Domestic Guru

Do you ever get the urge to just be domestic?!  I know you do.

And so do I.  In fact, sometimes I just want to sew something, or deep-clean something, or even grow something that doesn't call me "mom."

We love planting our garden, and last year the beans grew and grew, and then shriveled and died on the vine.  Because, we learned, we don't really care for fresh, crisp green beans. Rather, I don't.  And there weren't enough to make it worth canning, so basically, they just took up room in the garden.

yes, these are my beans!

Since last year, I have collected a few boxes of pint jars.  So with all of this in mind, I planted double our usual crop of green beans. And the beans came.  And so I picked, and picked.  And when it felt like I could not possibly store another bean in my fridge, I borrowed a pressure canner and spent the day on the phone with my mom, trying to figure out how to can the "easiest thing to can."

I was shocked to learn that my gigantic bag of beans taking up so much room in my fridge, after snapping, only filled 7 pint jars.  What a let-down.  I was sure I would have at least 30 pints.   But no.  All of that work, for a measly 7 pints?  Then again, that is 7 sides for meals for our family.  Nonetheless, it was disappointing.

But we kept the canner a little longer, and I have spent some more time canning.  To this date, we have 27 pints of green beans.  I feel like a brand new mom, so proud of my little jars.  If only they were cuter...

I do wish the beans could keep the same brilliant green as when they are fresh.  Because let's be real, the canned beans look less-than-appetizing.  But truth be told, they taste great!

You know what was the best part?  The jars I collected actually belonged to my grandmother.  So while I was learning domestic skills, I kept thinking about her, and how she probably used the same jars to can some delicious apricots, beans, or jellies.  Very cool.


Am I domestic?  On most days, not so much.  But I do get these incredible urges to be domestic sometimes, and occasionally it even works out like I planned! 

The next great motivational speaker... ME?

Many of you know that I went to Young Women's Girls Camp a few weeks ago.  What you might not have known was that I was asked to present a 2 hour morality workshop for all of the Mia Maids (14-15 year old girls) while we were at camp.

Talk about STRESSFUL.

Talk about a LONG TIME to talk to bored 14 year-olds.

I had a few months to prepare, all of which was sorely needed, and here's what I've decided since then:

I think I want to be a motivational/inspirational speaker-- specifically for youth.  You know, a "John Bytheway" or "Sheri Dew" type.  Unfortunately, "Amber Shurtliff" doesn't seem to roll off the tongue quite the same way.

Don't let me fool you, the morality workshop went ok, but there was nothing amazing to it.  Through the process of preparing and preparing and preparing, I just realized that I really like combining the funny, serious, spiritual, inspiring, etc. 

AND feeling like I had a chance to help someone else want to make good decisions was awesome.

Can't you see it?  Me, the next big motivational speaker.

 

Here's the problem.  There are a few things that might stop me from this new ambition.

1. I loathe public speaking.

Problematic?  Yes.  The fact is, I don't like anything where I have to be in front of a group of people, whether I'm speaking or not.  Just the thought that I might have to be in front of other people makes me nauseous.   

2. I cry WAY too much.

...specifically when it comes to topics that are really important to me.  Often, these are spiritual topics.  On the upside, a bout of crying does bring the audiences attention back to you.  On the downside, my voice goes all squeaky and my nose turns red.

3. I don't have anything motivating or inspiring to say. 

 Let's face it, in my short 26 years, I haven't had any major upheaval, just normal life.  I get that you can take "normal" and still have inspiring stories, but in general, I seem to be lacking in this category.

So in all honesty, it doesn't look like I have much going for me in the way of becoming a motivational speaker.  I have the desire, but am lacking in the rest of the requirements.  Oh well.  Maybe it'll happen down the road.

In the meantime, I'll just be a blogger.  Be inspired :)

Utah Part 3-- The Wedding!

And last but certainly not least, the point of the entire trip-- the wedding!  

This was the crowning moment, but was not without it's companion wedding-ish activities.  We went to a great bridal shower for Camille, were able to be at the temple with her when she received her endowments, had a fun family dinner, and then finally finished things off with a wonderful sealing in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple.

The girls were super excited to get to be princesses for the day again!  And they spent much of their time outside the temple inspecting the flowers.

Lydia actually did a little more than look at the flowers.  I hate to admit it, but she was culprit that filled each flower with dirt.  But honestly, they did look like bowls waiting to be filled.  And who better to do the filling than Lydia?!

After all of the beautiful-ness at the temple, and lots of pictures, we headed back to relax for the afternoon before the reception.  With a few kinks in the mix (such as the bride and groom's car breaking down), we got through the afternoon and ready for the reception.  I'm not sure what company Camille's mom hired, but they transformed the gym.  It was amazing.  In fact, props to Camille's mom, who other than being so sweet, managed to plan an amazing wedding in a completely different state!

But without any further ado, here is the cake I spent the week creating.  Not perfect, but the biggest one I've done to date, and  I was very happy with the results, particularly because I made it all far from home. Thanks to Camille and Christopher for trusting me :)

We had a great time at the reception.  Good food, great company, and the girls couldn't get enough of the dancing!

We're just excited for Christopher and Camille.  And we're very happy to have Camille as part of our family!

Utah Part 2- Church History Museum

So for another fun thing, we headed to SLC with the girls to check out the Church History Museum.  I think I remember visiting there as a child, but haven't been back since and I was pleasantly surprised.  There were a lot of really amazing things to see, that of course, we couldn't spend as much time looking at as we wanted.  Something about our children being out of control...  I couldn't take the senior missionary sisters scolding my kids while I was enthralled by the exhibit any more!  So we moved on to the childrens area and it was great!

This trip was definitely worth making!  The girls had a blast and we didn't have enough time to satisfy them!  Recommendation from me?  Definitely!

Utah Part 1- The Tulip Festival

So our next Utah trip, taken just two weeks after the previous one, was about the same length of time as the one before, but for some reason we have a lot more pictures.  So here comes a series of posts!  This trip was for another wedding, for my little brother, Christopher and his beautiful wife Camille.  I was lucky enough to be able to make their wedding cake, so we planned to be up in Utah for the whole week before the wedding to give me time to bake and decorate.  Tim's sister TraceCe was awesome and let us move in with them for week, and completely take over their basement kitchen (and much of the rest of the house).  The setup was perfect.  

But we couldn't spend the whole trip just baking!  So we found lots of other fun things to do.  And we lucked out, because the Tulip Festival was in full force, and it was AWESOME.

 

And if the flower gardens weren't spectacular enough, TraceCe treated us to a glass-blowing experience.  It wasn't blowing glass, per se, but it was super cool.  Tim even got in on the action, and we have two very cool flowers now.

Part 1, complete.  And I definitely recommend the Tulip Festival!!!

Girly-woman + flat tire + no cell service= ...well, you guess

I have several other posts that need to be posted, but before I forget, a story for you!

Sunday night I had to travel the hour+ to go into town for a stake meeting for our girls camp coming up.  I was lucky enough to get to drive in with one of my good friends, who makes the drive remarkably short.  Things were going good, and time was flying.  In fact, we were even going to be early...  when to my surprise, just a short 10 miles out of town, the car started making a strange thrumping noise.  Yes, it was definitely a thrump.  Not one to pay attention to strange noises the car makes (yes, I'm girly-woman through and through), I would normally just keep driving and hope my ignorance won out in the end, but surprisingly, this time I pulled off the road.

(If my comment about having to drive 1 hour+ to get to town didn't clue you in, this road we were driving on is rather... isolated.)

When what to my surprise (this sounds eerily similar to a Christmas poem I know...), but a flat tire appeared (ok, it didn't really appear... but I had high hopes that the thrumping actually meant nothing).  Realizing SOMEBODYwas going to have to do SOMETHING, I started looking for somebody.  Then I realized that somebody was me.

We pulled off the road as far as possible, which wasn't a whole lot, and started unloading tire-changing paraphernalia.  Then we realized that the jack, that is so easily placed under a car by a man, was not screaming at us where is should be put under the car.  So we set that aside, figuring it would probably figure itself out, and we tried to start loosening the lug-nuts on the tire-- which, I can say, in a skirt and sandals is not easily done.  Luckily, it wasn't 5 minutes after pulling over that a nice older man and his wife stopped and offered to help us.

(Have I mentioned yet that we didn't have any cell service?) 

I have no shame in taking help, so we gladly accepted his offer and before we knew it, the jack was under the car, the car was raised, and the tire was off- all before myself and my rider could figure out how to get the spare out of the trunk.  We were DEFINITELY going to make it on time to our meeting.  Our weak muscles couldn't handle the piece locking the tire into the trunk, so we stepped aside for our hero.  Except, he couldn't get it out either.  And 15 minutes later, he still couldn't get the tire out.  Something was wrong.

So we had 3 options:
1.Walk into town-- just 10 miles in a skirt and sandals, in the middle of the desert, at dusk
2. The couple who stopped could drive into town and call someone for us-- except everyone we knew in town was currently at a meeting and not answering phones
3. We could sit on the laps of  our heroes parents in the back of their car, have them drive us into town, and then we could call someone that wasn't answering their phone because they were at the meeting.

I"m not gonna lie, none of those options sounded that great.  So we went with option four: find the strange, ancient bottle of tire-puncture-fixer in the trunk that I had never seen in my life.  Mr. Hero put it in the tire, and with the spray spewing everywhere, and air leaving the tire faster than I could have blown it in, he said, "you better get rolling quickly.  This stuff has to roll around inside the tire to fill the hole." 

I panicked as he lowered the jack.  The tire kept sinking lower and lower-- but not as low as before, so we jumped in the car and started driving.  SOMEHOW, we managed to make it 10 miles into town.  But with it being a Sunday night and all, nobody was open.  Luckily, Walmart was.  Good ol' Walmart.  We pulled in and learned that the auto center was closing in 10 minutes.  Close call or what? The people at Walmart managed to fix the original tire and we made it to our meeting, with 10 minutes left. 

Why tell this story?  Because it was miracle after miracle.  It was super inconvenient to have a flat tire, but there were so many different ways this story could have gone. 

1. It was still light outside when we got the flat.
2. I actually recognized a problem and pulled over before we had a bigger problem.
3. A non-creeper stopped to help.
4. The tire-puncture-fixer, I later learned, was a last minute grab from Tim's parents' shed in Utah.  It is probably older than I am, and Tim was shocked that it even worked.  But it did, and it got us to Walmart
5. We got to Walmart 10 before the auto center closed, and the workers were willing to look at our car quickly
6. The tire was fixable, and I didn't have to buy a new one.

The next morning we had to leave the house at 4:30am to get to the airport.  Had we gotten a flat tire then, instead of the night before, it might have taken hours before anyone passed to stop and help us, and I would have missed my flight. 

Like I said, UBER inconvenient, and I'm bummed we missed our meeting, but things could have turned out so differently.  We are really grateful for the tender mercies we had.

Pure Bliss

 I'm not sure what it is about trampolines, but the girls love them.  And I love watching them jumping, falling, and squealing, because they are the epitome of pure bliss.  There are no giggles like trampoline giggles.  I love it.