A frozen bed

We got back from the Thanksgiving break a little early last night. We wanted to miss the snow storm, since my car doesn't do well in the cold white stuff. I forgot how cold it gets here in northern Utah, and we came home to a freezing apartment. No, really. I pulled down the covers to our bed, and our bed was was almost frozen. We have one of those memory pads on our bed and it was completely hard. It took a couple hours for it to warm up and act like it should. We laughed about it, and slept with tons of covers.

Our family reunion was wonderful! We didn't really have a strict schedule to go by, so we mostly just enjoyed each others company, which was alright with me. I thought I'd document some of the highlights. Such as this:

Food! This is my uncooked Pecan Pie. I know now why Pioneer Woman didn't have a picture of the cooked pie...it doesn't look very good at all. But my goodness, it tasted delicious. So don't be fooled by looks. I served my pie at Grandma's to eat with cousins, aunts and uncles. We had like 15 different pies. It was wonderful!

The star of the party, Turkey!

What is a Purles reunion without music?

Sometimes music time turned into chaos time, like this:

Lots of technology. You can't tell, but this is an iphone.
The ipad.
We're an Apple family. Can you tell?
I caught the boys in the movie room...
watching this:
Yes, it's what you think it is. That my friends, is Princess Barbie, escaping some sort of bad guy. Imagine my surprise when I walked in to find not one girl in that room watching the movie.

And of course, at every reunion, there is lots of love.

All in all, it was a fantabulous reunion. I hope all your Thanksgivings were full of love, family and friends, and lots of food.

Pie!

Okay, I promised I would write a post to make up for my bad one yesterday, so here it is!

While Daniel is slaving away at work today, I'm in the kitchen making my first Pecan Pie. I have fond memories of this particular pie. My Aunt Lynnie used to make it for our big family get togethers during Thanksgiving, and I've been hooked ever since. I don't know what makes a good Pecan Pie, so I tried a recipe from the Pioneer Woman. It's called The Pie That'll Make You Cry. Take a look! But the only reason that I'll cry over it is because I'll be thinking about how my body is going to react to all the sugar and fat. Oh well, Thanksgiving only happens once a year!

Daniel and I are heading down to St. George in a few hours to join my family for our reunion. I'm very excited. I love it when my family gets together. I'm so grateful for them, and that they are so close to me and Daniel. If only my parents could sell the chocolate factory for millions and get up here again. :) Speaking of being grateful, I have a very long list of things I am grateful for, so I thought I would just mention a few:

• My wonderful husband. I know that I was prompted to move to St. George a little over a year ago so I could meet him. I didn't know why I felt so strongly about going, because believe me, I did NOT want to go, but I did, and I will forever be grateful for following that gut feeling. I love him dearly, and couldn't imagine being with anyone better. He keeps me sane, and on the straight and narrow. I always wish I could do more for him.
• Family, of course! And not just any family, the best family on this planet. I was blessed with a new amazing family when I married Daniel - which makes me doubly grateful. I'm grateful for my siblings who follow the commandment to multiply and replenish the earth, because I have lots of kids to have fun with! (By the way, did everyone know we have two additions to the family come this April? Congrats to Amber and Kristin!)
• Cooking. Yes, I love to cook and I'm grateful that I can. I guess food would be added to this bullet point too - because as all of you know. I LOVE food.
  
• The clothes on my back, a warm shelter, and enough money to survive on more than potatoes and oats.
  
• BYU! And the fact that I'm graduating soon. I especially am grateful for the wonderful professors I get to work with everyday, and their influence for the better.
• UVU! So that Daniel can graduate too.
• Can one be grateful for wonderful smells? Because this pecan pie is making me awfully hungry. I can't tell you how good it smells. I'm grateful for smell.
  
• Our car. We abuse it, and it still shows us love. I'm grateful that it still works and gets us from point A to point B.
  
• St. George aka warmer weather.
  

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! May we all count our blessings this season. I promise that once you do, your eyes will be opened to see more blessings in your life. Eat lots of food, and enjoy your families and friends.

Soap Box

Can I just vent for a second? I apologize if this next post offends anyone, that isn't my goal. I just want to get out some of those feelings I've held in for the past week out there in cyberspace. I'm hoping it will make me feel semi-better.

I love BYU. I don't know where I would be with out it. But when we finally get some college school spirit, do we have to apologize? I feel like I can say a little bit on this one because I've been both an Aggie and a Cougar. So what's with the Y student being punished for this little number?

I don't see anything malicious or rude. I can't tell you how many posts I've seen on Facebook saying something like "classy, cougs." Come on. I've seen the posters USU fans hold up for basketball games, and they are vulgar, rude, and totally uncalled for. Most of them don't even have to do with sports. But when we say one thing that hints to a competitive spirit, the news is ALL over it. I understand BYU is a Church school, but does that mean we have to take kicks in the face all the time without enjoying a little harmless school spirit too? I mean we are college kids who just want to have a little fun too. I guess I just don't see why we are criticized so much for such a small act. I personally, enjoyed it.

GO BYU!

That's pretty much it. I will repent later for this post by writing something awesome about Thanksgiving - because that is what I'm supposed to be thinking about. I LOVE Thanksgiving!

And I'm especially excited to be able to see my family.

Yummy

That's all I have to say about how delectable this weekend's recipe adventures were. I decided to make Sundays my new recipe experiment day. It's working out quite marvelously. Yesterday while listening to a Christmas Pandora play list, (which we NEVER do, because somewhere there is an unwritten rule about no Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but I couldn't help it), I made Chicken Pot Pie and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I decided to share the cookie recipe with you. I got it off the Food Network website, but changed it up a bit to make it better (and because I didn't have all the spices...so I improvised. That's the one bad thing about cooking on Sunday...)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) of butter, softened
1 cup of white sugar
1 cup of brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups canned pumpkin puree
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 cups semisweet or milk chocolate chips
Nonstick or cooking spray or parchment paper

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray cookie sheets with nonstick spray or line them with parchment paper.

Using a mixer, beat the butter until smooth. Beat in the white and brown sugars, a little at a time, until the mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time, then mix in the vanilla and pumpkin puree. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Slowly beat the flour mixture into the batter in thirds. Stir in the chips. Scoop the cookie dough by heaping tablespoons onto the prepared cookie sheets and bake for 15-20 minutes.

ENJOY!

Morning

This morning Daniel kissed me and said, "you're so scrum-diddlie-umptious."

Yep. That's who I married. What a goober.

Therapy

Over the last couple of weeks I've realized that cooking has become a sort of passion/obsession of mine. Not only is it something I crave to do, but it's something I find myself thinking about all the time. I love looking up new recipes, watching cooking shoes, trying out new flavors, and slaving over a hot stove and oven. I especially love cooking for others.

I think I may just love food a little too much.

Anyways, I find that if I can cook when I come home from a stressful day, all my fears and worries melt away. As long as I can cook, I stay sane. It has become therapy for me. I can't wait until I graduate so I can have more time to cook and we won't have to eat dinner at 9 pm anymore.

I think the realization of this love was awakened by my watching Julie & Julia a couple of weeks ago. (LOVED the movie, but sad that it had to throw an "f" bomb in there. I mean, come on!)

Last night I stayed up until midnight making my Grandma's recipe for banana bread. Boy, was it delicious! I was glad to have something fresh for Daniel when he woke up this morning for breakfast. I'll post the recipe soon to share with y'all.

My new dream is to become famous like the Pioneer Woman. (Did you know she's going to be on Throw Down with Bobby Flay?! AWESOME.) I just want to cook, teach my kids, know everything about photography, look beautiful, and be a great story teller. You watch, I'll be famous for something someday.

I CAN'T wait for Thanksgiving. I'm going to be making a pecan pie for the first time. :) Mmmm. I can already taste it. I'm also grateful for this time of year!

Oh look!

I was looking through the Mormon Messages on Youtube and there was one on Pres Uchtdorf's talk that I posted about last week. So I thought I would share that too. I'm still working on patience...

This is school work?

I love my major. I know I've said this multiple times, but despite the deadlines, stress of putting presentations together all the time, and teachers with high expectations, it's pretty dang awesome. One of my professors is encouraging us to blog about advertising. So, I thought I'd share a few of my absolute favorite, creative, out-of-the-box ads. Some are for good causes, and some are just good because of the genius behind it. You may not appreciate it as much as I do, but just try to enjoy.






This commercial is the one that made me fall in love with advertising. I just love it.



Now, this one, I just love. Call me a cat lover, whatever, but I think this idea was a really good one. Why not let 100 cats roam around your store to show how cozy your furniture is?



Don't worry. I'll have more for your enjoyment later. :)