Getting bikini ready...for winter...I know...

Alright, this little mama (or non-mama as it were) needs to get her butt in gear. 

I look down while going to the bathroom and my little fat padded stomach is starting to sit on my legs!  WHAT?!?!  I didn't even know that was possible!  And no I do not think I'm fat.  However, I'm definitely not skinny and fit anymore.  What happened?  It's not like I went and had a bunch of babies or found a new love of McDonalds eew.  I have no excuse! 

So, I've decided I'm back at it.  Granted, I've been at this same place a lot over the last year and a half, but I'm ready! 

Here's the plan:

1.  Running.  I love it. I hate it.  I love it when I'm in shape and my hips don't hate me.  I hate it when I'm just starting out and I can't even run a mile.  Pathetic!  But I'm going to start slow...really slow...and see how I do. Also, Tank is really fat and needs some exercise badly!  :)

2. P90X.  (Or Insanity if I can talk Aaron into letting me buy it!)  I need something that will tone and stretch and strengthen on my off days of running. 

3.  Don't quit Tyann.  Please don't quit! 

Here's some motivation for ya...





Happy Workout!

Triple Salted Caramel Cupcakes

YUM!!! 

Every second Friday of each month at work we get together to celebrate the birthdays of that month with delicious cakes/cupcakes/pies etc. 

This month is MY birthday!

(and Nicole Cantrill's but lets be honest, I'm mostly excited about mine!)

I made these salted caramel cupcakes a couple months ago and they were a hit.  When I asked Nicole what kind of cupcakes she wanted she requested these without hesitation!

So, after staying up far too late last night to get these done, here is the finished product. 

Homemade caramel cupcakes with homemade salted caramel filling and homemade salted caramel buttercream drizzled with homemade salted caramel sauce and sprinkled with a touch of sea salt at the end. 

(Now do you see why they took so long to make?! And no, they are not too salty even a little bit.  They are just perfect!) 

--On a side note, the flavor of these cupcakes is divine.  However, they are extremely dense and don't raise up well in the oven.  Once I find a way to remedy that these will probably be my favorite cupcakes!!!--

Awkward and Awesome

I've seen Awkward and Awesome posts on quite a few blogs lately.  Can I just say right now that I love it?  Sometimes it's the best post of the week. 

So who am I to break the tradition? 

Here goes...

Awkward:

• Waking up to a dog standing on my hair and licking my face.  Umm, can I have my head back please?  Thanks!
• Going into a liquor store for the first time in my life to buy alcohol that I won't be drinking only to have the lady decide not to sell it to us.  Spouse had his ID but if forgot my wallet at home.  It probably didn't help when she asked my birth date and I stuttered over the date.  "Lady, please sell alcohol to this guy who's probably buying it for this girl who's probably under age.  Please?"
• Having your 2 year old dog sit on your lap for the first time after being neutered and realizing that it's just a empty flap of skin on you.  Yes, I just went there. 
• Accusing someone of doing something that they adamantly deny and then finding out that they actually didn't do it.  Oops, sorry person!
• Realizing that I've got a true honest to goodness addiction to pinterest.  It's a hard realization!

Awesome:

• Realizing that I've got a true honest to goodness addiction to pinterest.  It's just one of those joys in life!
• Having the spouse call you up and invite you to lunch on a work day.  Why yes kind sir, I would love to have lunch with you!
• Hooters hot sauce.  Have you had hooters hot sauce?  If not you need to get in the car right now and go to walmart, pick up some popcorn chicken from the freezer aisle, grab a jar of hot sauce, and go home immediately and make it.  Seriously, you need to do this.  Or you can just go to Hooters, either way.  It's delicious!
• Being married to my amazing husband for almost 5 years now and knowing that our anniversary is in 1 week!  I love you honey!
• Wearing my super comfy Toms to work.  What?  You can totally rock the Toms under a pair of black slacks!
• Awkward and Awesome Thursdays.  They're totally AWESOME!

See, I told you you can rock toms and slacks!

It's the small things...

Over the last two days there have been the most gorgeous sunrises. Ive got a thing for sunrises and sunsets. Every time see a good one I kind of think it was made just for me. It's the little things that remind me most about the love that our Heavenly Father has for me.

Fondant

I made my first ever fondant cake! Yay! I think I've been drooling over pictures of fondant cakes and dying to try to make sugar flowers (and watching Cake Boss and Fabulous Cakes of course), etc for about two years now. I was just too terrified of how hard it might be. I did make some fondant about 6 months ago with the intention of making a birthday cake for work...but then it just sat in the fridge unused. I was scared to screw it up. I've never even eaten a fondant cake for goodness sake! I had no idea about the consistency or anything like that, but I finally had a reason to jump in head first; my niece Maliah's birthday.

I don't think I've ever been so excited and so frustrated all at the same time before. (Seriously, fondant's kind of hard.) The cake itself was no problem. It may have something to do with the fact that I used a box cake. Don't judge, I wanted to make sure that the cake would at least taste great even if the rest flopped. But the fondant. Oh the fondant. Maybe it was because it was home made, maybe it was because it had melted marshmallows in it, or who knows, maybe that's just how fondant is, but it was so sticky! It doesn't look that sticky on tv! I had to use a TON of corn starch to make sure it didn't stick to the counter. (Ya, that happened a few times.) And picking it up to place it on the cake takes a master I think. But I managed. See...

Isn't it BEAUTIFUL!

Aaron even helped by rolling that little bottom border around the bottom. He's so talented!

Then, I got to make the sugar flower. Oh my, that was so much fun! Looking back I should have made a bunch to cover the top just because it was so much fun to make. ...next time. But I had so much fun making that flower. It was seriously a BLAST.

I definitely learned some things (DEFINITELY) and would probably do some things different the next time around. But I'm already looking for my next opportunity to make a cake. All in all, I think it was a major success!

Anybody have any birthdays coming up and want an amature like me to bake them a cake? Just throwing that out there.

Getting Caught Up

Can you tell that I'm not a true honest to goodness blogger by the inconsistancy of posts.  I think it's been over two months now since my last post...WOW!  I just thought I'd get you caught up with a few things that I intended to post about but never did. 

First, I made my first ever fondant cake!  Yay! I think I've been drooling over pictures of fondant cakes and dying to try to make sugar flowers and watching Cake Boss, etc for about two years now.  I was just too terrified of how hard it might be.  I've never even eaten a fondant cake!  I had no idea about the consistency or anything like that but I finally had a reason to jump in head first; my niece Maliah's birthday.

I don't think I've ever been so excited and so frustrated all at the same time before.  The cake itself was no problem.  (It may have something to do with the fact that I used a box cake.  Don't judge, I wanted to make sure that the cake would at least taste great even if the rest flopped.)  But the fondant.  Oh the fondant.  Maybe because it was home made, maybe it was because it had melted marshmallows in it, or maybe that's just how fondant is, but it was so sticky!  It wasn't actually that bad but I had to use a TON of corn starch to make sure it didn't stick to the counter.  (Ya, that happened a few times.)  And picking it up to place it on the cake takes a master I think.  But I managed.  See...

Then, I got to make the sugar flower.  Oh my, that was so much fun!  Looking back I should have made a bunch to cover the top.  ...next time.  But I had so much fun making that flower.  It was seriously a BLAST. 

I definitely learned some things along the way and am looking forward to my next opportunity to make a cake.  All in all, I think it was a major success!

Graduation? I never thought this day would come!

This post is a little late but...


He did it!

Aaron is finally graduated!  This was a day long in the making and well worth the wait.  I'm so proud of my graduate!

Aaron's parents weren't able to make it for his graduation but my Mom and Dad were able to come down for the weekend and I'm so glad they did.  It was so nice to have their support and to have them to help us celebrate.    

So here's how our day went {it was a busy day}:

We woke up really early because Aaron had to get there by 8:00.  Ok maybe that doesn't count as "really early", but on a Saturday morning...it's early.  We woke up, had a nutrition packed breakfast consisting of Coco Puffs, then Aaron and I headed out the door.  Aaron left to meet up where ever it was he was supposed to meet and I got in line.  5th in line by the way, yay me!  That's how I know I was there early!  Then I got in and found seats and I waited, and told people "yes, these 8 seats are saved" over and over again until my parents showed up about a half hour later.  Then my sister Jenny showed up with her family at about 5 minutes to 10:00am.  It started at 10:00am.  But they made it! 

When all the graduates came in and graduation started, we were able to find Aaron in the crowd but he couldn't find us.  So what did I do?  I turned on the strobe light on my phone until he finally saw me {ducking my head in shame}.  The graduation ceremony was actually very good and had some great speakers.  Oh ya, also super cool, we had the "BOISE..." "...STATE" cheer going with the graduates.  Apparently that was the first time that has ever happened at a graduation.  Ya, we're that cool!  I was so ecstatic to see him receive his diploma.  And his family was able to watch it live over the internet so that was really cool.  I'm so glad they got to see that all the way from TEXAS!


After graduating we snapped a few pictures...



This one is my favorite!!!



This one isn't far behind though...



...then we headed to TGIFridays where Mom and Dad bought us a celebratory lunch.  {Let me just instert that the Jack Daniels burger is AMAZING!}  Thank you guys!


After that we went home and went to my niece Trinity's birthday party (2nd one that week :) ).  Then after a long busy day we finally got home and crawled into bed. 


I'm so proud of my graduate!!!  Thanks to everyone who helped get him here.  I love you spouse!

Waking up...

This post is a little personal but I figure that the people who read my blog already are close to me and won't mind.  It's also seemingly inconsequential but it certainly didn't feel like it to me at the time, and even now looking back.  It all started with my dream last night. 

It finally happened, I got my miracle.  My prayers had been answered and I was finally pregnant.  It was such a blessing.  I understood my Heavenly Fathers plan for me and all of that waiting finally made sense.  You know how sometimes dreams are just a jumbled mess and don't make a whole lot of sense?  Well this one wasn't like that.  This one made complete sense.  I couldn't wait to tell Aaron!  The complete JOY of it was amazing.  It was the best feeling!  Through the dream I kept going from family member to family member telling them that I was pregnant and it was amazing.  It was like real life, I just went about my days.  I was pretty protective of my belly but I was so happy!  This dream lasted the whole night... 

...and then I woke up.  It was such an instant disappointment and heart break that I couldn't believe I had to wake up and come back to reality.  Why couldn't my dream be my reality?  I just wanted to go back to my dream.  It left an ache and a hole that stayed for most of the morning.  When is my time? 

I didn't write this so that people would feel sorry for me because that's not what I want.  I'm more content and at peace with my situation than I have ever been.  Although right now all this waiting doesn't necessarily make sense yes, I know that God has a plan for me and I just have to be patient.  I've been promised children and I know that He will follow through on his promises.  I know it will happen at some point and I know I have been blessed in my patience and in my faith.  I feel very similar to my sister and how she is feeling in her own life right now.  She is praying for a miracle but isn't sure if it coincides with God's will and I am doing the same thing.  I think all we can do is keep praying in faith for our individual miracles until God's will is revealed to us.  This isn't a poor me post for sympathy, this is a post more for me than for anyone else.  This is what I'm feeling and I needed to put it into words.

I love that man!

Aaron had to go to school the other day to work on an essay and left me home all alone which was kind of a bummer.  Around 2:00pm I went into the kitchen for a snack and saw this little note on the microwave:

How cute is this?

Then I opened up the pantry, still in search of a snack and saw this on our whiteboard that is hung up on the back of the door:

I love his little reminders that show me how much he loves me. 

I LOVE THAT MAN!

Thankful

I have a friend who inspired me to do this (thanks Chelse). I get caught in a funk sometimes and can't seem to find the beauty of my day to day so here's what is making me happy today:

• I didn't straightening my hair today and I am LOVING the simplicity of it...even if it is poofy and wavy and probably not attractive at all.
• The ability to breathe at work.  Today was not a busy or slow day, just a perfectly breathable day.
• I'm getting a nightguard today.  For most of the world, this wouldn't be on their list.  For me, I'm so excited.  I spend every second of the night clenching and causing so much damage to my teeth that everyone at my dentists office knows who I am.  No, this is not a good thing.  So I am definitely thankful for this one.
• Aaron graduates in two weeks.  YAY YAY YAY!  I wish I could explain how happy this makes me.  No more stress of class and all nighters and essays for him.  And when Aaron's happy, I'm sooo happy.  
• Aaron told me that when he got home today my boys, dogs, kept going back to the garage door waiting for me to come inside too.  I love that they love me!  :)
• And most importantly, I am so thankful for my spouse.  I have the best man and my best friend as my husband.  He is so good to me and is so funny and so attentive and so handsome and so AMAZING!  I'm seriously so thankful for that man and that he balances out my crazy.  He hugs me when I need it even though snuggling hurts his back.  He always makes sure I have a lunch to take with me to work and makes me dinner when I've had a long day.  He wipes my tears when my heart breaks.  He laughs at my jokes even though I know I'm not very funny.  I love you sweetheart, thank you for being mine!

It's so easy for me to forget all of these amazing things and having to list them out like this was kind of hard.  But I'm glad I did.  I can't wait to get home and give Aaron a big fatty kiss and show him how grateful I am for him.