Trendy Tuesday: Trying Something New!

I'm taking a break from my blog catch up (which I still have a lot to do!) for something new I want to try and will hopefully keep up called "Trendy Tuesday". Just for fun, once a week, I want to post about fun things that I find, learn, or love, whether about fashion, beauty, decor, food, or just random cool finds, and even maybe some trend fails. I love hearing about new fun things or trends, and hopefully others will benefit from a thing or two I post. This is also to try to revive my blog a little. I've neglected it, and I want to give it new life. I have a bunch of fun things to share to kick this off.....

The first thing I have to share about is a certain nail trend. First off, I used to think I was good at keeping up with styles and trends, but I don't keep up with it as much as I used to. (I'm hoping doing this "Trendy Tuesday" thing will help me be better with that!) Nowadays I actually find myself going to my 11 year old daughter to find things out. Anyway, she came to me one day, I don't remember how it came up, but she told me that nude nails were really in style right now. I said that that was great, I've been trendy with my usually nude, bare nails for a long time and didn't even know it! She said no, and that it's nude nail polish that is in and she wanted to get some. We headed out and came home with a couple different shades of "nude". I can't decide what I think. I tried one out and it honestly is almost the same color as my foundation I use, so way too close to my skin color. Mike thought it looked cool, maybe because of the way it made my nails seem to disappear? Ha! No, it's not that bad, but I think the tip to getting it right is to pick a nude color either slightly lighter or darker than your skin tone. It is classy and neutral, but I think I still prefer a little more dramatic.

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I have to admit something kind of sad.....I grew up in Seattle, the Starbucks capitol, yet it took me until just a couple weeks ago to finally try my first frappuccino. I did spend many summer days at coffee stands as a teenager with my friends getting the best Italian sodas ever though, but that was it! Anyway, I always assumed frappuccinos had coffee in them. I really didn't know what they were, but Brayden's friends all talk about them so she begged for me to take her to get one, and sure enough, they have non-coffee versions, who knew?! Oh, yeah, probably everyone except me! :) So we got two, the raspberry one they call the "Cotton Candy" one from their secret menu, and the Strawberries and Cream.

They were both awesome, but they are around $4 or more each depending on the size. Not something I want to buy on a regular basis. We started looking online, and found some awesome copycat recipes, and tweaked them to get them the way we liked. They were pretty close to the originals! Now we are addicted since they are also sooo easy to make!

 Strawberries and Cream Frappuccino

~5-6 strawberries

~A scoop of vanilla bean ice cream 

~1/2 cup half & half (milk works too)

~2-3 Tablespoons Vanilla Torani Syrup (depending on how sweet you want it) 

*We like to use Torani Coconut Syrup instead of vanilla. We always have that stuff on hand because we like our Cokes dirty!! ;)

~About 2 cups of ice

Blend well in a blender. (We have a Blendtec and use the "smoothie" setting.)

Pour into glasses and top with whipped cream! This recipe makes about two servings.

*You can substitute the ice cream with another 1/2 to 1 cup of half & half or milk, you just might need a little extra syrup to sweeten it. We've done both ways and they both are great!

Cotton Candy (Raspberry) Frappuccino

Same as above recipe, except instead of strawberries, use 2 Tablespoons of raspberry fruit spread. (You can probably make the strawberry one with fruit spread as well, but we haven't tried it that way with that one.)

Enjoy and you're welcome, I just saved you like a million dollars!!!

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Next up, this.....if you like coconut, caramel, and crunchy snacks and find yourself at Costco, grab it! I started munching on it as soon as I started my drive home from the store, and I couldn't stop. Maybe that's not such a good thing.....

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So my Brayden does her own hair every day (for the most part), but she hates blow drying it and pretty much refuses. I'm tired of doing it for her, or planning times for her to shower with enough time for it to air dry before bed. I accidentally came across this hair dryer stand online and had to get it. For $13 at Target online with free shipping with the Red Card, I already think it's going to be so worth it. She tried it out tonight and loved it! (Ignore the clutter, I think Brayden has more products than I do!!)

That's all for this week. Wow, I barely got it done before it's no longer Tuesday! I will try to post earlier in the future!

Birthday Time!

This year I got to celebrate my birthday on a few different occasions! It was so fun getting to spread out the celebrating!! The first thing I got to do was go on a birthday date with Mike. We usually do dinner and a show/play or a movie, but this year I wanted to do something different. We decided to go on a Grimm Christmas Ghost Tour downtown Salt Lake. Touring haunted places may not seem very Christmas-like, but have you ever heard of "A Christmas Carol", or "tales of ghost stories..." from a certain popular Christmas song? Ghost stories used to be part of Christmas tradition. We weren't purposely wanting to do something Christmas related anyway since it was for my birthday, but I'm just sayin'..... ;) We rode on a tour bus and had the most awesome, funny tour guide. He told us of old creepy Christmas legends from other countries, and we drove to different supposedly haunted locations around the city and he told us ghost stories about each place. It was so fun! I love learning about town history, and this just had a little creepier but fun spin on it. I have a fear of ever seeing a real ghost, but this was more funny and interesting than scary. And luckily we didn't see anything weird, ha! They also do tours where you get the EMP devices and get to go ghost hunting. That is something I would never do!

In front of our bus.....

Then afterward we went to a little Mexican restaurant called Blue Poblano for some Southwestern hot chocolate! I loved how they serve it! 

 We had plans for my actual birthday, so we had a party the weekend before with my family! I was tired of all the junk food we'd been eating lately, so I didn't want a cake, so instead we did something a little lighter - white chocolate pudding and berry-filled crepes! Ashton made labels for all of the berries he taped on.....

Present time!

I got the cutest sweater and scarf from Aubrey and Cameron (That I wore on my real birthday!)!

 Adrianne made me a really cute necklace, literally from scratch, so awesome!!

On my actual birthday on Christmas Eve, we had leftover crepes for breakfast, then before heading out for the day, Mike and the kids wanted me to open my present from them, a cute little necklace from Tiffany's! I'm in love with it! It's even the Tiffany blue color, which happens to be my favorite color! I love all kinds of jewelry, but it's nice to have a few extra special pieces to wear regularly. This is my first piece from Tiffany's and hopefully not my last.....hint, hint, Mike..... :) 

Um.....I guess I should have gotten a closer pic of the necklace here, but the packaging is almost just as cute!!

It's kind of camouflaged in my scarf here, I'm not just pretending to hold something, ha!

Since it's Christmas Eve, I like to make the day extra fun for the kids! I love that my kids love my birthday as much, if not more, than I do! We loved what we did last year, so we repeated it this year, and started the day at Boondocks for some arcade fun! Just a tip, you can sign up for the Boondocks birthday club and you get a free unlimited pass and 20 tokens to use on your birthday. The catch is you have to go ON your actual birthday and they need to see your I.D. or kids' birth certificates, but it's worth it if your kids like it as much as mine do!

Then our other tradition from last year is to go to lunch at Chuck a Rama. We've given up on trying to find other restaurants that we like that are open on Christmas Eve and stick to what we know! Christmas Eve is awesome there because it isn't very crowded!

 After that we headed home for a short while, then we went over to my grandparents' house to deliver presents and happened to run into my parents' there, so we had fun hanging out with them all for awhile! Then we went and saw an awesome house near my grandparents' house decorated with Christmas lights that danced to music you play in your car.

After that we went to the theater, had a little snack in the food court before our movie, then saw "Into the Woods", a movie I don't think I could've talked Mike into if it wasn't my birthday, ha ha! It was really good, both of my kids loved it and Brayden even said that it was her favorite movie she's ever seen. It helps to know the story ahead of time or if you have seen the Broadway version which we had on VHS tape growing up. It gets a little weird and crazy, at least that's what Mike thought who knew nothing about it, but the rest of us thought it was great! Just my own little review. :)

It was a really fun birthday for me, and I'm glad I had my favorite people to enjoy it with me!

(The Christmas part of Christmas Eve night will be part of my Christmas post!)

Fun December Happenings!

The whole month of December always seems so packed full and just flies by! This past December wasn't any different and I love it! Lots of pics ahead, but I had to pack it all into one post or I never would get it all posted!!

Christmas fun always starts a day or two after Thanksgiving, that's when we decorate and put up our Christmas tree!

 That's also when our elf Sammy first appears! This year he brought matching Christmas pajamas for the whole family, and left some crazy toppings to put on waffles for breakfast!

My kids don't believe in anything anymore, which is sad, but also takes some pressure off of me. The kids took over elf duty this year and took turns each night. I have to say they were way more creative than I ever was! They had fun doing it and I'm happy to say I'm officially retired!

Also that first week of December, some of us girls from the ward and neighborhood got together to say goodbye to our good friend Jocelyn who was moving. I'm so glad she at least didn't move too far away, but the neighborhood and ward won't be the same without her and her family! Even though it was a sad occasion, we had a really fun night!

This year I was asked to help out with planning and carrying out our church ward parties, and I have loved it so far! A lot more work and thought goes into every single detail than I ever realized, but I love staying busy and I love planning parties so it's the perfect job for me! Our Christmas party was a breakfast with Santa in your PJ's party!

This is what my car looked like after I packed in everything I was in charge of bringing.....I was so surprised I could fit it all! Planning for around 250 people is kinda crazy!!

We spent hours the day and night before the party decorating.....

Food table

Photo booth

Hot cocoa bar

We don't ever do matching Christmas PJ's, but I thought it would be fun this year for the party!

While kids waited for Santa, the kids who were done seeing him or waiting for the line to die down got to make donut snowmen!

Ashton had no interest in sitting on Santa's lap since this is the first year he really doesn't believe anymore, (So sad!!) but Brayden and her friend Avi decided to go for it!

Santa made the girls raise their hands and swear to never kiss any boys!

The party committee! It's so fun working with this group!!

Every year my parents have everyone over to decorate gingerbread houses!

 One of my favorite places to be at Christmastime is downtown. Growing up in Washington, that was my favorite time to be in Seattle and my favorite thing to do for my Christmas Eve birthday was eat at the restaurant at the top of the Space Needle. Some day I want to go back and repeat that! Salt Lake is it's own kind of impressive! We ate at The Garden restaurant at the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building right as the sun was going down and the Christmas lights were coming on.

They had a cute mailbox inside the restaurant to send a letter to Santa. Brayden may not believe anymore, but she wanted to make sure all of her bases were covered just in case! :)

We hadn't been to see the lights on Temple Square since Brayden was one! We are just too wimpy in the freezing cold! But this year it wasn't too cold at all and it wasn't crowded either yet so we really enjoyed it!

Then we walked around City Creek. Macy's had all of their windows decorated with giant ornaments made completely out of candy! So cool!

And Ashton loved the Deseret Book window that had a cute (pretend) apple cider making machine!

We shopped for awhile, then decided to go to the giant Harmons for some hot cocoa and gelato before heading home.

Brayden had her annual in-studio Christmas mini dance recital a couple weeks before Christmas.

This year she got moved up two dance levels, the reason she looks so little here, ha! We're so proud of her, she's doing so well!

Lately each year someone in our neighborhood hosts an ugly sweater/white elephant party! This year our friends the Goodloe's hosted, and it was a blast as usual! We came home with an Awkward Family Photos book (which stays on our coffee table now), and a condiment gun Ashton got so excited about! I think we did well!

 The last day of school before Christmas, the kids had a Christmas sing-around. Ashton got to be one of the few in his class to walk around and hand out a little gift as part of the song, and he picked Brayden to give his gift to. It's little things like that that show me they really do love each other! Haha!

Ashton and Brayden in their new outfits for Christmas Sunday!

So much fun and Christmas hadn't even come yet!!