One more...

I now realize that I should have posted after I made all my recipe cards! With that being said, here is a yummy pasta dish. Warning - it does have a lot of ingredients and several steps but it's really good! You could spice it up with using spicy sausage and even some red pepper flakes :)

Yummy Recipe

This is a yummy marinade recipe. I love to grill these and dice them up to have in the fridge for salads.  It's also delicious warm with brown rice and veggies :)

New for Fall

Fall is in the air (some days anyway!) here in the South. My sister gave me this recipe to try - I'm not much of a soup person - I enjoy the stew/chili types of soups - so this was up my alley.  It really was yummy and I actually prefer it over rice - just like my stews and chilis :) Hope you enjoy!

Family Reunion 2012

Back to School 2012

Marisa is 18!

It's been such a crazy busy summer! Two out of three kids are back in school. I'll be taking Marisa up to college this week - It's hard to believe! Here's just one of the many fun events from the summer - I'll eventually get them all scrapped and posted :)

5th grade

Easter 2012

I don't know why Tess' picture turned out so blurry?! 

I'm pretty sure it's camera operator error!

Tess' birthday pages

I've already posted about her party but wanted to put the finished pages here. It was a really fun party :)

Playing catch up

Between Christmas and summer, I am insanely busy putting together Girl's Camp. Therefore, I am super behind in blogging and scrapping what has gone on in my real world! So instead of catching up on spring cleaning (which my house needs!), I'm doing fun stuff - this is from our spring break trip in March :)

Last Awards

I can't believe my last little chicken has finished elementary school! They don't have elementary graduations where we live but we had the annual awards ceremony. It was very bittersweet attending this year.

Great job Tess on all your hard work in school!

We love you like crazy :)

Nutty weekend fun!

This is how I spent my crazy weekend (not complaining - just explaining :)

Girl's Camp FUN 2012

Girl's Camp was so much fun - like always :)  What a great time spent with the Young Women of our Stake. Our theme "Spark Your Spirit" focused on inner beauty and really touched the girls. I look forward to next year - I already have the theme picked out! 

 My SPARK sign actually hanging at camp!

 I had pinwheels all around camp and they made it through the all-day thunderstorms!

Cute pennant banners outside the rooms

 One of the BEST camp leaders - we love Dodie!!

 This was skit night - the leaders putting on a skit about looking for the inner beauty in others :)

Cute first year girls at skit night

 This was a super fun game that we played when it was pouring rain. The girls had to go fill a pillowcase with random things from their rooms and then had to compete doing different assignments. They had to make one girl into a super hero - they were super creative!

Then they had to make one of their group members into Pikachu - I thought this was very creative with all their yellow items!

 The lake is the most fun part of camp - the BLOB is awesome!

 Love the huge aqua slide and water trampoline

 The girls weaving their paper covers for their journal craft

 Making cute finger weaving bracelet/anklets

 Girls in a Bollywood Dance class

Zip line after making their way through a high ropes course - BRAVE!

 My cute YCL's leading the girls in some fun! I love how their t-shirts turned out

 CRAZY HAIR show - this was amazing :)  Even super shy girls took part and had so much fun :)

 One of our adult leaders - awesome triple spiked hair!

 The girls got really creative - using cups under the hair as foundations

 The striped shea socks that I had packaged for my core leaders - so comfy :)

The ending night after testimony meeting. We had long sparklers for all the girls and had five leaders spelling out SPARK with theirs. I LOVE this picture!

Girl's Camp gift...

For a select group of ladies who helped me so much at camp - I packaged up some of my favorite Shea Socks from Bath & Body Works and lotion in a cute polka dot bag.  The socks were the perfect color - aqua & white stripes. We looked so cute all together wearing them and just visiting in our cabin :)

Girls Camp 2012 SPARK

I just got back from Girl's Camp 2012 - SPARK Your Spirit!

It is the best few days of my year! Being with the girls in our church is so amazing and uplifting.

Here are some of the preparations I did before I left. I like to keep things under wraps as a surprise for the girls - so even though many of these were designed months ago, I can finally post them now :)

I'll post actual camp photos after I catch up on some sleep!

The goodie/registration bags each girl & leader gets when they check-in 

 100+ bags lined up ready to go!

 Each bag was named and in the level color of the girl

 This is what's inside: Our theme inspiration note, the camp song lyrics, the daily schedule, their lanyard (1st years was this raspberry pink color), a headband of their level color, their secret sister envelope, a "prescription" with Value Pills (see below for a closer picture), and their welcome note telling them their level's name with some gum :)

 This year's pillow treats - everyone gets one each night on their pillow before bed :)

 I made a bunch of these pinwheels in all different colors. I laminated them since they'd be outside all week - we had a heavy rainstorm that lasted the whole first day. My pinwheels held up and were cute all week!

 Made a handful of these paper starts to hang up in our big conference room - they were really cute hanging with colorful streamer, tissue lanterns, etc.  (I'll post more pics later) 

 Little thank you's that I gave out to the adult leaders. I love these Lilly Pulitzer cracker boxes and they went perfectly with my pink vintage/girly carnival theme :)

Our Youth Leader t-shirts. I love having them in bright tie-dye shirts the first day so the other girls know who are their youth leaders easily.

cookies

I've tried a million recipes for cookies and they are all similar. This one uses dark brown sugar - I normally use light and so the different taste is really a yummy change.  It uses about a cup more flour than traditional dough which make them a puffier cookie. You can make them nice and big - golf ball size - but bake a couple more minutes longer. 

I do prefer semi-sweet chocolate chips in my cookies but boy are these good with the milk chocolate!! Enjoy :)

click on image to enlarge

Girl's Camp Continues...

I just had a couple of camp events this past week:

Rough Out with our 4th year girls and our YCL certification learning. I made invitations for our upcoming YCL day - "SPARK IT" and passed them out to the girls. It turned out cute with a little fun lollipop at the top.

 I made a few treats for the meeting - brownies, yummy cookies and cupcakes :)

 Anything to help entice the attendees to attend!!

 These were the Rough Out shirts I made the girls for their beach adventure last weekend - they were so super bright and cute on them! The print was done on my Silhouette in a glittery white iron-on.