My Favorite Things...

My friend Lizzy posted her favorite things the other day and I loved it! So I am doing the same and adding some imagery as well! I am wondering how many I can get before I run out of time! :)

                                                      ~ Shopping!!!

                                     ~ Wedding dresses!

                                                   

                                     ~ Beautiful settings!

                                              ~ Rush Limbaugh :)

                               ~ I LOVE going to weddings :)

                                        ~ Cute and chic aprons! 

                                           ~ Fresh baked food ~

  

                                       ~ Beautiful well decorated rooms.

                                      ~ I loved helping my mom with the gardening

                                       growing up and can't wait to be able to do it

                                      again! :)

                                                 Rocky Road Ice Cream!!!!

                                              ~ England! Can't wait to return.

                                                      ~ Fresh razors! 

                                        ~ Does anyone not love kittens? :)

                                  ~ Helping my dad around the ranch!

                                          ~ A full tank of gas!!! :P

                                           ~ Beautiful classical music

                         ~  David McCullough is one of my favorite authors!

                                          

                                             ~ I LOVE to grocery shop!!!

                                             ~ My beautiful Colorado!!! :)

                            ~ Touring old houses with my mom and sisters!

                                       ~ Fresh sharp pencils!!!

                                      ~ Winston Churchill, one of my heros!

                                                   ~Rainy days!!!

                                  ~Beautiful dishes!!!!

           ~Ramona Quimby is one of my FAVORITE characters!!!!

                        ~ I LOVE BENJAMIN!!!!!! My best friend ~

                                        ~I love chatting with my mom and sisters!!!

                         ~I love craft books, cake and cooking books!!!

                                 ~I love homemade biscuits 

                      ~  Going out to tea houses with my mom and sisters!

                 ~                     I love fresh clean sheets!

                    ~  The Little House on the Prairie books and t.v. series!

                                            ~ I love beautiful furniture

                                                ~ And my favorite, Earl Grey!!!!

Whew! I know there is a BUNCH more, but I am out of time :) Happy Tuesday everybody! 

Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Ephesians 5:20   (should I do a list of all the bad things I am thankful for too? :P Maybe not :) Like I said Im out of time!!! 

Silhouettes

A while ago my sister Himilce gave me some of her magazines that she was finished with and one of them was a Country Living. In it was an article on Silhouettes. I cannot get over them now! I just love silhouettes!!!! I was able to find the pictures from the magazine so you all can share my enthusiasm! It has given me so many ideas to do things with. Like decorate a beautiful white cake with a black silhouette on top and maybe black beads going around the side of the cake. Or do a black and white theme for a future bathroom!! Thank you Himilce! :P

Happy Mother's Day Mom!!!

A very special Happy Mother's Day to my MOM!!!! Mom you are the kindest and greatest role model I could ever have. I am so very thankful that God blessed me with you as my mother. I pray that I can be to my children as you were to us all. Thank you for your sacrifices and all your many many prayers for all 7 of us!!!!! I posted this picture for you, because it has always reminded me of  you and your sweetness and what you were like when you were a little girl. I love you so very much!!!

Brownies

Today I made brownies for an evening at our friends house tonight. I got this recipe from Giada from Everyday Italian. It is so easy and delicious all in one! You just need one jar of orange marmalade and one brownie box. Make the brownies and pour them into your pan and then simply warm up your marmalade in the microwave and then pour it on top of the brownie batter. I only use about three fourths of a jar, but Giada calls for a whole jar. Then you just bake it. It does take a little longer to cook because of the extra liquid.

Boy oh boy it is delicious as long as you like orange in your chocolate! :P

Marius Clam Chowder

Benjamin and I love Clam Chowder and Benjamin loves to make it! And I love him making it! :)

He buys this HUGE seafood mixture. It has everything from Shrimp, Squid, Octopus, Mussels, and Surimi. He usually cuts up the seafood into smaller portions and then stirs it on a frying pan with white wine, spices and I don't know what else! Then he takes his Progresso Clam Chowder can and pours it into a cooking pot with about a cup and a half of milk added. (they tell you not to add more milk, but this tastes SO much better!) And there you go! Sorry I don't have a picture of the finished product but I think you get the idea! I am hoping he will come home from the office and make it for me!

Beautiful Friday

Today it is so beautiful out. Nice and cloudy with the birds chirping. We had a great and fast week. I went to Benjamin's DEP meeting last night at the NAVY office and had a lot of fun watching and learning. It was only supposed to be an hour or so, but it turned into six! My plans went out the window when I realized I had to stay for the whole meeting! It was a lot of fun though. We had to sign some papers, since Benjamin is only sixty days out now and I needed to come along and sign too! Its getting exciting for both of us. I will have to endure the long months him being away, but the whole adventure of it thrills me! And I love to see Benjamin's eyes glowing with excitement about it all.

In other news, I will be making a girls wedding cake the end of this month. Well, she is not having a traditional wedding cake, but a cup cake tower. Her colors are green, black and silver. Fortunately for me she is not too particular! She sent me some pictures that she liked and I was very thankful that it wasn't something extremely difficult. The only thing that concerns me is that it has already began to get really warm here in Arizona and I will need to learn the techniques of keeping the frosting from melting!

I posted a picture of Benjamin and I on our late anniversary trip this year and also a picture of our cat Bay, who I find sleeping in positions like this quite often! :)

I hope everyone has a fun and great weekend!

God bless ~Elizabeth

Amazing

 My mom recently told me about this little girl and her art. My mom is an artist and so of course she took a lot of interest in her :) The video is an interview and tells a little bit of her story. She sold her first self portrait for 10,000 when she was 7. She started drawing when she was 4 and painting when she was six years old. She grew up in an atheist family and had no idea about God. She said she started having dreams about Jesus and wanted to paint what she saw. The family is now saved and she is much older, but her work and the pictures of Jesus is amazing. :)  Her sweet spirit blessed me when I first watched this. I hope you will watch.  Also here is her web page so you can see all of her work. 

Flowers...

I was doing our grocery shopping at Wal -Mart yesterday and boy was it a busy place! So many people doing their shopping like me before the weekend. I love to shop.  Well, as long as life isn't too busy that is.  Anyways, it was pretty bustling at the store and I was just about to check out, when I remembered that I had wanted to go look in the garden area and see if they had any good herbs. Ah, what a transformation! All those beautiful flowers and plants. I just wanted to go and plant and garden and water and pick!!!! We live in a upstairs apartment/condo. So there is no way for me to go and plant a bunch of flower beds or herb gardens! I know I could get a couple of pots, but it isn't the same when you know you will be moving in a few months and your not sure the flowers would survive the move. But I am very glad I decided to go out and look at the herbs at Wal- Mart! Happy Spring everyone!

Beloved Truths....

 ⁴ Surely he took up our infirmities 
       and carried our sorrows, 
       yet we considered him stricken by God, 
       smitten by him, and afflicted.

 ⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, 
       he was crushed for our iniquities; 
       the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, 
       and by his wounds we are healed.

 ⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray, 
       each of us has turned to his own way; 
       and the LORD has laid on him 
       the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:4-6

This scripture is so meaningful to me and has been in my head for the last week. Have a blessed Sunday :)

Tea Party......

Tonight we are participating in a Tea Party at our capitol. I am excited that people are upset and wanting to stop what has been happening with all of the spending. I pray that truth will come to light in the heart of the people. After all the people are the ones with the power (right?). We empower our government. Anybody else participating in your local Tea Party? Leave a comment and tell me what you thought! :)

Raspberry Trifle

Im baking this today, for tomorrow! :) Its going to be difficult to keep my fingers out of it =)

Rainy Morning Breakfast

This morning we woke up to rain pouring down on the windows. I did not want to get out of bed!  It was so nice hearing the rain fall. I made us a nice warm breakfast. Eggs, seasoned oven cooked potatoes and vanilla french toast. I watched Nigella Lawson's video "French Toast Doughnuts". It sure got me in the mood to make breakfast! I don't know if it is a good thing, but I love being in a certain environment while Im cooking. I love burning candles in the kitchen and everything in order and then to have rain falling outside! It was a perfect Saturday morning and the just what I needed as I started our taxes! I am happy to say we are all done with out taxes for this year! Yaaaayyyy I always dread doing the taxes not knowing what to expect! And I put it off until the last! I had meant to have them done a couple of weeks ago! Thankfully they were very easy! Not like last years :P

I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter! 

Sweets........

These two are our little sweet hearts. They love each other so much. I always find them giving each other baths. Here is a glimpse of their love. :D 

(and I especially love it when they want to get cozy with me!)

Enjoying....

San Diego visiting Benjamin's brother. I can never get a good picture of Benjamin! He is always pulling a funny face on me!

Hello everyone! This is a really late post. Benjamin and I just returned from San Diego. Clearly it has been a really busy couple of weeks! I feel so behind with my blogging world! I haven't caught up with any of my beloved blogging buddies.

To start off with Marie and John were here a week and half ago, which flew by! And in the midst of them being here, working and preparing three baby shower cakes I got sick on the day I scheduled to make the cakes! I am so thankful I had Marie with me :) I think I would have been up for 24 hours if she hadn't helped me like she did. I felt bad having her help with her own baby cake, but Marie and I are sisters =P

We had so much fun with her and John. They bought us their favorite game, Monopoly and we played several times together in the evening. They are both pros and so of course you can guess who one!

Marie, Himicle and Katheryn's baby shower was lovely! The guests, food, dessert and games were a lot of fun. It was quite interesting having a threesome baby shower. I hope they loved it as much as I did :P I loved making their cakes (thankfully with Marie's help) and except for being sick! I made the cakes a week ahead of time (luckily) and froze them in the freezer. Marie helped me with the crumb coat and making and frosting the cakes. Then I did all the detail and designing. I did a color flow image on each cake and then made royal icing pearls around the top. Using pearl dusting powder. Everything was edible. The nice thing about the images, I put the image on a flat round fondant plaque. So the (Mom's) can take the image home. It made me feel better too, because after all that work I couldn't bear to eat into it! :)

Thankfully I feel rested, and most of the laundry done! I shall get back into the routine of things :)