I Love Christmas!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a WONDERFUL Christmas weekend. :) Here are some snipets from mine...


1. Yes, I'm in my twenties and got a doll for Christmas. But this doll has a story behind it. My mom had dolls like this when my older sister and I were really young. We both loved them so much, but my mom sold them when we built our home. We've talked about them ever since, but didn't know what kind they were. So my mom surprised us this year by finding out what they were and ordering one for my sister and one for myself. :)
2. My dad also got a toy for Christmas. haha! He received a remote control helicopter. He was so excited! Five minutes into playing with it and it was already up a tree. haha!
3. Fun socks by the tree.
4. I made Christmas sugar cookies the other day! Want the recipe? You can find it on my guest post HERE! It's the best recipe in the world. :)
5. The shadows of my sister, mom, and I walking home from church.
6. Those would be Juicy Moon Boots... :P
7. More fun socks!
8. Watched lots of Christmas movies this weekend! So fun!
9. These may just be the biggest grapes in the world!

Remember how on my Christmas Wish List I said I wanted a new bag/purse?? Guess what I got?! And it's even better than the ones I had pinned! My sister (and miss angela) is amazing!

I wanted to have a different way of saving my Christmas memories this year. So I took videos here and had my sister take videos of her little family in Illinois. Now it looks like we were together this Christmas. :)

song- I Love Christmas by The Girls With Glasses

Now everyone tell me, please-

1. what was your favorite part of your Christmas weekend??

2. What was the favorite item you received??

3. What was the favorite item you gave??

My answers-

1. My favorite part was seeing my family be completely happy Christmas morning, even though it was a much smaller Christmas than years past.

2. I have two- the doll because it's sentimental and the purse because it's exactly what I wanted.

3. My favorite item I gave would be taking my sister to see The Nutcracker (post HERE). She is also in her twenties and had never seen it!!

Have a great Tuesday everyone!

P.S. the WINNERS of the Christmas Giveaway Extravaganza were posted yesterday!!

Thanksgiving-ness

How was everyone's Thanksgiving?! Or- How was everyone's Thursday?! :D I had a great Thanksgiving, it was a little different this year. Usually we get all dressed up, go see a movie, come home and eat dinner, then lounge on the couch. But there were no movies we wanted to see this year (my dad wasn't really excited about Breaking Dawn... Shocking?), and it was just my sister, mom, dad, grandma, uncle, and myself. (we usually have more people) So instead- my dad and I took the 4wheeler up into the hills before our early dinner. It was a lovely morning/afternoon in the mountains. My kinda day. :)


It was crisp and overcast. You could feel the temperature drop as we climbed.
(yes, that's a frozen pond)


I can't get enough of these mountains.


We also saw lots of wildlife! Now, I KNOW these pictures are TERRIBLE. But I had to zoom a lot. And my camera only has a 10x zoom before it starts loosing quality... Plus these animals would have ran if we had gotten any closer. So bad photos it is...
Wild Turkeys (how appropriate right?!) and mountain goats. Also some deer, but I didn't take any pics. I see them all the time.


If you look closely you can see the mountain goats to the side of me. 3 white dots. One is up higher and the other two are down lower.



Here's my dad! Gotta love his puffy orange coat. At least it kept us safe and easily spotted by those families who were in the hills practicing their shooting...


Here's a 360 degree collage from where we stopped. It's crazy how different Utah is. On the East we have the beautiful lush mountains and on the West we have the vast dry deserts.


Then we headed home and had our Thanksgiving feast! Mmmmmmmm....

Everything was made from scratch. My mom and grandma are awesome. She was practically finished by the time I'd offered to help. I need to be better at that. She starts the night before so it's not so hard the next day.

Sweet Potatoes with roasted Marshmallows
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
Homemade Rolls
Jello
Homemade and homegrown Grape Juice
Turkey (duh!)
oh it was dellliiiiiissssssshhhh....


There was/is pie. But I didn't even think to take a pic. I don't like pie, so I just had second dinner... :/ haha! (don't judge me too much- our first dinner was really like lunch... haha!)

I'd love to hear how your Thanksgiving/ Thursday was! Please, do tell! :)

Happy SHOOOOPPPPIIIING!
Might as well enter the Poshlocket Giveaway while you're here! :)

Pictures of the Week

1. The necklace/ headband I did for THIS guest post

2. A fox print shirt I wore today- foxes are my favorite remember? (and lions)

3. The BEST cupcake in the world. I don't care how good you think your neighborhood cupcake shop is. This is better.

4. The animal cracker that we can't identify. What animal do you think it is??? Your opinion matters greatly. Oh, and it's not a cat, bear, or lion. There are others that are clearly those.

5. Little boy rue asleep on my computer desk while I work. Aw!

Waffles and Shoes

Our food has run low... very low. I will be living off of animal crackers (yes I am in my twenties and they're still a favorite... so what?? Big bag for $1.50? Yes please!), I have a few oranges and apples left, plus some frozen veggies. Why is our food supply so low? Well, that's because I leave to Alaska for a month and I really don't want to buy food that I might not eat. So I'm just going to deal for the next few days.

But when Sunday morning came and I had an urge to cook, I had to be creative. What did I come up with? I give you-

Chocolate Waffles with Cream Cheese Syrup...er Melted Frosting. Wow. Could there be a more unhealthy breakfast? (the answer is yes actually) I only had part of one (be proud), so I didn't feel too guilty.

For the waffles I just added cocoa powder and vanilla extract to your basic waffle mix. Then for the syrup/ frosting I just mixed together cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and soy milk. Then I heated the syrup/ frosting over the stove until it was runny.

I promise I'm generally a healthy person... I had no food or choice! I had to make them!

In other news:

As I mentioned I am about to head up to Alaska. But I really didn't have any shoes that would work. Heels and Alaska DO NOT mix. No one wears them and the weather is not sunny too often. So this week I purchased the pair of the Stripe TOMS I had been wanting as well as the Steve Madden Tsunami Rain Boots I'd been eyeing! I am ready! (minus all that packing business)

And sorry about the giveaway winners... They'll be posted soon! Promise!

Berries and Almonds

For Sunday dinner I wanted to copy a favorite salad of mine from one of my favorite restaurants. But one of the best parts about that salad is that it has cinnamon roasted almonds. I had bought almonds for the salad and decided- why not just make my own cinnamon roasted almonds??

So I did!

It's super duper easy- and yummy of course! You should try it!

For the cinnamon roasted almonds you'll need:

- 1 cup raw and unsalted almonds (mine were pre-sliced)

- 1 egg white

- 1 tbsp water

- 1/4 cup sugar

- 1/4 cup brown sugar

- 1 tbsp cinnamon

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

First you'll whip your egg white and water until fluffy. Next you'll add all ingredients EXCEPT your almonds. Mix well. Then just dump your almonds into the bowl and coat well. Heavily grease a jelly roll pan and spread almonds out flat. Then bake at 250 for 1 hour- tossing the almonds half way through the hour. Cool and enjoy!

Then for the salad you'll need some berries. I used black berries, strawberries, and blue berries. (I would have bought raspberries but couldn't find any)

Chop up the strawberries and cinnamon roasted almons. Then place the berries and almonds on a bed of spinach. Toss then top with your favorite dressing (poppyseed or berry vinaigrette's taste best).

YU-U-MY!

Look at that! You just got a double recipe!

Cracker or Cookie?

Today I made ritz... treats... I'm not sure what they're called... But I'm sure they're YUMMY!

My sister taught me this easy peesy recipe while I was living with her and her kids in AK. They remind me of days/ nights hudled and sealed in her kids room...

Ok, that sounds wierd... We were actually in the middle of a volcano eruption. We had been told to seal up all air vents, doorways, and windows. Gather in one room with supplies (our supply of choice- Ritz Treats, as I've just named them), and don't come out until the ash has settled. Good times... good times...

ANYWAY...

Like I said, today I made these delicious treats. Now I'll teach you. :)

You'll need Ritz Crackers, Peanut Butter, and White Chocolate Chips. That's it!

First step is to spread peanut butter between two Ritz Crackers. Don't overdo it or things will get messy. Plus it's not as good. Trust me, been there...

So now you should have however many little P.B. Ritz Sandwiches.

Next step is to melt the white chocolate. You'll need about one bag of white chocolate chips per sleeve of ritz. Make sense?

Only set the stove on LOOOOW. It'll melt just as quick and won't burn (again... been there. Lets see how many ways I've botched up this "easy peesy" recipe...). If you've added too much peanut butter it'll melt really quickly and mix in with the white chocolate- not bad, but not pretty. (what's that? Mistake number 3 in a 3 step recipe??)

Last, you completely coat each Ritz sandwich in the melted white chocolate. Let them cool and harden (they're better that way... yup, been there too) then ENJOOOOOY!

Unfortunately, mine don't come out as perfectly coated and smooth like my sisters do... Live and learn.

So now after reading all of my mistakes this recipe is FOOL PROOF! You're welcome. :)

Still need to enter the giveaway??

CLICK HERE NOW!

You don't want to miss out do you?!

Spring Is In The Air

The weather here (for now) is finally acting like SPRIIIIIING!!! It's practically Summer in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, I know. But we're a little late with things like that here.

Anyways, all day as I was enjoying the wonderful weather and warm sunshine THIS song was repeating itself through my head. Did I enjoy it? Uuuuuuuuuuuum... It's not my FAVORITE song... It made me giggle a lot though. haha! I grew up watching these lovely Hallmark cartoons (and re-creating them with my friends in home movies... no joke!). Any of you ever see these videos?

To continue my Spring day I had a lovely spring salad and a smoothie for dinner. This smoothie is so healthy, easy, and delicious it's ridiculous!

To start you will need to have some bananas prepped and frozen. Don't freeze them with the peel on, it's really hard to get it off. Best way I've found to do it is to peel them then place them in a container. No freezer burn, no sticking to anything, and no sawing to get past the peel.

Once your bananas are frozen (I put mine in the freezer before work today and they were frozen by the time I got home), place one banana in a blender with 1/2 cup of milk for one to two servings. DONE!!! If you want to make it extra tasty you can add practicaly ANYTHING else to this recipe. I added some freshly cut pineapple to it today and it was delicious! I've also added chocolate or strawberries in the past. YUM! It also works well with Soy Milk instead of regular.

The frozen banana makes the smoothie thick and creamy so there's no need to add ice cream or yogurt. (unless you want to!) If it's a little runny just add some ice and/or low fat yogurt to thicken it up.

OH!! You're still wondering about that surprise aren't you??? Weeeeeeeellll... It's still not ready to be revealed! REALLY soon though!!