Julie and Julia

I don't know how many of you have seen this movie, Julie and Julia, but I love it! I got it for Christmas and watched it today while I recovered from working the graveyard shift! I was feeling in the cooking mood, I made bread today and some yummy cheese tortellini soup and I am happy now! Anyways, I do really like this movie and while I don't think I'd really like to cook a lot of the French dishes like they did in the movie, I would like to experiment more! Well, I just thought I'd let you all know that you should watch this!

Christmas!

So, right now I'm working the graveyard shift at work and feeling extremely bored. It's also like 3am so I'm getting a little tired because I was enjoying family and didn't want to sleep before I came in. I thought while I was bored it would be a good time to catch up.

I have had the past two Christmases off so this year it was my turn to sacrifice and I worked Christmas Eve and Christmas. I was prepared to work it but it was still kind of hard. I prayed that I could have a good attitude and still enjoy Christmas even thought I was stuck in Tucson without any family. Well, on Christmas Eve I was invited to a co-worker's house. She and I work together every week and she's a little older than my parents, so all of her kids are grown and she was minus her family this year also. She and her husband moved here a year ago and all of her kids are in Utah. Anyways, we were both missing our families and so we helped each other out. I spent what was left of Christmas Eve with her and her husband and the Christmas morning. It was really nice to be adopted for a day so that I wasn't missing my family so much. I did work on Christmas but it went by quickly and overall it was a great day!

I got to go home Saturday night after work and spend Sunday, Monday and most of Tuesday with Mom, Dad and Brittany. It was really nice. We celebrated a late Christmas on Sunday. It actually started early that morning. We got a phone call from Mhari and James, my oldest sister and brother-in-law, around 8:30ish saying Mhari was on her way to the hospital to have her baby. We were all pretty shocked and excited. He wasn't due for another 2 weeks, but we were still way excited. This is the first grandkid in our family so......he's going to be spoiled rotten! So, little Andrew Keenan was born Sunday afternoon and it was probably the best present ever. My parents are so happy that they now have a grandkid, and a bonus, he's the first natural born boy in our family too! Mom and Dad tried and they just got 5 girls Now there are 3 sons-in-law, and a grandson! I'm very happy to be an aunt though and have a nephew. Mhari thinks now that she has a baby, no one will want to see her, they'll just want to see Andrew. She's wrong, we want to see both! Andrew is just more adorable! (just kidding Mhar- luv ya!)

It was great to be home though and spend time with everyone. Mom didn't have to work Monday or Tuesday and Dad didn't work Monday so we had fun. We got to see one of my grandpa's sister and her husband which is always fun. She cracks me up, and I haven't seen either of them in years. I was also reminded again of how much I take after my dad's side of the family. My aunt looked at me and said I was the spitting image of her mother. I've seen pictures of my great-grandma but only of when she was older. Apparently, there is a picture of Grandma Agnes when she's like 18 and I look just like her. I wish I'd been able to meet her. I wonder what kind of woman she was and if I'm like her in other ways. I look forward to the day I can meet her.

Also, recently I decided that I want to learn how to do more things. I've taken to cooking more and learning how to bake more things. I also have been wanting to learn how to sew. It's funny that at some point in my childhood, Mom tried to teach me these things and I thought I'd be fine without them. Now that I'm getting older and wiser-or whatever-I really have been wishing I listened! So, Mom attempted to help me sew. I've been wanting a bigger bag for Sundays that I can take all my stuff in so Mom concocted a pattern and we sewed it today. She sewed the majority of it because.....I wanted it to actually hold things! I did help her though! Kiersty and Kalli will probably faint when they read this, but yes- I DID SEW! Mom also had this like, 5 foot Santa fabric that's supposed to be a doorhanger but we are going to make a Christmas quilt! I'm excited to learn how to quilt and to have a Christmas quilt for next year! I'll have to post pics of all this later!

Holiday Fun.....

....With Cooking!

12-13-09 Disclaimer: If you are hungry, looking at this post may cause anger! ( This is for you Colton!)

Let me just start out with this: This year I have loved cooking! I don't know what changed exactly but this year I have really wanted to broaden my horizons in the kitchen. I made my very first pie from scratch, dutch apple, and I thought it was pretty darn good. Mom taught me how to make bread, at my request. Now let me just say that homemade bread is so D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! I am so happy that I can make it now. And I actually haven't bought a loaf of bread since October. I have bought lots more flour bread dough rising than ever before though!

My loaves of bread, fresh from the oven

I also had my first canning experience besides corn. I went home in October for like 3 days or so and I learned how to make bread and then Dad helped me can beans and apples. Peeling the apples was quite the chore but having homemade apple pie filling is worth it! Then because I'm baking bread more I've just experimented with the leftover dough and I've made cinnamon rolls and just plain rolls. This may not seem like a big deal to those of you who've been cooking for a long time but I'm just happy I'm learning more. Then with the holidays here I've been experimenting more!

I work with one lady every Friday and Saturday and we've been pretty bored lately, so we look up recipes and then try them out. We were looking at Christmas candy and so we both tried to make a easy toffee recipe. We tried different ones and I'm sad to say that I made mine twice and they were disasters-I thought! But third time's the charm so I gave it one more try and it worked much better.

It was interesting because you use saltine crackers to make the toffee but it is tasty! After that I've been doing other experiments for Christmas goodie plates. I made something similar to peanut butter balls and then tried Oreo balls. The other day I discovered the Pioneerwoman blog that Kiersty loves and I found a recipe on there that looked amazing. So, since I made bread tonight and had leftover dough, I made it. It's called Monkey Muffins or something like that, we used to make Monkey Bread when we were growing up and that stuff was awesome so... I made them and they're pretty amazing, I had to to sample one tonight just to make sure they were okay! I've also found plenty of other recipes that look amazing on that blog that I'm definitely looking forward to trying. I'll let you know how those turn out!

This is the Monkey Muffins, they look so yummy!