WiNteR TeA

After many months of dreaming I finally had the time and enough collected materials to hold a dream tea party with some of my girlfriends. I had bought some unique invitations back when I interned in NY a few years ago at one of my favorite paper stores. I stored them in a drawer until my crazy days as a student had ended and I had time to organize the rest of the event. I decided to share the fun I had had previously while doing this craft. So I collected fabric designed by this lovely lady, which I stretched on mini canvases for a craft of painting silhouettes as well as sewed a set of matching napkins and table cloth to set the mood. 

We met for a lunch of cooked chicken pastries, fruit and brie, and an assortment of cheese cakes. Which were washed down with multiple flavors of iced herbal teas as well as a selection of hot herbal flavors (including my absolute favorite beverage). After we took a very fun and informative personality quiz (which I will post later as it isn't the usual categorizing result and is actually pretty unique and fun). Filled a out a few mad-libs.....laughed a ton.....and then spent hours painting and catching up on each others lives. Definitely a much needed creatively stimulating and friendship rejuvenating get together. Im so happy with how it all turned out.

My Iced Tea Recipe:

I like to use the berry flavored herbal teas like the celestial seasonings wild berry zinger or peach blend. 

-bring two cups of water to just the start of a rolling boil (I usually do this in the microwave)

-add 5 tea bags and stir till the mixture is rich in color

-fish out tea bags and then toss them

-Pour colored mixture in a pitcher and add 2-4 more cups of water along with two handfuls of ice cubes (you can tell how exact I am when measuring in the Kitchen.....Bam!) 

-Add a 1/4 cup of sugar (or a calorie free sweetener which I have used and had the tea taste just fine)

Viola! enjoy by the glassful.

Cupcake Pop Demo

Last week I volunteered to do a demo at our chocolate relief society enrichment night. I wasn't quite sure exactly what I was going to do but I knew that I wanted to help out. So I looked to all my creative blogs for inspiration. I came across a cupcake pop recipe at this place, and instantly wanted to get in the kitchen and experiment. I learned tons a long the way. I made 30 pops consisting of two different flavors (devils food cake and buttercream frosting & strawberry cake with rainbow chip frosting)

I then got so excited with the possibilities of flavors that I made a ton of truffles of all different flavors using the same technique.

Flavors of truffles that I made:

-Lemon cake with lemon icing covered in white chocolate

-Coconut cake (enhanced with a package of shredded coconut and coconut extract cause I wanted more of a kick) covered in dark chocolate

-Dark chocolate with almond extract flavoring mixed with cream cheese frosting covered in dark chocolate

-Milk Chocolate cake, cream cheese frosting, covered in butterscotch

The demo went great. I was able to share some helpful techniques that I learned from experimenting that weren't mentioned online. I just hope that all the ladies there thought so too... If any of you want to try it let me know so I can pass along those helpful hints.

What the pops looked liked finished ready to hand out.

Recent Crafts

I designed these quilts back in october to give to my dear friend and her little boys for a Christmas present. I then spent a few months collecting the fabrics in the desired colors but the actual cutting and sewing of the quilt tops went really fast. I backed them in a paisley minky soft material. I really loved how they turned out.

I then stretched the left over  fabric  over canvases and painted silhouettes on them for some matching wall hangings. An idea i got here. A craft created by this creative woman.

What fun. I loved periodically working on this project after I had had stressful days, "creating" is my release.

I see you...

Just spent a little time looking at the map of where visitors to my blog are located. A new little dot just appeared in United Arab Emirates. I sure hope that that dot is our amazing friends the Ethington's who have just moved to the UAE for the next few years. We totally look up to those two and all the adventures that they are going to have.

Resolutions 2009

Its taken me awhile to formulate specific aspirations that I want to work on this year, as so many years past I have made too general of goals that I found were to hard to determine if I had fully accomplished them or not.... or even how to go about accomplishing them in the first place. Thanks to all the friends and family that posted their resolutions and gave me good ideas.

{some of my own to do lists}

Im hoping to work on these a little everyday as Im practicing on evening out my lifestyle, I love how I feel when my days are balanced and well rounded in the activities that I do. I also will print these out so that I will have the satisfaction of crossing them off. I am totally a list maker and find an amazing amount of joy in the act of crossing off goals.

-Clean more (work a little everyday on dishes, laundry, and CAYG "clean as you go" on clutter control, meaning that I will put away a little something every time that I go up the stairs or down the stairs for something)

-Cook More (cook a well balanced dinner from scratch at least three times a week, memorize the recipe for one bread and for one major dessert, try baking at least three types of pies during the year)

-Read more (secular book list for this year: Mysterious Island by Jules Vern, Gone With The Wind, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society, Life of Pie, Screw Tape Letters, and probably a few Dirk Pitt Novels)(Spiritual Book List for this year: Jesus the Christ by Talmage, Caught in the Gospel Net by Witdsoe, In his Likeness by Paul Brand)   

-Study my Scriptures everyday. (reading the Old Testament Made Easier by Ridges, amazing)

-Go to the Temple once a month

-Write in my journal everyday (or at least catch up for the week on sunday in my 10 year journal)

-Exercise more regularly (when Im not working on my triathlon training program I will at least pop in a Power Yoga or P90X video in everyday ((mini goal in itself.....being able to actually make it through the entire plyomatrix video in P90X))

-Do a triathlon some time this year (I will choose one from here)

-Hike More (Hike Mt. Olympus & Mt. Timp, then either The Fiferhorn or Kings Peak ((Family get excited to come with)) 

-Do at least 10 trails in my mountain biking trail book

-Produce a fine art photograph that Im completely proud of  every month

-Enter photographs in at least 2 shows found using my lovely source

-Make fine art travel books of my 3 latest excursions using this 

-Finish the rest of our major house projects (Kitchen-tiling&cabinets, Bathroom-wallpaper&tiling)

-Go camping more (at least twice this year ((I know it doesn't sound like much but that will be doubling the number of times we went this year))

-Go to bed earlier (no later than midnight) wake up earlier (trying to limit my number of all nighters that I seem to do pretty often)

-Drink more water (drink at least one water bottle a day)

-Practice the piano more (learn at least 5 more hymns really well, be able to play, again, all the music in my old black repertoire book)

-Continue making newer and stronger relationships with the people in my ward by doubling my efforts to volunteer for activities and service

-Practice my sewing (make at least one more quilt and one dress this year)

Then the general goals that I want to practice but couldn't formulate any specifics...

-Compliment more, gossip less

-Be more patient, think longer before I speak

-Be on time

-Act more grown up (stay on top of bills, find more deals when shopping, take control of my own health)

Just Noticed....

I just noticed that I have the same haircut in both pictures of me in the bread day post. funny.

Christmas Box

I made this box for FHE with Reece's sister's family.

We filled it with gifts we want to give to the Savior. 

My gifts were:

-to have better temple attendance

{at least once a month}

-to read my scriptures daily

{Im working on the old testament}

{Things are going well so far}

Bread Day

The annual bread day, an amazing tradition. Above picture is of me now and then of me getting help from my older sister karin back in 1988. We go my aunt Sue's house where she has bowls overflowing of dough that me make into creative shapes of greek bread loaves and cinnamon rolls. After the shaping and assembling we freeze the results so we can bake them fresh for Christmas morning.....well this year, any ol' morning will do since we had to postpone due to weather. Then we have a dinner in the pool house with all of my moms side of the family. They have been cooking Cafe Rio Salads the last few years which I love. Gotta Get the Recipe...

Skiing with the cousins...

Thanks to the planning of my cousin Chris we were able to have a cousins ski day. A first for me. It was so so fun. The conditions were perfect as it had snowed the night before leaving a blanket of fluffy powder, and then it was sunny and not to cold a majority of the day. Only on our last few runs it  8 degrees! Some of us were on boards and some where on skis. We went to Solitude where I was fascinated with the ticketing system. Just put your little card/pass in your pocket and then when you go through the gates to get on a lift a scanner scans through your pocket and opens the gate. Yeah I might be simple because I found this cool but so what. Taylor was our leader, taking us on some pretty challenging slopes. They made me really want to bring back my skiing skills.

Taylor's Jump.

Chris's Jump.....totally a back flip....um.....yeah......

Thanks for an awesome day. Lets make it a tradition. 

New Years

We celebrated new years eve at my family's house. My mom cooked a yummy turkey dinner where we all chipped in and helped in our own ways. Mom and I had fun looking through all her collections of sparkly trinkets and decorations for ideas in designing a holiday table. This years theme....Winter Wonderland. Someday I wish that I may have such a beautiful selection of dinnerware, candle sticks, candles, and decor.    

(Total "Raising Arizona" picture)

We then waited for the midnight hour by watching Lars and the Real Girl (one of my favorite movies that I got for Christmas and that I wanted to share with all my family) we also worked on various crafts of crocheting blankets and knitting hats. (there was some taking care of sick little kids in between the activities as well, poor little Nora) at 11:50 the TV was tuned to Times Square and the ball, the crystal goblets were pulled out, and the sparking cider and pomegranate 7 up was poured. 

Then the count down ending in kisses....

Cheers!

Lil Evy got to be baby new year for 2009! 

Johns Footage

A little bit of time lapse photography....a little of my first video filmed on my 5D mark II.....and my sweet family = cuteness. Look for my dad working on building a toy garage the entire time...it really goes up fast. You also can see what Im like with my camera at family functions....

Christmas Night

We headed over to my family's for Christmas dinner and evening. We open our presents in our "Christmas Room" where the walls are red, the furniture is red, and the curtains are red and green....very warm and festive. We let the kids open their presents first so that they could be entertained while we opened ours. My sweet dad got stuck putting together a playmobil car garage for most of the night. (Just watch him in the bottom right hand corner of the video)

A lot of these pics are of my sister's little Will, usually when I try to pose him he fights me so on this christmas night when he was naturally so happy and smiley I took advantage. 

My dad collects owl figurines. He must have well over 200 lining the shelves of his office. This year he finally got an owl that the lil chillens could play with. It was a fuzzy lil stuffed animal that Will loved to squeeze.

My dad and his yummy dessert creations.