I got it!....Again.

Since I'm a young women's leader I've been able to work on Personal Progress and earn my medallion again. That is neat because when I was a teenager I got the silver medallion. This time I got the gold one, and it's very pretty too! The church made some changes to the Personal Progress Program this year, including a new medallion. So, I'm doing it again! (Actually, I kind of miss it and didn't want it to be over, so I think I would have done it again even if there wasn't a new necklace...Honestly, how many temple necklaces does one person really need? Hehhehe!)

For those who don't know what Personal Progress is, it's sort of like boyscouts I guess. It's a program our church has to help teenage girls learn how to study and learn things from the scriptures, make goals for themselves, and work to become a better person. An example of something they would be asked to do is: "The Savior is the perfect example of integrity. He did what He promised the Father He would do. Study the lives of other individuals in the scriptures who lived with integrity. Read Genesis 39, the Book of Esther, Job 2:3, 27:3-6, Daniel 3 and 6, and Acts 26. Write in your journal the ways these people demonstrated integrity. Think of a time when you had the courage to show integrity and share your experience with a parent, Young Women leader, or Young Women class." A lot of times you're supposed to read a scripture about a gospel principle and then practice it for two weeks also. I think it's a great program for teenage girls and also for me! It helps me remember what's really important during my busy times with school and business stuff. It's also been good for me to know what the girls in my class should be working on. I think I can help and encourage them better because I've done the program myself...instead of just saying, "It's good for you so you should do it."

This is the new medallion they made this year. It also comes in silver.


They added the red stone to remind the girls of the scripture, "Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies." (Proverbs 31:10) I hope I have daughters so I can work on Personal Progress again with them!

Yummy Rolls

These rolls are so delicious! They just melt in your mouth and I want to eat them all and skip the rest of the meal!

The recipe looks long and complicated but it turns out to be pretty easy actually! (Especially if you have a mixer that can handle bread dough.)

1. Boil 2 cups water and at 1 cup butter or margarine and 1/2 cup brown sugar. Allow to cool a little.

2. While water/butter mixture cools, soften 2 Tbs yeast in 1/3 cup warm water and 1 Tbs sugar. (It grows a lot, so put it in a two cup measuring cup. I put it in a one cup and it overflowed a little.)

3. Add softened yeast and 2 eggs to the warm water/butter/sugar and mix well.

4. Add 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, and 6 cups flour

5. Beat all ingredients together until the dough does not stick to the sides of the bowl. You may need to gradually add small amounts of flour. (The dough seems to stay sticky forever, so don't add too much extra flour.)

6. Cover dough and let it rise for 2 hours. Roll out and put on greased cookie sheets. Let rise another 30 minutes. (Don't roll it out too thin...probably a quarter inch is good? We just made it once and it was too thin. You can experiment with it.)

7. Bake at 375 degrees for 12 minutes. Yield: 4 dozen rolls (Recipe can be cut in half.)

Ideas for Rolls:

~Roll out dough on floured surface; use a round cookie cutter to cut dough. Brush with melted butter and fold in half.

~Roll dough in a circle. Brush with melted butter. Use a sharp knife or pizza cutter to cut dough into equal triangles. Roll up dough starting from wide end and put small point down on cookie sheet to bake. (That makes it like a crescent.)

~Roll dough into balls the size of a walnut. Put three balls together in a muffin cup. Brush with melted butter.

~Sprinkle rolls with sesame seeds, poppy seeds, mix minced garlic or onion with butter.

Another idea, which I tried tonight, is to make Chicken Pillows. I mixed two cans of chicken with one can of cream of chicken soup. I made the roll dough like normal, rolled it out to a quarter inch, and then cut big squares. I put some of the chicken mix on the dough and closed the dough around the chicken mix. (The picture is what's left after making 9 Chicken Pillows. That's enough dough for two more at the size I'm making them.)


They turned out pretty big. I will probably make them a little smaller next time. Just one is like an entire meal.


I made a pot of sauce using a can of cream of chicken soup and half a can of milk. That's good to pour over the Chicken Pillow. I'm glad this turned out so good. It was just an experiment. I didn't mean for it to make so much though...I'm going to stick the left overs in the freezer. This recipe amount made 11 big chicken pillows. If you don't have a big family you would probably want to cut the rolls recipe in half and just use one can of chicken for the filling.


Give it a try! I'm sure you'll like it!

Another Roll Idea

This is another great idea for the roll recipe. Mom likes to make crescents with chocolate chips in them, so I used the little bit of dough that was left from the Chicken Pillows and made little ones with chocolate chips. I made a glaze to put over it too. Delicious!

Avatar. See it. 3-D.

It's magical.






That's all I have to say. I don't want to give anything away for you, so just go see it.

More crafts!

My Christmas vacation really was full of crafty projects! That was fun! It made up for all the time I didn't do crafty things last semester.

The last project was a hot pad. Greg's Mom taught me how to make it. It was kind of like a mini quilt lesson, because I learned how to make the pattern and sew the little pieces together. If I made a bunch of those squares, I could sew them all together to make a quilt. I would like to do that sometime. It would be really fun to pick out all the materials to make a quilt.


And by the way, it matches pretty well with my table cloth and the basket!

Christmas at Mom and Dad's

We had Christmas at Mom and Dad's on the 26th. Grandma and Aunt Mary came over for an early dinner around 1:30pm. Then we opened presents and had a nice time being cozy by the tree with pretty music. Then we had dessert. Mom made chocolate cake, and Dad bought cherry and lemon pie. Of course, we also had ice cream.

Later we played games at the table and on the wii. That was fun!

Christmas at the Kelley's!

On Christmas Day we were at the Kelley's. We started with a nice Christmas breakfast. Greg's mom made a quiche, Terri made cinnamon rolls and knots, and the boys made french toast, bacon, sausage, etc...It was more food than I could handle. After we had our fill of good food, we got to open presents. The rest of the day was spent napping, playing games, and getting ready for the dinner party. I made rolls, and Greg's Dad made a ham, and Mom brought potato salad. Again, there was lots of food and I didn't even get to it all. We had a good time visiting with Greg's extended family--aunts and uncles and cousins...And Mom and Dad came just in time to start dinner. It's fun to be with such a lively group of happy people!

There was also a fire outside for people to sit around and enjoy the quiet. It was so cozy and nice. After dinner and more presents, people played card games at the table, and others went upstairs to play the wii or pool. When it quieted down a little, I played the piano and Lory played her clarinet, and we all sang Christmas songs. I hope we do it again next year--that was my favorite part!

Painting with Mom and Dad!

When we visited Mom and Dad at Christmas they planned a fun day for us to be together. We went to the painting place and got to paint our own pottery. We spent about 5 hours working on our dishes! I could have worked on it another hour easily, but it was getting late and we hadn't had dinner yet. We were going to go out to Red Lobster, but since it was late we decided to order a pizza instead and play games. The pizza arrived at our house at the same time we pulled into the driveway. It was fun playing games and eating pizza.

We couldn't wait to see our stuff after it was fired. The paint looks a lot brighter and just different than before it gets the glaze, so you never know how it's going to look in the end. We painted our things on Monday and got them back Saturday night. I think they all turned out really good! And my fruit plate matches with my table cloth, kitchen rugs, towels, and potholders! Yipee!

Basket Weaving Class

For Christmas, Greg's parents gave me a basket weaving class. Greg planned with his parents and my dad so we could get the girls in the family together. Mom, Greg's Mom (Lory), Greg's sister (Teri) and two girls (Amanda and Rachel) all did the class too. It was fun to work on our baskets together, to talk and help each other. (The other lady in the background is Sherry. She is a great teacher!)

Old Plants and New Plants!

Hello
I've been fighting those stupid flies in my plants, and I think I finally beat them. I took all my plants out of their pots, thoroughly washed all the pots in the bathtub, washed all the dirt out of the plant roots, and thoroughly sprayed down all the plants in the bathtub. Then I re-potted them all with new fresh potting soil, and now they are all in one room together where the flies have never been. I'm hoping these efforts pay off! I haven't seen any flies for a few days now, so I'm thinking it might have worked!


Once I'm really sure, I will put all the plants back in the places they usually live around the house. It's kind of fun to see them all together like that though. I could arrange them and make it feel like a little jungle or forest!

This is my attempt to be creative. My friend gets baskets and arranges plants together in the baskets to look nice, so I thought I'd give a try with a few of the cacti.


These are the new plants I got the other day. There is a polka dot plant that has pink spots on it, and a snakeskin plant that shows a pretty white vein pattern on the leaf. I don't know what that other plant is but it looks cool! The leaves are actually green, but the plant looks purple because of the thick purple fuzz growing on all the surfaces. It has one large leaf sticking out with no fuzz, I'm not sure why.


I put them in a covered bowl so I can see if they are clean or if they will contaminate the other plants with bugs. I don't want to bring in more pests!

Last of all, this one was a Christmas present from Greg's mom. It's so cute! I love the little turtle pot, and the plant even has a cute name.


It's called a piggy back plant, because the new little leaves grow up from the old leaf and it looks like they're riding piggy back.


This one sits on the window sill in my kitchen and greets me every morning. Thank you Lory!

My Purse! Finally!

This year for our Girl's Weekend Wendy had the idea of making this cool purse. We all were making our own purses, taking turns on the two sewing machines and watching the babies. I ended up playing with the kids more than sewing, so I didn't finish my purse. Mom and Summer and Wendy would say, "Do you want me to just do this little part for you?" and of course I was having fun with the kids and didn't mind the help on the purse. (I like to call it the "Community Purse" because everybody worked on it. Haha!)

So I brought my purse and sewing things to Mom's so we could finish it during the Christmas break. We worked many hours on it, and it turned out great! The pattern didn't give any pockets inside, so we added extra features to make it cooler. This is one side of the inside. Mom had the idea to put elastic in the top of the pockets so they are stretchy and stay closed. I had the idea to make a separate pocket that snaps in and out easily. Mom pretty much sewed that one with the zipper part--it was really hard. She also made a nice little pocket in the front where I can slip in a chapstick. It's perfect!


This is the other side of the inside. There is a bigger zipper pocket and a place to clip my keys.


This shows how those magnetic snaps go in. I really like those! We made really strong reinforcements to keep the snaps from ripping out. It was tricky figuring out how to put it all together.


Mom did the hard parts for me. I was glad because I'm not very experienced with sewing and I didn't want to ruin my pretty purse.


Mom got this picture to show the clock. It says 1:30, and that's in the morning.


It was fun to work on my purse with Mom. She surprised me and made this nice make-up bag with the rest of the material from her purse. It's such a pretty pink (it matches the pink strip on the outside of the purse), and you can easily spot it in my purse.


Ta Da! Thank you everybody for helping me finish this purse!

Pay it Forward

This is what I got from a "Pay it Forward" post awhile ago. Thank you Mary!



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Temple Square in Salt Lake City

Merry Christmas! This shows the lights on Temple Square. A friend sent this to me and I thought it was neat. You can click on different parts and then look all the way around as if you were standing in that spot.

Temple Square in Salt Lake City