Meals

This is more for me so I remember the links for what we're eating this week, but in case you're wondering... we'll be having:

Monday: French Bread Pizza

Tuesday: Southwest Pasta Salad

Wednesday: Indian Butter Chicken

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Going out to eat for MY BIRTHDAY!

That's right... this week for dinner all three meals I am cooking are things we haven't tried before. I decided I'm going to be more serious about working through my list of recipes I want to try, and because of Pinterest I have a TON of recipes I want to try! Each week we will make at least one thing from pinterest, whether it be an entree, side, dessert, or drink. At that rate, and only with my current collection of recipes to try, we could be done with that list in about 3 years. Oh boy. Guess it's time to do more serious cooking. :)


**Okay, so the french bread pizza was delicious! We ended up making the pizza sauce recipe from OBB, and loved our little pizzas.

The Southwest Pasta Salad- AMAZING! My only complaint was that I should've chopped my cherry tomatoes into quarters not halves, they were just a little too big and I couldn't fit them on my fork with anything else. Oh, and I think next time I'll add a second bell pepper, partially just to add more color (I'll go with orange) and because I love bell peppers. I could eat this all the time, seriously.

Body Builder

I like to do wii fit after I go running. I like it even more when it tells me I am a bodybuilder. This particular time it told me that after I did lunges... 

Puzzle

I finished my puzzle. Finally. I did the top quarter of it super quickly, it was the rows of red tulips that was really hard... I loved this puzzle, even though it took me a couple more days than I had originally anticipated, it reminded me of home a little!

Toes!

Chris had to work late the other night so as I did my grocery shopping I picked up a totally different shade of nail polish than I had ever used (well, maybe I used something similar when I was a Beehive). I normally stick with the same shade of burgundy, but over the last few months I've seen friends with really pretty light blue and light purple toes and decided I HAD to change my toes up too! This is what I went with:

The brand is Orchid, and the color is Totally Teal. Sorry that my feet look nasty... I was just so excited to show you the color of my toe nails that I don't care that my feet look so bad. Chris came hoe and he quickly noticed the new shade and said that it looked cool. I was pretty excited, I wasn't sure how he'd feel about it.

That night I also started working on a new puzzle... one from the Tulip Festival up in Washington... wherever that tulip festival is. It's proving to be a bit of a challenge, but I'll post a picture when I get it done, which will definitely be before our trip to Dallas on Thursday!

Pumpkin

This is my pumpkin. When I first got called to Activity Days Leader I started looking around online for craft ideas for all the holidays that are coming up. I found this pumpkin and knew I had to make it. It's super simple, which makes it even better for a group of youngish girls. A square of fabric - mine is a 19 inch square; a roll of toilet paper (I used a double roll of toilet paper, just the cheapest brand at the grocery store for activity days, mine is a good costco roll), and a little brown paper (i used a grocery bag we had gotten). This is kind of a crummy picture, I just used my phone, but here is my pumpkin! I was pretty excited about the fabric that I found. I wanted something that worked for Halloween, but also could stay out during the rest of fall, and I found this. I also have a little left over, so now I get to come up with something else fun to do!

Sometimes...

... I do silly things. Like offer pieces of information that I will quickly regret. Yeah, I play the piano. I know how to play the flute and the oboe too! Sounds harmless... but when speaking to the ward music chair person, it is an invitation to ask you to play sometime soon in Sacrament Meeting and become part of the Christmas program. Unfortunately for her (and most definitely fortunately for me) my flute and oboe don't live with me, they live in a closet at my parents house, so I won't be able to whip those bad boys out anytime soon to play something. And that piano solo I played when I was 15 or 16, and then played again at two different wards at BYU, yeah, I can still play it pretty well. I'd be willing to play a piano solo in Sacrament Meeting. But after that piece, I don't have anything else anywhere NEAR ready to perform.

... I see silly things. Like this hippo.

I went to the zoo once (or a few times) recently and this hippo came right up next to the glass and just stared (or is it starred?) at us. I love hippos and couldn't wait to take a few pictures of it. I think this one is kind of really hilarious. Really this hippo is why I wanted to blog today, but then I read a blog post from someone else and it reminded me of the paragraph that I started with.

... I read. A lot actually. This year I've read something like 60 books. My favorites have probably been all of The Ranger's Apprentice books by John Flanagan. I thought of my oldest nephews when I started reading them and then later found out that they had read them and liked them as well! They're really good books. Other cool books I've read recently:
-Daughters in my Kingdom (The new book about Relief Society)
-Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon (it doesn't come out til November, and it is a TOTALLY different version of Cinderella. and I loved it.)
-The Help. (I don't think it needs much to explain it, but if you haven't read it, do.)
-Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25 by Richard Paul Evan. so different than anything I'd read by him, but I thought it was way cool
-Look Again by Lisa Scottoline. I loved it, but some of the reviews I read said that it's better if you don't have kids, otherwise it could make you pretty darn sad
-The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. LOVED it.
-Matched by Ally Condie. I don't even know what to say about this one. I loved it. It's sequel comes out in November, and I can't wait for it.

That's a pretty decent list of what I've been reading.

Sometimes I eat delicious dinners, and that's what I need to go do right now. I've got  Southwest Stuffed Bell Peppers waiting for me. YUM!

Brrrrrrr

It's only like 74 degrees outside right now, and it's 76 inside my house. Even with sweats on I am FREEZING! What has happened to me? I grew up in the northwest where it hardly ever got near 76 degrees and I don't feel like i was freezing all the time up there! Right now I don't know what I would do without my Chris's sweats, a blanket and some hot chocolate! If this is a sign that our winter may actually get kind of cold... then I'm concerned.

Sometimes... I ramble.

Sometimes I have to set rules for myself. Like this kind of rule:

Don't even think about using any electronics before you have exercised and read your scriptures. The exception is... if someone texts me I can respond. Really this rule is me telling myself not to get on facebook, pinterest, the byu 100 hour board, blogs, or my email until I've exercised and read my scriptures.

In a couple of days I'll have all of the materials for my two classes that I'm starting. Right now I have the textbooks, but not the actual classes. Once those come, I add another rule... No reading (except scriptures and textbooks) until I've done that days work for my classes. Once I have the materials and can see how much work each lesson will take I will draw out a plan so that I can finish the classes with plenty of time, and then I'll stick to that plan. This will be a challenge. Ever since I finished my last class I've probably read like 15 books. It's kind of a beautiful thing. I love books. This past week I've read two complete books. I'm also pretty close to finishing two others. And I have two more books from the library that I haven't started. I also have two books that are in transit to my library for me that I put on hold a while back. And then I have a stack of books that I've won over the last few months that I should read before I donate some of them to my library. These books should provide good motivation to keep up with my schoolwork.

Also: I still haven't seen any ants alive in our house since the bug guy came. I am still finding more and more dead ants in my bathroom. I'd rather they be in the bathroom and dead than in my kitchen cupboards very much alive.

And... I'm kind of in love with pumpkin right now. Pumpkin cookies. Pumpkin muffins (more like cupcakes though). Pumpkin bread. I found a recipe for pumpkin soup that is screaming my name. It just feels like pumpkin time.

And those are my thoughts. Just in case you were wondering. And I know some of you were. :)

Rain

It rained. The best rain I have experienced in Texas. It started raining around the time I went to bed last night, and it was still raining when I woke up. It was raining when we left for church, and sprinkling as we left church. In the past when it has rained here it has lasted 10-15 minutes tops. We got some freaking awesome rain. We've needed rain, so it was nice to get it... but I was more excited about the rain because it reminded me of home.