Okay, scratch that other post, I finally figured out my color scheme. :)

If you check my blog in the next few hours, please don't be alarmed by the poor choice in color scheme. I'm trying to get it fixed.

Twilight

Kenny and I went to see the Twilight movie last night and let me tell you...it was a ZOO at the theater! We drove by at 6:30pm to get in line to get tickets for a late night showing and the line was wrapped all around the outside! We went and got dinner then went back and stood in line to get tickets for the 10:50 pm showing. We figured that late showing shouldn't be bad, but it was packed! We stood in line for half an hour with flirty teenage girls all hyped up behind us...that was fun.

Now for the review (if you don't want it to spoiled even a little bit then don't read the next paragraph in bold):

Kenny and I thought it was really good. It followed the book really well and I thought the actors, for the most part, fit the characters. I think they demonstrated the realness of starting at a new school, or the start of a relationship very well. It also had some good humor and some good action. I didn't go in with real high expectations because you can't really do that with a movie produced from a popular book, however I think they did a good job. I wasn't really disappointed.

Now back to real life, I am celebrating the start of my Thanksgiving break, although it won't be much of a break. My teachers decided to pile on the homework and I have tons due the week we come back. I am very frustrated! So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I will pretty much be doing just homework. BREAK is definately an OVERstatement! Oh well, at least I have Thanksgiving off! :-) I did take my Molecular Biology final exam last Thursday (my teacher wanted to end class early in the semester) and that felt good! I am not sure how well I did, but it's over! YEA!

Clarification

For the post below I want to clarify one thing. The chocolate lab puppy, Izzie, is not the same puppy as the puppy of the owner of whom we think broke into the animal hospital I work at. Just wanted to clear that up in case there was any confusion. So, no, Izzie is not linked to a crime suspect!

Deer meat, pumpkin pie, puppy, and a break in

We've had an eventful weekend! Friday after school Kenny, his friend Josh, and I cut and wrapped Kenny's deer. Josh works at Del Monte so he knew how to cut it up right. :-)

What's left of the deer.

The plate of meat being made into jerky as we speak...or whatever.

We were able to get 3 roasts, 9 round steaks, and 16 backstraps. We also got 10 lbs. of salami and 6 lbs of jerky--these are being made at Del Monte. We already have the salami and it is really good with cheese and crackers! :-)

Kenny and I bought two pumpkins to carve for Halloween, but we never had time to carve them. After we got the meat cleaned up I decided to try my hand at making a homemade pie from scratch. I found a recipe online and got started.

Kenny cut out a section of one of the pumpkins for me.

I cut it into chunks and boiled them.

While the chunks were cooling from being boiled, I made a pie crust...without killing myself!

In the meantime, Kenny was tired of waiting for pumpkin pie, so he decided to make cookies.

I then mixed all the pie filling ingredients together (mashed pumpkin, evaporated milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and brown sugar).

I then poured the homemade filling into the homemade crust.

And baked it.

Well, it doesn't taste as good as pie filling from a can--it was a little too squashy-tasting and not as sweet as I like it. But I did it! :-)

Saturday morning I had to go into work for an hour or so to take care of the boarding animals. Then I went up to help Kenny on a job taking out and putting in a retaining wall that runs along a driveway. This was for the neighbor of an older lady that Kenny does some random work for every now and then. This was a lot of work! We had to pull out old, rotting railroad ties and then put up a 3-high wall of concrete, landscaping blocks. It turned out looking so good, plus we made some good money! :-) This is not a picture of the wall we built, but one I found on the internet; however this looks similar to the one we did (same color even, but ours had one less row).After that I had to go back to work to take care of the animals again and decided to bring home a puppy! Let me es-plain. This puppy was brought to the animal hosptial a couple weeks ago by a couple of hunters who found her on I-15 between McCammon and Inkom. She had road rash and a broken leg, but no tags or a collar or anything. So the doc treated her and we've been taking care of her since. Her name is Izzie, she's a Chocolate Lab and has the prettiest blue/green eyes! I wish we could take her, but we just can't right now. We've been trying to find a good home for her, so if anyone knows of anyone who wants a chocolate lab...she is a very good puppy, will need lots of exercise, and a big fenced in back yard. :) I just decided to bring her home for the weekend so she could have some interaction with other dogs. Also so she could play around rather than just sit in a dog run all day, every day. She does really good with our dogs and she's been really good in the house. Isn't she so cute?

Here she is watching Chevy eat. The splint should be coming off in a couple weeks.

Community Animal Hospital

Today (Sunday), Kenny and I were getting ready for church and my manager called me to tell me that someone broke into the animal hospital and released all the dogs to the outside. So Kenny and I went over there to help look for the dogs. I was the only one who knew what one of them looked like because the owners dropped off their two dogs for boarding Saturday evening and I was the one who checked them in. We had treated one of their dogs before, but not the other one. When we got there, they had already found two of the dogs, but 3 were still MIA. So Kenny and I drove around looking for them. One was found while we were driving around, and we found another one--the one that I knew what it looked like--and Animal Control helped us catch him. So both of the dogs that were dropped off Saturday evening were found. The 3rd dog is still missing. This puppy is a long story, and the most likely suspect to this crime is this puppy's owner. If you want the whole story, call me. The hospital's front door was all broken up, but nothing was stolen...kind of suspicious! Anyway, it was an interesting Sunday. I'm glad that we brought Izzie, the puppy, home with us Saturday cause who knows if we would have been able to find her!

Our Halloween

For Halloween, Kenny went deer hunting as a last attempt since it was the last day of the deer hunt. I went to my classes, but it was alright because a girl in my program brought a big bad of candy--the good stuff! So we were all high on sugar, thus making classes on Halloween more bareable. :-) Later that afternoon we went to do more deer hunting with our friend, Mike Nestler (yes, Julie, the same Mike you and Craig know--he and his wife, Desirae, who is from Marsh Valley, are in our ward, plus I am Desirae's visiting teacher). I didn't have a tag, plus I didn't feel like hiking all over, so I just stayed in the 4-Runner and worked on homework. The guys came back well after dark, but Kenny also brought me back a little something! Finally!

So when we got home, Kenny finished gutting it and strung it up under our back patio--a nice little treat for the trick-or-treaters. We only got one set of trick-or-treaters...maybe that's why...hmmm.

Kenny was pretty excited. It was a little 3-point buck, but you can't really tell there's three points unless you look fairly hard.

For the rest of our evening we were going to go to Mike and Desirae's Halloween party, but I was starting to get sick with a cold, so I wasn't feeling well. Plus, I didn't want to share it with everyone at the party. So Kenny and I just watched a movie and waited for trick-or-treaters who never came (we had the good stuff too!). Oh well. Halloween isn't what it used to be, especially when you're too old to go trick-or-treating, and you don't have kids to dress up and take trick-or-treating. And, no, we don't dress up our animals!

What do you get???

So....What do you get when you have lots of these....

...one of these....

...and one of these...???
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Applesauce and...

...fruit leather!!!!

A BIG thanks to all those who helped me get to this point in my life! I'd like to thank my Aunt LaDean for her willingness to give up so many of her apples for us and for letting us borrow her Victorian Strainer. We would have never accomplished this without her! I'd like to thank my brother, Ryan, and my Mom--my mom for giving Ryan the dehydrator to make jerky with, and Ryan for leaving it here at our house...it has helped us so much! (tear, :*-/). I'd also like to thank my co-worker, Teresa, who gave us the idea, after our third attempt, to use parchment paper to put the applesauce on before we dried it, instead of just slapping it on to the trays (who'd have thought!). And my husband, Kenny, for his support through this grueling process, and for being there to pick me up after three attempts of making leather that just stuck to the trays! Thank you all for all of your support! (Sniffle)

My Saturday at home...

I had a Saturday at home today, something I don't get very often. So what did I do?

1. Friday night Kenny and I stayed up late watching "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (yes, it's even more corny now than it was over fifteen years ago).

2. I slept in til 9am while Kenny got up early to go deer hunting with his friend Cade

3. I tried to study, but that wasn't working out

4. I made yummy Baked Potato Soup (Julie's recipe, I think) so that there was a good lunch for the guys when they got home from hunting

5. I also baked some Caramel and Cinnamon Rolls from a recipe my mom gave me:

These are the Cinnamon Rolls that I made festive by dyeing the frosting orange. :)

These are the Caramel Cinnamon Rolls

6. I cleaned the house, a much needed task to be done

7. I put up Halloween/Fall decorations! I haven't had time until now and it's been driving me crazy because fall is my favorite season (especially since I saw Aunt Shelley's decorations on her blog)!

My Fall village

Do any of the Baums recognize the pumpkin on the right? It is a cookie jar lid that Grma. Baum painted in 1987. Unfortunately I don't have a cookie jar, so it is just a shelf decoration. It was one of my mom's Halloween decorations that she gave me. Also, I painted the kitty on the upper shelf many years ago at Grma and Grpa Baum's and I remember getting upset because mine didn't look as good as everyone else's ceramics, so Julie helped me "spruce" it up. I've been happy with it ever since--I guess big sisters can be useful sometimes.... :-)

The "Pumkin Patch" was made by my mom, Julie, and me quite a few years back also. That year we made a whole bunch of Halloween decorations, but over the years they've gotten broken or lost or something because this is the only one I have left of the ones I kept.

And then you have my little ghost hanging from my fan.

8. Then I took a nice, long shower (sorry, there are no pictures for this one)

9. Now I am blogging, waiting for Kenny to come home from his evening deer hunt

It was a good day, even though I didn't study as much as I should have, but oh well, I needed a break. :-D

The Front Fell Off

My friend, Shelley, emailed me this video and I thought it was hilarious, so I thought I would share it:

SEPTEMBER

It has been a very busy month for us! At the first of the month, Kenny's sister, Tabitha, got married in the beautiful Rexburg temple to James Monson. While we were waiting for them to emerge from the temple we noticed a small bat just hangin' out on the side of the temple, so I had to snap a picture.

The middle of the month I made Kenny a nice dinner since I don't get to do that very often. I thought that I would try Chicken Cordon Bleu since I had never made it before. I found a recipe online that worked with what I had for ingredients. I made a pasta salad and a caesar salad to go with it and dinner was delicious! I recommend the Chicken Cordon Bleu:


SIMPLE CHICKEN CORDON BLEU

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast

4 slices Swiss or Provolone cheese

4 thin sliced smoked ham

¼ cup all-purpose flour

1 egg; beaten

1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs

4 tablespoons butter

½ cup chicken broth

1 cup whipping cream

Pound chicken breast to ¼-inch thickness. Sprinkle each piece on both sides with salt and pepper. Place 1 cheese slice and 1 ham slice on each breast. Roll up each breast using toothpicks to secure if necessary. Dredge each in flour, shake off excess, then in egg and finally in bread crumbs. Place seam side down in baking dish that has been sprayed with Pam. Place 1 tablespoon butter on each piece of chicken. Bake at 350° for 35 minutes until juices run clear. Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine broth and whipping cream; season to taste (salt, pepper, garlic, oregano). Simmer on low stirring until thickened; Pour over chicken.

...And enjoy!

Now before you become impressed with the salads, I must say that the pasta it "Simply Salads" from a box, and the caesar salad was one of those kits you buy at the store. I figured I spent a lot of time making the chicken from scratch, I could go easy on the salads. :-)

This last weekend Kenny and I a our friend Cade went up to Gravel Creek (east of Soda Springs) so the boys could go bow hunting. There was a beautiful sunset on our way up there, so we had to take a picture of it, but our camera wasn't wanting to give us a good picture, but here are a couple:

While the guys were out hunting, I stayed in camp with the dogs and studied...

Kenny came down from the mountain with a kill :-D ......

Too bad it was just a grouse and not an elk or a deer, but we'll take it either way--it tastes like chicken! The dogs were really interested in it too!

After a lunch of steak and a half baked potato (we tried wrapping them in tin foil and baking them in the fire, but they just burned on the outside and didn't quite get done on the inside), I tried my hand at shooting a bow at a target. It was really fun! I did as good as Kenny! He says I'm a natural, but he may have been going easy on me.

We didn't have a bull's eye target, so I drew my version of an elk and put a big heart on it to aim for. My arrow is the green-finned one and Kenny's is the orange-finned one. ;-)
I had to try it again, and again, and again...

And I finally got the heart, but as you can see, there are no other holes in the heart, meaning I'm the only one who got the heart! Yay for me! As for the rest of the trip, Cade nor Kenny got anything but grouse. On our way out, Kenny and I saw a big elk, however it was after dark, and the elk jumped a fence into a field (most likely private property), so we couldn't shoot it even if we wanted to. Sigh.

School is going okay. It keeps me really busy cause there is always reading to do, assignments due, quizzes online, exams online, and other things to constantly be researching and studying. But I enjoy my program and I've made lots of good friends. Kenny is still loving his program. He also works for his teacher helping other teachers in elementary, junior and high schools to apply for grants so they can do electronics activities in classes. This is to start getting kids interested in it at a young age. He has a lot of fun with it. Work is going okay for me. I'm not working too many hours, but that is good since my program makes me so busy!