Miles of Tiles

Ok, maybe not miles... only four to be exact. But this project was so super easy that I could have done miles! My mom taught how to make these adorable coasters at our Craft Day in the Clarkston Ward last year but I didn't do it. Mostly because we had a piece of trash as our coffee table and it didn't really matter what happened to it. Now we have a pretty and new coffee table that we would like to try to keep that way. Coasters to the rescue!

This is all you need:
Mod Podge
Clear Spray Paint
Paper or Pictures
Foam Brush
Little Felt Pads for the Bottom

I got my tiles from Home Depot and the little felt doo dads from the dollar store! All I did was cut my paper into 4x4 inch squares, put a layer of mod podge down and then center my paper on the tile. After it dried I put one layer of mod podge over top of the paper. After that dried a put a couple coats of the clear spray and voila! Done and done.

It was really fast and easy and they turned out so cute. If you use pictures you don't even have to put the mod podge over top, just skip straight to the clear spray. They look cute on our table and would also make an awesome gift!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday!

So it finally happened. Grandpa got sick when my parents were here, my mom got sick on the way back from her super awesome vacation to see us, and now I've got it. I just want to curl up and watch tv/sleep on the couch all day. This is not good news for my train wreck of a kitchen. Jared and Will can back me up when I say that Chad and I are real good at trashing a kitchen. Unfortunately a messy kitchen does not inspire me to want to cook. Neither does being sick. Chad's gonna have a real fun day!

Awkward:

• The Relief Society Welcoming Committee came over to welcome me to the ward and invite me to come to Relief Society. Huh? I've been here for 2 months people. This all started with the most awkward phone call ever, me trying to give directions (lol) to my condo to a little old lady that lives literally across the street from me. Are you on the west or east side of the complex? Uh.... don't know. Are you by the emergency lights? What lights? Are you in the second entrance? Which one is the first lady? Finally I told her that I am right on the street that we both share, you can park on the street and I am right there! She didn't believe me so I told her to call me if she had problems and I would stand in the street and wave her down. That seemed to calm her down about the whole thing. So two cute ladies came over to ask if I had time to come to Relief Society. Uh, yup, I've been going for about 2 months now. "Ooohhh... I've guess we've just never seen you". Great. Great, great, great.
  

• We attempted to donate plasma last night. Ha, that was just awesome. We really thought this would be a great idea and if we both did it, it would pay for most of our rent every month, super awesome. Only super awesome though if you can donate, I was rejected due to the fact that I freak out over everything and my blood pressure was too high, twice. They sent me to sit down and calm down before they took it a second time but my finger was bleeding profusely from the little poke and then when I was walking back to get it taken again some lady ran into me. They told me to go home and try again later. Chad was great though and was able to donate. Until he started to feel horrible and got real, real pale. They stopped him early and when I found him he was looking pretty awful. He got paid though! We may have to scrap our whole pay for rent with plasma idea though if we both keep this up. I'm gonna try again. Chad's thinking about it.
  

Awesome:

• I had another job interview this week!
  

• The past couple weeks have been full of awesome garage sale and DI finds. I'm always seeing all the great things that my friends find (Holly and Brittney) and now I've got some of my own! Now that picture up top is making sense right? :) I really lucked out with a garage sale put on by a couple girls my age selling their clothes!
  

• Holly sent me pound cake in the mail. It's the best, and I got it after the super awful "interview". It was much appreciated.

• Lots of back and neck massages from Chad since I'm sicky.

FYI: Chad has the whole kitchen cleaned, the living room picked up and is now working on the bedroom while I lay on the couch zoning out to HGTV. Best Husband Ever.

Cookies and Cards

My parents were here visiting last week and we had so much fun with them!

We did a lot of this...

The women won A LOT, and the men finally had to resort to cheating to get some wins. Chad however tells a different version of this story.

There was a lot of debating on where to eat. There always is when my grandparents are involved ;) They want to make sure we all get something we want. So the whole vegetarian thing made that debate even longer this time!

Fortunately there was a lot of these too...

In between the card playing and eating we swam in the very warm pool at my grandparents clubhouse, had a major grocery shopping excursion at WalMart, got awesome frozen yogurt, Cafe Rio shrimp tacos, and Kneaders French Toast (I guess that's still eating!), went to the DI, and just hung out and talked a lot. It was a great week that went by way too fast!

Granola Recipe

Chad and I eat A LOT of yogurt! We've recently discovered greek yogurt which is super yummy and super good for you. It's a nice way for us to get some protein! Along with fruit we NEED granola with our yogurt. Granola is expensive though and often times I have been less than impressed with what I could get at the grocery store so.... I make my own!

A while ago I stumbled onto this awesome website, Word of Wisdom Living. It is an awesome website all about leading a more healthy life! From there I got this granola recipe, it's full of good things and is much more affordable to make. The best thing about making your own granola, you can put whatever you like in it! We usually go with almonds, cashews and sunflower seeds as our nuts and call it good, but you could add all kinds of things: dry fruit, raisins, mini chocolate chips, go crazy! This recipe is a little different in that you bake it low and slow, but I like it SO much better! We end up making a batch every other week!

5 c old-fashioned rolled oats
1c whole-wheat flour
1c wheat germ
1c coconut, shredded or flaked
1 to 1.5c total of chopped nuts

Mix above ingredients in large bowl

2T vanilla
1/4c water
1/2c honey
1/2c (or less!) healthy oil (try coconut oil)


Mix wet ingredients in a medium bowl, then stir into the dry ingredients.


Spread in shallow baking pans and bake about 2 hours at 250 F., stirring gently every 15 minutes. Cook until golden brown and nearly dry. Cool and store in airtight containers; refrigerate.


Enjoy!!!

Worst "Interview" Ever

As of late I've been able to find quite a few jobs to apply to. I found one listing on craigslist that sounded like it would actually be a lot of fun, a Nutritionist/Dietician. I didn't apply to it at first because I am not a Nutritionist or Dietician but after talking with Chad and my mom figured, what the heck!, might as well apply! The posting said that you would be working with clients and forming meal plans and working with them on their diet. You needed to know about the body and how it worked and interacted with food. I'm a biology major, I got this! So I sent in my resume.

Later that day I got a response from Jared saying that he'd love to meet with me! Awesome! I was excited to go in and see if I could get this job. I googled the company and got a glimpse of what was in store for me. They only had a facebook page, something about healthy fast food... oh no. I remained optimistic about it until the next afternoon (the day I was to go in for the "interview") when I saw another ad on craigslist:

Men or women 18 yrs. or older
1-866-673-1341 leave mess.
Must like Network marketing
Business Breifing Thur. nights
call for time and place.
Add an extra $500 or more to your income
part time.

Oh no. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was the same thing that I was going to. I had my appointment all set up though and I really wanted it to be something awesome so I got myself all ready, straightened my hair, makeup on, skirt, heels, the whole works and went out to get myself a job.

The inside of the building was neon green. There were 20 women all inside. When I opened the door I was assaulted with club music. No. No. No. I asked some random woman for Jared, but he was out in the alley on a phone call. Middle aged women kept trying to get me to drink some sort of weird herby tea magical drink stuff, I declined 5 times. Everyone had buttons on and a friend with them. I sat awkwardly and watched someone come in dressed in pajamas. And then another girl in those horrible baggy bondage pant things with all the chains and things hanging off of them. Everyone else was in jeans and t-shirts. Some girl asked me how I had heard about this and what got me interested. Yeah.... I don't even know what this is. I chatted with her for a while hoping that Jared would finally come in and I could tell him that this isn't what I was looking for. I was looking for a JOB. Not some extra income. "Hi, yes, I would like some extra income to supplement the $0.00 I am currently making". No thanks. Jared wasn't coming, however, the women kept coming with their magical potions trying to suck me into their world. I kept hearing people say, "It looks like we're about to start" and "We should begin any minute now". I needed to get OUT. I was not going to stay through their whole, sell our tea presentation and I wasn't going to get to give Jared the con man the courtesy of an explanation due to important business in the back alley. So I looked at my phone, tried to sound like something important had happened and excused myself from chatting with the way too enthusiastic sales girl to make a phone call. I high tailed it to my car and without looking back, peeled out of there as fast as I could. While the job prospect was a giant fail at least I didn't have to sit through some awful presentation pretending to be interested in selling tea.

Hopefully the next interview will go better, and actually be an interview, for an actual job.

Anyone else have any interview stories? Please share... the good, bad, ugly and funny! Make me feel better about my crazy "interview"!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday!

How cute are our snuggly babies? They were beyond excited about seeing mom and dad. Sunny wrapped himself around them and Rukia was super hyper and wanted to lick everyone up! Unfortunately we dropped off the parents at the airport this morning :( So we are back to normal life around here. Who's coming out to visit us next?!

Awkward:

• Last Sunday we were strolling in to church a few minutes late. We scoped out the chapel and found some open seats in the front. We made our way down the aisle, Chad sat down first, and before I had a chance to sit down I got a butt pinch! And the 4 80 year old ladies sitting behind us got a little show.
  
• That same day in Relief Society the President introduced herself to me again. I just went along with it, no big deal. But then during opening exercises they asked if anyone was new, and she kept making faces and gesturing for me to get up. Yeah.... I already did that about a month ago. Glad I was so memorable... This went on for what seemed like forever, her motioning me to get up, me shaking my head, me making hand gestures, and finally me doing the whole off with your head hand signal to really drive my point home. The person sitting next to me definitely thought I was nuts.
• In Chad's Chemistry class the Professor asked if anyone was doing anything fun for Valentines Day. So Chad announced that he was going to Vegas. Everyone was a little shocked and thought that was ridiculous. Some kid said, "well at least we know who's single in the class!". Everyone thought that was real funny until Chad let them know he was married. He didn't however tell them that he was going to be sharing a hotel room with his in-laws right next to the grandparents ;)
• Favorite Tattoo parlor we saw in Vegas: Precious Slut tattoo. Keepin' it classy.

Awesome:

• We've had cable the WHOLE time we've been here, just found that out a week ago! Hello Food Network and HGTV, how I've missed you my lovelies!
• As mentioned before I was a $17 big winner in Vegas. Chad was a big 15 cent winner. In the positive baby!
• It rained a lot here recently which let to a double rainbow! If that wasn't fun enough we could see the end of one of them, and then drove through it. I always used to try to find the end of the rainbow when I was a kid and I finally did. I did not however get a pot of gold. bummer.
  

The "Dirt Mound"

A few posts I mentioned the "dirt mound" that separates us from St. George. In case you don't remember we foolishly thought (from google maps) that Chad would be able to ride his bike over this giant dirt mound thing that was between us and Dixie State. Until we got here and realized that "mound" was a mountain!



We decided to go and hike on our dirt mound, we found a trail and took off.