Messes

Recently we've been on a "try lots of new recipes" kick. Which is awesome, btw. I am falling in love with Our Best Bites for sure. They are where I got my Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, our new favorite stuffed pepper recipe, and the delicious mango quinoa salad recipe. Today they posted a recipe for strawberries & chocolate nachos that I REALLY want to try. I have loved everything that I have ever tried from them and really really want to get their cookbook that came out earlier this year (or was it late last year, I don't remember).

I stumbled upon something called a blog-hop giveaway from a bunch of blogs that write book reviews. The whole deal is that there are like 276 blogs that partnered up and each blog is doing a giveaway- either a book (or a few books) or amazon/borders/barnes & noble gift cards. I went through a TON of the websites and entered probably 70 or 80 (or maybe it was closer to 120, I don't know...) of the giveaways and really hope that tomorrow morning I get an email or several saying that I won something! I would absolutely love to win a few of the Amazon gift cards--I would definitely start using them to buy the Our Best Bites cookbook.

I just remembered that the whole reason I sat down to blog wasn't to blog about the giveaways I've entered or how much I love Our Best Bites and want their cookbook. The point was that as we've been trying new recipes I find myself making more of a mess in the kitchen. Turns out that a lot of our recipes before this new part of my life were one pot dinners or maybe two pots and a cutting board... but now it seems like I've always got a cutting board, a knife or two, several pots, mixing bowls, serving bowls (used to just serve things straight out of the pans, but now that the food looks prettier I want to serve it prettier), and then the dishes that we eat out of/with. Not to mention the overwhelming amount of either brownies or ice cream or brownies AND ice cream that we've been eating recently that just adds more dishes. Then.. I find myself not doing the dishes until the next morning. This morning I woke up to find my 12" skillet, my large and medium saucepans, the colander, my huge cutting board and about a bajillion other dishes just sitting on my counter, exactly where I left them last night.

I think I have to start forcing myself to clean up before I go to sleep, it makes me really tired just looking at the mess that I get to clean up today. But it helps knowing that Chris has to work all night and I'm eating leftovers for dinner, so I don't need anything to be cleaned up right away and I also won't make a big mess making my dinner tonight. It's always nice when the kitchen can stay clean for a while.

And those are my feelings about Our Best Bites (which in case you can't tell, I LOVE!), trying new recipes, eating tastier food, and my hatred of doing the dishes.

Toes

This is a not so exciting post because it won't have any pictures, but maybe you'll appreciate that after you read the story I'm going to tell in the post. Toes are definitely something I've taken for granted. Toe nails, even more so. Do you know how much more sensitive your toe is when there is no nail covering it up? This week I have learned that.

I lost a little over half of my big toe nail on my left foot this week. We had just bought a new bookcase and were bringing the box into our apartment when the box landed right on my big toe. It cracked my nail in half, but the nail was still holding on a little. It didn't take much effort to get it detached (although I didn't do the dirty work, I made Chris because I was super nervous and scared and didn't want to see my toe) but it sure hurt when he cleaned it and then we bandaided it up. Princess bandaids are cool, let me tell you! Now it doesn't hurt AS much but it doesn't look very pretty. I definitely understand now that toe nails are awesome and they do serve a purpose, and I hope that once my nail grows back I'll be able to go get a pedicure to celebrate!

Meatless Meals

A couple months ago (okay, several months ago) we had a Relief Society Activity where people gave tips for meal planning,, freezer meals, couponing, and cooking for 2. It was a pretty fabulous activity where I heard several great tips. My friend Marissa was one of the people who shared tips about meal planning and cooking for 2. One of the things that she mentioned was that at their house they eat meatless meals 3-4 times a week. It can be a great way to save some money (meat is expensive!), but it also works with the Word of Wisdom which teaches to eat meat sparingly. Ever since then I've wanted to try to incorporate more meatless dishes into our repertoire of dishes. Since then I think I have added 1- homemade tomato soup. Before that I think we really only had one to begin with and that was my manicotti. This week I was browsing food blogs (which I am kind of obsessed with) and I found two more recipes. I showed the recipes and the accompanying pictures to Chris and he thought they both sounded excellent, so next week we will be trying Southwest Stuffed Bell Peppers and Mango Quinoa Salad. We are both especially excited for the Mango Quinoa Salad. We've had some stuffed bell peppers before but they insisted that you use green peppers (and this recipe specifically tells you not to use green ones) and they used meat. We're excited to try these two dishes.

My question for you my friends in blogger land: do you have a good meatless dish that we need to give a shot? If so, recipes or links to them if they are online would be much appreciated!

Harry Potter!

A few months ago it was almost time for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 to be released in the theaters. We started watching one Harry Potter each Sunday leading up to it. Well my friends, it's that time again. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is coming July 15th so last Sunday was the beginning of our Harry Potter marathon!

Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend has been EXCELLENT! Chris has been really stressed lately with work, a bug came up in some of the coding he was working on and nobody could figure out what was going on. Anywho, he was ready for an extra day off.

Friday night we went to the temple and then did our grocery shopping.

Saturday we woke up early, went to a few furniture stores... we're looking for a bookcase, dresser and nightstands. None of these things are urgent, we just figured that looking during a holiday weekend could be a good time to find something great at a great price. We ended up finding a bookcase we like at Target, which hopefully means it will be there in a while still. Then we went and saw Kung Fu Panda 2. A few weeks ago we watched a friends kids and they insisted we take some free movie tickets that they had gotten from work. The deal was 2 movie tickets and a $10 certificate that could either be used at concessions or to buy tickets. We went for the concessions because we also had another coupon- Regal Cinemas offers something called a Zap Pack which is a little box with a small soda, fruit snacks and popcorn. I don't know how much they normally are but we found some coupons for only $2, so we each got a zap pack, then we got a hot dog and some junior mints. I think we ended up paying $1.75, it was a fantastic deal. Also, the movie was incredibly awesome. Chris immediately said "this is my new favorite animated movie!" I can't quite say that, I LOVE all of the Toy Story movies, but Kung Fu Panda 2 was definitely an excellent movie. After the movie we headed to the mall and hit up Banana Republic. For Memorial Day Weekend they hand a coupon out to everyone who walks in the store. This time the coupons were either 25%, 30% or 50% off your total purchase, including sale items. Chris got a 50% off coupon, so he picked out a few shirts for work and I scored a cute top and some awesome shorts, both of which were already on sale! We pretty much only buy stuff there when we get a 50% off coupon, then the stuff there is actually affordable!

Sunday was pretty normal.

This morning we woke up early and got ready for a day of fun at Six Flags (big surprise, right?)! We got there before it opened and got on a few rides without much of a wait. We decided today was the day to hit up the rides that you get wet on and then go to the water park. I was SOAKED before we got to the water park, but it was alright because I had my swimsuit on under my shorts and shirt! It was a perfect day at Six Flags, there weren't a million school buses with middle school band, choir and orchestra trips so the lines weren't too bad at all. We got home, made some burgers on our George Foreman and are now enjoying a James Bond movie on Netflix. My feet hurt (my sandals gave me a blister) from walking around the water park barefoot-next time I'll wear flip flops and just hold them when I go down the rides, I won't be walking around that water park barefoot again.

We plan on ending the night with some White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle ice cream. It is as good as it sounds, better actually. That was our splurge at the grocery store this weekend, and definitely worth it!

Happy Memorial Day everybody!

Pictures

On Sunday our lesson in Primary was about how Heavenly Father will help us when we are being obedient. A huge part of the lesson was the story of Nephi being commanded to build a boat. As such, we had each of the kids draw a picture of what they thought the boat may have looked like. Afterwards, one of the girls asked if I would take her picture home and put it on our fridge and I said yes. Then all 4 other kids offered their pictures for our fridge as well. They almost all had drawn other things on the back of their pictures and some specified which side was supposed to show.

Here we have our fridge with all the pictures + a wedding announcement and mom's graduation announcement and a photo from a Christmas card. I don't know who they are...

The kid who drew this picture made sure I knew that in the left corner was the sun and he pointed out the fish. He also wanted me to make sure I knew that some of the blue was water and part of the blue was the sky. He was a little concerned that I wouldn't be able to tell which was which, but I definitely could tell a difference.

This kid doesn't like drawing things that he has never drawn before (for fear of not being good at it) so he didn't want to draw a boat. Instead he drew Nephi. I told him that if he wasn't going to draw a boat then he had to use words and tell me what he was drawing. I cut his down to put it up on the fridge because it would fit better that way.

This picture kind of reminds me of the Fisher Price Noah's Ark. I'm guessing her family has one, but also it was just pretty awesome. I love the clouds in the sky!

It was almost like pulling teeth to get this kid to cooperate so I was pretty pleased with how his turned out.

This is the backside of the above boat. He really wanted to draw a Corvette instead, but waited until after he drew his boat knowing that he'd get in trouble for not being obedient, that meaning that he wouldn't get cookies with the rest of the class next week. I like the detail in his picture, he did a good job.

The kid who started the whole giving us their picture thing wanted me to post the picture of her face on my fridge not her picture of the boat, so I didn't show a picture of her boat here. I liked her picture of her face too, she's a fun kid.

After church we found out that we won't be teaching this class anymore (I have to be in Relief Society now because I'm the only person that plays the piano besides the actual pianist and she doesn't always make it there) which is really disappointing. We've LOVED teaching this class, even though it started off a bit rocky. I feel bad for the kids, they're likely going to get another sub for a few mores weeks until a real teacher can be called to teach them which means they'll struggle getting used to someone else right after they've finally gotten used to how we work and learning that there really are consequences to their actions. There is nothing like watching the rest of your class eat a cookie because they were being good and following the rules.

Post the 400th.

This is my 400th post. That's kind of crazy. I started my blog in 2006 while I was still in High School and mostly because I needed a way to fill my 8 hour work day on Saturdays. It's taken me a long time to get to 400. Hopefully it doesn't take me another 4.5 years to get to 800 posts.

Last weekend we decided it was time to take our red car (that's what we call it) to the car wash. It has been desperately needing it for several months but for some reason the thought of me driving the car through the car wash by myself terrified me, so I waited til Chris would go, which meant he would drive. We took advantage of the carwash around the corner from us that has free vacuums, so the car got nice and clean. We also took it to HEB to fill the tires up with air, they all needed a lot of it. While we were there we picked up some windshield wiper fluid and filled both cars up with that.

After taking car of the cars we decided it was time to go to Six Flags again! We went specifically to ride this ride, we waited in line for 45 minutes for it. It was the first time we've been able to ride it this season. We also had to go to ride this one. We LOVE the Scream! Six Flags is currently only open on Saturday and Sunday because all the kids are still in school, but we are definitely taking advantage of our season passes. We can't wait til it is open more hours when we can go after Chris gets off work and then see the firework show they do each night. I haven't gotten to see them before so I'm really excited! Also, two weekends ago the water park at Six Flags opened and we can't wait for the next good weather Saturday so that we can go play there too! Right now this coming Saturday is supposed to have a 40% chance of rain as well as some thunder storms, so a trip to Six Flags is not in the works this weekend :(

Stuff.

Hulu plus has Mr. Bean on it. I am so incredibly excited, you have no idea! Since Chris and I are officially caught up with House (meaning that in the last 9 months I have seen every episode of House that has ever aired) I think we may have to start watching Mr. Bean.

Also, in the last two days I have submitted two lessons for my class and worked on some writing assignments. I can see the end of this class (and then the start of the next one) coming!

And with those things said, I am way close to finishing one more of my 101 goals, and by watching all of House that is 1 more goal I can cross off! Woot woot!

Goals

So far in 2011 I've really been pushing myself to work on my 101 in 1001 goals list. It's been 182 days since I started my project and I have 52 of the goals completely done. I have a ton of goals that are in progress as well! I've read 20 of my 101 books. I've watched 20 of my 26 movies starting with different letters of the alphabet. So far I haven't missed a month of going to the temple, doing my visiting teaching, putting a note in Chris's lunch, or taking a bubble bath. I've ended up making cheesecake twice. I've made rolls a couple of times as well! It's been exciting to learn how to do new things and then see how they become part of our regular routine!

If you want to see my list, here is the website with it! You can see what I've been up to!

Also, I'm taking suggestions on books. I have 80 left to read for this project and I don't want to pick all my books at random at the library.

Also, for my movies I'm down to the letters: F,J,K,X,Y and Z. I know that for X I'm going to watch X-Men. For k I'm hoping to see Kung Fu Panda 2 when it comes out later this month. For "F" I'm debating between Food Inc, Food Matters and Fat Head. I'll probably end up watching all three of them but just counting whichever one I watch first :)

Now that we're done with the excitement of food poisoning, life has finally gotten back to normal. Our apartment is clean again and hopefully all the nasty germs are gone!

culturefest

every spring, USAA has a big party. it's kind of like a company picnic, but way better. in the past it has been referred to as "springfest" but last weekend it was called culturefest.. a huge chunk of the campus was set up as different countries. each country had a stage with dancing and music from that country. each country also had booths for food. we ate a bean and cheese chalupa, a churro, a chicken taco, a bbq sandwich, some roasted corn, jambalaya, pizza, italian sausage on a stick and i think that might be it. it was so much fun to go walk around and see all the people in their dance costumes too! while we were there we met up with our friend Clint and his three boys. Clint is our EQP, and his wife was out of town so we helped him keep track of his kids and then afterwards we went over to his house where i watched How to Train Your Dragon with the boys while Chris & Clint set some things up on Clint's new macbook.

we had a pretty sweet weekend, which was nice, because the beginning of this week turned out to be full of nastiness. we both woke up right around 4am monday morning with an extreme need to vomit. as i told my mom, you know it's true love when you throw up together. one of us into the toilet, the other into the trash can in our teeny bathroom. we were better on tuesday but took it really slow before doing too much. i'm still trying to catch up on the laundry and cleaning that i missed out on monday and tuesday. hooray for being sick!