Life Goes On.

So, Updates since my last post: I still have about 1/6 of the huge sheet cake left. Christopher and I are almost sugared out. And we weigh a little more than we would like to... Oops.

Also, I got the DVD with all my wedding photos on it!! Check out my Facebook album for those. I'll be sending out Thank You cards soon, I promise!

And, ~ HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO NICK!! ~

My handyman putting together my cupcake stand

This last week my Dad was in town for the STEM Fair at BYU. That was fun because he brought all the things I left after the wedding and any cards or gifts that people sent to my parents house before we changed the address on our registry. It was like Christmas all over again! He also took me shopping for birthday presents and took me and Christopher out to dinner the first night he was in Utah. I like when my parents visit. ;)

Poor Christopher. He knew what he was getting in to when he married me, but that still doesn't make it any easier on him that my birthday is one week after Valentine's Day. I made it perfectly clear that they must be celebrated as two separate events. He did a good job on Valentine's Day though. I got home from a long Friday of working (I was exhausted) and saw a new outfit laid out on the bed and spiced up with some accessories I already had. All of this was scattered with chocolate. Then I turn around to see him holding a HUGE box of chocolates and a bunch of roses. This guys spoils me :) Then we went to Wendy's to use some coupons that we had (hey, hey, calm down. He offered me Olive Garden first, I just wanted a fast food burger!). We then drove up to "our spot" on the mountain where he had first asked me to be his girlfriend. It was nice and quiet and secluded. The timing was perfect because we got to watch the sunset and then see the city lights. Romantic, huh?

Saturday we drove up to Farmington to spend the weekend with the Miners. My dad and Uncle Jeff were staying there to take their annual ski trip with Uncle Steve and Sean. We got to hang out and watch the Olympics and welcome my cousin Nick back from his mission. Then on Sunday, we went to church, then watched Charly. What a tear-jerker, that movie!! I barely survived without ruining my makeup. Immediately after, Jeff and Christopher and I ran downstairs to watch some mindless zombie killing (The Walking Dead). The rest of the family harassed me all the way through my show about making cupcakes so when the episode was over I got to work. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, and apparently they were a hit because all three dozen cupcakes didn't last that long!! Christopher and I headed home after having an epic Nerf gun war with Josh and Zach and then jamming to some made up songs.

On our way home, we took an adventure through Ikea (I might've found my coffee table! No more cardboard replacement soon!!) since I'd never been there. That store is like an amusement park! Sheesh! Then we used the rest of our Bed, Bath, and Beyond giftcard on some essentials and finished our journey back to our apartment.

That night, we went over to Kolby's apartment since he and Ashleigh had rented a puppy from puppiesforrent.com. This has only further convinced me that my next apartment needs to allow pets and I need a Corgi pup for my mental health. It's the only reasonable conclusion. The puppy's name was Bruno and he was a border collie pup. Too cute!

I think that's about it. My birthday is in a week, so no doubt my next post will be sugar-induced and include the many adventures associated with changing my name. Soon I will officially be a Hughes!

Sick.

Today's been quite the lazy day. I slept in til noon, cleaned some dishes, watched some Olympics, showered, then went to McDonald's for dinner. We were planning on going to see the Lego movie with some free movie passes we have from Christmas, but all the showings were full. Sad day. Christopher cried a little. So all in all it's been pretty uneventful. I do, however have some key events to report on from the past two weeks.

I am still sick. Boo. I feel like I've been sick my whole married life. Probably cuz I have been. I'm so over it. Whine.

We still go out and do things though. Like this! We went to the Shops at the Riverwoods to see these ice sculptures and fire dancers and reindeer and fireworks! It was fun. And cold. And confusing since they played patriotic music during the fireworks show. In February!

We also got together with Ashleigh, Kolby, and Maddy to watch the SuperBowl last Sunday. I don't know how the rest of your SuperBowl parties went, but I know mine was full of chips and dip and CUPCAKES!!

Yeah, be jealous.

My cupcake display; it reminds me of Beauty and the Beast.

I started going crazy printing off baking recipes and putting them in a folder. I finally decided to actually bake the things that I was putting into this folder and Christopher has been totally supportive saying he'll buy whatever ingredients I need. This might be how we go poor.

I also had the opportunity to teach baking tips at the Relief Society Activity. It was really fun. The sisters were great at participating and giving additional advice. They asked me questions too but surprisingly they were all questions I knew the answers to! :)

We made nifty cake displays with DI plates and candlestick holders. There was also a cookie exchange. I'm about sugar'd out! I brought Christopher home a whole box of all the different cookies the women brought, and he still claims he likes mine the best!

Here are some of the tips I shared:

For Cookies - 

• All ingredients should be room temperature before you begin (mostly eggs and butter) but not melted because if your butter is too squishy, your cookies will spread and cakes won't rise enough. 
• If you like cookies chewy, remove them from the tray as soon as they are out of the oven and place on a cooling rack
• If you like cookies crunchy, bake them a bit longer and leave them on a rack to cool.
• 
  Practically all cookies should be slightly underbaked – take them out while they are still a little soft, they'll continue to bake as long as they are in contact with the hot sheet.
• Use shiny baking sheets – dark or burned sheets absorb heat faster and cause cookies to burn.
• Check at minimum time to avoid burning (i.e. 12-15mins)

For Cakes -

• Don't attempt to ice the cake before it is completely cool
• Heat knife first for crumble free slices, run knife under hot water then dry with towel.

For Muffins -

avoid over stirring – do not stir until it's smooth and lump free

• When using berries in a mixture, dust with flour before adding in; this helps prevent bleeding in the batter.
• Don't fill cups too full – 3/4c. is just about right → gives round tops
• Muffins (and cupcakes) are done when golden and spring back slightly when touched.
• Let pan sit on cool, wet towel – helps muffins come lose easier and prevents from sticking to bottom.

Finally, some useful kitchen substitutions:

I made this into a cute little magnet.

• cake flour: 2 cups all purpose flour minus 2T, add 2t baking powder and 2T cornstarch
• buttermilk: 1T fresh squeezed lemon juice to 1 c whole milk and let sit 5 mins
• brown sugar: 1c granulated sugar with 1T molasses
• extra light olive oil in place of butter (¾ c for every cup of butter)
• salted vs unsalted butter. If recipe calls for unsalted; use it! If only have salted, just cut back on amount of salt added to recipe. Reduce by ½ t salt for every stick salted butter used instead of unsalted.

I realize I'm getting a little long winded now, so I'll just finish up this post by talking about our wedding open house that we had here in Utah. We had a handful of people show up and bring a TON of food. 

Brigitte and Seth stopped by and played apples to apples with us and a bunch of our Utah friends. Christopher got to show the slideshow of us that he originally made for the wedding reception too! Katrina got us Monopoly and said it's supposed to help keep our marriage together... I'm still trying to convince myself to be okay with Christopher winning every single game we play. I don't know how he does it!

Larry and Kim brought this HUGE cake. :)

So I have more cake and chips and cookies than I know what to do with! I keep trying to bribe Sean and Ben and Brigitte to come over and eat all the extra cake. I gotta clear out my fridge so I can bake more things for Valentine's Day and my birthday. This month is exciting :)

Busybodies.

Okay, okay. I know I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I got distracted with homework and Mario Kart and Ice Skating. Gimme a break!

Anyways, it has been quite chilly here in Provo. Personally, I'm ready for T-shirt weather again! Despite my inability to keep my toes and fingers warm, Christopher seems to be fairing well, other than stealing all the blankets at night and possibly catching the mutated version of my cold. Thank goodness we have blankets a plenty, including the new additions from Christopher's grandparents, Larry and Kim. They gave us an embroidered quilt as a wedding present and then stopped by to give me a "slanket" to keep warm. Kim made it herself for a daughter who I guess never took it, but it's a blanket with sleeves, so essentially a snuggie. IT IS THE WARMEST MOST COMFY THING EVER. I love it. Larry and Kim have been really great, taking us out to lunch at Texas Roadhouse and making it clear that we are ALWAYS welcome to stop by their house. I think we'll take them up on that :)

     Another event in the Hughes apartment has to do with our Betta fish, Jean Valjean. Yes, that's his real name. I'm obsessed. Christopher brought him home from Wal-Mart one day after a customer tried to return him. It's company policy to flush fish that are returned in case they have some disease or something wrong with them that will hurt the other fish. So Christopher asked his boss if he could take the fish instead. And that's how we got our little rescue fish.

     When we left for Christmas, we didn't have anyone to take care of him. Sadly, we thought he died over the break.
     Surprisingly, he didn't.
My old roommate Ashleigh called me at like midnight all excited to tell us that THE FISH WAS STILL ALIVE. She then made jokes about how he's our "love fish" and stayed alive because of the strength of our love. Haha. We were ecstatic that our little rescue fish made it through the break. However, now he is sick and has this thing called fin rot. It rotted away his whole right fin so now he's more like Finding Nemo than Jean Valjean. We are treating him with aquarium salt and he seems to be getting better. Yay Jean Valjean!



By far, however, the most exciting thing that happened this week was that we got a microwave.
Yes, yes, I know. We live terribly exciting lives.
We had to use the rest of our Target giftcards to purchase this little beauty, so we are now OFFICIALLY poorer-than-dirt newlyweds. We literally had eaten everything in our fridge before we went to the store to buy more. We're pinching pennies for rent. It's fun.

We're totally loving married life. We still manage to be social practically for free! Since last posting, we've gone to see the Ice Castles in Midway, Onesie Wednesday at Sammy's in Provo, and Ice Skating at Seven Peaks Ice Arena. As well as countless Mario parties with the gang.

I'm realizing this blog post is getting long, so I'll finish up real quick. Christopher and I love our ward, it's so fun to be in a family ward again! We don't have callings yet, but the bishop knows who we are, and the Relief Society has already marked me down in the books as a baker. They asked me to teach a little bit of baking advice at the next Relief Society activity which is February 6th. My next blog post will probably show off all the info I shared with them for bragging purposes.

One last thing, we're also planning a wedding open house for February 7th at the lounge here in our apartment complex. This will hopefully make it easier for our Utah friends who couldn't make it to the wedding to come see us and our cute little apartment. It'll be fun.

LOOK HOW CUTE MY APARTMENT IS!

LOVE my KitchenAid

Watching the kettle steam and squeal
is like my favorite thing ever.

Until Next Time.

Take One

I'm not very good at blogs

or journal entries

or anything like that,

so we'll see how this goes.

So Christopher and I got married almost two weeks ago now. That's the big news. The sealing was great, the luncheon was great, the reception was AMAZING, and everything went about as smoothly as we could hope for. I am beyond grateful to all my friends and family who helped take care of us and make sure we had a perfect day. 

 After that, we said goodbye to everyone and drove off to California. That was harder for me than I thought it would be. Thank goodness Christopher is so supportive, there's no way I would be able to do anything like that without him. Road trips are more fun with him anyways.

Disneyland was so much fun! It's a completely different experience going as an adult and not with 5 other family members. Rides are easier to get on to and meals don't cost as much (but they still cost a lot). We took a ton of selfies and it was super fun preserving memories that way. We're too goofy for serious pictures.

Look how CUTE we are!!

I think Christopher liked California Adventure a little more than Disneyland, but that might be because our day was more relaxed and we slept in a little more. Plus, it was New Year's Eve and we were ready to start our New Year together.

That being said, 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

We Party Hard.

Since we're already 10 days into the New Year, I figured we should try to keep up with some of our resolutions. This blog being one of them. Hopefully we'll find some time in our busy newlywed lives to bust out a quick blog post (with some pictures) once a week or once a month. We're still working on the title (Got any suggestions?)

Secondly, we're trying to keep up with our daily prayers. We've got meals pretty much down, but its the morning and evening ones that slip our minds. Scripture study too. Hopefully it'll get easier as we get into the groove with school.

Third, we are generally off soda and candy. It's sad, but true. We are not actively searching for it or purchasing it. However, that does not mean we will turn down cake at the celebration of someone's birthday - hey! we didn't pay for it, so it's fair game :p

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think that's probably enough rambling for now.

Maybe next time Christopher will make an appearance, I'll have to remember to start blogging while he's around. 

Our apartment is finally feeling like a home now that we've got a couch and a bed.

School is going smoothly and we're getting back into the swing of things.

We've even got some financial aid money.

I guess you could say things are going pretty good.

We sure are blessed.