Christmas is here!!

Well maybe its not the 25th quite yet. But the holiday season is definitely here! I have finally turned on the Christmas music and my house finally has a few festive decorations up. In my floral design class we learned to make an awesome candle centerpiece. It was so easy and smells wonderful! I think i will make one for my home every year from now on! Also, we were finally able to put up our Christmas tree thanks to Steve, Sarra, and the girl's who helped out! It looks great! The last thing to finally help bring in the holiday spirit is the heavy snowfall we finally received! It became a winter wonderland overnight! Normally I would be annoyed but it looks so pretty! and now that I have better snow shoes and a great coat, having to go to school in it isn't half bad!

It looked better a few days ago when the flowers werent as wilted but i still love it... our cute Christmas tree! dont mind the placemats we are using as a ghetto tree skirt. we dont have one yet haha
our street and apt. complex the morning after it snowed. it looked so gorgeous!

Busy but FUN past few weeks

These past few weeks have been pretty busy for us and we are so glad that this semester is almost over! we had tons of family coming in and out of town and I finally gave my Senior Recital! It went really well. And it was nice to have my family in town to see me perform. anyways, i will describe more with the pictures.

Happy Thanksgiving! we spent this thanksgiving with Sam's sister in law Michelle's family. Jeff and Michelle and the girls were up here visiting and it was so fun to see them. Michelle's family was so nice and the food was awesome! we had a great time! (just sad we didnt get any pics with jeff and michelle lol)Kelli and Shaun come to visit!! It was sooo fun to see them and the kids up here in Utah. We hadn't seen them since last Christmas and it was nice to spend some time with them. Alexa and Michael have gotten so big! i loved hanging out with them.
up on the parking lot of Y mount.. Alexa was so excited to be on a mountain for the first time!
we decided to climb up a littl ways. alexa was hilarious... "I'm on a mountain!!"
After my recital with my sisters!! This was my last big event that is basically my senior project. It was a lot of hard work but so worth it. I learned so much these past few months trying to prepare for it. a big thanks to my two amazing voice teachers Jennifer Welch-Babidge and Darrell Babidge. I wasn't able to get a pic with Darrell after my recital but no worries, I will get a good one sometime before we leave. Anywho, this is with my sisters afterwards.. it was so fun to have them in town and to finally be all together. Wish I could see them more often! we always have a blast together!
sisters and mom:
my dress:
My best friend Tiffany who flew all the way out to see me! I love this girl!! Thanks Tif for comin all that way!! I am so grateful for you and all the time we spend laughing together! haha
with my amazing husband. He has been soo supportive through everything. Love you babe!!
my mom and "aunt" Susan. so happy to have them there! Love you two! And a big thanks to everyone else who came to see me! i really appreciated having all of you there!
later on that night we decided to go out for a girl's night to Spark. Its a non-alcoholic restaurant lounge. it was so fun!

The next couple of nights we had our choir concert the "Celebration of Christmas." my sisters and mom were able to come before the left on Saturday then sam's mom flew in to see it. This year's performance we did more traditional numbers but it was all still pretty enjoyable. plus it is always cool to sing with the orchestra. This is a pic with our choir director Sister Hall because it is our last Christmas concert here at BYU..
With Sam's mom who came for a short visit to see the Christmas concert. always fun to have her in town.
It has been pretty crazy lately but fun to have so much family in town to visit. Can't wait to go home to Houston this coming Friday for a nice long break where we can spend more time with everyone. we are so excited!

Senior Recital

It's almost here! My Senior Recital is just a week away! This is the poster I made to advertise for it around my music building. It's going to be next Thursday December 3 on BYU campus in the Museum of Art Auditorium. I couldnt find a good evening time for the location so it's actually at 3pm in the afternoon which I think will work out pretty well! I am pretty excited because my 3 sisters, my mom, and my best friend tiffany are coming in to town! I cant wait to see them! anywho, if you are in the provo area next week, I'd love for you to come! Wish me luck!!

More Floral Stuff

Here are a couple more arrangements I have learned to do over the past few weeks. These two projects have been my favorite so far. I looved the glass cube arrangement I made and the bridal bouquet was pretty fun.. Both were actually pretty difficult tho. a lot more difficult than i thought they would be. I know that the more practice i have, the easier it will get to make em. So I am hoping to stick with it and make more so I can get really good at it.

glass cube autumn arrangement.. The blue-ish flowers are in this pic are actually way more purple in person. they look kinda weird in this first pic but i promise they look better in person lol...
I really wanna learn to make it look a little tighter and more round than this. but i still like how it turned out for this assignment.

I made this one just the other day.. and i decided i was sick of all the autumn colors i had been using so i decided to switch it up a little (thanks kel for the color suggestions haha).. anyways, this first pic is to show the cool stuff we learned to do with the ribbon when we tie it.
i used roses, white stock flowers, waxflowers and pink carnations. This is also one that was tricky to make and being a perfectionist, took me a little longer than i had hoped. I need to make a few more of these to really get it how i want them to look.

sorta late...

so i know its a few weeks late but just wanted to post a few fun pics from sam's bday. this year we decided to stay home and have steve and sarra over for the evening. it turned out to be pretty fun! i made one of sam's favorite meals for dinner along with one of his favorite kinds of cake of all time- a "Lincoln Log" cake. That is what he calls it anyways haha.. both the meal and the cake were his mother's famous recipes so he felt right at home! thanks mom r. for those! anywho, i wanted to post pics because this cake was pretty tricky to make so it was definitely an accomplishment for me! hahaa

sam got a mini rubics cube and Bohnanza for his birthday! that game is soo fun. i highly reccomend it.. oh he did also get a new xbox game a few days later when it came out....it is a roll cake that has mint chocolate chip ice cream in the middle. homemade chocolate frosting. it was sorta hard to make but waay delicious! 2 +4 candles =24! haha

happy birthday babe!!

Coconut Macaroons

So I had never been a fan of coconut. in my entire life. UNTIL a couple years ago when I was working for BYU catering and they had these AMAZING coconut cookies that were to die for. I still can not figure out what made me like em so much when I have never liked coconut in my life. but ever since then, coconut has been growing on me. especially in the form of these cookies haha. anyways, I was looking for some random recipe in one of my cookbooks tonight and came across a recipe for these delicious gems!! I was soo excited! I was even more excited that I already had coconut in my pantry and that the recipe was sooo so simple. I made them and they turned out awesome! they arent quite as good as the ones in catering but they are pretty dang close and pretty dang good!! So I decided I should share it with everyone! Here is the recipe:

Coconut Macaroons:
1-1/3 cups flaked coconut
1/3 cup
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp. salt
2 egg whites
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1. In a small bowl, combine the coconut, sugar, flour, and salt. Stir in egg whites and vanilla; mix well. drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto greased baking sheets.
2. Bake at 325 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack. Yields: about 1-1/2 dozen.


I have also had some that are chocolate dipped on half of the cookie which is also pretty amazing. I will be trying that very soon. anyways, hope yall enjoy!

Halloweeeeen!

This year for Halloween we kept it pretty low key which was nice. A few days before, we went and bought a couple pumpkins and carved them with our good friends Andy and Christa. They turned out sooo awesome!!! best pumpkin we have ever carved! i think it is the first one we have carved since we've been married and it was way fun so i am sure we are gonna do it every year from now on. Then on Halloween night we had a few friends over and made some yummy caramel apples then watched the Dark Knight. we hadn't seen it since the theaters and it was a pretty creepy movie so we thought it was perfect for the evening! I just have to say that I liked the movie waay more this second time I saw it. anyways, it was a great night! we had an awesome time with some good friends.

Sorry for the cruddy photo quality. our digital camera broke so we have been using the cameras on our phones. if anyone out there has an old digital camera lying around that they dont use anymore, let us know....

letting the boys do the carving lol:




Halloween, making caramel apples.. this was mine, heath chunks, mini choc chips and marshmallows:
the beginning of sam's masterpiece:
mallow-teeth?

Sam's creation.. not only did he include marshmallows on the toothpicks, he was sure to drizzle chocolate on them as well.. he pays attention to detail, haha:

Catching up...

October was a pretty busy month for us. I'm just now realizing I never posted pictures of the Opera so I thought I would get to that! It went great. Pretty time consuming but way fun. plus some of sam's family came in town to see it so that was fun too. Thanks for coming Amy and Mom R.! We loved seeing you! also, we had our choir concert with the King Singers which was way cool too. Some people took some pretty professional looking photos of both the Opera and the choir concert and let us get them off the internet so I am posting a few of those for yall to see!

Tavern scene in the beginning that Sam was in:
Next scene, we are all at a party at this scientist's house and Sam starts wandering around stealing things and touching stuff LOL "....uh maybe we shouldnt be touching that..."

Full cast curtain call, we on the stairs in the back, second couple down:


King Singers Concert, if you click on the pic, it should blow up so you could find us in the back better. I am right behind the percussion guy to the left, sam is second row towards the right:
before our choir came on:
Cool group shot: