I bake pies and wake the dead; I live a very sheltered life

Two things.

One, I love Pushing Daisies and the fact that I own both seasons on DVD makes me smile.

Two, I made a pie today and it was delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I'm going to show you the pie making process through pictures. My camera is currently MIA, so these are from my cellphone and aren't very good quality. But enjoy anyway!

I decided back around Halloween that I wanted to bake my leftover sugar pumpkin into a pie because I've never baked with fresh pumpkin before and it sounded intriguing. I only just got to it this week because today was the only day I had time to fit it in, between both of my jobs, my excessive sleeping, and my ever busy social life. But fit it in I did and it was so fun.

I started off by cleaning out the pumpkin guts and cutting it in half.



After it was baked, the next step was to scoop out the pumpkin and use a potato ricer to mash it up to a fine consistency good enough for pumpkin pie.



Mix that with all the spices and sugar and you get...



The most time consuming part was making the pie crust. I couldn't seem to get it wet enough to stick together so it wouldn't crack. But eventually I did it and I was able to roll it out and get it into the pie pan.





Then I prebaked the pie crust and then filled it with the pie filling. I ended up with more filling than could fit in the crust, but that's better than not having very much.



While the pie was baking I used the extra pie dough to make these cute leaves and acorns to put on the slices of finished pie. I think they're darling.



Freshly baked pie, right out of the oven!



When the little leaves came out of the oven, I sprinkled sugar on them and stuck them back in for one more minute and they came out looking like this



The finished pie turned out great, despite dark brown crust!



Of course, no pumpkin pie is complete without whipped cream! Homemade is the way to go.



Over all, it turned out awesome.



And seriously? It was so delicious.



Mission accomplished.

I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink...

It's no secret. I love Halloween. I love everything about it, the costumes, the decorations, the scary movies. I just realized I lied. I don't like everything about it. I don't like scary costumes and haunted houses. Scary movies? Yeah. I can deal with that. Haunted houses? Nope.

But over all, I love Halloween. It's one of my favorite holidays. This year I was scheduled to work the closing shift at Brookstone and I wasn't really thrilled. It turned out to be the most fun I've had at work, though! I got to pass out candy to the mall trick or treaters (and there were HORDES of them!) because I'm sweeter than Eric (he told me so.) Then Daniel put on the Comfy (the Brookstone Snuggie. Check it out!) and he and I had an all out battle with the power popper. It was sweet.

I closed off the night by playing a couple card games at Chad's house. We didn't stay all that late because the night before Halloween we stayed out playing Mafia until 4:30AM. We're ridiculous.

I love Halloween. I love my friends.

Let's give thanks today

I want it to be Thanksgiving. I'm in the mood for pie and turkey and potatoes and gravy and home made cranberry sauce. It sounds like a delicious meal I could eat a ton of right at this very moment.

Good thing Halloween is this weekend and I love Halloween.
I love Holidays.

I think I have super powers

So this weekend I got sick. I've got bronchitis and it's become a real pain in the bum because I've had to miss work at Brookstone two days in a row and I've stayed home from several ward activities (it's crazy how many activities they can have in just three days.) Today I woke up being able to breathe much easier than yesterday, but unfortunately it's become much more easy for me to cough. If I pay attention to my breathing and accidentally breathe in too much, too cold of air, or too slowly/quickly, I cough like there's no tomorrow. I cough so much that I've got sore muscles surrounding my abdomen. It's terrible.

To avoid being awake and conscious of my breathing, I slept as much as I could today. I slept until 2PM, wake up for a grand total of about half an hour beween 8AM and then. It was glorious. I felt lazy and accomplished all at the same time. I didn't even know I had it in me to sleep that long. I'm convinced it's a super power of some sort.

You can call me Koala Girl.

FACT: Koalas sleep 22 hours per day

About those missionary boys...

I've been noticing an increasing trend lately: missing missionary boyfriends. Not just missing, but pining for him and talking about it incessantly.

Now, I understand the missing deal, it's hard to be away from someone you care about deeply for two whole years and only have letters and, if you're lucky, emails as a way to contact him. However, I don't get why we're throwing tantrums and spending so much time hurting by being apart from these boys.

Do we not understand why they go on missions? We must not really get it otherwise we would be jumping for joy and praising the Lord for the good choice these young men have made to serve Him. Granted, I don't have a missionary boyfriend, but I do have a very, very dear friend with whom I was romantic with and consider to be my missionary out there and I miss him a whole heck of a lot more than I voice.

There's a whole website devoted to missionary girlfriends that has pages and pages of cute package ideas and different ways to make the time go faster and I think they've got it down pretty well. So here's a list of Do's and Dont's they have on the site that I think we could all learn a good lesson from:

Do!

- Be positive and uplifting in letters!
- Write frequently!
- Stay in contact with his family!
- Respect mission rules
- Talk to him about cool things happening with you
- Let him know you're praying for him
- Ask him questions about his mission
- Be a friend as well as a girlfriend
- Remind him you're proud of him!
- Stay close to the spirit while he's gone
- Have a goal in mind if things don't work out
- Treat him like a normal person
- Keep his letters and keepsakes!! He will be glad you did!
- Be consistent, in all areas. It's impressive and attractive
- Share spiritual experiences and your testimony.
- Stay in contact with his family as much as you can
- Hang up pictures of him to remind yourself what you're waiting for!



DON'T (this is the more important one)

- Tell him you want him to come home. (or tell anyone else that)
- Tell him about your latest boyfriend or crush
- Talk incessantly about the future with him
- Demand his full attentions
- Be disappointed if his letters are shorter than yours
- Be upset if he doesn't have as much time as you to write
- Get hung up about fairness---his first obligation is to serve the Lord
- Make a promise you don't intent to keep
- Say you're waiting unless you mean it
- Forget his first priority isn't you
- Expect that you won't be attracted to the opposite sex while he's gone
- Expect a lot period. Be cautious how you proceed at all times.
- Harass him because of lack of leadership positions or baptisms...sometimes the greatest convert of a mission is the missionary himself!
- Expect that he will make up for what you lack in the spiritual department...try to grow right alongside him.
- Ask him about girls in his mission. Just..no!
- Tell him that he's missing out by not being at home, or any other negative comment
- Threaten to stop waiting for him if he doesn't (blank).
- Forget his family at home is alive. Try to contact them when you get a chance and just say hello. They will appreciate it!



Here's my advice to you, missionary girlfriend: Get distracted! Take all that energy you put towards pining after your boy towards school, work, learning a new instrument, saving money to go travel the world, writing a novel, the peace corps, ANYTHING. If you find something you enjoy and will fill all the time wasted over missing him, it'll make those two years go by much quicker and you'll feel accomplished and proud! Trust me, I know. Sam's been gone for nine months already and every time I think about it, I nearly fall over. It seems like yesterday. But I've finished a semester of school and I've been working so very hard and making a ton of friends and staying out all night doing stupid things like playing risk and having wii tournaments. Have some fun. Don't put your life on hold; he wouldn't want you to waste two years doing nothing while he's off having two of the best years of his life.

Appreciate what these boys are doing. Support them. Don't distract them, encourage them. It's the very best thing that we, while waiting and loving from afar, can do.

I'm falling apart

I've become the over emotional girl I never wanted to be. I've been having break downs every couple of days. I'm breaking and I don't know why.

Taking a Risk

So there's this board game called Risk. It's a pretty heavy duty strategy game all about world domination and playing every turn in the very best way you can, since one mistake can turn the fate of the whole game. Obviously, it's a pretty masculine game, it being about conquering the world and all.
Well, last night I was planning on going to play volleyball, but it turns out volleyball is next week, no this week. Instead, the guys came over and we ended up playing this game. It was me and four guys, Jonny, Jeff, Jason, and Robert, playing and then Rick was overseeing as "Zeus". Risk kind of helped me out a bit, but most of it I was going to do anyway. He had to talk me out of a couple things, but over all, I did pretty well. I'm the champ at rolling. The boys started calling me Lady Luck. I think I'm just good at rolling.
In the end, it was me and Jonny going head to head. I won. I'm proud of myself, even if they did do a couple stupid things that lead to my victory. I still won.

It's about time the world had a female dictator.