What the heck is egg plant?

I love my husband!  He is so sweet to me.  The other day in our bountiful basket, we got egg plant.  I have never EVER had egg plant in my life!  Well, when I got it, my first reaction was, what the heck is this weird looking oval object?  I was not about to cut open that thing..So Brian said he would find a recipe where we could use the eggplant.  

Wow, he started making it!!  This is what egg plant looks like...  I was so happy to see Brian doing dinner.

Wait a sec, what is this?  lol..we were a team.  We dipped the slices in egg then cooked the eggplant with some cornflakes on either side.  We then laid the pieces in tomato sauce

At this point, I was fearing what this stuff would taste like....

We topped it with some cheese and cooked it for a while.  We dont have a picture of the final result, but Brian told me after the stuff cooked for a little bit that we needed to make some noodles.  When it came out of the oven, I realized what we had made!  YUMMY eggplant and sauce for spaghetti!  It was DELISH

 Onto Valentines Day.  Again I love my husband, and he loves me...and knows the way to my heart is by CHOCOLATE!!

Yes that is right, CHOCOLATE covered cinnamon bears!  They are delicious!

MMM..Chocolates and a beautiful rose.  I love my hubby  :)

Thanks for Reading!  :)

Hair part 2/Happenings

Here is Part two to my hair post.  Some people wanted pictures of my hair.  This was taken Sunday night after church.  My hair is CURLY!!  :)

I have been feeling really blessed in the last couple months with friends and family.  Anytime Brian and I feel like doing something crazy, our good friends Trever and Mandy are on board! For instance...

 BEAN BAG PARTY!

We really love when our friends come to visit.  Just last night, we had them over for dinner.    Mandy and I experimented with the brussle sprouts, made broccoli and potatoes, and yummy lemon honey chicken.  I think the boys enjoyed their party too...

Playing Halo.  

I cant fully skip over Christmas, now could I?  We got to go spend a week for Christmas at Brian's parents.  It was a lot of fun!  We went to a ward Christmas party.  Santa even came!  He looked way familiar...

 Can you guess why he looked so familiar? :)

The night before Christmas Eve, Jeff and Brian set up a tent.  Jeff's tent is no ordinary tent, it has a stove in it... Yes you heard me.  It was 20 degrees outside, but in the tent it was at least 60 degrees!    Here is a shot of our set up for movie night

 Emily, Jeff and I are ready for Sherlock Holmes

Christmas day was wonderful!  There were SO many presents.  I really loved spending my first Christmas away from my mom and dad with Brian's wonderful family.  

 Mom even gave me a cup of Cocoa!  I love her.  She obviously knows the way to my heart ;)

We got a lot of loot.  Harry Potter 7.2 and then the next gift was Harry Potter 1-7.1! 

 What a great Christmas picture of us!!!  :)  I love that boy next to me.

Notice the big box?  A griddle!  Yay!  

I totally broke my griddle by pushing it off the microwave..long story

Sadly, I couldn't stay any longer than December 26th.  Mom, Jeff, Sam, and Emily decided to come visit us over new years!  We had a lot of fun and even got some shooting in while they were here.  Yeah, not what Jeff would call "ideal", but it was certainly fun!

Gone Shootin' at Cabelas :)

Hair

I have had so many different experiences with my hair throughout the years.  I have to admit, I am not the best at making good decisions when it comes down to my hair.  When I was a Sophomore in High School, I decided I wanted to have curly hair.  Every other girl around had beautiful wavy/curly hair.  I was so envious.  I went to a family friend and asked her if she could perm my hair.  She said she would give me a trial perm because she didn't think my hair would hold any sort of curl.  I went in and got the back and underside of my hair permed.  It stayed for about 48 hours, then fell out!  Yeah, my hair is just that straight guys.
I had a better plan...
My Freshman year of college, I went home and got myself a perm.  When the lady asked me how tight I wanted the curls, I said that my hair wouldn't hold curl so as tight as possible would do.  She decided to do the smallest rings to my hair, then keep the product in twice as long.  Not my smartest decision.  My hair came out fried!  I tied it back all of the time or put it in piggy tails or braided it.  I obviously avoided the camera as well since this is about the only picture I have with that hair.

Oh don't worry, my hair didn't fall out.  I did however have to wait 2 full years for my hair to grow out.  The perm started looking funny about 5 months later.  My hair was straight about 4 inches, then the hair took a 90 degree turn and POOFED into a ball of ugliness, not to mention coloring my hair brown soon after perming my hair.

I learned my lesson

I have always wanted curly hair, and still do wish for a little body every once in a while.  My husband knows how much I love curly hair and for Christmas, He got me THE WAND!

If you know anything about the wand, you know it heats up to 450 degrees and only takes 20 minutes to do your hair.  AMAZING!  I just realized i don't have a picture of my hair done with the wand, but I promise, it looks a lot like this

I love how well this works.  I would have never been a believer in such a product because nothing has ever held curl as well as this thing does, but it really works!  I am pretty excited and happy about that Christmas gift.  I have an amazing husband who got a great gift that i only mentioned once.  :)  He is the best.  I will have to post another picture soon of my curly hair. 

Catastrophe

I definitely found a new recipe that I love!  Homemade PIZZA is my new favorite thing!  I have made it like once a week for the last like 10 weeks.  It is just too good to pass up!  It is easy, and cheesy!

The other day, while making pizza, I decided to make it better than ever by adding extra cheese, extra sauce, extra pepperonis, olives, and extra bell peppers!  It was a beautiful pizza that was heavier than normal.  Seriously I was so proud of it, I called Brian and told him to skip the rest of his class and that the best pizza he would ever taste was going to be out of the oven in 5 minutes! 

I went to pull the pizza out of the oven one handed when I hit the roof of the oven trying to get to the stove top.  I grabbed the pan with my other hand, unprotected, flinched from the agonizing pain while the pizza slid off the pan back into the oven ...UPSIDE DOWN!  Yes, this is real.  There was my masterpiece pizza upside down in the oven.  Cheese was burning everywhere!  I texted brian and told him he couldn't make fun of me.  As nice as he is, he came in, saw the mess, gave me a kiss, and ate the sauceless, cheeseless pizza.  What a sweetie.

The next day, I decided i wanted to go to zumba.  I came home from work and started cooking as fast as I could for dinner.  I turned on the oven and 5 minutes later, the fire alarm was going off in the house!  I had forgotten that I had had a pizza fall back into the oven!  Needless to say, I did not make it to zumba, but cleaned the oven out for about a half an hour. 

I wish I would have taken a picture of the mess in the oven, then the mess on the floor from the oven the next day.  It was quite the adventure.  We wont be having pizza again anytime soon.

The End

Halloween, Mothers and stuffed peppers

I must admit that Friday night's football game was not fully watched by me or Brian.  Instead, we left at half time to go to our ward party.  I was happy to leave because we were losing pretty badly.  Brian and I had an enjoyable time.  He dressed up as THOR and I went as .....people called me the sexy kitten.  I meant to be cat woman.  Whatever works though.  I really had a favorite outfit, and that was for sure Kyle and Ashlan's monkey suit with their new born Madeline as the banana they were fighting over.  Ashlan made their outfits!  How adorable! 

Next we had a picture with Bat man 2x cat woman and THOR!!

Not going to lie to you..Brian was the strongest one up there for the best costume!  They had a dance off, but brian cant dance, so he did the next best thing....PUSHUPS!

 What halloween party is complete without the doughnut eating contest?  Nothing compares!!

Oh, did I tell you I am slightly a fan of this baby?  cuz I am...  

My mom came into town on Saturday. It was fun to have her for a couple of hours because she is going to be leaving in about 20 days for Cypress, in the Athens, Greece mission.  I am so happy for them.  Before my mom came, she ordered one of my finest meals for Saturday night's dinner.  We had stuffed peppers!  My mom raved about them for hours!  I was really happy with her excitement.  She really loved it and said dad would probably never eat it though.  Here is a picture of my masterpiece!!
Seriously, delish

Recipe from the Flake Family cookbook
Stuffed Peppers (Sarah Flake)

6 lg bell peppers
1lb lean ground beef
2T onion, chopped (Brian and I dont like onions..and dont put this in)
1 C rice, cooked
1tsp salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 (15 oz) can tomato sauce
3/4 C mozzarella cheese, grated

Cut thin slice from stem end of each bell pepper.  Remove seeds and membranes; rinse peppers.  Cook peppers in enough boiling water to cover them, about 5 minutes just until soft.  Drain.  Cook beef and onion in 10 inch skillet over medium heat 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until beef is brown; drain.  Stir in rice, salt, garlic and 1 cup of tomato sauce; cook until hot.  Heat oven to 250 degrees.  Stuff peppers with beef mixture.  Stand upright in ungreased square baking dish 8x8x2 inches.  Pour remaining tomato sauce over peppers.  Cover and bake 45 minutes.  Uncover and bake about 15 minutes longer or until peppers are tender.  Sprinkle with cheese and serve

Bridal Vail Falls

Last weekend, Brian's brother and sister, Jeff and Emily, came and visited us.  Had a lot of fun!  I am afraid they got to see the worst of me during a BYU football game held last Saturday.  The game was amazing though as the lovely Riley Nelson helped our team win!  Ha, After the football game, we went up the canyon to Bridal Vail falls.  It was beautiful!  The trees were changing and Jeff and Brian loved running up the falls too. 

 

I love how great of friends they are  :)

This picture is really nice.  You can kinda see how far up we are.

 This was a rather enjoyable hike, not too hard!

 Aww, I love Brian. 

His family is great to visit us and I love them, too!

Thanks for coming guys!

Bountiful Baskets

Brian and I have been purchasing half of a bountiful basket with Trever and Mandy for the past 3 weeks.  It is so fun to have all the produce we have been getting! Things we usually wouldn't buy, like pears, avocados,  plums, broccoli, cauliflower, etc, etc, etc!  I swear it is genius.  The only issue I have found is the fact that we have to go and get the produce at 7:15 on a Saturday.  It is worth it though because Trever and Mandy get it every other week.  HA.  So this week was our week to go get the basket.  We got there at 715 and went in with our basket.  As soon as we got in line, a guy yelled at all of us in line for not volunteering and that we should volunteer every third time we get produce.  I wanted to say to him, HEY DUDE, ITS OUR FIRST TIME TO ACTUALLY COME GET PRODUCE! haha, even with the guy yelling at all of us, the produce is still cheap and delish!  Here is a picture of the full basket.  We keep half and Trever and Mandy get the other half.  Thanks guys for splitting with us!

 Last, but not least, I have been practicing my favorite meal a lot.  Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, homemade gravy and corn on the cob!  It definitely has been a feat trying to get the gravy to turn out right, but you know what?  I think I actually got it to not be clumpy for once!  I had to get the camera and take a picture.  Oh, the apron is one that I made this summer with my sister in law, Carin.  She helped me get it looking so cute!  Thanks Carin!!

One day, I will have this meal totally mastered.  :)  For now, Brian is just going to have to keep getting experimented on.