June 30. 2012 Got the Newsletters Copied Today

Here are a few the cute graphics I used in my newsletter.

I got the newsletters copied today and will give them to the people who hand them out tomorrow.  

                                                Anyway, Happy Fourth of July a few days early.

Friday, June 29-Ward Newsletter Time

     I write the newsletter for my ward and it comes out at the end of the month, so that has been my project today.  I collect all sorts of things over the month and put them together the last couple days of the month.  We always have a message from a member of our bishopric and one other member of the ward leadership.  Sometimes Russell even gets a chance to add a message.  I am big on graphics and calendaring and cool thoughts so I spend a fair amount of time looking for that kind of stuff on the internet.  Pinterest has been a great source of neat thoughts.  I always have a theme so that helps while looking for fun thing to use.  This month is about Pioneers and Independence Day. ( Real original huh?)
      Anyway, it may seem like it wouldn't be a very spiritually uplifting calling but it actually is.  I try to make a cute quote box for each of the month's Ensign messages so I really study those each month and then try to add something that might help be uplifting to others as they study the messages themselves.  I am also really trying to keep track of the goings on of our ward so that keeps me on my toes.
     One thing that is interesting about this newsletter is that I have a older gentleman that lives in our ward, (my building), who does not come to church but has started giving me information for the newsletter.  He does not have a computer so does not have the internet or an email address so he leaves me health related articles under my door.  He does not have long distance on his phone so he can't call me because I have an Idaho phone number.  We have actually never met but he seems like a really nice guy.  I know he is pretty old and has lived in our condo for over 30 years.  I was just 24, 30 years ago.....
     Another cool thing about doing the newsletter is that it use to be hand delivered and is now sent to over 150 email addresses of ward members.  That was a pretty big job, setting up all the email addresses and then correcting all the ones that were incorrect but I liked doing it.  We still hand deliver about 95 newsletters each month, which is understandable considering the average age of my ward is 76 so many older people do not have email addresses or computers.  Anyway, the story I wanted to tell about doing the newsletter over email is that one month I got a reply from a ward member who was in the armed forces and he had been deployed and had just read the newsletter where ever he was.  He just wanted to say thanks and that he appreciated being able to keep in touch with the events happening in our ward.   I have also gotten thanks from ward members who are on missions who are able to keep in touch through the newsletter, so it is a pretty rewarding thing to be a part of.  
     It isn't really anything I can put on my blog but just wanted to write a little about it....it is something I love doing.

Hello out there.....back to town and sanity!

The past week has been one busy week!  My birthday was last week, we had lots of fun company, Russell and I went out of town and now, I am back home.  What a busy time that all was.  I am entering this post during a lunch break at a computer class I am attending today so  don't have access to my pictures so will put them on at a later time.  Just know we had such fun with the kids here last week.  We had:
Meredith, Wes, Saria, Easton, Sadie, Kennedy, Brittany, Colby, Jim, Kimber, Blake, Lindsey, Caleb, Spencer and Ethan all together and it was CRAZY FUN!  Sure love them all and am so thankful for the chance to spend some time with them last week. 
Thanks for coming to celebrate Wes, Easton and my birthdays.  Colby made the famous Munson yellow cake with chocolate sauce for my birthday and it was delish!!! I haven't made that for a long time.  We had another cake for Wes on his birthday so we were caked out, it was all yummy though.
After a church meeting on Sunday morning Russell and I headed to Sun Valley to the Utah Bankers Convention for four days. We luck out when we go there because it gives us a chance to spend some time with Eric, Chandra, Ali and Myah while we are there since they live close to Sun Valley. 
Now back to real life......atleast until the next fun adventure next week at the Munson Family Reunion.  Can't wait.

Thursday, June 21, 2012 Cutie Little Hootie Owls

Today my project has been to finish up some little hoot owls I have been trying to get finished for little baby Kennedy.  Before she was born her mommy made her some really cute bumper pads for her crib and a matching blanky.  The fabric has really cute little hoot owls on them (see the blue owl above), so I decided to make her some little matching owls for her bed.  The owls were already cut out when I started working on them so I just had to sew the wings, add the nose and eyes and sew them together.  Saria and Easton, who are here to visit for the weekend, helped me stuff them later this afternoon.  One more project on my summer list finished. Yeah!!!

Wednesday, June 20, 2012 Cookie Day!

I have lived in my condo since October and I can not remember baking cookies since moving in.  Well, I know I have made several batches of sugar cookies, (my favorite!!!) but not any other kind of cookie.  We are expecting quite a crowd around here the next couple of days so I decided to bake some cookies for the masses.  It was quite nice working in my newly organized kitchen. I made one batch of cookies and while those were finishing up baking I made another batch.  I just hope they taste okay, like I said I haven't baked cookies forever.  I was planning on making chocolate chip cookies tonight but then I remembered that two of my daughters that will be visiting are nursing babies and so are not eating chocolate so I decided I better make another kind of cookie and decided on oatmeal. Something else that is kind of funny is that Russell is on a no eating diet for two days so I have had to bake them while he is gone to a meeting so he wasn't tempted to eat them.  The cookies are done and ready to be refrigerated until the company gets here. They look good, just hope they taste good.

 

Also today, I left this morning and headed to Provo to visit Colby and Kimber.  We had a fun day together.  Here is a funny picture of Kimber.  Study it carefully.  She was laying on her tummy and rolled her stomach and head over but her legs are stilling facing down. Kind of freaky!!! She is one limber Kimber. 

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Tuesday, June 19th, Happy Birthday to my big sis, Kimmey Wood, also, my cupboard makeover....

Today is my sister Kim's birthday.  Happy Birthday Kimmey!!!! June is a big birthday month for my family. I have nephews and nieces galore with birthdays this month.  My birthday is coming up and is followed by one of my son in laws.  Phew, thats a lot of birthdays...
Anyway, today I worked on redoing my kitchen cupboards and found lots of extra space.  I think I have three or four drawers with nothing in them and several shelves empty also.  One of the things that was so attractive about the condo we bought is all the cupboard space.  It is crazy some of it is still empty.  I am sure I will find something to fill it up with.  I wish I would have take photos before I started the whole project so you could see what actually ended up getting done but I just took a few in the middle of the process.  Here they are:

Before

After

Before

After

 Of course there are many more cupboards and drawers I cleaned out.  I moved all kinds of stuff from one cupboard to another and got out  baskets to help organize things.  They really help things look better.  Happy Day everyone.

Monday, June 18th, Happy Birthday Easton and Getting Ready for our Week With the Grandkids...

Today is our grandson, Easton's birthday.  He is turning 8 years old.  Just to freak out his mother, I made this funny picture of him, that he may look like in say,,,,10 years or so.

I am on a mission to do some funny stuff for the week the grand-kids come in August and turning them into super heroes is part of the fun.  My plan has been to cartoon them into super heroes but I couldn't really find anything I liked on the internet so I downloaded an app on my iPad and had quite a good time transforming my sweet little grand-kids into the beginning of :   
THE FANTASTIC FOUR


                         Meet the ASTONISHING ALI
 

                       

 the STUPENDOUS SARIA
                               

                       

the EXCELLENT EASTON

                              

 and the MAGNIFICENT MYAH

                                   

I still need to do some photo editing, like taking out the long blond hair on Myah, but that shouldn't be to hard.  These are going to be super heroes that make good choices, help others and hopefully will continue to be the best friends ever.  Yeah for the Fantastic Four

PS: I also started a major redo of all the contents of my kitchen cupboards, to be continued tomorrow.

Sunday, June 17th-Potato Salad Success!!!

My mother makes the best potato salad ever.  I just want to say that  the potato salad I made for dinner today was nearly as good as her yummy salad. I am so happy because I have been trying to make that salad for  more than 30 years.  Yes!  I feel very accomplished,  now on to my mom's delicious Christmas candy.....Oh yeah Happy Father's Day to all my sons, son-in-laws, and my sweet hubby!!!!

Saturday, June 16-Temple Trip and Lunch

We decided we better head to the temple this morning as next weekend we are having a whole pile of company, then we are going to be in Sun Valley for a few days.  We live a 5-7 minute walk from temple square.  That is such a nice part of living downtown in Salt Lake City!  After the temple we went to lunch at the Lion House Restaurant, which is right on the way home.  It was nice to have some one on one time with Russell.  During school it seems like we have so much going on that some days we hardly see each other. 

It has been a lovely day! 

Friday, June 15-Colby and Kimber come to town

Colby called a few days ago to see if she could come and do a Father's Day project with me.  I thought it was a great idea so she came on Friday and we got to work.  Well, we didn't get right to work  because we had a few errands to do first so off we went.  We went to the bank for some $, visited Russell there for a while then headed to Michael's for supplies.  By the time we got home, ate some lunch, feed the baby and got her happy it was after 1:00.  Colby's plan  was to make some cute photo blocks with pictures on each side.  I wasn't really planning on making anything but decided at the store to make something similar for Russell as a grandpa gift.  Well, it turned out to be a much bigger project than we thought and she didn't leave for Provo until around 9:00 pm.

We had to sand our wooden blocks, paint them, let them dry, print off pictures, cut them up so they fit the blocks, (that was the hardest part), glue the pictures on the blocks, cover them with mod podge and then let that dry all the while taking care of Kimber who wanted to be part of the fun.  Since we could only do one side of the blocks at a time then wait for them to dry it was a long process.  When it was getting close to time for Russell to get home we decided I better get mine all done so we put Colby's blocks on hold and Colby helped me get my done and put away.  After Russell got home we had another set of hands to help with the baby so that was a big help. He also went and got us dinner from Crown Burger which was yummy!!   Here are some pictures of the finished project.  Hope our spouses don't look at this blog before Sunday, HA!

You can see Colby had set of 6 blocks and I had just two.  Hers were 2x2 and mine were 3 1/2x 3 1/2. One of the pictures I took of her blocks didn't turn out so there are only pictures of five of the six sides. 

The hardest part of this project was getting the center set of Colby's pictures to fit the blocks.  Our pictures were 4x6 and we had to trim off the white edges so they were not quite big enough to cover the six blocks. The center block pictures had to be just a little bit bigger than the outside blocks.  After we figured that out it was all pretty easy.  My blocks were much easier to figure out since I was only cutting up photos to fit one or both.    We each bought one page of stickers to add to the blocks and printed some signage off the computer to add the words.  

Happy Father's Day Every One!

Wednesday and Thursday, June 13 and 14, 2012 CTE Convention in Park City

I spent the last two days in Park City at Park City High School, home of the Miners. I had a Career and Technical Education (CTE) conference to attend there.  My job as Work-Based Learning Coordinator at East High School falls under the umbrella of CTE.  It was nice to spend a couple of days among peers and listen and learn about the great things going on in the state.  I feel pretty fortunate to have gotten this job when I moved to Salt Lake three years ago. It can be very fulfilling knowing I have the opportunity to help kids make life decisions regarding their future and career.

Anyway, it is the last school related thing on my agenda for a while so I am now looking forward to sleeping in a day or two and exploring the beautiful place I live.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012 Historic Walking Tour

You probably can guess by the title of this post that I live among really old people.  Who goes on a historic walking tour????  Well our ward Relief Society did this week and the average age of people in my ward is 76 years old, so we are kind of limited as what our ward activities can be (technically I am a teenager,HA!). Anyway,  I happen to live in a beautiful part of  Salt Lake City.  In my block is Brigham Young Park, City Creek Park and Memory Grove Park, each of which is very historic...so we do things like historic walks in my neck of the woods.  I shouldn't complain about it though, I got lost once in Salt Lake and ended up at Memory Grove and thought it was such a pretty place so when I found I was going to be living there, I knew it was the place for me.

When you look at these pictures you will see many white haired people who are extremely kind, considerate, thoughtful and pretty darn old.   It is a good ward though, never will you find more people who had given so much of their lives to the church: we have emeritus  general authorities, past mission presidents, temple presidents, temple workers, current general authorities, and all around good people.  Plus, we have lots of young people who are college students in our ward.  It is  a pretty interesting ward because we have no YM or YW and no primary.  The younger ward members must leave our ward and go to the family ward when their sweet little children are nursery age, because we don't have a nursery.

You should check out City Creek and Memory Grove next time you are in Utah.  It will be well worth your time and very relaxing and enjoyable.

I made a website today!!!!

Monday, June 11, 2012
May I just start by saying that I love technology so when I got a chance to take a web development class with our school district I jumped at it.  I spent the day today developing a web page for the class I teach at East High School.   I loved it.  Here it is:

It is just a beginning but I will surely be working on it throughout the summer.  The website is:
www.wblehs.weebly.com   WBLEHS stands for Work-Place Learning East High School.  Weebly is the website we used to make the our websites.  Check it out and let me know how you like it.

Dinner and Day Trip to Provo

June 8th-A new dinner dish                                                                                                                                                                                             Today I cooked a new chicken dish for dinner that was pretty tasty.  It has only three ingredients:

Dijon mustard, maple syrup, and red wine vinegar.  Russell and I both liked it a lot.  Something else yummy is a new way I learned about to cook brown rice. I baked it in the oven and it turned out delicious. I will surely make each of these new recipes again.  I found both of these recipes on the internet, from pinterest.

June 9th-Road Trip
Russell and I started our day out walking the loop up the canyon from our condo.  It is a 3 mile walk that we try to take often.  It is a beautiful place to live by.  After our walk we headed south to spend the day with Colby, Jim and Kimber.  Colby was playing softball with her ward team so we got there in time to watch that. After the game we went to lunch then to Reams, a western wear store in Provo.  Russell and I are spending nearly a week at Frontier Days (largest rodeo in the US), in Cheyenne, WY in July so we have been trying to get some western wear for that. I had a fun time trying on Wranglers, cowgirl shirts and boots.  Came home with some fun stuff.  Little Kimber came home with her first pair of cowboy boots.  Who knew they came so tiny.  Here she is wearing a little cowgirl shirt she got from her Auntie and a tiny pair of wranglers. She is a sweet little cowgirl.

School is out!!!!!

Well, school is out and I have been wondering what the heck I am going to do all day, all summer. Here is what I came up with....I have decided to do one new project, cook one new recipe, or do one new activity each  day of  my summer vacation.. The rules are: I can not spend a lot of money, and if I am doing a project it can not take more than one day to complete or needs to be divided into day increments. This morning I figured out I would need 70 days worth of stuff to do, which is all the days of the summer except Sundays.  I made a list of 42 things to do so I am off to a good start.  Here is the project I made yesterday..... it was easy and I had all the supplies I needed on hand.  I think it turned out pretty cute.  The pattern is a download from pinterest which is a super cool site, if you have never been there. 

I'm planning on blogging everyday this summer with whatever I have been up to.  I will be out of town a few weeks here and there so will have to catch up when that happens.  Happy Summer everyone!!!!!