mockingbird

the time has come. the new blog i've been talking about is officially LIVE and i'm so excited. i won't be posting on this blog anymore, but it will stay right here! head on over to my new blog and make sure you follow me on bloglovin'! 

themockingbirdblog.blogspot.com

Katie, Lately

 

< from a few weeks ago | love seeing this smiley boy. he does the cutest little scrunchy face when he smiles sometimes. i just melt!

> dev's first day of school! he's not one week in and totally rocking it. 

i can't even. he's just so cute. so cuddly and sleepy

 

< the best way to start out your day? not with your favorite drink, but with your TWO favorite drinks. mcdonald's diet coke and a carmel creme brulee crio bru (remember this stuff??? brewed cocoa! soooo good)

> dates during the week are sort of the best. especially when they involve ikea. we brought home this rug, and cooper loves it. he always lays on it.

  

< a thursday. test driving the shirt i bought for the wedding 

> friday night sushi date. except i don't like sushi so i just ordered chicken. but this guy was pretty happy with his samurai and vegas rolls.

 

sometimes on my lunch break, i come home. and we sleep.

< coop's spot. he looooves to stand on the edge of the porch right here and watch the kids play.

> vanilla bean frappuccino for breakfast on saturday on our way to the grocery store. it's been the best weekend.

5 Things

1 | the sweetest baby boy, who is so, so ticklish these days

2 | leftover bridal shower flowers make for great nightstand additions. also, i resolve to have fresh flowers in the house more often, because i love this.

3 | this little dog knows exactly what sundays are all about 

4 | he spent the weekend climbing in the uinta's. i spent the weekend at my parents house. even though it was only one night, our reunion was sweet. although, he reminded me of the 5 day trip he is taking in october for his wilderness skills class and i about cried.

5 | wanted the kate spade version of this ring. until i saw this one for $3 at forever 21. problem solved.

if it didn't feel like fall before...

i wore a jacket to work this morning, because it was colder than usual when i walked out to my car. (granted, it was 6:30am, but still. work meetings. oh, pshaw).

devin's first day of school was yesterday. don't worry, we documented it. on the front porch. backpack and all. (i saw a similar picture later that day of my 3 year old niece for her first day of preschool, so...)

we have started christmas shopping (in an effort to avoid dumping a lump sum of money on presents all at once come december)

our 3 year anniversary is coming up (at what point in marriage does [should] the dating anniversary lose significance? i'm thinking now-ish. at least, it's public acknowledgement can be put to rest, and i will just remember it quietly to myself from now on.)

i work a pretty fast paced job. and we have been very steadily busy, when we thought our summer would slow down significantly. and now, as i was still waiting for that summer lull, we have begun to gear up for a busy winter season.

... it does now.

zac and mckayla: the bridal shower

kelli and i threw mckayla a bridal shower over the weekend! it was fantastic! the guest list was mainly family. aunts, a few cousins and mckayla's bosses came. it went exactly how i had planned, and i am so glad its over, haha. we had a tea party brunch and it was so much fun. i had all kinds of surprises for mckayla and we really enjoyed the afternoon! i had created place cards for all of the guests, which was a little bit of a hassle to get RSVP's and last minute additions and cancellations, but about 10 minutes into the shower, i looked around and every seat was filled and i was so happy. the food was all amazing, the decorations came out just as i had planned, and i think everyone really enjoyed themselves! i surprised kayla by editing some video footage i had taken while devin took their engagement photos, and the video turned out really sweet. i'm so glad she liked it! devin and i had also secretly interviewed zac a few weeks ago. we asked him a lot of questions about himself, mckayla, their relationship and the wedding. mckayla was so surprised and she got almost all of the answers right! i think it also helped everyone get to know zac better. i am so glad it went well! my friends did the same thing for me, and i was so surprised that they had interviewed devin, and i cherish that video, and i know kayla will, too. i'm so sad i didn't get any pictures of my sisters and i, or even just kayla! she wore the prettiest lace dress to the shower, she was absolutely gorgeous. it was a great afternoon!

< i'm usually not a fan of daisies, but these peachy pink ones were too cute to pass up
> place settings for all the guests. turned out so cute!


i absolutely loved assembling all these vases with fresh flowers. i think i'll be a florist some day.


all the decorations i made hung above the table and looked great!


< more of the table. my aunt kristin was so nice to let us take over her house for the shower!
> part of the food table - so many delicious things to eat!


< macarons and muffins - they turned out so, so great!
> i did a few repeat foods from devin's birthday party, including these bacon-wrapped lil' smokies. such a hit, but the whole house smelled like bacon and maple syrup.


the food table. i loved being able to incorporate the crates devin has been building lately, and kelli hung the backdrop which turned out just perfect!

i just about cried tears of joy when all four batches of macarons came out this perfectly. i squealed for a few minutes and kept making devin look at them.

a sad story from the weekend: on friday, my poor sweet mom shattered her elbow! she is getting surgery on wednesday (they have to replace the bone that shattered), but it happened the day before the shower, so she was unable to help, and was in too much pain to come :( i spent friday night at my parent's, and my older sister came down and spent the night, too, and we took care of her and got everything done for the shower, and still managed to get in a lot of cheech time (i love spending time with my sisters). her surgery is a same day surgery and the doctor is confident she will be out of a cast in time for the wedding, but dang it! it was a pretty long weekend to say the least! i'm just praying she can make it to wednesday, when the surgery is, without too much pain and discomfort. she is just in a splint with a few painkillers until then! is there anything worse than seeing someone you love in so much pain, and feeling so helpless? it is truly the worst feeling ever. i was glad to be able to spend the weekend at home with my family and do what i could to help out!

thought list

+ famous people i want to be best friends with: kate middleton, carrie underwood, john krasinski or kristen wiig. i would also take jeff daniels or tina fey.

+ the top 5 reasons why i'm ready for it to be fall:

1. i didn't get any color on my skin this summer, and my paleness is more excusable in autumn
2. i want comfort food. soups, breads, wassail, etc
3. it's been in the 90s all week
4. last fall was one of the best seasons of my life. i want a repeat.
5. i am tired of making rosette baby sandals and mint green everything (this is referring to my second job at addison renee boutique)

+ top 5 things i miss about cable tv: 

1. Friends
2. Seinfeld
3. DVR
4. movie premiers
5. nevermind, that's it. not having cable has been pretty nice.

+ i hate that "sweater weather" song, but devin loves it, so every time hear it, i smile, and listen the whole way through.

+ two words: beatles radio

+ patterns that all look the same: off-brand tissue boxes, hotel curtains, out-dated couches, art hanging in doctor's offices.

+ some confessions: sometimes, on my lunch break, i will eat in my car. in the back of a kohl's parking lot. i am so vain about my wedding ring still - i think it's the prettiest, and i stare at it all the time. i am obsessive about the way my hands feel, and always have to have lotion on.

+ am i "asking for it" when, at 8:00am, a coworker asks me how i'm doing and I respond by saying i'm ready for the day to be over? (it's only that I haven't had an evening, at home, with my husband, in about 3 weeks. and tonight, i finally get to cook him actual dinner.)

zucchini bread

 

I have long since made a promise to myself that I will never plant zucchini. I love squash, in all it's forms, but the stuff grows like a weed. During the summer, I never buy zucchini. There is no need! Between our neighbors, families and friends, we've always got someone begging us to take their overgrown vegetables off their hands, and I have a problem saying no, so we usually end up with more than we can eat. 

Which leads me to this: zucchini bread. Why it took me so long to try making some? Mostly because I'm afraid of baking breads. I've never done it before. Until this afternoon. I found this incredibly simple recipe, and now I might have at least one loaf of this stuff on hand at all times, because it's that good. I love this recipe because all of the ingredients are always in my pantry, so I don't need to make any special trips. This recipe is one step closer to homemaker than a "just add water" box mix, so anyone can do it!

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

3 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon (to taste)

2 cups fresh grated zucchini (I used one huge overgrown zucchini from my mom's garden and it was exactly enough. it was probably 16 inches long)

2 teaspoons vanilla 

other things you can add:

nuts

flax seed

granola

anything you can imagine

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat over to 350 degrees

2. In a large (very large) bowl, mix all ingredients together, in order (I started with the sugar, oil, eggs and flour and mixed, then added the soda, salt, cinnamon, zucchini and vanilla and mixed again, scraping the sides with a rubber spatula as I went)

3. Spray bread loaf pan (spray it really good, but evenly)

4. Pour bread mixture into the bread loaf pan, bake for 50 minutes (you can bake longer if you need to. I went 10 extra minutes because the middle raised really high on mine).

5. Eat while warm! Store in an air tight container.

happy birthday, cheech

i've told you about kelli, right? she's my older sister. we are three years apart and have always been either best friends or worst enemies, it's never in between. even to this day. (but it's mostly best friends now that we're older). 

kelli and i got married two weeks apart from each other, and it was the biggest blessing. i got to experience the most important and exciting time of my life at the same time as my sister, and now, we will always have someone who understands exactly what we are going through! the older we've gotten, the closer we've become, but i still look up to kelli so much. she if the kind of person that sets goals and actually accomplishes them. ever since she was a young teenager, she knew she wanted to be a choir teacher, and now she teaches at a charter school. she always wanted to live in northern utah, and this last year, her and her husband bought a beautiful home in ogden. she decided she wanted to run a marathon, so she did. she's absolutely amazing and so motivated. 

i truly don't understand how girls get through life without sisters, because she keeps me sane! sisters are best friends that tell you the truth, even when it's not what you want to hear. sisters are honest with you, even if it means telling you bad news. as far as people who know me best? #1: my husband #2: my sisters. i have spent many a late night with this lady, and shared many laughs, tears, fights and words of advice. she's the greatest older sister a person could ever ask for, and this post is getting way too sappy, so i'm gonna stop.

this photo was taken about a week before kelli's wedding, and three weeks before mine. i drove up to her house in layton and we had a "last hurrah" together, finishing up some wedding plans, relaxing, venting, and talking for hours. i love ya cheech! i hope you had the greatest birthday!

(have you caught on by now that my sisters and i call each other that? cheech? it's a weird story... for another time...)

CLOSED

I'm in a fight with my blog right now, so we're closed until further notice. 

I reverted a lot of posts back to drafts and will spend the next few days getting photos to function on here, and then we will be up and running for a short time. 

I have toyed around with the idea of starting a new blog for awhile (I won't delete this one though, i just need to start from scratch though!), mostly because i have butchered my CSS and HTML and also because it will be really nice, so that will be coming in the next several months, i'm sure. I will probably hire somebody, though, because I am not competent to do this on my own, as I have learned!  I will get these posts fixed, and then we will just go from there. I'm so frustrated!!! Any advice would be really nice :) 

katie, lately

 

for the 24th of july, we went up to kamas and watched the parade! i had to take a picture of this carquest float, because we order parts from carquest all the time at work, and i thought it was so funny they were in the parade! only in kamas! and we all know that i can never get enough of those three kids. they're the sweetest most hilarious kids around and i'm so proud to be their aunt!

amanda made cooper this bow tie collar for his birthday!

 

sporting his new bow tie. such a handsome boy

 

< drove to park city to take engagement photos for my sister and it was pouring rain as we left the house. i wasn't going to take any chances!

> their photos came out beautiful, though, and the weather calmed down.

 

aw, these two...

 

< devin was having a horrible day last week, and i made him chocolate chip cookies to cheer him up. it worked :)

> devin ordered me this watch for my birthday and it came last week! i had been wanting it ever since this watch shop opened! i love it!

< put it on right away as we were walking out the door to a wedding reception!
> coop got all snugly while we watched a movie with the kids this weekend! so cute.

i don't remember the last time this happened...

Today marks 1 year that I have been working for Cascade. How crazy is that?! Okay, not really. But honestly, it's pretty cool for me. I don't remember the last time I worked somewhere this long, so I'm really excited! I love the people I work with, and work for, and I love the work I do! Seriously, I may complain about being the only girl in the office, but it's like having 20 older brothers - and I mean that in both the best and worst ways ;) I love working for a family owned company, and I feel lucky to have this job. It can get pretty crazy sometimes, but at the end of the day, I still love what I do, and that's the important part, right?! Anyway, that's all.

the weekend

*first of all, i'm sorry my photos aren't showing up right now. at first, i ran out of space to upload directly from this here "write post" draft spot, and then i started using photobucket and just copying and pasting the HTML code over, and now it's telling me i have a limited amount of bandwidth per month? this doesn't even make sense to me. hopefully within the next couple of days i will have it figured out though! how do you share photos on your blog? do you do something different/easier? i would love to know! i got a flickr account, so maybe that's the way i need to go? we'll see... this is also why there aren't any photos in this post because i'm just not even gonna try.

>> we went to the wedding reception for danica and ryan's little sister, haley, who i love so dearly! she made the cutest bride and the smiles on her and chris' faces were huge! they are so happy together. loved it. the governor was there! they are sort of a big deal. plus, it was really nice to see danica and ryan, because it's been ages seeing as how i've been a horrible friend lately (see this post here.) but we've already made plans to change that, so i'm on the mend.

>> it was after that reception that we picked the babies up for a sleepover (already posted about that here.)

>> after we took them home on saturday morning, we cleaned the house and i got to work on some decorations for kayla's bridal shower

>> on sunday, we were asked to sub in a primary class. i spent most of saturday night preparing the lesson, thinking it was the same group of kids we had subbed for a few months ago (they were about 10-11 years old). the lesson was super awkward because these kids were a lot older, and my lesson was stupid to them, and we accidentally tried to make them go to primary, thinking they were still that young, when they were actually all older than 12. oops! oh well. you win some, you lose some. i just want to be called to young women already!! (bishop reddish, do you read my blog?!)

>> sunday afternoon was spent at the park, relaxing to several episodes of how i met your mother, and eventually driving back down to orem (we get so sick of that drive sometimes!) for dinner with devin's family. we've been having such a fun summer with impromptu barbecues and family outings. i love that family. i married into a crazy one, but i love it the same ;) haha

we're more than half way through 2013 and time seems like it's starting to speed up. kayla's wedding is only a month away, her shower is next weekend, and i've still got so much i want to do before the weather cools down! ah! at least we're having a good time.

sleepover

we promised our nieces and nephew months ago that we would have them over for a sleepover. the summer went by way too fast, and we realized we needed to follow through before school started! we picked them up last night and had such a great time with them! we watched all kinds of movies, they played in the backyard and entertained cooper for hours. this morning, devin took the oldest, kayla, rock climbing (it was our birthday present to her. 2 birds with 1 stone, right?!) and while they were climbing, i took the younger ones on a little drive to see the "Up" house! it was so cool and they loved it! after a quick lunch, they were back home, but it was so much fun to spend some time with them! i love these kids so much. i'm so glad i'm their aunt! 

twenty-two

my birthday was on saturday, and i had the best day! i had been pretty sick all day, but devin made sure i still had a really great time. we went to the brad paisley concert the night before, and we ended up trading our lawn tickets for some chairs, which turned out to be really awesome, because a few songs in, Brad Paisley came and stood on a small stage in the middle of all the seats, right in front of us! it was really cool. this was the second time we have seen him live (the first time was at stadium of fire in 2011), and he was so amazing! he is such a crowd pleaser. devin and i were surprised by how much we liked all the openers, too, even though we don't listen to any of their music (the henningsons, lee brice and chris young). it was such a fun concert, and i'd go again and again!

on my actual birthday, i slept in as late as i wanted (10:00am, thanks nyquil) and we went to lunch at cafe bella rue, got a cotton candy cupcake at swirly girls bakery, did a little shopping, and dropped cooper off with my sister. after that, we headed to sandy and checked into our hotel. devin had won a free night's stay at a local hotel through his work a few months ago and we thought this was a perfect time to use it! we were pleasantly surprised with how nice the room was! 

after checking in, we drove to salt lake for our dinner reservation at Pallet, a newer restaurant we had been wanting to try for awhile. it reminded us so much of communal, and they even order their meat from the same local ranch! their truffle fries were delicious, but the serving was huge! We probably only ate about half! the drinks were served in mason jars, which i love (i use mason jars instead of glasses at home, too!), and our meals were delicious, too. devin had a steak and i had trout - it was so amazing! for dessert, we got some house made strawberry sorbet for me, and then walked around the corner to bruges so devin could get a waffle, surprise surprise! 

after that we walked around city creek for awhile, and then headed back to the hotel room and fell asleep watching dumb and dumber on tv. the next morning after we checked out, we stopped at johanna's kitchen for breakfast, then headed to orem to pick up cooper and have family dinner with the ashby's! it was such a great weekend, but after our trip to grey's and all the birthday celebrations, monday was not sounding very appealing to me...

as far as this next year goes... 22 is my unlucky number. this could mean one of two things: 1. it's going to be a bad year. or, 2. i'm going to counter all the bad luck this year and turn that bad omen right around and it's going to be the best year of my life!

leeeet's go with the latter...

 

paid $8 for 2 vitamin waters, and $6 for this cotton candy. ridiculously overpriced, but we still had so much fun and it was worth it!

 

now for a bunch of awful quality concert photos! the stage set up was so cool though. and it was brad!

  

from when he moved to the smaller stage right in front of us!

that tiny person in the middle of the stage is carrie underwood. devin says it was only a hologram but it was her! i just know it!

 

birthday lunch and a cupcake, of course

 

hotel room. it was really nice!

       

this restaurant was incredible! they brought us our check in this old book. 

 

wouldn't have been such a good birthday without this sweet man of mine.