Let it Snow

David and I have been living up Emigration Canyon with his parents since May of last year, and it's been working out wonderfully so far. It's really nice because it stayed at least 10 degrees cooler up here during the summer, the leaves actually started changing color in September (when they're supposed to, in my mind), and we're pretty much immune to the nasty inversions the Salt Lake valley gets in the winter. What I was not prepared for, however, was the snow. At the beginning of December, it snowed about 2 feet at our house!

I had never seen this much snow outside a ski resort in my life! All of the snow up here has definitely made driving an adventure. David works in Park City, and Parley's Canyon rarely gets plowed decently, so he takes the Jeep up there most of the time, which leaves me the 2-door, 4-cylinder Yaris to go down the canyon. I have spun out more times than I care to admit, and have probably thoroughly annoyed all of the other canyon residents lucky enough to have 4-wheel drive who are also just trying to get to work. Oh well - I go 20 miles per hour and drive in second gear and do just fine.

Halloween 2009

Yes, yes, I realize that it's January, but I just got these pictures (finally!) onto my computer and wanted to post them!

Anyway, David and I hosted a Halloween party in October, for which we made mountains of food and decorated the house like mad. Halloween is tied with Christmas for David's favorite holiday, simply because he gets to decorate the house. :) Here are a few pictures from our party:

I tried out a lot of Halloween crafts this year, and one of the ones I loved the best were these pumpkin candles. They're surprisingly easy to make - you simply use a drill to hollow out the middle of the pumpkin and drop a small tea light inside. I loved them because they looked cool, and David loved them because he got to make a craft using a drill.

David and I like to dress up as a couple, and this year we were Cleopatra and Marc Antony. With a lot of help from my mom, I made both our costumes, and we were the self-appointed winners of our own contest. :)

For food, we made double chocolate chip cookies with Reese's Pieces, witch's fingers, caramel pecan twists, chocolate noodle spiders, 7-layer dip, and swamp water punch.

We're attempting to make this an annual tradition for our friends, and also to make the parties themselves so fabulous that no one will dare not come! We definitely had a better turnout this year than last, when three people total came, and at different times. Since we're not in Provo this year, several of our friends who couldn't make it down to Utah county made it up the canyon.

The Steed Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was blissfully uneventful, just as I hoped it would be. I have been staying up much later than I should all this week (and failed to break the cycle last night), so I was looking forward to sleeping in until around 10:00 am yesterday morning; unfortunately, Nolan, our dwarf bunny, had different ideas. He was hungry and bored - a deadly combination, so he gnawed on a toilet paper tube for a few hours before I got up and fed him. By then, I was already awake, and got up at the ungodly hour of 9:30 am. :) I proceeded to clean the bunny's cage and the cats' litter box, and was about to toss the cats in the tub for a bath when David woke up, which was incredibly fortuitous. If you ever decide to give a cat a bath, never do it alone - you need someone to hold them captive in the tub while you scrub them down.

On Wednesday night, David and I made a new dessert to take to everyone - pumpkin cheesecake squares. They were delicious. Next time we'll let the cream cheese soften a little bit more - the idea was to swirl the pumpkin batter and the cream cheese batter with a knife, but the cream cheese ended up in big globs and some people ended up with A LOT more cream cheese than pumpkin. Oh well, everyone seemed to love them anyway.

We went to visit my parents before Davids' family's Thanksgiving. We arrived just as they were finishing the dishes from their feast - perfect timing, in my opinion. We looked through the holiday ads in search of Christmas present fodder, and then drove back up the canyon to enjoy our own feast. It was excellent. My mother-in-law cooked two turkeys, so we all ate very well. After dinner, David, his brother, and two cousins ran upstairs to engage in some post-Thanksgiving dinner zombie killing, and his adult relatives went to watch "Land of the Lost," which meant that my only viable option was to help my mother-in-law clean up, which I didn't mind. I never mind cleaning other people's houses - it's my own that makes me balk. The evening was spent watching for sightings of the mysterious creature that now lives in the backyard. Guesses as to its identity include flying squirrel, pack rat, sugar glider, and - my personal proposal - rat/squirrel hybrid.

All in all, it was a nice and relaxing day with lots of good food and family - just as Thanksgiving should be.

Workhorse Debut

Guess what? My new fashion blog, Workhorse, is up and running! Click on the button on the margins of this blog to check it out!

New Blog

I must admit that I have neglected this blog as of late. I really must find a way to make my life more exciting so I have something worthwhile to post every now and again. As it is, my life is rather dull. I go to work 8:30-5:15 Monday through Friday; David goes to school Monday through Friday, goes to work before I get home, and comes home to do homework just when I'm about ready to go to bed. He's obviously frenetically busy, and I must admit that I am jealous in a way. I've been the one who's had a million things to do and only time to do ten for the past I don't know how many years, and now that I'm done with school and just working, I don't know what to do with myself. I'm antsy. And my job is not the most thrilling in the world - it's really difficult to drag myself out of bed every morning knowing that I'll just go sit in an ancient swivel chair for eight hours waiting for other people to post the pictures and details of their far-more-exciting lives. I need a hobby, but hobbies cost money, and I don't have any of that.

Actually, I lied. I do have several hobbies that don't cost money: doing dishes, vacuuming, cleaning my house, watching anything on the Food Network or TLC, and fashion. I've discovered that researching the latest fashion trends, finding cheaper alternatives, and blogging about the whole experience keeps me from actually spending money on fashion. So yes, this is a shameless promotion of my new blog, Workhorse. It's not quite up and running yet, but when it is, plan on more shameless promotion! I have several fashion blogs that I already follow quite religiously, but realized that the same phrase kept popping into my head as I read: "That's adorable, but I can't wear that to work." So, for all you ladies out there who work in a professional, office environment, this blog is for you! Look for it starting next Monday!

Moving Up

Check out the new header to our blog! I am a photoshop wizard. And irrationally proud of myself. :)

Life, etc.

I promise that I will write about David and my Halloween party soon! Consider this an interim post. I just thought all you avid followers out there (one of you being David) were wondering how our lives were going. Even if you didn't, you're going to find out anyway. :)

October flew by. And now it's November. I have been trying to prevent David (rather unsuccessfully) from listening to/singing Christmas music for the past month. The snow came early, and he was already singing "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas." Except when he'd sing it, he would only get as far as "It's beginning to look a lot like..." before glancing at me, receiving a scathing glare, and finishing rather timidly with "...autumn." Before you label me a scrooge, allow me to present my defense. I am thoroughly opposed to what I refer to as "steamroller-ing" holidays. You know what I mean - Halloween isn't even over before the Christmas decorations are up, Christmas has barely passed before the Valentine's decorations are up, etc. There's a reason there's usually only one holiday per month: they're supposed to last the whole month. I would argue that Thanksgiving is the most underappreciated and unrecognized holiday of them all. It's also the only holiday that the world hasn't been able to commercialize; it is difficult to turn gratitude for blessings into something monetarily profitable. Hah, take that, consumerism!

In my husband's defense, however, there aren't any Thanksgiving songs except "One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians," and that gets old fast. When I would protest to David singing Christmas songs in October, he would say, "But you're supposed to have Christmas spirit in your heart all year long!" and I would respond, "Yeah, but not in your vocal chords!" Now that it's November, however, I've told him that I'm still opposed to Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but if singing it actually does help him be more charitable, compassionate, and kind, he's welcome to sing all he wants. :)

In other completely unrelated news, I read an article that said that during economic recessions when budgets are being cut, cops give out more tickets to make up the difference. I can personally testify to the veracity of this analysis. I got a speeding ticket about two weeks ago, and went down to the courthouse to contest it today; no dice - five miles over the speed limit, $90. I suppose I'll just call Wells Fargo and tell them that I can't pay the student loan this month because the state of Utah is in a budget crunch and is extorting money out of their taxpayers. I'm sure they'll understand.