Simple Saturday

This morning Sam and I attended a financial seminar at BYU hosted for Alumni and current students. We split up and each attended a different seminar so that we could have double the helpful info for our family! Sam was SUPPOSED to be attending the seminar on planning for buying your first home (not that we are doing that!), but ditched it when he found out that a very popular professor that heads up most of the economic department was teaching the seminar on provident living. I went to the seminar on being a 'steward over family finances.'

I really enjoyed everything that the presenter (a BYU professor) had to say. I felt that I learned exactly what I needed for myself to help Sam and me and our future family. I felt especially grateful during the presentation for my wonderful husband who insisted I come with him on a Saturday morning. He's such a great influence on me and in helping me figure out my new role as a wife in our home.

On a completely separate note, Sam and I are home together a lot... and for many meals. So many meals that in a matter of 2 months I've gone from NEVER cooking to feeling the need to cook a couple times a day! Of course, I don't prepare a full meal for both lunch and dinner, but if I'm not cooking, it feels as if I'm doing the dishes from whatever cooking/eating we did last. My level of respect grows for mothers who do all this and raise children more and more each day. My sister-in-law Christi shared a very funny picture on her facebook page that made me giggle and fits exactly this...

I'm just glad that I have time to practice my cooking and cleaning skills while its still only Sam :)

Mini Apartment Tour

I turned the top of our bulky entertainment center to a mantle-like display!

One of our favorite wedding presents from all of my mom's siblings

Continuing with the peacock theme... and I made the coasters, one of my many projects

The shelves above the office desk, love the rhino and TJMaxx for selling it

My cute cute aprons hanging in our kitchen

My favorite project yet, a picture featuring our states and cities where we've lived... still want to put vinyl underneath that says, 'Home is where your heart is'

My creative solution for all of our kitchen gadgets! Our kitchen theme is purple and green! Ryan, Mary and Justin Burr gave us really cute place mats and matching napkins that inspired the colors!

Just a small glimpse into our bedroom, featuring our luxurious bed!

Bridesmaid Love

A picture is worth 1000 words, but this one is priceless. I absolutely love my best friends.

Foodies

I am going to be posting fun dishes and desserts I try as well as document our fun newlywed stories. Sam caught on to this blog idea the other night after he made a late night snack and exclaimed, 'Blog about this!' and insisted we take a picture of his creation :) so here it is!

We were running low of groceries (I'm going shopping today) but still managed to create an impressive Mexican inspired snack. Good job babe... for those wanting to try at home (JK) I believe he used 2 white tortillas, refried beans, mozzarella cheese (I said we were running low on ingredients haha) corn, lettuce, maybe some more ingredients I didn't know about thrown in all fried up in a pan and topped off with sour cream and fresh cilantro. Good work Sam! Last night I grilled chicken for dinner and needed to use the sweet potatoes that were soon to go bad. So I tried this recipe from the Food Network Website...
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/neelys/twice-baked-sweet-potatoes-recipe/index.html
  
Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

• 6 sweet potatoes, even in size and scrubbed
• 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Place sweet potatoes on sheet tray and bake for 1 hour or until soft. Remove from oven and let stand until cool enough to handle.
Split potatoes and remove the flesh to a medium sized bowl, reserving skins. In another bowl, add brown sugar, butter and cream cheese and the all of the spices and mash with a fork or rubber spatula.
Add the butter and cream cheese mixture to the sweet potato flesh and fold in completely. Add the filling back to the potato skins and place on a half sheet tray. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. 


I prepared the dish for only two potatoes, I cut the ingredients into fourths and made a few changes to keep the dish lighter... I used half the amount of brown sugar and substituted Fat Free cream cheese and only a bit of margarine. They looked beautiful when they were done, but I'll tell you they were a little too rich of a taste for me. Sam is such a trooper eating my healthy food (he's not a huge fan of sweet potatoes in general) but he ate more of this side than I did... so semi success!

Viva Las Vegas!

Last night we returned home from our 2 night get-away to Las Vegas. We drove down with Sam's research group Wednesday afternoon and stayed until Friday afternoon. Thursday morning Sam and his research partner presented their research on behalf of the group. Stress was running high the night before and morning of, but they did fantastic! I was very proud and were their professor. The group they presented to all received the pilot research very well, and they had comment which more or less supported/encouraged what they presented and no attack comments! Woohoo, you can never be sure what to expect from fellow psychologist and such. Here is a picture of the group we drove with.

So I was only able to attend Sam's presentations and the few afterwards in the same hour. So what did I do while Sam and the group attended the conference... shop of course ;-) I headed across the street to Caesars to the Forum shops (we stayed at Harrahs... on the third floor aka the 'pet friendly floor' Bah! We had a nice quiet room, until the second night... but two of the guys sharing a room were across the hall from a yapping dog and their neighbor had taped a picture of their dog on their door... LOL) Anyway, the largest H&M in the world is there and I decided to enjoy myself in one of my favorite stores. I controlled myself and only purchased one must-have item, an inexpensive houndstooth printed skirt (stretchy material) with a trendy zipper running along the backside. Heaven. Sam keeps calling it 'dogstooth' which I think is funny. On my adventures alone I also visited the wildlife habitat at the Flamingo, where a duck almost attacked me. Only a stranger saw and laughed... life is just better with Sam around :) Back in July 2008, Kelly, Liz and some other girls and I went to Las Vegas and stayed at the Flamingo. Hands down that was one fun trip. Being on the strip made me really happy thinking about those fun memories...

The rest of my time by myself was spent talking to old people at the McDonald's next to the hotel, which offered free WiFi. No joke, I chatted it up and looked up phone numbers for more than one elderly person on my Ipad. I ran into a lot of people from the midwest, I'm always proud being from Michigan and able to connect with people that way. So other fun stuff Sam and I did... we had dinner the first night at Cheesecake Factory (my favorite). The second night we had dinner with the group at Hard Rock Cafe. Afterwards Sam and I walked around... we hit up the M&M store (one of Sam's favorite candies) where he paid almost $2 for about 12 M&M's from the wall of the melt in your mouth not your hand candies... what a joke! We spent about 45 minutes walking around the MGM Grand looking for the white tigers just to find out they had been removed from their exhibit 2 weeks ago... lame! And then Sam's favorite part of the night was watching the Bellagio fountain show. All in all a fun trip, especially since the gas was paid for and the rooms were at a discounted price for the conference :)

First post and our first Valentine's Day!

Drum roll please... today I officially have started our blog. I've been wanting to do this since we got back from our honeymoon, but its taken me this long to sit down and get it created! I'll be posting fun projects I work on and stories of Sam and mine's adventure as newlyweds. Enjoy!

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day!

To celebrate Sam and I brought our favorite bakery to us! I spent Monday night decorating our dining area to look like a cute Valentine's version of The Chocolate, a cute house-turned-bakery/cafe in North Orem. Our absolute favorite (and only) dessert we order there is called the Cazookie (Sam calls it something else... Pizookie, but it is officially called the Cazookie at the Chocolate ;-) We order the white chocolate macadamia nut version. It is a HUGE under baked cookie with a huge scoop of ice cream on top! And of course we always order milk to wash it down! This is fairly easy to create at home, however little did I know that Smith's is the only local grocery store that carries white chocolate macadamia nut cookie dough (Toll House, sooo good!) And yes, it took me going to 4 different stores to find it! So in addition to this indulgent dessert we exchanged gifts, or 'tokens of my love' as I kept referring them to Sam and had a yummy co-made dinner. Sam cooked the antelope (for my Michigan girls, yes Sam killed an antelope in my honor and we eat it for dinner lol) and I took care of the rest, including heart shaped biscuits!

So yesterday we had a lot of fun, but its really just beginning! Sam has been working SO hard these past few weeks in preparation for the American Association of Behavior and Social Science conference taking place tomorrow and Friday in Las Vegas. He participated in research for a professor prior to graduating and tomorrow he's presenting at the conference! So whats a new a wifey to do? Of course tag along! We head out in a few hours and will be driving the group of student presenters down to Vegas and will be staying at Harrah's on the strip. We plan on eating dinner at the Cheesecake Factory tonight (we have a gift card and its my absolute favorite!) Sam will present tomorrow morning and then hopefully we will be able to relax and enjoy exploring Las Vegas together! More to come after we return!