Hair Donation!

It's been in the planning stages for quite some time, but now it is done.

I cut off all of my hair!!!

10-11 inches gone.

In just a few snips, it was gone!

And now it's so short and light! 

I probably lost 5 pounds in a matter of minutes!

The only down side to this endeavor is that I will now suffer from bedhead.

I think I'll manage!

Some lucky cancer patient will receive a great new wig!

Merry CHRISTMAS!!!

Instead of trying to get cards to all of our friends and family and risking neglect and hurt feelings, we have emailed and blogged our Christmas card this year!

Click to ENGLARGE

YAY!!!
So right now I'm 9 weeks along.
And I realize that some of you may have suspected before now given a seemingly non-chalant remark regarding "ginerale and saltines," however, I regularly eat saltines and ginerale when I am not feeling well.
Also, this is not really a true indication of how my preganacy is going so far. It's really been quite mild.

So we'll keep you updated on how things are going, and you're welcome to follow along!
We're really excited about this new adventure, and we're glad that we can share it with you!

Grades are IN!

So, only one pre-Christmas and After Thanksgiving post to say that the grades are in and I've GRADUATED!!!

SCREENSHOT!

There's lots of white space after the grades, but yay!!!!
I improved my GPA by .01!!!
I'm graduating Magna cum Laude!
YAY!!!

So, as far as my baking desires and plans, all is being fullfilled.
Mom and I are mking oreo and cake balls, some coconut chocolate bars, various cookies, apple and pumpkin pie, and who knows what else.
It's going to be great!

So until Christmas, have  great time preparing for Christmas!

Adventures in Baking

So remember that little list at the end of my last post?
Well, this week I began checking off some of those items.
First I made the Cranberry Muffins with Orange Marmalade Glaze.
They were DeLiCioUs! Especially while they were still warm and fresh! So good and easy that I forgot to take pictures.

Then, I made the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.
What a fiasco! I have never before made a bad cookie! I will NEVER use this recipe again. The author of this particular recipe attempted to make the cookies healthier by using less sugar. And maybe I did something terribly wrong in translation, or there is some little tip that she forgot to mention in her directions, but my cookies were awful.
Making them was fine.

This is a very typical pre-baked cookie shot. 

One would never suspect that something was wrong.

They came out like this:

They look like normal cookies, but not like normal PUMPKIN cookies, which really isn't the end of the world.

The flavor was great--enough pumpkin and spice, but they weren't puffy. 

And even when I baked them longer, they were still a little mushy. I deduced that this was the result of too much pumpkin.

My solution was to add a tad bit more flour. 

The next batch (3rd--pumpkin recipes make TONS of cookies) was less doughy, but still not puffy.

So I added maybe an 1/8-1/4 teaspoon more baking soda. 

And those came out like this:

As you can see, more poofy, but not really enough. I baked the last 2 batches without further adjustment because they tasted fine. 

Then, to my horror, after fully cooling, all of the cookies took on a dry-overly-floured-almost-sour (like baking soda) taste. This included the first few batches of cookies. 

All in all, I probably messed up huge somewhere. And the amendments I made to the recipe probably added to the chaos, but I honestly don't think that 2 Tbs of flour and 1/4 tsp baking soda would really make cookies that tasted that bad.

I've made pumpkin cookies before, and they were fine. I obviously just don't agree with this recipe.

So I threw away probably 30 rock-hard, too-much-flour tasting cookies.

That was sad.

But I have 3 more 29 oz. cans of pumpkin, so I'm bound to try again sometime.

So, wish me better luck in future baking endeavors. 

We'll call it all part of a learning experience :)

How to Be a Lego Pirate

Warning: There are lots of pictures, but honestly, words are not enough for this coolness!

So 11 days ago I was a Lego Pirate for Halloween!

No, I can't take all of the credit for my ingenious idea.

My friend Tanya Sanders always has super clever Halloween costumes, and once she was a blue lego piece. Thinking this was awesome, I decided to take it a step further. Peter had recently found a pirate lego key chain. This was it. I could still be a person and a lego!

So I enlisted Peter's help and we got to work--which all seemed to take place late at night.

He Measured &

 He Cut

 And then he Glued

 Checking for fit

I must say, I think I make a sweet pirate!

And then there was painting. This was my first experience with spray paint. All I can say is it was tiring and didn't work quite as well as anticipated. Oh well.

 I totally wrote lego on the back using a ton of painting tape--doesn't work quite as well with drippy spray paint.

I used a "Marks-A-Lot" Marker to fix the weird spots, and then it was finished!

Me after finishing:

I painted my face in the morning--Lego men are yellow. It wasn't quite the right yellow, but options are limited when it comes to Halloween makeup. Then there was also the problem of getting it off. It was on there good!

 And me in full costume at work---where I won 1st place in the costume contest!!!

So there's my sweet Halloween-spirit.
Now that it's the second week of November, I'm definitely in the mood for baking.

Things I intend to make very soon:
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Braided Cranberry Bread
Fall colored Oreo Balls
Sweet Potato Casserole
Apple Pie
Chicken Divan

It's all going to be so delicious and you should all be jealous!

I live in the Wilderness!

You'll appreciate this dad!

Check out what I saw outside my window just an hour ago!
(click on the pictures to make the BIGGER!)

I'm pretty sure that's a WILD PHEASANT!

If it's not wild, then it has escaped from somewhere, but it's in my yard!

How cool is that?!

I tried to take a picture when it was still close and in the open, but

of course the camera focused on the rain/snow spots on the outside of the window, so I had to sneak outside.

By the time I got outside, he had moved into the taller

grasses.

When he left, I took these cool pictures.

When I was interrupted by this:

Yeah, that's a wild deer! Haha.
S/he just stood there and looked at me for a little while while I took pictures of her.

Then she walked away and either started jumping or stamping at something--I couldn't see, but HOW COOL!

And just one more picture of the beautiful cool fall/winter morning here outside my front door!

It's a FLOOR!!!

It's not over, but the entry way floor is complete!!!!

This is us laying down the first of many squares! We used self-sticking vinyl. It was really easy to use and looks pretty good in my opinion. We'll see how it lasts.

This doesn't really fully reflect the true glory of the now finished (minus the molding--it'll be done in a few more weeks) floor, but this is a small taste. I'll amend the situation when I get home again : ) You can also see a bit of our painting job in this picture.

So, Tuesday night, at about 8 pm, we started and worked on laying the tiles together, but we weren't able to finish before 11pm. So we called it good and cleaned up for the night.

Wednesday evening while I was at work, Peter FINISHED! He was responsible for cutting all the edge pieces to fit perfectly against the wall--much harder than just lining up 2 already cut squares.

This is Peter cutting out a cardboard guide for going around a door frame:

And some pictures of progress!

We're on the Ward Activities Committee!

So, this happened 3 weeks ago now.

We're awful at blogging.

My reasoning is that every time I was online and had time to blog, I didn't have a memory card reader, and so I couldn't upload the pictures that I wanted to post. Yes, I could have blogged anyway and said something about posting later, but I didn't think of that until now.

So without further delay, here is the record of our part as Ward Activities Committee Members:

First, 6 jellyroll pans of yellow cake

Each pan holds 1.5 boxes of cake mix

And then there was rice!

Yes, there are 3 large, Costco size boxes.

Each contains approximately 37 1/2 cup servings.

We planned to serve 250 people because that is 1/2 of the ward. The task of cooking rice and cakes was divided between one other Sister and me.

I only cooked for about 125 people. Ward members were asked to bring rolls and salads--fruit and green. We also had a whole pig that was cooked in the ground all day long with hot rocks.

Here is his head!

So with all the variety in food, we had about 6 pans of rice left after the party. (about half the amount we made)

Peter and I brought home 2 pans of rice and one cake.

One rice and cake for the guys at school, and one pan of rice for us. We also had 1 cake because 5 pans of cake requires 8.5 cake mixes. I, therefore, added my own cake mix and had 6 pans.

The rice and cake at school were gone within 2 days.

At home we still have half a pan of rice, but the cake started to mold before we got more than half way done.

Posts that are more recent will likely follow shortly--or possibly not

Mouse Found!

After Mel came home from work, I was just trying to read in bed, when Melanie yelled, "Peter, come here!" I grudgingly went to see what the matter was when she said she heard something in the snack basket.

I heard it too! Something was in there, but we didn't want to find out. Finally, I manned up and took the basket out back and when I set it on the ground, the mouse leaped out and ran across the deck. How did it get up there in the first place?

Mouse in Our House!

Monday night I fell asleep before finishing my homework, so, not surprisingly, I naturally woke up in the middle of the night to finish. Walking into the kitchen for some water, I saw a blob float across the back and down the side of the counter. I'm used to seeing spiders do this, but this blob was bigger than a spider.
Being the big girl that I am, I got a flashlight and started looking around the fridge where I saw the blob fall to.

I found a mouse standing on one of the wall logs looking strait at me beside the fridge!!!

I did not scream, but I did wake Peter up at 3 am to console me.
So, ever since Monday night we have found "evidences" of the mouse in more and more places. We've set traps with peanut butter, but nothing yet. Each morning the mouse (I certainly hope it's only one) has explored a new part of our house. I feel like nothing is safe. I don't know how, but he manages to reach all sorts of seemingly unlikely places.

So, how long should I expect to wait for this mouse to be trapped? Am I doing something to encourage the mouse to stay, or to stay away from the traps--besides the obvious and inherent danger of traps?

Happy Birthday Me!

I just had my 27th birthday! Time flies. I had so much fun with my family, both in Salt Lake and our party at home. We went up to SLC for a wedding reception and to Logan for a baby shower over the weekend.

So, while we were up there, we had my birthday party too! We went to Jordan Commons and had dinner in the theatre. It was fun; I had never done it before. It was a bit hard to eat in the dark. I didn't even think of that. After the movie we went home and had cake and presents. I got Star Trek Voyager from Mom. That will take a while... But I finally get to watch it in order! I got some of the tools I have been wanting from Melanie, yay!

On Sunday, Mel and I had a little party at home. I got loads of cool stuff. I got some german books to improve my vocabulary, some more tools and a couple model train cars. Check out my new train!

I loved this birthday and I thank everyone who wished me a happy one! Yes, that means all you who sent cards and those "posted on your wall" emails from Facebook. Thanks all!

Storm!!

We had quite the wind storm today! Good thing we had nothing planned tonight but to sit inside. Check out our wavy trees in the video. This is life and "The Lake".

Problem Solved!

Finally, after weeks and weeks of fiddling, I have solved the big issue that is keeping my thesis from moving forward! Thanks to Mel for letting me stay at work late :). Now I can move on to actually doing things that will be interesting to write about.

A Moment to Brag

Yes, my grades were FINALLY posted this morning! And in case you can't read that very well, it says "A" in both of my summer classes!!!!!!!! (Click on the picture to make it bigger) Not to mention my increased GPA of 3.88!!!!!!!!!!

So summer semester was good to me. : )

I was so anxious all this week because my professors said that grades would be entered by Monday. Apparently UVU doesn't let students see the grades immediately--very disappointing.

Now we're just waiting for financial aid to come through.

School starts on Wednesday, we're celebrating Peter's birthday next Saturday, and then it'll be right back into full school-work schedule one last time!

It's Over!

My first ever (and last) college summer classes are over. I can't say finally because they didn't last long enough for me to wish they were over. I woke up this morning happier than I have been in a while just knowing that I had absolutely nothing to worry about today: no reading, no papers, no presentations, no work!

So now onto all the things I wish I had time to do all summer long! I've got a week and a half to prepare for Peter's birthday, get books for fall semester, learn to use my sewing machine so that I can makes some repairs that have been waiting since about May, organize pictures, scrapbook, watch movies, read, etc... I'm also working a few more hours this week. It'll be good to get a bit more money so as to compensate for the minimal hours during the next four months. I'm not worried about it. I'm just glad that I can do whatever I want and not worry about deadlines. That's the beauty of part-time jobs--absolutely no outside commitment.

Grades will be posted on Monday. If it's good, you'll hear from me! : )

The Disaster (almost)

Today I had one of those gut wrenching, life altering disasters... My hard drive apparently had no partitions on it! For those that don't know what I am talking about, it just means that windows didn't think there was anything on the drive.

All my photos, all my music, all my videos, all my documents, and all my wife's of the same were, apparently, gone. After a half hour of hopelessness, I finally just gave up and decided to try a data recovery firm. During church I realized that I DID backup at least my pictures, but not for the last 8 months. What a disaster!

After church, I miraculously found a possible solution. Apparently Windows 7 didn't give it a drive letter. BLEH! All that worry for nothing! Now, my pictures are being backed up as we speak. Also, we are planning how we are going to keep them backed up. What a crazy adventure. But, through all of it we realized that it doesn't matter if we have the pictures, just that we have the memories and a future. All is well in the Lieber home.

Swarms

Since the thunderstorms, our front yard has been the choice for swarms of "midgees". What are they, you ask? All I know is that they look like mosquitoes and swarm like mosquitoes, but don't suck blood (thankfully). They are so annoying though! Chack out this picture; you can barely see through the thing!

From The Lake

Our little adventures

Hey Mel, lets write down and post pictures here of all our happenings! We can post web links, pictures, and write down how our house flooded and the midgees are attacking. Remember the hailstorm? Yah, crazy stuff.