costumes and stuff

Who doesnt love this time of year?

We had this for dinner. Please go buy some at costco. You will thank me.

pig tails

alpine slides

jared and his girlfriend are so cute together. Hope he keeps this one around for a LONG time.

annual hee haw farms

Vera Belle Petersen

we have the cutest new cousin

favorite place

whenever I turn the faucet on Neal throws his arms around in the air like a bird telling me he wants in!

barbies

Grace was playing at grandma's house and took a strong liking to barbies. Lucky for Grace, I bought some for her a year ago at DI for 25 cents each and stored them in the basement for later. So I brought them upstairs and I asked Grace if she knew what their names were. Grace replied with



"Yah Mom! Cari and Alec!"

love your body 6k

Lorna, Miss, Hill, Hailey, Beth, Nesha (jared's girlfriend) and I all woke early and ran in the FREEZING cold morning air. We had so much fun doing this all together and I think this might even have to be a new tradition. After the race I thought about it a lot, I think I could have done better, so my next race I hope to set a PR.

some new drawings

Last wednesday we were on our way out the door and I had asked Grace several times to hurry and get her shoes on because we were going to be late. She was still distracted and finally I told her that I was going to leave and that if she wanted to come that she would need to RUN! When she came around the corner in the kitchen she was holding these and saying "LOOK MOM! I drew Ellie and Hill!" "can I bring it to them?"

Grace is so creative! She found all of these materials on her own, I didnt even know she was coloring, and using glue and googly-eyes. How cute.

best friends

(thanks for the picture hill)

shots from tabletop photo

The lighting wasn't that great in the hotel conference room we were in, so with a bumped ISO I think these are my favorites that I took in the class. This cake is cardboard that she had made just for photo shoots and its a few years old! I thought that was interesting.

She talked about how for tabletop photography you want the light to always come from somewhere other than directly in front. These pictures are lit from the the left, as you can see the shadows on the right which she said you WANT. Also new and interesting to me.

The last time I thought about a color wheel was when I was in interior design (if you saw my house you would never have known I took it:) in junior college. Anyway, she talked about how you want to pick the opposite color of your subject on the color wheel to complement. This totally makes sense, now I just need to print one off to post on my wall so that I can picture opposites. Im so visual.

Photography

Where do I start?


Maybe I should start by saying that I had always wanted to take photo in high school and learn how to take cool pictures like my friend Hannah. She was pretty good. Anyway I never got around to taking it and when Josh surprised me with a new camera I was pretty excited to start learning how all this Photography stuff goes.

I grilled my sister in laws, Missy and Hill (who are exceptional and worth checking out) and learned lots from them. Then last fall I took photo 101 and really enjoyed learning all about my camera and all the neat and cool things that you can do while in manual settings.

I set a goal this summer to get my camera out everyday and practice a little and I think it really helped me out! Uploading my pictures was sometimes really sad for me (I did a photo shoot with Jenilyns family and when I uploaded them all I realized that I had done a terrible job) and sometimes it was rewarding. But I felt like I was making progress.

So to help with my progress I took table top photography this weekend and I learned so much! I am so excited to see what I can come up with and put into practice with the new tips and tricks I learned. I am also looking into a new zoom lens. I have a few fixed lenses, but a zoom would be so nice to have. Specifically I am looking at the 17-55 2.8, 24-70 2.8, and 24-105 4. Any suggestions out there?

I am so excited to have found a hobby that I love! and that involves mostly my children.

And thats my story.

making the yummiest whole wheat bread on the planet

Whole Wheat Bread

5 cups wheat flour (I use about 1/3 red and 2/3 white wheat kernels)
½ cup gluten flour
2 Tbsp. instant yeast (SAF is my favorite)
4 cups hot water (run sink so it is hot but not scalding)
1 ½ Tbsp. salt
½ cup oil (can reduce this amount if desired)
¾ cup honey (we use a little more, more like 1 cup)
2 Tbsp. lemon juice, bottled
5 cups wheat flour, in addition to previous 5 cups

Add first 5 cups of wheat flour, gluten, yeast and hot water in mixer and mix for 1 minute using wire whisk attachment. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes (if your kitchen is cold, it may take a few minutes longer to rise). Add salt, oil, honey, lemon juice and rest of flour (one cup at a time). Change to dough hook before adding remainder of flour. Let beat for 10 minutes until dough pulls away from sides of bowl (the texture of dough will change during the 10 minutes, so make sure to give it that time).

Heat oven to lowest temperature possible (e.g. 160 degrees). Turn dough onto oiled counter top. Knead together. Divide and shape into 4 loaves. Spray pans with oil and place dough in pan. Place directly in oven to let rise for 10-15 minutes. Once bread is about ½-1 inch from top of pan, increase temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 30 minutes. (Don’t remove bread from oven while waiting for oven to heat up). When baked, butter tops and remove from pans onto cooling racks.

Source: Leah Van Wagenen
Makes 4 loaves.

playgroup field trip

We took Grace's playgroup to the apple orchard in Orem a few weeks ago and the kids were so fun to watch! They were not really sure what to think of the lady giving the tour or what she had to say but they loved getting an apple just their size at the end.

(Grace also helped herself to a box of pears and took bites of 3 separate ones! uh! So we bought the box)

can this great weather stay forever?

nine months(is the the messiest)

Neal thinks Grace is pretty funny and laughs at all of her silly jokes while we are driving in the car. I love to watch her contorted faces and sounds in the mirror and Neal gets a good kick out if it too.

for some reason Neal thinks I like feeding him 2x in the night still. I hope its the teething.

and right now he has a small obsession with pears. I feed him, then feed him baby food and then wonder why hes not content. Then I show him a pear and you would think it was candy, he goes crazy for them!

he climbs- in and out of laundry baskets to get toys and socks, my legs and holds on as tight as he can hoping ill pick him up, and everything else. All of my appliances in my kitchen look like someones has done a 30 min finger print job on each of them.

and I almost forgot. When we got home grace found all the old binkies in the pantry that I had taken away from her and handed one to Neal. He LOVED it! So occasionally I let him have it for fun.

Neal spends most of his days standing and eating.

riding the horses

On our way out to Chicago Grace asked me if she could go ride the horses at the TP farm. I was so surprised she was asking me to go when last year had been a total disaster and she and half her cousins that were also there all threw tantrums right there on the horses saddles. I told Grace that we didnt live by the horses anymore but that if she could wear big girl underwear than when we got home to Utah, I would take her to ride the horses.

So here is Grace turning in her chart for a ticket to ride the horses.

and this time all enjoyed the ride