Halloween--Real Quick Catch Up

So it's been 18 days since I last posted.
I'm over it; you can be too now :)

Here's the pictures from our AWESOME Halloween Party!

We also decorated our entry way with black walls and stobe lights and a fog machine! Sa-Weet! Trevor hid himself and used Brandon's axe to scare Travis and Robyn when they came in.

We watched Hocus Pocus and had way too much yummy food.

Halloween Weekend!!!

This weekend is going to be HUGE!

Today I'm renewing my car's registration today-- ON TIME. Which is, frankly, amazing. I just HOPE the crack in my windshield is small enough that I won't have to buy a new one. CROSS YOUR FINGERS WITH ME.

I'm also going to get the oil changed, and possibly clean it out--spectacular Friday, right?

THEN, I'm making chicken for dinner with my old friends Megan and Danny--who I NEVER get to see but who I love :) It will be so awesome to hang out. I know it's kind of mean of us, but we're bringing our husbands and making them hang out with each other too. It's all part of growing up :) I'm excited to see Megan's house! YIP!

Then tomorrow is the big day for the amazingly awesome spectacular tremendously crazy Halloween party that Amber and I are throwing at my apartment! I have been into everything Halloween this year--except dressing up. For some reason I just can't find a good costume :( I'll tell you how it went later. But we have some AWESOME stuff planned!

Then to top off the weekend, we all get an extra hour due to Daylight Savings! Mmmm, my kind'o weekend.

Trevor and Me

I've been reading a lot about friends who are in love and happy, who are making families, who are new to families, and old to families. And it made me stop and think about my tiny half-a-family with Trevor, and how much I love him. When you don't have kids, it's easy to focus on yourself. It's easy to focus on the two individuals who are married, and BE individuals who are married. That's good, a lot of times, because I think every married couple needs time to be individuals and spend time getting to know each other as well as spend time together alone AFTER you already know each other. I'm looking forward to when we can expand our family, but today I spent a lot of time thinking about the family we are NOW. On a day-to-day basis we can get distracted by the dishes all over the counters, the dinner that needs to be made--the dinner that needs to be cleaned up, the towels that are all wet, used up, and dirty on the bathroom floor, the new cute basket in the bathroom I picked out that Trevor thinks is going to get moldy (but wouldn't get moldy if he would just not get it wet when he washes his hands), family parties, new gadgets, or miscellaneous cords for the tv/computer that will make our lives 10 times better. It's easy to focus on the long road ahead of Trevor and me before we have the money and time to begin the "life" we want to begin. YEARS before our debts are paid, YEARS before Trevor can finally go to school for what he wants. WHAT are we doing with our life in the meantime? Just waiting? It wouldn't be worth it if there wasn't an upside. Today I've been thinking about that upside. That I get to spend time developing my hobbies into talents that I can use to help myself and Trevor, and later my family. I can turn preparing food because I'm hungry into making dinner for Trevor and I to enjoy and relax with after a long day at work. We can spend time sitting next to each other under a blanket watching a movie, only interrupted by the need for more pudding cups. We can stay up late in bed talking, diving into the dreams and pains we have. I can turn over at night and be close to Trevor, and feel his arms wrap around me, and feel his hand find my hand, even though he's half asleep, to warm me up when we left the window open and Mother Nature decides she wants it to snow. I can count on Trevor wanting to say goodbye to me before I leave every morning, so we can let each other know we care, even if he only has 5 minutes more to sleep before his alarm clock makes him wake up. I can count on Trevor listening when I've had a bad day, or when I have an opinion about something that is different from everyone else's. I can count on Trevor to nudge me towards a goal I've set for myself, even if he doesn't want it.

Yep, we've got it pretty good right now, I think. Even though we feel like we may have lame goals, or too much time before we can feel like we've become active human beings progressing in life. I have Trevor, and he has me, and we can really take advantage of that. Even though it can sometimes feel like compared to other people, we got married to early, or we blew our money more than other people, or we are more extravagant than other people--there is a reason we love each other, and there are reasons we decided we love only each other, and those reasons still exist.

I gave in to the girly reading thing again

I want to be completely proud of my reading decisions lately, but in reality, I've been a little surprised at the books I've been into since I graduated high school. I have discovered that I really am a sap when it comes to romance and happy endings. I mean, holy crap, I read Twilight last year and didn't hate it! What has the world come to?

Last week I decided I needed to take a break from Trevor's Series Ginormo to read a little classic romance--specifically, Pride and Prejudice. You know, THE Jane Austen.

I know what you're thinking, "What? How can someone have never read Pride and Prejudice?" How can I have read Ivan Denisovich, or Voltaire, or the Inferno but never the obvious Pride and Prejudice? Really, I was confused myself. I wouldn't say I'm WELL-read, but geeze, it really was a little ridiculous.

Thus, I began. I little skeptical, a little excited. Skeptical of all the rave, excited to see if it could really live up to the "happily ever after" standard I was seeking. Mr. Darcy was enticing, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett began an interesting statement on class, and Elizabeth was not as annoying as I was expecting (given the Kierra Knightly disgrace of late--Oh Kierra, don't you know that just because her name is Elizabeth doesn't mean she's the same Elizabeth from Pirates?). Then the Bingleys came, and it was refreshing to read the subtle mockery of the upper class that Austen obviously felt. She was in the middle of it--she lived the class structure--she gossiped, dined and danced in the time. But she could see the hypocrisy, and the prejudice. I won't give you my whole "book report" but just know I appreciated the honesty.

All in all, I was pleased with the tension, and with the resolution equally. I will definitely be reading another Austen book soon to get my fix of happy endings. And I feel good about recommending it to everyone else :)

Stay-Cation

I was planning on blogging about our vacation WHILE ON vacation but that didn't really work out. I was too busy doing nothing to worry about documenting. Now that I'm back at work, my time is in high demand and I'm feeling almost freak-out-ish because I can't get a break. So I'm basically forcing this break on myself right now during the last 20 minutes I'm at work. I don't feel too bad because I've been working my butt off for the past 3 days, and technically I'm still manning the phones in case someone calls, so...

I haven't blogged about my photo class too much (or at all) because I haven't really had time to take that many pictures using the stuff I've learned yet. At least, not very good ones. It's hard. I can't wait till the stuff I've learned is natural to me so I can get back to taking spontaneous pictures. I'll put in a couple in this post though just so you can see what I mean.

Mmm, stay-cation...

It was amazing. Really. Do you guys even know what the word amazing means? "Causing great surprise or sudden wonder." And yep, that was stay-cation. I was greatly surprised how easy it was to put work completely out of my mind and be "weekend Becky" for 9 days straight. And I felt wonder spending so much non-stop time with Trevor. We only fought for real, like, 1 time. And that wasn't even till the end of the week :)

Here's some of the stuff we did:

• Friday and Saturday--Becky cleaned up and got the apartment ready for REAL vacation while Trevor worked. Friday night we went grocery shopping to stock up on all our vacation goodies, and bought Trevor new dress clothes for work (at the new Kohl's on 33rd--oh my, don't go there unless you want to spend money) since he's up for the Lead Assistant Manager position. He wears a tie every day now :) So hot.
• Saturday--Watched Conference and cleaned. Did you know they play re-runs from 12-2? Becky visited Trevor's nephews while Trevor was at work. Got to play in the sandbox and make mermaid feet out of little boy feet. Went to Panda and had our first official meal out of the week. It was glorious and our stomachs were unadulterated by other fast food products from previous trips to eat out. Went to get us a spot in line at Leatherby's BEFORE 8 (when all the men are supposed to be in the priesthood session still) and the line was HUMONGO, so we got hot fudge and caramel to go, and had ice cream sundaes and banana splits at home with Brandon, Amber, Robyn, and Travis. We watched Justice League :)
• Sunday--Our actual anniversary (yay! 3 years!). It really is so weird that we've been married for 3 years now. That means we've been together for 5 total. WHAT exactly have we done with the time?! Oh well, I love Trevor. Our relationship has grown so much in the last year; I'm really proud of us for our progress and our new goals. We let ourselves sleep in, caught a little conference, smelled candles at Kohl's (yes, we went there again), and had hot cocoa from Starbucks, where Trevor laughed at me because I didn't know to how to say "grande." Shopped for a new jacket for Becky that looks like this:

• Went to Rodizio Grill. I can't believe we went there again. We were just going to go to Marie Calendars or something and then I said, "mmm steak sounds good" and magically Trevor wanted to go there. Surprisingly, I didn't gorge myself this time :)
• Monday we went to the DI and found a really great pea coat for Trevor for only $8. We found snow boots for me for $10 at Plato's Closet too :)
• I'm sure we did other stuff on Monday but there was a lot of lazing about, keeping things tidy, watching movies, DVDs, doing upkeep on my Farmville (which I've gotten Trevor so addicted to, that he has officially gone creeper on it and created fake friends so that he can expand his farm...), browsing Barnes and Noble, that sort of thing. No TV though, surprisingly.
• Tuesday we were supposed to be at my boss's cabin but we had to wait because of the snow, so we saw The Invention of Lying--which was super good and I recommend it to anyone. I think Ricky Gervais is becoming one of my favorite actors. I hope I never see him in anything that bothers me so I can keep my impression of him intact. I wanted to go to the Ogden Dinosaur Park or the Museum of Natural History, but Trevor "wasn't in the mood", bah!
• Wednesday we had breakfast with Trevor's brother and his girlfriend, which was really great and I'm glad we got to spend time with them. We never get to since we have opposite work schedules a lot. Then we packed practically our entire bedroom + food and drove 40 minutes up Big Cottonwood to my boss's house where he was letting us stay in his cabin. Besides the awkwardness of the giant bedroom window being 50 feet away from HIS bedroom/kitchen/dining room windows, it was super relaxing. We made a huge fire in the fireplace, went on a small hike-ish thing and took pictures, and lazed about in our pjs to read. We roasted marshmallows and made s'mores, ate leftover lasagna for dinner, and had cereal for breakfast. You can see the pictures in the slideshow at the bottom.
• Thursday we recuperated and had dinner with Trevor's other brother and his girlfriend.
• Friday we... I have no idea. I think this is the day we saw Surrogates. Good movie. Slightly different than a normal robot movie. And we went to the mall (practically half the stores), and Burlington Coat Factory (but ended up only getting Trevor a new beard trimmer, weird). We did a TON of window shopping.
• Saturday we helped cut limbs off of Trevor's mom's apple tree, and went on a walk through the Parkway with Trevor's other OTHER brother and his wife. I took a COUPLE good pictures before I realized I'd put used batteries in my camera and it crapped out. I still need a lot of practice with getting the exposure right on the fly, but some of them turned out. Some of them were just fun :)
• Sunday was our last day and we spent it making apple pie, watching as many movies as we could, reading as much as we could, and relaxing as much as we could before going back to work on Monday.
• We did a lot more stuff I just can't remember. WE LOVED relaxing and spending as much time with each other as possible! Can't wait till next time. About the only good part about going back to normal life is the NORMAL food. My stomach STILL isn't back to normal :(

New Pillows

This is a really bad picture, but I need to post it now so I don't forget. They aren't really this yellow. Last week Trevor got some old pillows from work (there actually ARE benefits to working at Rent-A-Center!), so we decided we'd use the stuffing to make new pillows for our living room. We had these red and green plushy pillows that were loosing their shape, and were starting to seem really blah. So off to Ikea we trotted to pick out new fabric.

The next step was for Becky to learn how to use a sewing machine. I use one so rarely that I have to relearn every time I use one. So after a couple hours of the machine and myself malfunctioning together, I finally got it going smoothly. After that it was actually really easy.

You just sew to squares together with the insides out. You sew 3 sides completely. Like this:

l________l

l________l

l________l

l________l

(I took how-to pictures along the way, but they're on a different memory card, and I just don't feel like dealing with that mess on a Monday morning.)

And then you sew the top like this, leaving a hole to stuff the cotton into:

-----___----

l________l

l________l

l________l

l________l

Turn it right side out, stuff the cotton, and sew up the hole. SO easy (after my sister-in-law showed me how :) she's great).

I figured out another way to make pillows this week too. I've been trying to figure out how to make the pillow cases that you can stuff a pillow into, but for some reason my brain has been at maximum capacity every time I've tried to imagine it, or something. They had the example up at Ikea, so thank goodness.

You take a 20 inch by 60 inch piece of fabric (20 inches because that's how big my pillow is, and 60 inches because you double it and add 20 more inches). Basically, it's super confusing to explain, so I drew ya'll a picture. You can click on the picture to make the picture bigger if you're interested. I like this idea of having a cover because then you can change the cover whenever you want, depending on what kind of mood you're in.

More Food Projects This Month

I thought I'd post a few pictures of a couple things I've been working on lately. I feel a little behind since I didn't post the pictures when I took them. My photography class starts this week, so I need to be up to date on all this stuff before it starts.

A few weeks or so ago I used red potatoes to make a cheesy potato bake thingy, and I couldn't stop taking pictures of the potatoes. The contrast between the red outside and the white inside was so satisfying.

I made a pork tenderloin roast last week with a chili orange glaze, and I also loved the contrast between the red crust and white inside. I liked the sauce but Trevor didn't. Sometimes it really drives me crazy that he's a simple food kinda guy. "Meat, potatoes, and cheese," he says. Pish posh. There's more to life than meat and potatoes! I love experiencing new flavors, and combining flavors I've never tried before--and I can like them even if it's weird. Trevor is kind of the opposite.

I made spinach lasagna a while ago too, and the spinach leaves were so beautiful! Trevor likes all kinds of lasagna, so I didn't have to worry about that this time :)

I also made homemade reduced sugar strawberry jam more than a month ago. I've only made jam one other time, and they didn't set up the way they were supposed to that time. This time, the jam jelled up and all the lids sealed :) AND I felt okay about spreading it on everything since it had half the sugar (as long as I didn't think about the 3 pounds of sugar that WERE in it).

This weekend I made a new cake. It wasn't as complicated as the last one (thank goodness!), but it was fun and really relaxing to make. Unfortunately for my waistline, cooking is very theraputic for me. And spending my Sunday afternoon cutting, layering, frosting, and making a cake look like a big fish was just the balance of "project" and relaxation that I wanted. Plus, since it was fun and silly, it was okay if it didn't look perfect, so I didn't have to stress out over anything.

I was able to find the balance I've been looking for in my frosting. I've made buttercream frostings with butter, which have great buttery flavor, but that's all you can taste, and they don't hold their shape very well at room temperature. I've made frostings with shortening, and they have great consistency; the flavor is good but very "store-bought." Trevor suggested that I do something about that last time, so I combined the two and I think we found the perfect frosting! The only thing I need to get right now making the frosting smoother. I'll figure it out one day.

If you're wondering what I did with all the extra red, green, orange, yellow, and brown M&Ms... yes, I ate them. Our fish couldn't have mismatching dots, after all.

9/11 on a Personal Note

September 11th isn't about a terrorist attack to me. Yeah, I know that's what caused it. But for some reason I just have to focus on letting the fact sink in that it's possible in our world to kill 3,000 people at once just because. I know there have been many many other instances in the history of the world where more than 3,000 people died when something happened; 9/11 is kind of close to my heart though--probably because I was young when it happened, and it was the first time I'd really understood something awful and huge happening in the world on a personal level. To me, 9/11 is an example of the atrocities the world is capable of. Obviously, yes, historically it's important for us to know that on September 11, 2001 terrorist members of the Al Queda group were responsible for crashing 2 planes into the World Trade Center towers, another into the Pentagon, and another in Pennsylvania. And it's important for us to know why they apparently hate America and feel the need to "teach us a lesson." But to me, the most important part isn't the details of who caused it or when, but how American people and the people of the world responded emotionally. I'm glad that the majority of our human society was appalled by what happened. I'm glad that the world isn't so far gone that we can't connect over the horror of 3,000 people being murdered. I'm glad it's still wrong for something like that to happen--with all the crime and hate in the world, all the uncaring people, all the people who have no care what happens to others, or what happens to society as a whole, or how much we degrade ourselves-- I'm glad that we aren't desensitized so much that we can't come together and realize when we've lost something (the majority of us, anyway).

I always want to remember sitting in 8th grade Algebra, doing my morning worksheet, and having something so important come on the TV that my uncaring, basketball coaching, smelly math teacher knew a room of thirty 13-year-olds needed to see--needed to feel what was happening together. All of my teachers let the students talk with each other about what was happening and how we were feeling throughout the day. And I like to think they let us do that not just because we need to know what happened, but because we needed to internalize how it impacted us individually and as a group. We needed to know how we would respond as the younger generation of the world to harm and the psychological, emotional pain of losing something many of us had never seen before--of losing something that to many of us was intangible. I'd never been to New York City, or to Washington DC. I'd never met anyone who I knew may even be IN one of the towers, or even in the city at the time. I'm sure that was the case for the majority of my classmates. And yet, we still cried. I'm proud that we banded together to dive into the new feelings we were having--and to gain an appreciation for the beauty of our human race and complexity. I'm glad we could recognize the loss of life--the loss of a group of conscious people, who were breathing and thinking, and who had families and friendships--and the suffering they all must have been going through--that there are actual people on the other side of the country, living their lives, just like I am. That's what there is to learn from historical events, I think. And 9/11 was the first time I'd really had the chance to internalize that. It helped me open myself to feeling the personal experiences that other people must have gone through during other historical events. I hope experiences like 9/11 do the same for everyone else in the world, so we can be a more humane, sympathetic, and sensitive society as a whole, and that we can think about the people, not just the event.

I love finding pictures of people on historic dates.

September 11, 2001

D-Day: June 6, 1944

Oklahoma City Bombing: April 19, 1995

Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941

Fall of the Berlin Wall: November 9, 1989

Robyn's Fondant Birthday Cake

Made my first cake using fondant. It turned out okay. I don't really know why I thought it would be any different, but molding with fondant is pretty much like molding with clay. If you stink with clay, you stink with fondant. It was a really fun, challenging project for me though.

I did the cake for my sister-in-law's birthday (happy birthday!) and it tasted pretty good, which is the most important part :)

The cake itself was a marble cake made from 2 boxed cake mixes; dark chocolate and french vanilla. It's super easy. You just make the two mixes separately (or, if you're going all out, you just make two cake mixes from scratch), then pour part of one in the pan, part of the other in lines on top, then take a knife and criss-cross through the batter. Don't stir, just criss-cross to make a pattern. Sorry, no picture.

While your cakes are cooling (in the fridge, to make them hard), that's when you start making the fondant stuff. I tried making the candles completely edible by wrapping Pirouettes with fondant, but they weren't stable enough. So I wrapped wooden dowels and then cut strips for the lines on the candles. Fondant is pretty easy to roll out--you just need to have a bunch of powdered sugar and cornstarch to roll it out on to.

I didn't know this, but you use a little bit of water mixed with some dissolved fondant, and you use it as glue to hold stuff together--really neat :) You let the fondant decorations harden while you're getting the rest of your cake ready.

I made a homemade vanilla-flavored butter-cream frosting to build the cake with. Mix all the wet stuff, then add the meringue and sugar in increments.

• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 1 cup shortening
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 tablespoons milk or water
• 1 tablespoon meringue powder

I bought a frosting tip that is huge for putting a layer of frosting onto the cake so you don't tear it up trying to get it even. It looks like this, only the opening is about 2 inches long:
So you just frost the cake, then roll out your fondant and put it on top, smoothing out all the surfaces and trimming it up. Then I stuck in my candles, made curly-cues, stuck those in, and dotted on some royal icing to hold it all together. Royal icing is different than butter-cream. Royal icing starts out runny, and gets thicker as you beat it, then gets hard a few minutes after you use it. It consists of:

• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons meringue powder
• 1-2 tablespoons water

Then you finish by making a border to hide the trim-line of the fondant.

Then you eat it :) And it's yummy. I think next time I'll stick with making less intricate stuff out of fondant--Stuff I can use cookie cutters for and straight lines :) It took me a bit of time to get used to working with the fondant--especially when you wet it down to glue stuff together. So be sure to plan on your kitchen getting destroyed in the process, and your hands being sticky the whole time--then you should be good :) I think I cleaned my kitchen 3 times that day.

If you're looking for good cake ideas, Joann's website and Wilton's website have GREAT ideas and tips and places to start. That's where I got my ideas this time.

Cheese

Before


After


Yay! I'm learning!