An NYR Update

Remember New Year's Resolutions? Seriously, it was less than a month ago but I think I've already forgotten several of mine. Well lucky for me, I was randomly browsing Pinterest today and saw a link to food storage tips. Hey, I need to do my food storage! So since I need a schedule for all things because I can't seem to do anything without one...(and because food storage and preparedness is super daunting to me and I'd like to plan and space it all out), here's an expanded schedule for my preparedness goal and my family history goal!

Food Storage
I found this great website Prepared LDS Family. She even has a "start here" page, hurray! Following this website, here's my plan for preparedness:

February- Find out how much water we need and get that much, plus get into a regular rotation (literally, we have no water stored....I'm a bad preparer!) Water Page
March- Set aside an emergency fund and put together a 72-hour kit with important documents and everything else. Money Page and 72-Hour Kit Page
April- Plan the meals we would eat for our 3-month supply and begin stocking the ingredients 3-Month Supply Page
May- Continue to stock food for 3 months
June- Continue to stock food for 3 months
July- Continue to stock food. If I haven't already done so, can fruit or vegetables to put in supply.
August- Hopefully have supply completed. Now, make a rotation schedule and find and compile other recipes to use for food storage.
Buy September, I'd like to feel comfortable and knowledgeable about food storage, and have a long-term plan in place!

Family History
So family history is always on my mind ever since I made this goal, but I'm seriously still overwhelmed just thinking about it. I know quite a bit of my family history has been done on all sides...but I still feel like I need to learn about it, even if it's just learning what others have done. So here's a rough schedule of what I'd like to do for this family history thing...
February- Continue watching all the tutorials and playing around with New Family Search so I feel comfortable with the website and what family history is all about.
March- Link up both of us so we're attached to our ancestors as far back as we know (and make sure all our own information in entered).
April- Print our family history fan and make a binder to begin collecting all the information for our ancestors
May- Begin actually researching. This is a very vague goal, because honestly I'm not sure all that this entails. I'm such a beginner at family history...but hopefully in the next months I can learn more and feel what my purpose for family history will be.
June- Now that I'm working on family history, I'd also like to make sure our own histories are recorded. Research things I can do to create our family history- be it journals, pictures and scrapbooking, etc. Begin something that will keep a record of our family history for our posterity.
July and on- I'm honestly not sure where this goal will take me. I'd like to begin finding a family name that I can work on...but is that what I'm supposed to do? But the rest of the year will be spent acting on this goal- searching for our family history.

Well that's it...lame post about needing schedules to run my life, but every time I write my thoughts about these two goals, it makes me so excited! If you have any comments about either of these goals...please share them with me because I clearly have no idea what I'm really doing! But I guess that's what learning is all about. :)

Happy Birthday Blog!

I think this blog just might stand the test of time- it's been a whole year since I started it! Last year, I wanted a place to record the things I learned about cooking/sewing/crafting/baking, everything! I do feel like I've learned a lot in the past year. However, I also feel like I haven't had a real direction in my learning. I still need to work on planning things out before I start them- I need to research how to do a project, rather than just digging in and regretting it. So hopefully that's where 2013 will take me!

For my blog birthday, I wanted to make a treat- last year I made some nutella cake pops, and they were delicious! Cake mixed with homemade nutella frosting, dipped in chocolate, and covered with nutella glaze and nuts. I was pretty happy with them, but they took about 5 hours start to finish...so I haven't attempted cake pops since. Well, I did it this weekend!

These cake pops weren't nearly as good as the nutella ones. I started with a white cake mix, crumbled it up in my food processor (which actually made it easy to crumble, and made great uniform small crumbs), and mixed it with two different kinds of frosting. I made one batch of "chocolate caramel" cake pops, and the other "key lime pie." These are both in quotes because honestly...they don't take anything like those flavors, and they don't even taste much different from each other.

I attempted homemade caramel frosting, and while it was good, I think that caramel without doing the official caramel making process...just isn't caramel. And the key lime pie were okay, but again, the frosting wasn't really that lime tasting. I honestly think what ruins them for me is that they both taste entirely too much like white cake mix. I actually thought I liked white cake...but I guess not when I really want them to taste like something else!

So in the end..these are just pretty balls of overly sweet bland cake mix. The chocolate ones have nuts and caramel glaze, and the key lime ones have graham cracker crumbs and lime glaze. I wish I could have enjoyed these more! But for next time I've learned: 1. If I'm going to attempt caramel, go all out. Don't even try to fake it, because it won't be worth it. 2. For dipping things, it's really best to get the candy melts. I used milk and white chocolate chips...and they're not quite the same flavors. 3. It's okay if I don't make the best dessert ever. I really struggle with this one..because every time I make boxed brownies they turn out great, but every time I attempt a fun dessert that I'm super excited about, it usually fails. But I'm trying to learn that's okay. It's okay if I throw away a sewing project after a few months, it's okay if I make a dessert and throw away the rest if we don't eat it in a few days...it's just okay. I'm learning! And I need to try to actually learn when I make these things, rather than fail and not try to learn from it.

So there, it's been a whole year, and while I probably haven't learned much, I've at least learned that I want to learn better!

Winter Wreath

I kind of skipped Christmas, in case you didn't notice. I didn't have a tree, decorations, candy plates for neighbors, a Christmas wreath, anything! But even during December, I knew I wanted to make a winter wreath. Even though Christmas only lasts a month, winter lasts decades at least (this year I'm pretty sure it's millennia). 

I've been thinking about this wreath for a while now, and I was never able to find exactly the pieces I wanted, so it kind of evolved into something entirely different. I wanted snowlakes on it (the epitome of winter to me), but for some reason, most stores only sell snowflakes before Christmas...so I was out of luck. 

I had the white ribbon/silver ribbon idea from the start, and I randomly spied these adorable pearl strands while at the craft store. I couldn't find anything to go in the middle, and I'm not entirely happy with the giant (no seriously, it's sooooo giant.) ribbon bow, so I'll probably rip it off and find a real snowflake next year. But for now, I love this wreath for winter!

Oh, did I mention this wreath could fall apart at any moment? Okay, probably not, but it is definitely held together with string. I started off with my hot glue gun, which worked great for the ribbon. But the pearl strands are so heavy that glue wouldn't hold them, and I was determined to finish the wreath in one day. I broke out the yarn and began wrapping over and over....then I secured it all with a bit of glue and voila! Despite having a white door, I still love that this wreath is white, and someday we'll probably have a different colored door, and I'll love this even more!

Why I'll Never Be A Food Blogger....

I've been meaning to post about these cookies for a few weeks- ever since I made them before Christmas vacation to take to some of our neighbors. I had grand visions of those amazing treat plates that neighbors sometimes give you- frosted sugar cookies, fudge, toffee, homemade almond joy or peanut butter cups....but that never happened. Mostly because finals week was very busy for us, and since most of our neighbors leave after finals week...there wasn't much time before Christmas. So I just made these super simple sugar cookies (they don't even require frosting because they have a very nice sweet sugar cookie taste- not at all bready or dry) one night.

But back to why I'll never be a real food blogger...when we got back from Christmas break, I finally began checking all of the blogs I follow again. I was greeted with a very unpleasant thing (at least unpleasant to me)- VALENTINE'S DAY IDEAS. I mean, I love Valentine's Day and all, but on January 2nd? Do we always have to start thinking about the next holiday before we've even recovered from the last one? Not to mention having to cook all that food super early, and then when V-Day comes around, you're cooking Easter things...and it could just get crazy how far ahead you have to be. So while I love having this blog, and getting to write (and rant :D) a bit about my love of food and crafty things, I'll never take this far enough to do things months in advance. I mean...think about cooking a Thanksgiving turkey before Halloween! It's just strange...

Okay, back to these cookies. They tasted so good! And they were super easy. I used this recipe from SaltTree and  followed her tutorial as well and it worked great. I really liked getting the bottom dough layer slightly wet before laying the other dough on top, so that they stick together easily. The only thing I would've changed is I would've refrigerated my dough before rolling it out and I also just rolled my dough straight on the counter, and then it stuck to the counter when I tried to roll it! So using parchment or something else would've helped a ton.

 

Oh also, the cookies were super tiny when I cut them into circles, but they baked into perfectly good-sized cookies. And the swirls looked pretty lopsided before they were baked, but I think it evened out in the oven alright. I'm just so happy with how these turned out!