My Week in Review

This is my "excited to be up at 730 in the morning face"

Work week - commuting. It's hard to get used to working away from home after I have had the blessing of not having to drive anywhere for work for the past 2 years. But in case nobody heard the news via FB or Twitter, my job I've been at for 5 years out of Chandler, AZ has recently ended. It took a few weeks of applying for jobs and interviews until I found the job I'm at now. It's called Weir Minerals and I do data entry pretty much for them. Invoicing , filing and such. The first week I worked 4 hours each day and again on Monday (this past Monday) but on Tuesday I got to work 8 hours because my computer was mostly set up. Yay! I'm happy to say that I am not having to look at my notes quite as much and I feel like I'm catching on semi-fast. Fingers crossed that continues and I can get used to working in an office enviroment again. Not a fan of waking up early to be to work at 8am, esp when a couple nights I couldnt fall asleep til past 2am. I came home after work one day and Tony found me asleep upstairs!

Tuesday evening I went out to Lehi for a Connective Circle event. It's for bloggers and happens once a month and this month's topic was about working with brands.  It was sooo good and I learned a lot! So many awesome Utah brands there to talk to and get to know. Every time we talked to a brand we got to mark it off on our paper (shown above) and they did drawings for prizes at the end of the evening.  I won a sweet lantern from Candle Warmers.

We got some samples from people there such as XyloBurst (above), bracelets from Very Jane and cute animal from Sidekix, just to name a few. I will be reviewing some of these items on my review blog in the near future. 

Becky from Utah Sweet Savings invited whoever wanted to go , to JCW's afterwards. So my friend Aimee & I went. So much fun to eat and hang out for a bit - I didnt get home until 1130! I got the "cream sicle" ice cream shake but my burger was so-so. If I go again it'd just be for the ice-cream. Maybe the fries, which I didnt try this time but maybe I will next time. They did have a mushroom burger..might have to give that a try.

Enjoyed these Jelly Belly's at work the next day from Blickenstaff's who were at the Connective Circle event.

Saturday Tony & I went out to Rocky Mountain Raceway with our Pass of All Passes. Really fun to watch the different events. A new one that they did was double decker cars. It was hilarious! Person on top had control of the steering wheel and person on the bottom had the brakes and gas. Whenever a certain car(s) went around the corner, they were on 3 wheels! Eek. There were only 3 sets of cars racing but they hope to grow this category in the future.

Two cars crashed on the track and had to be towed off. So sad.

Also on Saturday our landlord and his son came over and spent all day putting in a new kitchen floor for us. Awhile ago water got in and ruined part of the carpet and they asked us if we wanted carpet again or linoleum. We said linoleum and ended up with this wood floor. I think this looks so much nicer and I'm totally in love.  So excited too to have it done finally and we can get our downstairs put back together.

My outfit on Sunday...maxi skirt from Deb, shirt from DownEast and the shirt I'm wearing over the teal one I got at Plato's Closet awhile ago but this is the first time I've ever worn it.  It is all lace on the back and I thought it was a nice layer to add. Necklace is a hot air balloon. YES! Thanks to Tony for taking the picture..he made sure to get his Boise State doormat in the picture. LOL

Hope you all had a great week last week and an even better one this week! Did you do anything fun? Leave it for me in the comment section below!

Happy Mother's Day To Me!

Sooo I know that Mother's Day is past now but I just wanted to blog a little about it. I also know I'm not a mom to my own kids but it's all good! I'm kinda like a mom (well auntie really) to my nephew Riley and I'm a mom to my 5 birds! Works perfect for me :)

 I actually didn't take that many pictures (shocking I know) but here are a few I did take...

Tony made us crepes for breakfast and lunch. We had literally 5 minutes to eat before we had to head out the door to go to church. When we got home he made more and did one giant crepe at the end! I put Nutella and bananas all over. So tasty! He also made me a crepe that had mushrooms and cheese in it. Mmm

For dinner he grilled kabobs while I was on the phone talking to my brother Matthew who is on his mission in Houston , TX right now but is coming home on May 21st - a day before his birthday!  The kabobs turned out so super good. We bought a yummy new marinade at Winco and he soaked the meat in it overnight. Teriakyi Pineapple flavor. Perfect because we forgot to include real pineapple, oops!

Then I made angel food cake for dessert because it's my favorite and last time Tony tried to make it..well..it didnt rise very well. Our oven is tricky. Winco was out of strawberries - that's what we get for going at 11pm the night before Mother's Day! So we just used whipped cream instead. Delicious!

The present Tony got me is....

MOTORCYCLE RIDING LESSONS!

Ahhh I'm so super excited. I've been wanting to do this ever since last year and now it's finally going to happen.  On Saturday we actually rode around some streets by our house but instead of me in the back behind him, I was in the front & he was behind me on his bike! What what! It was a little scary but mostly really fun. I cant wait to schedule the lessons!

A majority of people reading this are female it seems ..so..what did you get (or give) for Mother's Day?

Another Addition to Our Family

I'm so amazed at how blessed Tony & I have been. Esp. lately. We were able to buy a teardrop camper and then a couple weeks later I was on Facebook browsing the yard-sale pages and someone posted they were getting rid of their top-bar hive. Tony has been building a top-bar hive but it's not quite finished yet. We went to a class about bees in Mapleton a few months ago and Tony has been super interested in owning bees for awhile now. So I msged the lady and we met up with her the next evening. Talked to her for awhile and watched the bees and decided to buy her hive! Since it was getting dark outside and the bees were settling down for the night, it was pretty easy to wrap a blanket around the hive, move it to Tony's truck (with the help of some neighbor kids) and we drove it back to Midvale and dropped it off in the backyard of a couple in our ward who said we could keep the bees there.

So , now the adventure begins! The lady did not take such great care of the hive it seems...she never harvested the honey or anything and she has had the hive since last summer. Tony is waiting for the bees to swarm so we can switch out their hive to the one he is making. Will post updates in the future about how this is going. I'm excited to taste the honey and also learn what to do with the wax (making lip balm, etc) ...maybe I'll open an etsy store or something. Haha. 

How About Some Cheese?

Saturday evening my friend Holly & her husband Dominic , had their 5th Annual Cheese party at their place in SLC. She had invited me on FB and Tony LOVES cheese so we decided to go. First we stopped at Harmon's to get cheese. Each guest had to bring 1/2 lb of cheese they love and 1/2 lb. cheese they had never tried before. I brought Colby Jack (one of my favorites) and a kind I had never tried - cheese with cranberries in it!

6pm - Home Room

6:30pm - Cheese Tasting 101

7:00 pm - Cheese Making Demo

7:30 pm - Cheese Tasting 201

8:00 pm - JeapordeCheese

8:30pm - Cheese Tasting 301

Table full of cheese, fruit, breads, jams/jellies and more. So wow!

Plates for the adults & the drinks

Supplies, Diplomas, Cups & Kids Plates

Super cute! 

(sorry, on my computer the pictures are facing the right way but when I upload them to Blogger, some got flipped and I cant fix it right now. bummer)

Different kinds of cheeses to try

We were supposed to find what paired well together. I'm not good at that so I just sampled all the cheese and then picked fruit and breads that looked good

Learning how to make Mozzarella cheese from Dominic

Use 2 gallons of milk (doubling the batch) whole milk or 2% but nothing less

Bring it up to temperature on the stove

Stir a lot so it doesnt scorch. Stir up and down and in circles too

 

Add Rennet and Citric Acid (comes in the kit that you can get on Amazon for $30 or less)

And then....well, the world will never know. Just kidding. Tony & I had to leave but the rest of the process of making this kind of cheese sounds really cool. Maybe I will get the kit for Tony for his birthday & then document what happens next??

I tried to get on the wifi and saw "Pretty Fly for A Wifi" 

haha - so fantastic!

Tony trying out 2 kinds of cheese on one piece of bread. Fancy!

Before we left we tried goat cheese. Looks like caramel and it actually tastes like caramel apple a bit when paired with...apples. Haha. I am so glad I got to try this one before we left. I did not like the cheese so much on its own but with apple it was pretty yummy!

There Are No Owls at the Aquarium

I went to the aquarium in Sandy for the first time a couple weeks ago. It's not far from where I live and Tony & I keep meaning to go but just never get around to it. There was a Connective Circle (bloggers) event going on there and I had signed up to go so it was neat to finally have a chance to go.

Penguins are in mating season. Eek

Cool jelly type fish

  

The jellyfish are so amazing to me

After walking around for awhile and taking tons of pictures, we got to see a slideshow of what new things are happening with the aquarium. they are actually moving to Draper, to a bigger location and construction is already happening. 

Sweet light fixture I saw as I was heading out

Thank you Connective Circle and Sandy Aquarium for the awesome evening of learning and fun!