Food experimentation..

Here are some recipes I've tried lately that I think have been a success!
Fruit Pizza:
*What I did for this was I used one of those packages of sugar cookie mix and used that for the crust. You cook it for as long as the package says.  Then I put a layer of whipped cream, and then cut strawberries, kiwis, and bananas! It was delicious :)

STRAWBERRY JAM!:
I have been really excited to make strawberry jam, just to say that I've actually tried it1  I think it turned out to be a success!
*So, what I did for this was I bought a box of pectin, and inside there is an insert that gives you directions for different kinds of jams.  Well, we had strawberries that were going to go bad so i decided to make strawberry freezer jam!  It is delicious as well.

It made so much!  2 yogurt containers, 5 glass containers, and 1 Tupperware container.  I'm excited to have this on hand all the time.

Something else I made lately were bacon filled potatoes.  I found this recipe on pinterest.  It's not hard though.  All you do is cut a raw, peeled, potato in slits.  Make sure you don't cut through the whole potato though.  Then you get raw bacon, and you put little pieces of bacon in each slit you cut.  These were a hit.

They look kind funky but they were actually quite good!

BILL COSBY!!

Sorry it's taken me so long to blog, Tanner and I have been busy!! Anyway on June 7, Tanner and I went to Bill Cosby at BYU-Idaho.  My parents had 2 extra tickets so they gave them to us. Oh my heck, he is so funny!  Everyone was laughing so hard, the entire time.  I think why Tanner and I were laughing so hard is because a lot of the stuff he was talking about related to our marriage.  He talked about how when you get married, the woman starts to order the man around.  And she 'hides' her husbands clothes from him.  Tanner and I died because that is exactly what I do.  When I'm cleaning the house, and his clothes are everywhere, I hide them so that he has to find them.  Then hopefully he'll realize I hate it when he leaves his clothes around- haha.  Bill Cosby also talked about how husbands always get blamed for things, when really- it was the wife's fault haha.  This has also happened.  Oh man- we thoroughly enjoyed our night- and it was such a fun date night for the week!  Thanks mom and dad for the tickets!!  Here's some pics:

                                      We took this before the show.  We were excited.

             I think one of the funniest things about the show were his faces...he has the funniest facial     expressions hahaha.

                                                             Hilarious. Definitely a fav.

Love you, Aub!

For my bridal shower last September, my sister Aubrey lived in California so she couldn't make it. Instead she put together this 12 month date night packet. For every month she put in a date idea in their own manilla folders, and said that whenever we can't think of any fun dates, to open that months date and do what it says!  Well last night we decided to open may.  It said to build a fort in the living room, and have a movie marathon!! so fun! we watched the little rascals :)

 I love this date idea.  Aubrey said she got the idea on pinterest, and we love it!  We look forward to reading what's in the folders every month.

 I can't figure out how to rotate this picture...haha so here it is anyway.  But this is kind of how she does it.  Each month has a paper inside with a description of what to do for that date.  So cute,  and so thoughtful. Thanks so much aub, for being so great and wonderful.  She put a little twist on each month.  She said that we couldn't look ahead at any of the months.  The anticipation sometimes kills us haha,.  Here is a list of the previous months dates.  We'll start with the very first one we opened, OCTOBER!!

 October: This month she had us take the time to sit down and write down details about your wedding day; either in our journals, or writing our own.  This was such a cute idea.  This way we won't forget our wedding day and the important details that happened that special day.
November: So for some reason there was nothing in the November folder, whoops! I'm sure we did something fun :)
December: This month's date was A SNOWMAN DATE!! Unfortunately, when we opened this envelope there was NO SNOW!!! hahaha we were heart broken.  But she included these cute hot cocoa packet things:

January: This month's date idea was New Year Resolutions time!  This was such a perfect idea.  Aubrey doesn't know this, but this is actually what started my exercise and trying to eat healthier.  I will admit it, I really like sweets.  Chocolate, candy, cake, anything- i like it!  And I have never really had an exercise program, but this got me started.  I made a goal to exercise every day for at least 30 minutes, and I'll tell you what- i feel so good!  I have lost about 5 pounds, and I hope I can continue to lose unneeded pounds!  In the winter I was also off track so it was fun to be able to prepare healthy meals for tanner when he got home for school.  Thanks aub, for getting me started on exercising every day!
February: "A night at the Steven's Home Spa!"  How fun was this!! The idea here is to pamper each other and have a relaxing, romantic evening.  Each of you choose which option you want, and maybe even a couple options.  Get everything ready to go.  Enough said :) :)
March: Go enjoy yourself a good ol' dinner and a movie!!  Inside this envelope aubrey included a $15 gift card to five guys burgers and fries, and 2 movie theatre tickets!  This is embarrasing, but Tanner I thought that these tickets were only valid on California, and so this was Aubrey's way of giving us an excuse to go visit them. hahahahaha.  Come to find out that we can use the tickets in Idaho Falls.  We used that gift card and had a wonderful date night.  We'll have to use the movie tickets in the near future!
April: This months date was a campout.  Make tinfoil dinners, and roast marshmallows. Well we chose to do this date at Tanner's parents house,  because they have a firepit in their backyard.  My favorite thing is to roast starbursts and smores in the summer, so that is exactly what we did!  We sat around the fire, talked, roasted starbursts and smores, and then slept in his parents camper!!!  It was a blast.
May: Make a fort in your living room, and have a movie marathon!! This is exactly what we did last night!!!

Our tent is dominating our apartment right now, it's kind of fun. hahaha.  Tanner and I can't wait for the rest of this years dates!! I'm so grateful for my sister Aubrey, and for the wonderful example she is to me.  She is such a good mother, one that I hope to be like when I have my own children.  I am so grateful for families, and for the chance we have to be with each other for eternity.  Aub, thanks so much for everything you do and continue to do for me.  I LOVE YOU!!!

 This is a hideous picture of me, but sadly it was the only one I could find of us!  (Aub, we need to change that haha)

COUCH FOR SALE!!!

We are asking $90 for this couch.  It is super comfortable, we just don't have room for it in our apartment anymore.  Let me know if you are interested!  It also has many pillows, but you can take or leave as many as you want. email me at and10020@byui.edu if you are interested!

Memorial Day

Well, this year for memorial day we really wanted to go camping.  My father in law had a 45% coupon for kelty camp stuff.  Kelty is a super nice brand of outside camping gear, backpacks, etc.  Tanner and I want to go camping a lot when we are older and have kids so we thought this was a good opportunity to get it all 45% off!  Well, we were disappointed because none of our camping gear came.  And on top of that, it was a heavy downpour, and it even started snowing.  Not cool.  So, we spent the night in his parents camper for 2 nights.  That was still fun.  We watched the grinch in the camper, and had a good time.  I didn't take any pictures....but we had a fun weekend!  On Sunday we helped his brother Ty move to Montana.  That was crazy.  It was so super cold, and not very enjoyable.  But we got them settled in in no time and we had a good time spending some time with them.  To top off our memorial day, we watched the Grinch.  What a good weekend!

I am a true believer

So, the first 5 months of mine and Tanner's marriage, I will admit, we were super lazy.  We would stay up until 3 in the morning watching prison break and other movies, sleep until 10 or 11 (oh my) and then waste our day doing silly things like facebook, watch movies, eat popcorn, go to school, etc.  We never did anything fun, exciting, uplifting, nothing.  We found ourselves getting into this hole where we started gaining weight.  and being lazy.  In high school, i LOVED staying up late and not going to sleep.  I've always been a party animal. hahaha. But now that I'm married, I'm realizing that that's not exactly the right way to live. My dad has always taught us to go to bed early, and to wake up early.  But none of us have ever believed him.  Well, now I'm starting to believe him.  In March-ish, I realized that we were really lazy, and that we both had gained weight.  Gaining weight is never attractive. haha.  Anyway, so we decided to make different goals for ourselves.  We decided to go to the temple at least once a month, exercise EVERY DAY, go to bed at the latest 11:30, actually cook dinner and cook healthy, not watch tv so much, and make more time to study for school.  Oh my lanta....I feel so much better!!! I love exercising every day, and especially because it's with my hubby.  We always glance at each other and wink haha and it just keeps me goin!  I have found that going to bed earlier, waking up earlier, and especially EXERCISING every day, has made both of us happier people, more alert, and we have more fun together!!  We are starting to realize how funny each other is, and we just have a ton of fun together.  It seems that now everything fits into our day that didn't used to.  It's kind of weird.  But, to sum this all up, I just want to say I'm a firm believer in exercising.  Not gonna lie, the first 2, even 3 weeks of exercising was NOT enjoyable.  Like at all.  I would feel like death during, and I would just fall and die after like 10 minutes of running.  Oh ya, I forgot.  I made a goal to not 'become a runner' but to 'become comfortable at running.'  My whole life I've felt like running is a weakness of mine, and I've always been a really slow runner.  So...I decided that running would be my goal for the year.  Become comfortable at it, and hopefully lose like 15 pounds.  Anyway, exercise isn't easy, but now after about a month and a half, I am actually starting to enjoy it.  And I've lost 4 pounds! Woohoo for exercise.  All of you out there that have ever felt like Tanner and I, lazy, and fat, you can change.  Because  if we are, so can you!!

 p.s. We made goals to look like this someday:

This is what Tanner wants to look like:



  And this......this is me. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. We'll let you know our progress.

:)

So....I know every woman out there thinks they have the best husband in the world.  But I think after reading this post, we all would agree that MADDIE STEVENS has the best husband in the world.  There are many reasons why I do, but this is the most recent one.  A little background on this,  So  last night Tanner and i started watching Rango.  It's about a lizard, and it's hilarious.  Well, I got bored and started painting my toenails.  Without saying anything, Tanner took off his socks, put his feet up by mine and said, "paint mine."  I just kind of stared at him like are you serious?  But...I didn't hesitate, and I got right on it!!  I painted them pink and purple with a cute little message on them.  I was laughing my head off the whole time because I kept wondering why he was letting me do this. hahahahahahahaha oh my heck so funny.  When I finally let him look, he died.  As I'm sure you can imagine.  But, we went to bed and he didn't ask me to take it off.  Now ladies- if you have a husband like mine- you know he's a keeper.  hahahaha I love him so stinking much!  Anyway, here are some pictures:

                                                                   Here's HIS toes

                                                                And here's mine.

                                  This is true love. hahahaha. I just got thinking...in 10 years when I                         show our kids my blog, what are they going to think?? BAHAHAHAHA