Vase

My mom had this huuuuge decorative vase that my grandma gave to her. After looking inside there was a bunch of trash in it, but we didn't know how to get it out. David helped me lower it to the ground on top of him, so we could shake all the trash out into a box that we could throw out. He was underneath the vase so we wouldn't break or chip it on the tile

David is just so cute and I got this embarrassing picture of him and I couldn't help but post about it.

 

Lost Keys

David normally drives the car, but for some reason last week I did. After coming in the house for an hour or so, we realized we had no idea where our car keys were. I am notorious for losing everything ever, but I figured they would turn up eventually. Thank goodness we have a spare set, but we still wanted to find them because they had our mail key on them. We searched all over the house, and David asked me the regular questions:

"When was the last time you saw them?"
"Where did you go after we got home?"
"Where could they have gone?"
Etc.

We left the next day to go to Fresno for Thanksgiving. David made a few comments about the lost keys. After getting home and still not having found them, we were worried I had permanently lost the keys.

Until David went to put on his work pants.

Do you see that green lanyard coming out of the pocket of his navy blue pants? Those are the car keys. 

For the first time in our entire relationship it was David who lost them, not me. We had a good chuckle about that for a while. 

Pumpkin Pie

David and I carpool to work. This one particular day walking to the car my hands were full with my lunch, his lunch, is luch dessert (pumpkin pie), a water bottle, and a book or something. I get into the car and set everything on my lap. His lunch and pie are in ziplock baggies, so they are kind of slippery ad slide all over the place. I am juggling too many things on my lap, so when they fall to the floor I don't bother to pick them up.

After a few minutes David worriedly asks me, "Amanda, where is my pumpkin pie?" I reply "Just around here somehwere."

He is worried enough that he makes me search for it. It wasn't on the floor like I had suspected. It also was not a very rigid pie at all, like I suspected. I mean, this thing was borderin on the softness of apple sauce. I eventually found it tucked under my left butt cheek by my seatbelt buckle. Without even feeling it I had squished his perfect slice of pie.

After David had cut his perfect slice of pie earlier that morning, it had fallen crust-up onto the floor. He thought he had escaped scott free because all that happened was a tiny layer of pie got peeled off the top and stuck to the ground. And then I came along and sat on it. Whoops. 

Harry Potter Cake

While in Philadelphia, I was told I had to get the most delicious cannoli of all time at a certain bakery. I brought one home in a box on the plane with me for David to try. During my layover he asked me how the cannoli was doing.

David: "How is the cannoli holding up?"

Me: "A little like Harry's 11th brithday cake..."

If you don't get my joke, I really don't think we can be friends. 

Knives

My mother owns the dullest steak knives on the face of this planet. I would have better luck cutting a tomato with a spoon than her knives. But I finally got her to send in her knives to get sharpened, and when they came back the first thing I did was check to see how sharp they were.

If you want to see how sharp you freshly sharpened Cutco knives are, don't do it by runing your finger along the blade. You won't feel it right away, but it will cut you because IT IS FRESHLY SHARPENED!! I don't know what I was thinking.

Philadelphia

I travelled to Philadelphia for a research conference a short while back (paid for by my school, woohoo!!). I was there by myself, but I really had a great time. I didn't want to pay for transportation, so I ended up walking roughly 6 miles around down town every day I was there to see all the sites and eat all the delicious food. Here are some things I learned the hard way:

Here was my walking path just one day:

1. Penn's Landing? Have you heard of it? I walked over 2 miles to get there, to find out it's a parking lot. Literally.

2. The tourist book in my hotel room said to check out Race Street Pier. It is not a popular place. And there is nothing to do there.

Not another soul in sight.

3. You know that thing that happens in New York City where a car drives by and splashes  puddle of water on the person standing on the curb? That happens in Philadelphia too. Yay for me.

4. Jim's and Geno's (and probably Pat's as well) Philly Cheese Steaks taste the same. I don't know what the big debate is about.

5. Cobblestone is my favorite thing ever.

6. I can have fun travelling alone. I have never travelled by myself before, but I don't hate it. Especially when it is virtually free.

Gutter

If it is raining outside, watch your step as you get out of the car because if you parked next to a gutter, you will step in that gutter and get your foot soaking wet.

On this same night we went rock climbing with a local meetup group. When we showed up, the parking lot was crazy full, so we parked next to someone who parked next to someone who was in a spot. When we left, it was pretty empty, so our car was in the middle of the parking lot, a whole space away from the closest parking space, which was empty. Only a little embarrassing.

It's really hard to see, but the actual parking spot is cut off on the right side of the picture. We are the silver car on the middle/left of the picture.

Pee in my pants

I was driving home on a road trip with my dad. My water bottle is really old, so if it isn't sitting upright then it leaks water. I didn't want it to leak all over the floor, so I put it right between my legs to keep it upright. Like so:

What I didn't realize is that the mouthpiece was pressing up against the seatbelt and causing water to leak out. Like so:

That was a fun realization.

Halloween Woes

This Halloween involved a lot of lessons.

1) Irons can be unpredictable. I was using fusible fabric to iron two pieces of fabric together for David's costume. For 3/4 of the costume the ironing went perfect. Then ALL OF A SUDDEN the iron is so hot it melts the fabric. And my arm.

The melted fabric got on the iron, too, of course, so I had to stop using it.

Immediately after the burn.

The next day.

No worries, though, because you can't really tell on the costume and he turned out to be the cutest Charlie Brown I've ever seen.

2) The hallway by the front door is VERY slippery in my new boots. When trick-or-treaters came by the house, I wanted to wear a scary costume and jump out at them to really scare them. Instead, I jumped out at them, slipped on the floor, and fell on my bum. I was not hurt, but my pride was. They came back later asking if I broke my leg, and when they heard I didn't they started laughing and said that fall was the funniest thing ever. 

The skid mark to prove it.

The scary costume.

3) Don't trust Pinterest for Pumpkin seed recipes. I found this post called "10 best pumpkin seed recipes" and tried out two of them. The first one was so gross I couldn't eat another bite. The second one was only tolerable because of the large quantities of sugar on it.

4) GROCERY STORES DON'T SELL PUMPKINS ON HALLOWEEN!! A few days before Halloween there are huge bins of pumpkins outside every grocery store, but if you aren't on top of your game and wait until Halloween day to buy pumpkins, you will be out of luck. We went to two different stores and it as the same case at both. Luckily, my mom had purchased one pumpkin weeks in avance, so at least we got to carve one pumpkin.

While I'm naturally talented at a lot of things, pumpkin carving is not one of them. I'm not sure how good pumpkin carvers do it, but I have tried so many of the hard patterns and quit halfway because you couldn't tell at all what it was. This year, having learned my lesson in the past, I chose an uber simple pattern. And it was still hard. We had to hide toothpicks in it to keep it from collapsing in on itself. 

5) This neighborhood goes ALL OUT for halloween with lights and lout music, and we handed out ALL of our 10 lbs of candy in less than 2 hours. It is a popular neighborhood.

All in all, it was still a good Halloween. 

Frankenstein Knuckles

For the Halloween season I decided to make some chocolate covered pretzel sticks look like fingers of Frankenstein, like this:

Found on Pinterest

I melted some white chocolate, then added some food coloring to make it white. 

Side note: regular food coloring makes white chocolate seize up.

Side note 2: Seized up chocolate does not stick to pretzels very well.

After I noticed the chocolate had seized, I came up with the excuse that the hot bowl it was in was just over cooking it.

I took out more white chocolate, melted that, then proceeded to add food coloring in a bowl that was not nearly as warm.

The result:

This is when I found out that the food coloring was the problem.

After a lot of practice, I was able to spread the white chocolate onto the pretzel sticks like a very hard-to-work-with peanut butter. 

Even though the chocolate seized up, it still tasted delicious.

After I was finished, I tried adding some milk to the leftover chocolate to see if it would un-seize it.

It just made the chocolate oily and weird.

Sleeping

Today I learned David sleeps with one eye a little bit open.

Cornbread Muffins

I've made cornbread muffins a few times, and I think they are delicious. I was quickly trying to finish dinner the other day because the missionaries were coming over to eat and we were running late. The recipe called for the normal ingredients: corn meal, flour, sugar, melted butter, etc.

When they came out of the oven, they hadn't risen as much as they normally do, and they didn't look as yellow as they usually do. But whatever, maybe I just remembered wrong.

After I ate one, I noticed they were definitely more dense than the last time I made them. It must be because I had only made them in Utah, which is at a higher altitude and much drier climate than San Diego.

Yeah. That must be it.

Dinner goes fine. Nobody mentions anything about the muffins.

The next morning, I go to heat up some oatmeal in the microwave and... what? Why is there a bowl in the microwave? I pull it out and look inside the bowl.

WHAT?

HERE IS THE PARTIALLY MELTED (and re-solidified) BUTTER THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO GO IN THE MUFFINS!

And suddenly it all made sense. 

Clumsy

Sometimes Lots of times I'm clumsy. If you are a clumsy person like me, don't put your hamper within 2 feet of your bed. You will somehow roll off the bed (while awake) (how did I even do that?) onto the hard edges of the laundry basket and make some nice bruises on your legs. But, it's worth it because it was really funny.

I got one just below my knee, and one righ above my ankle, because that's how big my laundry basket is.

Frosting Brownies

When making the famous BYU mint brownies, make sure to do the following: 1) carefully read the directions, and 2) think rationally before making any decisions.

I made these brownies, followed the instructions, put them in the pan, then put them in the oven. All was well.

Then I went back and looked at the ingredients list. It listed chocolate frosting.

What??! I DIDN'T PUT ANY FROSTING IN THE BATTER! (Here is where I ignored rule #2)

I then took the brownies out of the oven, poured the batter back in the bowl, made some chocolate frosting really fast, mixed it in with the batter, and put it back in the oven.

Whew! That was a close one! Good thing it had only been in the oven for 5 minutes before I re-read the directions!

Then I made some mint frosting, and a second batch of chocolate frosting. Man, this recipe takes a lot of frosting.

The brownies were supposed to cook for 25 minutes, but they were still liquid at that point. They weren't done until 45 minutes had passed. Strange.

When I told the story to my mother, she thought it was odd that the recipe called for frosting in the batter.

I re-read the recipe.

HAH! IT DIDN'T CALL FOR FROSTING IN THE BATTER!

I didn't follow rule #1 or #2, and for about 10 minutes I was very stressed, and it made me make extra frosting, but in the end the brownies were delicious and sweet so it wasn't all that bad.

Hair Treasures

If you're not careful, you might accidently rip off your ear cuff when taking your shirt off. And if you do, you might spend the next 15 minutes looking all over the room/house (just in case!) for it, only to find out it was very secretly hidden in your hair.

The cuff that went missing.

The hair where the cuff was hiding.

There it is!!

How much?

I like to watch TV at a lower volume than David does. And this happened tonight.

David: "Want me to turn down the volume?"
*Red Lobster endless shrimp commercial starts*
Me: *Thinking about the volume level*
David: "How much?" (Talking at the TV, asking about the cost of endless shrimp)
Me: "What's it at?" (Talking about the volume)
David: "Red Lobster"

Sometimes misunderstandings make us laugh.

P.S. The deal is $16.99 for endless shrimp, in case you were wondering.

Sewing

You don't know back pain until you've tried sewing on the floor for a long period of time.

Queso

David: "Let's make queso dip to snack on."
Me: "Yum! Okay!"
*Buy ingredients*
*Make queso*

David and me: "Woah that's a lot of queso!"

Well, what do you expect from two pounds of Velveeta and a quart of buttermilk/milk/heavy cream? If you are me and David, then you don't think about the fact that it could feed an entire football team. I guess we're having queso dip for the next week of dinner.