Halloween Crafts

Hallow's Eve is almost upon us (okay, kinda but not really) and here are the cute crafts Emmali and I did last night:

My "Spooky" block letters.

Emmali's cute lil' witch.

So fun.  Can't wait to put my decoration up in my apartment!  I might wait a little while though... it seems a little too early for Halloween decorations.  I mean, school just barely started!

#tbt 2

Back to when I  hiked Angel's Landing and found a bent tree.

Cyclops sunglasses at Claire's.

When I was crazy in Young Women's.  Chocolate staches.

And more craziness in Young Women's.  Giving awesome make-overs.

 Happy Thursday!  It's almost Friday!

Carmelitas

My boss introduced me to carmelitas.  They ooze with caramel, and they are crumbly with oats and brown sugar.  So good!!!! They're super unhealthy, but you might as well indulge yourself in this once in a while. I thought I'd share this recipe because everyone needs to make them!

Ingredients:
32 caramel squares, unwrapped
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Combine caramels and cream in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until completely smooth; set aside. In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, flour, oats, and baking soda. Pat half of the oatmeal mixture into the bottom of an 8x8" pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Remove pan from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips over crust. Pour caramel mixture over chocolate chips. Crumble remaining oatmeal mixture over caramel. Return to oven and bake an additional 15-20 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool completely before cutting.
*A stint in the fridge will help them cool off if you're pinched for time. They shouldn't be served cold, but all of that molten caramel takes a long time to cool down. They should be stored and served at room temperature.
**If you want to use homemade or store-bought caramel sauce in place of the caramel/cream mixture, use 1 1/4 cups of sauce.
***To make a 9x13" version, simply double the amount.

Oh, and she said her sister said she got this off of Lulu the Baker's blog (just citing my sources so I don't get in trouble for plagiarizing haha).

Yeah, not the best picture to capture the deliciousness, but just take my word for it.  Okay?  Okay.

Simply U

For Christmas my parents bought Robert and I a few essential items, which included shampoo and conditioner by Simply U.  This brand makes their shampoos and conditioners safe to use for hair, leaving out sulfate and paraben (those two things damage hair).  We still had shampoo and conditioner to use at the time, so I haven't started using it until about 2 weeks ago.  At first I didn't think it would make a difference to my hair.  I was just using the Organix Coconut Milk shampoo and conditioner (sulfate free), and that stuff wasn't doing anything to my hair (at least that was noticeable).  So I thought the Simply U stuff was just another brand of shampoo and conditioner that claimed to make your hair moisturized and soft when in reality it didn't do squat.  On top of that, the shampoo and conditioner smells gross.  They literally smell like bathroom cleaners, especially the conditioner.  But after 2ish weeks of using this stuff, my hair has gotten the softest it has ever been!  I wash my hair every other day or every other two days, and one time I noticed after not washing my hair for two days that it was still super soft when I got it wet to wash again.  And it has been noticeably less frizzy (still ugly wavy but less frizzy).  Luckily my heat protector smells divine (I posted about this a while back) and covers up the bathroom cleaner smell.  I looked on Walmart's website to see how much this stuff costs and I was surprised at how inexpensive it is.  Especially for the sizes of the bottles.  They are about $6 each!  And I think they come in like 24 oz. bottles.  My Organix ones I bought were in small 13 oz. (okay it doesn't sound small, but they definitely look small) were $8 each!  So I will definitely be buying this stuff in the future.  I also noticed that the shampoos and conditioners now include keratin (which does a lot of things to help hair), so I will buy that kind once I run out of my current stuff (hopefully they improved the smell.  But oh well if they didn't haha).  If you can get past the smell of the shampoo and conditioner, I would highly recommend this for your hair!

Support Your Local Sheriff

July is the month of family reunions.  We had one on the 4th for Robert's family, and this weekend we had one for my family.  Every year my family goes camping down in Beaver on Tushar Mountain, and every year there is a theme (the siblings rotate turns to be in charge).  This year the Mills chose to center their theme around the movie "Support Your Local Sheriff", a silly cowboy movie.  Robert and I left Friday morning and got there right when all the activities were dying down :(.  But that's okay cuz we got to play games later anyway.

Driving down with our cool twinner Jazz glasses.

And it was raining like crazy so we didn't need the sunglasses.

Asian man wanted.  Jk.

Robert the outlaw! P.S. that bandana smelled really weird hahaha.

Ridiculous.

Our Friday consisted of a few card games (7 Up, Hand and Foot and Scum) and my cousins brought a projector for my aunt so we could watch "Support Your Local Sheriff" under the canopies (it was raining) while eating popcorn.  Speaking of rain, luckily we got to have a campfire this year.  Last year it was raining and we didn't get to have a fire and it was freezing!  I thought for sure we wouldn't be able to have a fire again because of this drought Utah's had this summer, but luckily we did!  Camping just isn't the same without a campfire.

On the way home we stopped at a gas station in Beaver and took a picture with a beaver.

The 4th.

On the 3rd Robert and I went down to Fillmore with his family.  We went down for a family reunion, and we also went down to see Robert's grandparents in the parade (they were the grand marshals).  The day before the parade we got to watch a free movie at this old school theater.  We watched "The Croods".  I love that movie!

The movie screen is behind those curtains.

The Fillmore parade sure was somethin'...  I thought the Mapleton parade was small, but boy was I wrong hahaha.  It took like an hour, but there were like 10 cars (okay maybe like 15) throughout the entire parade so each group was spread out in 5 minute intervals.  So it felt like the majority of the time I was just sitting there staring off in the distance as the next car slowly drove toward us.  On the plus side, I got a huge otter pop :)

The Grand Marshals sitting in the back seat of a spiffy car.

Someone brought coolio hats that we wore.

Making a dumb face cuz the sun was in my eyes.  And look at my horrible posture.  I look like a giraffe with my neck sticking out.

Yup.  That was the bumpin' parade. The family reunion was shortly after.  It involved lots of good food, chatting with others, and cleaning up.  We got to relax a little after all the hard work before we got back in the car to go back up north.

That night I went to my grandparent's house with Robert and we met my long lost cousin (okay not really long lost, but that's a whole 'nother story).
**Random tangent:  Saying  "a whole 'nother story" out loud sounds normal, but "nother" isn't even a word...  But it sounds just as weird saying "a whole another story".  Anyone even know what's correct??
Back to the story.  We met my cousin and her adoptive parents, and we played volleyball outside on the lawn (which is definitely not my sport).  After we got a private concert from Emma/Kandice (my long lost cousin) and her dad.  Robert sang a song as well, along with McKell and Tanaya.  After the "concert", my dad performed some magic tricks for Kandice and her parents while we waited for it to get a little darker for fireworks.  My uncle, Gary, then gave his annual reading of the Declaration of Independence, and off went the fireworks.  There was no need to go to the Stadium of Fire since some of our fireworks were pretty much Stadium of Fire worthy.  I stuck around for an attempted game of Capture the Flag (attempted because the layout was weird and we didn't really clarify some of the rules so both teams were doing different things haha.  And we just weren't getting anywhere with the game.)  The rest of the group decided to play Sardines, but it was late and Robert and I needed to get home for work early in the morning (bleh).  So here I am... at work... where hardly anyone is.

Here were some of many hot air balloons above our apartment complex as Robert and I left for work in the early morning.

Birthday Balloons

This weekend was Tina's (my mother-in-law) birthday.  Here's a cute idea for a birthday surprise if you don't have an idea.  Emmali got this one off of Pinterest.

These were originally supposed to go on her bed but under the circumstances, we decided to put them in the living room so that when she got into the house she would see them sooner.  They are just a bunch of balloons and there are pictures tied onto the ends of each string.  It didn't take too much work, but I don't think I'll do this ever again.  The balloons were being difficult when we tried putting them into our car.  One popped and another escaped as I was trying to stuff them into the car without letting them touch the outside of our car because the heat would have melted the balloons and popped more of them.  If you have a van with big doors or something then I don't think the balloons will cause you any trouble.

It was such a busy weekend with the birthday and with Stacey's (my sister-in-law) baby shower, so I had a hard time getting up this morning.  Yay for another week of work.  But for reals... I only have to work 3 days this week because I'm taking the 3rd and 4th off for the 4th of July.  But I could go for a nap right now... just 10 more minutes until my lunch break and I'm out.  Well.  Maybe after I eat some food.