Can this be the one?

In the afternoon on Friday, the 27th we went house hunting again!

House hunting actually went quite well!  It didn't start out so well as every house we looked at, I just didn't feel good about any of them.  It wasn't until the last house that we visited that I actually thought about putting a bid on a home.  This house is actually pretty perfect.  It is in a great location (best we've looked at so far), pretty much move in ready, not too large of a yard to upkeep, no carpet or tile needing to be replaced or walls repainted and refrigerator and swing set is included.  The home is 1800 square feet, but it does not feel that small or that large for us.  It just seems perfect for us to start a family in.  This is the first home that I am really excited about.  I would actually be pretty disappointed if our bid got rejected.  I know that there are other homes out there, but I just feel that we might not find something as good as this one.  Plus, I am tired of looking and ready to move onto the next step.  It probably is a little pretentious to post pictures of a home we don't even own yet, but like I said, I am pretty excited about this one.  Here's a little sneak peek:

Okay, so this isn't our dream home by any means, but for a starter home, it's pretty nice!!

We will find out Monday night what they say about our bid.  Please pray that all goes well and that this house may become ours! 

Date Night at LaCaille

Tuesday, the 24th was a busy day.  I had school, LaCaille and the family wedding shower for Brianna.  The weather for LaCaille this year was beautiful!!  It made wandering around the grounds much more enjoyable in nicer weather than in snow or rain like it has been in the past.  Scott and I showed up earlier since we had to leave right away so I could go to the shower and I got some nice pictures of the grounds this time.

This is the new dessert.  It is a little lame compared to the bananas foster being set on fire.

LaCaille was delicious as usual.  Not on purpose, but Scott & I got to sit at a table all by ourselves.  It was actually really nice to be able to talk to each other without worry of what surrounding students might hear us say.  It was like a little date night for us.

The shower for Brianna afterwards was nice.  I didn't take any pictures while there though.  My present for Brianna was a scrapbook with guest book pages for them to use at their wedding that can be part of her wedding scrapbook later on.  It had been a while since I'd seen some of the extended family, so it was nice to be able to chat with them.

Pinterest Recipe Finds

Time for a pinterest update!  I think I might start blogging every time I try something from pinterest.  I've seen people make a whole separate blog about the things that they do from pinterest, but I don't feel like having two different blogs.  The most things that I try from that website are recipes.  A lot of the other crafts or good tips are ones that are more for future doing instead of right now.  The recipes I love since well, we need to eat every night!

On Sunday, the 15th I decided to try  these Slow Cooker BBQ Ranch Country Ribs.  It was great because I could put it in the crock pot before church and it would be ready after church was done.  This recipe had you make your own BBQ sauce, so I tried it, but it ended up having too strong of a ketchup flavor.  The meat was delicious.  It was very moist and tasted great as leftovers.  The only thing I would change is just using a bottle of BBQ sauce since the flavor of the ketchup was really overpowering.

Yesterday, I made these Sausage Stars.  I actually don't like that they're called Sausage Stars, so I'm going to call them Sausage Cups because for some reason, stars just sounds lame.  I actually really liked these!  I strayed a bit from the original ingredients and amounts, but followed the rest of the directions the same.  I didn't cook as much sausage since there's just Scott and I to eat the food.  I just used cheddar cheese since that's all I had to use.  I also didn't use 1 cup of the Ranch dressing mix, but whatever I had left from the ribs on Sunday.  It equaled about a tablespoon I think.  I also didn't do any olives, but did red and green pepper and green onions.  Scott was a little hesitant about the green onions, but I thought you couldn't taste them at all.  I took a picture of the ones that were on my plate and I wanted a little bit more ranch taste, so I just put a dab of ranch dressing on top.  Scott said that they tasted like Mexican pizza.

These are more of an appetizer food and I did have trouble pairing something with these.  We bought a watermelon (all Scott) and so we just had some of that with the Sausage Cups.  I just didn't think any of the other vegetables we had would pair well with these, so maybe these are just better as an appetizer than a meal.  Either way, I did enjoy these and how quick and simple it took to make them.  Plus, they weren't fried in oil, but baked in the oven, so that definitely cuts out the fat.  Usually anything made with wonton wrappers is always fried in oil, so it's nice to find recipes using wonton wrappers in different ways.

Bridal Shower

My little sister Brianna is getting married May 11th, so Rebecca and I threw her a bridal shower on Saturday, April 7th.  Rebecca had a lot of things to deal with (she has 4 kids!), so I took the reins on the bridal shower.  I went to the internet and pinterest.com to help me with ideas since this was my first bridal shower to throw. 

The biggest thing for any shower is a theme.  I didn't want to resort to just kitchen item gifts or date night gifts, so I found a theme where you assign the guests a letter that would then spell out a message in the end.  The guests would then buy a gift starting with that letter and the bride would then get a variety of gifts.  I used the word 'Congratulations Brianna' to go off of. 

Brianna's colors for her wedding are a dark red and light blue with white as an accent, so I used that a lot in decorations, invitations and food.  It helped me more to go off of a color scheme than a 'Hawaiian' theme or something.

Invitations:  I didn't want to really spend money going to a place to get invitations printed, so I found this website where I could design my own and print it off with my own printer on card stock paper.  I thought they turned out pretty cute.  I had to take a picture of the invitation on my computer because the file is too big to load on the blog.

The food is what I was most excited about.  I love cooking new foods and showing off what I make.  I found out that Brianna likes chicken salad, so I made that the main dish and paired with croissants from Costco (any bread is good from Costco).  Usually there's always some form of vegetables and fruit at a shower, but Brianna isn't a fan of a lot of fruit.  I thought of this frog-eye salad recipe from my mom and found out she liked that and made it.  I should post the recipe for it because it's pretty delicious even though it has a funny name.  I bought a veggie tray and Rebecca got crackers and we had fruit punch and water to drink.  I'll go over dessert separate.

The food was delicious and I'm so glad there were leftovers. :)

I decided to be a little ambitious with dessert and make something I've never made before.  Cake pops are a popular dessert that I've been seeing all over the internet, so I figured why not.  I would be able to incorporate the colors so easily and they didn't look too hard to make.  Boy, was I wrong!  I went over to Rebecca's the Thursday before the shower to make them.  She had made them only once or twice before, so she knew about as much as I did.  I won't go into details, but I will say that there was some struggle in making them and I am glad that they were a hit at the shower.  We put them in Styrofoam blocks with red ribbon and it looked great!  I was so glad that they turned out despite how hard it was to make them.

The decorations went with the color scheme as well and we decided that we didn't need to go excessive on the decorations, so here is what we did.

 I found this idea on pinterest where you can download this template where the circles are the same size as a Hershey kiss and you can put in whatever words and pictures you want, print it out and glue onto the bottom of a Hershey kiss!  It works as a decoration, dessert and favor. 

This banner shows the date of Brianna's wedding.

Whole table view

Rebecca asked Kyle the same questions she asked Scott when she did my bridal shower and recorded his answers.  Brianna then had to see how many she would get right and if not, then a piece of bubble gum went into her mouth.  It was funny to hear her answers compared to his.

The number of girls that came weren't as many as were invited, but I'm glad Brianna was able to get a shower, feel special and see some friends.

I didn't realize how much planning went into any kind of shower, but it was actually pretty fun to do it and I'm glad that everything turned out as I had planned in my head.  Thanks Rebecca for helping me out! 

Easter Eggs & A Birthday Party

While Andrew, David & Kristene were here in Utah, we also dyed Easter eggs and celebrated Brooke's (Lane & Brita's daughter) birthday.  Here are some pictures to make up for lack of pictures in the post before.

Jocelyn & Scott

Scott decorating eggs

Scott would write funny sayings like this on the eggs.

All the eggs!

Jocelyn

Kristene & Jocelyn

David & Kristene brought their dog, Pebbles and Jocelyn loved playing with her.

Brooke's 1st birthday (cup)cake.

Brooke's 1st birthday ice cream cake.

Lighting the candle.

Singing Happy Birthday!

Brooke and her cake!

Love Brita's face.

Andrew & Brooke

Us & Brooke

It was fun to have Andrew, David & Kristene come up and visit those of us who live in Utah!