Baby booties and baby hats

So a few weeks ago, I started trying to figure out how to make little baby booties and I finally found a pattern. I practiced it for a while and alternated the pattern to come up with something that I like a lot. Here are a few examples of the finished products, these were for baby Ava (Ryan and Heather's baby that is on the way):

And I made this little hat (a miniature version of an adult hat that I made on Christmas break).


I really like these little tiny hats and booties and this week I am going to make a set for a baby boy this week. Those are always harder to come up with a cute idea thats not to girly. Hopefully I have a good idea come to me, we'll see.

Valentine's cupcakes

We had the annual "Mayfair Live" talent show and dessert bar again at church this year and I made some delicious goodies. I got this idea from my cupcake book to make a "box of chocolates" instead of making mini cupcakes in a regular chocolate box, I made regular size cupcakes in a giant chocolate box that I made from posterboard. They were red velvet cupcakes with chocolate frosting instead of traditional cream cheese frosting. I just got as much pink, red, white, and chocolate candies out that I had, bought some more too and went to town. I was so pleased with how these turned out as you might be able to tell by all the detailed pics below:








I also made some regular things too, these tortes are filled with nutella, carmel, chocolate and topped with pecans.
And I made the cake on the left. It is an Italian Creme cake. Joanne made this delicious cake on the right. It is chocolate cake covered in peanut butter icing and topped with reeses cups and pieces (yuuummmmmmmmy)!!!

Lana made this pretty strawberry cake below, I wish I had got a piece because I love strawberry but I got full before I could try any.

And I dont know who made these last two but they looked really impressive and delicious.

There were many more and too many to try all but it was great as usual and I am glad all my things turned out well despite the minor complications I had when making them.

Decadent Valentines Events

This year, Matt and I really lived it up around Valentines Day with all of our outings. The week before Valentines Day we went to Chocolate Decadence, an annual fund-raising event for historic Automobile Alley. This was our second year to go and I enjoyed it even more than last year! If you dont know how it works, here is a brief overview: There are 20-30 restaurants across the city that have a table with their chocolate goodies and everyone gets to eat as much of it as they want and vote on the best table at the end of the night. There are silent auctions and live auctions going on too but we never get into that :)

Since I am not quite the chocolate lover that Matt is, I tried harder to pace myself this year. We found The Mantle's booth which was serving lamb chops with a chocolate balsamic glaze (super delicious by the way) and La Luna's booth that served chicken mole as their "chocolate" dishes so I basically went back and forth between those booths and tried chocolate desserts of all kinds in between. I definately ate more than last year and felt like I needed to be rolled out to the car afterward.

I brought my camera but its always hard to take good pictures this way...we have never really mastered it. This old photographer man was making fun of me and took a real picture of us, we will see if it ends up in one of those OKC magazines.

At the beginning, there is usually a jazz trio and they were really good, then my least favorite part of the evening is when Jack and Ron make their appearance as the MC's. It would be so much better if they werent there but I guess a lot of people like them. I dont get it.

And lastly, they added a free photo booth to take silly pics, so we did. I dont think I have ever taken pictures in one of those things, they are really small. This is poor quality in more than one way :) but I had to take a picture of the picture since our scanner isnt cooperating!! But anyway, it was such a fun night and I am glad we went again. All you chocolate fans should look it up next year. It is usually the week before Valentines Day.


And on to our other Valentines celebration...

Matt and I celebrated the day before due to lots of stuff going on that week. I went to a knitting class all day and came back to some lovely roses and a sweet poem (classic Matthew style)!!

I always love his silly poems and cards that he makes. They always put me in a good mood and remind me of when we first started dating!!

And for dinner, we got to finally go to The Melting Pot and use our gift card. Luckily we made reservations weeks in advance because the time slots were slim pickings already. We got lobster tails, steak, chicken, ravioli, veggies and that was just the main course. There were 3 other courses including desert. We got the spinich artichoke dip for the app and the smores fondue for dessert. Delicious and incredibly filling. Again, I had to be rolled out of there.

After eating here, I realized that we could make stuff like this with our own fondue pot. I have never really thought about making the different fondues they make, we have only ever made plain chocolate fondue and not very often at that. So we definately have plans to use it in the near future.
And like a dummie, I brought my camera but it was missing the ever vital memory card so we couldnt take any pics. Fortunately, we had a super nice/sneaker server and she snuck the restaurant camera, took a picture of us and told her boss it was my bday so they would print it and put it in this frame. So here is my picture of the picture again.

I am so blessed to have my wonderful husband by my side forever and am reminded of how much he loves me even more this time of year when we get to do fun things like this. I love you Matty and happy Valentines Day!

"I love, I love, I love, I love my calendar girl"

Yet another post that is overdue. In early December, I came home for lunch and got a surprise in the mail. I was so excited/confused to see the Tulsa Boxer Rescue Foundation 2010 calendar in the mail. After a little while, I remembered that Matt and I submitted a photo of Lucy and her mini-me friend from H-town about a year earlier and I thought they had sent us a calendar. As in turns out, Matt bought it but it is tooooooo precious. All these sweet little boxers in the calendar. They are super cute when they are little puppies!

Anyway, Lucy and Sudie made the calendar for September (Matt's bday month). It is kind of weird because they spelled Sudie's name wrong and then added a middle name of "zoom" which who knows where that came from and used our last name, but oh well. Here is proud Lucy with her calendar spread:

They look like Berenstein Bears bigtime in this picture! Unfortunately, earlier this year, Sudie had a tragic accident and died :( I am glad this picture got chosen because we were able to give one to her owners as some memorabila of Sudie. If you would like to learn more about the Tulsa Boxer Rescue or the Lone Star Boxer Rescue (in Houston area) you can click on the links. The tulsa link is where we got the calendar. I know we will submit again for next year!

Oliva the Wise

When it snowed a bunch a few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of spending lots of time with some of our best buds, the Isenbergs. And while I have no pictures of us, I have lots of Olivia! Imagine that. These are the best ones:

I saw this cute buret pattern that looked cute and easy and decidided to try it out. When knitting sometimes, I just decide that I think I know what is best and kind of disregard suggestions by the pattern writer. Well this is what happens when you do that, you end up with a giganto hat instead of a baby buret. But is is super cute anyway, she just wont be able to wear it until like a year or so. But we had to take advantage of the photog moment.

She looks like a very wise mini-buddha, but obviously cuter!

She's like, "you know what i'm talkin bout Willis"
Another day they came over, Olivia was all into reaching for Lucy, and as you know, Lucy loved to lick the babies. This is her face after all the licking. Looks like she is trying to tell me to wash her hand please!

I tried to put these pics in order but blogspot is being stupid again. I say this alot, but I really feel it should be more user friendly than it is. It is always messing up and it is quite cumbersome to put pics and videos in. But anyway, you get the idea. Maybe it will be fixed sometime soon!

A much belated Houston post.

After all, we went on New Years weekend. I have been behind as always so I will do an incredibly brief picture update:

We brought the Wii and had lots of fun with all the interactive games!

Christmas day number 4 for us. We had Christmas together, then with my mom and sis, then with Monica and John, and then all 5 of us when Deanna came back! These 3D glasses that Monica bought make all the Christmas lights into logos or words popping out from the tree. It was cool!

One day we went to Old Town Spring, which is kind of an old timey place in the area. Im not sure if it was an old town or just made to look old. But it was fun. We stopped at this one store to pet this HUGE great dane and she was getting playful with Matt so I sat by her to try and calme her down since she couldnt go anywhere and then she sat in my lap. Her owner came by and was like, "oh yeah she does that all the time." It was random and funny :)

We decided we would try something fried that shouldnt be and John and Matt decided on fried twinkies. My face here is about accurate for my feelings toward this. It was waaaaaaay to sweet and weird.

Different friends and family came to visit while we were there. These kiddos are Matt's second cousins who are getting big now and they just loved Lucy. And she loved them being there and paying so much attention to her. She was all mopey when they left.

And here I am doing what I always do, knitting, sitting in the warmest spot in the room, and cuddling with my dog when she allows :)

And we also went to the final Texans game of the year. We had super awesome seats and the game was really great! Everyone was pumped because they were on the verge of making the playoffs, if all the cards fell in place and they ended up killing the Pats but only after almost blowing it at one point. Too bad the Jets didnt loose. But at least we got to witness the first winning season in Texans history!

As you can see, we had an excellent trip and I wish we could go back because it has to be warmer than here right now!! Speaking of that, I am FREEZING right now. Better turn up the heat!

funny picture

Well I am kind of behind on some things I wanted to post about but since I dont have time for those, I was going to put up these pics that we took last night. I posted one on facebook last night but wanted to write a blog with the picture that Matt took too.

So we pulled into Target last night to get some laundry soap to find this lovely piece of artwork in the spot next to where we parked:

Matt immediately started laughing and I was reminded of his nasty duct tape sandals from college and this sick duct tape couch that used to be at the church and various other duct tape items that shouldnt be duct taped. I was so mad that I didnt bring my real camera to take pics so we just had to use our cell phones.

Earlier this year I posted a link to peopleofwalmart.com which this totally reminded me of something that could be on that website. And I was thinking of posting this picture except that we were at Target, I dont know if it counts. About 5 minutes after we arrived, a "tricked out" car pulled up with a for-real giant spoiler. I wonder what they thought about this.

And then just before we were leaving, the driver and passenger showed up. They were just a guy and a girl that looked college aged. Random!

Some videos for you

check this stuff out. two totally different, yet totally amazing videos:

Video 1: freakishly flexible ladies singing about potato salad:




Video 2: have you ever wondered how different it would be to boil water on earth vs. in space? Well since I'm sure you have, here is the video to show the difference: