Halloween 2011

We had a really fun Halloween this year. The weather was perfect - cool but not cold. Sometimes we can get humid and yucky Halloweens but this year was great. All the kids scooted out to Trick-or-Treat with friends. I never mind having older kids coming to our house for candy as long as they've taken an effort for a costume. Marisa has gone out every year and said she couldn't miss her senior year! Tess was a really cute 50's girl - that's actually a skirt I made Marisa in Kindergarten (you can see Marisa even wore it this year to a party - see top left photo!). Tess and I met up with her best friends in the neighborhood and had a fun time going around - she got so much candy. Her school has a donation that goes to kids in Reynosa, Mexico - so thankfully we'll be sending a bunch there!

Marisa YW Medallion

Marisa earned her Young Women's Medallion today! She completed all her Personal Progress goals and 8 different projects of 10+ hours each. We're so proud of her and all her accomplishments and talents she had cultivated. For those not familiar with this award for the young women in our church, it is equivalent to a scout receiving his Eagle award. She received a cute collection of Value books, a beautiful flower bouquet from her YW President, Sis. Morton, and her silver medallion.

 I wanted to make a special dessert to celebrate with all the girls at church. So I made two six-layer rainbow cakes that had all the Value colors represented.  The frosting is made from a white chocolate ganache and decorated with roses on the top. It was really cute and pretty easy too :)

BYU in Dallas

Yesterday we drove to Dallas for the BYU vs. TCU football game. It was played in the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. Jose got tickets for us all in one of the suite boxes - yummy food galore! Marisa couldn't attend since it was her homecoming game at school so Ryan brought his good buddy, Keith.  We had so much fun being there even though our team lost :(  That stadium is amazing and it was like visiting the Mother Land for Jose since he's a hardcore - lifelong Cowboys fan! We stayed overnight and drove back today since Marisa had her Homecoming dance/date tonight - luckily her school team won even though BYU didn't :)

Ryan, Keith, Tess and Jose outside "Jerry's World" (Stadium)

American Girl Glamour witch

I taught a couple of American Girl Doll classes this month. The girls made "Glamour Witch" costumes for their dolls. They turned out so super cute. They made a dress with two glitter tulle overskirts, a bat necklace, a trick-or-treating bag, and the cutest hat with feathers, flowers, ribbons and more! I also bought all the dolls some silver shoes to finish of the Glam :)

 All the girls showing off their models (Tess in the middle)

I loved having all these pretty little witches lined up for a picture!

Pumpkin Contest

Both Ryan and Tess are in orthodontics right now. We love their orthodontist and her office staff - not to mention all the fun stuff at the office (arcade, etc.). Anyhow - they have a pumpkin decorating contest each year and the winner gets an iPod - 2nd & 3rd place gets cash!  The kids got into decorating their pumpkins. 

Tess made this spiderweb one with glitter glue, glitter spray, and glitter spiders - sparkly!

 Ryan made his into a mummy - kind of cute, huh? This also shows the cute individual S'mores treat bags we made to give to friends.  I'll keep you posted on if the kids won any of the prizes :)
(UPDATE - Ryan's mummy pumpkin won 3rd place!)

Pinterest addiction

My peppermint cake got on the main page of Pinterest this weekend - now I have over 900 repins and links onto my blog - wow! I know this isn't anything exciting for most of you but it kind of tickled me :)

I've been spending a lot of time on Pinterest. The first time I went to the site, I just saw a lot of images posted and thought "what's the big deal?".  I didn't understand that when you "pin" images to your "boards" (just like pinning a picture to a cork board - you get the drift), you can click on those images and it takes you to the original website or blog from which it came.  So instead of adding dozens of bookmarks to your favorites - this keeps them all for you with images!!  

When you browse through Pinterest, you'll end up seeing all the best of the blogs and sites. There are tons of ideas and inspiration to be found. I really LOVE it - go and see for yourself :) 

Here are a couple examples of how it looks

My Fab Bday (Michelle style!)

I had a birthday recently and just wanted to post about what my dearest friend, Michelle, did for me. On that day, I received a box from her in Utah that stated Marisa knew what to do with everything. So I waited until Marisa got home that evening to open it.  I actually had taken a very late nap and got up around 7:00 pm to this super fun "Birthday Party in a Box" that Michelle had made.  What a cute surprise everything was!

 Look at this garland she sewed for me - she ruffled yards and yards of three colors of streamers together - she's amazingly crazy with all her projects - I love it!

 Then she made me a fancy birthday hat of zebra fabric, plumes of feathers and flowers! I'm having Ryan model for me since I had just woken up and being a year older - it wasn't a pretty sight ;)

Michelle had packed in zebra balloons, cute plates, napkins, "J" cupcake pics, confetti shred, and all sorts of goodies.  She also made me the cutest apron from a tea towel with owls on it and added ruffles and rustic lace - so cute!  Marisa went and bought my favorite cake at Cheesecake Factory and had that there too - yum!

It started as a not so fun day but ended great - thanks Michelle - Love you! (and my cute family too :)

Triple YUM!!

These are so dang blasted delicious!!

Made some last night - bites of heaven - enjoy :)

What's coming to dinner?

These are going with me to a dinner party tomorrow night - I'm opting for the ice cream and hot fudge on top too :)

Good thing I've done some extra cardio today!

Scrapbooking Disney

Stuff...

I just realized that my 3rd year Blogging anniversary just passed by -

Happy Anniversary Dear Blog :)

I've been trying to get my life a little more organized since school has begun. My summers aren't the time to breathe let alone get my act together. I have Girl's Camp at the beginning of summer and then I teach sewing & cake classes all summer long. So now that all that's over for the time being (still always lurking in the corners of my mind), I can get some things done.  Yesterday I felt all tech-savvy and installed more memory on the iMacs in our house. I love the speed it has given me - I'm a little giddy about it all! I'm in debates with myself on purchasing iMac #4 for the house - I don't know the excuse for another one but I'm trying ;)

Summer Trip 2011

We did the killer four days at Disney - a different park a day! I would never recommend doing it that way unless you love Disney - which I do. I guess attending high school in Florida and then living in So. California ignited some kind of Disney obsession in me ;)  We had a ton of fun even though it's always hot and humid - not as bad as we live with daily here in Texas though.

 Ryan with the Test Track car at EPCOT

 Monkeying around in the Toy Story ride!

 The New York City Subway??!!  Just a movie set at Hollywood Studios

 My Disney expert friend, Nicole, recommended taking this drawing class at Hollywood Studios. We loved it so much that we did it twice - learned to draw Pooh Bear and then Woody from Toy Story. Don't you love the cute desks? Disney details - they're awesome!

 Tess trying on a Yeti wig after the Everest Roller Coaster at Animal Kingdom - our favorite ride of all the parks (at least us girls - the boys loved Rockin' Roller Coaster)

 Toy Story ride - really cute and clever - we were rockin' the 3-D glasses :)

Jose and kids on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom - 

We heart Disney!!

After our Disney marathon, we went to visit my Dad in Sarasota. He lives near to Siesta Beach (voted #1 in the US this year) so we went everyday. Jose let Marisa and Ryan go parasailing one day - that would seriously give me a stroke! I don't know how they braved something like that?! 1,200 feet in the air - yikes!

 The crew would bring them down and dunk them a few times - they loved it!

 View from the air

 They had about 10 dolphins playing around their boat

 Marisa, Jose and Grandpa playing in the water

Tess and Ryan taking off on the boogie boards - they loved the clear warm water. It was nice because we didn't have to keep an eye out for jellyfish like when we go to Destin's beaches. It was a great trip!!

Lelands & Boondocks!

We ended our Utah trip with a bang by meeting up with our dear friends, The Lelands. Ryan and Tess had so much fun with Cater and Callie again - we've missed them so much since they moved to Amarillo last year!

 Rebecca suggested going to Boondocks and that was the best time! The kids loved the go-karts, bumper boats, laser tag and especially the 4-D movies. Rebecca and I got to catch up and giggle at all of her funny stories - loved it!! :)

 Cute girls!!

Utah 2011

We had such a fun time in Utah this summer. On the day we arrived, we went hiking up to a pretty waterfall with my brother Tim's family.  Marisa with her cousin Katie.

Ryan's best buddy, Parker, came up to Utah with us. My nephew, Tyson, dared the boys to dunk their heads into the freezing cold water - you can see the results below... 

This water was killing their feet because it was so super cold!

 Still alive but now they are freezing like the water - crazy boys!

 They had to lay against the warm sunny rocks to keep from getting hypothermia!

The next morning we took Ryan and Parker down to BYU for a week at football camp. They loved it even though they were in the old yucky dorms at Heritage this year. They said their room was the messiest around but I think they had the most junk food and snacks too!

 All their practices were at the huge indoor facilities this year - saved on the sunscreen and burned skin of last year.  This was the last day of camp when the parents got to come see some drills, etc.

Ryan's favorite thing to do this year was Airborne in Draper. It's a new trampoline place that had a huge foam pit to jump into. He mastered his double flip while there. We ended up going twice - loved it that much!

 Tess getting the hang of her front flip - 2nd bravest jumping bean in the family after Ryan :)

 Marisa - our least brave child. She only did twirls - forget any flipping! Still had a ton of fun :)

Girl's Camp 2011 - take 2...

We started the first day of camp with my YCL's (Youth Camp Leaders) fluffing up all the pom poms we had made (about 50 of them). We then hung them from the ceiling of our main meeting room. They looked so festive and fun!

 Then we started off on our Amazing Race. Here are some of the "detours" and "road blocks" they had to perform (in Egypt they had to mummify one of their teammates)

 When traveling from one country to another, they had to travel in different ways such as piggy back, walking backwards, leap frogging each other, doing the Laverne & Shirley walk, etc.

 In India, they had to identify 10 spices just by smell.

 Our 1st team to come to the Pit Stop on the first day - we awarded the daily winners and then had a Grand Winner at the end of camp.

 My YCL's in the shirts I got them and put YCL on the sleeve in glittery black - they looked so cute and they all loved the shirts. We had 27 awesome YCL's this year!

 Making one of the crafts - rolled rose headbands. These were so cute and the girls could totally customize it to their taste. They also made initial pendants with genuine pearls hanging on a cute ball chain.

 Fun at the lake - jumping and being bounced off the BLOB! Some girls got seriously flight time!

 I asked two my YCL's to teach a Zumba class. We always try to put a fitness class in at camp. We've done yoga, pilates and now this year was Zumba - don't be fooled by the faces..they did really like it ;)

 Rock wall climbing - these girls are brave! We also had high ropes with a zip line at the end - scary!

 One night we had a Super Jam - World Tour (lip syncing show). I didn't know if they would like it but the girls got totally into it! Here's one as Justin Bieber - and the cute little one in black was the "rapper" - so awesome.

 A little of Enchanted - How do you know that she loves you? Loved it!