To Bri...

...who knows that saying nothing is sometimes the best thing to say.

To Kristen...

....who happiness always seems to find.

May 15, 2011

Once again the parents have left to yet another engineering conference. This time at New Orleans. With them away, Blake and I decided to invite Krist, Bri, and Nate over for an overnight stay. Of course the first night I was sick and after making dinner, had to stay home while they went to a late movie. (What's up with that? Lately I've been getting sick every other week! Ugh!)

Anyhow, the next morning we had waffles (my favorite recipe!) then made our to the lovely lake/park down the street from us in the Daybreak community. It's one of my favorite places to go on a warm sunny day. There's parks, lovely landscaping, and a nice path that goes all the way around the lake. Here's a few of the highlights.

On another, unrelated note, for the first time in several months, I saw my favorite berry in the grocery store! 

While this little beauty is fantastic all by itself, there is one very simply go-to recipe I use whenever I have fresh fruit and I'm worried it'll go bad before I can use it all.

Here's what you'll need: 

Pound Cake (angle food would work as well) you of course could make the cake, but Sara Lee makes a wonderful cake that I always keep on hand in my freezer for days when I need something sweet, fast.

You'll also need:

Any fresh berry or fresh peaches

1 Pint Whipping Cream

14 oz can of Sweetened Condensed Milk

1 Cup Cold Water

1 teaspoon Almond Extract

3 oz box Vanilla Pudding (or cheesecake)

Mix the Cream, Sweetened Condensed Milk, Cold Water, Almond Extract and Pudding until smooth. Refrigerate until the pudding sets up, around 15 minutes. Layer the cake, pudding mix, and fresh fruit to creak a lovely, quick, and absolutely delicious summer time dessert!

Enjoy!

If I Say "Hi" to You Do Not...

My job requires that I "greet" every individual that walks through the door. This job, though at first tedious and tiresome, has become increasingly interesting. For those of you who do not want to become a victim of my uncouth sense of humor I have the following suggestions.

If someone says "Hi" do not respond by:

1. Saying "Good."

2. Looking at me in a bewildered, distracted way, so much so that you lose your footing and trip. It's not like I said something dirty, I said "Hi".

3. Look at me, then look away pretending like you never heard me. Just so ya know, I know you heard me, you looked when I first said it.

Here are a few more suggestions for public behavior:

1. When asking for the location of the restroom, unless you're younger than five, it is not appropriate to say, "I gotta pee, where's your bathroom?" Especially if you're a grown man. I really did not want to know that you "gotta pee".

2. I'm not a mom, so I can't make many assumptions about appropriate behaviors for parents, but I think it's safe to say that if your child is running around in circles of a bank lobby yelling "SUCKERS! SUCKERS! SUUUUUUCKEEEEERSSSSSS!" it would be a good idea to ask them to stop. Just a thought.


Any other thoughts about appropriate public behavior?

Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring

Goodbye winter, hello spring. Can I say that yet? It seems like winter has dragged on and on and on! Even now, I'm sitting in my family room with the balcony door open and my winter coat on, hoping for a ray of sunshine! Granted, it is a lot warmer than it was over the weekend (did anyone else have to scrape their car Friday morning of ice??). It's sufficiently cold and overcast today that my door should not be open. I guess I'm desperate! Besides, doesn't the saying go "April showers bring May flowers"? Well, incase mother nature is not aware, it is officially MAY and I want some flowers! :) I guess I should be smart enough by now to know that Utah goes directly from unbearably cold to unbearably hot. 

Anyhow, I have some fun pics from Blake and my comings and goings through this pseudo-spring time.

So random question-Blake is completely obsessed with these things. His car always smells like "New Car Scent", and mine smells like "Very Berry", which is great. But does anyone else think these little hanging trees look kind of trashy??....What do you think?

Anyhow, back on track: Dinner at my grandma Money's

Hahahahhahahahahaha-I love my mom. Not to mention my grandma's funny expression, is she eating something sour? IDK, all I know is the jello we're all eating is delic. (Does Nate have a little mexi-stache going on??)

Nelson Family Party

We had a family party at my Aunt Sandra's. Here's Kristen and our cousin's daughter, Addison. Isn't she so cute?

Emily's Twelfth Birthday Party

Emily (center) is my sister-in-law. She turned twelve and I helped out with her party by making pizza for the group.

McDonnalds Grand Opening

On to the next event, McDonnalds! So, Blake decided that he wanted to go the the McDonnalds "grand opening" for the new McDonnalds in Herriman. His motivation being that if he stayed over night he'd get a coveted free combo meal for a year (I personally think that sounds kind of disgusting...but whatev'). There was only one hitch, he didn't get off work in time. Enter, me and Denny.

I couldn't tell you why I'm smiling in this picture, it was freezing cold, even Denny was cold, and I sat for several hours waiting. When Blake got off work he switched me places and stayed all night long with his brother and friend Nick.

Journey to the Center of the Earth!

Have you ever been to Bingham Copper Mine? Well Blake and I live about ten minutes away, and since I"ve never been before, we headed on over. The pit was unbelievably deep, this picture really doesn't do it justice. They've truly dug thruogh an entire mountain. It was pretty awesome, they have monster trucks there that make buses look like toys.

Ruth's Diner up Immigration Canyon

With Blakes new job, he doesn't have many saturdays off. A couple saturdays ago he was actually off! And we were wasting it! Just sitting around, not sure what to do when bam we saw an episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives on Food Network, telling us to head over to Ruth's Diner up Immigration Canyon for a superb breakfast. And it was to die for!

I had a smoked salmon omelet

Blake had their famous biscuits and gravy. It was delic! You should check it out.

Summer Clothes Shopping

Even though there arestill skiffs of snow on the ground, we couldn't stop oursleves from going summer clothes shopping!

Kristen, Bri, mom, and I went. Isn't this bag cute?

Oh yeah, and Blake was there too! He got some Tom's shoes.

Days at the Park

Flying Denny!

Now that the snow is gone we've really enjoyed taking Denny to parks and letting him run around. 

Finally, we had a family party for Easter and I tried out a Blueberry Lemon Cheesecake bar recipe. I forgot to take a pretty picture, and took one half way through dessert-they don't look like much but they are SO great! In fact, most of the recipes I try just end up saved on my computer, very few actually make it to my recipe box, on a recipe card, but this one did. So I'm not lying when I say, this is a keeper and you should try it out.

Blueberry Lemon Cheesecake Bars

Preheat oven at 325 degrees.

Base Crust:

2 T Sugar

1/8 t Cinnamon

9 graham crackers

1/2 stick butter

Put all these ingredients in a food processor (or blender), and pulse until they're only crumbs. Press into the bottom of a 9*9 inch pan, bake in oven 12 minutes. Remove from oven, and cool before adding the filling.

Filling:

16 oz cream cheese (two packages)

2 eggs

2 lemons zest and juice

1/2 c sugar

Mix all these very well, I use the same food processor (or blender). Once the crust has cooled, pour the mix over the it. Drop 1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries into the filling. The blueberries break down as they bake and are SO delicious by the time it's all done.

Bake 35 min, when you take it out it'll still be jiggly, just allow it to cool and put it in the refrigerator for at least three hours. By the time it's done cooling, it'll be nice and firm.

You really have to try these, they are SO good!

Curtesy Food Network, Tyler Florence

T=Tablespoons

t=teaspoons

Can't wait until I have some warm, summer pictures!

Carl Bloch

So as you may (or may not) know, there's currently a Carl Bloch exhibition at the BYU Museum of Art. He was a truly inspirational figure and amazing painter. The painting above is a really well known one, and one of my personal favorites. He has such an amazing way of capturing emotions and has a unique view of Christs emotions.

Me, my mom, my sisters, my aunt Leslie and cousin Kim went to it yesterday and absolutely loved it! It's free, you can go online to reserve tickets (which I'd recommend doing, there were a lot of people "standing-by" because they didn't have tickets). You can rent an i-pad for three dollars which guides you through the paintings, various analytical views, and meanings. Afterwhich, we stopped at the Creamery on 9th. It was lovely, even Blake (who really didn't want to go) ended up enjoying it.

It's a great, cheap date! You should go!

Tie-Dye Cupcakes!

How would I describe these scrumptious little concoctions?

YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY!!! 

Very cute.

SUPER easy.

Crowd Pleaser.

Could it get any better?

My family has been making these little morsels for a while now. We call them Tie-Dye Cupcakes because we like to color the batter and frosting fun and crazy colors (as you can see!).

Here's what I do:

1. Prepare a white cake mix without egg yolks according to package directions. If you want to color the batter, keeping the egg yolks out will ensure the batter is true to color, and the yellow in the yolks won't make your colors funky.

2. Add an entire, 8 oz package of cream cheese and mix until well blended.

Keep in mind, the batter will be lumpy because of the cream cheese. Don't worry, it's totally worth it. The cake will turn out very moist and won't crumble apart because of the lumpy cream cheese.

3. (Optional) Divide the batter into three bowls and add correlating colors-this is the tie-dye part. :)

4. Drop batter into lined cupcake tins. Bake according to package instructions

Having a good frosting recipe is also key. In the picture above I piped the frosting on, but it looks yummy and homemade if you just spread it on.

Frosting

1/2 cup Butter (room temperature)

4 cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoon milk

1/2 teaspoon extract (I usually go with either Almond extract or Lemon extract, but you could use any extract, vanilla included.)

Using an electric mixer, mix the butter and sugar until smooth. Add extract and milk until it reaches the desired consistency (1 tablespoon does it for me, but you can add more or less if necessary.) It's also noteworthy that if you are piping the frosting onto the cupcakes, you'll likely need more frosting than you'd need if just spreading it on-double this recipe.

Enjoy!