I watch too much Martha...

So, I saw these on Martha a while ago, and would love to make them for Emma. Just waiting to find a great cardboard box. Isn't it amazing? The instructions here include a doll bed, chairs and a table. You can also do a little kitchen set.


I'm not innately creative, but I sure am a good craft copier. :) A few years ago, I swore I would never get into the whole Martha crafty thing...but after a few years. Here I am. Love all the ideas I get from her show. :)

Create!

Oh, how I love this video. I forgot about this talk by President Uchtdorf, but I remember when he first gave it, and I lOVED feeling validated that creativity was a part of who I am, and that I should cultivate it! It helps me feel good about my crafty desires, and the constant wish I have to make things to beautify my home, my life and my surroundings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhLlnq5yY7k

(Thanks Heather for posting this...made my day!) :)

Anne's baptism

Last week was Anne's baptism. Heather did such a beautiful job of putting everything together. It was so fun to have it on Valentines Day. Anne's dress was amazing that Heather made, and Shane was thrilled (and a little emotional) about being the one to baptize her. I'm so proud of Anne and of the beautiful strong girl that she is. She's such a good influence on her siblings.

Here's Shane and Anne before the baptism. Shane was nervous, and Anne was as cute as ever.

The rest are just a few pictures of everyone after the baptism. It was a fun day with family, and there's nothing more sweet than feeling the spirit when someone gets baptized.






A few days later, this is the cute thank you note Shane got from Anne...Shane thinks its so cute he wants to get it framed. :)

Valentines Day FHE

So, in preparation for our Special family Valentine's dinner & FHE, Emma and I attempted Martha's "lovebug" cookies. I couldn't find a ladybug cookie cutter, so we did "love butterflies" instead. They turned out cute. They were yummy, a very chocolatey sugar cookie. I skipped the royal icing and did buttercream instead. I only made about 6 cookies instead of the usual HUGE batch, to keep munching and splurging on calories down. :)

Emma and I made the dough in the morning, and Emma loved to eat the batter off the spoons. I remember fighting with my brothers over the spoon and bowl growing up. It just made me laugh. Licking the spoon must be an inherent skill of being a kid. You just know it's going to be good.

(these are my beautiful pink roses from Shane... I also got a matching bear with angel wings from Emma, that immediately was commandeered and became one of her collection)

In the evening, we cooked steaks, vegetables and I tried a special sauce that I found. It was super delicious, but required wine. I had bought some wine on my return trip to Chile a couple of years ago (don't know why, but I did), and it's been sitting in my kitchen ever since. So we cracked it open, and used it in the sauce. It was our first bottle of wine that I had, and the cork looked so cool in the bottle, so I snapped a quick picture.


The dinner turned out great, and Luke and Lindsay were in town, so we invited them over to join us. After dinner we decorated our cookies, they turned out great. We made an extra for Grandpa Lyons and took it over to him in the morning.





Finally, we ended the evening with our special FHE on temples and marriage. We watched a slide show of our wedding pictures with Emma, and sang "I love to see the temple" a few times (at Emma's request). We also looked at Luke and Lindsay's pictures and videos from their wedding, and read the book, "My Wedding Day". It's all about a little girl who asks her Dad if he'll walk her down the aisle for her wedding. The dad says no, but then goes on to explain how special that day will be in the temple...very sweet. I couldn't get through it without a few tears.

We talked about forever families, and how happy Heavenly Father will be for her when she gets married in the temple. Overall, a wonderful night together. My favorite Valentines Day we've had for a long time. The best part: Ask Emma where she's going to get married, and this is her response... "I'm getting married in the temple to a nice boy!" Whew...hope she remembers that for a while.

We put Emma in bed, and then watched one of our favorite romantic comedies "The Holiday". Not sure why we like it, but we do! It was a good day...

Pay it forward!

A friend of mine has this on her blog and I thought it sounded like so much fun. So this is how it works: The first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive a handmade gift from me during this year. When and what will be a surprise.There's a small catch...You knew there would be, didn't you? Post this on your blog then come back and leave a comment, telling me you're in. Fun, huh? Remember, only the first 3 comments receive a gift.

I'll even mail far away! I'm on a craft craze, so I promise it will be cute!

Will you be mine?

I want this bed!

I found this bed at IKEA, and love it so much! We are hoping to upgrade to a King size bed at some point, and I'm devastated that this only comes in a Queen size. Totally cute! I'm keeping my eyes out for something similar at another place for a great price.

Lovebug Cookies

I saw these cookies on Martha today and totally want to make them, not sure I can get the energy up though. They look to be quite the process. But, could you find a cuter cookie? Maybe we'll see these at our house on Valentines day if I can find time over the next few days. :)

Olympics here we come!

I blogged a while ago about wanting to go to the Vancouver Olympics next year, because they will be so close. I participated in phase 1 of ticket sales, but didn't get any tickets, because I didn't bid high enough. So round 2 was this last week. I went to the site on the morning they began selling tickets, and everything but hockey and curling was sold out...I couldn't believe it. I chose hockey for sure, because I don't think you could pay me to watch curling. It took me about 20 minutes to click through all the pages, and get the tickets ready for checkout. I clicked submit, and I got a screen that said, "sorry, we could not contact your bank". And then my cart was empty. I was so mad that I had spent all that time and lost the tickets. I went back into the system to search, but by that time, there weren't any tickets to anything left (unless you buy the hospitality package with is thousands of dollars)! I was so mad!

So I called Shane and told him I tried, but couldn't get us tickets. We were bummed. Then today, in my email inbox, I got a confirmation email from the website for my tickets. Apparently I actually got them! Woo-hoo! So, on February 19th, 2010, at 9:00 at night, we'll be in Vancouver at a Hockey game. We're hoping to ride the train up, and stay in a hotel that night, and then ride back down on the train the next day. Should be fun. I'm so excited. Going to see the Olympics is one of the things on my "bucket list", and I'm so excited that by some miracle we actually got the tickets.

FHE & Cookies

Tonight for FHE, Shane's lesson was on the beauties of the earth around us. We sang some songs, talked about all the animals and the earth. Shane started out with..."Thank you all for coming to Family Home Evening," and Emma responded with, "Oh, your welcome Dad". It's amazing how much she is learning each week...sometimes I think this all doesn't really matter yet because she's not really getting alot of it, but then she'll prove me wrong. We had a lesson about the Holy Ghost a few weeks ago, and she still sometimes will stop in the middle of what she's doing and say, "Mom, the Holy Ghost doesn't have a body, but we do have a body. He touches our hearts". In her prayers she's been asking sometimes if the Holy Ghost can get a body. It's pretty funny...but at least she's picking up a little of what we're trying to teach her.

After FHE, we decided to make some cookies. We're trying to clear out all the "bad-for-us" food in the house, and yesterday Shane found a bag of Hershey's kisses, so we decided to make Peanut Butter Kiss cookies. I actually had never made them before, but always loved them when others did. They were really easy, and oh so yummy. Emma got to help push the kisses into the cookies when they were done. Then we all fought over cookies for a while, before wrapping the rest up and taking them to some friends (again to get them out of the house). If we had a couple dozen cookies sitting on the counter, I know most of them would be gone by morning, so we had to get them out. Anyway, it was fun. :)

Shane likes to ask Emma to share everytime she goes to take a first bite of something, and tonight she screamed and turned the other way. She was NOT going to share her cookie without a fight!



It looks like I'm sticking something up my nose, but that's just the knife hanging up on the wall behind us...

Superbowl Party (A week late)

Thanks to the Nobles for having us over to watch the Superbowl last week. It was fun to hang out with everybody--the boys all watched the game, and the girls mostly gabbed in the other room, while the kids ran around and played. The food was delicious, who can say no to game-time snack food? It was all so good!

Emma had so much fun running around with all the kids. They could've played for hours...


At one point, Shane sent Emma in to see me, and she did this, while shouting, "Go Steelers" :)


We had a short dance move demonstration, by Steve after the Cardinals did something good.
All in all, such a fun night. We are so glad to have such great friends to spend time with. We really love our ward, and love all the people we've met here. After about a year and a half, we finally are feeling really settled. :)

A good day...

It's been a bit of a busy week, a little rough at times. But today has been amazing. We were able to get up late this morning, have a lazy breakfast together, play with Emma for a while, drop her off at Grandpa's and then Shane and I went to the temple together. It seems all I needed was to take a short break, a deep breath, and a chance to focus on what is important in my life again. I guess sometimes I surround myself with so much chaos that I don't let the quiet moments come enough to let the spirit in. I'm glad for days like this, and for a husband that seems to just know when I need to go to the temple to get re-energized.

On the way home, we were having the 'what should we do on Valentine's day?' discussion, and decided instead of struggling to find a sitter for Emma, that we are going to have a family Valentines celebration. We're planning a special FHE on Love and Temples. It will include a fancy dinner at home, a visit to the temple grounds with Emma, a look at our wedding pictures, and some family time making valentines & cookies. Most likely we'll end the night with a romantic movie of Emma's choosing (I'm hoping for Enchanted, but realistically we'll probably be watching Ice Age, Wall-e or Incredibles, her current idea of love stories).

I can't imagine anything better than an evening like that with my two favorite people. :)