Harry potter dreams? 0_o

I love Harry Potter, both the movies and the books (the books more of course). The latest installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 is hands down my favorite. Therefore it can only be concluded that I'm just as excited for part 2 as the next person. Apparently I'm more excited than I thought because in the past two weeks I have had, count 'em, three dreams about Harry potter-ish stuff.

Not the guy Harry Potter mind you. He was always suspiciously absent in my dreams, but about different plots that happen. From what I can remember, most of it is during the battle at Hogwarts. I'm usually running around battling Voldemort's minions with Ron and Hermione. Now I know what you're thinking, maybe YOU'RE Harry Potter, but I don't believe that's the case. At least....I don't think so. After all I don't want to be a boy in my own dream! These dreams would have been absolutely delightfulsome if it weren't for the fact that my magic is rubbish in my dreams. Every time I tried to cast the Incendio spell (lights an object on fire) or the Reducto curse (blasts solid objects aside), (no wimpy Stupefy for me, I mean business!) nothing happens!
I remember trying to cast spells with all my might and absolutely nothing happened to Bellatrix! It's embarrassing! If, in fact, I am our scarred hero in my dreams I'm letting him down big time!
I remember what part that I thought was cool was during my third dream, Hermione was secretly casting protective charms around Snape. Definitely makes sense considering after all this time he turns out to be .........(I'm not saying in case anyone reading this doesn't know how the story ends haha)
Naturally I told P about them. He was rather disappointed to hear he wasn't in any of them but what can I say? I have no control over them and if I did I certainly would be able to do my share of magic! Have you ever had a crazy dream before? Or maybe two or three?

Hike and Geocaching

  P and I decided to go for a nice hike today. The weather wasn't the greatest but still a nice day. Something P and I love to do together is look for Geocaches. Geocaching is sort of like a world wide treasure hunt. People all over the world hide containers in different places and then send out a hint and the coordinates to the location and then people put them in their GPS system and set out to look for them. Once they find them they sign the log and often people will leave little trinkets for people to take. But the rule is if you take something you have to leave something.

My friend Amy introduced me to it a couple years ago and I in turn introduced it to P. He loves it just as much as I do. It's so exciting to find them. People who don't know about geocaches are called "muggles".

We weren't able to find the one we were looking for today so we'll have to try again later. The walk was really beautiful. It was nice to get out of the house and explore trails in the mountains. Luckily a love for hiking and camping is something P and I have in common.

I grew up in Indiana and we lived across the street from a state park. One of my family's favorite activities was hiking the trails and walking along the creek bed. It took us awhile to get anyway because my oldest brother loved to build dams along the creek so we always had to stop and wait while he built them up. To this day he still loves to do it.

Halfway through our hike, my camera's batteries died. I'll have to remember to bring extra next time. Oops!

If anyone wants to learn more about Geocaching, here's the website: http://www.geocaching.com/

sunshine

Because it's drizzling and yucky outside I'm going to share a couple of my favorite outside pictures. The first is a picture my friend Hal took when he was coming down his driveway in the always beautiful state of Tennessee. I love this picture! Thanks Hal for letting me use it!

This second picture is one I took last night while I was leaving work. I love the way you can still seen the sunset through the pine trees.

Scotland

These are two of my favorite pictures that I've taken. They were both taken in Scotland when I went there on a trip with two of my friends in between semesters at school. Sorry about the poor quality. I only had a film camera back then (2004) and I had to scan them into my computer.

The big dinner

Well last night was a big night for me. I was asked to take care of the food for a party of around 100 people or women I should say. It was suppose to be elegant but easy so I jotted down a couple buffet ideas and decided on a taco one. Everyone likes tacos right? Especially ones you put together yourself.

We were celebrating the birthday of our Relief Society organization for my church so I wanted to make is special for everyone but also keep the casual feel of the party. We went food shopping on Monday and then I spent Tuesday creating the cute little add ons such as the candy vases in my last post etc....and then yesterday I spent the morning making sure all the meat was cooked and gathering all the boxes I had saved to use to create the layers underneath the table cloths. I also used our phone book (obviously not for it's original purpose, who uses phone books these days?) our Settlers of Catan game, some big books of mine and a shoe box my slippers came in. I wanted the food to be on different levels because I think people get tired of the regular thing.

My mom let me use her beautiful ivy which helped balance the casualness of the tacos with the elegance of the evening. I'm not sure why they picked me to be in charge of it, I mean part of it is because they know I like to cook but I also think they had a feeling I would enjoy it. They were right. I've never done anything like this in my life. At first I was very flattered and also a little surprised but I was grateful for the challenge and the tons of help I received. What was the most interesting thing for me was after a couple days of thinking about it, what I eventually created was what I saw exactly in my head.

I'm really proud of how it turned out. I couldn't have done it with all the help I received. Everyone was so great with asking me what I needed help with and if I liked it this way or that. I'm also grateful they completely turned the reigns over to me even though there were so many more experienced ladies out there. I kinda had a vision I guess you could say of what I wanted to do and they helped me make it happen.

Everyone was so gracious with their compliments and really made me feel good about my work. One lady even commented I should do parties and receptions in my spare time. (haha I don't know about that!) I just really wanted to make everyone proud. Especially my family and my mom but more importantly I wanted to make P proud. He has always believed in me and supported me in everything I do and so I knew I could do this from the beginning. Thanks again for everyone who helped me do this small, but to me big, project and especially to my mom who loaned me some of the decorations. :)

So tomorrow we're having a big dinner and fireside for our relief society and I'm in charge of the dinner. I found this amazing way to display flowers and since I had the square vases I couldn't resist. I'm going to display them on the tables with the food.

The color theme is white, blue and gold. I went to every store I could think of to see if there was any elegant golden candy out there but I didn't find any. I did however find some gorgeous silver chocolate covered almonds. I'll have to find a use of them someday so I can justify getting them!

Here's the link if anyone's interested to see how to do it, it's very simple!
http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/diy-flowers-candy-filled-vases

My favorite dogs

Today I'd like to pay a quick tribute to some of my favorite dogs in my life. First and foremost, our family dog. His name is Conner, he's a Dachshund/Corgi mix and the sweetest dog on the planet. He has the quirkiest personality and has an uncanny ability to know when he needs to curl up to someone.

We just recently found out he goes more than a little crazy when you pretend you're looking around and saying 'cat? Where's the cat?'

This is my boss's dog Marley. He's a white lab and still a puppy. She brings him to the office every once in awhile so we can all say hello. He's such a sweetheart and a big goof ball.

The students love it when he comes to the office which isn't very often. He's very friendly and loves to play with anyone that will throw his toys and pet him.

This is P's dog back home. I had so much fun playing with her when we were there visiting. She's been in P's family for a little while now. I really love labs. P and I hope to get one or two someday.

My friend Amy adopted this adorable Italian Greyhound and named her Milly. She's our team mascot for street hockey.

This sleeping hound is known around the neighborhood as Bosco. He is Suzy and my little brother's dog. I think Daniel rescued him from the pound (?) He has a gentle soul and is featured in many of Daniel's excellent photoshop scenes.


*Not represented but still on my list are my brother's two little dogs Dunkin and Brick. Also Ginger, Black Dog, Gertrude, Snickers and Charlie aka Good luck Chuck.

Setting up for Easter!

At our house, Easter has always been a fun time of the year. My mom always hauls out the Spring decorations and soon our house is filled with beautiful pastel colors and fun Easter decorations. For us, we like to keep the focus on Christ but my mom has always made sure we had fun Easter baskets and treats as well. Since I'm newly married and living on our own, my mom has graciously allowed me to pick out some of my favorite decorations to use to decorate our little home with. These are just some snap shots I took of what I've used so far.

Tacos

Today was a kind of let's have tacos with chicken that's been soaking overnight in a simple marinate of brown sugar, soy sauce, and pineapple with juice and then wrapped in a cooked tortilla with green onions, tomato and lettuce with cheese sort of day.

It's about time I posted some of our favorite wedding pictures on here. All our pictures taken here were down by my fantastic friend Stefanie Versey. She did our engagements, my bridals and of course our wedding day.

Taken by Jen Summers