Date Night – Hello Cupcake!

So this weekend was John’s turn to plan date night, and when I got home from working at the temple, I was presented with a few options. One of them was to make cupcakes from a book I have called “Hello Cupcake!” – which I LOVE, so naturally, I chose that option. We had lots of ideas to choose from, but we settled on Sunflower Cupcakes!!

And yes, I did let John do stuff ;) He was an expert frosting mixer, cupcake froster and leaf cutter!

The sunflowers were Oreos. Here I am giving them their petals :)

Here they are in the making!

Hard at work

  
So cute!!!

We are now in the process of delivering them to friends. We don’t want to eat them all!!!

Also, because I have been slacking…we had a fabulous day at the beach yesterday with our friends. We went to La Jolla and kayaked (we got to borrow our friends’ kayaks) to the caves and saw sea lions! They were very loud, but really cool to go and see! Then on the way back to the shore, and wave came up and broke behind me and I toppled over and lost my kayak! Oh well… ;) We went to the beach after my annual eye appointment and my eyes were dilated…so it was bright and I couldn’t see very well…thank goodness John came to rescue me!

I also want you to know that I got FIVE bags of goldfish crackers for $1.40. I know. It’s awesome. :)

The cougar has landed!!

Or…something to that effect. Jason has arrived at BYU and starts classes tomorrow!

Our love and well wishes!!!! We totally miss being at BYU…so yeah…I’m a little jealous ;)

Also a shout out to our daddies for Father’s day! We love you and we hope you have a wonderful day! We miss you lots and are so grateful for you in our lives. You’re pretty much awesome. :)

Testing…testing…1,2,3…

I’m experimenting with something called Windows Live Writer that I just read about. I’m hoping I like it more than Blogger’s post editor, because it was really bothering me when I was trying to write about the fair…

We went to Balboa Park again this last week for resident’s free Tuesday (LOVE!) and we got to go to the Japanese Friendship Garden.

Ahhhh…so tranquil…

They had fun little trees…

We also went to the Museum of Art and the Museum of Man (think civilizations/anthropology), but we didn’t get many pictures. They weren’t as cool as we thought they’d be. Glad we went for FREEE! :)

Yay!! It works!

Take THAT blogger post editor!!!!!!!!!!!!!

San Diego County Fair

The fair! The fair! We went to the fair! Yay! We went yesterday for the afternoon and had a lovely time. 

We managed to figure out how to get free parking (YES!) and took a shuttle over to the fair.

We rode on the top of a double decker bus. We were a little 'windswept' by the end of the ride. My hair got so tangled! ouch!

As we arrived, we were BOMBARDED with lots of yummy smells! We probably should have had a real lunch before we went...because we wanted all the yummy fair food. But we had brought snacks and managed to stick to those...for a while... 

We walked around several exhibits, from gemstones and woodwork, to hobbies and collections

Pretty cool surfboard and tiki man!

ADORABLE woody with little barbecue trailer..you can't see it well, but it totally has a wooden take out tray with a burger and a shake on it. SO CUTE

Over by the collections and hobbies exhibit, there was a display for those who entered a CAKE CONTEST! WHY did I not know about this?! But I'll show you my favorites :)

(sorry they are a little fuzzy...I had to do it without the flash...)

Finally, we gave in (more like I did) and got a FUNNEL CAKE. Yum! With powdered sugar. Oh yes. 

Nom nom nom...

We also looked at all the shops and things that were set up. You can get just about anything there! We also stayed to watch a cooking show advertising this really cool waterless cookware. It ended up being a lot longer than we thought, but we still enjoyed it and they fed us food...so it wasn't a total loss ;) 

We saw this guy on the way out...it was pretty cool. :)

Then we decided to walk around a little bit longer...and then it was time to go home. We had a lovely day, but we haven't seen everything yet! We're going to go back again...anyone wanna come? I think John still wants to try the chocolate covered bacon strips...

10 Months!!

Woo hoo!!!

We've made it to ten months!!! I can hardly believe how fast the time has gone! 2 more months and it'll be a year!! Crazy!

Lovin' it :)

My New Bags!!!!

My bags are here!!!

you know, the ones i WON :)




So exciting!!! Can't wait to get some mean deals in these bags!!!!!!!!


(am i a dork? yes. but I have new bags! hee hee)

I'm the winner!!!!!!

Woo hoo!!!!

I won an online giveaway! YES!!

Wanna know what I won? Of course you do.

I won REUSABLE BAGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Am I a dork? Yes. But I'm totally okay with it)

*Side story - my mom totally uses reusable bags and I remember as a teenager making fun of her and feeling ridiculously goofy when she would make me give the bags to the baggers at the store. Now I totally use them. Don't worry, I've been turning into my mom since I was about 12. :) *

I won them from The Krazy Coupon Lady!!!! Love. Love, love. :) They just came out with these bags with their cute logo on it. I was one of 10 winners, but my name showed up first!!! How cool is THAT?!

With all the couponing that I do, I brought home a lot of plastic bags each week. Yuky. So I invested in a few reusable bags at Walgreens (but ONLY because they were on sale - 3 for $1!! hee hee). But for the bigger trips, 3-4 bags wasn't cutting it. I even mentioned to John today about getting more. NOW I DON'T HAVE TO! I've never won an online giveaway before! I had to email them with my contact info and I already got a message saying my bags were getting shipped off today! I am SO EXCITED!

And while we're talking about it, I just want you to know that I got (among other things) hamburger helper for $0.25ea, clean and clear face wash for $0.49, 4-pks of razors for free to $0.99ea and for the first time since I've been here, our Albertsons DOUBLED coupons!

Ahhhhh, love it.

Okay, i'm done ;)

Apartment Hunting

Blech. Blech! BLECH!

It would be one thing if the apartment finding websites were actually helpful. But, they are not. Mostly. Not all the available places are listed, different sites have different information, the sites don't have photos or floor plans or anything relevant to someone actually looking to LIVE THERE. Though, I have found a few promising prospects, but not enough to make a good decision! And I know virtually nothing about the geography of downtown Chicago, so when someone says, "oh, you should live here"...i have no idea where there are talking about. It could be in Indiana for all I know. I'm working on it.

Issues:

1. We must have a washer and dryer.

Now, I'm not just saying that. We really must! If you know anything about our diseases MRSA Saga, you'll know we use our current laundry facilities everyday. Yes. everyday. More than 2 loads. Daily. Do you know how many quarters that would be at a coin op!?! Get it? You with me?

2. Commute

I will be going to school downtown, and John will hopefully be working somewhere downtown. Don't want to commute more than an hour. We would like to live downtown. somewhere.

However, both of these lead us to Issue 3:

Expenses

Why is it so expensive for EVERYTHING these days?!?!? I remember when you could check on bags at the airport for FREE!!! And when people were freaking out because gas was almost $2!!!! Good grief!

Dear Recession,

I would very much like it if you would just go away.

With Love,

Ashley


PS: And you'd better watch out: I'm a couponer

Maybe we'll just live in box, step away from the computer, not think about this anymore for today...

The Balboa Park Series

The Natural History Museum and Reuben H. Fleet Science Center

We recently found out that select museums at Balboa Park are FREE to San Diego County Residents! WOOT!

So can you guess what we did today?

Yep! We were off to get cultured and edumacated :)


First stop: The Natural History Museum. Their main exhibit downstairs we precious gems and stones. SO cool. Gotta love ginormous necklaces and earrings DRIPPING with jewels! We saw gold and quartz and opal and it was all very pretty. But flash photography was not allowed and I don't take good pictures without the flash. So. Moving on.

Then came the sharks and dinosaurs!

John's friend, the very large shark

AHH!

RAAWR!!
The dinosaur actually moved by the way...it was kinda creepy when it's eyes twitched!

After the natural history museum, we made our way to the science center and stopped by the lovely fountain

The science center was totally hands on and way fun! There were kids EVERYWHERE as it seems everyone else already knew about residents free Tuesday, but we still managed to have turns on all the interesting things to do there.

John was creating air currents

The picture isn't that great, but it was a tornado...

We tried building an arch...I broke it the first time, but here, we were successful!
Carefully standing up the blocks...

Ta da!

Yay! We did it! It was actually really hard!

Then we went over to this large area where everyone was making buildings and structures out of little wooden blocks. All the blocks were the same size and long and thin. On display they had some awesome things people had built:

The castle was the coolest for sure, so we tried our hand at making a tower like the one on the bottom left

Eek! The standing up part was hard!

Here is the inside of our creation
Not too bad, huh? Yeah, we know it's a little wobbly and totally leaning, but hey, we were pretty proud of ourselves :)

So proud of our tower!

Here are some other creations we saw:

A bird?! So cool!

After the science center, we walked around the rose gardens. So pretty!



After that, we were very sleepy (we had worked at the temple for Memorial day from 6:30am to 1:30pm - and we're STILL tired!) and came home. But now John is at class. Hope he stays awake!