Christmas Ships Come Sailing In

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas season! One of my favorite activities was going down to the river to watch the Christmas Ships with my nieces and nephew. I really missed the Christmas Ships last year. Going to see them has been a tradition ever since I can remember, and somehow, the Christmas season just doesn't seem complete without them.

(L-R Pixie, Myself, Bookworm, Noodle and Roadrunner in front)

It was a cold, cold, cold night- especially down at the river. We bundled up and played school-yard games to stay warm. Among the games, we played Follow the Leader and Red Light, Green Light. According to my nieces and nephew, I learned the wrong way to play Red Light, Green Light! For all they know, they could be playing the game wrong!

After what seemed like a frozen forever, the ships finally came downriver. They were so beautiful and were definitely worth the wait. Here are the few pictures that turned out not too blurry. Combine night with moving lights and you just have a picture nightmare! I never can seem to use the correct setting on my camera! Does anyone else have this problem?

That last one is a fire engine complete with a loud siren! It was so fun to shout "Merry Christmas" to the ships and wave as they went by. Some of the ships even had Christmas songs playing for us to enjoy!

I absolutely love Christmas!

Blog Parties

Man, it sure has been a while since my last post. I blame it on... um, life. Yes, life is the culprit! I've been trucking along on my quilt project despite a misbehaving sewing machine. Hopefully, I will have all the blocks finished this week. I also successfully made gifts for my nieces and a friend at my ward Super Saturday.

Since I can't post pictures of my quilt till after Christmas, I will share one of my favorite hobbies: reading blogs! It is amazing what a person can find in all the blogs out there! There are a lot of food blogs, quilting blogs, sewing blogs, crafting blogs... The list can go on forever!! I just love, love, love this wonderful resource at my fingertips. I'll share a few of my favorite blogs!

My favorite food blog is Our Best Bites! The two ladies have a ton of creative recipes like fudge cupcakes and personal pies in a jar! How cool is that? Spend some time on their site, and you will be hooked just like me! I love the detailed tutorials and directions for their recipes. I plan on making a sugar scrub for my visiting teaching ladies that I found from this site!

A craft blog that I am amazed by is A Little of This... A Little of That. This blog has some great DIY projects like a Christmas Countdown that I love! She also made some really neat Halloween place mats.

If those aren't enough for you, I discovered this blog today that what I will call the encyclopedia of free print-ables! Basically, you can find cute and crafty ideas such as a Christmas advent calendar and gift tags made by the blog's creator or you can find links to other projects on different blogs. It's amazing what she has collected!

These are just the tip of the iceberg to what you can find on these blogs and others. Technology is so amazing!

Happy Holidays!

Quilting Update

I am happy to report that I finished cutting out all the fabric for my current quilt! Four days and five movies later, I now am the owner of 585 squares!

 I've discovered I prefer movies as background noise as opposed to music. I just haven't found any good "cutting fabric" music.

Let the sewing begin (after making a few triangles)!!!

An Aunt-filled Weekend

I had a fun weekend with my niece, Bookworm, and her brother, Roadrunner!

Friday, I went to a football game with Bookworm. It was SO much fun! I was dancing along to the band, being silly and enjoying myself! It helped the spirits when our team ended the first quarter with a score of 27 to 0. By the half, we were up 42 to 3. Our team won by a landslide: 56 to 3. It was a great game!

After spending four years' worth of Friday nights at high school football games with the band, I picked up a tradition of having a candy bar during the third quarter. If you really want to know how this tradition started, you can ask me. That's a different story. Anyway, I treated our little group to candy, being nice to the boys and treating them too! Bookworm decided to be nice to the boys. Eh, they were worth the three dollars! Bookworm and I took a few pictures, but I can't find my cord to download the pictures to my computer. You'll have to be patient with me on that one.

Top three favorite moments for Friday:

3. Dancing to the Band music, causing Bookworm to laugh at me!

2. Discussing the idea of a Pep Orchestra and the sports it would support!

1. Driving Bookworm home and hearing that I am the best aunt! You can't top that!

Saturday, Roadrunner and I spent the afternoon together. We were going to go to a pumpkin patch, but the entrance fee was more than I had in my wallet, so we did the only sane thing to do: go to WinCo for pumpkins! We picked out four little pumpkins about the size of a baseball and two big pumpkins about ten pounds each. I was impressed! Roadrunner climbed into the cart and "steered" us around the store. (I was the "rear-wheel-drive" and the motor.)

After that, we headed to the park to meet some ladies I know. 

There was a really cool ring that spun around. We had fun on that one. Roadrunner stood on it while it went around, keeping his balance quite nicely. I was not nearly that brave; I almost lost my balance just sitting! Take a look.

I did all the work of going up hill with these boys. My legs got quite the workout by the time I was done!

Top Three Favorites from Saturday:

3. Running to the back of the parking lot pushing the cart as a "race car", then screeching to a halt just prior to hitting the car. Roadrunner's comment: "Wow, those brakes worked better than expected!"

2. Roadrunner folding himself in half with his feet sticking up in the air for luck as we drove over the railroad tracks.

1. Learning that Roadrunner turned down a play date to hang out with me!

I love my family!

Tying on the Apron Strings

I was working on a quilt all day on Saturday. As much as I love making quilts, they just take forever to be completed! I was in desperate need to create a small project that could be finished quickly. I remembered an apron tutorial I found online here.

After one trip to the fabric store, two Disney movies, three seams picked out, four improvisations, five pin pricks, six separate fabrics and seven hours of working, I finally had my girlie-girl apron! It really was fun to make and turned out fantastic!

Check out all the colors in this apron!

I just LOVE all the ruffles! I feel so feminine and like a little girl when I wear this apron. I don't think I will wear this when baking, but I could probably wear this every day! It's one of those pieces that makes me happy by just wearing it!

Since I am on the subject of aprons, I want to share another apron I made a few months ago for a friend's birthday. This next apron was super easy to make. The hardest part was threading the ribbon through the holes.

This is me modeling the apron before mailing it to my friend.

This is the picture my friend sent to me with a big "I love this!" Check out those pretty details!

I love, love, love sewing and turning an idea into a beautiful piece of artwork!

My Apple Dumpling Gang

We had a family reunion last month where, for the first time in a while, all of my immediate family was together.

My parents with my brothers and myself

My parents with my oldest brother and his family

My parents with my second brother and his family

Since all nine of my nieces and nephews were together, I couldn't pass up the chance to take a picture with them. 

I love these kids!

Summer Craziness

That is my excuse for not updating my blog in the last month. I had a few crazy weeks full of everything from weddings to family visits to a complete computer overhaul... Oh and a few trips here and there. So, you can see that I was probably busier than the bumblebees around our lavender plant! As busy as I was, it was a grand summer filled with a lot of memories and fun. I haven't loaded all of my pictures onto my computer yet, so hopefully I'll have some good ones up in the next few days. We'll see how this weekend goes since this weekend is packed as well. Speaking of packed, (Honestly, there was no planned transition there.) I'm moving about six miles up the freeway next week. I am hoping this weekend will let me get some packing done between visiting with out of town friends, a jewelry show and a wedding reception. Wish me luck!

To tide you over, here are a few pictures from my trip to Seaside, OR.

Lessons in Baking

If you have paid attention to my blog at all, you know that I love L-O-V-E love baking! This summer has been no exception in my baking, although I've had to pick and choose when I bake due to the heat of summer. Here are a few things I have learned in my experiments and pictures of why I learned these lessons.

1) Be sure to check the oven before preheating.

So much for the left over corn bread!

2) Always measure butter correctly.

I'll just say that these "cookies" were not presentable for the party that night. I ended up making another batch with the correct amount of butter.

3) There are baking times for a reason!

These are my experimental peanut butter & chocolate brownies that I took out of the oven too early, causing the middle to be gooey, gooey, gooey.

4) Chocolate Sauce makes desserts look pretty.

Now, doesn't that look pretty? It certainly was before I ate it! Yum!

While I was visiting with my grandpa tonight, I learned that his mother loved to bake. I'm beginning to think baking is in my blood! Or it could have something to do with the name she and I share. Perhaps her love of baking was passed to me when I received her name! Regardless of where my love of baking came from, I am determined to embrace and develop my relationship with baking!

Star Light, Star Bright

Here are just a few pictures from the Starlight Parade!

Our ticket into the VIP seating

Our reserved seating!

Aren't these neat hats? Pixie was very reluctant to put this on. She only did to humor me.

Noodle cradling all our glowing flowers.

Picture of a Picture-taker (Pixie); a family classic!

The VW shirts were my favorite costume!

Blue one!

The Alaska Airlines float which my sister-in-law was aboard

My sister-in-law greeting people

A set of glowing Drum Majors

A parade is complete when there are at least four stormtroopers around.

The wonderful signal to the end of the parade: the clean-up crew!

Like I said, these are just a few pictures from that parade! We had a lot of fun. My nieces and I are determined to be in the Costume 5K Run next year that starts off the parade. They keep thinking of costumes for us to wear!

Stay tuned for more pictures from the wonderful month of June!

Citizen of Busytown

I seem to be averaging one post a month this year. I'll have to change that soon.

This month has been a whirlwind of weekend activities! All my weekends have had some kind of event. The first Saturday, I attended the Starlight Parade with my nieces and nephew. What an amazing time we had! Because of their mom, we had the opportunity to sit in reserved seating for the parade. The Starlight Parade is perhaps my all-time favorite parade because all the floats have lights. Even the bands had glow sticks on their uniforms and even on some instruments! We took a lot of pictures- practically every float except of the ones we missed as we ran down the street to keep listening to a band- and shared a lot of laughter!

The second Saturday was the Grand Floral Parade, and I was privileged (once again thanks to my sister-in-law) to sit in the Colosseum for the parade. Here's a fact I bet you didn't know. The Portland Grand Floral Parade is one of the only parades in the world to go through a building! It was a wonderful parade and a beautiful day. This year the Rose Festival was lucky to have such great weather for both big parades!

Last Friday was the bridal shower I threw for a good friend of mine. The shower was quite a success I am happy to report! The food was worth the lack of sleep for making it! However, I must say that my favorite part of the food display was the amazing center piece. The shower's theme was Kitchen and Recipes. For the center piece, I purchased a small colander and a bunch of chrysanthemums. We placed a bowl of water underneath the overturned colander and poked the flowers through the holes! I was so delighted that it turned out so beautifully. As the shower was wrapping up, the bride remarked to me that it was everything she had wanted for her shower! Success!!

This last Saturday held a wonderful event. I treated my niece, Bookworm, to a Portland Mormon Choir & Orchestra concert where the guest artist was none other than Jenny Oaks Baker! It was probably one of the best concerts I have ever attended! The music was so beautiful and inspiring that I can hardly wait to resume band in the Fall. I could feel the Spirit very strongly as Ms. Baker poured her testimony of Jesus Christ into her music. What struck me the most about her playing was how much she moved her body while playing. She conveyed emotions and dynamics with her movements. It was quite a sight and a great experience. Bookworm and I shared some great experiences that I will expound upon more when I post the pictures from that night.

This weekend holds the Regional Youth Dance Festival that two of my nieces are participating in. I've been hearing about this event for a while and am very excited to see the fruits of the youth's hard work. This week also holds the restart of my business. Hopefully, I can see the fruit of my labor as I get this business rolling.

That's all for now.

Small Accomplishments

This week brought the beginning to a grand (and grueling) adventure. I started training for my first 5K run. Crazy, I know. I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to do this. Oh yeah... I wanted to be healthier and more fit. I am using a training schedule my sister-in-law suggested to me that trains a non-runner (me) to run a 5K in about nine weeks. I downloaded a podcast to my iPod that guides me as I run. 


First, I must say that the Northwest has greeted my return with open, wet arms. It rained 26 of the 30 days in April, which for those of you not in the Northwest is a new rain record. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love the rain more than practically everyone. Yet, I am not quite ready to go running in the rain. I suppose that would cut the need for a shower afterwards! I had to find a break in the weather this week to fit in my run.


Today was my second run for the week, and I feel a small sense of accomplishment. I finished the workout- start to finish without stopping! I can't tell you how grand that makes me feel. It gives me a sense that I will be ready on time for the 5K if I keep going!!! That's the key. Two days ago on my first run, I could only do five of the eight 60-second runs. Then today, I did all eight!! I really had to push myself on the last one, but I did it! This is teaching me that I can do anything as long as I remember to push myself to the end. That's the key- pushing through the hard parts to reach the end.


Paka


*Pictures of my journey West still to come!*

Fashion-forward Scriptures

Today, I started and finished a project! Back in October, I made a tote for my church things. I now have a coordinating scripture case! Take a look!

I used the same fabric as my tote but chose to use the other side instead. I'm pretty happy with how my scripture case turned out. It took me about two hours from start to finish, not including the bobbin situation I had. The best thing about sewing is learning new techniques. I had never made a buttonhole before, so I was quite apprehensive about that part. I found the Instruction Manual for my sewing machine online and read how to make buttonholes. After doing three test runs, I decided to make the buttonhole on my case.

I am quite impressed with my little machine's abilities. I hope to explore this summer more of what this baby can do.

So, what do you think?
Pretty good for not using a pattern on either one, huh?

A Sure Foundation

We learn in Corinthians that "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new". This is true with shoes. After years of loving my 'every day' shoes, they finally have gone the way of the earth, or at least into the garbage can.

It is best to replace something when you throw it away, and that is precisely what I did. I am now the fashionable owner of these new 'every day' shoes:

So far, I've been happy with them, and I think they will serve me quite well as I work towards my first 5k this summer. My true purpose in going to the shoe store was to find a new pair of high heels to go with my new black dress.

After visiting six stores, I found my fabulous new heels. I love them! They are different from all my other heels and have quite a personality about them. Yes, my shoe addiction has officially started thanks to these shoes. I can say that I am not the only girl who feel in love with them.

My niece, Little Miss, loved my shoes. She didn't want to give them back! Here is a picture of my nephew, Imaginator, wearing them while Little Miss was complaining- hence being up on her toes.

She had great balance walking in my heels; of course, it helps that her foot sits only in the toe of the shoe. I was still impressed.

I can tell you what our Aunt-Niece outings will be when her feet stop growing! She's my little fashionista!!

Good-bye Friday, Hello Sunday

With this new month comes a new work schedule. I am super excited about the change. My supervisor called me into her office last week to talk about my schedule. I mentioned that I am free Friday afternoons, and she offered that she would love to have me work the Friday evening shift instead of Sunday! One of the downsides is I won't be able to participate in any activity held on a Friday, but an up-side is I can attend the next CES Fireside.

Oh, this is such a great blessing for me. I can't tell you how much I have missed a peaceful, relaxed Sunday in the last three months, one where I can take time to ponder what I learned in church. This change is definitely something I have needed for many, many reasons. I love it when a window opens somewhere and how the Lord knows our needs and our wants!

Hurray for Sundays!

Birthday Celebrations Part 2

When I got home after school on my birthday, I discovered my bedroom had been birthday-ified by my roommate, Utes.

That night, my visiting teacher treated me to a movie! It was such an amazing movie. We went to see Invictus, and I haven't enjoyed a movie so much in a long time. It's a really uplifting movie about the South African Rugby team and their win in the 1995 World Cup. The story is very powerful and moving, showing that people can move past differences and come together. I highly recommend it to everyone!

What movie would be complete without treats to enjoy during the movie? None. I felt so loved by my visiting teacher because she payed for the movie and for our treats. She even bought me my favorite movie snack: chocolate covered pretzels!

Friday, my sister-in-law and I celebrated our birthday by going out to eat. We chose eat at one of the only Outback Steakhouses in Utah. I'd never eaten there, and the food was FABULOUS!! Outback Steakhouse is my new favorite restaurant as of that meal. Here is a picture of our amazing salads and the Bloomin' Onion.

 That was honestly one of the best salads and steak dinners I have ever had. They can expect my business again!

My last birthday activity was a movie marathon with another of my friends. We watched The 10th Kingdom, or at least most of it. That movie is one of the best epic fairy tales. I enjoyed having WinCo muffins, hot chocolate, and pizza during the five hours that we watched of the movie. We haven't finished it yet, but I already know the ending. I'm not chomping at the bit to find out what happened.

All in all, my birthday this year was quite a birthday! I don't think I could have asked for more. Thank you to all who were involved in celebrating my birthday!

Love you all!