Red Pepper Pasta

Admittedly, I am not the best cook. Nor do I cook dinner every.single.night. bleh. BUT I am trying. I am making a conscious effort to make homemade meals more often, and cooking healthier/cleaner meals. Last week I cooked 4 nights! That's huge for this girl who would gladly welcome a McDonald's cheeseburger and call it dinner on any given evening. Also, I am making a conscious effort to use the fresh food in our house before it goes bad. (Rocket Science, guys...seriously) I am proud to announce that I am also improving in that area as well! So you could say my efforts in the kitchen are going pretty well... So from our New England kitchen to yours here's what we had for dinner tonight:

Menu: Ed Giobbi's Red Pepper Pasta & Edamame

**A few tips: I skipped the basil because we didn't have any in the house. Still tasted great. The crushed red pepper adds a lot of heat without much, so be careful is you're not super into spicy. 

Hopefully you make this and it turns out as well as ours did! It was a super easy meal to throw together and the husband loved it. Kudos to C-Smack killin it in the kitchen!

Elder Evans

Well a week ago, Ethan became Elder Evans and left the country. He is currently in London, England where he will remain for the next 2 years for his mission. It was so hard to let him go, but we are all so happy that he has made the decision to serve our Heavenly Father. He is a really great guy and we will miss his sense of humor around here, but the people of London will get to experience it which is lucky for them. He seriously is hilarious. But we are proud of him and look forward to his letters each week!.

Happy 23rd Birthday to me!

July 31 is my birthday, and for some reason I still get super excited to celebrate. Maybe it's just the excuse I need to throw a party for myself. Regardless, this birthday we had a little get together.

The day was casual and started with the gym. Since moving in with my parents, I hardly ever get to go to Zumba with my friends, so I made it a goal to get there that day. It was my birthday, and no one was going to stop me :) after Zumba I made my birthday cake, which took forever! I have been wanting to try to make the minion cake that I have seen on Pinterest, and yet again, my birthday was the perfect excuse. My mom felt bad that I was making my own cake, but that is exactly what I wanted. So I did. And I loved every second of it!!

Finally that evening, Tay threw me a family birthday party with Pumpkin Belgian waffles with peaches and cream. So delicious!! We had our family over to celebrate and it truly was the perfect birthday. Also, Zack sent me videos all day long of people in Pittsburg wishing me happy birthday and they are hilarious. I'll try and post some so you can all witness the greatness of this!

Bluebird Cafe

So Tay's mom works at Sundance which means we get the hooks ups on occasion. A few weekends ago, we got invited on a double date with Tay's parents to the Bluebird Cafe. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but Tay seemed excited about it so I agreed to go. It's always nice spending time th his parents and be date ideas are somewhat hard to find.

We went out to dinner at Cubby's which is this new place down in Provo that people have been thing us to try. It was so good! Tay and I both had the heart attack, and that menu item has never been more accurately described! It was a spicy hot dog/briscuit sandwich and it was delicious. I'm pretty sur I gained 5 pounds from it instantly and my arteries got clogged with each additional bite, but it sure was good. After dinner we headed up to Sundance.

I don't know if I'm just naive,but just in case, Bluebird Cafe is where song writers go to show off their stuff. They sing the songs they've written, share the back stories, and if they have been lucky enough to have a famous artist cut them.

I seriously loved this so much! It was three country song writers who came, and I recognized so many of the songs! The songwriters sang songs by Miranda Lambert, Brad Paisley, Kip Moore, Joe Nichols, Kacey Musgraves and so many more! It was so fun to hear how they got their inspiration for the songs and to hear the songs as they were originally written.

One of the funniest parts of the night was when we walked to our seats in the amphitheater, Kat and TJ were sitting on the same row. So ironic, but so fun to share this night with them as well!

Exciting Things in Our Lives

Said goodbye to this babe...

And welcomed this gem to our family.

So tons of great (and a few not so great) things have happened in our little family I've the last month. I guess that's my way of announcing a post that will probably be too long...

So here it goes...

We finally sold Bella! My car which was a 2003 Eclipse. We loved her while she was around, but a few things about her were a little bit hard to love

1. She only had 2 doors
-- aka she was not family friendly, and anyone who knows me knows that I've been baby hungry since Tay proposed. So that was a big reason why we had to let her go.
2. She was TERRIBLE in the snow.
--And considering that we are moving to a place that gets 3 feet of snow overnight, we chose life.
3. She was low to the ground.
-- this really wasn't that big of a deal to us, but we did not like having to do a deep squat to get in and out of her every time we wanted to go somewhere. Also, I'm pretty sure I pulled a hamstring while getting out of her one time. Not ideal.

That being said, we knew we wanted something different. Four doors and 4wheel drive were our only two real requirements. We wanted good gas mileage so we were leaning towards sedans like a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, but we didn't really are. We started looking around and I sort of fell in love the idea of a Honda Pilot. I felt like it was perfect because it was reliable, great in the snow and gave us plenty of growing room. Turns out those babies are expensive(!!!) and really hard to find with a decent amount of miles on them. So we kept looking and stumbled upon the Honda CRV. It was also great in the snow, great on gas mileage, and I think it's super cute. We looked at dealerships and they were all super over-priced (shocker, right?), but that allowed us to get in a few and test drive them. Let me tell you- we found love that day. As much as we hated the guys trying to sell us the car, and the awkward sales pitches where they tell us what a killer deal they are giving us, it was nice to get thrum down on our new dream car.

Fast forward a few days and a few hours of searching KSL and we got ourselves a new CRV! We go it from a private seller, which is rare, but we love it! It has been the perfect addition to our family.

One Year Down...Eternity to Go

Yesterday we made it to our first anniversary! It is so weird to think that our wedding was already an entire year ago! It feels like it just barely happened, but at the same time feels like we've been married forever. In order to celebrate this occasion we decided we needed to get away. Living with my parents is great and all until you need some time alone- and then it's a slight nightmare. Well not a nightmare; but just not really possible.

So Tay and I decided that we would rent a hotel for an evening up in Salt Lake. We opted to stay at the Hotel Monaco which was so amazing! It was classy and swanky and we loved every second of it. One of my favorite parts was that we got to stay in a King sized bed which was such a treat for us! I could sleep on my back with one of my knees up and Tay still fit in the bed too. It really was incredible.

So Sunday night we went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory at City Creek Mall. It was so good to be together for a night out. We then went back to the hotel for the evening. This morning we woke up with the intention of going to breakfast, but ended up having a lazy morning in which I was totally fine with! Sleep is a rare thing for us these days, especially for us to be able to sleep in together. As soon as we were ready to roll out of bed we showered and put on the zebra robes they gave us and sipped on fancy juices. We then got ready and went to lunch at one of Tay's favorites: Tony Caputo's. It was once again, delicious.

All in all it was so nice to be together on our own. We were able to just hang out and be lazy and have a good time. Getting away from our everyday life and spending time together was so special. It took me back to our dating days when we were carefree. Life is good and we are more in love than ever!

Happy Anniversary to us!

Busy Bee's

After having put in 5 hours at work by 10am, we were feeling a little tired

Before Tay and I got married I had this idea that marriage was going to be the best thing ever. And it is! Except for the fact that just being married automatically makes you 10,0000 times busier. I don't know what happened, but since getting back to our normal lives together we hardly have time to see one another. [Maybe its the multiple jobs that we have...who knows... ]

Lucky for us we come home to each other after the long days work and then hang out for a few minutes before passing out.

Married life is wonderful :)

Although most days multiple jobs stinks, we occasionally love it because we get to cater an event together. For some reason, work is a lot more tolerable, and dare I say enjoyable, when your spouse is there with you.

This morning was one of those occassions where we worked together. We had to get up early because it was a breakfast for a golf tournament which started at 5:30. So painful! But we made it out alive and even managed to have a few laughs [and naps] along the way.