a few, them being:

This is a really good kind. It’s a vanilla ice cream, with fudge-covered potato chip clusters. Those are crazy – you’re eating a little chocolate ball, and once you bite into it, its Lay’s potato chips. It messes with your mind, but boy is it delicious. I recommend. Another good kind:

This one is awesome – it’s vanilla ice cream with a caramel swirl, and fudge-covered waffle cone pieces. (Wow, I just realized how similar these two ice creams are. Hmm.) When this one first came out (a few years ago) it was really hard to find, I could only find it at like, one Albertsons in Orem, and only once a month or so. But now you can find it anywhere, which is great, because it is delicious.

Tonight, I tried a new flavor of the B&J ice cream. It is:

This is so good. I love me some pumpkin cheesecake, because of the Olive Garden one, and this one doesn’t disappoint. I think the only thing that could make it better is if I added whipped cream to some bites, but maybe that would be sweet overkill. I recommend all of these flavors, but there are so many more that are also good. If you haven’t ever had a flavor of theirs, I say, stop waiting, and go get some post haste, and I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed, no matter what kind you get.

Foto Friday

2011-11-04T11:53:00.001-06:00

And welcome back, kids, for a Foto Friday: Marathon Edition!

Last weekend, PJ and I ran a half marathon (which I did mention on here, just not in detail). It was a really cold race – they brought us up to Sundance, (the race finished at the Riverwoods) where we sat around and waited for 3 hours prior to the race. Finally, we got going, and it was chilly and all downhill for the first 9 miles, then we evened out, and I started to get warm. It was a fun race, because costumes are fun, but I just don’t like the way it was planned, so I don’t know that I would do it again. They took pictures of us during the race, and emailed them to us finally a few days ago. I did a (slightly illegal) thing and just saved them to my computer instead of buying them. (Shhhh)

This is PJ and I during the race. I don’t know what mile this is – it must be at least after the 9th or so, because my gloves are off. My hands were getting really hot. Look how great we look as the Power Rangers.

There’s a part near the end where for some reason, the race course narrows so that only 2 people can run through. I was stuck behind this lady, because near the beginning of the narrowing, she grabbed the hand of her son (who was not running, but there to cheer her on) and they were in front of me, and I couldn’t get by, it was driving me crazy. So my face is mad, because I was stuck, but this is finally where I got to get around her and run fast again.

I always look really mad at the end of the race, in every picture. But at this point, I was really close to the finish line, and I was happy to be over, my body was screaming at me to just stop running at this point.

So there it is, the Halloween Half-Marathon. It was a fun race, once it got started, but all the waiting around stuff just drove me crazy. But at least I finished, and had no guilt eating candy the rest of the day. Not that I do anyway…

Skirt Thursday…and Other Musings

2011-11-03T14:03:00.001-06:00

I wear a skirt every Thursday. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, I just do. It mixes up what I wear, so that I don’t wear the same thing all the time, plus its just fun. In the summer, a skirt provides a nice breeze when its warm, but in the winter, its really fun to jazz up a skirt with some colorful tights. I enjoy Skirt Thursday, I’ll keep the tradition alive.

Last night, my tenants moved out of my house. I know, they’ve only lived with us for a short time, since October 8th, but they decided to leave us before the before-agreed upon time, to move in with others, to spend time with them. Its nice to have our house back to ourselves (not that they took up that much room, mind you) and not worry about affecting anyone else around. This morning, when I went downstairs to see what conditions things were left in, I noticed that they had taken our towels. I’m not entirely sure why they did this…maybe they wanted to be nice and launder them before they gave them back? I’m hoping this is the case. I’m really not looking forward to making the call that asks to return my linens.

RSL won last night. Well, technically, Seattle beat RSL 2-0, but with the aggregate goal situation, we technically won, 3-2. It was a brutal game, and very nerve-wracking toward the end, but when the final whistle blew, we (Husband, PJ and I) all jumped up off the couch and screamed. It was awesome. I’m not sure when the next game is – there’s another playoff game tonight (between LA & NY) and the winner of that determines where/when we play next. Good luck to NY – I’d like them to win this one.

I don’t really like vanilla yogurt. I keep trying it once in a while, to see if maybe my feelings change (its happened before, on other things) but so far, they remain the same against the yogurt. I tried some the other morning, and there’s just a weird taste in the ‘Very Vanilla’ Yoplait yogurt.

I tried some of Chelle’s ‘French Vanilla’ Yoplait, and it did taste better, so maybe in the future, I’ll switch to that one, and see how it goes. There’s something about the fruit flavors lately that I’m just sick of eating. But eating yogurt is healthy for you, and I’m trying to make healthier choices. Since I won’t give up eating cupcakes/cookies (despite my best efforts) I have to make different choices of healthiness. Because, I’m sorry, but giving up the sweets – its not really fun.

It’s Only Halftime

2011-11-02T16:14:00.001-06:00

Last Saturday, RSL played Seattle in the first leg of the 2011 MLS Playoffs. It was a crisp evening (and by that, I mean, I was pretty dang cold) and the air was crackling with excitement. They’ve made the playoffs for the last 3 years, so you’d think at this point that we’d be sort of used to it, but not yet. The 2009 playoffs, which won RSL the championship, happened because of a series of fluke accidental games, but last year was all our talent. After a lot of bad luck this year (so many people getting injured, including Javier Morales’ broken ankle, and a lot of call-ups to the national teams) we ended up doing pretty well, and got into the playoffs in the third spot. But there’s still some work to be done.

Now back to last Saturday. The game was at 8, hence the chilliness. We got off to a good start, and scored before halftime, so thank goodness for that. The team seems to do better when they lead going into a half. After an exciting second half (in which 2 of our defenders got injured, and had to be substituted out) we ended the game with us winning 3-0. It was awesome – the screaming we all did was so loud.

But right now, its just halftime. We play at Seattle tonight, to finish the first round of playoffs. This round is based on aggregate goals – meaning, the end result is decided by who had the most goals when you add the 2 games together. So getting a 3-goal lead last week was the best thing we could do. If we win tonight, awesome! If we tie, that’s good. If we lose 2-0, or 3-1, that’s ok, too, because we’ll still have the most amount of points. I’m going to root for a victory, but I’ll settle for a tie.

Go RSL!

Halloweeeeeeen!

2011-11-01T10:51:00.001-06:00

Ok, everyone, here it is. The month of November. And as everyone knows, as it happens every year, it is now National Blogging Month. I will again take on the task of trying to blog every day. Now to begin this year’s attempt, here is my recap of Halloween.

This year was my first in a new place, where I got to be the one who answers the door and pass out the candy. Of course, I had to get ready for it. So when I got home from work last night, I carved myself a pumpkin.

I already know that I’m not very good at carving pumpkins, since I’ve only done it once before, but here is my attempt. He’s just a happy guy, ready for the Halloween festivities to start.

I was in a great costume this year, and by great, I mean, I sort of dressed up. For a half marathon that PJ and I ran on Saturday, we dressed up as Power Rangers, because A: Power Rangers are cool, and B: they were really easy to run in still. So I basically repeated the outfit I ran in, just with minor changes.

The evening was fun, we basically just sat about, handing out candy, and Husband kept trying to scare the kids that came to the door, but I don’t think he was ever really successful. I was just glad when the night was over and we had helped our last trick-or-treater. Happy Halloween (either 1 day late, or 364 days early)!

Food Tuesday

2011-10-25T15:48:00.001-06:00

Today, I don’t really have much to talk about in terms of story, but I have a couple of pictures to share (and preserve for future generations) so I’ve decided to make it a picture/food Tuesday.

This first one is a picture of the cupcakes I made last night. We recently got Boo’d in my neighborhood, and this is what I made to give to others. I like them – plus I think they are delicious.

There’s no real recipe to share here, as they’re just plain white cake cupcakes, with black, orange, and white sprinkles baked into them (like Funfetti!) and then decorated with plain vanilla frosting, dyed orange. And on top, sprinkled with more white, black and orange sprinkles with some bats and pumpkin sprinkles tossed in for good measure. So easy. I should have included a picture of the cupcake wrappers – they were Halloween-y, with pumpkins and bats on there too.

This second one is what I did today at work. We (Chelle and I) were taking a tiny break for a little snackage. We pulled out some Mini Triscuits (so good – and totally tiny and fun) and some EZCheese (you know, the kind that sprays out of the bottle!) and had some deliciousness. After a few minutes, I decided to spell my name onto the crackers.

It’s harder to do than you think, because these crackers are dang small. I should have included something next to them, so you could see how small they are, scale wise. They were as good to eat as it was fun to make them.

Anyway, enjoy today’s pointless blog, and I encourage you to seek out the Mini Triscuits.

There are Better Ways to Spend the Game...

2011-10-24T11:57:00.002-06:00

I used to never get headaches. Up until a few months ago, when I got a headache, it was super rare, and they only lasted for a few minutes, before they’d either go away by themselves, or I’d take some pills and they’d go away after a bit, no problem. But for the past few months, I usually get a headache on Monday, in the afternoon. I assume it’s because I don’t really look at a computer all weekend, then I come back on Monday, and look at one all day, so my head needs to get used to it. (Which is weird, because this never happened before) So now, every Monday, I just take a little extra precaution to see if I can prevent it. Make sure my eyes don’t get dry, drink lots of water, just in case, that sort of thing.

This past Saturday, I had a good 7-mile run. It was awesome – and my last long run before my half marathon this Saturday. So I came home, drank a little water, and got ready for the day. Throughout the day, I didn’t really pay attention to drinking anything else. During the week, at work, I have my water bottle right next to me, so I drink from it continuously because I can see it. On the weekends, when I’m pretty busy, I just never realize that I’m not drinking. Such was it this day. So onto the game I go, and when we’re leaving Joanna’s, where we ate dinner, I was getting a little bit of a dehydration headache, and that’s when I realized I hadn’t been drinking to compensate for all the running. We get to the stadium, I get myself some water, and settled in for some cheering.

There was a lot of screaming going on, of course, like every game. About halfway through the first half, my head started to hurt more with every scream/cheer that I did. By about the 40th minute, my little headache had grown into a full-blown migraine – complete with a little nausea, and an aversion to the sounds of the stadium. But this was the last game of the season! I wasn’t going to give up! So right at halftime, RSL scored, and we all went crazy. Husband picked me up, and hoisted me above everyone (like he usually does) but this time, the headache, combined with the movement and the screaming of 20,000 people, this was a goal celebration that I wished I hadn’t done.

The rest of the game was pretty boring, for me. I no longer screamed, nor cheered, I just clapped when anything happened. When things got too noisy, either Husband or PJ would cover my ears with their hands so that I could clap, and they could cheer. It was a sad arrangement, but I stayed the whole game. Afterwards, as soon as I got to the car, I took a bunch of Tylenols and ibuprofens – a doctor recommended dosage, don’t worry – and drank almost another whole bottle of water. At the usual post-game ice cream (from Baskin Robbins) I also got a Mtn Dew – to see if caffeine helped. By the time we got home, the migraine had calmed down a little to just be a headache. My lesson here is that I really need to drink more during the weekends, especially if I had a long run that morning. But at least I got to see my team play their last regular season game – and good news, playoffs start this upcoming Saturday!

This picture is of the Portland fans – who were sitting across from us. At some point of the game, they all set off a billion smoke bombs, and a lot of flares, so all we could see of their section was smoke and fire. It looked a little like they had just set themselves on fire. Why would they do this? I’m not really sure.

Foto Friday: Favorite Sign Edition

2011-10-21T15:02:00.001-06:00

Ok, I don’t really have any photos to share right now, I haven’t taken any, but I was breezing through my photos the other day, and came across these signs. They are both taken on different trips, and they both made me laugh.

This is the library in Boise. The reason I love this sign is because the library is finished by an exclamation point. How excited is Boise to have this library? This excited!

We took this in Boston. I know what the sign is saying, I get that its warning you of children in the area, but I still feel like there’s a better sign of saying than just announcing “Children”. Maybe I’m the weirdo here, but this sign is odd.

I hope these made you laugh as much as they did me.

Melted Witch Puddles

2011-10-20T09:17:00.001-06:00

I felt like doing some baking yesterday, so I pulled out a recipe I have gotten recently (from a relief society event, can you believe?) and made Melted Witch Puddles. They are pretty easy, but being my first time making them, I definitely had some hurdles to jump over, and I have some things I would do differently next time. Sometimes I hate as I’m making something for the first time, and as soon as I get done with a step, I can think of a better way of doing it, and curse myself for not thinking of it sooner. Anyway, the puddles:

And in case you wanted a recipe:

Melted Witch Puddles

1 tsp water

4 drops yellow food coloring

1 ½ cups flaked coconut

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

6 Tabs shortening, divided

36 Oreos

36 bugles

4 cups vanilla or white chips

36 pretzel sticks

In a large resealable bag, combine water and food coloring, add coconut. Seal bag and shake to tint coconut, set aside. In a microwave, melt chocolate chips and 2 Tb shortening, stir until smooth. Dip bugles into chocolate, set aside to cool. For witches hats, place about 1/3 cup chocolate mixture in a resealable plastic bag, cut a small hole in the corner of the bag. Pip a small amount of chocolate onto a cookie. Dip a Bugle in some of the remaining chocolate, allow the excess to drip off. Position over Oreo, forming a witch hat. Set on waxed paper to dry. Repeat with remaining Bugles and cookies. For puddles, melt vanilla chips and remaining shortening, stir until smooth. Spoon mixture into shape of a puddle on waxed paper-lined baking sheets. Immediately place a witches hat on the puddle. For broomstick, dip the end of a pretzel into white chocolate, then drip that into the coconut. Place in the chocolate next to the hat. Chill for 15 minutes or until set. Store in an airtight container.

These are pretty delicious, and totally perfect for Halloween!

Next time, I’ll just get it myself

2011-10-19T10:35:00.001-06:00

Last night, neither Husband nor I felt like cooking. The tenants that we have with us right now weren’t there, so we decided to be lazy, and just order in. So as I was driving home from work, Husband was placing an online order to Pizza Hut, for some delivery. (I love that people deliver food to you – I think it’s such a great invention!) The online thing said that it would take 30 minutes, so we sat down and watched a little TV while we waited. After about a half an hour, I kept wondering where our food was. After 5 more minutes, I was getting hungrier and hungrier, and wondering if the food guy got lost, and then as we were chatting about it, Husband realized he had put the wrong address down for our house address – he put the address of his work – in Lindon.

So we hurry and call the Pizza Hut we thought we had ordered it from, but after a few minutes on the phone, they told us they didn’t have our order, we didn’t order it through them. So we call another Pizza Hut, with the same result – we didn’t order it through them. Well by now I’m like, something’s hinky here. I checked my bank account balance, and sure enough, they had taken the money out already, so I knew we had ordered it from somewhere. So we remembered that they send out an email after you order a pizza. We check the email, and ta-da! There’s the number of the right pizza hut! I quickly call them, give them my name and number and… they can’t find my order. At this point, I’m like, what the junk, I know someone has to have my order, because they took my money. After many minutes, Husband figures out why they can’t find the order – he had put the wrong area code for my telephone number, so they couldn’t locate it.

Finally, finally, we got it all sorted out, and about 5 minutes later, our pizza was finally delivered. Luckily, it was still hot, and very delicious. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this, it’s that maybe its better to not be so lazy, and get up and get our own food. Or…any time there needs to be any info filled out online…maybe I should just do it.

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-10-17T11:51:00.001-06:00

Colorado Edition

I went to Colorado over the weekend. Well, not really over the weekend, but I was there, in Denver, for about 36 hours. We (PJ and I) flew out of Provo – which was pretty cool. Here are a few highlights.

I watch a Food Network show called “Challenge” in which 4 bakers across the nation come together to compete on who makes the best cake, and they’re judged by a few people. One of the judges, Keegan Gerhard, is a chef who owns a little cafe/bakery in Denver, called D Bar Desserts. I have long wished to go there, and finally, this trip, I did. I even saw Keegan – he was standing right in front of me! I was so excited. I wanted to take a picture, or speak to him or something, but he was speaking on the phone, and I didn’t want to interrupt. Incidentally, the treats I tried at his bakery were crazy delicious.

We went to a favorite breakfast spot there, called Hot Cakes. I love this place so much. I get the chocolate chip pancakes, and they are sooo good. I took a picture of them, but I don’t know if you can appreciate the size of the pancakes from it.

The plate there is a regular dinner plate size. These things are HUGE, and you can only get 2 – not one. So I ate half of both of those pancakes, and called it good, and felt like I had eaten too much.

Now, the reason for the trip was to see RSL play Colorado. Sadly, we tied, but because we had beat them earlier in the season, the Rocky Mountain Cup was ours. We have held onto the Cup for 5 years now – we are champions. (Well, in that regard, anyway) The game was pretty fun, but because all of the traveling fans around us are drinkers of alcohol, a lot of them were drunk. And spilling on us. And using cheers that had shady language in it. But, we still had fun, we just kind of ignored them, and screamed and cheered our faces off.

That was the trip – short, sweet, but loads and loads of fun.

Foto Friday

2011-10-14T11:27:00.000-06:00

I’d like to think that I’m an awesome runner. That when people see me running down the street, they look at my form, my speed, my everything, and just go, “Dang. Now that’s a runner”.

Unfortunately, this photo is what I believe is an accurate description of my life.

At least I’m probably having fun.

Vieve’s Video’s

2011-10-10T15:54:00.001-06:00

Ok, this was way too cute not to share. I may have blogged already once today, but this is going up as well. This tugged at my heartstrings, and it made me want to go to Disneyland as well. Enjoy.

(I hope this link works, it was tricky.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-10-10T15:45:00.001-06:00

Well, kids, Happy Columbus day! Today is a glorious day…ok, I won’t lie. Columbus Day really means nothing to me. Its not a day you get off of school, it’s not a day you get off of work, it’s not really a day I observe, so to me, sadly, it doesn’t really mean anything. But last year I learned that Canadian Thanksgiving is today. And, having married a Canadian, this means I get two Thanksgivings a year!

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I’m not really sure why Canadians are weirdos and hold it a month early, but I’m happy to celebrate it as many ways as I can. I don’t treat Canadian Thanksgiving the same way I celebrate American Thanksgiving. On our holiday, I run the Turkey Trot, I sit around all day watching parades, and stuff myself to the gills at dinner, and then spend the rest of the day in a food coma on the couch, watching Thanksgiving-ey movies. (thank you, Lifetime and Hallmark channels, for airing those types of movies, that I can Tivo). But today, because it’s not a holiday Americans celebrate, I get up…go to work…wait until the day is over, and then eat a regular sized dinner. It’s still turkey, and all that jazz, but the feeling isn’t quite the same.

Maybe someday this great nation of ours will start to celebrate the holidays of other countries. Maybe we’ll have many days off a year, for things that we don’t really understand. But for now, I will celebrate the Canadian Thanksgiving the way everyone does – by mostly ignoring it. :)

Foto Friday

2011-10-07T20:36:00.006-06:00

This will be a wordy entry for a Foto Friday. Yesterday, my little sister got married. It came as a surprise to me, too, I had only learned about it the night before. Husband and I were asked to be the witnesses, of course we said yes, and we were told to be at the courthouse at noon. It was a lovely ceremony, performed by a judge.

The night before, when they were asking if we wanted to be the witnesses, they also asked if they could move in with us when they got married. See, the guy my sister is marrying, has also joined the Army and he's going to Basic Training on Nov. 28. So instead of wasting money on an apartment for only 6 weeks, they asked if they could just occupy a free room we have in the basement. After a long talk, we decided to let them move in. (It was either they live with us or

live with my parents, and whilst my parents are awesome, we decided to let them live here) The stipulation here, of course, is that when the husband leaves, my sister has to as well. No offense to her, I just don't want her living with us. This might seem mean, but its for the best.

Anyway, so they went on their honeymoon this weekend, and will be moving in on Sunday. The room that they'll be moving into currently belongs to Pony, who I've not mentioned on here before. Last year, for my birthday, my parents gave me a pony, a little stuffed one that is about 2 feet tall. I can ride on him if I crouch, it's a lot of fun. I've been giving the newlyweds a hard time about moving in there, telling them that the room is Pony's, and they'll have to share. So today, Husband and I decided it would be funny if Pony made signs and put them around the room. So I took some time, and made the signs and posted them up. It took a lot of time, and my fingers were black, but it was worth it!

This is how Pony looks in there all the time:

This is the first sign in there:

And this was another good one:

I put up six signs in total, but to put them all up seemed a little overkill. None of the signs have the right grammar, which I just thought would be a funny touch.

Now, is this crazy of me ? Maybe, but I think it's hilarious, and I can't wait to see the expressions of the others when they see it, and really, that's what makes it all priceless.

Vieve's Videos

2011-10-05T17:50:00.004-06:00

I was on Twitter today, and Andy Williams (#77 on my beloved RSL) tweeted out the video. Now, I've never played Angry Birds, but I hear it's crazy addicting. And I'm sure this is an accurate representation of the game, with soccer players. Anyway, I don't really need to explain much of this beyond, a soccer team has recreated a live version of Angry Birds. These guys are AMAZING - I wish I had the accuracy required to do all of this stuff. But enjoy, anyway, and hopefully you'll be as impressed as I was!

Angry Birds!

PS Sorry I couldn't put the video directly on here, and only could link, I'm not blogging from a usual place. :)

Foto Friday… Pt 2

2011-09-30T09:42:00.003-06:00

Aaaaaand here’s the second Foto Friday! There aren’t really stories to these pictures.

This photo was posted by my sisters fiancé on Facebook. I want this dog so badly. Husband says that if we get a dog, it’d have to be an outside dog. But if I got this dog, I could keep it with me all the time, and cuddle him in my arms always. Plus, I’d try to put him in different things. Taco shell…pita pocket…you get the idea.

I have found the devil, and it’s in this cat. This is a rare Janus cat, a cat born with 2 faces. According to this article I read on them, they usually die pretty quickly, because they can’t get their food to their stomachs probably, and they die of starvation, or the milk goes to their lungs, and they die of lung-related diseases. But this one has miraculously survived for 12 years. I believe it is the devil, and should be avoided at all costs.

Foto Friday… Pt 1

2011-09-30T09:42:00.001-06:00

Ok, here’s the thing. I meant to do one of these entries the other day, and make it its one, but there’s a picture attached, so I thought I could sneak it in under a Foto Friday. But there’s some other pictures that I wanted to share with everyone, so I’m doing a two-parter. That’s right – the first ever two part Foto Friday! *cheers*

This one has a story with it though. Tuesday night, I drove up to SLC to meet Husband and his company for dinner at Buca di Beppo. So I get there, and of course, it being SLC, I have to find a parking lot to park in, and find one that’s hopefully cheap enough, because I only have $5 in cash (all in ones, of course) to pay for it, and it has to be long enough time that I don’t have to be rushing to my car. So I find one, and I think it’s good enough. I park, and I’m standing in line, the third back. And waiting…waiting…because the people in front of me are taking forever. So as I’m waiting, a guy comes up to me, and asks if I’m paying to park. Uh…I’m standing in the line…yes I am. So he tells me, he only got there 20 minutes ago, and his parking pass is still good, so if I want it, to save me a bit of money, I can take it. Well, this sounds awesome, so I follow him (nervously!) to his car. He takes out his pass, and hands it to me. After I thank him, he drives away, and I get a look at the pass. It’s good for 10 more hours – I’m saved! I saved money, I don’t have to hurry back, what a glorious thing this stranger did for me.

So that’s my story of what a Good Samaritan did for me. I keep trying to pay it forward, but so far, no opportunities to do so have popped up, but I’m keeping my eyes open. Hopefully soon, I can help someone out like this guy did for me!

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-09-26T17:25:00.001-06:00

It’s been a little bit of time since I’ve done one of these! Let’s jump in, shall we?

This last week has been a traumatizing hair week for me. I cut my hair last Monday (a week ago today!). And when I say cut, I do mean cut, I didn’t just trim off an inch. As I was doing my hair on Sunday, I noticed that the ends of my hair were just gross. So when I went in for the trim, I decided, lets cut off more than normal. So I cut off 4 1/2 – 5 inches of hair. It may not seem like a lot, but for me, it was. No my hair barely grazes my collarbones. Its such a change for me. My ponytail is so small now, and the buns I do are just tiny. Its nice to have the healthy hair though, I love running my fingers through it.

The other hair event was, I colored my hair. I originally was doing my normal hair color, brown on the bottom, blonde on the top, but there was an issue with the blonde, it made my hair look gray! I was flipping out, so of course we changed it. This all happened late Saturday night, which was an adventure into itself. So now, my hair is medium-brown on the top, and light-brown on the bottom. They look the same, though, as if there’s no difference. So now, I’m a brunette. There is no blonde. For now, I’m enjoying the change, but I know that in a month or so, I’ll be sick of it, and change it back to blonde. Or red.

RSL is on a bit of an up-and-down right now. We had a 5-game winning streak of awesomeness, we even beat NY at NY (which we’d never done!) last Wednesday 3-1. Needless to say, we were pretty pumped to go into Saturday’s game at DC, since DC isn’t very good. Oh boy did they surprise us. They scored 4 points in the first 30 minutes. We got one in during the second half, so the game ended 4-1. What a disappointment. It broke our streak. But we can always get a new streak. We have a game in two days on Wednesday – hopefully we can win that, and make our way back up to the top.

I wish I could blame it on age, but…

2011-09-19T14:23:00.001-06:00

We all know, I don’t really have that good of a memory. I can barely remember childhood fun, and now, I have to write every single thing that I need to buy from the grocery store, or I’ll forget it. If I need to remember something for later, I either have to send myself a text message, or put it on a post-it note, and attach that to my cell phone, so that I know I’ll look at it later. Its possible that many people are like this, but from my point of view, my memory is not very good.

This Saturday, RSL played Sporting Kansas City (yes, that is their full name, isn’t it awesome?) on the same day as The Holy War. I had spent most of the morning shopping, groceries, etc, and then went up to Sandy to go to Tai Pan. A group of us shopped up there for a while, and then went to eat at Simply Thai. The game started at 7:00, per usual, and we got to the parking lot at 6:30. When we got to the lot, I stepped out of the car, and as soon as I stood up, I realized, I didn’t bring the tickets with me. I left the tickets on my nightstand. I wanted to kick myself so hard!

We immediately got back in the car and went home, with me cursing myself the whole time. We thought about going to the box office, to see if we could just get the tickets there, but when we got near there, we saw the line there was insane, and since I wasn’t sure if they could do that anyway, we just drove home. I was calling the box office of RSL to see if there was anything they could do, but no one ever answered. After some serious speeding, we got to the house a little before 7:00, and grabbed the tickets, and immediately hit the road.

We got back up to Sandy at like, 7:20. Husband, being the nice guy that he is, dropped me off in front of the stadium, so that I could run in and watch the game while he parked the car. I got to my seat 25 minutes into the game, and thankfully had not missed much. RSL ended up winning the game, 1-0, and we’re now in 3rd place in the west. Huzzah! We took this picture while we were waiting for the concert after the game, OneRepublic to get started.

The concert was pretty good, but the sound quality was horrible, so we left early, maybe 15, 20 minutes into it, but that was plenty. I guess my whole story here could have been avoided had I just done one small thing – checked for the tickets. 5 years of games, 20 games a year…you’d think I’d have learned this. And believe you me, now, I have.

The End is in Sight

2011-09-16T11:00:00.001-06:00

All right, readers, here it is. Day 5 of dedicated-to-Husband-week. Its been a good week of helpful information for you all, but today is when it stops. But I’m not saying that I’ll stop talking about him. As I understand it, I’ll be married to him for quite a while from here on out, so he’ll likely be in most of my stories. And I promise that in future blogs, I’ll mention him enough so that people can deduce that I am married, and its possible that from here on out, I might even call him by name, Adam. We’ll see, we’ll see.

Its not that I was ever, like, ashamed of Husband. It’s that this blog is mostly about pretty superficial things. I heard it described this way once on my beloved Cougar Town: I want to talk about him all the time, but nobody wants to hear me only talk about that. Plus, once I start talking about him, I just might not stop. And then I’m a crazy person, and nobody wants to be a crazy person.

But I digress. The point of the week was to show that I do talk about Husband, and that he does exist. And I’ll be talking about him for years to come.

And the answer is…

2011-09-15T17:08:00.001-06:00

All right, here we are. Day 4 of Husband week. I couldn’t think of a topic, until I was helped by Chelle. It’s not that I have nothing to talk about anymore, its just…that I don’t know what to talk about, so my mind goes blank, and I don’t have any idea of any memories of us, so I don’t know what to say. But today, I’ve chosen to relive our engagement.

I won’t lie, I thought (now) Husband would have proposed to me over the holidays. Because it’s a cliché, I thought it would happen to me too. So here came Christmas Eve, and…nothing. And then, Christmas Day! And…nothing. So I was like, all right, this is never happening now. So I had put it at the back of my mind, because I didn’t think it would happen any time soon, which was fine. I was pretty sure it was coming eventually, so I didn’t stress too much about it.

So one day, the 28th of December, we were at his house, hanging out, not really doing anything. We were trying to decide what to do that evening, but so far, couldn’t think of any ideas. Finally, he asks if bowling sounds fun, and I’m like, yeah, lets go bowling. We get in the car, and off we go. He wasn’t going in the direction of the nearest bowling alley (Fat Cats!) so I just assumed he was heading to the one up on state street in Orem, so I didn’t question it. Then we pulled into the park where we had most of our first date (I saw most, because we had dinner, got a cookie, walked around for a while, and then found ourselves at this park for a few hours, so, most) and then that’s when I was like, oh my dude, this is when it’s going to happen.

We get out of the car, and of course, the car is covered in snow, and its freezing even with my winter coat on. We walked around for a minute, then found (we think, through the snow) the spot where we had our first kiss. We chatted for a few minutes, and there was a dang dog barking the entire time that we kept laughing about. He kept taking a breath, like he was going to start talking, then he would still be quiet. After what seemed like forever (because I was so antsy!) he got down on one knee, and proposed. And of course, I cry, like a girl, and say yes.

So there it is, my proposal. And so far, everything has turned out pretty well for the two of us. And I leave for you, a photo, one of my favorites from our engagement photos.

Helloooo? Helloooo? Is anyone there?

2011-09-14T14:48:00.001-06:00

All right ya’ll. Operation “Blog about Husband Every Day” is still in effect. Sadly, as with other times when I blog often, I am just sort of blanking out on what to write about. But I thought about it, and here it is. There is something Husband does that drives me up the wall bananas. Usually, I mostly keep this to myself, because its probably pretty petty, but today, I’m getting it off my chest:

Husband is horrible at returning my messages.

I know, I know. It’s not that big of a deal, especially when I’ll most likely see him at home in a few hours, but oh my, does it drive me crazy. During the beginning of our courtship, we would text often. During work, we’d send each other cute, funny texts, because you know, we’re in that stage where we wanted to talk to each other all the time. The texting, since we were at work, was delayed, because you know, we’re working, we can’t be just texting all the day long, so it took a bit of time for either of us to write back to each other. But then we got farther into our relationship, and the texting cut back a little. Then we got married, and the texting pretty much stopped, which, again, is fine. I see him before I leave, I’ll see him again when I get home, we really won’t have anything else to say to each other that can’t wait. But now, when I text him during the day, it’s because I have a question for him that I need an answer for before the day is over. Ideally, it’s a question that I need an answer for something in the next hour. And, dun dun dun dun, I usually don’t get an answer. When asked later, I always get the same answer: “I just don’t look at my phone”.

I’m not sure if I believe this, but that’s all right. When a phone dings, don’t you instinctively look at it? Isn’t that what people usually do, look at something when it makes a noise? But that’s ok, people are busy, and things don’t always go the way you want. Now, I know the answer to this is, don’t work on anything during work that I need any consulting from Husband on, but sometimes, that’s the only time to do it, as so many places are only open 9-5. (which incidentally, drives me crazy as well)

But I will persevere. At this point in my life, I understand that Husband won’t actually text me back, so I’m not waiting for it anymore, and if it happens, I’ll just be pleasantly surprised. But now if there are any snap decisions to be made, I’ll make them myself, and no one gets to complain about the consequences.

Bucket Listing

2011-09-13T14:21:00.002-06:00

All right folks, we’re all in for a treat today. What is this treat, you ask? Easy – I’m doing more than one blog entry for the week! I know, I know, you’re about to pass out in your chair from the excitement of the multiple entries, but stay with me. We’ll get through this together. So, Husband, who has actually never read my blog, read it yesterday. He thought that it seemed like he had died, and while I can see where he’s coming from, I disagree, but that’s because it’s my blog, and I get to say what I want here. Anyway, I have decided to write an entry every day this week dedicated to Husband. Why? Because now nobody can ever say that I don’t mention him on here.

The other day, I was going through my bucket list of the 100 things I’d like to do before I die. I was telling them to Husband, so that he could know the things I want to do (and what he’s in for), and as I was reading them, I realized, Husband has already helped me accomplish some! I have now accomplished getting a passport, going on a cruise, and waxing my legs. Thank goodness the first two was way awesome, because the waxing of the legs, that one made me want to shoot someone. But at least on the cruise, I didn’t have to shave, so that was awesome. He’s also helped me cross off river rafting, and he’s slowly helping me collect shirts from every Hard Rock cafe. So far, on every business trip he’s taken, he’s brought me back a shirt from the HR, so I’m getting there!

He keeps trying to help me get other things crossed off, and so far I’ve resisted. Camping keeps getting thrown out there as an activity, but I’ve tried very hard, and have thus far successfully avoided it. I’m just a sissy there. Plus, he keeps getting me to eat exotic foods, but it always sounds so gross, so I just don’t! I keep thinking I’ll be brave and try stuff, and while I’m doing better (I eat sushi sometimes!) mostly I chicken out. But I’m working on it. Since I’ve created the list, I have finished 10 of them! 10! That’s only in 3 years, which seems like not many in the span of that much time, but this is a list I’ll be working on for the rest of my life, so I feel pretty good about my accomplishments thus far.

Memories…

2011-09-12T12:09:00.001-06:00

All right, recently, I have been getting a lot of flack for what I have or have not put into my blog. For my birthday, mom and pops got me a blog book – they put all of my blogs into book form, someone printed it off with pictures, etc, and now I am a “published author”. So, because my blog book has been at my house, people have been browsing through it, and commenting on it. And I have been given a lot of grief over not really mentioning Husband on here. So here it is, memories of Husband.

Even though my 4 readers know this, Husband’s name is Adam. Adam is a Canadian. Do I make fun of Canadians often now? You bet I do! We met in August of 2010, and had our first date the day after my birthday. We went on several dates, and he taught me an important lesson:

After several months of dating (but not many!) we got engaged on December 28th, 2010. He proposed to me in the park where we had the bulk of our first date. Being December, and a park, it was freezing, but we survived with all of our limbs. The next few months were a flurry of planning, as we got married on March 5th, 2011.

If you check my blog between the engagement and the wedding, you’ll notice that I only wrote about twice. I was busy, that’s all I’m saying!

After the wedding, we went on the honeymoon, as is custom. We took a cruise that went from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. We drove to Vegas the night after the wedding, stayed there for a night, and then drove to San Diego the next morning. The directions that iPhone gave us were retarded, so we barely made it to the ship on time, but we did, and that’s all that mattered. I did a lot of sleeping the first day and a half, being so tired from the previous months. But finally, we arrived in Cabo:

We just kind of explored the city for a while, and did some parasailing.

That was a lot of fun, the 6 or 7 guys that were with us were some of the funniest people I’ve met. We had a blast with “The Boys” as we had dubbed them. On the second day (we had 2 days in Cabo) we saw and got to hold a baby tiger. The tiger was sleeping in the cage right up until they handed him to us. They explained to me how to hold it, and I thought I had a pretty good grip on it. It kept yowling at me, and trying to scratch or bite, or whatever it could to stop me from touching it. Right after we took the picture, it lunged at and tried to bite Husband. Luckily, he missed, and the handlers grabbed him before he could try again.

So there it is. Our courtship and marriage. We lived in an apartment for the first six months, but 3 weeks ago, we moved into our very first house. As I’ve mentioned on here before, the signing/moving/painting/cleaning/everything has been crazy, and a lot of work, but we’re nearing the finish line on it, and I’m excited for when the painting will be done. Of course, there’s still work to do after that, but at last, the painting will be out of the way.

Of course, there is no real reason Husband was never included in the blog, its just that my blog is only about the weirdo things that I come up with, so there was never an intention to leave him out or anything. But now you know all about him, and the life we’ve led so far. There have been tons of adventures already, and here’s to many many years of many more.

Foto Friday

2011-09-09T09:34:00.001-06:00

Sadly, I don’t have any fun photos of anything going on with me right now, but as I was looking at things on my computer, I saw this oldish picture, and I think its glorious. It’s especially appropriate because, as I understand it, football season just started.

I don’t know why I find this so funny, its just a great name for football. I tried to call it handegg, but nobody would know what I was talking about, so now I use the normal name.

Happy Football Weekend, everyone!

Penny Can!

2011-09-08T15:39:00.001-06:00

I don’t know how many of you watch Cougar Town, but I love that show. Its completely different than what you expect – it may have started out a show about Jules (Courtney Cox) dating younger guys, but the show has ditched that premise since about the 3rd episode. It’s about a group of friends who are hilarious, and drink a serious amount of wine (seriously, I don’t know how they’re sober, and all still have their livers.) But, there’s a game they invented on this show that is so fun, and I play it often. Behold:

Those are the rules of Penny Can, and yes, they are not at all hard. There are some new rules they’ve added. If you get a rimshot, you get flicked in the ear. If your penny goes in and out, you have a mustache drawn on your face. So far, though, I’ve never done the ‘stache attack, because that’s just mean. We’ve not had a proper Penny Can yet, we mostly just play with cups, vases, bowls, etc. Until now.

For my birthday, PJ made me my very own Penny Can. She took pictures and show quotes to decorate my can, and it is glorious:

So there it is, my very own Penny Can. We’ve been playing this all the time since I’ve gotten it. We’ve played it with the can down on the first floor, and all of us up on the second floor, overlooking it. That way is difficult – the height sometimes makes it so that the penny just pops right back out. But it’s still fun.

I brought Penny Can to work today, and Chelle and I played for a bit. Of course, we were being quiet, so when a penny made it in, we softly said our “Penny Can!” so as not to disturb anyone, but still celebrate the victory. This is what the ground looks like after we play:

I’m sadly not very good at this game. I make only about 15% of the pennies I throw, but I still have a blast. If anyone out there has the time/inclination to play this game, I totally recommend it, its so much fun. And remember, no matter who makes it, everyone has to say “Penny Can!” because it just makes it better.

Scared Silly Saturday

2011-09-06T17:16:00.001-06:00

This past Friday night, it was pretty cool (temperature-wise) when I was going to sleep, so I turned off the AC, and opened like, every window in the house, including the 2 in my room. So, I go to sleep, with the gentle breeze wafting into the room.

I wake up the next morning at like, 6:00ish (on a Saturday! Come on!), to a noise. I wait for a minute, and another happens. In my sleep-addled brain, the noise to me sounded like someone was putting a ladder against the window, and then I swear, I SWEAR I heard someone climbing up onto the roof. I laid there, silently, not moving, not doing anything, just listening. I waited a minute, then stole a glance over to the window. The noises kept repeating, and I kept waiting for a murderer to come into the window. I waited…and waited…and no one came, and then I realized, the wind was blowing so hard that it was rustling my metal-like blinds, and that was making the noise. Relieved, I turned over and tried to fall asleep again. The noises kept happening, and even though I knew that it was the wind, and not a killer, finally I leapt out of bed and slammed shut all the windows.

And fell fast back asleep.

Ketchup

2011-09-01T16:02:00.001-06:00

All right, I know it’s been a while since I’ve been here. In my defense, I have been a little busy. What with the moving, the unpacking, the cleaning, the painting, the mounting of pictures, etc, I still haven’t had very much free time at all. But here’s me, hopping onto here, to explain where I’ve been.

Last week, it was my birthday. My desk was decorated awesomely by Chelle. She did a princess theme this year, as you can see. Last year, she did a theme for soccer, my favorite thing ever, but because the balloons were black and white, everyone assumed she was calling me over-the-hill, which of course, she wasn’t. So this year, pink was the theme!

Also, she got me a crown to wear that day, and I got to wave wands around. I wore the crown until the night, when I went up into the canyon for a dinner ‘round the fire. I didn’t want my crown to ruin, obvs. But it was a fabulous birthday, (thanks Chelle for the awesome work experience) and I loved turning…late twenties. :)

The rest of my time has basically been spent cleaning. Cleaning the new house, cleaning the apartment (which, we finally accomplished on Sunday, and then got to hand over the keys on Monday, so we’re all done with that, woohoo!) and just…general fixing up of stuff. We’ve been putting up blinds, changing light bulbs, etc. This weekend, we’ll be taking advantage of (read:ruining) the three day weekend by finishing all of the painting once and for all. All that we have left to paint: the 2 stairwells and the 2 bathrooms. I have confidence that those painting (I still will not, sorry everyone) will finish the job awesomely, and I will be…hanging out, doing something. Lets be honest, I’ll probably be cleaning. There are still a few boxes that I need to clean out, but for the most part, until I get some bookshelves, I can’t unpack anything else. Hopefully I’ll be able to get those soon, so I can finally feel like we’re moved in. Another thing that’ll help with that is if we actually got furniture into the front room. So far, we’ve been using that room as a dumping ground for things that we don’t know where to put yet. So it looks a little like we’re awkward hoarders.

So there it is. That’s what I’ve been doing. Nothing exciting, but I can feel that soon, in my future, we’ll be able to have a day where all I have to do is sit and do absolutely nothing. I look forward to this day. And when it happens, I’ll be singing from the rooftops.

Painting, painting, painting

2011-08-19T11:51:00.001-06:00

Last week, we (FINALLY) closed on our house. After taking a while on Thursday of last week to sign all the paperwork, on Friday, at 2:00 PM, everything went through, and Husband and I now own our first house. We immediately went into makeover mode. As everyone knows, we were going to paint, and I so didn’t want to. But hiring painters didn’t work out in my favor, because Husband didn’t want to. Ugh. So we painted a little over the weekend, (only a little, because the city had turned off our water, and its difficult to clean brushes with no water) and then on Monday, really tackled it. And by we, I mean Husband painted. I warned IN ADVANCE that I wouldn’t be painting, that I hated it more than anything, ever. So I spent the week cleaning the house (drawers, etc) while Husband, Sister and Sister’s Fiancé painted. We were doing ok, we ragtag bunch of painters, until we realized Wednesday that we needed the house painting done by Thursday night, so we could steam clean the carpets the next morning, and have them dry by the time we were going to move in on Saturday.

So we all took Thursday off of work, and went into super-painting mode. By this point, all of my drawers and cabinets were clean, so I had to jump onto the paint train. Since I still hate to paint (yeah, this didn’t change) I was mostly in charge of taping off the trim, painting the trim, and general clean-up. We got started early, at like, 9 or so. We were also joined by Brother-in-Law, that was a help. So all the guys are downstairs, doing all the big painting of stuff, and Rory and I are upstairs, cleaning up all the mess from the wallpaper (that took about 3 days to get off the wall), doing the trim, and just working in general. As we’re cleaning up the final bits, I look down at the carpet, and see red splotches all over. Let me preface this with, the night before, as we were painting with the cranberry color, someone stepped in the paint and tracked it all over the light blue carpeting. That made me upset, but seeing it happen again today, I just about flipped my lid. So after I spent some time screaming at everyone (I had to yell, seeing as how we were all in different rooms!) I look down, and notice that its on this thing where I had just stood. So I look down, and its not paint – I had apparently sliced open my foot at some point (but didn’t feel it, or register it, I guess) and I had been bleeding all over the place. So after I apologized to everyone and got it all cleaned up, we kept cleaning. After a couple of hours, the upstairs was totally painted, the floor was finally wallpaper-free and clean, and everything was done. We stopped then, and had lunch.

Then, the rest of the house. At this point we lost Brother-in-Law, he had other things, so it was the 4 of us again. We taped, and painted, and sung, and talked, and worked tirelessly for a long time. It got to be about 6-ish before I started to lose it. At this point, I was sick of painting, I was sick of taping, I was sick of being in the super hot house (we couldn’t have the AC on in the house, because the guys installing carpet were having an issue with the AC and the carpet. Plus we needed windows open for ventilation). So this is when the mood turned slowly from having semi-fun painting to hating paint and hating the house and hating everyone around me. Needless to say, things got dark. But after an hour or so of a downfall of moods, things picked up. We finally finished the painting and clean up at 9:30. We all slowly shuffled out of the house, burned out, tired, dirty. On the way home though, we stopped at Arctic Circle and got ice cream cones. We all skipped dinner, so you’d think we’d have been starving, but no. I was just ready for bed, and an ice cream cone sounded like the best thing ever.

So now, here we are. The house is done, all that’s left is a little light cleaning, and putting vent covers/outlet switches back onto the walls. And by tomorrow evening, we should be totally moved in. I can’t wait to be moved in there, and I’m just glad that we’re done with all the painting. And here’s to hoping that I’m done with painting for the rest of my life.

Medaled

2011-08-16T15:08:00.001-06:00

Ok, peeps. I had another race this past weekend. It was, (and I know you’ll be impressed by this) the Lindon City Days Dash – a 5K. Last year, I did this race pretty quickly, I won my age group. I was so psyched when it came around again, of course I entered. This time, I was hoping to get the same result, but since I’m no longer as fast as I used to be, (because lately, I’m in like, a runners funk. I don’t know what its about, but I just don’t want to get up and run. And when I run, I’m just so lazy, I run slower than I used to. Oh well.) I didn’t know that it would happen, but at least I’d give it a go.

So we (PJ and I) show up at the race at the appropriate time, to get our race packets and pin our race numbers to our shirts. The race was a totally different course than I thought it would be. Its always fun to try a new course, but I like having the same one, because then you know just when it’s going to go uphill, and when you have to push yourself and when you can hold back. So I was going into this blind, but confident. The countdown began, and when it was time to go, off I went.

I did ok. I went pretty fast right off, and was doing pretty good, until about mile 2, and then, I slowed a bit. I was getting a little tired, and my body isn’t used to racing 5K’s right now, the last few I’ve done have been 10K’s. But I held in. I kept going. I did the best I could, and then when I was nearing the end, the course went uphill. That’s right, one of the fewest races in the entire world where you run UP to get to the end. As if we’re not already dying by the time we get to the end, we had to finish by running uphill. But I soldiered through it (probably slowed right down) and then finally finished. After a post-race cool down (complete with blue Powerade and a slice of bread from Kneaders) we sat down and waited for the “awards ceremony” to get going. As they’re passing things out, I realized, I actually wasn’t that fast. Hearing the times of people, I was like, shoot. I did my best, but I guess it wasn’t fast enough. So then they get to my age group, and they say the fastest time was me! I was so surprised, I shouted and screamed, and jumped up to get my medal. I meant to take a picture of it, but I only got this one of me and PJ (how attractive do we look in this?!) so here’s a half picture of the medal.

So there it is. My medal for being fastest in my age group (25-29). I am a little proud of myself, so I want to share this with the world. This is the only race I ever get medals in, because the race is small and there aren’t many participants. But I’ll forget all that when I celebrate my victory.

Oh, BTW, the shirt that I’m wearing here is a hamburger, and underneath him is the saying “Runners have the best buns” and I thought it was magnificent. And then the little burger is saying “Tasty!” so I thought that was even better.

Foto Friday

2011-08-12T09:38:00.001-06:00

The photo for today is:

This is my nephew, Nathan, with me at an RSL game. It was the one last weekend, where we creamed NY 3-0. Husband and I took him for his birthday. We also took my sister in law for her birthday, so it was like a birthday-palooza. Today, the 12th of August is actually Nathan’s birthday. If I’m accurate in my guessing (and I’m probably not) he’s turning the big 1-4 today. I love my nephew – he is so much fun. He’s finally getting to be almost taller than I, its about time. He’s so quick with a joke or a funny comeback. I’m trying to get him interested in soccer, so that he’ll start playing. Since he’s almost in high school, I want him to be on the HS team, but I need to work a little more with him before he’s ready. He doesn’t know this, BTW, I’ve decided all of this without him.

Anyway, happy birthday, Nathan!

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-08-08T10:04:00.001-06:00

Well, it’s almost upon us. I know you don’t know what it is, so here, I’ll tell you. This week, Thursday specifically, Husband and I will be closing on our first house. Its been a long while to get to this point, and now, here we are, about to sign all the paperwork. (Which, from what I hear, is a lot of signing. I’ll be sure to warm up my hand beforehand) We looked through many houses, and the one we’ve chosen is (obviously) our favorite. We’re signing on Thursday, and then we’ll be official home-owners. I can’t wait.

Unfortunately, with buying a home comes the preparation for moving in. We’ll own the house this weekend, but probably won’t move in until a week or two later. We’re wanting to paint the house. We’ve picked some good colors, ones that I’m excited for. I HATE to paint. I don’t have any other word for painting except for hate. I get so angry after about 3 minutes of painting, and I don’t even know what it is about painting that incites my rage so. So while Husband is all buckled down to paint it himself, I am looking for painters to do it for me. I’m just saying, yes, it’d cost a little bit of money, but come on. Someone would come to this for me, they’d do a way better job than I could ever do, and get it done in about half the time. Plus, then I wouldn’t have to paint, which is a win-win for everyone.

My Tivo is quite full right now. For those that have followed my blog here for a bit know that I love my Tivo. It contains all of the things I love, its always there for me when I’m bored, it completes me. I’m still getting used to having to share it with Husband, and that on some shows, I have to wait to watch it with him. Luckily, he usually doesn’t like my favorite shows off of the CW or ABCFamily (I’m not ashamed of these shows) so those I can watch with some freedom. Because Husband has been working later than usual this past little while, our Tivo has been backing up. We try to catch up, but we don’t always just sit about watching TV, there’s things to do, things to see, so we fit it in when we can. Yesterday, I made a remark of how far behind we were, and joked that we shouldn’t even leave the house, we should just stay in and watch as much as possible. Husband said I wouldn’t be able to handle staying indoors, watching TV all day, which seemed like a challenge that I accepted. So yesterday, that’s what we did, and I’ll be darned if I didn’t catch right up. Of course, there are still shows on there that need to be watched, we didn’t get everything in one go, but we got pretty close. At the end of the day, as we were going to bed, I said that I had completed the challenge, and won. And then, I thought, I didn’t leave the house, and I lazed about all day. Did I really win?

It’s Arts and Crafts Time

2011-08-04T20:53:00.001-06:00

Lately, I’ve been quite busy. For my sisters birthday, I gave her a little photo book/scrapbooky thing that I had made. It took a while to make, to find the best pictures, to match the best background paper to the picture, etc. When it was finished, I was a little proud of myself. I’d never done anything like this, but I finally attempted it, and at least I finished. The only creative thing I’ve done is just the cards – which I’m given instructions on, and have a card that’s already made that I get to look at the whole time, to see what I’m doing as I do it.

I was so proud of myself for getting that done that I made another one – but a bigger one. I wanted to do the same thing for PJ for her birthday, but instead of the accordion book I did for my sister I did a full-on book, with many pages, and all of them to be decorated. This book actually almost put me over the edge – there was just so much to be done with this one, but since I was a little more experienced with this book than the last, I felt a little better about it. It did take a lot of work this time around, but when I finished, the feeling of accomplishment was awesome.

Riding that wave of accomplishment, I decided to tackle another project, this one for myself. I had ordered a cube, to put pictures on. I had chosen to put pictures of myself and Husband on them. After much deliberation over pictures, colors, etc, and about 2 weeks of fretting, I finally got the pictures on there. I brought it to work to have Chelle help me with it. While I’m getting better at doing crafty things, I’m still nowhere near the level that Chelle is with all of this. She helped me put some great finishing touches on it, stuff for texture and just general cuteness to it. At the end of all of it, it looks like:

And there it is. Now that I’m done with it, I’m quite proud of it. It took a lot of work, and many, many papercuts/stamped fingers and gluing of my fingers to stuff, but now that its done, I really like it. I’m displaying the heck out of it on my desk. That was actually probably a good thing too, because until today, I had no pictures of Husband and myself. But now, I have many!

Foto Friday

2011-07-22T10:46:00.001-06:00

This is a sad day, everyone. Well, technically, I took this picture last weekend, but waited for today to post it, because it’s a photo. Last Sunday was a hard day for the McSnailingtons. (Yup, this is another post about them!) We came home, and as we were walking to our apartment, there was a pile a little bit from our door:

Yes, there was a McSnailington massacre. I don’t know who did it, I don’t know what happened, we just found them this way. I didn’t want to touch them, in case any were alive, so I just left them after snapping my picture. I didn’t want to disturb! Interesting, though, when I came out later that evening there was a snail on our doorstep. I wished I had snapped a picture, but I didn’t have a camera handy. I assume that the snail was Edgar, trying to ask for help. I didn’t move him, of course, you never want to move them, and I shut the door. When I came out the next morning, he, along with the rest of the snails, were all gone.

I hope that they all got out to safety, and in case any of them lost their lives, I hope they got a proper funeral service from their kind. Now that the snailocaust is over, I haven’t seen any snails since then. I’m sure they’re just laying low, avoiding making themselves noticeable. I’m still not sure if this attack was human, or if the OSnailahan’s had something to do with it. I’m keeping my eye for my tiny peeps…if ever I can help them.

The Neighbors

2011-07-20T15:59:00.001-06:00

I don’t know many of our neighbors. I’ve seen one of them at church, and a few outside, walking about. I’ve talked to one of them, they’re fans of RSL like Husband and I are. But other than that, I’m not really sure who any of them are. Its not that I’m unfriendly, its just that I don’t know that I need to have a friendship with these guys that extends beyond a friendly wave and a ‘hello’.

Husband is out of town yet again this week. Last night, after I’d finished with all my errands, I was calming down for the evening, watching a bit of TV. I had turned off all the lights, except for my bedroom, and I was in there, watching and working on some craft projects, when all of a sudden, the doorbell rang. I look at the clock, and its a little after nine. At first, I thought it might have been Sister coming to visit me, she said she might smuggle over her adorable dog. (Miniature Doberman Pincher, so cute!) But as soon as I thought that, I realized, Sister doesn’t ring the doorbell, so I knew it couldn’t be her. So I finally creep over to the door, and attempt to look out the peephole. And…I’m not actually tall enough to see out of the peephole. I was on my tippy-toes, trying to see, and I couldn’t get to that height. So I rolled the dice, and just opened the door, even though I was scared to do so. Come on, a random doorbell, I can’t see who it is, it’s night time, I’m alone? Of course I was scared!

And there stood….the neighbors that live above us, or as I have dubbed them, The Peroxide Family. I’ve seen them at church once, and around the neighborhood a few times, and they are a family of blondes. Which is fine, except that while the children are naturally blonde, the parents have white/blonde-ish hair that is very much fake. But that’s ok, I don’t judge them on that. I judge them on being quite noisy. They live in the apartment directly above ours, and they are quite loud. The kids are jumping everywhere, and clomping down when they walk, which I keep trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, like, maybe the ceilings/floor are thin, but still, my goodness. I always know when they are home, and what they’re doing when they are there.

Anyway, the point of their visit was to tell me about some cat food the children had spilled on our patio. They came to tell me sorry, and that they’d clean it up tomorrow. They asked if I had been asleep, since all the lights were off, and that’s when I realized I am an old lady, turning off the lights at 9. But that’s ok, I embrace it. So after the tiny children apologized, they went on their way. Truthfully, had they not told me they spilled it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. I rarely go out to the patio, but that was nice of them anyway. And it was nice to see them face to face, since I’ve really only seen them from behind. Also, after they left, it took about 20 minutes to get my heart rate to normal. I really need to not be so scared when I’m home alone.

Foto Friday…Harry Potter Friday…

2011-07-15T10:58:00.001-06:00

All right, so this technically isn’t really a legit Friday entry, but I’m combing my life of tradition (Foto Friday!) with my love of Harry Potter. And thus it begins.

As expressed above, I love Harry Potter. I didn’t hop on the HP wagon until book 4. Before then, I’d heard of it, but was like, meh, I don’t need to read a book about children and magic. But then Little Sister had the first four, and told me to read them. I read them all within about a week, and loved them. Book 4 is still my favorite, of all of them, I could read that one over and over. But I still love them all.

I’ve been on a few different sides of being the HP fan. I’ve been the regular fan, reading all the books, getting them as soon as they come out (literally, at midnight, I’ve gotten them) and I’ve worked retail when they came out, and had to work the midnight shift to sell them to other fans, ones who had actually dressed up for the events. A lot of retail people hate to work these types of events, but I loved them. Being around the people who love the books enough to be there right as soon as they’re released – it’s a great feeling for everyone there.

So tonight I’m going to the last Harry Potter movie. I’ve seen every single one, opening night, and I am really looking forward to this. I finished the 7th book again this weekend, I re-saw the first Deathly Hallows movie last night, so I’m totally ready. I am excited to see this – to finish out this chapter of my life with a movie that will satisfy my Harry Potter cravings. Luckily, I own all of the books and movies, so if ever I need to visit Hogwarts again, I can do so.

And luckily, no one died

2011-07-13T09:42:00.001-06:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I did something this weekend for the first time. (waiting for the applause to die down) All right, now that we have that out of our systems, I’ll continue. For some time now, Husband has been wanting me to go rafting. He was a rafting guide for a long time, he loves the river, the outdoors, etc. I think he first asked me to do this the second weekend after we’d started dating. I, however, am crazy scared of water. Yes, I’ll admit this right now, I hate water. I can’t swim, I don’t like water, we just don’t get along. But finally, almost a year later, I have given in. I finally said yes to rafting.

We went to Idaho for this, to the Payette river. I get to the river, I get on my lifejacket and make sure it’s extra secure on tight. One of our friends that was going with us secured it on for me, and then gave me all sorts of helpful trips for my first time down the river. I’ll share those now. If ever you fall out of the raft, and you can’t get back in right away, point your feet downstream as the current takes you, until they can get a rope to you. If you can make it back the boat after you fall out, when you get there, you need to have your back to the boat, and they’ll pull you up by the shoulder straps of your lifejacket. He then demonstrated that for me on dry land. The guy giving me these tips was 6’6”, and with me clocking in at an even 5’5”, he had plenty of room to do so. These tips were terrifying to me, because I guarantee that if I fall out of the raft, I will do none of these, I will sit there and scream and then promptly drown.

After a while, we finally get going. I was right behind Husband, who was in the lead on my side of the raft. We had 7 adults in the raft, 3 to each side and our “guide” on the back. (he had done the river before, and was there to guide us through it, but he was a friend of ours) We also had 2 children, a 7-year old and a 4-year old. I was relieved to have them in our boat, because they wouldn’t do anything crazy to risk the lives of tiny children. We successfully made it down the river, and it took us about an hour to do so. We got drenched, then would dry out before another rapid came along, and this cycle continued to the end. I had a lot of fun, despite my fear, but man did it wear me out.

We went only once on Saturday, and then did another run down the river on Sunday, before we had to drive back. This time, we had 2 less adults in the raft, but the kids were still with us. On this run, as we went over a particular rapid, our boat rose up in the front, like normal, but as we went up a little, the wind caught the boat, and we were at almost a 90-degree angle. Being thrown to the back of a raft, while watching the front continue to rise up? Terrifying. But having the raft go back down, with no one being thrown out? Awesome. I’d do this again.

Foto Friday

2011-07-08T14:58:00.000-06:00

Last night, as I was walking to my car, I glanced over at a nearby bush, and I found out where the McSnailington’s live. They were everywhere. On every branch, all over the grass, my gosh. As I was inspecting the bush, I saw a baby baby snail hanging out. I tried to take a picture of it, but I don’t know how well you can see it. The first picture is the original picture, and the next one is cropped around the snail, hopefully to let you see it a little better. He was adorable, and I named him Henry.

Walk of Death…death…death…death

2011-06-30T11:34:00.001-06:00

All right, I’ve been meaning to get this on here for a few days now, but things have been a little busy, so I’m just finally getting to it today!

The other day, Chelle and I went on a walk during work. It was warm, and lovely, not too hot. As we were walking, I looked down and saw a dead bird. I almost stepped on it, actually, but luckily, I didn’t. We remarked on it, and went on our way. A block later, we look down and see about 7 dead snails, just laying there, in their shells. We named them the Snailston family (not to be confused with the McSnailingtons, my friends, and their rival clan the OSnaileys.) We said a few nice words for their passing, and went on our way. Another few blocks later, we look, and there’s a giant dead bird, beak down, in the lawn. Well, by now we had figured out, this was a walk of death.

We saw too many dead animals for it to be a coincidence of something. Is this a sign from the universe? Is there something bigger than us, telling us something? What is this?! WHAT’S HAPPENING?!

And now, 2 days later, we’ve had torrential rains, winds, lightning, and thunderstorms. Is this a sign of the apocalypse? Maybe. There’s something out there…telling us to beware of something…

Or, maybe, the birds just had accidents, and the snails were left out in the 90 degree heat and couldn’t survive. It seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation of things.

OR DOES IT?!

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-06-20T11:24:00.001-06:00

Yes, my good friends, you are quite lucky. 2 blogs from me in a row! What?! What did you do to deserve such good fortune?! Answer: I don’t have a lot going on right now, being at home alone and all. Aaaaaand you’re welcome.

Yesterday, when I was on my way to my parent’s house for the BirFather’s day festivities, and I saw the McSnailingtons everywhere, I really wanted to pick up a few, put them in a container, and bring them there. Hopefully, once they were settled in their new location (parent’s house) they would breed and make a new McSnailington clan. Now, on a scale of 1-10, how bad would this be? Would bringing them to a new environment be that bad? Could they survive? I mean, yes they’d miss their families, but people move away from home all the time, so it’d be a new adventure. When I got home from the party, there was not a snail in sight, so I’m pretty sure they can also read minds, and they knew what my plan was. Shoot. I need to keep my thoughts stealthier around them.

I have 2 days this week to do my to-do list of things I wanted to get done while Husband was gone, and as of today, I have about 1 thing left on it, and the one thing left is the easy one that’ll take no time or energy at all. I wish I had been more ambitious with my list. I’m now scouring my brain to think of things that I can do, but so far, I’m not really coming up with a lot. If I had the strength to move things, I think it’d be funny to rearrange all the furniture in the house as sort of a surprise to Husband when he comes home, but it’s not going to work out as well as I have imagined. Some other time, maybe, when I’ve planned it out better.

As I was cleaning out my underroos drawer yesterday in my quest to clean everything, I stumbled across some cards in there. I randomly have, in my underpants drawer, my old library cards, some old insurance cards, and a frequent eater card for a Chinese food place that closed about 4 years ago. I’d like to think I can remember why I put them in there, but so far, I’m at a loss. Was I hiding them for some reason? Did they go in there themselves, to nestle in against the underthings? I’ll never know, as I have now destroyed them all. Sorry guys.

All by myseeeeeeelf…..except today with Pops!

2011-06-19T20:01:00.001-06:00

I almost wished I could have a Miscellaneous Sunday, because I have a few entries I want to put into one, but I’ll just do a couple maybe, see how that goes.

So, Husband went on a business trip on Thursday. This is the first trip he’s been on since we’ve been married. Before we were married, it wasn’t a big deal, because I lived at home, so I had people around, if I so wanted to talk to them or whatevs. But now, I’m all by myself in our apartment, so every five minutes, I’m pretty sure a serial killer is going to break in and kill me. Now listen, I’m going to admit this out loud: I’m a sissy. I’m not a tough girl when I’m all by myself. I’d like to think this, but oh man, my heart jumps every time a noise is made that I don’t recognize. But the plus side is, I’ve gotten so much done since he’s been gone. It’s not that he prevents me from doing this stuff, it’s just that I’d rather do other things when he’s around, or I’m pretty sure it’ll just get dirty anyway. But I’ve gone through all my drawers, cleaned them out, gotten rid of old clothes, I’ve vacuumed, mopped, taken apart the stove and cleaned that, cleaned the bathrooms, and done every bit of laundry there was to be done. I’m proud of the progress I’ve made this week, and yet I’ve got so much stuff that I still need to do in the next few days while he’s still gone.

And, of course, today was Fathers day, and today was my Pop’s birthday, so Happy BirFathers Day to him! Everyone here knows I loves my Pops, because he is too awesome. So happy day to him, and I’m really sorry that your birthday fell on the same day, so that we couldn’t celebrate ya twice.

And by the way everyone, with all the rain today, the McSnailington’s were out in full force! Happy day for all!

Foto Friday

2011-06-10T08:49:00.001-06:00

This past Monday, Husband and I went to the local arcade (Trafalga) for a fun night. We played arcade games, had a go-kart race, and won some tickets from said games. We took our tickets to the counter, and had enough to buy 11 of these guys (and with leftover tickets, we bought one tootsie roll and one Jolly Rancher. I ate the tootsie roll, in case anyone is wondering.) Anyway, when we got home, we set them up in an epic battle scene:

So far they’ve been engaged in battle for almost a week, with no casualties. I’ll post further if there are any deaths.

Happy Friday!

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-06-06T16:15:00.001-06:00

So, all, I had my race on Saturday, and sadly, I didn’t finish where I wanted to. I started out super good, I finished the first mile in 7 1/2 minutes, I was stoked. A little after the first mile, there’s a giant hill in the race, and needless to say, this one kicked the crap out of me. I knew the hill was there, they had the same route last year, and I was sure I had it under control. Unfortunately, my legs/lungs/etc didn’t get the memo. I made it up ok, but then for the remaining 2 miles, I was just tired. I ended up finishing the race in 25:12. I was 12th in my age group, which was just super disappointing. I know that for others, that’s a pretty good time, but it wasn’t where I wanted to be, but this just means there’s room for improvement. My next race is a 10K in July. I look forward to it.

A co-worker left a bag of Doritos on my desk for the office to share, since my desk is between the peeps. At first, I was like, ok this is a good idea, I can snack on these. Cut to 6 hours later, and I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten half of the bag. And now, all I can taste is Doritos, and that’s even with chewing gum and having mints. I liked Doritos at the beginning of the day, and now...

Sometimes I wish that I was a mutant, like in X-Men. I don’t even know what I’d want my power to be, but I think it’d be cool. Basically it’d be like being any superhero, but I like the X-Men a little more than say, Batman, or Green Lantern or most of the heroes out there. Being psychic would be cool, but so would being able to walk through walls, or having super strength. I’ve been watching a lot of X-Men lately, so its just been on my mind. What a nerd.

National Running Day

2011-06-01T13:51:00.001-06:00

Today, kids, the 1st of June, 2011, is National Running day. I love these national (fill in the blank) days, because they’re not a real holiday or anything, and by the time you find out about it, you can’t really do anything about it. Except for today – I found out in time to do something about it. And my something? To blog about it.

As everyone who reads this (all 3 of you, what up?!) knows, I heart running. I almost made it another full year of running every single day (which would have been Monday) but then I missed a few days when I got that weirdo flu thing. I missed 2 days – 2 days of running, and it ruined my whole average. But, I soldiered on. And I’ve started a new one, on Monday, the original day it would have been, might as well keep the same date, I thought.

I know a bunch of people think I’m a crazy for running so much, all the time. But I love it. I like getting out of the house, and just letting go of everything, and the only things I have to think about is avoiding cars and what route I should take. Or, on the flip side, if I need to work something out, I go running, and think the whole time and get a solution to whatever it is that’s on my mind.

I’m proud of my running. It took me a long time to get to where I am, to be able to run as fast as I do. I’m not as fast as I’d like to be, and there will always be someone faster than I am, but for me, I’m glad with where I’m at. I’ll always work on getting faster, and I have a race this Saturday that I’m hoping to finish in the top 3 of. The Art City Days 5K is one of my favorite races. The race is fun, and over so quickly, and the prize drawings afterward is always awesome. I’m hoping to have my number called for an awesome prize this year!

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-05-23T09:41:00.001-06:00

Here we are again folks, for another session of the only 2 blog entries I write. Listen, though, it’s probably better than nothing.

The McSnailington’s were out in full force this morning, as they have been all week and weekend. I’m really sick of this rain, and having it be cloudy and gross all the time, but when it does become summer, I think I’ll miss having the McSnailington family around each morning as I go out to my car. I secretly want to take a Sharpie marker and write on their shells a letter, so that I can keep them all straight, all the ones I’ve named. But something inside me says that’s probably wrong.

I got really sunburned over the weekend. I didn’t get in my early morning Saturday run, as usual, the morning was a little busy. So I didn’t get my run started until about noon. It was warm, but not overly so, and definitely not hot. My run ended up being about 90 minutes long (so lovely) and by the time I got home, my skin was red. I figured it was just because I was hot and sweaty, but after my shower and a few hours, it was still red and getting redder. I looked lobster-esque by the end of the day. Its not too painful by now, but the good news is that I’ve gotten my sunburn of the year out of the way. Now, I can just be tan!

I have sad news. Mostly for myself. I am going to, as of today, give up sugary and delicious treats. Husband and I have a little bet of sorts, and it was either this, or meat, and while I love my cupcakes and everything of the like, I could so not give up meat. So we’re going to give this a try, and see how well I do. If I crash and burn, well, at least I gave it a good shot. And if I succeed, then I’m a champion. I’ll keep you updated on the whole treat giving up, hopefully I won’t go into sugar withdrawals and start to hallucinate sugary treats dancing around my head all the time.

Foto Friday

2011-05-13T11:09:00.002-06:00

I love Mike & Ike’s. They are delicious little candies that are so easy to eat. I have to ration myself from them, otherwise, I just keep popping them into my mouth, without even realizing I’m doing so. So the other day, I made this little box for my M&I’s so that they would be at hand, but if I eat them too quickly, the box is empty and I get sad, so it helps me to control how many of them I eat. I don’t know how exactly, but in my brain, it works, and so far, since I’ve made my box, I’ve eaten them a little slower. The box is made of blue paper. I suck at crafty things, but this seemed to work out well for me. I added the little Toy Story 3 thing to make it a little more festive. I got that off of a cupcake.

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-05-09T09:35:00.001-06:00

As I was walking out to my car this morning, I saw at least 10 snails all around the yard/sidewalk. You know what this means?! Edgar has a family! All of his peeps are hanging out with him! I was going to get a picture, but they were all scattered around, and I didn’t want to pick them all up to put them near each other. I know that I’d hate it if I was just hanging out, doing my thing, and some unseen force picked me up and put me next to my friends/family for a picture. What if I’d just spent the last 6 hours getting 1 foot away from them? All my hard work, ruined!

I had a 5K on Saturday, the Provo City 5K/Chase the Mayor. They let the Provo city mayor start the race 1-2 minutes before the rest of us, and you were supposed to get a prize if you passed him. Now let me tell you, when they announced that this was happening, I imagined the mayor to be a stout fella, not in shape, but no, he was in shape, and probably a runner anyway. When I crossed the finish line, I was 4(!) people behind him. I was so close to catching him, I just couldn’t quite get him. Grrrr

I forgot to bring my yogurt to work today. I didn’t even realize until I got to the office. And now I’m sad. I could get some out of the vending machine, but the only kind they have there is blueberry, and blueberries are my least favorite fruit of all. I’m a little sad about it, but I suppose there are worse things going on in the world. But in my world, my heart (and stomach) is a little less full with no yogurt with my breakfast.

Miscellaneous Monday

2011-05-02T22:27:00.001-06:00

Good news, all. I found Edgar. I was afraid that I had killed him, accidentally run him over, but today, I made the effort to look for him when I got to my car. I saw him, and Husband picked him up for me. He had crawled all back up into his shell, so we put him back on the grass. We thought that maybe he got back into his shell, panicked that it was no longer cool outside, that the road was getting too warm for him. So we tried to help him out. I’ll keep you updated every time I see him.

I have a change jar/bucket that I’ve had for a while. I’m not exactly sure how long ago I’ve started that, but I’ve faithfully put all my coinage into it. I decided to count it, since I actually have no idea how much money is in there. After about an hour of counting, I reached the final penny. I have $89.31 in there. I’m rich!

Foodles are the best thing ever. I saw them in the store, and thought they were cute, so I got one. I don’t know if anyone has seen these, but they’re little plastic trays in the shape of Mickey. In the face is apple slices, and in the ears are grapes and cheese squares. OMG it is delicious. You can combine the foods for an awesome mix of perfection in your mouth. I recommend them to everyone. I need to go back and get some soon.

Foto Friday

2011-04-29T08:57:00.001-06:00

Well, I’m so good at doing my regular segments that I decided to add another one, but this one should actually be super easy to maintain, so it might actually be one that I keep going every week. I’m just going to take a picture of something (probably most likely something random) and post it on here. Here is today’s:

I found this little guy by my tire this morning when I left for work. I named him Edgar McSnailington. I think he’d appreciate such a fancy name. I kinda hope he’s still in the parking lot when I go home, so I can see how much progress he’s made during the day.