A Good Laugh

I don't know where this picture is originally from, but I saw it on Facebook and it cracked me up.  I was having a lot of trouble being productive on my homework because when I realized that the semester is coming to a close and I have so much still to do, my brain went into panic mode.  Well, as we all know, when stress levels are too high, productive levels are very low.  So Jimmie helped calm me down by finding funny things to laugh at.   Maybe it's just me, but I was dying with the visual this story put in my head. For those of you stressed, sad, or just wanting a laugh, have a look at this story, and smile :)

I thought this one was pretty funny too :)




Smile on my friends!

Saint Patrick's Day Festivities

So for Saint Patrick's Day this year we got together with our friends Rachel and Conlon to have dinner and play games.  So because it's Saint Patrick's day, we stuck to the theme of rainbows and green!  For dinner we made some rainbow pancakes and green scrambled eggs.  Yup--we all got to eat our whole rainbow! (...except no one quite finished it all)

Obviously it's not much of a surprise...you make rainbow pancakes by making regular pancake batter and separating it into the bowls and dying them whatever color you want.

And you cook them like normal too.  The key to wonderful, deep, rich color is using gel food coloring instead of liquid food coloring.  Whether its a cake, cupcake, pancakes, or whatever--use gel.  

So then you're left with lovely rainbow stacks of pancakes!

But you can't have rainbows without the clouds at the bottoms... so we got whipped cream :)

I don't know how, but it was not even hard to fit 6 layers of pancakes in one bit.  It was so good!

I also made some lovely Irish potatoes (Which Rachel and Conlon had never heard of; are they very uncommon? Strange.) And utilizing my new surface area.

I probably should have made them a little bit smaller because they're so rich, but they're still good

I also made a red velvet cake from scratch, except I made it green instead of red.  It tasted very good but the recipe was pretty confusing in certain parts and the consistency of the cake wasn't excellent.  Which is actually a pretty big deal since it was supposed to be a green velvet cake roll.  So if part of it's too dry, over baked, too thin, etc...it falls apart.  Anyway, the cake tasted pretty good, but the icing/filling was superb! Unfortunately, it wasn't very picture worthy, but it tasted good and that's all that matters! 

In excellent celebration we've also listened to great Irish jig music, wearing green shirts, eating Lucky Charms and attempting poor Irish accents.  Happy Saint Patrick's Day to y'all! And top o' the mornin' to ya!  Or, well not anymore since it's night time.  But you get the jist of it :)

Kitchen Makeover

Okay, so maybe the term "makeover" is a bit extreme. But I was so pleasantly surprised with my little project from yesterday!  I guess most of you don't know what our kitchen looked like before... I guess before pictures would have been helpful.  These are the best pictures I could find of our kitchen before that were randomly taken at some point.

So in the beginning, we first had the table and this little microwave cart in here.  

But then we realized there is a ton of room in our living room and very little counter space or storage space in our kitchen. 

So we moved our table to the living room a while back...

and decided to buy another shelf from Walmart for more storage.

We bought it awhile ago but just never got around to putting it up.

So yesterday after classes, I had an unusual amount of energy and an unusually low amount of homework and figured I'd give it a shot and surprise Jimmie when he came home from work.

It actually took a long time to assemble because in the packaging, certain parts that get screwed in had been put into the poles and jammed in there crooked.  So I put Tarzan on and spent nearly half the movie trying to get these screws out and in the way they're supposed to be. 

Eventually I got it, set up the shelf, and rearranged our whole kitchen.

So I got creative with this little piece.  Originally we had just talked about leaving the microwave cart where it was and then putting the shelf against the empty wall for storage.  But I get SO frustrated with not having much surface area to sit things when I'm cooking and stuff... (especially since there's no dishwasher so if in the process of your cooking you use more dishes than can sit in the sink or can be washed quickly...there is no where to prepare things.)  In the picture above, I used it to sit my phone computer and water while I cooked :)  It's the same microwave cart, but I remembered that we had some extra wood paneling type material in Jimmie's office that was left over from a desk that we built.  It was sturdy and looked nice, so I just got the tool kit out again and cut it to shape with an exacto knife.  Score! It's so convenient, we're loving it.  

This is just another shot of the new shelf.  I'm sure we'll get plenty more things to put on the shelf, but for now I'm just enjoying the simplicity of it and the fact that we're actually able to get into our cupboards successfully for a moment. 

So ta-da! I know it's not super special, but our kitchen feels so complete now and like I can actually work in it without going crazy! And it always feels good to be productive.

Miami Heat

So Jimmie and I had the opportunity to go to the Miami Heat vs. Utah Jazz game on Friday!  It was SO much fun, I can't even begin to describe it.  Of course it would have been loads better had we actually won, but somehow the Jazz won.  I have officially become a Heat fan :)  It was pretty funny to have the people next to us ask us, "So do you guys live in Miami?" ...Nope. We live in Provo.  "Oh, are you guys from Florida?"  ...Nope.  We're from New Jersey.   <Blank stares>  "Oh, okay then".

Okay, sorry about the silly face, but here is Jimmie's lovely LeBron James jersey.

I also, like Steph with Marc's Jeeps, came to appreciate Jimmie's level of LeBron love compared to others.  There were  a lot of Heat fans there and we were second in line.

The man in front of us was wearing a super expensive jersey that was upwards of $250, was wearing a pair of way expensive LeBrons (shoes) AND had another one in his hand that he was going to run over to where they come in and try to get LeBron to sign them.  Crazy.  We just went to our seats :)

 I got to wear Jimmie's LeBron t-shirt which I was happy about :)  Oh and yes, you might notice Jimmie got a haircut.  We both got haircuts like 2 weeks ago, and both cut off about 4 inches.

Just kidding-I cut off four inches, but it seemed like Jimmie's hair was so long, it had to have been like 1 or 2!

Here's where we actually sat, it was pretty high up, but they were cheap so I can't complain.  I think next time we go, we'll sit a little closer, but it wasn't a bad view.

The guy right on the Z is LeBron...we just thought the stretches looked really funny :)

He did get boo-ed when he walked in, but we cheered real loud!

I think this is supposed to be when LeBron was doing his famous powder toss, which is what was pictured on the back of my shirt... but you can't really see it at all.

And here's a shot from the game.

Maybe the loss would not have been as disappointing if we hadn't just expected to completely kill them.  The whole time I just kept saying... "We're losing....to the JAZZ!"  Chris Bosh, one of the big 3, wasn't there to play because his grandmother had just passed away.  It kind of threw everything off balance and it just wasn't happening for us.  The game last night though, the first game he was back, they won by 30 points.  Who'da thought Chris Bosh could make such a big difference.  We played awful in the beginning and in the end of third/fourth quarter we made a KILLER comeback and took the lead for the first time in the fourth quarter.  It was so dang close and came down to the last shot missing in the last seconds of the game.  Regardless of the outcome--we had a blast!

On the way to the game, we stopped at Jimmie's work and I got a tour of the building.

We went passed John's office...but I didn't get to meet/see him because he wasn't there.

For you Kid History fans, this is Jimmie's boss.  

Haha, and what an excellent picture this is.

He's Jimmie's direct boss now because Jimmie got promoted :) We're excited about that and he's still loving it!

After stopping at Myler Disability, we got some dinner at a place his co-worker suggested called Moochies because she said it was WAY good and the best Philly Cheese steak place around.

Apparently, it's famous.  It's got that one guy who does that one show about good food...what's it called?

Okay, it was pretty good.  They didn't have a lot of meat, and the cheese was different, but they tasted good. Nothin' on Nixon's though.  But! They had Tastycakes and I was happy :) I would go back for sure.

I think drinking bottled root beer is really cool, so Jimmie took a picture :)

Anyway, that's our all for our adventurous Friday! Was one of the greatest dates ever--I'm glad we chose to do it for a late Valentines :)