The struggle

I really like cute shoes.
.
I would like to think that I am normally a pretty grounded, logic based person. But somehow when it comes to winter and what shoes I wear out in the frigid temperatures, I am completely irrational.
.
I know that I will be cold. I knew that when I stared at the shoe rack in my closet this morning. I looked at the shoes I should wear, and then I looked at the cute green ballet flats I wanted to wear and said out loud to Bobby, "I want to wear these shoes, but then my feet will be cold!!" And then I put the cute shoes on completely knowingly.
.
When we got in the car and I was freezing my begeebers off, Bobby said, "don't complain to me, you knew you would be cold when you decided to wear those shoes." And he is completely right. I did, and I still wanted to wear them more than my survival instinct wanted to be warm (you'd think the survival instinct would be especially be strong, because I am ALWAYS cold- and my feet and hands are the worst- perma icicles from October to March)
.
I think I need help... Anybody??? Otherwise this struggle will continue through out the duration of the winter, I am sure of it, as last year I wore these ballet flats in the snow....
_______________________________________________________________
Note: So I just came home from class with Bobby and.... it rained... my sad little shoes soaked though and my feet freezing!

Turkey Day!

What a beautiful array of delicious food. I love this meal, and look forward to it. The full stomach turkey coma that results, is probably the main reason that I don't create that feast more often!

This year we spent the holiday with Jeniel and Dave's family in Rexburg. Who can resist good food and good fun?

Is this my second post in a row dedicated to the traditions of over eating??

I do NOT believe in eating doughnuts...

Do we have no sense of self preservation? What is it with us eating foods, that while they may taste good, we know that they are going to have an adverse reaction on our body that will last much longer than the flavor of the food ever remained in our mouths...

This is how I feel about the doughnut. Once upon a time I gave up three foods for an entire year. Soda, Potato Chips and Doughnuts. I have similar feelings about all these foods. They taste good (sometimes) but they always leave me with a feeling that I wish I hadn't eaten it. So I figured that if I could just have the willpower to last past the initial temptation, it could be like I already ate the food, but with the bonus lack of regret and stomach ache.

That year however, was not this last year. And while I still manage to not eat doughnuts regularly, I have managed to eat them THREE times in the last month, and never felt good about it afterward. The first were made by Meesh from biscuit dough deep fried -of course- and covered with cinnamon and sugar. They were a great little treat while carving pumpkins ( I say were because you know that I did not just eat one). The second time were the best doughnuts I have ever eaten. They were the creation of Allyson and Dave from the collection of Alton Brown and Good Eats. Wow. I never knew that a doughnut could taste so good. Lets just say that I don't even know how many I ate that night, I just kept eating doughnut holes, so I didn't have to feel bad acknowledging how many entire doughnuts I had eaten. So these delightful ones were the cause of further cravings, resulting in this last indulgence. It was my turn to be in charge of date night , so I surprised Bobby with a trip to the Krispy Kreme Bakery and we came home with a half dozen to accompany our puzzle putting together activity. Needless to say, it was brought to my remembrance, in the middle of out healthy feast and on-coming stomach ache, that I do not believe in eating doughnuts. Thus the vow has been made, I have sworn them off again. (until next October 31st, because I'm pretty sure that Allyson and Dave are going to make their heavenly homemade doughnuts again next Halloween!)

shadow puppets and leaf angels

There is just no telling the fun that can come from a Friday afternoon jaunt in the canyon. My attention span for just walking/hiking forever without a specific destination seems to last a little longer than Bobby's, who wants to know where we are going and how long it is going to take us to get there. But somehow when you bring in the opportunity to do crazy things and document them with a camera, the excitement increases tenfold. I think I love taking pictures more for the adventure it creates when you are taking them than for the pictures that I get to view afterward.

It turns out that we were hiking at just the perfect time of day, and Bobby discovered as he was taking pictures (again, adventures through the eye of the camera) that he had a perfect shadow of everything he was doing. And thus, the next adventure began. It started with shadow puppets and ended up with shadow bodies...
If you are wondering what in the world is sticking out the back of me in the shadows...
That would be my favorite mitten holding location.

The adventure continued when I got my turn to play with the camera.. i.e. pictures of the Bobby we all know and love. I talk him into playing for the camera, and then he usually wonders later how I got pictures of him doing silly things!

And, because I LOVE leaves, i just can't ignore playing with them this time of year. I couldn't quite convince Bobby to jump into the leaves with me, but I'm pretty sure that he was amused to be an on-looker. I would highly recommend this entertaining companion to the snow angel...
***So, apparently I'm playing around with photoshop- forgive me if this is a little crazy..

Pumpkin Craze!

I get so excited for this time of year. A key feature is how excited I get about pumpkins. I love pumpkin bread, cookies, and decorating with pumpkins and the color orange. (ironically, I do NOT love pumpkin pie. How this can possibly be, I don't know, but I it is true. I even tried to love it again last Thanksgiving and I still don't love it...)

So naturally, I get excited about carving pumpkins. So excited in fact, that I inevitably get the urge too early in the season. Last year, we carved pumpkins about the first week in October, and they were oozing down the driveway by the time the trick-or-treaters came rolling around (its true, there are stains on my old roommates drive way- oops!) So this year, I thought I was reigning in the urges. September came around and the pumpkins started showing up in the grocery stores, and I started to get excited, but I told myself that I still had a LONG while before I needed to start planning that activity. The first weekend of October came, and I still refrained. So by the third weekend, I thought we were in the clear! These beauties became our doorstep display..


The quality Jack-o-lantern would be Bobby's artwork. The Spider randomly turned red would be mine. I decided since it wasn't a large pumpkin, not to clean it out and just do the cool surface carving. Turns out, that when you buy a "pie" pumpkin, it doesn't have that cool orange/white contrast. So I had an ugly orange/orange mess. So we improvised and I added red food coloring, and well.. you've seen the result of that!

Unfortunately, the sad ending to this story, is that week three is still too soon... It was very sad. Bobby's pumpkin turned into a squishy mess, and to prevent an oozing replay of last year and stains on our doorstep, it has passed on to the trash can. Next year, I think I'm banned from pumpkin carving until the week of Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!

Oh, the glorious bed!

We recently (as of yesterday) joined the world of the real live furniture owners. (The kind of furniture you actually have to purchase rather than those items graciously bestowed upon you by very kind and loving family members and friends)

We decided that almost 8 months was a sufficient testing ground for whether or not a full bed was going to work out for us to sleep on. The key here is SLEEP on... not just lay down for 6-8 hours. For Bobby, who would have slept through punching me in the eyeball had it not been for me crying out in pain, sleeping may not be the problem. He apparently sleeps through everything (except for me screaming...) Though even heavy sleeper Bobby was beginning to notice the back aches he was continually waking up to...

I wish I had a picture for you that would actually do justice to the image. But just try to imagine this scene if you can. Bobby is 6'4" and has a habit of sleeping with his arms above his head, which means that his body starts about a foot into the bed already. This leaves pretty much everything from his knees down, directly hanging off the bed. (and due to age and lack of sturdy nature, this means the bottom half of the bed had a gradual curve downward) Then there is me, clinging as closely as I can to the edge of the bed, trying to leave as much as I can for Bobby because; 1) he's bigger than me, and 2) I knew that I, being the much lighter sleeper, was the one likely to wake up in the middle of the mattress or blanket war.

So decision made, we set out to buy a bed. It was an adventure of going from store to store and lying on lots of beds. Pretty much all of them, we decided, felt better than ours. Then came the moment of truth.... WHICH one of the fabulous beds out there were we going to take home? I think we started forgetting which ones we liked and which ones we hated, because we had laid on so many! We called and consulted with "the experts" (i.e. those of you who would answer your phones that night!) Then we chose our new bed!!!

It is so big we can both sleep in it and hardly know the other person is there! Bobby lying sideways is still bigger than out last bed!
I of course had to fight through a couple days of buyer's anxiety.. Did we get the right bed?? Was it worth the extra money for a bed that's better, or are they all so much better than our bed that we won't realize what we're missing once we are sleeping on it, and we should get the cheaper ones. Eric, one of our wise expert opinions, scoffed and rolled his eyes at that comment, apparently his vote was not for the questionable, cheap, no-name mattress. I'm sure he had our best interest, and our back's interest, at heart! But Bobby trumped all anxiety with the statement, "Megan, we are going to have this bed for 20+ years. Pick the bed you want for 20 years, and not just for right now." Alas, Decision made, we got the better bed. And we are very happy about it!

halloween cupcake craziness

Every once in a while I get this little itch to do something outside of my realm of comfort and talent. (Lately I have been wanting to do them more frequently, which usually just means that our little apartment is going to be a disaster until I get it all sorted out!)

This year, for some reason, I have been dying to make random crazy Halloween cupcakes. Why? I don't know, but the desire was strong enough that I actually set out for a reason to have to make the cupcakes (because heaven knows we don't need to eat 2 dozen cupcakes all by ourselves...) So a friend and I decided to put together a Halloween shin dig, just so that we would have an excuse to make fun Halloween food.

It doesn't help, mind you, that Martha Stewart puts out all sorts of magazines with fun ideas, and my brain seems to interpret them thinking that they can't possibly be too hard or time consuming.. (again forgetting my lack of experience, or creative genes!)

Then, last week, they sent around a sign up sheet at church asking people to bring a dessert to the ward Halloween activity. My response, "SWEET!" (Still being in the excited motivated, having not yet started the project, phase...)


So this is me, Tuesday night. I pulled the table into the middle of the living room to watch TV while I played, since I was home by myself. And Bobby came home to quite a mess!

He didn't mind the mess so much- because then he got to eat pumpkin cupcakes, various colors of all cream cheese frosting and random candies. (He even tried to help me decorate a few. It was awesome. He used licorice to look like a knife sticking out of the cupcake!)

We had to strategically store the cupcakes so all the fancy frosting and candies would not bump into each other. However, when I went to collect the cupcakes Wednesday, they were in a little bit of a sad shape. The taffy, once stiff and spiked all fancy like, was looking a little more droopy, and the frosting also had softened up and gotten a little slippery looking...

But alas, we took them to the ward Halloween party anyway... But I was a little sad. I think people were a scared of them. By the time we left, I think about 5 of them had been eaten.. but I slyly took the plates out from under them and left them there in case someone else got brave and wanted to eat them (and lets be honest, I didn't want to walk out with them and have everyone know who had made the scary looking cupcakes!

So now, I got to make the silly cupcakes that I was excited about. It was half a success and half a bust... and now I'm stuck having to make them again Halloween night for the party I threw just so that I could the silly things! Sigh....