Welcome home, Elder Torres!

Edgar is home!!

Two years ago, Edgar performed Hans' baptism. He was my first friend when I moved into the Capital Ward. And then he left to serve a mission in the Arcadia Mission (Los Angeles). And Tuesday night, he arrived home!

He is currently staying with his family in Elgin, but last night Andrew picked him up and we got the old Office FHE group back together for dinner at Salt Lick. Edgar's been cravin' some good BBQ for the last two years.

It's really great to have him home and you can actually feel the spiritual high he's still riding just being in the same room with him! Glad to have you back, buddy.

(Thanks, Andrew, for the photos! And thanks, Riss, for the cookie cake recipe - everyone loved it!)

Makin' whoopie

There's a lot to celebrate this week!

Yesterday was my co-worker Jolie's last day with us. No, we're not celebrating she's leaving (we kind of hate that part) but we did want to celebrate all her awesome-ness and how much we've enjoyed working with her. We did so with food. Lots of food. And two bottles of champagne (for them) and ginger ale (for me). For her going away, I decided to try out the Pumpkin Whoopie Pie recipe that Steph said had my name written all over it.

But wait! Yesterday was also Molly's birthday. And I couldn't remember if she liked pumpkin, but I did remember that her wedding cake was red velvet. Looks like I'm making two versions of Whoopies!

There was measuring ....

And mixing...

And spooning onto trays.

You may remember I tried these before and while they were very tasty, didn't look so pretty. This time I picked up a 2" cookie scoop from Target and it made all the difference in the world. It helped the whoopies stay rounded and fluffier, and more uniform in size. I don't know how I have baked for so long without a cookie scoop.

I also lined the cookie tray with parchment paper this time and that also worked miracles. The bottoms didn't get as dark and they were really easy to get off the tray.

Last time, I just spooned the icing onto the cookies. This time I put it into a plastic bag, snipped off a corner, and piped it into the center of the cookie. This helped so that when I put the top cookie on it spread evenly and didn't squirt over the edges as much.

The pumpkin recipe produced a much moister cookie/cake. Very dense, very very moist. The red velvet recipe was a lot lighter, but a lot drier. It also flattened out significantly more than the pumpkin one. Both were incredibly delicious (one of my coworkers simply said "Oh. My. Gosh.") and even though I usually like pumpkin way better, something about this red velvet was amazing. Maybe the buttermilk? I'm not sure. It was some of the best red velvet I've had. Wish I wouldn't have run out of red food coloring.

Find the pumpkin recipe at Our Best Bites and the red velvet at Fat Girl Trapped in a Skinny Body. I used the cream cheese icing from the pumpkin one for both. I cut the pumpkin recipe in half and it made about a dozen. The red velvet made exactly one dozen. (That's a dozen whoopie pies - or 24 individual cookies/cakes).

That is neat.

A couple weeks ago I read about Amazon's Universal Wish List. Have you heard about this? It's so cool!! If you have an Amazon account, go to the website and click on "Wish List" (it's up at the top right, next to the button for 'cart'). This feature isn't new - you've been able to browse and tag items on Amazon for a long time.

What's new is that you can now tag stuff anywhere on the web. You download a toolbar button and any time you're browsing and online show and see something you like, click "add to wishlist" and it'll keep track of it in Amazon. And these lists can be public or private, so they can help your family know what you might like for Christmas/Birthdays/Anniversaries/Wednesdays. If you look at mine, I have stuff from Crate and Barrel, Down East Basics, Target, Victoria's Secret, Etsy - all over! I know I kind of went crazy with it.

By searching public wish lists, I found one my brother started and one my dad started - it helped me buy their Christmas gifts for this year. Yup, it's that easy. Everyone should have one of these - no one will worry about what gift to give ever again.

(Nope, not getting paid to hawk this product - just really love it!)

A quick and free makeover

You may have noticed in my the photo in my last post that we've done some re-arranging.We LOVE the difference it makes just changing where all the furniture.

Our living room is cavernous, to the point where we're not sure what to do with all the space. Hans was pretty set on mounting the TV above the fireplace, so we kind of based everything off that. This is what it looked like:

Once we moved the dining table into the dining room, we were left feeling like the couch cut the room in half and we didn't know what to do with the left half. Or the wall to the right of the fireplace, for that matter.

After seeing this image on a blog, I thought "Hey, that arrangement might work for us!" So we tried it. We moved the tv to the right wall, and mounted it there. We shifted the bookcase to the opposite corner, and moved the couch by the window. We bought the gorgeous, giant frame on the cheap from Ikea.

Now it's easier to see the TV, it's not as high so it's more comfortable to watch, there's less glare, the room feels more balance, and we have the fireplace to decorate as the centerpiece for the room.

We're feeling that it needs some arm chairs to round it out, but we're not sure where to look. Suggestions?

A simple banner

For Halloween I tried to make bunting from cute fabric. It didn't happen, that's why you never saw it on this blog.

So for Thanksgiving, I tried to go a little easier. I bought some fun scrapbook paper (tried to get the thicker variety) from Hobby Lobby, some craft twine, and we already had a ton of clothes pins lying around the house from other projects.

I found a font I liked (ChunkFive, free download here) and printed the letters out on regular typing paper. I cut out each letter, traced them on the back of the scrapbook paper, and then cut out the letters.

Keep in mind you only need to cut out templates for HAPY THNKSGIV. I almost forgot about that.

On a side note, I think I may need one of these soon. After all those bats and letters, I'm pretty over hand cutting.

Oh, and the cute Turkey dude and the autumn leaves garland were both half off at Hobby Lobby. Score.

ooOOOoooo, sparkly

Lately, I am loving Martha Stewart's website. I've always kind of avoided it before as unoriginal (everybody does MS stuff) but what can I say? It's cute. I came across a post for a pumpkin centerpiece and it looked so easy that not even I could mess it up. And I love it!

1. Grab some small pumpkins from the local grocery store. These are actually pie pumpkins for about $3 each at HEB.
2. Using a brush, apply glue to the entire pumpkin. I used Modge Podge and it worked great (love that stuff).
3. Sprinkle fine glitter all over the pumpkin. Don't use anything but fine glitter, it looks dumb. Just sayin'. I used Martha Stewart's glitter from Michaels. It was about $4.50 a jar, but I didn't use nearly all the jar and will be able to use the rest again next year. I used three different colors, though I wish the lighter two contrasted a little more.
4. Display them on a platter/charger/board/SOMETHING so you don't get glitter everywhere. My orange charger is from (guess where?) HomeGoods.

I don't recommend doing this project in the living room......

Sugar was a bad idea

We spent part of this weekend in Houston with Hans' family. His stepdad had family visiting from Panama - his mother, nephew and nephew's family (wife, and two of their five kids).

Saturday night, Hans and I took the kids out for frozen yogurt. Evveeerrryone had to have a pic with a spoon in their mouth.

 

Jack doesn't speak much English and jabbered away in Spanish as if I could understand every word. I think I caught "agua" at one point.

Gretel doesn't speak, but she'll sing if Journey's on the radio.

Katlyn (our niece) had some awesome one liners:
- "Girls don't sweat. They glow."
- About the rollingstones' song, you can't always get what you want: "Hey! That's what my mom always tells me!"

Gretel and Jack are actually quadruplets (their brothers were left at home). Natural quadruplets (no fertility). I told Hans I will kill him if he does that to me.

Frozen yogurt at 9:30 at night means it's really hard to get a bunch of 7 year olds in bed.