HAPPY DECEMBER!!!!!!!!

Let's be honest---the holidays are AWESOME. To jump start the Christmas spirit (if you don't have it already...I've been listening to Christmas music since the second week in November), have your family do an advent calendar! I looooove advent calendars and plan on sending one to the people in my family every year but don't remember that I'm going to do it until December 1st when it's time to start them! So, here's the site to print out one that you cut out and read the Christmas scripture to go along! The picture of this particular calendar is the picture at the top of this post. Something else, there are 25 articles in the Ensign this month (they could do that every month, but I've never counted them before), so you might want to do that too! I'd probably start from the back and go forward so Christmas day you read President Eyring's talk on Christmas day.

Also, if you don't have any Christmas music, there are a ton of Christmas radio stations you can listen to online, or you could go to pandora.com and put the kind of music you want to listen to. I typed in White Christmas Bing Crosby and it's playing Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Dean Martin, Andy Williams, and lots of others! Nothing beats the classic Christmas songs!

Merry Christmas and Happy December!

Etsy Shop - mommaginger

So, I have an Etsy shop. If you don't know already, Etsy is a site where the only things that can be sold on there have to be handmade or vintage. Well, I have a site that sells things I make! I started out doing things that were mostly for babies but I didn't sell one thing for a baby, and to be honest, that stuff really isn't in my brain...but stuff for adults is! So, I've started up my business. That's what the craft fair was for, and I'm doing another one on December 12th! Black Friday was good for us in that we got a LOT of fabric REALLY cheap, and Jordan is going to spend the next two weeks (when he isn't at work earning us a living) cutting out fabric while I sit next to him happily sewing away at the same rate that he cuts them, as Porter plays calmly and happily beside us...oh wait, that isn't real life. Real life is that there'll probably lots of sleepless nights ensuring that we're getting all of it done. But, the moral of the story is that you should go look at the things at my shop! I'm not really pushing you to buy anything, I'm just excited that I've got stuff that I MADE out there. My site is mommaginger.etsy.com. I also have a separate blog that I put stuff on--some I put on this blog too, but some I just put on that one: mommaginger.blogspot.com.




Merry Christmas and when I get a second I'll post about our great St. George Thanksgiving!

Holy Cannoli Part Deux

Success! Our friends Emily and Steve Cook came over for dinner for sopaipillas (we cut them into gingerbread shapes), and after dinner we made cannolis! They were so good...sigh...so good. We didn't have anything to wrap them around when we were frying the dough, so we wrapped them around 4 clothes pins and it worked great!

Holy Cannoli

I love cannolis. They had an episode of Cake Boss where they showed hundreds of cannolis and it just made me want them more and more until I finally caved and spent the $2.29 on ricotta cheese to make them. I'm going to go make them now and I'll put pictures up of them because they are going to be SOOOOOOO GOOD!

Edit to No More Texting

Not only is my screen broken so there's no more texting, but my whole phone's broken, so don't call me at all. I'm trying to convince myself that I can wait until Christmas, but we'll see how it goes.

Falltime Hot Chocolate

Jordan's been requesting hot chocolate on a pretty regular basis, but we only have chocolate milk mix (not that good...disgusting actually, but somehow he doesn't mind), so in order to make it taste acceptable I've been adding two dashes of nutmeg and cinnamon to mine and it is divine.

Happy Fall!

First Craft Fair Ever!

I had my first craft fair ever, and it went ok!

I didn't know I was doing it until the day before, so I spent the whole day and night working on the stuff I'd be selling. I was really scared about it when I got there, and felt really ghetto but it ended up going well in the end. At the beginning I only had a card table and two chairs, so this is how I set it up.



A few hours later I got another longer table, so we put the quilts on those.


At least I got my name out there, and had my first experience at it. I'll know what to do better next time!

MADISON CRAFT FAIR

I AM A VENDOR AT THE MADISON COUNTY CRAFT FAIR TOMORROW---YAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!

Just a couple more Halloween pictures, and a cute one in the swing

Happy Halloween!

We had a very happy Halloween! Porter's 1st Halloween was a blast! He had a lot of different costumes we tried--we borrowed a couple different costumes from Jordan's work buddy, and then we found Superman pajamas from my mom, and then we saw a giraffe costume for 50% off at Kmart and just couldn't help ourselves...he's such a cute kid! Earlier in the week we went to a Halloween Playgroup where all the kids were dressed up--soo cute! We dressed him up in the Elmo costume, and even though it was too small, it was still adorable. He wore the Superman outfit for free pictures at a copy shop in town. There was a special Halloween storytime at the library, which was a BLAST. I loooove the library, and Thursday's my favorite day of the week for the sole reason that it's story time. That night, we went to our friends', the Young's, for Halloween night. Since Porter was a giraffe, I was a lion (I know--a lion's a boy...whatever), and Jordan was a safari tour guy. It was so fun! I had to put in a ton of hairspray and tease my hair, and to be honest, at the end of the night my hair looked like Edward Scissorhands , but it was great in the beginning and so fun! We played 15,000 which is a dice game...what a blast! The food was great and so was the company! It was a great Halloween!

Thank you, Miss Britt

My beautiful friend, Miss Brittany Ruch (you can see pictures of her on her work blog here...she's the tall, gorgeous, platinum blonde), sent me a wonderful e-mail on how to make my pictures bigger. Thank you, thank you, thank you! (also, thank you to Lindsey for offering to teach me...it was very kind of you!) Therefore, here is a beautiful picture of Porter, while we're on our way back from the ranch, he's naked, out of his carseat, and wonderfully happy. Enjoy!



and another one where he has the LONGEST legs i've ever seen on a little baby! what kind of ballet dancer baby did we get!?

New Layout

I was looking at some other blogs that I really like, wondering why I liked them so much more than mine, and realized that I like the 2 column look better, and I like the big pictures better. Therefore, voila--new layout!

To christen the new layout, here are some new pictures. Let's be honest--Jordan and I aren't as goodlooking as Porter, so here are some of Porter we took yesterday and today.



Yeah--he discovered the toilet today. Since it was Jordan's fault, I made him clean Porter up...gross.




Actually, these pictures aren't as big as I want them to be--I'll have to figure out how to make them bigger. Ok--maybe next time. Hope everyone's enjoying their October!

Falltime Activities

I didn't appreciate the fall at the beginning...I just like summer so much, but the more and more it's here, the more I like it.

Between conference sessions on Saturday, we went to the apple orchards on campus. You go and get as many apples as you want, and then weigh them in a little booth for 50 cents a pound. We got 47 lbs--it was so much fun! When we got home, after the second Saturday session, I canned some applesauce, and the next day made an apple pie while some friends were over (the Youngs)--it was great! When we went down to Utah, we canned the apples so that anytime we want to make something with apples we just have to open a jar and they'll be right there! (we just canned them in water so we could make stuff sweet and not-sweet)






Later that week, Stephanie Young came over again. We made sugar cookies and decorated them with Halloween stuff! I had been really really wanting the 101 cookie cutters from Walmart for $10, so Jordan said I could finally buy them for that occasion. It is a great set of cookie cutters--I'm so happy to have them. Anyway, there were a lot of Halloween cutters so we used those. The only one that was left by the time I got the camera out was my haunted house--they were so good, and so fun! My friend, Emily and her son Jensen, came over too, and all three boys just played with the pumpkins on our kitchen floor--they had a blast.





We got some Halloween clothes from Jordan's mom, and they are adorable! Porter is so cute, and stuff like this doesn't hurt! Thanks, Tawna!

let's be honest...

we're having this for dinner, but let's be honest...this is what i wish we were having for dinner

Carrot Hamburger Soup

This soup is to DIE for---you have to make it and eat it and looooooooove it. It's great for a rainy fall day like ours!

1 # hamburger
1 med. onion chopped
1 can cream of celery soup
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp garlic salt
1 c water
2 c tomato or V8 juice (I use a 12 oz can), for fun try the spicy V8
1 c grated carrots (may use more)
1/4 tsp black pepper, more is good also
Brown hamburger and onion, add everything else, simmer 40 min. Excellent the next day.

Sometimes I add chopped celery and fresh garlic.

Hunting and Utah

Every fall, Jordan has the best week of his life when he takes the whole week off work and goes out hunting (whether he gets anything or not...which this year he didn't get any big game, but did get a couple grouse and a few ducks) into the arctic chill with Uncle Trav, Trav's best friend Chris, usually one or more of Trav's kids (this year it was Blake), and sometimes Uncle Tom (who this year did come, and brought his 4 yr-old daughter Audrey). I don't know if Aunt Theresa is usually there, but she was this year! She was there for a couple days before she left for London on Tuesday and it was great to see her. I've been absolutely comfortable letting the events that go on during the week be a mystery to me, until this year when Jordan decided he wanted us to come--so we did! Oh yeah, Trav also brings his dog Ruger for duck hunting who this year had a little buddy follow him around everywhere he went (Porter). Porter loooooved Ruger. He would follow Ruger around, try to eat his food, try to climb on him, pet him, kiss(/suck on) his nose, and somehow Ruger doesn't like these things. He was never mean to Porter, but he would just get up and walk away when Porter would get near.


One of the first things you need to do before you hunt is "sight your gun in," which means you have to make sure your scope is focused on the same place your gun is shooting. We were worried Porter would be scared of the loud noise of the gun shooting even with the ear plugs, but he jumped once, and didn't jump any of the rest of the times--he's a natural!




Theresa and Audrey went outside to sled in the snow, and so we went out to let Porter have an adventure. Porter went down with Audrey a couple times which went well, but the last time, they overturned and Porter got some battle wounds--just a couple scratches on his face from the ice, and I'm glad he had an adventure.




They also had a snowball fight (which Theresa started), and while Porter and I didn't get hit, the others certainly did--looks like fun!









Porter and I then drove down to Provo during the rest of the week while Jordan was hunting to spend some time with my family and some friends. We did a lot of canning (and eating apple pie), and went around with my friend Tabitha to some places we grew up playing. We took Porter to the park up our street and this pharmacy where we used to lie to our parents, pool our money, and get someone to ride our bike down to get penny candy. It was so fun. We also took a picture together at the place I got bit by a horse, but the picture's kinda blurry. All in all, it was great to see my sister Rach, Heidi, Tabitha, Jordan's Dad who was in town for a few days, and spend a lot of time with my grandparents and aunt. I talked to my grandma about family history and watched NCIS with my grandpa--it was a really nice trip.