Book Club Tea Party

This is a very exciting post. It's my first post using my iPhone and the blogger app.

I hosted book club last night. We read The Forgotten Garden (great book-see review in side bar).

Since a lot of the book takes place in England, I decided to host a tea party for our discussion.

The menu was finger sandwiches (cucumber and cream cheese, ham and cheese with fig spread, egg salad, chicken salad), English scones (cheese, ginger, orange cranberry), shortbread cookies, and of course a selection of tea.

For dessert I made phyllo cups with chocolate mousse and raspberries.
I found the recipe on Epicurious.com. I had made spanekopeta for dinner last week and needed something to do with the extra phyllo (do you say fee-lo or fie-lo?). The cups are 6 layers of phyllo brush with butter and sprinkled with sugar and hazelnut. The mousse recipe wasn't my favorite, but not bad.

(We found an easier recipe for phyllo that the kids loved this week. Put a line of Nutella along the side of a sheet of phyllo, roll up, brush with butter, and cook a few minutes. Easy and delicious. I liked a double layer of phyllo brushed with butter between. I would have taken a photo but they were devoured before I had the chance.)

Book club was lovely. Food and girl time is always nice. We had a bonus when Stephanie (fashion maven) invited us out to her car to go through the piles of clothes she was taking to consignment. Everyone went home with something new. I scored 6 scarves.

Thanks my dear friends. It was a wonderful evening. I'm looking forward to next time.

(blogger note: not sure I'm loving the app for longer blogs. The pics didn't insert where I tagged them, rather attached to the bottom. I'll have to go adjust on my computer. Also tedious typing all of this on my iPhone keyboard with one finger. This will be nice for shorter blogs with just one photo. )

Isaac's Piano Recital

So proud of him!

Red Carpet

I am a big fan of a good red carpet. I had family over on Sunday so I missed the Golden Globes, but have enjoyed the many pics online. Here is a breakdown of some of what I think post-worthy. These are in no particular order. I was too lazy to rearrange them from the order they were uploaded.



I love Tina Fey, but this looks SO 1980's prom dress to me.



Don't hate me, but I love this! I think Tilda Swinton has such amazing style. I'd like to just once see her eyelashes though.



Weird, yes. But I still really like it. Unique and flattering. It is Madonna after all.



Helen Mirren can do no wrong.



This one is growing on me. I first was turned off by the color combo and that kooky bird belt buckle. But I like the shape and texture of it. I'm giving it a thumbs up.



My girl crush disappoints. Not flattering.



Sad sad sad. My worst dressed of the night for sure.



Not a big fan of turquoise, but Heidi Klum always looks fabulous.



Beautiful! She always looks perfect. It would be my best dressed if she didn't pair it with that snotty look on her face.



Not the most flattering dress, but I love Zooey and the dress matches her cute quirkiness.



Best dressed!! She looks flawless. And she's hilarious to boot.



oh Sookie no! I feel like she thinks because she's curvy, she has to look frump.



Adorable!



There was a lot of yellow this year. I loved it.



More yellow. I love how this pops. She has the perfect skin tones for this bright color.



Nicole looks beautiful.



Oh Buffy, what were you thinking? There was also a photo of her at an after party. Apparently, this has a matching jacket. If you thought this dress couldn't get worse, you are wrong. I read that she let her 2-yr-old daughter pick her dress. That explains a lot. I think it's cute to involve the kid, but it seems like a little too much power for a 2 year old. How about, "Here are 3 dresses mommy likes, which one is best." Maybe that is how it went down. If so, I'm back to "What were you thinking?"



Love him. Love the tux. Way to mix it up from the standard penguin suit. I watched his opening monologue online. I was disappointed it was so tame. I'm usually against being mean to get laughs, but something about making fun of big movie stars who are sitting around congratulating themselves really appeals to me.



Who wouldn't want to look like this?



This is tied for best dressed for me. She looks lovely. Perfect dress for her.



Yikes Kelly! The dress is cool color, and I can appreciate a wacky design, but it's all puckered and homemade looking. Even if the dress was a knock-out, the gray hair HAS TO GO. Most of us dye our hair to avoid that color.



I have no idea who this is, but I love her dress.



Pretty color, boring design.



I have to say that I love how so many dresses had sleeves and high necklines. High school girls going to prom take note- Nobody is wearing a strapless mini-dress. Looking like a tramp is not glamorous.



Pretty! One of my favs.



I'm torn on this one. Dragon scales? yet, kinda cool.



I am enamored with the top of this dress. So cool. But the bottom seems like too much to me.



Ick. You are a purple mushroom.

Happy Birthday to Me

Check out what I got for my birthday



I love it!

It has Google Maps so you can ride anywhere in the world. The bike tilts with the incline/decline of the road. It's great. And most importantly, my feet will tolerate biking better than any other exercise.

The past several years have been rough for me in the exercise department. Plantar faciitis has pretty much debilitated me. I had surgery to correct it over a year ago, but I still cannot be on my feet for very long. They are slowly getting better, but the inability to exercise has taken its toll both emotionally and physically.

This was the solution. I am happy.

The goal is to ride 2-3 times per week and xc ski on the weekends. (We finally have snow in the forecast-knock on wood.) Interestingly, my feet can tolerate skiing better than anything. I don't know if its because my weight stays mostly on my toes, or that the movement is constantly stretching my feet, but it seems to work. My feet will hurt a bit while I ski, but the pain doesn't linger for days like when I do other physical activities on my feet. Yoga has even caused too much pain. My feet have felt surprisingly good since the ski trip last week, so I'm hoping it's therapeutic in some way, and the more I ski, the better they will feel.

I'm looking forward to a fun winter.

Annual XC Trip

Last year, Rick and I started a winter tradition by spending a long weekend cross-country skiing at Bryce National Park. It was lovely and we decided we needed a yearly ski get-a-way.

Rick got a new ski set-up for his birthday this year, and since there is NO SNOW here in Utah, we headed North to find some. After contemplating several spots, Jackson was our chosen destination. It was lovely!

Day 1: We arrived by 11AM and were pleased that the hotel let us check in early. We made a sandwich for lunch and headed out for a short ski before it got dark.

We headed over to Moose Wilson road into Grand Teton National Park (the annual National Park pass has served us well this year!). With no new snow for several days, the main trail was pretty torn up, but once we got off on a side trail, it was wonderful. We skied to Phelps Lake and had the trail almost to ourselves. The temps were below freezing, but with the air perfectly still, we were unzipping our coats and taking off our scarves once we got moving.

Some of it was pretty steep, but we managed. I admit, I'm very out of shape, so after a couple of hours of skiing, I was ready to be done.


Day 2: We headed up to Colter Bay. It was completely frozen and we enjoyed skiing across the snow covered ice. We left the ice and skied around one of the peninsulas for a bit, but came back across the water when we realized we were heading in the opposite direction as the trail we had planned. (Also, we had to ditch two other skiers who were following our trail. Hello? We are the only ones out in this huge area- go a different direction! Can you tell I like the solitude of xc skiing? :) ) We ended by finding a trail on the shore and skiing around the back of the lodge to the car.

Self portrait: us, Colter Bay, Tetons, my finger.


Skiing across the bay.



Tetons across the frozen bay. Breathtaking. The snow was sparkling in the sunlight and my hilarious hubby said, "Look, the ground is made of vampire skin."



On our drive back we had to stop and snap a couple of photos of the sunset.


Day 3: Since the town shops closed early evening, we spent Saturday morning walking around town. The last time we were in Jackson was just before we got engaged. That trip was when we both knew we'd get married and started making plans. It was fun to go back into the jewelry stores where we had looked at rings. We also enjoyed some art galleries. Neither of us are really into Western Art, which is typical of the Jackson galleries, but we fell in love with these guys.


Tim Cotterill is known as the Frogman. He makes bronze frogs that come in various sizes, colors, and styles. We decided we'd love to start a collection. This guy would be our first piece.

After another pb&j in the hotel for lunch, we headed out to ski. With our late start and the longest ski planned, we were a little concerned about time and light.

We skied to Jenny Lake, which was our favorite ski of the trip. The trail was pretty flat and, again, once we were off the main trail, the snow was great.

Over the river and through the woods.



Sorry for the bad photo. I just wanted to show that the snow was deep! Rick is in to his thigh and not touching the ground. Nice to know that there is snow somewhere.



Rick with Tetons in background. That little cloud stuck around the peak all day.

This day turned out to be more of an adventure than we planned. For part of the route we skied on the frozen river- at least we thought it was frozen. We could see some water on the ice up ahead so we decided to move onto the shoreline. Just as I was about to side-step up the bank, my ski fell through the ice. Because it was so cold outside, the water immediately froze around my ski when I pulled it out. (Yay for waterproof boots so my feet didn't get wet.) It took us a while to get all the ice off so I could ski again. Brrrr.

Darkness fell about halfway back to the car. It turned out to be perfect as the full moon came out early and bright. It was a beautiful ski back with the snow glistening in the moonlight. Rather romantic.

Sunday we went to church then headed home. We stopped in Randolf to have dinner with Aaron and Crystalyn and to see the new baby, Olivia. I love old friends! It was so fun to catch up and see their cute family.

I can't think of anything I'd change about the weekend. It was perfect!

Back Again

I was reading some old posts and decided it's time to recommit to the blog. I've had these good intentions before. We'll see how it turns out this time around.

I stopped because I was feeling the need for more privacy, as well as a bit overwhelmed with all the changes in my life- marriage, step-kids, moving, hubby starting school, etc. I think I'm in a place now where I am ready to re-engage.

It's been an eventful year since I last posted. Perhaps when I'm looking for something to post about I'll catch up on some vacation pics, etc. Perhaps not. We'll see. :)

The goal is to blog once a week. I just updated the list on the right with my latest movie and book reviews.

It's a start.