Please Watch This

Yes, I just posted a few minutes ago. And then I watched this video, and I needed to share it. I'm a firm believer in sharing important information with others, and this is extremely important. Pornography is SO destructive. I've seen what it does to individuals, marriages, and families. Please share this video with others and help to educate about the harmfulness of pornography! Click THIS LINK to watch.

Who Wouldn't Love Him?

I love my husband. For lots of reasons. One of them: He loves Young Adult literature as much as me. Tonight he is engrossed in this book:
...which has given me the time to clean my kitchen with Pandora on a Spice Girls station. There's nothing quite like Spice Girls, Brittany Spears, J-Lo, Christina Aquilera, N-Sync, Ace of Base, etc. to get you pumped up for cleaning. I know DJ even secretly loves it, because every now and then he'll bust out a line of the song playing or I'll catch him bobbing his head to the beat as he's reading. Gotta love that!

Okay, so last week I got a phone call from my husband when I was at work. It went like this:

DJ: Hey, so... where do you keep the paint?

Me: Ummmm... in the top of my closet...

DJ: Okay thanks I love you!

Me: Wait! What are you painting?

DJ: Just something. You'll see!

Needless to say, I was anxious to get home and see what he had concocted. I immediately smelled the paint when I walked in the house, but I didn't see anything right away... then he showed me this:
Ummm... I LOVE IT!!! I've been looking for something for months that would help keep my bathroom organized and my counter clear of all my crap (clearly, I have very little counter space).
Check out that distressed-ness! And aren't the colors perfect?
Here's the top... It's really perfect!

And now my hair products have a home! It's so nice to have things more orderly. The best part? He paid $5 for this at DI. What an adorable husband! I'm smitten!!!

Getting Paid To Have Fun!!!

So, remember how I said I couldn't sell the furniture I refinish because I love it so much? Well I'm slowly learning to overcome that. A couple weeks ago I picked up this baby from DI:

Such a cute shape, right? I knew I had to have it. I brought it home and in about an hour I had transformed it into this:


It was so fun, and I love it! It looked so cute being in the same room as THIS table I did last month. Once again I didn't want to sell my creation. However, I listed it on KSL and decided to see what happened. After being listed for about a day, I was almost hoping that I'd get my wish and it wouldn't sell. BUT.... I got an email from someone who loved it as much as I do. I ended up selling it, and you know what? It didn't kill me. I got to refinish something adorable, which I absolutely love to do, and I got paid to do it. Also I didn't have to find a place to put the table once it was finished. Let's be honest, my apartment isn't big enough for all my projects!

A Recipe For Megs

Tonight I tried a new recipe for fettuccine alfredo. I've never made a sauce from scratch before, and I was a little nervous about it. Oh man, was it ever worth it!!! This sauce is seriously so easy and delicious! It immediately made me think of my big sister, Meggin, because I've never met anyone who loves fettuccine alfredo as much as that girl! So, Meg, this one's for you! (And, of course, anyone else who wants to have something amazing for dinner ;]) Zach pronounced it "Exceedingly delicious," which, if you know him and his eating habits, is pretty impressive!!!

Fettuccine Alfredo

1/2 C Milk

1/2 C Butter or Margarine

8 oz Cream Cheese, cut up

3/4 C Parmesan Cheese (the grated kind you get in a jar... that's kinda powdery...)

You just throw all of that in a little pot and stir it constantly until it's all melted together and smooth.

This recipe made enough for DJ, Zach and me all to eat dinner, and I've got some left over for my lunch tomorrow.

Try it out!!!

Makeup Bags

I've been having issues with makeup bags lately. I've been using the same one for too long, and it was getting pretty nasty inside. You know how that goes. So I threw it away, and for the past couple of months I've been keeping my makeup in a Ziploc bag. Clearly that couldn't last forever! So yesterday, I made myself new makeup bags. I made them up as I went, and I'm pretty pleased with the results!

Here they are when they're all closed up. So cute, right?
Here's the inside of the powder bag... I couldn't really roll up a bag that has big powder containers in it, so I made a separate one for my bronzer, foundation, etc.
Here's the brush/eye makeup bag unrolled.
And here it is all opened up! I seriously love it! Since I made it myself, I could make each little section the perfect size for what it was going to hold. Like my mom always told me, "A place for everything, and everything in it's place!"

Stress

I've had a stressful day. Okay more like a stressful month. At any given time in the past few weeks, it wouldn't be surprising to find me on edge, about to come apart. I've been stressing about everything.... money, work, having kids(or rather, not having kids), summer plans, having a clean house.... you get the idea. Today things really came to a head, and I had a major come-apart at work. Okay, I had 2 come-aparts. Yep, full on tears, melt-down, come-aparts. Twice. And I wasn't even embarrassed about it! I just couldn't handle work today. I told DJ about my day, and he showed up with a pot of these:

Beautiful, huh? And I love that they're potted, so I can keep them on my desks for months and always remember how amazing my husband is and how much he loves me!

Next, I had two different people I work with bring me a little of this:

Clearly, these people know me! The day was continuing to look up!!!

Finally, I got an email with my sister that had these images, which just cracked me up:

Zombies are Nuts

Lactose Intolerant

Ice Cube Dreams

(my personal fave...it's now the desktop background on my work computer!)

Belated

All in all, I'm really grateful for good friends and family today that helped relieved my stress. Especially my husband! He was so good to me today, and I couldn't ask for a more understanding best friend!!!

Love... In Dessert Form

I found a new best friend in the kitchen. Would you like to meet him?

Yep, butter flavored Crisco. Growing up, I never used Crisco when I baked. Not once. My mom didn't like it, so any time a recipe called for shortening, we substituted margarine. It wasn't until after I got married and my new aunt Melin gave me a recipe for her chocolate chip cookies (which are DJ's favorite) and gave me all the ingredients that I gave Crisco a try. I discovered that I loved it. So for the past 20 months I've been using Crisco when a recipe calls for it, and I've been loving the result! Well a few days ago I bought butter-flavored Crisco, and oh my goodness, I am HOOKED! It makes those most creamy, delicious cookies ever. Tonight, my wonderful sister Nikki gave me her world class peanut-butter cookie recipe. I used the butter flavored Crisco and these babies are so dreamy!!!!
What could possibly be better than Nikki's peanut butter cookies? Well... a little chocolate couldn't hurt right?
That is not just any chocolate, girls, that is chocolate ganache. Equal parts of heavy whipping cream and chocolate chips melted together. After drizzling it over the cookies, I put them in the fridge for the ganache to thicken. Now it's a perfect fudge-y consistency, and THAT, my friends, is real, peanut butter chocolate love :)

Conference Crafting

This weekend was one of my two favorites in the entire year: General Conference! There's nothing quite as wonderful as spending the weekend with family just listening to the words of the prophets. It's a real "battery re-charger" in my life, and I couldn't ask for anything better! One thing I absolutely love about the weekend of General Conference is the time I get to spend crafting. Anyone who knows me very well knows I have a hard time sitting still and paying attention. In order for me to really soak in and process the words of the Prophets, my hands need to be doing something. As a kid, I remember doing countless puzzles during Conference. As a teenager, I would sort photographs for my mom (back when you used to use real film and have it developed... we would sort them about every 6 months and put them in our photo albums). Now, I like to do crafts. This was my Saturday morning craft:

Fun, right? I've been wanting a new door hanging for spring, and I couldn't find one I really liked. Even my beloved Hob failed me this time. But I saw something similar to this on a crafting blog and decided to give it a whirl. I started with a straw wreath from Michael's. They had foam wreaths for about $6, but I figured the straw one for $2.99 would serve the same purpose (the straw wreath was wrapped in plastic, and I just left that on). I used felt squares which I got for 29 cents each at JoAnn for the flowers, and the fabric to cover the wreath I already had. So for less than $5 I had the perfect wreath!

Here's a close-up of the flowers:
One last angle:

I absolutely love it, and you know how happy it makes me to have something cute to put in my home (or on the front door) that I made myself! Now I'm really ready for spring!!!

Pranking the Prankster

I completely forgot it was April Fool's Day yesterday. When I got to work and realized, however, my immediate response was to text DJ and remind him, then I let him know that he needed to come up with a good prank to get his brother Sean, who was staying at our house last night. Sean is definitely the biggest prankster I know, and I love that about him. I just wanted to really get him for all the times he's pulled pranks on other people in the family. I usually can't pull off a good prank, but when I got home from work, I remembered this guy:

Yep, that's a mannequin head from when I was in hair school. Creepy right? One time my sister Carly borrowed it from me, and when she brought it back she put it on my bed so it looked like there was someone sleeping in it. It worked wonderfully, and she successfully scared the bajeebies out of me. I decided to give it a shot with Sean. I took some clothes and my temple bag to stuff the bed:
(don't you love the rat tail on that mannequin?)

And the final result was this:

Pretty convincing, right? I was super excited to see how he reacted. Unfortunately, the boys started watching a movie at midnight, so I went to bed without knowing what Sean would think of my prank. When I got up this morning, I walked out of my bedroom to see Nick (Keesha's boyfriend) asleep on the couch and Sean asleep on an air mattress that we had gotten out for Nick. I ran into my mom's house (I heard her in her workout room, and everyone in my house was asleep... I needed to tell someone right then cause I was so excited!) and told her that I thought Sean thought there was really someone in the bed because he had been asleep on the air mattress. Then I told DJ when he woke up. I didn't say anything to Sean, but I was in the kitchen when DJ came out of our room and the conversation went like this:

DJ: "Sean, why did you sleep on the air mattress?"

Sean: "Well where was I supposed to sleep?"

DJ: "In the other bedroom...."

Sean: "There was already someone asleep in there!!!"

[I start laughing my head off]

DJ: "Come here..."

Sean and DJ went into the room and DJ showed him my awesome prank. I'm pretty sure even my world class prankster brother-in-law was impressed :) I'm thrilled that I actually got a prank to work, especially on Sean. I may have opened a can of worms, because who knows what he'll do in return, but I'm guessing in the end it will probably be worth it!!!