Thursday, January 28, 2010

Finally Finished



Do you ever have one of those projects that just sits and sits and sits around waiting for you to finish it? Well I am embarassed to admit that this project (which is for my sister in law) has been sitting around my sewing shelf for months. BUT today I finally finished it and it will go in the mail tomorrow.
Sorry Emily that it took me so long.

The initials turned out a little bigger than I originally hoped.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Last Meal

Several weeks ago on NPR I caught the tail end of a discussion with an artist who has painted around 350 last meals of death row inmates on china plates. The radio announcer mentioned that they would be on display at a college about 50 miles from my home so Mike and I decided to go. Please note that I am not an artist and I must admit here that I don't have a great understanding of art. HOWEVER, I do love food and I love knowing what people eat and what could be more fascinating than finding out what kind of meal a person about to die would request. So on Saturday we went with our traveling circus plus a friend and saw the exhibit.
Lots of steak, eggs, cake, hamburgers, pizza, fried chicken and pie. Several "no last meal requested". Some random ones including, a bag of jolly ranchers and another one for Spam. The saddest one of all was a plate that simply had the words "birthday cake was given because prisoner never had birthday cake". So very sad.
Sobering exhibit.

If I had to choose a last meal I think I would like king crab legs with butter, mango chicken from my favorite Indian restaurant, grapefruit and peanut butter and chocolate cookies. What would you choose?

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Julie and Julia


If you haven't seen the movie Julie and Julia please rent it. Delightful, entertaining and very inspiring. So for those of you who have not had the privilege of seeing it, the movie is a true story about a woman named Julie who decides that she is going to make EVERY SINGLE recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook. She embarks on a year long cooking adventure and at the end successfully completes the ENTIRE cookbook. She has to make some less than appetizing things, (aspic anyone?????) but has a great experience expanding her horizons and learning a ton of new things.

I want to be Julie. I want to do this. I do not want to cook everything in Julia Child's cookbook because quite frankly french cooking doesn't really appeal to me. I thought long and hard about which of my many cookbooks I could stand to cook EVERYTHING from. Enter Carol...... My lovely sister gave me a wonderful cookbook for my birthday a few months back from Anthropologie which I have been itching to try. It is an eclectic mix of recipes from the LA farmer's market. For those not familiar with LA, the farmer's market has a ton of little mom and pop eateries literally from around the globe. (can you see the amy appeal already?) The author chose several of these eateries and managed to get a few recipes from each of them. From Korean to Turkish to Creole to American to Greek to Singaporean (is that how you write that) to Brasilian, this cookbook has it all. So, I'm doing it. I am making EVERY recipe in this cookbook. Some of the recipes scare me "Seared Duck breast with pomegranate glaze" anyone? Where do you even BUY duck breast? Some of the recipes make me lick my chops "Diver scallops with blackberry puree and shitake risotto". And some of them just don't really appeal to me"potato piroshki". But like them or not I am making them all, even the leg of lamb :( I am so excited to try this and hope to find several new family favorites as well as kick my culinary skills up a notch. Wish me luck and let me know if you want to come over to help us eat duck.

I'll keep you posted.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Thanks for the reminder







Yesterday after church a friend who has children that are grown and gone approached us and told us that he had been watching our little family all through the meeting and wanted us to know how cute and sweet he thought they all were. He told us that this is the best time of our lives and to savor every moment of that sweet innocence of childhood when our kids think that we are the best and know everything.



My first reaction was to almost laugh because we had been wrestling with them for the extra long 2 hour meeting and I felt like they were disruptive and loud.



But then I got home and realized that he was right. I have everything I have ever wanted and our children, who challenge all my skills of patience and endurance, are sweet and beautiful and say the cutest things and give us the greatest sense of love and joy.



So here's to batman capes, tutus, slobbery kisses, kissable cheeks, messy diapers, messy rooms, mismatched outfits, "flying wings", "pretty things" and those beautiful blue, green and brown eyes.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

50 by February

One of my New Year's Resolution is to dejunk. So I set a goal to get rid of 50 things by the end of February. I'm keeping track of it on a piece of paper. Anyone else want to join me??? Anyone want some of my junk???????

Let's play.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Christmas in Review

What could be better than:
Sledding in the freezing weather Wearing awesome snow clothes
Playing with fun toys

Hanging with new cousins


wearing matching jammies
spending 25 mintues trying to bundle up your 2 year old

eating Grandma's pies
It was a cold and snowy Christmas in Southern Utah, just like I ordered. We had a blast. We ate too much of Grandma's panoche, played in the snow and enjoyed being away from the daily grind.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

#2, #7 and #6

Look who came to town. Being from a big family is the best. My brother Andy was in town(#7) interviewing for possible summer internships and so Jean (#2) and I(#6) went out to dinner with him. Yes, I need to post about Christmas and all that fun, but that is kind of ovewhelming to me right now so this will have to do for the time being.
Happy New Year.