The Random One With The Exciting Updates

I am sitting here at midnight craving chocolate and watching Conan. Not so unusual, I know. But I am excited to eat lots of chocolate while passing out candy for Halloween. I decided I have a lot of little updates I could tell you about, and I haven't posted in a bit, so here we go!
I ordered my dress and should be receiving it in 2 weeks or so. I am pretty excited. It's a mermaid style. I already had my princess dress, and this time I wanted something sassy. It was difficult to find anything sassy and modest, but I sure lucked out with finding it... and at an amazing price! I found it for half of the price of renting a dress. Pretty excited.
Also, I am very excited for The Office tomorrow night. It should be pretty good. I am excited to see what Jim dresses up to be this year. The last Halloween episode, he dressed up as a 3-hole punch. Classic. Thank heaven for the internet and for friends that record it for me. I always have to work Thursday nights. Bummer.


I am now a t-mobile customer. That was an exciting one for me. I miss my old phone. T-mobile will save us a ton of money though, so I'm always up for saving money.
I took my ring in to be sized. I miss it, but I found some good bling to wear until I get it back.
I got hit on by several men today... odd how it happens all at once... and when I was wearing a really big ring. I wasn't even wearing makeup... weird... the waiter at dinner asked for my number. I always wanted to give a guy Rick's number when they ask for mine, but Magyn talked me into being a bit nicer, so I gave him another Michelle's phone number.
Today, Magyn and I went to the mall after dinner and some girl selling cell phone covers started talking about how she cheated on her boyfriend. Pretty odd! Too much info!
I am starting a wedding post that I am pretty excited about. I will post the address shortly, hopefully.
The Jazz won tonight! WOOT! I am proud of them. They seem to be on top of things this season (and pre-season). I am pretty sure, though, that they won because I was wearing my Korver shirt all day. He got a hair cut, I noticed. Looked good, as always!


I think that's about it.
Wow, what a week!

The One With The Family Pictures

Emily's youngest is 6 months now, so we took him to Gardener Village to take some pics. While we were at it, we took some of all of the boys and Emily. These aren't edited at all, but hopefully I will find some time to enhance them soon. After, we enjoyed some treats from the candy shop. Yum!

The Other One With The Other Tag

Ok, my friend Carlye tagged me in this one. So, what you do is choose your 4th picture folder on your computer and choose the 4th picture in it and blog it.
My 4th folder down is titled family. It's where I throw all of my family pics I have taken or scanned in. Needless to say, there are many more sub-folders inside the family folder, but the tag says the next step is to pic the 4th picture down. Lucky for you, I only have 4 pics floating around in this folder, since the rest are sub-folders. Here it is!


This picture must have been taken at least 6 years ago... exciting! It's of me, my mom, my sisters and the kids we all love so much!

I tag every one as usual!!

The One With 8 Of Just About Everything

Here's a tag I got:

8 TV shows I love to watch-

1. John & Kate + 8

2. Designed To Sell (which is actually on now)

3. What Not To Wear (which is also on now, but this is what I am watching)

4. Good Things Utah

5. Say Yes To The Dress

6. The Simpsons

7. Seinfeld

8. Friends

8 Favorite restaurants-

1. Wendy's

2. Neighborhood Bakery (at work)

3. Paradise Bakery

4. Panda

5. Arby's

6. Ginza's (sushi)

7. Archibald's

8. Papa John's Pizza :)

8 things that happened yesterday-

1. I woke up

(this is really hard, I am having a hard time remembering)

2. Got ready

3. Went in to work

4. Worked my crazy little tooshie off - work was super busy, it's Wee Witches Weekend (You would NOT believe how many people crowd into that little village)

5. Drove to Ricky's house

6. We then drove to Harmon's to buy me medicine, then to Valley Fair Mall to pick up one of his friends then...

7. Went to the Dashboard & Plain White Tees concert... woot!!

8. Went to Rick's basketball game, then went to his house to watch The Office (OH CRAP! How could I forget to put The Office on my favorite tv shows to watch!?!?)

8 things I'm looking forward to-

1. After Big Witches Weekend is over :)

2. Getting married

3. Picking up my dress so I can wear it around the house ALL day EVERY day. :)

4. Moving out (no offense mom & dad!)

5. Getting out of debt

6. Having kids

7. Graduating from college

8. Seeing Ricky tonight

8 things on my wish list-

1. Getting out of debt asap (I guess that shopping trip I just took didn't help that!)

2. Making time to exercise on a regular basis

3. Find a cheap pair of chairs that will match my kitchen table I just painted

(this one is tough... I like my life and don't wish for a lot of things)

4. I had more time to spend with my friends and family

5. Become closer to God with my scripture study

6. ooh, Laser hair removal so I don't have to pluck my eyebrows anymore

7. oh yeah! bigger boobs! :)

(and last the best of all the game...)

8. WORLD PEACE!!

8 persons I hereby tag!
All of my friends who have time for this!

The One With The Pumpkins

On Monday night (man, that seems forever ago) my family went to a pumpkin patch so all of my nieces and nephews could pick out a pumpkin. It was blasted cold, but lots of fun. As usual, I have pictures to prove it.



Can you tell he (^ above) was freezing? :)



He, of course, wanted the biggest pumpkin he could find, but it was so big he could only roll it. (above)


Good buddies... cute!


Our pumpkin was the best! Too bad we didn't take it home.




And last the best of all the game... my dorky brother.

The One On Temple Square

Over conference weekend, I got the bug, once again, to take pictures. I have always wanted to take a picture for Rick of his favorite temple and enlarge it, so I thought I would give it a go (maybe for Christmas). It rained a lot over the weekend, and when it rains is always a beautiful time to take pictures. It stopped raining by Sunday afternoon, but Rick and I went up that evening before the sunset to play around. I am not sure I got "the picture" that I want to enlarge, but I'll play around with what I have and see. It was beautiful up there!



After that, we went up by Ensign Peak and enjoyed the view. It really was amazing!



It was quite the contrast to be right next to the grand Salt Lake Temple, then go up a bit higher and realize how tiny everything is, even the temple.



Even the U is so small ... Go Utes!!

The One With The Great Brownie Recipe

I haven't posted in a bit, and haven't known what to post for a while, but I was reminded the other day at how much I love making desserts, and not just any desserts, the best desserts, so I decided I can share my love for dessert baking with all of you.  :)

Rick's mom just had surgery on her knee, and she LOVES mint brownies, so I decided to do what I do best (haha, or what I like to think is one of the things I do best...) and make a tasty treat.  I didn't have a lot of time so I went to Albertson's and bought a brownie mix, but it wasn't just any brownie mix (I don't like to skimp on quality with my sweets, I don't want to make okay desserts, I want to make AMAZING desserts), so I bought the most expensive brownie mix I could see (I forget the brand, but if I remember it I will update this) since I didn't have the time to make it from scratch, and went home to get busy (in a good way).  

I made the brownie portion, put it in the oven, then moved onto the mint frosting portion.  The recipe goes as follows for the mint frosting:

1/4 cup softened butter

2 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

3 tablespoons of milk

1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

green food coloring

To make the mint frosting, cream the butter and confectioners' sugar. Add the milk 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until it is smooth and spreadable. Beat in the peppermint extract and tint to the desired shade with green food coloring. Frost the cooled brownies, cover, and chill for 1 hour. 

Luckily, I realized that it said to cream the butter and sugar... I had never done that, so I looked up how to do it.  Thanks to the site http://www.meninaprons.net/2006/07/how_to_cream_butter_and_sugar.html (yes, that is www.meninaprons.net), I learned that you get the somewhat softened butter and take a pastry blender and smash it occasionally adding a little sugar, until it is fluffy. 

This takes some time and patience, but is so worth it.  It ended up being pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.  After that, you melt chocolate chips and 3 tablespoons butter together and put on top of the cooled brownies.  Refrigerate for about an hour and it is good to go!   Needless to say, Jaleen loved the brownies and they were gone in about 48 hours.  They were so delicious, I might make more tomorrow, since I didn't get to give any to my dad.  I am also trying a recipe for sweet rolls tomorrow.  Wish me luck on this endeavor.  Below is the closest pic I could find as to what they looked like.  Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of mine.