Friday Night Perogies

This fall marks seven years since I moved to Utah from Ohio. It's hard to imagine that it's been that long! I keep counting and recounting to make sure it's right. I've really started to love a lot of things about Utah. Doug and I live in this great neighborhood and we just love our ward. Even with all the things that I really love here, there are so many things I miss about Ohio.

I'd have to say of all the things I miss, the one I miss the most is the cultural diversity found outside of Cleveland where I grew up. I just grew up thinking it was normal that every year at Christmas my mom's students would give her boxes full of fresh tabouli and an assortment of baklava, that every year we had to cancel early morning seminary for Rosh Hashanah, and that all the grocery stores carry fresh European breads and, on the other end, have a kosher foods section. It's so fun to go to my parent's house and know that if you go east to Middlefield you can be in Amish country, west to Beachwood and you'll see the Orthodox Jews walking to temple (if it's saturday), northwest to Mayfield where they teach Russian in the public school so the students can talk to their grandparents, etc etc etc.

*Sigh* Yep. I do miss that.

So what does all this have to do with perogies? Well, not too much. Except that Doug's really nice and he lets me make all the crazy food that I miss whenever I want :). It's a good thing he's not a picky eater.

So Friday night for our date night we made perogies from scratch. This was the first time I've ever actually made the perogies and I now have a lot more respect for the people who do! They weren't super hard, just time consuming. But we had fun and it was totally worth it. Yum! We now have a freezer full of perogies just waiting to be eaten.

Here's a link to the recipe we tried in case anyone wants to be adventurous and make their own! (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Ukrainian-Olhas-Varenyky-Perogies/Detail.aspx ) If anyone has a better recipe for them let me know!

The Perfect Day

I love Autumn! Just thinking about walking through crunchy leaves in the crisp, sweater worthy air just make my heart get all excited. I know it's still August, but I tend to have just as much fun anticipating my favorite things as actually living through them so I'm officially soaking in every second of pre-autumn life. On Friday I spent a good part of the evening curled up on the bench right by our big window in the living room reading a book (a task that will be so much more comfortable when I finally get around to braving the idea of covering a cushion for it. Making my own piping for the edges just sounds so scary to me!). The window was open and Georgie was perched, as she always is, watching all the neighborhood kids play on the street. Our new humming bird feeder was less than a foot from my head and I watched bird after bird come to it and not even care that I was so close (they must be pretty used to people) It was so amazing to get so close to them. The evening air is starting to get cooler and it reminded my that my favorite season is on it's way. As I sat there and soaked it all in I got pretty sure that life couldn't get much better.

A Little Taste of Hawaii

One of my very best friends from our stake growing up is now living in Hawaii with her little family. Her husband is starting his own business out there and I did a little design work for them. In return they sent us a great package full of a little taste of paradise :) Who knew there were so many different flavors of macadamia nuts? We've had so much fun taste testings each kind (I think honey roasted are my favorite... though actually the maui onion and garlic are pretty close!)

They also sent us stuff to make Spam Musubi. Yes that's right, sushi but with spam in it. It was a lot of fun to make and eat with the pretty chopsticks that came in the package. I'll be honest, it'd take me a while to get used to it enough to really like it- but I really love trying new things so even though it wasn't a sudden favorite I'm really glad I got to try it. Doug on the other hand actually craved it the next day so it did become a sudden favorite for one of us! If you want to be creative and try it out here's a link to the recipe.

Girl's Week

My sister has started a tradition of coming down to Utah for the first Monday of Education Week. I love getting to see her and going to a whole day of spiritual learning is always so refreshing.

This year my mom came out for a few weeks in August and made sure to stay so we could all go to Monday classes together. It was such a great trip. This is the first time Doug and I have had a guest room for people to stay in when they come visit and it was so fun to get some quality time with both my Mom and Marika.

Whenever I get together with just one of them we always work on some fun project. With both of them here I'm afraid we went a little craft crazy! It was a lot of fun. Our entire living room and dining room turned into craft rooms for the whole week. Our main project for the weekend were these great aprons (you'll notice the matching hot pad as well. Because I'd just hate to pull something out of the oven with something that clashed with my apron!) It was so fun, though I'm afraid I've hung my new apron behind my others. It's just too nice to actually cook in! I've decided it will be my 'company's over' apron :)

Happy End of Summer!

Today I officially finished my last invitation of the '09 Summer Wedding Season. If you could see me now, you'd be witnessing the biggest sigh of relief in the history of time. It has definitely been a crazy summer!

Doug and I went out and celebrated the end of summer with hot fudge sundaes and let me tell you- it felt SO good. The coming of Autumn has never felt sweeter-I'd definitely have to say it's now officially my favorite time of year.

Salem Days

On Saturday Doug and I went down to my Grandma and Grandpa Chris' house in Salem for Salem Days and to celebrate my Grandma's birthday. We love to go down for the grand finale on the last day of Salem Days for the auction (that's probably my favorite part) and big fireworks show. Their fireworks are seriously one of the best city shows that I've seen and my grandparent's lawn has the best view in town. So good in fact that we have to actually go claim a spot in her yard early in the day 'cause come night fall people will just wander up there to watch!

Hope you had a great birthday Grandma! Thanks for getting us have the best seats in town.

Happy Anniversary!

Doug and I celebrated our anniversary a little early this year since my family will be in town for the actual day. We had a blast! Instead of doing one nice, big day we decided to do a little something each day for a few days. One day we stayed home and watched a movie and ate Chinese takeout, the next we went up to Thanksgiving Point's Dinosaur Museum (just as a side note, Thanksgiving Point is doing $2 Tuesdays this month- you can go to their gardens, museum or farm country for $2. We'd been wanting to go check it out but never wanted to pay the $10/person so this was the perfect opportunity), and then the next day we went to see Harry Potter. It made for a really fun week without wearing me out with planning and such.

Thanks Doug for the best year- I'm looking forward to many more!

The Month of July

Ever since I got home from my mission, Julys have been a really sick month for me. How weird is that? I'll be doing so much better and then July will come and it'll be just like when I was super sick in Argentina.

weird. If this keeps up I'm going to have to start believing the people who keep telling me my health is directly affected by the phases of the moon. (strangely enough I've had a lot of people tell me that....)

So most of July was spent in bed for me watching more episodes of the Gilmore Girls than I'd like to admit. But we did end up doing a few fun things- here's a summary-

-We celebrated the fourth of July by getting an amazing tabletop grill (gotta love holiday sales) and grilling on our front porch. Doug had been saving up for a grill for a while (he's been wanting one since before we were married) so this was an exciting purchase for us. We love that it's so small we can tuck it away in the corner of our garage when we're not using it.


-We went up to Idaho for a great family reunion weekend.

- We watched the Orem fireworks from our living room (we could see them out our front window)

-We finished painting all the rooms in our house! (ok ok, DOUG finished painting all the rooms in our house- I was the one in bed watching him do it- Isn't he the best?)

Probably lots of other things... but it was all kinda a blur to me. Hooray for the coming of August! I've had enough July for one year.