A little late...

For those of you who don't know, Salon Foushee is moving. And by moving, I mean it already moved. The original plan included us working through tomorrow, and moving after work. However, due to issues with the landlord we are completely out of the Coal Mine location and will be reopening on July 1st at the new Belleview location. I will post pictures as soon as we have everything into place!

While caught up in all of this craziness going on, I never made a Father's Day post! It is a little late, but I think it is only fair because Eric came into my life a little late! Just kidding Eric, but I love you tons! I am going to try and squeeze out 20 facts that I know about this awesome man.

1. He is great on the grill! I love his ribs, but he makes a lot of other great stuff on there too.

2. He loves the show According to Jim, and in so many ways reminds me of Jim Belushi.

3. dubbed the song Just Another Day In Paradise as our family song.

4. he can build/design/remodel ANYTHING,

5. his feet are pretty "damn" hot.

6. he doesn't like celery.

7. he gets along with EVERYONE

8. In highschool when I encountered a few minor fender benders, I always called him first because I knew he'd be calm and help me calm down.

9. He loves football, especially the University of Utah.

10. He served his mission in Tennessee. His younger brother also served in the same mission at the same time.

11. he does a great impression of "Bruce."

12. his pies are DELICIOUS! He once gave my sister Aubrie and our cousin Brittany and their dates pie making lessons.

13. he enjoys camping and fishing

14. once we went to St. George for spring break, and he created this awesome game that entertained us for over an hour. The game consisted of who could make it to the end of the hall without making the motion sensor light flash.

15. He likes chick flicks, and even watched Twilight with us last time I was in SLC.

16. In addition to all of the other delicious food he makes, he makes really great breakfast. I love, love, love his hashbrowns.

17. When we all lived at home and went to church together, after the sacrament he would pass out the flourescent green spearmint gum to our whole row.

18. He hasn't really figured out facebook yet and on his birthday thanked everyone for the birthday wishes signed in under my moms name.

19. he loves being a grandpa and his grandkids love how silly he is

20. And most importantly, he makes my mom so very happy! He is such a great husband to her, and such a great example to my little sisters.

I love you Eric, and I hope you had a great time on your trip!

In The Kitchen

I've talked a lot about food, but I have yet to actually show you anything that I've made. I have been semi obsessed with several food blogs lately, but one in particular. Cookie Madness... This chick is a trooper, she bakes something basically every day! Sometimes several things. She mainly bakes cookies, but she also has baked up some pretty tasty looking treats! I have been looking for an excuse to make a few of her items and finally got to try my hand this weekend. Last week sometime she posted her "Favorite 5." This includes her 5 favorite chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, brownies, etc. One of her favorite brownies caught my eye so I decided to put it to the test. They were a huge hit, and fun to make. Messy to cut, but mainly because of all of the toppings on top. Here's a picture of how they turned out, along with her recipe.



Caramel Filled Brownies

1 cup whole pecans (more or less, RR uses 1 ½ cups)
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips or chopped up chocolate
2 sticks unsalted butter (8 oz)
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (14 oz) bag of caramels
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or more if you like)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place pecans on a cookie sheet and toast for 7-9 minutes or until aromatic. Let cool. When cool, chop.

Meanwhile, line a 13×9 inch pan with Release foil or parchment paper. You could also just line with foil and spray the foil. Make sure to spray the sides so the caramel won’t stick to the sides.

Place chocolate and butter in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on high for 1 minute. Stir and repeat until smooth. Let cool for about 5 minutes. While chocolate cools, in a separate bowl beat sugar and eggs on high speed of an electric mixer for 3 entire minutes. Beat in vanilla. Stir chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. Using a mixing spoon or wire whisk, stir in flour and salt. Pour about half of this batter into the lined pan and bake for 20 minutes.

Cool for 20 minutes. While first layer cools, prepare filling.

Unwrap caramels (ack! Why don’t they make unwrapped caramels!) and put them in a saucepan with the 1/3 cup of cream. Heat on medium low, stirring often, until caramels are melted. Stir about half of the chopped pecans into the caramel. Pour the caramel mixture over the brownie layer.

Spread the remaining brownie mix over the caramel filling. It is kind of tricky, so do your best, but don’t worry about covering all the caramel. Scatter chocolate chips and remaining pecans over the top.

Bake at 350 degrees for another 20 minutes or until the top batter appears set but not dry. Allow brownies to cool completely (this should take a few hours). I like to cool them and then chill them because it makes slicing easier.



I also made another recipe she has introduced me too. It's delicious, but a new concept. It is kind of a candy, like a toffee, but filled with trail mix like items. One of those items being Frito chips. Yikes! I know.. Fritos! But it's a sweet and salty candy, and the Fritos are more of an accent than a main ingredient. I left it in the fridge until we left today, and it got kind of gooey in the car even though it wasn't that hot. I think if I know it's going to be sitting out I would freeze it to make sure it really sets up nicely. Here's a picture, and read the recipe so you get the concept and don't just think I'm a total nut.



Frito Candy
2 cups of pretzels
1 cup Frito chips
12ish mini peanut butter cups (I used 6 big ones, they are a little gooey. Either way, you might want to toss these in the freezer ahead of time to make the chopping cleaner)
1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 c brown sugar
1 1/2 cups semi sweet/dark chocolate chips

Break pretzels and Fritos. Don't crush them, but break them. This will make breaking the candy easier. Chop peanut butter cups. Toss mix, and lie flat on a foil lined pan. You want it to be spread pretty thin. Melt butter, and add brown sugar. Bring to a boil for one minute. Pour evenly over mixture. Bake at 350 for 8 minutes. Remove from oven and scatter chocolate chips on top. Put back in oven for a minute or two, until chocolate chips are soft enough to spread. Spread evenly over the top. Cool, then refridgerate to set. Break into pieces.


Now that you're hungry, I'll talk a little bit about today. Today the girls from Salon Foushee drove to La Jara (outside of Alamosa) to bless Neva's headstone. I have been dreading this day.. but knew that it was something I needed to do. Everything about it was making me nervous. I bake when I'm emotional, which explains my over the top treats. I stood in front of my closet for what felt like hours this morning. What do you wear to something like this? Peri and I left my apartment, and I told her that I didn't want to go. She didn't want to either, I don't think any of us did. Because I wasn't able to be there when the burried her (they also had a closed casket funeral), it still has seemed a little unreal. Seeing her burial plot, and her headstone would make it feel a little permanent.

We met up with the girls in Castle Rock and left from there. As we were getting into Colorado Springs we were routed off the freeway because of an accident. As we went over the overpass we could see the remnants of a terrible accident and the car grew quiet. The images I have engrained in my mind of Neva's car hit me like a brick.

We got into La Jara after about 4 hours and met at the cemetary. What a green, beautiful place. Her headstone was beautiful. They put her picture on it, and there was a sweet poem on the back. A Catholic Priest gave a sermon, and read from the Bible. How lucky I am to have such strong faith that I will be able to see my dear friend again. It was a comfort to be surrounded with her family, and to visit the home she grew up in. We are lucky to have each other at work. I think of her every day. She left an incredible impression on me, and everyone that knew her. I am so lucky to have known someone worth missing so much.

Momma

Happy Mother's Day! I hope everyone is able to appreciate their own mom today, and will continue to do so for the next year. I am going to snag Jacque's fabulous idea and tell you 25 things about my mom.

1. She is an amazing cook. She makes delicious homemade bread, lasagna, chicken spaghetti, cakes, Christmas treats, and THE best peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches.

2. She likes to camp and fish.

3. She loves limeades.

4. In Texas when people would call and talk to her on the phone forever, she would have us ring the doorbell so she could pretend she had to go. The door we used to enter/exit the house didn't have a doorbell, but whoever was on the phone never seemed to make that connection.

5. She works as a Special Education teacher, and is very passionate about giving those kids a great education, and great environment to learn.

6. She isn't afraid of PDA, "No making out in the kitchen Mom!"

7. She tries hard not to hurt your feelings
me: Mom, how do you like my new hair cut?
mom: Ummm... well.. what look are you going for?

8. She is afraid of heights, and I have inherited that same quality.

9. She loves babies and kids. And they love her too.

10. She is good at planning stuff. Everything has to have a plan, and she's great at delegating it.

11. In highschool she didn't care if I skipped classes as long as I had A's.

12. She is sensitive to all of her kids different needs and wants.

13. She has style. She tries hard to do her hair like I do it, and doesn't use cheap make-up.

14. She is madly, hopelessly, in love with her husband.

15. She loves playing games. Canasta, Mad Gab, The Fruit Game, Poker.. Even is some of them make her look silly.

16. She likes everyone to be included, and goes out of her way to make sure no one is left out.

17. When I was little she would pay me money to rub her feet and play with her hair. She had this red round brush that would always get tangled in her hair.

18. She went to BYU (twice) but is a huge U of U football fan.

19. She doesn't really like cereal, but when I was little she would eat this cereal called Raisin Squares. I loved it too, and still put raisins in my shredded wheat cereal.

20. When we lived in Texas she loved garage sales, and had several of them at our house.

21. She always wanted a house that had a wrap around porch, and a cocker spaniel. No porch yet, but when she and Eric got married he had a cocker spaniel named Dennis.

22. She used to take us to Longview shopping ALL day long on Saturdays. We got to go to the mall, Target, and Sam's club. Such a treat.

23. She stayed up late checking my math homework for me all during elementary school.

and for my 2 favorite things about my mom...

24. She LOVES getting good deals. If you tell her you like her shirt, she tells you where she got it and how much it costs. She loved coupons when I wad little. She loves the clearance racks. I make fun of her for this, but have inherited that same quality from her.

25. She is the most giving person I know. As busy as she was when I was little, she volunteered in my classroom. She helped out people in our ward that didn't have money. She bought me stuff when I complained that I always got me hand me downs, even when we didn't have the money. She is always happy to give to someone else, because she knows that there are always people that are worse off.



I love you Mom! Thanks for all that you do for me, you are the best mom ever!!

blizzard

Last Thursday started out as a pretty normal day. I woke up exhausted, but put on my gym clothes to head out for the gym. I could hear cars outside my window, and recognized the sound of tires on pavement- not tires sliding in slush. I peeked outside and let out a sigh of releif that we hadn't gotten the "8+ inches" the news had promised. Phew.

So I packed up my stuff (I get ready for work at the gym, due to it being 15 minutes from my house in the direction on the salon), and poured myself some Kashi. Shortly after I head that Cherry Creek School District had cancelled school on account of it being a snow day. But where was the snow? It certainly wasn't at my house. It turns out that the storm was supposedly delayed, and expected around noon. A storm big enough to cancel school, even before it had started? I got a little nervous. I headed to the gym (which is west, toward the mountains) and as I got closer there was a little more snow. The gym is basically all windows, so while running on the treadmill I could see that the wind was picking up and the snow was coming down. Within an hour it was coming down hard.. I got a call from the salon saying that all but one of my clients had called in to cancel. The salon is even further west, and they were already experiencing a white out. I haven't had a snow day since Texas, what a fun surprise! I continued to workout because really, a snow day means a lazy day with plenty of junk food. After over 2 hours of cardio, and watching the storm blow in I headed out.

I now understand what a "white out" is. I could barely see the car in front of me, and was dying of heat with my defrost blasting. Cars were all over the road.. hazards blinking, tons of cars stranded on the side of the road. My usual 15 minute drive turned into over an hour. I live at the top of a hill which was scary in itself, since that same hill takes you to the freeway and there was mass confusion due to stoplights without power. It turned out that everyone got sent home from work at the same time.

By the time I got home Victoria had found out she was off of work too. What a lazy day. We watched tv, surfed the net, took naps.. just about everything. I was highly disappointed that both Ellen and Oprah had been replaced with local news and the latest blizzard report. Around 8 we couldn't take the silence anymore. We called every restaurant within a mile to see if we could get out of the house. The only thing open was Old Chicago so we got to eat some delicious pizza and watch basketball. There was no one on the roads by that time so the ride was slow but not too scary. I can say I've survived my first (and hopefully last?!) blizzard!
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The T's and the P's

When I was about 16 my mom and I were chatting and (from my recollection)out of nowhere she suggested that I marry someone tan. Her theory on this was that though all of her brothers and sisters were pale, those with tan spouses had tan children. Now let me explain to those of you bronzed babes- this isn't just a vanity plea. I remember many blistering sunburns from the scorching sun. Sunscreen in my eyes at Six Flags and Lagoon. The older I've gotten the more I appreciate my fair skin. I like my freckles and red hair. I slather on sunscreen underneath my make-up, and know that my skin will thank me later.

I often get the question, "What are you looking for in a guy?" Now even though I am not sure I really know the answer to that question I have normally smile and respond with, "tall*, tan**, and temple worthy." I mean really, what else does a girl need? Actually, I just found out.

My boss recently heard some hullabullo on Oprah about a new book by Steve Harvey called "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man." In his book he depicts where women go wrong, and what to look for to know if your relationship is for sport or for keeps. I would recommend this book to all of the ladies out there- single, in a relationship, engaged, or married. So from this book I add to my list "looking for." In addition to a guy who is tall*, tan**, and temple worthy- I would like a man who will profess, protect, and provide. If you know a single gentelman who fits this criteria, feel free to send him my direction.






*I am 5'11" without shoes on, tall is considered this height or taller.
**due to my attraction for red heads, this is negotiable.

Boom. Roasted

I didn't really care about the superbowl this year, but it's always fun to get together with friends and have some good food. As for The Office, I think that might be my favorite episode yet. I'll be making my list of people that I would make out with before I'd make out with Michael Scott. However, I won't be sharing that list with you here.

I often mock the fast and testimony meetings in my ward. They are a little less predicable these days, which I consider to be a good thing. The last few months have been a lot more sincere, and a little less for show. I found yesterdays meeting especially uplifting, and left feeling spiritually fed. The pulpit was graced by several newer members, who bore testimony of their new found truth. I was recently reading a blog post written by my friend Zack. We attended EFY together at least 5 years ago and his outgoing personality left a deep impression on me. Though I don't keep contact with him I love reading his witty blog entries. His last entry seemed to be especially insightful and I would encourage you to read it. It can be found here: everydayiseasterinmycloset.blogspot.com

I have been reading the conference edition of the Ensign for the last week at the gym every morning. What a great way to start the day! It amazes me how having a positive attitude can turn a dull day into a great day. Also, a friend shared this video with me this weekend. I shared it with my mom, and thought I should share it with everyone. Just remember- it's not if you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

A Historic Event

As much as I like to open my big mouth.. I just want to say that I am proud to be an American today and excited to see Obama as president. This is a huge historic event, and I feel blessed to be able to witness it. I have only been able to see part of his speech from this morning but am excited to see it in its entirety.

I finally got a car. I shouldn't say finally since I was only looking for a couple of weeks. But wow, I am relieved to not have to shop anymore. I made the great mistake of test driving a Mazda 6. It was smooth and fast, still zippy and sporty. I felt at home behind the wheel.. and the dealer thought I was a sucker. When he tried to get me to pay $1000 over sticker price I laughed in his face, and kept on hunting. I drove a few Hondas. A Corolla. Even a few American cars... nothing compared. So I found myself a 2005 Mazda 6 and am loving every second of it. What power!

Recently, I discovered a fun little fitness website called sparkpeople.com. It is a social network, and a nutrition/fitness site. It's cool because you can log all of your food and exercise, read message boards, post pictures, etc. I have been doing that for about 2 weeks now. I am following a low fat (30% fat )diet, not eating sweets, counting calories, etc.. So week one I was down 5.5 pounds, and now at the end of week 2 I am down another 3. That's 8.5 pounds so far this year. I am feeling great, and really enjoying the gym. Except for that darn stair climber... I freakin hate that thing, but put in my 30 minutes a day regardless. I am thinking about running a half marathon in September. I am looking for people to run any races with in the meantime, so let me know if you're interested.

People

I have had a lot on my mind lately, and it's hard for me to sort out my thoughts. I've been doing lots of journaling of my own, and felt like blogging my thoughts tonight. I have been (and still am) so caught up in trying to buy a car that I haven't even slowed down to do anythign else. So here I am, test driving a car tonight.. I have the dealer in the back seat, my most wonderful friend Alan in the front seat... and I'm rambling off about my ipod, the laptop I just purchased, and it clicks to me how many "toys" I have accumulated lately.

I have recently been rereading my favorite book, "What Happy People Know." I live by this book. I practice what it teaches, and try and share what it has taught me with everyone. I am constantly recommending it to clients, friends, and family, and even gave a copy of it to one of my friends for Christmas. It's great, pick it up when you have a chance. I've been recognizing how many people use some thing to fill voids in their lives. For some people it's something more destructive like drugs or alochol, others it can be something wonderful like love, affection, and companionship. And there is most definitely those of us who fill our lives with things.. clothes, toys, make-up, etc.. At some point I think all of us have used at least one of these things to "heal" us, without ever trying to fix the problem.
So what's the point? Here we are, our ultimate goal being perfection, aspiring to be like our older brother Jesus Christ. How is a new purse, or a large serving of chocolate cake, a new house, a new boyfriend, a new tv, going to help us achieve that?

I am so greatful for the incredible people I have in my life. Mainly my mother, who I have never known to really want anything. Okay, so that is an exageration, but honestly I can't ever think of anything big that she's ever asked for or expressed desire for. When we ask her what she wants for anything, her response is usually, "I want a clean house." Only ever replaced with the even more selfless, "I want my children home with me," or "I want my daughter to be happy." I would say that no matter what the circumstance my mother has been an incredible example of being genuinely happy. I am so lucky to have such a great family.

Neva has been on my mind a lot lately. I keep thinking of all of the funny things that she said to me throughout the years. Or how she would take naps in the break room, or her car, or wherever she could lay her head. How she about scared me half to death my first week of work telling me that if I didn't do my share of color bowls everyone would hate me. I still miss her presence every day. Peri had a client today who told her that since she had been in last she lost both her son and her husband in a car accident. When Peri told those of us in the back room we all gasped in unison, and I think our hearts broke all in the same way. After recently losing such a great friend, I can only imagine how she is feeling. How dare I complain about not having anything to wear, my grown out roots, or missing my favorite tv show? The Lord has blessed me with so many great things, and more importantly, so many great people.