Under Glass

I haven't posted much lately. I think my screen time has been mostly spent on Pinterest. Is everyone as addicted as I am? I love being able to keep all the great things I see in blogland in one place so that when I want to do something I can actually find them again. This is an idea I saw there. This is the site that had the tutorial. So easy and doesn't everything look cuter under glass. Just in case you don't check out the tutorial I will fill you in, glass votive from the dollar store with two flat glass marbles super glued on top. I had two sizes so I used them.

I can't seem to stop finding things to put under glass!

The New Pumpkin Recipe

Every year I seem to find a new favorite pumpkin recipe. It has been pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies made with a cake mix, the pumpkin cookies with a chocolate cake mix. This year it is pumpkin muffins with a cream cheese filling. I found it on Pinterest, well actually two recipes that I combined. According to one of them. Each muffin is under 150 calories. Only problem is I want to eat about 10 a day! So here is this year's recipe:
Mix together 1 block of the 1/3 lower fat cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar.
Then form it into a log shape on plastic wrap and freeze for two hours
Then combine:
1 small can of pumpkin or 1/2 a large can
1 spice cake mix
1 cup water
Remove frosting log from freezer and cut into 24 pieces
Fill each muffin liner a little less than half full then add a piece of the frosting mixture. Top with more muffin mix. The muffins in the picture were topped with cinnamon sugar. The first time I made them I sprinkled a crumble on top made of 1/2 sugar, 4 T butter 5 T flour and 1 1/2 t cinnamon. They really were ultimately more yummy with the crumble topping but I figured the cinnamon sugar saved a few calories. Plus it was faster. Bake for 20 minutes at 350

This is what it looks like inside. Sooooo good!

Remodeling

There is something about September that makes me want to do stuff to the house. I have been at it again. Before. Nothing really wrong. I was just bored.

The lack of window treatments was bugging me.

New window. Another chair. Recovered the easy chair and new ottoman. Added yellow pillows.

From above

This was a chair I found at the thrift store for $5. It wasn't perfect but for that price I couldn't leave it.

After some new paint and fabric.

I decided it was time for a new table cloth too. I had found the wire basket thing at the thrift store too. Then I decided to extend the yellow and covered some wiffle balls the boys were done with.

This is my favorite splash of yellow. I inherited this chair from my mom when Brittany was born. I think she had gotten it from her grandmother and rocked us in it.She had painted it black when I got it. I painted it white. I almost went back to the black but decided to go with color. Glad I did. I don't know that I can ever part with this rocker. I rocked all my babies in it. So it is good it got a face lift. Now it is time to get ready for the holidays!

My Boy of Fall

Matthew has been begging for a long time to try flag football since his mother is mean and won't let him play tackle. They have been playing for a few weeks now. I have to admit it is pretty fun. Even when we don't win.

I found myself turning into that mom. You know the one screaming her head off in excitement. So embarrassing. But fun.

The little boys are loving it too. This is Josh with his buddy Gage and a random boy they made friends with. They play too only with their own rules.

Brittany even came to the first game. As did Grandpa and his dog Elliott. Hurray for the Boys of Fall!

Forget Not

One of my favorite blogs posted a great reminder of one of my favorite talks from General Conference. Well, the Relief Society broadcast really, but they are connected in my mind. She had just taken some pictures of forget me nots and then turned it into the perfect little reminder. The blog link is here and the written talk is here.

Soccer Boy!

Guess where you can find us Saturday mornings lately? Yep, soccer field. Josh is playing with his friend Gage. Gage is the superstar-we count on Gage for the goals and Josh for the entertainment. I love this picture of my sweaty boy finding a seat watching his friends.

He really is chasing a ball even though it isn't in the picture. Josh seems to be getting the game a little better this year. He will at least chase the ball down instead of just following his buddy Gage around.

Can you tell his moves usually are a little more fluid than most? I have to take some video because the way Josh plays soccer it is a little more like soccer/dancing. Lots more fun for me to watch!

The Birthday that Never Ended

So as part of his Birthday present Matthew requested a room make-over like I did for Brittany. I really didn't intend for it to be too extensive but these thing sort of evolve and it turned into a complete overhaul. I snapped this one right before we started. After I had spent the entire morning hauling out junk. Man, little boys can be hoarders too.

My mom, the super-decorator helped. She thought it would be fun to have a reading corner. Found this chair and ottoman at the thrift store. I covered the lampshade with the fire fabric that is in his room too.

I painted a new headboard, also found at the thrift store, black. Everyone had their college bedding on sale so he did get a new comforter. I made the new quilt on the foot of the bed, also the letter M pillow using freezer paper.

There is also a music corner, I found him a keyboard for his birthday on KSL so now he is ready to start piano lessons. The rug was in the college bedding stuff too.

It seemed to be a big hit!

The Book Page Wreath

I haven't blogged much lately. Or been on the computer at all much really. The kids going back to school and adding all their activities has changed the tempo of life around here. I think we are finding our groove now though. I have taken advantage of some of the kid free time to work on some projects. I have wanted to do this one for months. I used this tutorial for months. It took a pretty good chunk of time to finish but I really love it. It actually has more color in real life.

Family Reunion

We had a little family reunion this weekend. It was a great day full of fun. The kids swam, played badminton, and played a some video games. The men even got a killer game of badminton going.

There was a lot of fun had in the pool.

Tante Maren has all boys so when she gets the nieces at her house she gets busy and paints nails, and does makeovers. This time it turned into a huge session of dress-up. Uncle Glendon had been on a trip to India and brought home a huge collection of fabulous Indian fashions that the girls had a blast. These are some pictures of Brittany and her cousin Brigitte. Aren't they fun? It was a great day, great memories were made!

My Boy is Nine!

I can't believe it, my baby boy is nine! He was my tiniest baby and now he is so big! We have been celebrating all weekend long and we aren't done yet! This was his friend party. We took he and four friends to the Aquatic center. Brilliant, if I do say so myself. They had a blast and I read a book. Again, any birthday party where I am reading a book is a good one! It was a small enough group that they played together the whole time.

Then we had a little family party today. The cake was Lego inspired Pirates of the Caribbean. This has become my go-to cake idea for boys. The cake is easy, turns out very cool and the boys keep the legos. He was pretty happy with the keyboard I found on KSL so he can start piano lessons. He also spent a good chunk of the weekend working on the volcano kit an car model he received. I think he had a good birthday. I sure am glad he is my boy. He is a good, sweet, smart, amazing boy! Happy Birthday Matthew!

For my Friend Sarah

It is that time of year when squash abounds. We were talking at lunch the other day about how you can only eat so much Zucchini bread. So for dinner the other night I tried baked Zucchini with mozzarella cheese. Except I used yellow squash instead of zucchini because that is what I had a lot of from the garden this week. I cut them thin, then dipped them in egg then in a mixture of bread crumbs (mine were gluten-free), Mrs. Dash, grated mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese. I sprayed a cookie sheet with Pam before I put them on it. Then I baked them for about 10 minutes at 350.

First Day

We finally made it to the first day of kindergarten! Here is my big kid, in line to enter the world of learning. He was so excited our biggest problem was making it to 12:40. He wanted lunch at 9 because I told him he could go to school after lunch. It was a great day, for both of us. As I have mentioned,that lovely lady in pink at the head of the line was my Young Women's leader when I was 12 so I had no apprehension turning my baby over to her. Now we are off to the second day.Yeah!

Grandma's Tea Party

One one of the last days of Summer last week my sister brought her girls up to spend the weekend at Grandma's and we were invited for a tea party. My mom is queen of the tea parties. First you had to get dressed up in Grandma's best finery.

That is a giant yellow rose cupcake, or a very small rose cake-depending on how you want to look at it. Lots of tiny treats!

A great time was had by all!

Girl's Lunch Recipes

I hosted lunch for my girlfriend yesterday. Tried some new recipes from Melskitchencafe. Love her. Had to post them here so I don't forget them. And they turned out pretty good and some of the gang wanted them. This was a Vegetarian Lasagna, I chose it because I could use loads of veggies from my garden in it. I was using a spicy marinara sauce by Barilla but decided it might be too spicy so I finished with just a regular marinara sauce (both from a jar). Oh, and I didn't put it on a cookie sheet to bake like she recommended and now my oven is a mess so do that.

Blueberry fool. Still don't know why it was called that but personally it was my favorite part of the meal.

The food was okay, but I was so happy to be back with my girls after a whole Summer of not getting together that we could have eaten cold cereal and I would have been happy!

Raingutter Regatta

Matthew had the Rain gutter Regatta in Scouts last week. Which he won! His dad is so good at this stuff I almost feel bad. Almost, not quite. For the record William does make Matthew do the work, he just has great engineering ideas. This is why I helped put the guy through college and get that mechanical engineering degree. So my kids would have an edge at stuff like this! See that kid over Matthew's left shoulder? That was his competition.

Yep, blew them away. It was really fun!

In case you wondered we recommend the catamaran design.

Back to School 2011

Well they made it! They all survived! The first day was great. Everyone loved their teachers. More importantly I survived sending my first-born to Junior High. My anxiety outweighed my horror at being this old. She didn't get lost, forget where her locker was/combination, found friends to eat lunch with and no one was mean. Let's hope it continues! She is absolutely in her element and seems in love with the whole junior high experience. And I am so glad!

Josh got to met his teacher today. I must be doing something right because of all the amazing blessings I could come up with, having Josh get Mrs. Graham is more than I could imagine. She is also Wendy Graham who lived in my neighborhood growing up and was one of my very favorite leaders in Young Women. So instead of being anxious about his first school experience I was not worried in the least. Wendy is wonderful, and so he is going to have a great kindergarten year!

Thank heaven Matthew got just the teacher he wanted with best friend so I had nothing to worry about with him!

Welcome New School Year, we are ready for you!

It's Over!

Oh, lovely Summer! We are going to miss you! This was my final view of my beloved umbrella at Cherry Hill.

This is how we spend our time out of the water.

One of my favorite things at Cherry Hill is how the kids do things together. Two brothers going down Cardiac Canyon.

Big brother helping the little one with his tube on the way up.

Big sister helping little brother down the Dragon slide.

Now it is all over and I sad. It was such a great Summer full of sun, fun, lazy days, late bedtimes, food that was less than great for us and great memories. BUT on the upside let's welcome the return of schedules, planned menus, bedtimes, a clean house and my Wednesday lunches!

Park City Summer 2011

Another thing we must do every Summer is go to the Park City Art's Festival. Attending this was our second date a long, long time ago. Now we take the kids and usually make a long weekend of it. I loved these glass balls, I wanted a whole basket to take home.

These sculptures were there last year and my kids were happy to see them back. They are bright and colorful and they move!

Love Park City!

I would LOVE to have one of these gorgeous kinetic sculptures in my yard but even if they were free I would need a bigger yard, that would have to go with a much bigger house and I am happy were I am so I guess no sculpture. They were amazing and hypnotizing to watch though.

Some people with us got a little hot an tired. Luckily there was a curb near these wooden instruments. It was a great little get-away. We all came home inspired!