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Happy Birthday, Love!

March 24th, 2009 · dave

Dave turned 29 years old yesterday!

We had a fun couple of days celebrating. On Sunday we invited one of his friends over for dinner, and Monday night our little family lit a candle and sang to him… and the whole thing was Dharma-themed (more on that later). We had a good time.

I was thinking it would be neat to showcase Dave’s life in pictures. We do it for our kids on their birthdays, why not include husbands. 🙂

1980:

1983:

1986:

1990:

1995:

1999:

2003:

2006:

2009:

Well, Dave… I know I’m a day late, but I just wanted to say Happy Birthday, and I LOVE YOU! I’m glad to have you as my husband and the father of our children. You are a strong, well-rounded, hard working man, and a wonderful daddy. I know our kids adore you too! Sorry if I embarrassed you with pictures from your childhood… I left out the pictures of our wedding and the ones of you with our kids – we post those kinds of pictures all the time! I think its fun to see how you’ve changed over the years… boy you were cute when you were little. 🙂

I Love you so much! I hope you had a great birthday!

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The Slotted Spoon

March 20th, 2009 · food

Ok. I did it. I’ve been wanting to start a seperate food blog for awhile now, and I finally did it!! Yay!

I wanted a place to keep and organize my recipes. A place I could send my mom or my sister to when they ask for one of these recipes. A place to collect photographs of foods I make. A place to document food experiments. A final resting place for all that Sweet Pork trial and error.

I liked the idea of having a seperate page where people can visit if they WANT TO. So people that prefer the regular ‘ins and outs’ of our lives (like my husband) can stick to those topics here, without muddling through the occasional food related post.

So, I finally did it!

Come take a look. Leave me a comment. Bookmark the page. Add me to your blog roll. Tell your friends. Or don’t
www.TheSlottedSpoon.com

What do you think??? There are still a few changes I’d like to make to the page, but I’m nearly there. 🙂
I plan to copy over the recipes on this blog and post at least once a week to The Slotted Spoon. AND I’M PRETTY EXCITED ABOUT IT!!

On a side note. I made this really yummy Strawberry Pecan bread the other day (even came up with the recipe myself). I think you’ll like it. I posted it on the food blog yesterday.

Thanks for humoring me. I feel like a little kid in a candy store. I really am pretty excited about this.
It makes me want to cook more too. LOL!

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I *AM* Bakerella

March 19th, 2009 · domestic attempts, food, random

Ok. So, I’m not really Bakerella. But I assume you already knew that.

She’s amazing. Her cake pops, cupcake pops, cupcake bites, and basically everything else she makes is awesome. She is incredibly talented, and I love to look at her site and pretend I could make such cool looking things. If you haven’t visited her blog, you should. I think you’ll be amazed.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to try something new a different for a St. Patrick’s Day treat this year. So I braved it and tried to make Bakerella’s cupcake bites (and some cake pops)…

They don’t look nearly as cool as hers. Seriously.

But I did have fun trying.

And I now have a whole new level of respect for her. These took A LONG TIME. Way longer than I thought. Now, I am going to guess that Bakerella has gotten into a rhythm with these things and that she’s considerably faster than me. And I’m going to assume that she doesn’t have 2 small children vying for her attention as she’s cooking. But still.

I probably spent 4 or 5 hours in the kitchen working on these. Bridget helped for awhile, but then lost interest.

On the bright side, I think they turned out pretty good. And they look cool. (though not as cool as hers). Cool or not, I don’t know that I’ll be making more of these any time soon – they just take too long to be massively consumed immediately after they are finished.

Anyway, here are a few more pictures:

I tried to dye the yellow cake mix green. It didn’t quite work like I’d hoped. Its not really all that green.

And the Cake Pops. I think the cupcake bites were easier.

Oh… and for the record. Dipping chocolate works significantly better than melted chocolate chips. You can probably see that my brown is a little rougher than the other two colors.

As a side thought, I bet these would be really good with an Oreo Bon-bon filling instead of the cake. At some point I imagine I’ll try that.

They are pretty fun and funky. So if you’re feeling ambitious, I recommend giving these a try.

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Making Friends

March 17th, 2009 · bridget, domestic attempts, random

A few weeks ago I was looking for a fun project Bridget and I could do together, and I found myself on this website that has really cool paper dolls that you can download and color. I particularly like them because the dolls looked like young kids (or babies) rather than grown-up looking teens.

The website is MakingFriends.com. They have all sorts of other craft projects you can do too. Maybe we’ll try some of those at some point. But this time it was all about the paper dolls.

Anyway, I got this crazy idea to make them magnetic!!

So, I got myself some of this “magnetic material” with an adhesive side. I got it here. But you can also get it here, in varying sizes.

I printed out the dolls and all manner of hair and clothing to go with them. We colored and cut for a few hours (over the period of several days). We adhered our artwork to the magnet and covered it with clear contact paper, then cut it out again. We stuck each one to the fridge as we finished.

As far as teamwork goes…
We both colored. Bridget cut out roughly around the pieces (yes, we had a few causalities). I refined the cutting, stuck it to the magnet/contact paper, and cut again. And she carried it to the fridge. We made a pretty good team.

We ended up with several (gender neutral) ‘dolls’

Some hair

All manner of clothing… career, various seasons, princess, etc…




Add a little creativity….


And you can create some pretty awesome characters!

Seriously. I’m not entirely sure what she was thinking when she made some of these. (Not unlike her own choice of a mis-matched wardrobe some days, I suppose). Anyway, some of these gave me a pretty good laugh. I did the best I could to title them 🙂

Ahem…

“Hello China moves to Jamaica” and “Little Boy Blue”

“Mary Poppins meets poodle groomer”

“The gender confused nerd”

“Sacajawea gardening”

“Rainbow Brite plays soccer”

“Bejeweled Sumo meets Wilma Flintstone”

“Cancer survivor beauty pageant winner – Swim suit contest”

AND FINALLY here’s the same contestant in the evening gown/talent portion. Not sure I want to know what her talent was (especially if it involves that axe)…

Can you tell which ones Bridget colored?? She was pretty excited to see the stuff she colored on a magnet.

Well…
At any rate, we had lots of fun making these. And quite a bit of fun playing with them since. We’ve printed several more outfits since I took these pictures, and even recently make some ‘Easter bunny’ versions from the templates at MakingFriends.com. There really are tons of fun options!

If you are looking for something creative and fun to do, I recommend these paper dolls. (Magnets or not they are pretty fun).

P.S. I think I need to clean the door to my fridge. Leave it to a handful of photographs to point that out! Ha.

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Arby’s Roast Burger

March 16th, 2009 · food, random

Just thought I’d post a quick link for a FREE Roast Burger at Arby’s. Its good until March 23rd.

http://www.fmrnd.com/arbys_roastburger/

Party at Arby’s everyone!!

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Sick kid (and Validation video)

March 15th, 2009 · bridget, random

Bridget has spent the last couple of days sick.

The poor girl has had a stomach ache and a fever (it got up to 104 on Friday). All she wanted was to held, and she actually asked to take naps/go to bed. Surprisingly she even felt bad enough to turn down offers of Popsicles and ice cream. Now, that’s sick. lol.

I don’t know what it is. The flu, maybe.

I thought she was starting to feel better, but then she had diarrhea last night – and the fever came back. Thankfully she hasn’t thrown up yet (crossing fingers).

She’s been a little daddy hungry too. With him out of the country though, we had to rely on some neighbors to come give her a blessing (thank you, kind neighbors). It was funny, after they left, she just looked at me and said, “Well, I didn’t throw up during the blessing. I must be getting better already!” (You might recall the last time she was sick – that experience makes her comment even more funny.)

Hopefully she’ll be back to her happy self again soon!

On another note. Here’s a video a friend passed on. I think you’ll like it.

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Jesus blesses the children

March 14th, 2009 · bridget, random

Last night we were reading from Bridget’s Book of Mormon reader. We got to a chapter titled “Jesus blesses the children.” I asked Bridget if she’d like to read about how Jesus blesses us. She glanced down at the page, and immediately exclaimed, “How come Jesus shows up there? He doesn’t ever show up here to bless us.”

I chuckled a little bit and tried to explain. I told her that Jesus used to walk on the earth, and that he lived here before he lived in heaven. And that he’d come to earth again, but that it would probably be a long time. Her only response, “Why?”

I tried to explain that Jesus has ‘helpers’ here on earth to bless us with the priesthood when he can’t be here himself. Again she asked, “Why?”

Man, I love the “WHY” stage.

At any rate, I tried to simplify things the best I could so she would understand. Who knows if she actually does.

I thought that her initial comment was cute and innocent though. Well, sweetheart, I’d love it if Jesus showed up here to bless us too!

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3 month smiles

March 13th, 2009 · spencer

Our little man is 3 months old today! Its crazy how fast he’s growing. He is doing a little bit better on his head control, and he’s full of smiles.

He’s an absolute joy. He is a very well mannered baby, easy going, and almost always happy. He sleeps well too. Thanks for being part of our family Spencer! You are very loved.

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I like Sprouts

March 12th, 2009 · random, tina

I like sprouts on my sandwiches.

I do.

I just thought you should know.

Do you like sprouts??

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Sundae

March 7th, 2009 · bridget, food, random

Bridget had her first hot fudge Sundae the other day.

In the past when we’ve tried to offer her things like ice cream toppings she refused. She just wanted the cherry a top her regular bowl of ice cream. Silly girl. Needless to say, when she finally tried it, she loved it. I think we have a sundae convert on our hands. She had hot fudge, caramel, and strawberry toppings. Cool Whip. Peanuts (not pictured). And, of course, a cherry.

Next time we’ll have to do it when we have ripe bananas on hand. I bet she’d love a banana split too!

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