A Fort Night

When I was younger it was always so much fun to make a fort out of a folding table and tons of blankets.  Being able to crawl into the fort and pretend I was in a castle or a cave.  Others could only come in with a password or secret handshake.  The best forts were the ones that were made with the opening built so you could watch TV with secret hiding places for food and drinks.  That is the kind of fort Elijah and I built last night in our living room!  Elijah built the fort around the couch and TV while I prepared a feast worthy of such a fort....we had popcorn!  Once the fort was complete we crawled in with our popcorn and water and watched Mr. Beans Holiday.  A wonderful night with an amazing man and a fort!!

Checking out the "Cave"

Gotta include the TV in the Fort!

Ooh you caught me!

Don't disturb the beast in his cave

A Change Of Pace

Lately it seems that Elijah and I have fallen into a rather typical afternoon/evening routine, we get home from work talk about our days, watch Elijah play Skyrim while I work on one craft or another.  Then we eat some kind of dinner watch a movie or play Skyrim.  We have been slowly becoming less active and complacent with our low activity level, which is not what we had anticipated when we got married.  Over the past few weeks we have made a few changes in that routine. We have purchased a 6 month membership to the Rec Center here in Provo so we can play racquetball.  We have been trying to play together as often as we can.  We have sustained a few minor injuries that are typical for someone who has been getting little to no exercise and then began to play racquetball like a mad beast.  Sore forearms, back, legs, neck, twisted ankles, slight bruises and jammed fingers, toes, arms, shoulders, etc.  No injuries have stopped us from playing....yet.  The best part is we have made a reoccurring play-date on Monday nights to play racquetball with a couple of our friends, Dani and Andrew.  Playing doubles is very different than playing singles but it is always exciting trying to get out of the way of other people and the ball!  
This has been a very welcome change to our routine.  We get to play together or with friends most days of the week and we are getting exercise.  I think this is an excellent change of pace for us.  I can't wait to play again!

Festival of Colors

So on Saturday we were invited by some friends to join them at the Festival of Colors.  

I had no idea what it was so I went to the trusty Wikipedia to find out about this Festival.  

As it turns out it is a Hindu religious holiday to celebrate the beginning of spring.  It is celebrated by people throwing scented powder and perfume at each other.  So of course we had to go and experience it!  We finally made it through traffic, thanks to Andrews wonderful driving, and then to the Krishna Temple grounds where we would get our own scented powder.  As we were walking to the Temple we were being "blessed" with different colors of spring from those people leaving.  After about two hours we were completely covered with the colors of spring!  

Dani and Andrew getting colored before getting to the celebration

Elijah and me before the celebration!

Me and Elijah up on the Temple terrace

Post Party Glamour 

Definitely worth every second there!

Thanks to Dani for talking Andrew into going and inviting us along for the ride it was a perfect way to celebrate Spring!

Couldn't Resist!

I watched this again today and had to share it.  I really like Star Wars and these videos are so much fun!

Darth Vader on a unicycle playing the bagpipes...Um....amazing!

She's Crafty!

Since my work week has been drastically cut I have had time to sit at home and work on some projects that I have been putting off.  One of the things that I will be working on for a while is my wedding scrapbook.  I have decided that it should be from the time that Elijah and I met to when we got married.  I have been getting quite a bit done and am happy with most of the pages so far.  I have only had to redo one of them and there is one more that might be on the chopping block but we'll see how much I still like/don't like it in a few days.  My favorite page so far is the "Falling in Love" page.  The colors I chose and the contrast of it all makes me happy. 

Another thing I have been putting off since Christmas time is the pinata I started for my brother Val who is currently serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City.  It is a Christmas tradition in the Sorensen house to make a pinata and decorate it and invite a family over to help us break it.  Well this past year I made two pinatas one for us and one for Val.  This Christmas was his last on the mission and I wanted to surprise him with a pinata.  Well I started both of them around Thanksgiving time so I would have plenty of time to get both of them done and even some time to procrastinate them both.  Well I finished the one we were going to use on the day we were going to break it.  It was a Christmas lamb.  (It looked like an albino Santa Claus)  Well I kept putting off doing Val's because he had no idea I was doing it so wasn't expecting anything.  Well Christmas came and went and I still didn't get it done for Val.  Then I decided I would give it to him for New Years.  That could be a fun New Years activity right?  Well New Years flew by and I still wasn't done with the pinata.  Then there was Valentines Day...even better right?  I could make it pink with cupid on one side and glitter and hearts all over it.  Well that didn't happen either.  So yesterday I looked at a calendar and realized that his birthday was coming up and so was the end of his mission.  So his birthday was right around the corner and I wanted to watch a new movie and not be lazy, (I tend to have movies playing in the background while I craft or clean or when I am home) so the pinata is now finished!!  A whole month in advance!  
I've never done a birthday pinata before so I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it.  Well I painted the whole thing blue because I figured blue was the color I wanted to be the base.  I then decided I would make it into a bird.  Like the blue macaw from the Rio movie.
                                        
I got to thinking about that and decided that would take way too much time and I didn't want to do it unless I could cover the thing in feathers, so when it got hit the feathers would fly off.  (Like they do when you hit a bird with your car)  So I had this big blue ball with white eyes painted on it, what could I possibly do with that?  Then it hit me!  COOKIE MONSTER!!  Of course cookie monster would be awesome for a 22 year old missionary!  So my first Birthday Pinata is Cookie monster!!  I think he is going to love it!  I have to admit I am pretty impressed with myself for how amazingly it turned out!

Triumphs in the Kitchen

 Ok because I like to cook and because I love to eat I would like to share a few moments of glory that have come out of my kitchen.  The first one I would like to mention is a pizza.  A few months ago we went over to eat with some friends of ours.  They had bought some pizzas from Papa Murphy's one of them was your normal everyday pizza and the other was a Chicago Style!  I decided that I loved it so much that I had to try one of my own.  Lately Elijah and I have been into Chicken Bacon Ranch pizzas so I made the bottom layer as a that and the top layer was pepperoni!  Fantastic!  Look at all that cheese!!  Amazing!! And so filling!  I think next time I will try a baked potato pizza on the bottom with the chicken bacon ranch on the top!  Wow could that be amazing or what!!  Now all I need to do is get a round pan so it will actually look like a pizza.

 

Next on my creation list is a grilled buffalo chicken cheese sandwich.  I have attempted these several times.  Each time with a very similar result....one huge mess.  When I wanted to make them I never had bread already made so I would make dough and make buns and after that was cooked I would put the chicken and cheese in them and try to grill them.  Talk about Epic Fail!!  Mess everywhere!  I continued to try but to no avail.  Well this time I was inspired by the empanada and this "sandwich" was turned into a empanada looking calzone.  One of these days I will attempt to actually make this sandwich like the recipe says to but until I have bread already made and ready to make a grilled buffalo chicken and cheese sandwich I will be making the empanada clazone instead.  Amazing flavor!

Last but not least....I have succeeded in making Pita Bread!  Yes that bread that seems so impossible I made on the first attempt and it turned out perfectly!!  Unfortunately we ate them so fast that there was no picture taken.  Next time (and there will definitely be a next time) I will take pictures and do one of those step by step picture thing because they are that easy and that much fun to watch!  Inside our Pita's we had chicken bacon lettus ranch and avocados.  Tonight I will be making stir fry and eggrolls and Sunday I will be attempting Orange Chicken in the crock pot.  I am so excited!!  Cooking is so much fun when things turn out like they should!  

Our Day Off Together

 Elijah and I have both been working full time for a while now.  My only day off is on Sunday and Elijah takes his days off on Sunday and Thursday.  So we don't usually get time during the week to just relax and hang out together, until after work and even then it seems like there is only time for making dinner, eating it, cleaning it up, and then going to bed.  So as a whole Elijah and I don't get to spend time just being together and doing nothing.  But this week at work our full time therapist was going to be in Salt Lake to take a myofacial class.  Without her working we didn't have any appointments on Thursday or Saturday so I asked if I had to come in and my boss man said no.  So Thursday and Saturday I have off this week!!  Before I moved to full time I had Mondays off and I would do the laundry, clean the bathroom, the kitchen and vacuum.  Now I do those things before and after work throughout the week so I had absolutely nothing to do with my day off.  Not a bad thing though, right?  Elijah had Thursday off so we got to sleep in and cuddle way into the morning.  I finally got out of bed around 9:30 or so and made breakfast for us....yummy cinnamon waffles with Nutela!  After washing the dishes and getting the table cleared off, Elijah started playing Skyrim and I sat on the couch next to him and started working on some crafts.  That is how we spent our day off crafting and video gaming on the couch in our pajamas.  Can life get better?  I submit that it cannot!


So I will admit I have a slight addiction.  There is a website called pinterest.com that has some of the most amazing ideas for cooking, crafting, pictures, or just about anything you can think of.  So I have been looking at all of the things I could be doing to make my house cuter and how I could make things myself.  So I have been making a list of things I would like to try to do.  I was able to go to Joanns last weekend and get some crafting supplies that I didn't already have.  Well this day off just gave me the opportunity to attempt some of these new crafts!  The craft of the day was our last name in yarn wrapped letters.  It took me more attempts than I would like to confess to get them looking as good as they do....still not perfect but better than the first few attempts but I like them, and in the end that is all that matters right?!  Now I am thankful I married a man with a short last name, because having to do this with my maiden name Sorensen would have been much less fun!

Here is the finished product!

I made a deal with Elijah that when I got done with the letters we would rehang the wedding pictures to incorporate my new creations.  About a month ago we finally hung our wedding pictures.  About 2 weeks after that we rearranged the furniture and the TV covered up the pictures we had just put up.  So we swapped walls now the wall behind the TV has the "Family Tree" and the The Family A Proclamation to the World and The Living Christ on either side.  The wall behind the couch now has our last name and the big wedding photo that Elijah's parents gave us and two other smaller photos.  Of course all of this is subject to change at any time, but for right now I am one happy woman!

Finished Walls!