Thursday, February 26, 2009

Parade of Homes

Every year for the past 5 years I have gone to St. George President's day weekend for the Parade of Homes with Jill. It is a blast. Jill's parents live there so we have a place to stay and for the last few years my Mom, Sister-In-Law and nephew Logan (who loves looking at these houses) have met me there. The houses are amazing and sometimes ridiculously extravagant but so much fun to check out. I have gone to the parade of homes in Salt Lake a couple of times and it does not even come close to comparing.

This year you could definitely see the effect the economy was having on the housing market. Instead of there being a couple houses that were 6 and 7 million and then a lot in the 3-4 million range then most between 1- 3 million and very few under a million there were a couple that were 3.5 million (one NOT worth it!) and a few 1-1.5 million then everything else under a million. Don't get me wrong the ones under a million are still gorgeous homes just not with the crazy add ons of arcades, bowling alleys and other fun stuff. I made a goal to take over 200 pics and I overshot that by 65 so here are a few of my favorites.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

1st attempt...there will be more

Okay so my first attempt at making sugar cookies turned out with some pluses and some negatives. Let's start with the positives: The actual cookie tasted REALLY yummy! The frosting turned out edible. The improvements that need to be made are that I need to NOT over cook all but one batch...even though the overcooked ones still tasted yummy. I also need to find a little bit better frosting that doesn't taste like powdered sugar mixed with water. Here are the end results!

The heart is my favorite! I did lose patience with the decorating and coloring the frosting but hopefully I will get more patience the more I practice at it.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Cookies!

Cute shaped cookie cutters (i.e. one is the shape of California!) have inspired me to bake some sugar cookies this week. Not just any sugar cookies but cream cheese sugar cookies...yum! Well hopefully yum, I have never made sugar cookies before that I can remember so we'll see how they turn out (pictures below are my end goal.) Since I cannot eat all of these cookies I am going to take them to work and to my family in St. George when I meet them for the Parade of Homes and force them to be my experimental taste testers.