My most favoritist stuffing

So, there are some things at the holidays that I just have to have to eat. My mom has an Apricot-Craisin Stuffing that makes my heart oh so happy. I have decided to share it with the world because the world needs this stuffing. It is THAT good.

So, here you go:

Mom's Apricot - Craisin Stuffing                                                              350 degrees - 30 min.

 

1 - 10 oz. pkj. Mrs. Cubbison's stuffing (make sure it is cube style)

1/3c. butter

1c. chopped onion

1c. chopped celery

1 - 14 oz. can chicken broth

1c. finely chopped dried apricots

1c. craisins

1c. chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts)

 

Melt butter in saucepan. Add onion and cook until translucent.  Add chicken broth heat until very warm.  (do not boil) In a large mixing bowl pour in stuffing, celery, apricots, craisins and nuts. Pour broth mixture over top.  Toss lightly, do not over stir. Pour into a 13 x 9" cake pan. Cover with foil or lid. Bake 20 minutes.  Take foil off and cook 10 minutes more.

Happy Thanksgiving EVE!!!

Happy Thanksgiving eve everybody!

This year Allan and I are hosting his Mom, Gary, his brother Peter, his brother Fred and his wife Judith. We're very excited to have family over and to get to play games and eat good food. :o)

I have been posting pictures of my prep and such on Instagram and thought I'd share them with you.

On Monday I made Cranberry-Pomegranate sauce. I love this recipe!

Here we have my FAVORITE Cranberry Jello Salad. It's not Thanksgiving for me without this salad. We also have the brine I'm using for our turkey that I got at a turkey farm here in Ogden.

This is LeRoy the turkey. Yes we named him. It makes everything so much more exciting. :o)

And here's LeRoy in his brine bath.

So there you go. The beginnings of Thanksgiving dinner. I'll be posting many more pics over the next few days - we have friends and family coming over Friday and Saturday and we're going to play and decorate and do all sorts of fun things. :o) I'm excited!

Life keeps on happening

I keep thinking I'll take time to update this little blog, and then I keep on doing other things. :)

Life has been busy lately for me and Allan. We work all day and play all night. Our "playing" consists of doing anything from working out and watching to TV, to going to a performance at Weber State and having ice cream afterwards. We're enjoying our many, many adventures! :o)

Since my last post we have enjoyed making new friends and hanging out with them, running in a color 5k to celebrate the inaugration of the new WSU president, going to the Imagine Dragons concert at WSU and celebrating Halloween with one trick-or-treater stopping by our house.

Like I said, life has been busy! I post lots of fun things on Instagram, so you really should follow me there. ;)

ANYWHO. We're getting excited for Lindy to come visit us at Christmas time - hard to believe that Christmas is less than 6 weeks away at this point! I'm excited to see Christmas through a toddler's eyes and for the magic of the holidays to be extra present in our house.

In other news, Allan and I are hosting Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year with his Mom and Step-Dad, Brother and Sister-in-Law and other brother all coming to dinner. The total number of people at our house will be seven and it should be fun times! I'm going to brine a turkey and I'll try to be better at posting so I can tell you all the adventures that will surely bring. :o)

That's about it around these parts - I'll just throw some pictures below of our recent happenings and will try to be better at posting. :) Life is fun!!!!

us at the end of the color run 5k we participated in

what I did at Super Saturday - oh and it should be noted that I am now the RS First Counselor and Allan is a Gospel Doctrine teacher. :) We've been put to work!

Imagine Dragons concert! It was AWESOME!!!

We were Mario and Princess Peach for Halloween. :)

I may or may not have ruined Allan's hair when trying to use our new hair clippers. I may or may not have cried.

Funny faces time on FaceTime.

We have new friends! There are a 4 other newlywed couples besides us in the ward.

Adventures lately....

Well. We are living in our new house. :o) It only took a few days…but they finally got the water pipes fixed, the right size fridge and all appliances installed. Now there are just a few other things to be done, but those aren’t necessary to be able to live in the house. HUZZAH! 

We’ve been unpacking and cleaning and unpacking….and there’s still more unpacking to do, but I’m happy that we live closer to our works. It is fabulous. We’ve been to our ward once and we felt very welcomed and are very excited about putting down some roots and making friends. Hurray for adventures!

We’ve had a lot of time with Lindy the past few weeks, she left for Canada yesterday morning and we won’t see her again until Christmas. We tried to jam-pack our time with her with all the fun things we could think of and I think we succeeded in making some fun memories. We look forward to seeing her in just a few months (and all the skyping in-between no and then.)

There’s a Children’s Treehouse Museum in Ogden that is so much fun and has all sorts of things to do and so we decided to spend our last Saturday with Lindy going there and playing. Lindy had a blast. That place is seriously so awesome. We love it. If you follow me on Instagram then you’ve probably seen all these photos, but if not here they are again. ;)

Lindy and Daddy building towers

Lindy the train conductor!

Cowgirl Lindy

Princess Lindy and Prince Daddy

Princess Lindy and all her funny, funny faces.

Firefighter Lindy

Lindy the bunny in the Participlay

We seriously had so much fun at the Treehouse Museum. After dinner, we went back for a special "Enchanted Forest" adventure. They had costumed characters all through the museum and the kids were led by a character to learn and help characters in need. It was adorable and so much fun. Lindy dressed up as a fairy:

Anyways, it was all fun times. To leave you, I will give you two videos of the adorableness of Lindy:

 

Lindy Skipping. Seriously impressive for a 3.5 year old

Lindy playing several musical instruments. So fun!

Moving Adventures

So, we moved this weekend. YAY!!!!!

However, we are not yet actually LIVING in our new place. :(

See, our new place (as awesome and lovely it is) went through some renovations right before we moved in (yay!). Due to these renovations, the water was turned off. It has not been turned back on yet. This is a problem in most daily needs.

Also, our lovely new fridge does not fit in the space that the old fridge fit in. There is a small (probably 8 inches or less) cupboard that seperated the fridge and stove...and it must go for the fridge to fit. The landlord is supposed to take care of all of this today. I hope.

Allan is easy going that all of this just rolls off of him and he's handling it really well. I'm a planner and this whole situation throws me into a tailspin.  sigh.  Lucky me to have a husband who can deal with this because I'm going crazy.

All of this will be worth it in the end...I'm just hoping the end is sooner rather than later......

Hopefully the next time I post, we'll be sleeping in our new place. :o)

Just keep packing, just keep packing, just keep packing.....

You might remember back in July when I posted about leaving my current job and getting a new one. 

Allan and I knew that as soon as I got a new job we would start to look for a place to live that was within a reasonable distance of our works. With both Allan and I working in the Ogden, UT area we started looking in Weber county for somewhere to live. When life slowed down a little bit (ha! like it ever slows down...) we finally made it out and about to look at a couple of places.

The second place we looked at we fell in love with it immediately. The guy renting it out is wanting to retire and hasn't really dealt with it for almost a year. He was in the middle of renovating the whole place. New carpet, new paint, new appliances, etc. It's a 2-bedroom, 2-bath place that is perfect for our little family. We talked about it, slept on it, and the next day got him our contract and part of the deposit. The great thing is this guy really wants to get out of renting and is willing to sell us the place - so we're looking at purchasing it. :o)

So now....we're packing. All day, all night - all I can think about is all the stuff we have to move. :P The good news is that I don't think we'll have to move for a long time yet after this move. At least, I hope that's the case - because 3 moves in one year is 3 moves too many in my opinion. ;)

Saturday can't come and go soon enough! :-)

How we got a whole household full of furniture for next to nothing...

So, this post is a long time coming, I know. Life is busy around these parts! What with moving...(yup. Moving. A post will be coming shortly [i think] about that.) and playing and all sorts of other things, I just haven't had time.

ANYWAYS. Back in June, Allan's Aunt Beth texted him some pictures of some really nice furniture....and asked us if we wanted their entire dining room set (which included a table with leaf extenders, 6 chairs, a china cabinet and a buffet table). Then she asked if we wanted their couch and loveseat. THEN she asked if we wanted the bedroom set (including the bed + mattress, man dresser and woman dresser + vanity.) The only catch was that we would need to get down to the Palm Springs area of California and rent a moving truck and drive back all that furniture. We thought it out - and decided that we'd never get a deal like this again (plus we could sell all of our old furniture) and finally said yes!

After switching dates a couple of times, we drove off one Friday afternoon in a cute red Ford Focus we rented from the car rental. We got to Palm Springs just fine and the next morning got our rental truck and returned the car. Aunt Beth had not only all that furniture for us, but other odds and ends for us to take as well. Our 16' moving truck was very full! The great things is that Aunt Beth gave us some money to help make the trip and also hired movers to pack up the moving truck for us.  We then drove home Sunday and with some fun adventures on the way (like getting pulled over for "not paying for our gas" [we did pay for it]) we got home and got everything unloaded.

We now have a very full house of furniture - since we knew we'd be moving so soon we didn't unpack a lot of the stuff - and the china cabinet is in two pieces in Lindy's bedroom. :o) BUT it makes me very excited to get all moved and organized in our new place. :o)

the "buffet" table

the china cabinet and one of the chairs from the table set

*I'll try to post more pictures when we move into our new place - maybe you'll even get a tour! (don't hold your breath waiting for that.....)