Love Is All You Knead

Well I know a month ago I announced that I had a food blog and promised to put up recipes. Well life and time got away from me and I never had time to mess around with getting it started. The biggest issues were the pages and categorizing recipes. It still doesn't work exactly how I wanted it to, but that's a work in progress. The way I wanted it to work... well costs money and more than I was willing to spend right now. 

Its official and recipes are posted. Hope you enjoy. 

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Love Is All You Knead

Love Always, 

Day 12: Holidays

I crave a good holiday. The day after a holiday I can't help but get anxious for the next. I love how holidays bring people together and its another excuse to mix up the decorations. I know I probably have annoyed my husband a bit with the changing of the decorations, but he knows I love it so he puts up with me. Sweet guy, I know. The problem he sees is that with each new set of decorations I make new things, because as a newlywed I don't have much for decorating our house for the holidays. Its been a work in progress to say in the least. The day after last Christmas we went and hit the 80-90 percent off sale on Christmas decor, as we knew that the following year would be our first Christmas as a married couple. Jeff will testify that the day after Christmas I was beyond excited for the next Christmas? What Christmas-obsessed-girl-soon-to-be-newly-wed wouldn't be? 

Since I was a little girl I could wait to put up the tree, ornaments, lights, and fill the house with the music of the season. I love every part of it. My all time favorite movie is the Grinch that Stole Christmas (the one with Jim Carey) to say that I LOVE it is an understatement. I know every line and song by heart. I watch it no matter what time of year. The thing that I love most about Christmas isn't the presents or the superficial stuff its the way that it makes you feel. You spend time with family and eat delicious food and the lights at every house how could you not love Christmas. My dear sweet husband let me even put up our decorations a week early this year! Thank you honey!! I will post pictures of our amazing tree and decorations thus far.

How could you not love this green face? haha

I do love majority of holidays. Jeff has to work this thanksgiving from 6am to 6pm. I felt bad that he would miss out on Thanksgiving and seeing as it was our first I just couldn't stand to let it pass us by. So as I have said before I planned to cook it all by myself. Of course, being me, I pulled out all the stops everything from the cranberry sauce to the salad dressing is made from scratch. We have rolls, turkey, green bean casserole, stuffed mushrooms, spiced sugar carrots, spinach poppy seed and pomegranate salad, stuffing, and homemade ice cream and pies. Fortunately, my mom came to help make my 2 days of cooking run smoothly not to mention after dinner Black Friday shopping extravaganza. I love being married and having a home to fill with company and celebrate the holidays together. I don't think life could get any better. Did I mention my dad is coming for dinner? I have never spent Thanksgiving day with my dad and I'm excited for him to come eat at my house. I promise there will be lots of pictures of our eventful day!

Have a very happy turkey day!!! I know we will!

Love Always, 

Day 10 & 11: Nature/Seasons and America

Day 10: Nature and Seasons

Growing up in Utah you can't help to be appreciate of the wonders of nature and how different each of the seasons are. I can't imagine not living by our mountains and being able to drive a few short hours and being in the heat of the red rock desert. I love the hot summers to the cold winters. It gives us so much to do that other states can't experience without traveling thousands of miles. I was driving to work a couple weeks ago and it was an absolute blizzard. Now as much as I love the snow on the ground I hate having to drive in it. Frankly, scares the daylights out of me. As I was driving I was thinking of how wonderful the weather had been a couple weeks prior. We had 80 sunny degree weather and it was fantastic. Its crazy how our weather can change so quickly to such extremes. Its one of the amazing things of this planet, especially here in Utah.

My favorite time of year is fall with all the leaves changing

Jeff's heaven on Earth= Lake Powell

Utah County Mountains

I seriously seriously seriously miss skiing

 This year I won't be able to go up to the ski resorts, but I am going to make it a point that we go next year a couple of times. That is something Jeff and I have talked about through our 7 years of dating and have never done. I have never been to Moab and that is also something we plan to do (not in the middle of the summer ... fall time sounds good). There are so many backpacking trips that Jeff has lined up for us for years to come. This summer I will experience fishing and backpacking for the first time in my life. I can't wait for all the experiences this next year brings and the opportunities to spend some quality time away from our busy lives and in the outdoors.

Day 11: America the Beautiful

Since I was a little kid I have had these deep sense of American pride. The first cd I ever owned as a kid wasn't Brittney Spears or Backstreet Boys it was a Lee Greenwood. Who is that you ask? He sings I am Proud to be an American, I was probably the only kid that knew all the words to that song at such a young age. Jeff always teases me because when I try to come up with color schemes somehow it always ends up with variations of red, white, and blue. Our engagement pictures and even our wedding colors were a variation. When I was on pinterest the other day one of my friends had this pinned to their wall. 

 I think this really puts things in to perspective. We complain about how hard this economy is and how hard our lives are, but the majority of the world is far worse off. We have so easy here and yet all we can do is complain about how things can be better. I don't want to forget this message when times get tough. When having to stretch our money to the next pay check I will think back that I am richer than 75 percent of the world. That is mind boggling to think about. Not only does this make me want to appreciate what I have, but want to help those less fortunate than myself. 

We have the freedom to choose where we live, what we do, what job we have, who we marry, who we vote for, and where we want to go and do with our lives. Millions of people don't have these same opportunities and choices we have. Remember where our country came from and what others have been through for us to have our freedoms. If you don't like how something is done, then stop complaining and do something about it. If you want things to change do your part and a step towards that is get educated and vote. I will be there next year and I will make sure that I know where I stand and who I want to represent me. We can't make things change without making it start with ourselves.

Love Always, 

Day 9: Hobby Lobby

I can officially say that I am addicted to Hobby Lobby. Having the store 2 minutes from my house is a blessing and curse; Jeff would agree. When we bought our house I couldn't wait until I could start crafts to decorate and personalize each room. When I went into hobby lobby for the first time I thought I had died and gone to heaven. If you haven't had the opportunity to visit one, you are missing out. Now this blessed store has everything that a ordinary craft store like Michael's or Robert's. Yet it has cute home things for home decor crafts, huge seasonal section, and tons of other things. I love it obviously. Not to mention they are constantly having sales going on. I haven't bought a single that that wasn't at least 40% off. Crafts are expensive and they are helping me afford my habit.

As we are preparing for the Christmas season I have spent many hours in hobby lobby over the past few weeks. We bought a good portion of our decorations, including our beautiful tree there. I will share this on another post. My brain has been running wild with all sorts of craft ideas. Here are a few of the inspirations that I have found for my own home. 

I want to create something similar on our big blank living room wall. I want to add some words or monograms

I am going to do this in a deep red for our living room.

Absolutely love this!

I am going to do this in our windows downstairs

I want to make him if I can figure a place to put him

I want to do a curtain like this in our window in the kitchen

I am all about the words.

I want to do this with our letters in the hallway

Cute wreath. I would do something similar maybe with a summer theme. I like the letter

I am going to do this same thing with a similar scheme in our guest bedroom

LOVE LOVE LOVE this. Definitely going up after Christmas

Want to do this in our kitchen window

I want to do this in our bedroom or bathroom or maybe with the empty frame art in the hallway

If I don't do the other collage I will do one like this

Thinking of doing this for Christmas. very cute idea

Love Always, 

3 and 4 Months Old

 Jeff and I have been married for officially 3 months or 91 days yesterday. Personally the 91 seems like a huge number and I can't believe how much time has gone by. We couldn't be happier and I can't imagine not being married. We are really busy this semester with work and school, but I know next semester will be worse. We will make it work. We spent last night eating sushi and going to see Breaking Dawn part 1. Jeff didn't enjoy the movie, but was a good sport for taking me. It wasn't my favorite and was a little slow paced. The next one should be good though. What did everyone else think about it? I also hated her wedding dress in the movie, mainly the front of it. I've lost my Twilight fascination I guess. I can't wait for Hunger Games to come out in March and for The Immortal Instruments. If you haven't read that serious and liked the Hunger Games Series I highly recommend it. The first book is called City of Bones.

Scuba Diving

We are currently planning a 10 day vacation to Hawaii this summer and I can't wait! Jeff has never been and has been dying to go scuba diving. We are also going to California in the spring with my family and Lake Powell with his in the summer. Plus, I know there will be weekend trips to Vegas, St. George, and varies camping trips. This next year will be filled with great memories and lots of travel. 

My paradise

Pearl Harbor

 

Such a beautiful resort

I love camping and can't wait to take Oakley!

 .I am loving this holiday season and can't wait for Christmas. It won't be a huge Christmas this year in our home and we would rather save our money for our upcoming trips. We are going to do some small little gifts for each other and then one bigger gift for both of us. We will be able to be part of each of our family parties and dinners. I even am thinking of planning a couple's holiday party at our house. Not sure if that will happen, but that's the plan. 

Oakley is officially 4 months old and is getting bigger by the second. Today we spent the day playing and learning roll over. It amazes me how smart he is. He experienced snow for the first time last night and this morning. I was hoping he would love it and jump around in it, but instead he hated it. He doesn't like cold and wet I guess. Maybe when we get more snow he will enjoy it, only time will tell.

Love Always, 

Day 8: Cookbooks & Cooking Blogs

I love this book. Its so fun!

As far as wedding gifts go some of my favorite things we got were all the different cookbooks. Jeff and I love to cook and experience new food. We always alter recipes to make them better. I also love to bake and recently decided that I wanted to get into decorating cupcakes, cookies, and big cakes. Since we've been married we have tried so many different recipes and most were amazing... some need some work. As I have said I have a food blog called Love is All You Knead... there has just been some issues with getting it started. I swear that by thanksgiving all my recipes I have typed up and are ready to post will be there. {I swear} We are so grateful for all cooking stuff we received as gifts. Out of everything it gets the most use. Jeff's mom even made me a cookbook with all of they're families main recipes and she typed each recipe on a card with a little picture. I really appreciated the time that took, not to mention I can now make my husband's favorite recipes.

I was so excited to get this cupcake decorating book at my family bridal shower. I want to be the lady that has the fun and crazy cute desserts. I want to make awesome cupcakes for my kids parties and for holidays. Crazy, I know. I have always wanted to work at a bakery or for a cake decorator. I think it would be so much fun. I am going to save up to take some cake decorating classes to learn the tricks of the trade... they are just expensive so it'll be a long while until that happens.  A girl can dream right? 

I love getting ideas from other food blogs and seeing what creative things people do. This week I am looking for inspiration for Thanksgiving meal. This is the first year I am cooking every aspect of Thanksgiving by MYSELF!!!!!! Yikes... Jeff has to work this year until 6:30pm and he loves this holiday. I felt bad that he wouldn't get to be part of all the family festivities so I decided that instead I would invite both of my parents to dinner and have it at our house. I love to have people over to our house, but this is a big undertaking. Not to mention Jeff's parents are fantastic cooks so I'm worried that my version of Thanksgiving is going to disappoint him. We'll see how it goes, right? 

Since I am doing it all this year I want to put my own Katie twist to it. I want it to be fun and have some creativeness to it. Of course I would take on sometime even extra on such a huge project, but that is definitely how I approach everything. Go big! I haven't decided all the details yet, but I will have a post about the results. Wish me luck!

Love Always,