One in Every Color- Dresses

When I say every color I mean EVERY color.  Cindy gave me a link to this blog. And I went....and I saw dresses in 143 different colors!

The blogger poses the question, "What about you? Would you wear the same dress every day, just in a different color?"

My answer, the answer, is YES. Yes I would. Because there's one in every color.

Except for maybe brown and split pea soup green. Those aren't my colors. I sort of pretend they aren't in the color wheel.

All Stewed Up

A few of my friends here are recently married as well and a couple of them have had some cooking dilemas.
This post is dedicated to Aly and Sara, with my hopes that this no fail recipe full of possibilities helps them out! I reccomend getting it going first thing in the morning to have everything good to go by dinnertime!

Start out with your crockpot. We got this beauty as a wedding gift! Many people have them sitting around in their garages/ pantries as well going madly underused. I put mine on high and start filling it up.

The best base to any crock pot stew or roast is potatoes! A nice solid filler especially when you have a husband who eats as much as mine does. Plus theyre a good newlywed food because theyre cheap!

So are carrots. Put lots of those in too. I put the carrots and potatoes on the bottom because they take the longest to cook!

When I peel them I peel into the sink but the scoup it out and put it into the trash. Garbage disposals are good for little bits but you dont want the horrible lesson of having to replace one of those suckers.

Then I toss in one of these no fail flavor packets. This one had kind of a kick. Another good one is a Liptons French Onion Soup packet! Its sort of like cheating, but the flovor is worth it, especially if your intimidated by seasoning your own food. I also added almost four spoons of Worchestershire sauce. That stuff is good in almost anything! Then if you're making stew I fill it about two thirds of the way with water, or until all the veggies are covered.

Then brown the stew meat (that means cook it on high so the outside gets nice and cooked looking and the inside is less cooked.) Meat that goes into stew doesnt have to be as tender as your favorite steak because the long cook time of the crock pot should tenderize your meat making it softer and fall apart as you eat it.

Luke prefers more meat in his meals. I used a pound here, but had put half of it in the crock pot before I remembered to take a picture.

Your stew should look about like this:

Leave it for 4-5 hours and it should look like this:

This is when I like to toss in some frozen veggies. (Theyre less expensive, you can buy them in bulk, and they dont go bad as quickly.)

Serve with some fabulous sour dough garlic bread and youre good to go!  Yum!

You can change this recipe up however you want! Add other vegitables, use a beef base instead of a packet. Mix it up! Let me know how it goes!

I also am seeking your advice!

Luke looooooves his Costco muffins, but you leave one muffin out here, and it's rock hard in 20 min! Which means even the smallest crack in the wrapper leads to crusty muffins. Do you have any advice or tips on the storage of these beasts? Is there a product that you find especially helpful for this? I feel wastful putting each into it's own ziplock bag. Especially since we know this is a product we'll continue to purchase for a long time to come.

Caddies and Ladies

Some threatening weather moved us inside for our final photos. Lucky for us, the hotel we moved our ceremony and reception into had a nice central staircase for some group photos.

We had some very charismatic Flower Ladies and Golf Caddy's as members of our wedding party.

Abbey, Katie

Keegan, Tyler, Ethan

Tyler took on quite the persona with his knickers, argyle socks, and hat.

Keegan and Ethan were so professional I would have them caddy for me in a second!

Abbey and Katie were quite the ladies in their dresses and took extra special care to display their multi-colored bouquets!

Ring Caddies:

Hats...................................Gap (Found special by Aunt Becky)

Shirts.........................................................................Old Navy

Pants.........JcPenny Sweatpants, Golf ball/tee embroidery by me

Socks..........................................................Little Miss Matched

Golf Bags and Clubs.............................Hand Created by Jhrme!

Flower Ladies:

Dresses..........................................................................Dillards

Shoes......................................................................Their Choice

Flowers.......Created by Jhrme and inspired by Princess Lasertron

Wedding Wear

I've been promising wedding details and so far all I've got posted are "Funny Friday's" scheduled to be posted every Friday through December.
Soooo we'll start it off with what we wore!

The boys all wore black with a solid color accent tie.

Mark, Luke, Jay, and Stephen all wore different versions of paisley in their respective color.
Many of my girlfriends wore black dresses and a colored ribbon sash, which made taking coordinated pictures much easier!

Melanie, Me, Amanda

Kelsi and Me

Destinie (purple), Jenny (Pink) Dani (Orange) Beth (Green) Emilie (Yellow) Valerie (Aqua blue)

Dress and Petticoat: Cherry Pie Vintage (Etsy) The Darling Dress and Cotton Petticoat

Shrug: Recipe on Ravelry Here Two-Tone Ribbed Shrug by Stefanie Japel in Fitted Knits

Shoes: Rocket Dog's (I know our photographer thought I was joking.)

Jewelry: Belonged to my grandmother Shan's mother.

tHat sMitten

Theres a baby boom. At least among our families and friends. (No we are not and do not plan to be expecting children for quite a long time.)
I have been frantically trying to catch up on special projects for these little bundles of joy.
(My appologies to those of you whose gifts are late...it just means whatever I complete will probably fit longer, as your children will have gone through their first major growth spurt by the time they get their hand knit gift/quilt.)

These little booties went downstairs to the couple living in the apartment below us. (Ravelry Pattern Details)

They're having a little girl any day now! I tied them up with ribbons that coordinated to leave them on the door knob.

These are for Luke's baby cousin Beckham who was just born last week!

They left in the mail on Wednesday!

Ravelry details here and here.

I've finally purchased "Knit Mittens: 15 Cool Mittens to Keep You Warm" and think I will find it to be a solid addition to my library. It thouroughly explains so many things and last time I checked it out of the library I had so many things I wanted to do that when I finally returned it, the book was over 2 weeks late! Oops!

Our Guest Bedroom

...or lack there of. This last weekend Mark and Jay braved our one bedroom apartment and came to spend the weekend.

Heres where Mark and Jay slept. Apparently Mark wasn't too fond of the mattress.

Jay and I borrowed our neighbor's dog Muff and went out for a hike on a nearby trail.

In the area that was previously a quarry.

Our array of snacks for "game night." I was kind of enjoying the colorful array!

We had two bowls of popcorn. Dairy free for Jay and Drenched in Butter and sprinkled with salt for the rest of us. I'm such a bad lactose intolerant.

Bashed His Head In

Golf is supposed to be a non contact sport. So explain to me how my husbands head got bashed in.

Well okay he was giving a family lesson, leaned over to help the mom and the kid caught him with his follow through swing. I guess the kid got him pretty good because bone was exposed. The place he's working took him to the ER where he got 7 staples.

Luke's highlight of the day: two doctors and one nurse want Luke to give their kids lessons.

Here he is sticking his tongue out at me for making him sit in the light to get a good picture.

* Grandma G...I guess I can now compete with you for grossness!

Funny Friday- Stephanie

Be sure to  click on the comic to be able to read the writing. Luke said I should tell all ya'll.

This is Luke's cousin Stephanie. She did my hair for the wedding!

 She's an expert! She also play(s)(ed) golf which is why her perspective in this comic is funny!

One In Every Color- Close Shave

Yep, the marketers have definitely heard about me.

Why else would they have just released a "color collection"? I confess, I  know these are over priced. And I'm pretty sure that large brightly colored plastic handle can't be all that great in a landfill. But the color! Look at the color! Before now, they had packs with shades of green,  a pack of blues, pinks and purples, reds and yellows. And now THIS!!! A color collection!?! It's beautiful!

Pondering Production- Theatre

There is a superstition in the theater that it is bad luck for someone to knit in the wings during a play. I couldn't find anyone who could tell me why, but I did sort out that it's still OK to knit in the audience.
-Yarn Harlot

You know you knit too much when...
... you have projects identified by where you knit them. "Movie knitting," for example is a simple project (so you can work on it in the dark) done on wooden needles (so they are quiet) that are circular (because if you drop one of your DPNs in the theater it rolls to the front of the room...and that makes it hard to get back.) Makes total sense.
-Yarn Harlot

In the 1930s knitting was fashionable and trendy and even movie stars modeled for patterns. Maureen O'Sullivan, Olivia de Havilland and Bette Davis were all in Hollywood Knitting Book which featured the patterns for sweaters that had been worn in movies. Katharine Hepburn AND Joan Crawford knit. Not only was it the golden age of film, but one of the golden ages of knitting, when hand-knits were high fashion.

I am thankfull that the trendiness of knitting is rapidly coming back! A while back, when Luke and I were watching Eclipse in the theatre I spotted a fantastic hat on the character named Bella. I leaned over and asked: "How much you wanna bet that pattern is already on Ravelry?" 1.) I love that Luke understood the humor of that. 2.) It was/is on Ravelry and my cousin Tanya owned it already!

Thanks to the Internet knitting has become more accessible. Stitches can be learned by YouTube videos, and patterns can be found EVERYWHERE! All it takes is a little search on Ravelry (facebook for knitters) to find a felted yoda hat, World of Warcraft charts, and clothing items seen on characters in Harry Potter, Twilight and more!

However I agree with the Yarn Harlot and would "be willing to place a cash bet that most knitters watch fewer foreign films than the rest of the population. It's not that we are less interested -- it's the subtitles. It's very hard to read subtitles and chars at the same time. Knitters prefer dramas. More listening, less looking.

So then we turn to Audio Books and podcasts. There's a whole Harry Potter Knitting podcast?! Another one that mixes classic books with crafting!  Its win win and I love that it's carrying on an art!

Pondering Production- Nervousness

"What we love to do we find time to do." -John L. Spalding
That my dear friends is why I quit my job. Juuuuuust kidding. (Sort of.)

Because I have quit my job, I have been put on a yarn/fabric/paper diet.

The Yarn Harlot explains it here:
"There exists, in the knitting world, a concept called 'the yarn diet.' It works the same way as a regular diet: You purchase no new yarn and use only what you have until you have 'lost' the predetermined number of yarn pounds from your stash. Sadly , the result of a yarn diet is often much the same as that of a regular diet: A person crazed with deprivation, guiltily packs on the cashmere in a yarn shop while nobody is looking."

This is why I have not yet set foot in a yarn store in Colorado. I went to a Farmers Market with Luke's family near Junction and packed on some hand shorn, hand carded, hand spun, hand dyed, 100% wool yarn. Ooops.

However knitting was once a suggested treatment for "mental disorders" in women as early as the 1800's and was one of the occupations recommended tio help women with "illnesses" like hysteria and nervousness.  (Yarn Harlot)

So MAYBE this is just what I needed after working at such a disfunctional place? Maybe this will help me with my hysteria and nervousness?

Alas, as so many before me have declared "I'm bored" staying at home, something you will never hear a crafter say is : "I'm bored. Can anyone think of something to do?"

Argh. It hurts my ears. That is one thing that pains me to hear coming from young people! They always look at me astonished when I start listing off all of the things that I want to be doing right then and there on top of what I'm already keeping busy with! Then I say: "Would you like ME to think of something FOR you?"
Then they scamper off all of a sudden "un-bored."

8. 9. 10.

Today is 8/9/10.

I think that's neat.

That is all.

One In Every Color- Hair Bands

Or as my Dad likes to call them "head ribbons." Have you seen the Ramona and Beezus movie? How the dad never gets the name right and the girls always correct him, and really we get the picture that the dad is just doing it to annoy the girls? I think its sort of like that. Anyway, I think the marketers have heard about me.

Funny Friday- Wedding Funnies Cousin Kent

At our Wedding Rehearsal, and receptions in Fresno and Idaho we had some cartoons created by me with empty word bubbles. Our friends and family filled in the word bubbles and some even added to the drawing! Every Friday from now until we run out I'll post these funnies that made us laugh out loud when we read them! If you wrote your name Ill give you first name credit! If yours was not quite rated PG...well...this is a family friendly blog so it will go in a secret pocket in the back of the book we make! Without further a-do here's the first Friday Funny from my cousin Kent:

Resigned to Cooking

I have been quite the slacker in my posting lately. Either because I was holding off for Valerie and Matt's guest post or because I've been somewhat busy.
Here is my last week and a half in pictures:

Top row: Some long overdue slippers. Finally finished. A birthday plate for my friend Sara, painted at her Color Me Mine birthday party/girls night. Middle Row: Field trip to the Olympic Training center. Way cool. Field trip to the Denver Children's Museum, even cooler! The building knows whats up, every part is painted a different color! They did a whole group lesson on making "Bomb bubbles" (Hint: corn syrup) and had a totally awesome magnetic wall, giant magnetic poetry included. I want one of those. Bottom Row: A trip to Boise/Payette/Ontario for our Idaho Reception. Way Fun. A completed cabled head band to accompany the slippers as a way of apologizing for the tardiness.

I have also resigned from my position at the childcare facility/school that I was working at. There were many reasons I was there, and I truly learned a lot while working there. The business practices and some of the child care methods were not the kind I could fully stand behind. We were in the position to still be comfortable while I'm exploring some other options, and I am very grateful to Luke for his full support. In the mean time he is enjoying my more frequent cooking and even increased cleaning!