Apology to all my loyal fans

I know my last post was rather boring, so I just wanted to apologize.

That post was only half of what I meant it to be. After what you see there I was going to post "This is what Steve did tonight" and show you the video of him using his new Neti Pot.

Unfortunately, the video wouldn't upload and I ended up with half of a post.

Sigh.

Not that you want to watch water dripping from my husband's nose anyway.

Pizza Time!

Looking for a tasty substitute for traditional pizza sauce? Try this incredible cheesy version and you may never go back!

First things first, toss out your favorite pizza crust recipe into a disk to form your crust.


Thanks, Steve, what a fantastic demonstrator you are. And that apron makes you look as good as this pizza is going to taste.

Next you'll want to fill your food processor with some fresh spinach and pulse until its finely chopped. Throw in about 3/4 cup of cottage cheese, along with some minced garlic, basil, and oregano. You know how much you like these, add to your own preference.


Pulse until you get a smooth pale green sauce. The cottage cheese will have become more of a ricotta texture. Spread on your crust, but leave a fairly wide edge.

If you want to add some portabellas to your pizza, now is a good time to remove the stems and chop them to your desired size.

Brush the fungi with some olive oil, and while you're at it brush some on that edge of your crust you left bare.

Sprinkle heartily with mozzerella cheese, top with a little chedder and asiago if your heart desires. When it comes to cheese my heart always desires.

Sprinkle some finely grated asiago or parmesan cheese on the oiled edges of your crust. If you have any doubts about how fantastic this will be please throw them out the window and try it. Trust me.

Add your mushrooms, a little more cheese, perhaps, and some coarsly ground black pepper. Sniff and enjoy the aroma.

Bake in a preheated oven at 400° for 10-14 minutes. When the cheese is melted and the crust is lightly browned and your house smells like heaven it is done. Remove, slice, wait 2-3 minutes so you don't burn the roof of your mouth.

Enjoy! Tell me how you like it so I know if I should keep creating recipes for your personal enjoyment.

But I will, anyway... for mine.

Amazing Chicken Dinner

Steve is an inventor. He creates book series, designs things, and makes up recipes in his head. Wednesday night our family was treated to a series of chip-coated chicken nuggets by my one and only. It was delicious! He marinated the chicken all day, in several different types of marinade, then he coated all but the lime-marinated chicken in different varieties of crushed up chips. He used regular Doritos, Ranch Doritos, Chile Cheese Frito's, and Fiery Hot Cheetos. Yum! My favorite was his Fiery Hot Cheetos Chicken, so I'm going to share that recipe with you. It goes really well with some black beans flavored with lime juice.

Steve's Hot Cheetos Chicken

2 Chicken breasts, cubed

1/4 cup Plain Yogurt

1/3 c Vinegar

3-4 large dried chili peppers

5-6 garlic cloves

1/2 onion

1 (99¢ size) bag of Fiery Hot Cheetos

Combine the chili peppers, garlic, and onion in your food processor, processing until smooth.

Make a marinade with all the ingredients except the chicken and Cheetos.

Put the chicken cubes into the marinade and refrigerate for 3-5 hours.

Crush your Cheetos. A food processor works best, but you can do pretty well if you spend some time at it with a rolling pin.

Roll your chicken in the chips to coat. Place on skewers.

Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes, until chicken is no longer pink inside.

Enjoy!

GIMP

Steve and I are trying to learn how to use GIMP, a free-ware program that is sometimes compared with PhotoShop. This is the picture Steve made for me today. He is so talented.

Stacy Likes Blog Updates

I don't think I'll ever have enough time to sit down and type all about our Christmas adventures this year, so I'll just put them in here a piece at a time. I'm actually at work, and as this is the only picture I have access to right now, you are getting the Santa Clause piece today!

My Grandpa used to dress up as Santa Clause, he had his own suit. He gave it to my dad, who has used it numerous times. This year Steve had the opportunity to use the family suit. Santa Claus came to visit shortly after Steve and I "left" a Sunday dinner with our family. Eric Slade and Bennett Smith were happy to visit with him. When Santa left, I took him over to visit the Cate family. Ethan and Preston were SO excited. Ethen gave Santa a flower to take back to Mrs. Clause, and asked for fortune cookies for Christmas.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to sit on Santa's lap and enjoy this beautiful part of the holiday season with my beloved sweetheart.

Baby Harvey's Blessing

Harvey Gene Smith was blessed today. It was so beautiful.

Sacrament meeting in the Naches ward was cancelled due to dangerous roads, but they got permission to bless him anyway, as Captain is leaving for infantry training on Jan 2. Once everyone was there it was decided that we should have our own mini-sacrament meeting. There were 24 people in attendence (3 more came after the sacrament was passed). Leslie led the opening song while I held Harvey. After that he was blessed, then Leslie and I traded places so she could hold the baby, and I led the music. The sacrament was then passed by Steve and Captain. Captain's father blessed it. Afterwards we had a testimony meeting. It was very beautiful and touching. There were at least 9 testimonies bourne, including Leslie, Captain, his parents, Doug Harvey, and my own.

I've had a special week. I spent my first Christmas with my new family, which means becoming a part of other people's traditions and remembering my own. Yesterday I attended a beautiful funeral for Randall Marquis. He was truely an inspiring man, and it made me feel like I need to strive to be better. It also made me feel so grateful for the faithful man I married, who has big dreams and who already makes me dream bigger.

I'm grateful for the gift of the spirit and them time I have to reflect on the things I have been given.

December!

The month is already half over and I'm only now sitting down to blog all our Flynn fun this month.

We found out at the beginning of the month that Western has turned down Steve's request to begin school in Spring rather than January, so now we have no idea what we'll be doing. It'll be fun to see how everything works itself out, but for now its the "maybe we should do this" game. Steve is looking for a new job, since we'll be here awhile longer.

We went up to the mountains on the 6th to go get our Christmas tree. No snow! It felt weird, like we were going too early. It looks very lovely sitting on the table in our room- we picked a short one as we are quite limited on space.

You can't tell from the picture very well, but we have an ornament with a picture of the 2 of us, celebrating our first Christmas together. We decided on our honeymoon that we would collect Christmas ornaments to commemerate special trips and occasions. Unfortunately we seem to have packed up and hidden the one we bought in Victoria when we made that desicion in the first place! Oh, well, there is always next year... and the ones after that.

Speaking of ornaments, this year I joined my mom and her girlfriends in their annual ornament exchange. I made some cute felt poinsettias and figgy puddings and received some really lovely ones (and ideas!) in exchange.

In other craft news, I've been busy this month sewing new stockings for Steve and I. He designed them both (with lots of input, of course) and I sewed them up. I just finished this afternoon. Steve's is Santa, and mine is a snowman. Santa's hat has a real jingle-bell, and my snowflakes are beaded and there is a row of little bells along the bottom of the cuff. We had a lot of fun with these, and we are very excited to hang them for years to come.

We both enjoyed my work Christmas party last week. I was (foolishly) quite concerned about what to wear, but Steve surprised me with a beautiful red sweater and a pretty pin and some earrings, and made me feel beautiful.

Yesterday I threw a baby shower for my friend Leslie. I forgot to get any pictures, but we had a good time. I made an ice cream cake. Leslie requested one when we were teenagers for her wedding cake- I was a little late, but at least I made her the cake. We played Nursery Rhyme Jeopardy and guess which flavor of baby food was in the jars, and she took home so lovely gifts. It was a lot of fun to spend time with her and friends and family. And of course, baby Harvey is the most fun of all- he gets cuter every day.

We are looking forward to a busy week of cookie and candy making, followed by Christmas!!! We hope you are all enjoying the season as much as we are.

Christmas Preview

Steve and I had a lot of fun on Saturday taking pictures for our Christmas cards. Since I am home today praying I don't have a kidney stone I figured I would finish our cards and post a little preview up here, especially since I haven't posted any pictures lately.

It is so much fun having a husband I can be silly with. He takes such good care of me. Yesterday he made me my favorite cookies- oatmeal with cranberries, pecans, and white chocolate chips. Delicious! I wish I had more time to bake for him, although I don't really want the time to come by way of sick days... I'll be content for now.

Tag You're It!

We've been tagged by Keith & Stacy! Here are 5 things you may not know about us....

1. Steve and I wake up every (weekday) morning at 5:00. My family has scripture study and we join them. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Steve leaves for work with my Dad as soon as we finish reading. I try to stay awake those mornings to get things done, but I'm not very good at it yet.

2. Steve was recently accepted to Western Washington University in Bellingham! He was chosen from among more than 900 applicants to fill the 315 spaces they have open for the January term! Now we just need to figure out how to pay for it... and where to live... and get jobs... But we're excited!!

3. I basically had to talk Steve into giving me the time of day. I called him first, I asked him on the first several dates, etc. I invited him to go with me to the Harry Potter premiere with me on July 11th of last year, revealing my nerdy-likes to dress up side, but he didn't even consider it a date until a few months ago! Thankfully he became my home teacher and was forced to call me up once in a while, so our little family could have a chance to start.

4. Steve and I have matching freckles- a little loner freckle above our kneecaps. They are on different legs but that just means if I stand facing him they line up.

5. Steve has more than 90 harmonicas! Okay, I'm exaggerating, but he seriously has a ton of them. Whenever I find another one and exclaim my surprise at the need for so many (I mean, seriously, he can only play one at a time!) he gets a little defensive and reminds me he needs one for each key. I think he is trying for one for each piano key myself..... In other words, my husband is a fantastic harmonica player.

I'll tag.... Kat & Ryan!

Here are the rules: List the person who tagged you. Mention the rules on your blog. Share 5 things others probably don't know about you. Tag fellow bloggers. Enjoy!