My little brother received his mission call last night. He'll be going to the North Carolina Raleigh Mission, reporting to the MTC in November 2010! We're so excited. It was fun to have everyone in the family make guesses about where he would go and post it on a world map. We were there with him just a few weeks ago and hoped he would get his call while we were there. We missed it by a week and a half. We're grateful for modern technology. We were able to be there via webcam. Such a fun experience.


I'm so proud of him. He'll be a great missionary and it will be a wonderful two years of his life!

This is my family (my family, sisters families, brother and parents) right after my brother was ordained as an Elder (received the Melchizedek priesthood) , this summer.

Peace

I got bored (for a bit) with piecing the zig zag quilt. (I'm sooo slow at quilting. Ugh!) So, I needed a new small project. Over Thanksgiving weekend I decided to use a few scraps from the zig zag quilt to make a Christmas banner. I had some cream felt leftover from making the birthday crown awhile ago. I wanted the felt to be thick so I double it. I then decided it should be reversible. I was going to put another Christmas word on the other side, but thought maybe I should go with a word from a neighboring season/holiday. So, the other side says "Fall" with a fabric leaf on the extra square. I hung it on the mirror in my living room. The only thing I don't really like about that is that you see the fall colors and letters. Oh well.

I free handed the letters on parchment paper and traced them on the fabric. My artistic husband helped me. :)


I used dark green thread to zig zag around the letters (before I attached the Fall letters felt squares to the back).


Easy peasy! But, I thought it would be a two-hour-or-under project. Nope. Not for me. I'm slow! I also broke a needle and stuff like that. When I was done, I was happy with it, but wished I had spent the time quilting instead.

Thanksgiving weekend

Thanksgiving morning we met some out-of-state friends at the zoo and had a little "turkey trot" of our own. We ran a few times around the paths of the zoo "before normal zoo hours" (it's a member benefit)! Some of our kids rode bikes and the little ones sat in jogging strollers. It was so fun. I am really bummed that we didn't actually get any pictures of us all together there.

While everyone else was off looking at the new Komodo Dragon exhibit, I snapped a few photos of this cheesy ham.

At the Turkey Trot at my kids school.

I pushed my little kids in my neighbor's jogger (mine was in repair) while I ran with my other two around the school a few times. I ran with each of them separately. I think it came out to be about 3 miles total. Not bad for an elementary school. It was a very fun event.

Of course we ate very yummy food on Thursday. I was sooo stuffed. It actually hurt! We got together with a few of my husband's brothers and their families and my mother-in-law was in town. My family made broccoli salad, spiral sliced ham, mashed potatoes, and rolls. Oh, YUMMY! Everything was so stuff-your-face-good!! Darn, no pictures of the food either. I thought I got more pictures of everyone during the meal. I guess my brother-in-law probably did, but that doesn't help me right now. Anyway...

I did a little crafting over the weekend, too. I'll post about that tomorrow, I think. :-)

Two Crafty Things Today: one online, one in person!

Thing 1:

Ooooh. I'm so excited!! When I opened my google reader this morning and saw the post from Heather Bailey, I was so happy and so sad at the same moment. There is a craft fair event in Mesa this weekend (yay!) and it's Friday night (tonight) from 6pm-10pm (NO!!! I can't make it at that time!!) Oh wait... As I kept reading I found out that it going on (10am-5pm), on Saturday also!!! Woohoo! (Now if I can just fit it in...). Heather Bailey will be there along with Stephanie Nielson (nienie) and her husband (don't know if they'll be there both days, though), and many more!

I don't want to go alone. Anyone want to go with me? I asked one of my crafty neighbor friends and she reminded me that she would be out of town :-(. So, let me know if you're interested in joining me!

Here's a link to the Domestic Bliss blog (that's the boutique store where the craft event is at).

Thing 2:

Some of my favorite craft bloggers (click there to read about them) have been chosen to participate in a crafter's challenge. It's called So You Think You're Crafty (S.Y.T.Y.C). This is the last day to check out their "anonymous" first-round project and vote for your favorite. There are some REALLY beautiful creations. Very talented women, I tell you!

When you go to the So You Think You're Crafty blog you click on "this week's challenge" on the top tab. Look through those crafts and vote. Then you get to see the results so far.

It's fun! Go check it out. Don't forget to vote! And come back here to talk about what your favorites are. (It's SOO hard to decide).

Busy Halloween Week

Three of my kids, with three of their cousins.

It's been a week since my last post, but it seems like weeks! We've been so busy that I feel like there should have been multiple blog posts from each day last week. There just never seemed to be any time to blog about things. Now, I guess I'll try to fit it all in at once and only share a few of the more interesting things that we did.

My baby chick. I need to send this to Little Birdie Secrets. I got the idea from them.

I stayed up so late one night making/altering this Draco Malfoy costume.

Preschool Halloween Party:

7-year-old birthday party on Halloween Day:

We did crafts and snacks. I think they had fun. :-)

6 and 7-year-old's use a lot of mod podge!

This pic is of the mummy pizzas before they went into the oven.

And... Our dinner and dessert last night:

We made these Stuffed Pizza Rolls from The Best Bites blog. (see my last blog post about them.) We used our own homemade pizza dough recipe (I should have my husband post that here on my blog sometime...) This was SOOO yummy! A bit more work (just took a bit more time to assemble) but WELL worth it! Really, dipped in warm sauce, it's so much better than pizza! You've got to try it! We'd like to try this one next time.


And here is my family's first ever Pizookie! We all just grabbed spoons and ate it straight out of the pan together! And of course we LOVED it! (We don't usually have dessert after dinner - in fact it's really quite rare here.) We DO usually make cookies on Sunday evening, though, and last night we decided to bake it a little differently! Thanks to some awesome friends for introducing me to these yummy creations! (I live in a cave, apparently!)

My New Favorite Food Blog

I absolutely love good food! Who doesn't?! I'm not exactly sure how I found this amazing food blog: Our Best Bites. But when I did, I searched around on their site for about an hour (I could easily spend tons of hours there) looking through some delicious recipes!! There are also some fun and yummy Halloween treats, perfect for a Halloween party. I personally was looking for ideas for treats for preschool this week, and my daughter's birthday party (that just so happens to be on Halloween).


I also can't get over their recipes for fall. They have so many great sounding recipes... like Pasta with Pumpkin Alfredo (Um, ya. I LOVE that idea), Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream Sandwiches (I've died and gone to heaven!), and Crumb-Topped Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bites (Oh, my)! I never really liked pumpkin when I was growing up, but just in the last few years I have completely fallen in love with it, in almost anything. I sorta like pumpkin pie (has to have a ton of whipped cream accompanying it, of course), but I REALLY like other pumpkin stuff. I think it all started when I was pregnant with my 2nd baby, 7 years ago and we stopped at Dairy Queen on the way home from a midwife's appointment (super far away). I decided to try a pumpkin pie blizzard that day. I've been hooked on pumpkin stuff like that, ever since!

Didn't mean for this post to get so long. I tend to ramble. I just wanted to share this wonderful site with you! Have fun browsing through their awesome recipes! And even more fun making and eating your creations!

Don't know yet what I'll be making... first....

*On a side note: Anyone want to teach me how to get a picture from another blog to show up on my blog? I'm obviously not blog/internet savvy... yet. (I should probably just ask my husband. But he's too busy!)

New Mexico for Fall Break

Here's what we were up to last week. In random order. I may try to go back and add captions sometime. ...and I may not. :-) We had a blast in New Mexico! Sometime soon I need to post all about my friend and all that I learned from her last week, just by being there in her home and observing her as a mother. But, that's for another day...