Leftover Valentines Day Candy = Beautiful Cake

Brandon and I went to the store the week after Valentines and found a bag of conversation hearts on sale for 25 cents.

We had a can of frosting that expired in October so we decided to make a cake and use the candies for decoration.

I think it turned out really well.
Full disclosure: it was Brandon that mixed up the cake from scratch, baked it, and did most of the frosting. I only helped by picking out which candies should go on the cake (the ones with unclear writing were sent straight to my mouth.) I also put the candies on the cake.

How to make amazing Pizza

Many of you commented that the pizza Brandon and I made for Valentines day looked great. I thought I would share our recipe and the tricks that we do to make amazing pizza.

Here is the basic frame work for the pizza with my additions:

The Dough.
2 1/2 cups of Flour (mostly I use white flour but I like to substitute a little wheat to appease the Loveless side of my personality)
1 T Sugar
1 T Dry yeast
1/2 tsp Salt (sometimes I use garlic or onion salt instead of regular salt)
1 cup hot water
2 T of oil
(I like to add spices like basil, oregano, Italian seasoning, and onion or garlic powder)

Combine these ingredients in order and mix well.

Kneed on a lightly floured surface
(I know the dough has been kneaded enough when it looks like the head of a cabbage patch doll)

Roll the dough out on a lightly floured counter
(I use whole wheat for the flour to simulate cornmeal like restaurant pizza)

Dust a pizza stone with flour (again whole wheat) and put the dough on the stone.
To make the edge roll the dough on the edges of the pizza under the crust.

Put dough into the oven at 350 degrees for about 2 minutes. This will get the dough warm enough to rise.

Let the dough rise for about 10 minutes

While the dough is rising prepare toppings. Here are some topping ideas:
Tomato sauce (we like to add spices to this as well)
Pepperoni
Hamburger (add spices to make the hamburger taste like sausage)
Green Peppers (we like to buy several at once and then cut them up and freeze them for future use)
Onions (these can be frozen as well)
Cheese (any kind will do. sometimes I like to put a light dusting of Parmesan)
Olives
Pineapple
Ham

Once the dough is risen add the toppings to the pizza.

(One thing we have noticed is that for wet ingredients like pineapple or frozen green peppers, it is best to cook off some of the water in a frying pan before adding them to the pizza. Doing this prevents the water from making the dough soggy.)

Cook at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.

The transitory nature of college life

Sunday was stake conference and our Stake Presidency was reorganised. I figured that the new stake president would be somebody I had never heard of. Brandon kept guessing that it would be our bishop. Well, Brandon was right. I'm happy for our bishop but I also feel sad. Student wards aren't like regular wards. The bishop's family doesn't go to our ward so its not like we will still have regular contact with him. Once someone moves on from a student ward you will probably never see them again. It highlights the transitory nature of college life that I have come to know so well. As I sat in Stake conference I thought back over all the different wards I have been in since I went to college. Here is the list

Ephraim College 5th ward
Kearns 5th ward
Ephraim College 4th ward
Ephraim Summer ward (2005)
McKay Ward
Ephraim Summer ward (2006)
Logan University 16th ward
Logan University 61st ward

I've had 7 different bishops in 5 1/2 years. Despite the short amount of time with each bishop they all touched my life. I couldn't tell you what each one has done for me. I just know how I feel when I think about each one. I can't count all the testimonies, blessings, and prayers I've heard those men share. I'm so grateful for these men that take time away from their families and their home wards to lead congregations of college students.

So now add this bishop to the list of bishops that have quietly come into my life, left a giant footprint on my testimony, and then moved on. We'll have another bishop soon. I'm sure he will touch my soul in some way, and then he too will go into my memory as Brandon and I move out of the ward. After going through this so many times you think I would be used to the sadness, but I'm not. It still is hard to say goodbye.

Brandon's Present

I wanted to make something special for Brandon for Valentines Day. I heard the song "Change" by Taylor Swift and loved the message in the song. So I decided that I would make a picture out of the song. Here is how I did it.

First I needed a picture frame. I found one at DI for $3. It had some apocryphal poem about the Dogwood Tree. I didn't care for the poem, but I loved the frame.

Then I sanded off the finish. I have to say this is my best sanding job ever. Usually I get sick of sanding pretty fast. But Brandon and his friend talked to me the whole time I sanded. (It was about 3 hours)

The frame had some gold leaf on the inside. I decided to keep that so I taped it off with masking tape. Then I stained the frame. I wanted a dark stain to match the finish on all the other wood in the living room.

For matting I bought poster board for about $1. I measured out the size I needed and figured out where I wanted the pictures to go. Brandon cut out the spots for the pictures with his razor knife. (I'm not patient enough to cut neat and even)

I thought about leaving the matting white, but then I thought it would be better to paint it. Brandon gave me some paints for Christmas so I was glad to have a chance to use at least one color. I painted the matting Ivory.

That took care of the frame, but what about the pictures? They were supposed to be the easy part. But they took much longer. The photo shopping didn't take much time. I'm getting pretty good at that. Each of the 6 pictures was taken by either me or Brandon. All I had to do was pick which ones I wanted and crop the picture as needed.

Getting the pictures printed just about drove me crazy. Usually I print pictures at Smiths Market Place, but their machine was out of order. So I tried Walmart and their machine couldn't read my Jump Drive. I tried the Walmart website but it kept telling me that there was a problem with my JPEGs. I finally got Smith's website to read my jump drive and they send my order to a different Smith's store than the one I normally go to. Every time I called the store to find out if they had my pictures they told me they don't do picture printing and would try to tell me to call the other store. Finally after 2 weeks of all this I found out that Maceys could print pictures and went there. $1.20 was the final cost of the pics.

And here is the final product. The total cost wasn't even 10 dollars. Brandon help a lot with the actual framing and he also helped print the pics. But he didn't see what the whole thing looked like until we were done framing it.

I was going to post the individual pics, but there really must be something wrong with the JPEGs because they aren't loading right. So here are the lyrics to the song.

"Change"

And it’s a sad picture, the final blow hits you

Somebody else gets what you wanted again and

You know it’s all the same, another time and place

Repeating history and you’re getting sick of it

But I believe in whatever you do

And I’ll do anything to see it through

Because these things will change

Can you feel it now?

These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down

This revolution, the time will come

For us to finally win

And we’ll sing hallelujah, we’ll sing hallelujah

So we’ve been outnumbered

Raided and now cornered

It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair

We’re getting stronger now

Find things they never found

They might be bigger

But we’re faster and never scared

You can walk away, say we don’t need this

But there’s something in your eyes

Says we can beat this

Because these things will change

Can you feel it now?

These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down

This revolution, the time will come

For us to finally win

And we’ll sing hallelujah, well sing hallelujah

Tonight we stand, get off our knees

Fight for what we’ve worked for all these years

And the battle was long, it’s the fight of our lives

But we’ll stand up champions tonight

It was the night things changed

Can you see it now?

These walls that they put up to hold us back fell down

It’s a revolution, throw your hands up

Cause we never gave in

And we sang hallelujah, we sang hallelujah

Hallelujah

Valentines Day is my favorite Holiday

I was due to be born on Valentine's day. That's why my name is Valerie. I've always liked Valentine's but this year I decided it was my favorite holiday. Here are some of the highlights.

Brandon made this chocolate cake with Strawberry Ice cream for me. He originally planned to make it for my birthday, but then we decided to spend that weekend in Salt Lake. So he made it for me for Valentine's day. It is so yummy. Here are pictures of my birthday cards.

I got Brandon a staple gun for his gift. He tried it out on random pieces of wood throughout the house before he remembered that the couch needed some TLC.

For dinner we made a heart shaped Pizza with heart shaped pepperonis.
We also experimented with making a cheese stuffed Crust. It sort of worked.

Here is the other gift that I made for Brandon. It is the Taylor Swift song "Change" broken up into 6 parts and put with corresponding pictures. Tomorrow I will do a detailed post of all the steps this present went though.

Brandon also gave me a photo collage of pictures of us together. (I don't have a picture of it, sorry) We also went for a walk and watched the movie "Tuck Everlasting." But most importantly we were able to have a whole Saturday to ourselves. I love spending time with Brandon.

Power of the Priesthood

I just have to share this. Last month work was getting really hard. I asked Brandon to give me a blessing. This month work has been amazing. Somethings have been so easy that I worry I am skipping steps. Billing was supposed to be horrible this month due to a short amount of time to get all the billing done. Instead I am done early. Yeah some of it is due to me, but most of the credit should go to the power of the priesthood.

Birthday

I turned 24 on Saturday. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm not sure what I should feel. I'm now 24 just like 10 years ago I was 14 and 10 years before that I was 4. I really don't feel any different than I did 20 years ago. I don't even feel smarter (in fact I probably am more spacey than ever) All I really feel is that I have lots of great memories and experiences that I didn't have 20 years ago.

My 24th birthday now is one of those great memories. It started on Thursday the 5th. My team at work had a little surprise party for me. Earlier my friend had got me to tell her that I liked 7 layer dip instead of cake. So my team lead brought in the dip and the rest of the team brought in the chips. My Sr team lead brought be balloons. I was totally oblivious to their plans.

Friday was Hawaiian day at work so we had Hawaiian pizza and fruit. Everyone was dressed up. I wore a Hawaiian style shirt that was actually from Brandon's mission to reunion, a lay and a flower in my hair. Everyone was super relaxed an in good moods. My friend Heather made me a chocolate cake (the real name of the cake probably shouldn't be put on this blog, but if you know what I am talking about you know how good the cake is). She made three 9X9 cakes. Usually everyone at work shares two of the cakes and then the third one is for the birthday person to share with their family at home. Well everyone was so full from Pizza that only one cake was eaten at work. The other two I took down to Salt Lake.

After work my sister Emily and her husband David came down from Rexburg. We ate dinner at a Institute married student association activity. The activity was very well attended. We were 10 minutes late and had to wait in line for 20 minutes. It was a good dinner catered by the Blue Bird. After dinner we car pooled down to Salt Lake. My sister Lindsey and her husband john were already at my parents house with there new baby, Rocklond. He is so cute. I got to hold him for the first time.

Brandon and I slept at his parents house and Saturday morning we went out to see his sister Shannon. Her daughter Breylynn turned 2 about a week before so we went to visit and give her a birthday present (hair clips). After that we hurried back to Kearns, picked up Emily, David, and my brother Billy and went to my aunts house in Kaysville. My aunt was hosting the baby shower for Lindsey and Rocklond. (By the way I love baby showers after the baby is born. Its so fun to actually see the baby.) This happened to be my birthday so everyone sang to me.

We went back to Kearns and I helped Billy do his taxes (actually I just walked him through how to use www.taxact.com) We had a fun evening playing games and talking. We ate the cake my friend made me and both cakes disappeared quickly.

On Sunday my whole family went to church together. EVERYONE in the ward wanted to see that new baby. They knew it was a Loveless baby but there were some people who did not know who the parents of the baby were. Probably the funniest example of this is when an old man came up to my 15 year old sister, Hillary, and asked her how long ago she had her baby. (In his defense Hillary and Lindsey do look alike.)

After church we had dinner and then all too soon it was time to go back to Logan. Emily and David rode back up with us and then because the weather was turning bad they stayed the night. We watched "Singing in the Rain" and laughed our heads off.

Then Monday morning we had to get up early, say goodbye, and get back our usual lives. I'm still worn out from all the fun, but it was worth it.

Two pics

My family was all together this weekend. It was great. I'll probably write more about it later, but for now here are two pictures. The first is of all of us together and the second is of me and Brandon.

Movie Review: Miracle

Five years ago on my birthday I went to see the movie Miracle with my roommates. One year later I asked for the DVD as a birthday present. Every year after that I watch the movie around my birthday. Brandon and I watched it last night in honor of my birthday on Saturday.

As I watched the movie I tried to figure out why exactly I like it so much. On the surface it doesn't make sense. The movie is about the 1980 Olympic Hockey team and how they beat the undefeated Russian team in the semi-final round of the Olympics. The story centers on coach Herb Brooks and how he put together and trained the winning team. I'm not the type of person that should love this movie. I was not alive in 1980, I've been to one hockey game in my life, and I'm generally not a fan of sports movies.

But this movie is not really a sports movie. It is a movie about faith, teamwork, hope, hard work, determination, youth, exuberance, challenges, dreams, and of course miracles. It is also about boys, and anyone who knows me knows that I love being around boys. Boys will work hard for anything that they really believe in and this movie proves it. Even the actors had to train hard to be able to skate like Olympians.

So I think I love watching this movie every year because it reminds me that dreams do come true. It shows that hard work yields great results. It is proof that faith and action together create miracles.

As an odd coincidence Brandon and I read Ether 12 in our scriptures last night. This chapter goes along perfectly with the values illustrated in the movie. I'll probably add reading that chapter to my yearly movie tradition.

Post month 0309

Right now I am working on bills that will be due on March 1st. The charges will post 03/01/09 or 0309. This is cool for me since the first bills I ever did posted in 0308. I can't believe I have been billing a year. I still have about 25 of my original 29 properties. I also have 50 other properties bringing the grand total to 75! (I'm "babysitting" 5 properties while the new billing manager gets trained.)

Last year at this time I was so lost while I billed. I'd been trained, but I still had to figure out the little quirks that each property had. Now I know most of the quirks. Yesterday I had my best first day of billing ever. I billed 16 properties. Usually I am glad to get 6 done on the first, but I've perfected my system. Today I have slowed down. I'm working on getting 29 other properties ready to bill. Hopefully I will get those done tomorrow.

It's neat to look back and see how much I have learned and improved over the past twelve post months. Of course I still have a lot more to work on.

New Calling!

Of course, as soon as I start looking forward to nursery each week I get released. That's right I'm no longer the first counselor in the Primary. Brandon and I are now on the activities committee.

Ecstatic is not a strong enough word to describe how we feel about this change. We've wanted this calling since we moved into the ward a year and a half ago. Brandon's favorite calling was Activities Co-Chair in our singles ward. He was in charge of planning about 15 linger longers (For those of you not up on student ward lingo, that means a dinner after church), a stake ski day at Beaver mountain, and a couple movie nights. I'm excited continue to develop the planning and decorating skills that I have.

We are totally looking forward to planning linger longers, movie nights, and the ward camp out. I will miss nursery, but I can't wait to get to work on planning things. I'm also glad I still have a joint calling with Brandon.