My Stampin' Up Month

This month was my month to be the 'hostess' as part of my stampin' up club. I love our club and the many cute ideas that come out of it! These are the really cute Christmas projects that my demonstrator put together! You should check out Shelly's craft blog at http://mystampstuff.blogspot.com/. It is all SUPER cute!

Treat box:

A super cute ornament card:

Wreath card:

As part of being hostess I was in charge of treats. These are called cocoa mels, they are a toasted coconut, carmel, chocolate delight! I had a lot of fun at stamps this month!

This weekend we also went to one of our family Christmas parties where we did a cookie exchange. I had doubled the batch and made the cookies pictured above. It was a lot of fun! We brought 24 cookies and left with 20 different cookies!!! I saw a new side of my husband while all of the adults played musical chairs. It was with great thought that the adults played their own game and the kids played their own game. I think that the adults got way more into it than the kids!!!

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Thanksgiving and a friend reunion!

My friend Susan (first row, middle) is having a baby in April!!! We were super excited to see her for Thanksgiving-so a few of us threw her a baby shower! These are just a few of the ladies who showed up in the first few minutes. It was fun to have an 'excuse' to see everyone. I was really sad that I wasn't feeling well and didn't get to go to dinner that night with all of the spouses :-( Hopefully Christmas will be better, when everyone comes back 'home' again!

This is my cute card that I made Susan!

This is one of the gifts that I gave Susan. This one was handmade. I love the frame with the boat on the bottom. I love checking out other blogs where I saw the tutorial for the boat!

This Thanksgiving we went to Fillmore where Craig is from. They do a fun tradition of making gingerbread houses. At first I was the only adult making one with my cute nieces and nephews. By the end of the fun I was at the table with all of my sister-in-laws! I had so much fun and look forward to this tradition next year!

This is my gingerbread house!

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Parties & Apples

Here is a crafty post for you! I needed to take something to a pot luck, so I decided on my famous caramel apples. Here are a few pictures: I did M&M, all chocolate deluxe, butterfinger, apple pie, coconut and symphony. Yummy!

Also this week I worked on invitations for a baby shower. I thought the final project turned out pretty cute! I'm super excited to see my good friend Susan come up from Las Vegas.

Here are a few of my favorites put together!

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October fun: recipe and photography!

October 18th is Craig's anniversary date of coming from Texas. We have made it a tradition on that day to have brisket, which is Craig's very favorite. He was very proud of how it turned out. This is the meat all seasoned to yummy perfection!

I made popcorn balls out of marshmallows and white chocolate to celebrate and tie in the colors in the Texas flag.

My brother and siser in law were visiting Logan and us yesterday. I was telling them about this yummy and easy Tiny Spicy Chicken recipe that an instructor taught back in my days of teaching cooking classes at Maceys.

Tiny Spicy Chicken

3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast cut into pieces

garlic salt

2 beaten eggs

cornstarch

2 tsp chili paste NOT powder

1 1/2 c sugar

1 c ketchup

4 tsp soy sauce

dash salt

1 c chicken broth

1/4 c brown sugar

Sprinkle chicken with garlic salt I do this very generously. Let sit for 1 hour in the fridge. After an hour dip chicken in eggs and then in cornstarch. Brown chick in fryer until golden brown. Put chicken in 9x13 pan. Mix remaining ingredients in medium size saucepan. Cook until sugars are dissolved. Pour over chicken. (the sauce is very runny at this point but it thickens while cooking) Bake @ 325 degrees for one hour, stirring the chicken every 15 minutes. YUMMY!

Also this month I took some engagement pictures for my friend's older brother. These are a few of my favorites. I wrote some new photoshop actions for their pictures which I love! Congratulations to the happy couple getting married December 5th!

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Sorry Too Long!

Sorry it has been a crazy month for us...It feels like we've been going non-stop when we can. Here are some things that we have done recently:

These are some of my interior design projects for my theory class where we talk about the different principles of design. These are my abstract butterflies...

One of our assignments was to create a 3D project displaying an emotion. My project was 'glamour'.

This project was to design a 'modern' teapot...Mine was lime green with black flowers.

We talked about positive and negative. Here is my design:

Our first assignment of the semester was to design a tape dispenser within a certain time period. I did mine like a sculpture of a Russian designer in the Art Deco Era.

One of my favorite nights in the month is Stampin' Up! night. These are some of the projects that we made. I love to decorate for the holidays. One of my favorites is the spider made out of York Peppermint Patties! I think I need to make those for Halloween!!!!!

This is a random cute story about Craig. These flowers we discovered growing in our back yard. Shortly after I met Craig we went through the McDonald's drive thru. These flowers happen to grow on the path of the drive thru. Craig reached out and grabbed one as we were driving away and said something about a beautiful flower for a beautiful flower. I love that fact that we found these in our back yard!

One really fun thing we did the month was hang out with our niece. We were playing with BUBBLES!!!!!!!!! It was great to feel like a little kid for a few minutes, completely care free.

One crazy thing that happened this past month was my birthday! My work (Maceys) brought me a balloon bouquet to my house. Each of the balloons were purchased by some of my co-workers. They put their name on the balloon and a few dollars in it. It was really sweet since I've been really sick lately and some of my friends at work found out and they gave me this. It was really humbling for me. I cried when I saw the balloons. It was helpful for us!

WARNING: This is a scary picture. My friends in the floral department came to take me to dinner to celebrate my birthday. We love to go shopping together at Ross. One time we were there we saw these horrendously awful moo moos. They bought one for each of us to wear and we wore them to dinner and to see 'Mama Mia'. It was a ton of fun even though we looked REALLY SCARY!

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New Calling...

Today we were set apart as gospel doctrine teachers in our ward. Craig is super excited and I am slightly intimidated! Next week is our first lesson. We are in a small ward. Craig and I are also the ward librarians, Craig plays the music in priesthood and I am the ward music chairperson. Gotta love the joys of being in a small ward where people have multiple callings at a time.

School is going great. Craig just did really well on his stats quiz and I am doing ok in my interior design classes. Every single week I have at least one drawing project due.....I am working on getting more in tune with my inner artist. Hopefully I tap into that creativity SOON!

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We're Aggies

We survived the first week of school at USU!!! Craig is an accounting major. This semester he is taking accounting 2020, economics, business stats and more math. He loves it. (I'm sure grateful that's not me in those classes) He will have a ton of homework-YUCK. I am thinking of going into the interior design program. I have 3 interior design classes and two general ed classes: biology and humanities, where the bible is my only textbook. So far I really enjoy it all. I am really intimidated by the art/sketching aspect of interior design. Next semester I hope to take some art classes and I'm hoping this semester to 'practice' by taking some art classes by a guy in my ward, Jonathan Ribera. We'll see how it goes. Wish us luck this semester!

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Catching Up...

Sorry it's been a while since I blogged last. I pulled up all of our pictures and here we go!

A couple weeks ago we went to Bear Lake Raspberry Days. This is a picture of Craig wearing an $80.00 'Indiana Jones' hat. Needless to say with school getting ready to start there are many better ways to spend $80.00.

This weekend I went to IKEA. I know my brother in law hates it but I absolutely loved it! This was my first time there. I went with my step-mom and spent 3 hours there! I bought some really cute pillows for our living room and material to make a few more. When I have them all finished pictures will come. I am NOT having a baby but I loved this idea and had to take a picture of it. This is a wall from a nursery display. It has a family tree on it. I thought it was cool.

Stamp night is my favorite Thursday night ever! I love stampin' up and I love have fun with the girls. I can't believe that my friend and demonstrator said she didn't know what we were doing that night and I came home with these 3 beautiful cards that I made! I am so excited to get my order from this new catalog!!!

I saw this idea in another blog and decided to give it a try for my dad's birthday. This first picture is a crumbled cake mix mixed with one can of frosting. After that you roll them into small balls to fit a candy mold.

In the bottom of the candy mold you fill 3/4 way with melted chocolate almond bark and let it set up.

After that you color white almond bark and dip the top of the cake ball and decorate it however you would like. I chose sprinkles and m&m's. Here they are in a candy box. That's how I gave them to my dad.

I made 2 batches one with funfetti cake mix and one with devil's cake mix. We took a bite of each one so you can see what they look like. They are YUMMY!

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Olympics

I LOVE the Olympics. I was blown away by the opening ceremonies. They were awesome! For those of you who watched it my favorite part was the 'boxes' with people in it. They were all in complete sync with each other...WOW! This week/weekend I wasn't feeling too hot so we took it easy. My parents DDR'ed the first few days. We watched basketball, women's fencing, swimming (especially Michael Phelps) etc. It is always so cool to see an American standing on the medals podium singing the national anthem. (PS more of them need to actually SING it! As you watch other people win they SING their national anthem...come on Americans!!!) I look forward to watching more of the Olympics and especially the USA basketball team-Go Deron Williams!!

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Oregon!

Ofiicially all of the drivers in our computer are fixed and I can now use the computer and the internet!!!

We went to Oregon two weeks ago for a family reunion. We decided to venture out a few days early so Craig could experience more of Oregon. It was BEAUTIFUL there!

One thing we did was go to the Oregon State Aquarium in Newport:

A ginormous alaskan king crab. They look really gross but taste really yummy!

A sea otter swimming by casually after being fed.

Craig in a tunnel of fish like in the movie 'Jaws'. Du du. Du du. Du du.

We also went the Oregon State Zoo in Portland. For some reason they were having a dinosaur display. So we went to check it out. We went on a dinosaur 4D ride and got to wear these oh so attractive glasses. It was worth taking a picture of.

Another thing we did at the zoo was feed birds. When I say 'we', I really mean Craig. I was too afraid to feed the birds. You go into this huge exhibit and there are birds flying (and doing natural bodily functions from being fed too much) EVERYWHERE. At one point 2 birds landed on Craig's shoulders. I teased him that they were going to pick at his ears. It was cool still.

We also got a change to hike Multnomah Falls. It is about 30 minutes outside of Portland. It is amazing. You drive down the freeway and all of a sudden you see this beautiful water fall. It was a great hike!

Of course we went to the beach! We actually went to several which include: Nye State Beach, Agate Beach, Depoe Bay and Yacuina Bay to name a few. It was so fun to walk the beach! We were lucky and went to Cannon Beach at minus tide and were able to see some of the coolest sea life. Incase you are wondering Craig caught a small crab and is only pretending to eat it.

We also went to Seaside where we ate the best crab dinner ever! We went to Astoria and saw the Astoria Column (a lighthouse). While we were in Astoria we went to the meritime museum and learned a lot about boats and the coastgaurd. It made want to come home and watch the movie, 'The Guardian'. We went and did some Lewis & Clarke stuff: Fort Clackamas, Fort Stevens. We hit Lincoln City and went to the Tanger Outlet there. The only thing we came home with was some s'mores popcorn. One of my favorite places we went was to a candy shop called 'Aunt Belinda's'. Wonder why I liked it so much?! It was all wonderful! I highly recommend Oregon to anyone who is thinking of going on vacation!

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Craig and Belinda Olsen

About

Craig and I have been married for a little over 2 years. When we aren't working or going to school we like to play 'Lost Cities', cook together, go for walks, watch movies and eat ice cream. We have a pretty low key life. One day we'd like to have a family. For now I have a camera. :-) If you are interested in checking out my photography site please visit www.belindaolsen.com I specialize in newborn, toddler, children and family photography. Other photography available upon request.

Seriously?!?!?!