Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving we went to my family's house in West Jordan. It was lots of fun. We didn't take any pictures of the actual Thanksgiving dinner though, or the family all together. It was delicious as always. There weren't as many people there as usual though, because my mom's parents didn't come until later.

But I did manage to scrape up a few from my phone and James' camera from my mom and me playing some games, which we loved to do, and James took some cool pictures of the guys shooting, which was their Thanksgiving bonding experience.

 

Playing Bananagrams, the funnest game ever! At least, my mom and I could stay at this for hours. We only succeeded in coercing others to join us for a little while. Then they all caught on that there was no escape from the monotony. And there never would be.

 

I did this the morning the guys went shooting, to commemorate this activity.  I was actually most proud of this, and thank you for Spencer for knowing that "Squib" is actually a gun word. "Movie" and "Vision" are rather questionable.

And here they are in the middle of desert nowhere (South of Tooele).

 

Shooting the AK-47.

 

My brother Spencer with the .22 rifle. Man, he's so cool.

  

And look how strong he is. I mean I doubt I could hold up that heavy gun by the grip with one hand.

 

Nor would I need to shade my eyes to see if I hit the target. What? What target? 

 

My dad with the AR-15.

 

And a 9mm pistol. These people have a lot of guns.

That's what James aspires to have--lots of guns. Probably I've done gone married a hoarder of guns and camera lenses. I'm really glad he knows so much about them though, and how to handle them safely. He can explain every little detail about how different kinds of guns work, their inner mechanisms, and he's not afraid to take them all apart, clean them, and check all the parts to make sure they are working right. James is pretty awesome! :)

And we had a great Thanksgiving.

Nature Hike

James and I were having kind of a lazy Saturday and decided to go on a fun walk in Rock Canyon. This was a great idea. I don't think we do this often enough, go outside and walk around in Nature. Especially if we're bored. Well, it was sadly another one of those times when there are only pictures of me and no James. I will have to get better at that.

Really not a whole ton happened. We just walked up the trail and wandered over to check out a tiny cave in the side of the hill. Mostly it just felt really great to be outside and see these really pretty colors of the stormy canyon on a fine fally afternoon.

I think the next two were taken by me:

It began to drip a few drops and then rain a little harder so we headed back to the car. Then the rain stopped. Oh well, we should have known that would happen in Utah. But it was still lots of fun!

Fun with Foods

Whenever we make something new or unusually yummy, I take a picture of it and sometimes send it to my mom. She said we should put them on the blog, so I decided to do it. It's not really a recipe blog because I didn't make up the recipe for anything, but I like seeing pictures of the fun creations. So this is basically a compilation of all the food pictures that have been sitting on my phone for the past couple months.

First there is this bread bowl. I made zuppa toscana (from Olive Garden) and cut in half this big chunk of bread and carved out the inside. This picture is slightly misleading about how awesome it was. James got the bottom half of the bread, but the top half that I had was too thin and the soup leaked out. Also, it was sourdough bread which isn't our favorite, so we didn't end up eating most of our bowls...but it was fun anyway!

Then one night, we were hungry for a dessert. It was pretty late. We both thought pancakes sounded good, but then we thought of cinnamon rolls and those sounded good too. But we realized that we didn't have to choose!!! Here is our attempt at following a Googled cinnamon-roll-pancake recipe. Nailed it! ;)

This is just regular old French toast, (according to James, worse than regular because it's on wheat bread. James is always so disappointed in me when I don't buy white bread.) but James had a fun idea to put nectarines on it. And mostly, I just like how he cut a chunk out of his toast so that all three slices fit snugly on his plate. He does this every time we have French toast.

I was really rather proud of this beef jerky. It wasn't the best, and we think it's because we used ground beef rather than actual nice cut of steak. We mixed the hamburger with liquid smoke and a few other spices, and then squished it flat and cut it into strips. We put those on a wire rack and put it in the oven, and had aluminum foil on the lower rack in case of drips. Then we put the oven to its lowest setting, 150 degrees, and let them dry out for about 6 hours.

I sent a picture of this to my mom and said "We made beef jerky!"
She said, "I've done that before, but on accident. Was yours on purpose?"

These are my mom's famed sugar cookies which are just simply delightful. They are pretty fun to make because they go in the oven for about 6 minutes, so you can make like a million batches. That would actually take 6 million minutes, but still it's a lot shorter than the time for other cookies, which would take approximately 10-15 million minutes.

This is just homemade rice-a-roni. I really like it. I'm pretty sure it's cheaper than the box stuff but tastes the same. As you may have guessed, the hot sauce smiley face is the work of James.

Also, if you are every hungry for a quick and delicious lunch, you should eat this. It is carrots, tomatoes, and olives mixed together with salt and pepper. I also included cucumbers. It's the yummiest thing made of pure fruits and vegetables that I've ever heard of.

And then the pumpkin bread. We had leftover pumpkin puree. So I just tried making a banana bread recipe and instead of bananas, I put the pumpkin. It really wasn't bad. Although it was actually better cold than hot out of the oven. It had a nice squashy-yellow tint to it as well. I'd make it again.

Well anyway, it was a bad idea to write this post on a fast Sunday. Maybe that's why I wrote it in the first place. But maybe if more food pictures begin to congregate on my phone, I will do another one of these things. Yum!!!

Fall Decorating

This Fall I decided I wanted to have some real life fally decorations. You know, trying to be a homemaker and everything. Well, all October I worked and planned and created, and in the end there was a grand total of.... 4 decorations!

But look. That's a lot better than 0, which is how many we usually have. Plus, our apartment is so small (cozy) that four decorations pretty much make it festive!!!

I'm kind of into DIY decorations. These are pictures from our very fun hike into Rock Canyon to collect fall leaves for decoration. I'm SUPER glad we went because everyone is always talking about how pretty the canyon is at this time of year. They are right! :D

A grasshopper!

James and I have this game where whenever one of us sees a dandelion, we pick it and try to blow it at the other person's face. You see, despite the countless times I have tried, I have only won this game once. James usually wins even if I'm holding the dandelion.

A wild Miranda appears. Here I am scouting out the perfect leaves for the decorations!

A charming James appears!

So that was lots of fun. Next, I also wanted acorns to decorate with. Now being the smart frugal decorator that I am, I decided to collect these acorns from beneath an acorn tree. All I needed was an oak tree. How did I find it, you ask? (You see, this is Utah, where they don't just spring up in any old place.) Well, during my freshman year I took a class about landscape design, and in that class I received a BYU Tree Tour pamphlet. It's a very classy and well designed pamphlet describing over 100 different types of trees on campus, and their locations.

Me (bragging to James): "And I used my BYU Tree Tour book to find the closest Oak tree, and it turns out there's one right next to the Eyring Science Center!"

James: "I know. I walk past it every day."

Ah well. I guess James thinks that simply paying attention to the world around him is superior to reading about it in books. I bet he didn't know that it was a Bur Oak, though.

So here I am at the dead of night shoving pinecones into a bag. I was too embarrassed to do this during the daytime with all the university students walking around. I think it was almost midnight, actually. Oh the things James puts up with.

But it was all worth it!

I bought the big jar and the sheet music from D.I., and then literally everything else except the acorns (OBviously) came from a Relief Society Mod Podge activity.

Also, my mom had a big wreath of grapevine she had never used, so she gave it to me and I hot glued the leaves to it! A rather small wreath, but it was very vibrant.

Here's our kitchen table with the acorn jar, and also a wicker basket bowl that I've had since freshman year. I just bought a bunch of squashes from the grocery store. I told James it was either real squashes or fake squashes (but there WOULD be squashes), so he chose real ones because of their utilitarian value. We had several lovely squash dinners throughout the month.

So there you have it! I'm rather proud of my leafy acorn jar and will probably keep it for next year. :)