Being patient sucks less after reading these...

How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees.
~William Shakespeare

Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.
~Brian Adams

Our patience will achieve more than our force.
~Edmund Burke

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
~John Quincy Adams

Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice.
~George Jackson

Patience is passion tamed.
~Lyman Abbott

There will be a time when loud-mouthed, incompetent people seem to be getting the best of you. When that happens, you only have to be patient and wait for them to self destruct. It never fails.
~Richard Rybolt

"The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter."
— Paulo Coelho

"Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything."
— Mother Teresa

"Patience is bitter, but it's fruit is sweet."
— Aristotle

"If something doesn't work exactly right, or maybe needs some special treatment, you don't just throw it away. Everything can't be fully operational all the time. Sometimes, we need to have the patience to give something the little nudge it needs."
— Sarah Dessen

"Fear both the heat and the cold of your heart, and try to have patience, if you can."
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best—better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His. We can grow in faith only if we are willing to wait patiently for God's purposes and patterns to unfold in our lives, on His timetable."
— Neal A. Maxwell

It's a great day when your hair obeys.

So, I am not a big infomercial shopper, really. But, I will admit to a twinkle in my eye when the offer when from one Slap Chop to TWO Slap Chops in a matter of seconds. It's almost irresponsible not to consider having two of those on hand... you know, for last minute Christmas gifts, or, just in case the first one bites the dust from over use. I don't know about you, but I feel like if I had a Slap Chop I would be doing the "bikini, martini, bambini' chopping all the time.

OK, enough about the Slap Chop. I know. I get a little carried away.

What was I saying? Oh right, I don't usually fall prey to the late night babbling about products that cant even make it to Zellers (that's kinda sad when you think about it). BUT, I caved.

For years I have heard about this "Wen". It's a hair treatment, blah blah blah. Yeah. Some guy gets on late night TV and talks about his revolutionary product. It always weirded me out that he had better skin than I did, knew his perfect shade of lipstick and pulled off the "luscious lashes without looking like your wearing any mascara". Well, turns out this guys knows what he's talking about.

I purchased a kit. How could you say no to this face:
And just look at that hair. I'm sold.

And that's exactly what happened. I bought the kit. It was 20$ with free shipping. Yes.... I waited for the deal.

So this is what I got:
1 Bottle of WEN Cleasing Conditioner
1 Tube of WEN Styling Creme
1 Tub of WEN Re-Moist Intensive Hair Treatment
1 Stick of WEN Texture Balm.

So, this morning I went ahead and tried it for the first time. I hadn't washed my hair in a couple days cause I like to just rinse and dry so that the healthy oils stay in my hair shaft etc...well. I lathered this stuff up in my hair. Well, maybe I shouldn't say lather because it doesn't get all sudsy. It's like really nice conditioner.

I wasn't sold until I dried my hair with my blow dryer on hot, didn't apply any leave in conditioner and STILL my hair came out so much softer than I have ever had it before. It has BODY, it has SHINE, and its SO SOFT.

So there you have it.
"Wen".

I'm a believer.
A believer with great hair.

* Apologies for the awkwardness of the picture. I just felt weird about it... as you can probably tell.

Saturday kitchen adventures

Today I woke up and thought to myself, "I am going to spend my day in the kitchen". And that's just what I did.

First on the menu, Salmon cakes... except I am a poor college student and all I had was tuna. So, three 5oz. cans of tuna and some other ingredients later... TADA!

What you see below is a tuna-cake(sounds appetizing, huh?) topped with a mayo dressing (mayo, lemon juice, cilantro, s&p). Delish!

Then came the deserts. I basically made everything simultaneously. Here are the famous Eagan cookies.... which became victim to my "overly-hot-but-can-never-figure-out-what-temperature-to-bake-at-instead" oven. I'd say it's a superficial burn.. nothing more than a first degree.

This little treat below is a Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcake. Yes, you read right. All of those things rolled right into one thigh-plumping desert. Basically, you make yellow cupcake batter, fill the paper half way, stick a wad of cookie dough in the middle, cover that with more batter and bake it. The icing is basically really wet cookie dough, without the egg. Pretty much the best thing ever. Really... ever.

Lastly is the Hawaiian Sweet Bread (artisan style...aka.... no pan). Now, this was from a box (I hate to admit) but I will find a recipe to bake from scratch. Anywho.... this was very cool for me. It turned out pretty dang good. It wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be, because of sweet breads I have had in the past, but pretty dang good for a box. It even came with a little yeast packet. Over all, really fun to make, and even more fun the bake....because there was no pan to clean..... well, except for the cookie sheet. But that doesn't count. Because I cleaned it several times throughout the course of the day... it didn't even seem like work by the end.

So there you have it. I am rad. I can bake. Let's get married, because it just so happens...I'm kinda domestic.Seriously. Let's get married. This is what our table will look like allllll the time. Promise.

I WANT ONE.

Yorkshire Terrier. My Birthday is Oct. 19th.

I said I wouldn't, but then I did.

Well, today I tried out a new recipe. It was SO GOOD. So good in fact, that I had to blog about it. I said to my friends that I wouldn't as I took the picture....but, I couldn't resist. So, here it is.

MINI BLUEBERRY TURNOVERS
(I used blackberries too, I just cut them into halves)

INGREDIENTS
4 oz. cream cheese-softened (half a brick)
1 egg
1/4 C White sugar
1 sheet puff pastry (I used a roll of Pillsbury croissant roll outs)
1/2 pint of blueberries (4-8 berries per roll)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 400F and coat baking sheet lightly with cooking spray.
2. Place cream cheese in a bowl and stir until completely smooth. Separate the egg white and yolk, putting the yolk in the bowl with the cream cheese, and setting the white aside. Add sugar to bowl and stir until completely combined.
3. Lay the puff pastry sheet out and cut into squares. Now, I made 8 squares and ignored the pre-scored lines by pinching them together.
4. Spoon a tablespoon into the middle of each square and put some blueberries into the middle. Fold the two opposite corners together, one on top of the other and using a finger of water to help them stick.
4. Place turnovers on the baking sheet, brush egg whites over them and sprinkle with white sugar.
5. Bake for 15 minutes-ish, or until they look done. Mine only took about 10 because my oven is HOT. You can also wrap them and refrigerate for up to 4 hours prior to cooking.
6. Serve warm, and try your darnest not have two. I dare you.

So there I was.....

A beautiful Saturday afternoon...and what do I do? Go to the ward activity at Egin Lake. Turns out that the weather is perfect (warm sun with just a slight breeze) and the water is a perfect temperature.

So, all us gals and our FHE brothers piled into Travis' truck and made the 20 minute drive out of town to the 'lake'. It's basically a glorified pond because it never gets deeper than your knees (or mid thigh for you shortys).

Here is us in the truck.



There's Scott, sitting on the inter-tube in the back... we hit a few bumps on the way out... so he got a bit of a ride.

Myself and Jahnin... ready to get our bronze on...Then there is Rex, always ready for his glamour shot...
Then Jahnin and Kayla. Jahnin looking especially Mexican and Kayla looking especially white.
Then, we were at the beach.

Kayla and I...

Kevin got reallllly dirty.
So we took some glamour shots. He was walking away from me, and I yelled after him to turn back but I forgot his name so I called out "Dirty boy, turn around". I guess it sounded a little wicked because I got a few awkward looks from the people around me.

He looked great though. Look at that form.

So, it was a great day at the beach. We splashed, played in the sand, ate some 'burgs and sipped lemonade.


Perfect.


Until I fell asleep for 3 hours....


and woke up like this.



Thanks summer... sometimes you sure know how to cramp my style.

So...

Remember that one time when I was so happy that I realized I had literally been smiling for 3 hours straight? Yeah, I do. I remember. :)