Calling All Cool Concert Chics!!!!

My good buddy Rossi & I are planning a girls trip to LA to see Maroon 5, Counting Crows & Augustana on the weekend of September 12-14. We are looking for awesome girls who also might be interested in a fun weekend away and a fantastic show. Flights into Long Beach are only $158 through Delta, so I'm sure that you could find something cheaper if you're interested, the fact that there is also LAX & Orange County as options is kinda nice too. This is going to be a blast even if it's just Rossi & I because we are awesome, but if you are interested in basking in our awesomeness & Adam Levine's hotness, please state the ways that you can contribute to the awesomeness of the weekend by leaving a comment. I need to know soon because I am planning on buying the best tickets possible as soon as they go on sale next week (?). As soon as I know how many people will be going, I'll find a sweet hotel/beach house/park bench for us to sleep on. I'm thinking Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon. Who's game?

In the meantime, please enjoy this concert footage I found on youtube.

K neber mind

So what have I learned from the last 2 days of (nearly) internet free life? That there is a reason why I was born in this day & age. There is a reason that the internet is so cool and yes, I, and the majority of my generation have become mostly dependant upon it. I can't make dinner, pay bills, communicate with my friends & family, find phone numbers & addresses, plan trips to see Maroon 5, shop or find out for sure if that girl on So You Think You Can Dance is really a Jazz Dancer or not. Granted, all of these things are not exactly vital to everyday life, but they have become soooo much easier with the use of the lovely world wide webbed internet thingy. I think that my main problem is not the internet in general, but rather too much time spent blogging or reading blogs. I need to just set aside an hour a week or something and have that be the only time I do that. So that's the new goal.

Internet Fast

no, I am not referring to the speed at which I can access random bits of celebrity gossip. I am announcing that I am taking the first step in breaking my addiction to spending copious amounts of time cruising the internet, reading blogs, writing blogs and generally piddling away what little free time I have. It has officially become a problem, and when I think about the amount of time I've spent here on this dining room chair staring at a computer screen rather than snuggling with my cute husband or or playing with my darling daughter or reading or cleaning or working on getting better at cake related components or gardening or organizing my house or painting Sawyer's new room or doing laundry or working out, well it pretty much makes me want to cry. So I am instituting an internet fast for one week. I think I can do it. I will be getting my email, but THAT IS IT! If you receive comments from me on your blog, chew me out.
That being said, I'd like to also mention that this holiday weekend was lovely, Matt & Sawyer went up to the cabin a day earilier than I did because I had to teach Young Women's and I cannot tell you how nice it was to a)hang out with my awesome brother while he completed the plumbing for our basement (what a rock star.) and b) attend church by myself. You have no idea the wonder of an uninterrupted sacrament meeting until you actually get to experience it, and it has been a while for me. I drove up to the cabin with the Kettles, our new favorite traveling friends, as we will be going to Seattle a week from tomorrow. They are fantastic and I'm so glad that they came with us. Yesterday we stopped in Park City for a lovely little outlet shopping trip wherein I found 3 pairs of fantastic shoes and a cute little workout top and Matt got a few work pants and Sawyer got an adorable green & white polka dotted rain jacket. Then dinner at Red Rock Brewery (freakin' yumm) and then home again, home again, jiggetty-jig.
NOW I'm starting my internet fast.
Goodbye.
See you next Tuesday.
Peace out.

new addiction

actually there are a few

1-so you think you can dance

2-nic's sticks by opi- as someone who really sucks at applying nail polish, I have found my zen

3-costa vida's tortilla soup

4-marshmallow fondant. sooo much better tasting & easier to apply and make than the regular stuff.

I guess those will suffice for my daily things I'm grateful for list, huh?

how cool is cake design???

someone please, please, PLEASE ask me to do this cake (actually if you click on that link, you have to click on Portfolios, then "bold wedding cakes" and then it's the second one down on the left, the fabulous white & red one). I have been cruising around the internet tonight & found a couple of baker's websites that have completely blown my mind! Here's one, too. Freakin' amazing stuff.

1- cute little David Archuleta who, while he may never be my American Idol (too cheesy), is a great example of how Mormons can be; a peculiar people but not totally wacky. Please bless he never sells out or forgets who he is.

2- lovely ladies to visit teach.

3- my cute nephew, Brock who feels comfortable enough with us to call at 11pm and ask if he can stay with us tonight. I've always wanted to have a house where people know they can hang out and be taken care of.

stumbled upon

accidentally ran across a cute little mom/baker blog when trying to learn how to create gum paste ranunculus for my sister-in-law's sister's wedding cake. She lives somewhere in New England and is also LDS and is also able to do fun little cakes for people. My world has seriously "smallend", or shrunk, since I started blogging. One thing that she does that I am immediately adopting on my blog is with each entry, she includes 3 things that she is grateful for. Thank you for the lovely idea, new friend.
1. a gorgeous, shiny, sweet lover of a dog
2. a beautiful new tree that I managed to get planted before I killed it
3. the physical strength to dig a ginormous hole to plant said tree in without really even batting an eye.
(also, spell check which made me laugh by knowing how to spell ginormous, (which is nothing more than a Will Ferrellian combination of gigantic and enormous) but not ranunculus or recognizing LDS as a legitimate acronym.

Tulip Festival...sort of.

Well, the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point is over, but that didn't stop us from having our own when the weather suited us a bit better. My cute sister-in-law Jennifer and I as well as Grandma Susie took the kids down for a little wander around the beautiful grounds and had a lovely lunch together. Jen's sister Melissa came with us as well, I am so excited to do her wedding cake in June, it is really going to be cute! Anyway, we had a lot of fun and it was a beautiful day, although my pictures leave something to be desired, due mostly to the fact that Sawyer hates to stand still for pictures, so most of them are of the actual flowers, which, you know, you can only have so many of.

Raindrops on roses and speckled bird's eggs

A killdeer has made a home for her family in our flower-free flower bed. How sweet are these little guys? Happy Spring!!! Finally. Probably for a week, then right on to summer. Welcome to Utah. (p.s. Jessica or Ashley or anyone who knows, how do I make it so that my corners are lovely and rounded without those crappy white corners?)

You got tagged? What? Is that some kind of new drug???

So, Sawyer got blog-tagged by her little buddy Max, well, actually, Max's cute mom, Jessica, but whatev. It's a fun chance for me to brag about my girl, I'll take it!

1. Sawyer is 2 and a half, and honestly the terrible twos just started today. I would like to report a kidnapping, someone came in the night and stole my funny little agreeable child & swapped her with an onery look-alike. Please, whoever you are, bring my angel back.

2. Sawyer's first word was Mama, go figure, nothing too exciting there. I am a bad mom, but I really don't remember how old she was. That's one thing I've been surprised by with motherhood, everything is so gradual, it's hard to say when exactly things happen.

3. Sawyer's hair is crazy. It's down past her shoulder blades when it's wet, but then it dries, she gets these cute little ringlets only at the nape of her neck, so it's just shoulder length. It is pretty thin though, so it's hard to keep in line. She is just barely starting to push it behind her ears and it KILLS me when she does it because it's such an adult looking thing the way she does it. Sooooo funny.

4. Recent tricks? Going potty without telling anyone, she'll just come out with no pants on and a big old grin cuz she's so stinking proud of herself!

5. Another trick- Calling her Daddy Matt. We dropped him off at work last week and she goes, "K, bye Matt."

6. I don't really know what to say here, Jessica talked about Max walking... um... Sawyer has started to dance like crazy, and she won't let me sing or dance if it's her dancing song, I just have to watch her quietly & applaud at the appropriate places.

7. Sawyer is not afraid of really anything. She LOVES Charlie and they are best friends, she sits on the floor next to her and reads books to the dog, for goodness sake.

8. Sawyer likes to be carried especially in parking lots, not quite sure why. I think it stems from the fact that I am way impatient and always carry her when I actually want to get something accomplished. Anyway, it didn't work out too well when Grandma Susie had her last week, not everyone can truck a 35 pound tank around all day.

9. Sawyer is an awesome sleeper, always has been, started sleeping through the night at 5 and a half weeks. (thank you Baby Wise) I guess my love and need of sleep rubbed off on her, and as evil as I am when my sleep gets distrubed, at least her healthy sleep appreciation has made her good at sleeping. (90% of the time)

10. Sawyer quit nursing at 8 months when her whimpy mom got mastitis. Seriously though, that ain't something I would ever mess around with, mastitis is worse than labor (with an epidural of course.) But she didn't even blink an eye when I up and cold-turkied her. Such an agreeable child... where was she today?

so, there's Sawyer's first tag! She is tagging Porter, Mason & Bennett, Max & Mikaela and Caleb & Spencer!

p.s. the questions weren't very obvious, I think you're just supposed to talk about your kid in ten various areas of their lives. Just make some stuff up. ni-night.

Happy Birfday, Matt!!

Alright, so after five and a half years of marriage, I finally kept a secret from Matt! I completely had to spin a web of lies in order to do it, but it was worth it. It has probably been six months in the making, but I don't think that he knew what we were doing at all! I stayed up till 3 two nights last week making a cool little scrapbook of our travels, with pages like these:and the last page was this one...and I think because I woke him up a bit early and pretty much shoved this in his face, it took a moment to register, but as he hopped in the shower and finished packing, he kept laughing and saying funny little things that had started to make more sense. I had his boss & partner at work both, convince him that he had "continuing education" all day Friday so that he didn't schedule any closings or anything. I had him convinced that we were going to his neice's baptism in Provo all day Saturday, so he couldn't play in his usual Saturday golf tournament. His golf buddy Brett & his wife Vanessa came down with us, which was so perfect because that way I didn't have to golf all freaking 54 holes with him, and Vanessa was fun to shop with.

On Friday went straight from the airport to the golf course, and I rode with Matt for 9 holes, then went & got a pedicure while he finished up, then we went to the hotel & checked in, it was amazing, I totally want to buy a timeshare now. We went to dinner at Cantina Laredo which was lovely and then because Brett & Vanessa's plane was an hour late, we tried our darnedest to find me some ice cream, and ran into a place that we begged to stay open a bit later for us, called Ice Tango and it was freaking great! Listen to this combo: yummy super tart frozen yogurt, frozen custard and... AND... dessert crepes!!!! I got some vanilla custard with brownies & raspberries. Matt got a crepe with peanut butter and nutella with vanilla custard on top. And oh, my goodness! Freaking yum.

Saturday Vanessa & I went to a cute little spa while the boys golfed, then I took her back to Ice Tango. We then proceeded to go shopping for 6 hours straight without buying anything for ourselves. I think that's part of being a mom or something, but it kinda sucks. You get more excited about stupid little Minnie Mouse bowls and spoons at the Disney store than a BCBG sale. Also we made a rule that going to any store that we had at home would be a waste of time, and so we were kinda in unfamiliar territory. We really should have gone to the pool for at least part of the day, it was nearly 90 degrees and I have absolutley no tan lines to show for it. But, due to the delightful food we consumed in mass quantities, I do have a few pounds to show for it. Among that food was a really fun dinner at Los Sombreros, and if you are ever in Phoenix, hit up their carnitas and then you can die with a smile on your face, because you will never get much better than that.

Sunday we took Brett & Vanessa to the airport bright n' early & then went to our lovely timeshare presentation which was quite informative and made me really want to go to oh, EVERYWHERE in the world on vacation in perfect little timeshares. I really should have planned Sunday better though, because we let ourselves get too hungry and got kind of onery at each other and ended up not doing want either of us wanted to, so then we just went to the airport like 2 hours early which bugged me, but made Matt happy, so it was fine. I went down there with really only one thing I cared about doing: going to get some Sprinkles cupcakes. However, due to the fact that it had opened only on Thursday, it was a madhouse and a line around the building + 90 degree weather + low-blood sugar Matt = no cupcakes. It was his birthday. But we made it home and that was good. It was so good to 'nuggle Sawyer again! It is good to be home.

Tonight I made birthday cupcakes for Matt so that he had something to blow out and we could sing Happy Birthday, look how cute they turned out, these are awesome and super easy.

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

what the crap am I doing up at 12:45 am? My husband has been asleep on the couch watching Predator 2 since like 11 pm, so why am I still chillin' in front of my computer? I love blogstalking people, cruising the internet for new recipes and celebrity gossip. I think mostly (and thanks to Jessica for helping me understand this tonight) what I love about staying up way too late and doing nothing of ANY value at all is the fact that I get completely uninterrupted time. All to myself. No little fingers to poke at the computer and pull me away. Nobody asking me where he left this, that or the other. The only thing nagging me is me; my brain telling me that there are a million better ways to spend my time, my eyes sleepy and drooping... oh and those dishes in the sink that no one else will do but me. (for the record, that last bit is my own fault. If I didn't redo the dishes every time Matt did them maybe he wouldn't have become allergic to them. Alas.) Off to the dishes, then.

Here's today's favorite from out shoot with Ashley....

Ashley Thalman is a photo goddess!

One of my bestest stumbled upon blog-finds has been Ashley Thalman. For some insane reason this amazing photographer ran a portfolio building special for a 90 minute session for $75 including all image rights. Holy cow! So yeah, we took her up on that. I'm not going to post very many of them right now, but how beautiful is this one?

Oh, and this one! Ahhh...

I am so glad we did this with her, she just let us be ourselves and that is totally what I wanted, nothing posed, just us playing, and I couldn't be more pleased with how they turned out.

Two birds...One stone

As I mention later in the post, I am having a rough time with time lately. I wrote my parents an email that turned out to be a decent recap of our lives right now, and will share here for anyone who cares. Here is how we are:
Matt- very, very, very busy. The end of the month is always quite hectic for him, but this month was a joke. He keeps thinking that his business is going to slow down, what with the crappy housing market, but it just isn't! The Lord is blessing him/us SOOOO much right now. Matt is honest and does his best, but he also (and I think that this is why the Lord is being so generous right now..) doesn't really bend over backward for people like a lot of others in his industry do. Not in a bad way, but he just really tries to make sure that after work hours, he is home. A lot of times people will want him to work crazy hours, and do things after hours, but he just doesn't do it, and I appreciate it so much. It really feels like the real-life version of that scripture about the windows of heaven being opened and pouring out so many blessings that you don't even have room to receive them. Oh, and the fact that we have a couple of faithful missionaries out doesn't hurt either. :)
Sawyer- 95% potty-trained!!!! Once I was consistent with it, it really was easy and quick! There is one method that I learned from...... you guessed it! BabyWise that really turned the whole thing around. It's interesting, instead of having ALL the emphasis being on when they successfully use the potty, periodically throughout the day, you have them check to see if they are dry, and for the first few days also check to see if their potty-training doll or bear or whatever is dry. Once they get that the goal here is to stay dry, it only takes them a little bit to realize that if they want to get rewarded for staying dry, the way to accomplish that is to use the potty instead. It's like a light just clicked on over her head when I started to emphasize this. (One danger of this method, however, is having your daughter come up to you while you're talking to someone you don't really know, and putting her little hand on your crotch and asking "mommy, are you dry??" Hilarious now, but quite embarrassing at the time!) Anyway, that is the potty training secret. But you probably knew that already, huh, Mom? Sawyer and I went to cousin Caroline's dance concert tonight, and I have never seen Sawyer that excited and attentive in my entire life!!! This little girl got her Grandma Miller's dancing genes. I knew that she would like to see Caroline on stage, but I could not believe how intensely she was loving all the dancing! I wish I'd have had my camera. Actually I'll bring it tomorrow night, I'm doing Caroline's makeup again & we'll stay for the first part this time, because we missed it tonight. I hope I get some decent pictures.
And Me- I am loving my new calling in the Young Women's. It's a little intense, both emotionally and time-consuming-wise, but I love these girls soooo much already. We are having a Book of Mormon reading challenge, and I'm trying desperately to catch up to them, so I'm reading more consistently and better than I think I ever have in my life and it has been wonderful. I really am solidifying my testimony more each time I read, and although I have always had a ton of faith in the Book of Mormon, my knowledge is really growing. Better late than never, I guess. I'm just really loving it! Also, I am really really getting clucky, I want to be pregnant so bad and everywhere I go I see big round bellies. I know that I shouldn't be so anxious about it, we haven't even been trying that long, it's just that I am soooo excited to meet this next kid! And so is Sawyer, I'm afraid! Also, I am very excited for Matt's birthday next week, (the 11th) and it is a secret, so that is all I will say right now, but trust me, it's gonna be good! I've put alot of work into making it a surprise, so I hope, hope, hope that I can pull it off. However, I am having a problem prioritizing my life right now. I spent a few hours last night trying to get to sleep, but I just kept thinking about how to find balance in my life. I have so many balls up in the air right now, things I'd like to do, things I should do and things I must to, and I feel like in order to do well in any of them I have to fail others, and it is very frustrating. Moderation in all things really is the key isn't it? But man is it ever hard to find that balance. Anyone have any secrets??? Even right now, I'm thinking of a hundred other things I need to be doing in my down time. That is why I'm going to use this email as a blog post and kill two birds with one stone.