Tuesday, December 31, 2013

2013 in review

This years has been a crazy whirlwind. Ups and downs... and round and rounds.... Here are a few things that have made it all worth the craziness!

Here's to you 2013. You were a pain at times... but lucky for you I choose to focus on the positive.

 

Now Lets ring in 2014! 

 

Monday, December 30, 2013

Sugar cookies!











This weekend was the last weekend I'll be teaching my class in Sunday school. At the beginning of the year I'll have new batch (pun intended) of 8-9 year olds. So to say goodbye and show them some love, I made them sugar cookies. Something to remind them who the best Sunday school teachers  are in the world. That would be Josh and I, if you didn't catch that.

I used THIS recipe that I found on Pinterest. I've tried so many sugar cookie recipes on there and I have to say this one is my favorite!! It was so simple and only really tastes good with frosting on them. So of course I frosted them with my own Buttercream frosting recipe.. which is really my mom's recipe... anywho, here it is.
1 stick of butter Softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon milk (If needed)

-First add butter into mixer and mix until fluffy
-Second add powdered sugar until completely mixed
-Third and possibly last? Add teaspoon of vanilla
-Fourth... if needed add a teaspoon of milk at a time until consistency of frosting is to your liking. If your frosting is perfect before the milk... don't add any.

I made a double batch of the cookie dough and frosting just to make sure I had enough cookies for my class.
Once you make the dough, you are supposed to refrigerate it for an hour. So I did. After words I started rolling it. Normally you'd roll the dough with flour, flour and more flour.
Instead of doing that and frustrating myself with dough somehow still sticking to the roller... I kept the dough in the plastic rap.
I made it wrapped a little looser though to make sure it has room to flatten out.
Seriously if that is all you get out of my post today... That is fine by me. This is way better than using tons of flour trying to make the dough not stick to your roller. It worked like a dream.
 
I used two different cookie cutters, a heart, and a shield. The cookie cutter were pretty big so I'm sure you can get a lot more cookies out of your dough than me if you use a smaller cutter.
This is how thick I made them... I cooked them for about 7 minutes.
Here is the shield.
This is the frosting I used, got it from Target.
My husband suggested green for the shield... so I decided green works good enough for me.
Now, don't critique my skills of frosting and writing letters on my cookies. Neither are done very well...
 
I found this nifty little froster guy at Walmart for like 2$. It's what I used to write the letters.

I chose CTR for Choose the Right
 

Friday, December 27, 2013

Minute to win it Christmas



 


Usually on Christmas we just sit and hang out. This works for the most part, but sometimes that causes us to all disperse into other rooms and then we don't get family time. I'm ALL about family time.

So this year I made a point to have us play some games. My mom had the idea to play board games at first. So She got a bunch of games out ( Yahtzee, scrabble, pick up stix, etc.). While I'm a big fan of board games, I wanted to play games that'd get us really competitive... And laughing. Laughing is my favorite.

I found this Blog with minute to win it Christmas games and we played some! This was the Oreo game. This one I think was my favorite one.


Had some serious concentration going on.

 


What you had to do was place a round cookie (we used Oreos) on your forehead. And with only using your face, move the cookie into your mouth. NO HANDS!
They had more games too that we played, like the cup game. I'd totally recommend finding games like this for your next family gathering.
 
We did end up playing Yahtzee too! I actually won for once in my life, and by a landslide! Thank you thank you very much!
Hope you all had a fun Christmas

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Christmas in pictures








Some of my favorite things about Christmas are:
1. The Food!!! I could never diet around the holidays.
2. The Family time. I always love spending time with my family. This time of years gives me the chance to force everyone to get together.
3. The decorations.
4. The magical feeling that Christmas brings.
5. The spirit. I've always loved talking about the birth of Jesus Christ.
6. The kindness! I do feel like it'd be nice to have the cheer and happiness all year round... but for now, Its one of my favorite things about Christmas.
Christmas Eve we went to my In-Laws for dinner and fun. Here is Reese trying to sit up in her high chair.. (we had to take her out of the highchair 5 seconds after the picture)





Reese wanted so bad to play on her dad's video game, She kept making him die on pacman.
Reese's outfit here
Top & pants : walmart (I know so not expected from walmart)
Bow: gift 
 
Don't mind the blurry

Christmas Morning!! ( Just noticed Oakley, our dog, looks psycho in this picture. She wasn't even barking... maybe eating though...  We may never know).
My top: Express
Reese's PJs: Walmart
Reese loved opening gifts, and trying to eat the wrapping paper
She may have liked it more than the gifts them selves?
Christmas apparel for the munchkin
Bow: Hobby Lobby
Onesie: Target
Pants: gift
 
This is one of our minute to win it games, I'll post more about those tomorrow. They were so fun!
Sad to end this great day! But was for sure tired... if you can't tell... from all the excitement and fun.



I hope you all had an amazing Christmas day!!

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Christmas/Family Photos

I have always loved to take pictures. Maybe not in a professional way, but in a way where I can savor the memories. When I can, I even like to print the photos off of my iphone so I can put them into a photo album. When I was younger I LOVED looking through the photo albums of my brothers, parents, grandmas, grandmas, and who ever else is in there. One of my favorite pictures (pretty sure it's my dad favorite too) is of my dad wrestling a bear! Now seriously who would believe my dad wrestled a bear if there was no photo to prove it?

Another favorite is again of my dad and some of his friends... Bet you can't guess which one is him.

 

As I got older I knew I'd want lots of pictures of my kids and family to look back on. Josh tends to think I'm silly since I want a picture of everything. I always know though that he'll be so happy I took them. He always has this same attitude when we take a family photo. Even when we got married he didn't understand why I wanted so many photos taken at the reception.

 

So a few weeks ago we had family photos taken. Josh was not too excited about this... especially because he knew we'd be taking pictures for a few hours. Me on the other hand, I was ecstatic! Not only was I excited to do more pictures of our little family, but I was excited that my best friend ever was taking them for us. She is a very talented photographer.

 

So now that I am finished rambling...Here is the finished product!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I believe this was the point where she said we were done taking pictures.

To see more of Alexandra's work, visit her blog Here

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Pure Happiness

Christmas time has always been my favorite of favorite holidays. I love the music, the family time, the lights, and the over all the spirit that comes along with it. Usually gift giving is involved.. and trust me, I definitely enjoy giving gifts and receiving them. This is year though has put a different mindset on the whole gift giving tradition. We may be giving a few gifts, but because of our troubling times surrounding us, there wont be many. At first I felt like man this Christmas is really going to suck. Then I realized that I was thinking about this the wrong way.

 

When things are going perfect in our lives, we(by we I mean Josh and I) don't usually get the chance to take a look around and just be grateful for the things we DO have in our lives. We are usually focused on wanting what we DON'T have. And maybe, just maybe this is why we had to experience what we've been experiencing. It has definitely humbled me to see life in amore optimistic way. We have so many things that we have to be grateful for this holiday season! We can think of them as gifts if you may. No matter how you think of them though, they are things we can be grateful for.

 

So lately I've had to stop stressing and just pray that something will happen and pull us out of the situation we are in. This is not easy to do for me since I've always had a hard time giving up my power in a situation. I want to control every situation possible. But when things started going south this holiday season, something I read once came to mind.

 

 

I love this saying so much, I read it a few years ago on my husbands grandma's fridge. It has made me take a step back from all the stress, and craziness. Why do we need to worry so much anyway?

 

Now, no matter what is happening this Christmas, good or bad, I am focused only on the things that really matter in my life. I hope you all can do the same!

Merry Christmas!



Friday, December 13, 2013

Dry Shampoo

So just recently, I have fallen in love with dry shampoo. I mean, I've heard many people say how amazing it is.... but seriously, this stuff is AMAZING!

The reason why it has taken me so long to use this magical hair product was I didn't want to spend money on something I may not like. This is also why I usually order the same thing every time at restaurants (don't judge me). Luckily for me I know  someone with expertise on hair care. I told her I wanted to get a dry shampoo, one that worked great AND didn't empty my wallet. So she recommended this! 

So I may or may not know what you are thinking. My first reaction was this... "Suave?" with a look on my face like I just smelt something bad... But I took her advice anyway. She told me this is in fact what she uses herself! Plus for only $2.88, I figured it wouldn't kill me to try it.

So, on day 4 of not washing my hair, I am proud to announce, it is still down AND doesn't look like I'm on day 4 of not washing my hair! Woohoo!

Do you use dry shampoo?

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

3 Months Reese Taylor

Wow! I can not believe I forgot to post about Reese for her 3 month update! My greatest apologies for depriving you from this adorable little girl.

She's laughing more and more and getting cuter by the day! She is soooo long! this girl is going to be tall for sure!

3 New things about Reese:

*Her pouty face

*Her little belly laugh

*They way she wraps her arms around you