Springtime beauty

I'm really enjoying all the smells and sights of spring!

Here are the words from a verse of one of my favorite primary songs that we're singing in sacrament meeting tomorrow at church. It's not in the Children's Primary Songbook, but it was from the Friend or a magazine for church/home use. It was written by Tom E. Clark and Michael G. Facer in 2006.

That Easter morn, disciples ran to see where Jesus lay;

And there they saw a miracle: The stone was rolled away!

He came for us; He died for us 

All to fulfill our Father's plan. 

On Calvary, Gethsemane, 

He sacrificed that we might live again.

It's a song with such a simple, beautiful message. I also enjoy playing it because it sounds similar to a Charlie Brown Christmas song. :)

I hope you have a beautiful Easter!

Today I'm choosing to be thankful.

I'm having a day. One of those days. A particularly moody day. However, this afternoon has been better. So in an effort to completely turn this day around, I'm taking the advice of others and remembering things I'm grateful for. Here are a few things.

Also, I just cleaned out my phone's memory. This post will probably have some old silly pictures just for fun. You're welcome.

I cannot wait to show you that finished crochet project. If you haven't figured it out, it's a doily. Now I know I'm channeling my inner old lady. And I'm fine with that. :)

And I finally got to check out The Hobbit from the library. I'm very excited to read it because I loved The Lord of the Rings so much. And Steve will be excited because then we can finally watch the movies together. Although we still might wait until they are all available.

Yes, I know it's April. But I found this pattern for wrist warmers on Ravelry, and I just thought they looked so fun and cute! So I made them. They actually turned out easier than I expected.

And just for fun, this really terrible phone picture of our Valentine's Day date to our stake dance:

And also this song. It's one of my favorites. And their outfits are super groovy. And the guy wearing the orange shirt is obviously loving life. Clearly, because he keeps swinging that french horn around and making me feel like he's going to drop it!

I hope you have a happy evening! 

What do you do when you choose to be thankful and happy?

Chunky Crochet Basket

Hey friends! As most yarn crafters do, I have an enormous amount of small yarn balls that are left over from previous projects. What to do with these? Where to store them? Why won't they stop rolling all over the place?!

Problem solved with this cute chunky crocheted basket!

I saw this cute chunky yarn basket over at All About Ami. She had seen and used the free pattern at Crochet In Color, created by Liz. I happened to have some extra chunky yarn from a project from probably 3 years ago. There wasn't enough to make a fun scarf, and there were two different colors.

I decided to give this crocheted basket a shot, simply because it looked cute, it would use up some yarn in my stash, and it would be a cute storage spot for some small yarn balls. All kinds of great things in one project! Liz does suggest you use two strands of yarn at the same time. It would make it stiffer so it would keep the shape. As I mentioned, I would not have had enough of these colors to do two at once. Even though I knew it would be a little flimsy, I decided to do it anyway. It would still serve its purpose.

I ran out of the pink (as you can see). When that happened I was glad I decided not to try the two strands at once. Even though it's a little lumpy in spots, I'm enjoying the end result and storing some smaller yarn balls in the basket. I have some other chunky yarn that I'm planning to make a blanket with. But if there's any left over, you know what I'll be making. :)

Excused Absence :: Here's the deal

I'm really sorry for my absence from this blog for like a week. It's really not that long, but since I've been posting a few times a week, not posting for over a week seems like a long time. I've been pondering and thinking about sharing about this topic for months. I finally feel comfortable sharing this with the big ole world wide web.

Here's the deal... we're trying to make a baby. :) In fact, we've been trying to make a baby for a couple years. So occasionally I get a little overwhelmed and need to re-focus. It's been an unexpected and frustrating journey so far. I'm learning a lot about myself, my hubby, our relationship, and our faith. There have been ups and downs. However, I must say that I think we've been handling the whole situation pretty well so far.

I'm not going to go into much detail right now. But I plan to share more about this whole deal more as I sort out my feelings and thoughts on it.

Thanks for your understanding and support during this. You've all been super amazing and loving.

I could not have asked for a more patient and supportive teammate throughout this time. I love my hubs dearly for his caring.

I shared this picture on Facebook for Steve's 30th birthday. Can you even handle those sweet blue eyes?
TOO. MUCH. CUTE.

Motivation Monday :: 100HappyDays

I heard about the 100 Happy Days challenge from a blog I follow: A Beautiful Mess. They have such fun and cute stuff over there, check them out. It took me about 3 seconds to jump on this bandwagon! I love challenges and ideas that will remind me to be happy and enjoy life every day! I started this challenge on March 22, and I'm going to do my very best to do this. Even if I don't do it every single day in a row, I know it will be beneficial.

Will you try it along with me?

Here is the website and registration to the 100 Happy Days challenge. Check it out and feel some happiness! :)

Then every day we can sing this song, because it makes me want to dance every time.

What I've been reading...

Howdy! Welcome back to hear about what I've been reading the last few weeks. I am so glad that I'm doing well in my goal to read more, and to read a variety of books. This set of three books was really great. I've got some new favorites.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think?

The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern Abridged by William Goldman
I've haven't seen this movie in quite some time, and I've heard this was a really good book. Why not give it a read, right? This was different than any other type of book I've ever read. It was witty and fun to read. I loved the author's sarcasm. It's rare that I laugh out loud when reading, and I was actually laughing and chuckling pretty much during the whole book. I would recommend reading the abridged version. I didn't realize I had gotten that version until I read the first few pages of the introduction. But after reading the bits where Goldman abridged things, I'm glad I got the abridged version -- because I didn't want to read 60 pages about trees. Ha!

You know this book is going to be a win -- it's a tale of love and adventure! As usual, the book brings more depth and interest to each character. The thing I enjoyed most was learning more about the "villains." I put that in quotes because I do not consider Fezzik and Inigo as true villains. But their backgrounds and inner thoughts were so nice to learn.

The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
As you can imagine, this book is good, because look at the author! If you didn't know, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is part of a big series of books by C.S. Lewis, and is a beloved book of mine. I read the whole series once upon a time when I was probably in middle school. I remember loving it so much that I wanted to re-read the series.

The Magician's Nephew is the first book in the series. It's about a man that accidentally-on purpose sends his nephew and his nephew's friend to a different world. In the end, you get to learn about Narnia's beginnings and how different people were involved in its founding. It was a really quick read, and I enjoyed it very much. I'm glad I'm starting the series again.

Persuasion by Jane Austen
Like all of the Jane Austen books I've read so far, it always seems I have a problem with the beginning or the end. Why, Jane, must you rush things so much without any explanation?? Alert: the next sentence is kind of a spoiler! I love love love stories where people are in love, then separated for some reason, and then somehow find their way back to each other. Like, really. Hence, why Jane Eyre is one of my top 5 favorite books.

At the beginning, I felt she rushed some of the story line. I had to re-read a page because there were three big events on the page, but each event only took like a paragraph. I was confused because I felt like those events should have been given a little more explanation...you know, to show they were important to the story! And the first volume (half) of the book was a little too slow for me. But the second half really picked up with the action of figuring out Anne's dilemma and what she was going to do. This is the first Austen book that I've read and really enjoyed the ending.

March Date Night

I'm sharing our latest free date night. It was super cheesy - figuratively and literally. As I mentioned in my post about the 12 dates of 2014, I made all of the dates this year free - or free if you don't have to buy snacks or materials ... so maybe they're like 98% free.

Anyway, the date for the month of March was to make a blanket fort, make some fun snacks, and watch a fun "kids" movie. I put "kids" in quotes because some of the so-called "kids" movies are our favorites.

We made our fort - and it was pretty great. We had small vice grip things, so we used those to tie yarn to the sheet and pull it tight so we could see the TV. The treadmill is holding up the back. I wish there had been a little more room so I could lay on my stomach to watch the movie, but it was still fun.

We also made some new treats. We made some pretzel bites (flavored in parmesan and cinnamon), some garlic chicken puffs, cheesy bread, and some chips and dip. It was so yummy and so not good for us, but it was date night, so no worries, right?!

I got the recipe for the garlic chicken puffs here on tidymom.net. I was actually pretty surprised that I liked these as much as I did. The only thing we changed was that we added some more chicken to the chicken/cream cheese mix because I don't like really creamy textures that much.

I got the recipe for the pretzel bites here on justgetoffyourbuttandbake.com. Next time I'll follow the directions more carefully. But these were great with some cheese dip. And the cinnamon sugar flavor was YUMMY for just a little bit of dessert.

I hope you've been having some good date nights!
Next time I'll take better pictures, promise.

What has been your favorite free date night?