Dinner at my house

I thought it was a pretty good dinner...

Cafe Rio shredded chicken
Rice
Corn torillas
Salad
Watermelon
and Frog-eye Salad

...and its not even Sunday!

Guess what Ashby ate?
        Marshmallows picked out of the frog-eye salad. That's it.

Then when I got after him about eating real food, he yelled about how he wishes he never had a mom.

Such is life with Ashby. Such is dinner at my house.

Mesa Favorites

Its been 5 years since I've been to Mesa - the town I grew up in and called home for 20 years.

There were several things on my list of must-dos while we were visiting.

Mesa, AZ temple visitor's center

City Cemetery to visit my Mom's grave site

 Bahama Buck's - seriously just as good as I remember!

Swim time at a city pool to cool off

Visiting the ol' homestead on Lyn Rae Square

We were lucky that our childhood home is for sale right now and the realtor lives across the street. So we arranged for a walk through. Four of us kids took advantage of the opportunity. We hadn't been home for 7 or 8 years since Mom and Dad sold it.   

All the cousins certainly made themselves at home in the backyard. 

It was a very strange experience to be back home and know it isn't our home. I found my name I engraved into the metal door knob when I was 5, we cried and reminisced about our favorite parts of the house, and we took our first-day-of-school picture by the front doors. 

Dunkin' Donuts 

Krispy Kreme just doesn't compare. 

And our favorite restaurant Gecko Grill

I've been dreaming about their Southwestern Shrimp Burrito for over 5 years. Dream come true!

We had a great time staying at Tasha's new, lovely home in Mesa and visiting with them. We also got to finish the trip with a family BBQ and swimming at my sister, Gayla's house. It was a great trip, and was even worth the sweat from the heat. ;)

Garden progress

We've been enjoying some great crops from our garden. We're learning a long the way. Like, maybe don't plant 8 cantaloupe seeds next summer. :)

Dinner Date

This is my favorite time of year because it is our annual date with our friends the Gurneys.
Brian Gurney does our taxes for us and, as payment, we take them out to a fancy dinner.

Our favorite place to go is Restaurant Forte. Its the UVU culinary arts restaurant and it is amazing! A fancy four course meal for a descent price. Love it!  This week's menu was Italian. Mmmmm...

The Paint Party

I've found I'm really great at replicating other people's creativity. 

The invitation

The decor

I loved using paint chips for decoration - its free! I did feel a little sneaky grabbing handfuls of paint chips at Lowe's and WalMart though. Hope no one was looking!

For a gathering activity the kids blew colorful bubbles onto the "Celebr8" sign. I just added food coloring to bubble solution. Some of the colors worked better than others. The kids had fun doing it, but by the end of the party you could hardly see any color on the poster.

The painting

I wanted the kids to be able to make something special on canvas to take home and hang in their rooms.

I wasn't sure how long the painting activity would take. Some of the kids were done fairly quickly and others really took their time. That made it hard to clean up and switch to the next thing. But the first ones done just played and ran around, so it wasn't too big a deal. 

I don't think our swing set had seen so much action. Brian had to anchor it in place.

The cake

The cake was fun to make. I did colorful splotches of batter on the cupcake and made sugar cookie palettes for the topper. The mini m&m's really added the perfect touch. Then I found a cupcake wrapper template and a paint splatter image to use for it. Everything was tasty! (except for the colorful sherbet cups that had melted - but the kids drank them anyway).

The favors

I was thinking of getting empty silver paint cans for the kids, but they were too expensive. I think this was still pretty fun, especially the candy buttons - do you remember those? I had to order them online, but it was fun to introduce the kids to something I had when I was a little.

My favorite was the chocolate dipped rice krispy treats. Such a clever thing!

I love all the great party ideas there are online!

Paper bag Popcorn

I can't even tell you how thrilled I am about this little tip I found on pinterest.
http://www.squawkfox.com/2010/07/27/popcorn-recipe-gourmet-popcorn/

You can actually pop regular ol' popcorn kernels in a regular ol' paper bag! My neighbors make really yummy popcorn in their popcorn air popper and I just put on my thrift store list to find a popcorn popper. I was jealous of their easy, healthy snack. Well, now I can do it too, yay!!

Bake Sale

We've been waiting for a good day to hold a bake sale on the corner of our house (accounting for weather, school schedule, baking ingredients and ambition). So last week I finally committed to the kids and made it happen (even though today turned out to be a pretty busy day). Everything worked out and I made sure to be dressed to sweat - I'm always in a better mood when I know I'm going to be sweaty and stinky, than when I try to look cute and end up being sweaty and stinky.

The kids helped me pick out 3 things from Pinterest that they thought looked good:
Avalanche Bars (my personal favorite)
HolyCrapTheseAreAmazing Cookies
Applesauce Cookies with Caramel Frosting

Ashby and I got everything set up while Paige was at school. And then we sat and waited for the school bell to ring and for customers to appear. I encouraged Ashby to go out to the sidewalk and wave at people and call out about the bake sale. No matter what though, he would not do it.

He is very different than his sister...

 I was glad when Paige got home from school. Our corner was not so quiet anymore. Yet, it took quite a while for anybody to actually come to our bake sale table. Mostly because they ended up walking home, getting money and then coming back.

  There was quite a crowd for a time. They were all very nice and I think they enjoyed the goodies. Some of the girls even helped me as a store clerk. They also helped me clean up everything (they earned an extra cookie!).

So...the loot?  $21.25
Mostly in coins. I'm not sure where it all came from. It didn't seem like we sold that much stuff, but I guess it was worth it.

I had fun, the kids had fun and it was a good learning experience.

New Food

This week I bought and cooked with 3 things I have never used before.
I had to buy Jalapenos, Ginger root, and coconut milk to make Basil Chicken in Coconut Curry Sauce.
It was really so good, and I felt like I was eating at a Thai restaurant.

I recently started using Pinterest and that's where I found this recipe.
I've found lots and lots of yummy recipes on Pinterest.
The trouble I've found is that its really hard to lose weight when there is so much deliciousness staring you in the face. (well I guess looking at them doesn't really hurt, but its the wanting to experience them that does). So far, I've lost 15 pounds and I'm proud of that, but there is a lot more to do.
Maybe I should take a break from Pinterest....

Favorite Time of Year

Tax season if my absolute favorite time of year. Maybe someday I'll have cause to complain about it, but for now, I think it is wonderful.

I love it because it is the only time of year we have enough money to actually start crossing things off our long wish list. The unfortunate thing is that the money is usually spent before we even get it.

The other greatest thing about tax season is that it gives us a good excuse to eat out somewhere fancy. Brian's best friend does our taxes for free, and in return we take him and his wife out to dinner. If the timing works out during the semester, we usually like to go to Greg's Restaurant - the UVU Culinary Arts restaurant. We each get a 5 course meal that is to die for. Deliciousness!

Yep! I love, love, love tax season.

Rumor is I'm a baker

I recently learned how to bake bread. It started out as a personal progress goal and I provided homemade bread for the sacrament for a month. That was something I remember a girl in my ward growing up did for her personal progress and I thought it was the most awesomest thing. I had since tried, unsuccessfully, to convince some of our young women to do it, and then realized I could do it. I was pretty nervous to commit to something like that because I've never even attempted to bake bread, and I'd heard about all kinds trouble with bread-making, so I didn't think I could do it. But my friend gave me a fool-proof recipe and I had perfectly delicious bread from the very first batch. I've continued to bake bread, but it never lasts. I usually bake three loaves at a time. My family and I eat almost an entire loaf fresh out of the oven, and I give away the other two to friends and neighbors for different reasons while the bread is still warm. After all, homemade bread just isn't the same if its not fresh from the oven.