Death by Chocolate

Last night for our monthly girls night out we had a mystery dinner party. The theme was Death by Chocolate and it was SO much fun.

The Fabulous 15!

In order of appearance we have:

Hazel Nutt-Whirl {Veronica}, Kit Catt {Kamme}, Beebee C. Channill {Brit}, Candy Kisses {Julie}, Wendy Boxis-Empty {Karen}, Jacq Latt {Caitlin}, Moll Teaser {Tracy}, Charlotte Webb {Emily}, Kara Mello {Celia}, Wilma Winker {Charity}, Dr. Pix E. Stick {Kim}, Lolita Popp {Sandra}, Marsha Mallow {Janet}, Shopin Channill {Audry}, and Pippa Mint {Jenny}

A joint party is being held at Thornbury's Chocolate to launch the new range of Symphony Chocoaltes and also to celebrate the birthday party of Shopin Channill who is the daughter of Thornbury's owner Cocoa Channill. What could possibly go wrong on such a happy night?

We had a wonderful array of appetizers and salads, some incredible pasta with garlic bread, and of course, what would a chocolate party be without having some delicious chocolate fondue.

Of course we had to take a lot of pictures.

In the end we found that the murderess was little miss Jaqu Latt. Who knew that a little old lady could be so vindictive?

This night was truly so much fun. Thanks to everyone that made this possible and for all your hard work to pull off such a great night.

3 year anniversary

On this day 3 years ago, my wonderful and loving grandma passed away. She was an incredible woman whom we miss dearly. Today we remembered her and celebrated her life together as a family. My sister made my grandmas one and only amazing apple pie. Each bite took me back to Mexico where you could instantly smell sugar as soon as you walked into her house. Where her kitchen was always full of life an enjoyment. The way her eyes would light up when she laughed. And how she could tell the most amazing stories. Te extrañamos muchisiomo abuelita y siempre pensamos en ti. Como quisimos que conocieras a Oliver. Te queremos mucho abuelita Licha, y algun dia nos vamos a volver estar juntos como familias eternas.

Grandmas amazing apple pie. So good, I even had to have a full piece. Oliver loved it too.



Here is Oliver with his grandma. His favorite thing about brown grandma is that she dances with him every single time he goes to visit. As you can tell by the look on his face, he pretty much loves her.

This is officially a masacre...a rat masacre.

And this makes 4!

Location: North side of the compost at around 1700 hours.

The victim: Templeton number 4.

Again, getting ready to eat dinner...I guess the rats had the same idea. I saw the dark furry thing running back and forth to stock up on the rest of the cherry tomatoes that had been left out. Bad idea, rat. Don't you know that nearly your entire family has been picked off from doing this..apparently their absence doesn't mean much to you. I pumped the gun, snuck out the front and around the corner. Threw out a nice fat red rotten tomato to lure my pray on over and I waited...again. Sure enough, a few minutes later it casually walked out and made it's way over to my trap. I didn't know if it was going to hang around and I didn't want to sit outside much longer. I was getting hungry and I didn't want my dinner to overcook. So I shot and hit it right in the head as you can see in the picture below. I guess I'm good at hitting my targets in the neck and head, since that's where I've gotten every single one of those nasty little [and some not so little] things. This one was a fighter. It jumped up in the air and wiggled and squirmed all over the place. I was trying to shoot it again to put it out but it wasn't giving up so easy. It took me about 3 more shots to finally hit it and then he was gone. Tear...of gladness! If I'm not mistaken, I believe there is still one more. Hopefully not, but I'm not giving the Templeton's the benefit of the doubt.

The eyes started to go grey right away. It was pretty gross to say the least.

P.S. I sware I'm not white trash...just trying to protect my property. Is that so bad???

Halloween Apothecary

This year I wanted to do some Halloween decorating on my own and for free, so I searched the web and I was able to come up with these:

Spooky Halloween Apothecary


My sister in law, Taleesha had given me all sorts of old bottles a while back and for the longest time I was trying to get rid of them (those that often attend the GNO nickel auctions should know this). When I saw the idea to make an apothecary, I was so happy to know that I had the perfect bottles for this project. I found some excellent labels online that I could print for free and started making a variety of potions of my own.

Some of these potions included, Rotten apples [real apples that we found on the ground while on a walk], Witches warts [raisins], Swamp Slime [aloe vera], Snake oil [colored water, oil and a toy snake], twisted twigs [tree branches], Human flesh [fake heart, arm and leg in water], Eye balls [toy eyeballs in colored water], wolf howl [cotton balls], Mummy Mold [mud], and more...

I used these orange and purple lights to illuminate my shelf and to create a spookier atmosphere. So far, I love it and now I can look forward to adding somet new potions to my apothecary every year.

Unfortunately, I can't take all the credit for this idea. Here are the links that I used to get my ideas from. I'd love to see if anyone else has done something similar to this. Please share, as I love to see how creative other people are and where there ideas are sparked from.

For APOTHECARY JARS click here and here

For LABELS click here and here

The Alpha Male!

The crime scene: North side of the compost pile. Around 1400 hours.

The Victim: Mr. Templeton aka The Alpha Male

I am so sick of these rats and today(actually 2 days ago) when I saw a huge one [the one that I thought may just be the alpha male] I had to do something about it. So, I did. I killed it! I put Oliver in his highchair with his lunch perfectly cut up on his tray to allow me time to do this while he remained entertained for a while. I set up a chair out back close to my target, threw some cherry tomatoes that were going bad out by the successful watermelon trap, and I waited. Then, as if I were some sort of rat whisperer, he came out. At first he was hesitant. Don't blame him. He sniffed the air and sat back on his hind legs smelling and tasting the air for his enemy [me]. I could see his nose and whiskers twitching. He slowly walked out from under the beams of the compost troff and ran back again for shelter, but still watching. He was testing me. He was trying to see if something was really out there gunning for him. Little did he know that I was only ten feet away and very very still. He came out again and I knew I was going to have to be quick...real quick. I was already waiting for him, watching every [last] move he was making through the site of my rifle [ok it was my bebe gun again, but it looks like a rifle..and it's not really mine, it's Amy's]. He was fast. All he was after was a single cherry tomato and he got it, but I got him before he ran back. It was perfect. I hit him in [what must have been] the neck because he was still alive, not squirming as much as the others, just kicking it's hind legs as if it was trying to flip over and run away. Again, Don't blame him. The worst was about to come...death! Because he was still alive, I didn't want him to jump up and run away to die in its hole, or even worse, run towards me and eat me, so I shot at him and hit him in the neck [as shown]. Blood immediately started dripping from its wound, mouth, and nose forming a solid puddle of red. He was done and so was I. I felt pretty shaky this time. Maybe it was because I was so stinkin close to him or because it was so gruesome and bloody. It could have also been because I hadn't eaten anything and the adrenaline plus no energy was making me have the shakes. I sent some photos to Luke to show him what his wife does while he's at work. He was pretty impressed and told me that he would help clean it up when he got home. Good thing...he was huge, and yes I am certain that it was the Alpha Male. Only 2 more to go...that I know of.

The cleanup:

I first went to go pick him up with the pliers, but I chickened out and I couldn't do...the shovel will do just fine.

The aftermath:

So gross. Luke dug up the dirt and threw it in the garbage. It's been a couple of days since my last kill and I haven't been out rat hunting... To be honest, I'm a little creeped out from this one.

Oh and by the way, My dad wants to take me Elk hunting now...

Weekend at a glance

After a long and busy week, we were ready for this weekend. We had a lot planned and couldn't wait to do it all. After Luke got home from work on Friday, we packed our things, dropped Oliver off and away we went.

Friday we went to a Halloween party where we had a murder mystery dinner themed Murder in the Wild West. For the night I was known as Blaise F Glory, the traveling bounty hunter and Luke was General Custard, Commander of the US Cavalry battalion at Fort Dodgy. We had some really good chili and cornbread and a lot of great desserts to satisfy any sweet tooth. Thanks to little careless (Brittany) and Lily White (Keli) for hosting such a fun party and inviting us.


The next morning we awoke at 6 am to load up the car and drive out to Maple Canyon where we spent the day rock climbing and repelling with some of the Young Women in our ward. It was pretty awesome!

We did a couple repels including a 300 ft. repel. I thought I would be more scared then I really was. I guess it helps to be surrounded by a lot of really brave girls.

Kasidy showing us the way to rock climb like a pro and the face of the 300 ft. repel.

My two favorite pictures of Luke...and of the day for that matter.

Me and Luke ready to go home after a long day.

The rest of the weekend consisted of me trying to fight off my cold that hit pretty hard Saturday night. Maybe I should have let my body recover before taking on such a busy weekend...then again, I loved every minute of it!

Templeton #2

The crime scene: North side of the compost pile. Luke and Kim's house. At around 1700 hours.

The victim: Templeton #2

I did it again and it was glorious! I was eyeing the compost pile all day long hoping that I would see one of the Templeton's out. It was a nice warm[er] day, so I thought for sure I'd see them running around all day long. Finally when we were eating dinner tonight, I saw one...a smaller one. Once again, I ran out the front door with gun in hand. The kids were watching through the back door [this time they weren't covering their ears]. Of course the dang rodent scurried away as soon as I was positioned, but once again, I didn't want to give up so easily, so I waited. He came back and started munching away at the trap of a watermelon that we had left out as bait. I took my time getting my aim on the target just right. At first all I had a good shot of was its rear end and from killing the last rat I knew that the bebes wouldn't penetrate there. I made a little bit of noise with my shoe so that he would pop it's head up and when it did, BAM! Once again, I nailed it! This time it was more along the back of the head in the neck. It squirmed around flopping its body all over the place like a fish out of water. It flopped around on the concrete, onto the grass and took its final breaths on the mud. When I looked back, all the boys were patiently waiting for me to signal that it was okay to come out. I had to shoot it a couple more times to put the filthy thing out of its misery. Most of the boys watched. I told Ethan that it was okay to cover his eyes, which he did. Again, they thought it was the coolest thing ever. I had to clean up the mess I made all by myself since Luke wasn't around and wasn't going to be home for some hours, but it really wasn't that bad. Now, I just have the alpha male to kill and hopefully we'll be done with this...until the spring I'm sure.

Meet the Templetons...

WARNING:

That images below are somewhat graphic and not very pretty [especially if you're a rodent lover]. What you are about to see may not be suitable for [your] children. Consider yourself warned...
[as preiviously seen on An Apple A Day]

The crime scene: East side of the compost troff. Luke and Kim's house. At around 1200 hours.

The victim: Templeton #1

That's right. I did that! Luke and I have been dealing with these rats for months and months. It all started in the spring when we first discovered that they had moved into the neighborhood. We tried and tried for weeks to get them, but never succeeded. It is known throughout our friends and family that we have this small problem and it doesn't help matters that our garden and compost pile keeps these rodents fed pretty well. Today while we were getting ready for lunch, one of the boys looked out the back door and saw a Templeton in the compost. Luke and I quickly grabbed the bebe guns and snuck out the front door ever so quietly. Luke thought that they had scurried away, but I saw three and wasn't about to give up just yet. I quietly walked over closer to them. The medium sized one was perched near the back of the compost troff. I raised my gun, closed one eye to better focus on my aim, squeezed the trigger, and BAM! I didn't think that I had hit it until I saw it squirming all over the place and trying to recover from it's injury. I called out to Luke telling him that I hit it. I thought I would have heard it scream, but it was silently writhing to its gruesome death. Luke and I shot at it a couple more times without penetrating the skin thinking that any moment it was going to run away, but then it stopped moving and finally died. When we got a closer look we noticed that I had nailed it right in the head. Lucky shot you may ask? Not at all.

Disposing of the nuisance. I was pretty impressed with the size of that thing. If this was hunting worthy, I could have snapped a shot and taken it to Sportsman's Warehouse to have my prized picture displayed on the wall...Okay maybe not, but to have a rat that big in your garden is a big deal to me.

The boys thought this was one of the coolest things ever. Boy are they going to be impressed when they start going deer and elk hunting with their dad and grandpa.

There may be a smorgasbord of food scraps in that compost pile for those Templeton's to choose from, but this is not where any old rat can glut, glut, glut, glut and get away with it...

The shoes that will never be...

About a year ago when I went shopping for my brand new baby boy, I found some very cute clothes that I was so excited for him to grow into. Among the many cute things I found were these shoes:

Cute right?

Well, yesterday when I pulled these out of he closet to test them out on Oliver, I was very saddened. Oliver's feet are too big and fat. Once again, another pair of shoes go back into storage in hopes that maybe my next child will get use out of them.

I like to call his feet hobbit feet...minus the thick toenails and hair.