Mothers Day Dinner

To all of you who like to COOK & EAT: This means everyone in our family I suspect.

A month or so ago in our book club we read "A Little Princess" and I brought Indian Butter Chicken and homemade Naan, which you can find the recipes for here:

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2011/03/indian-butter-chicken.html

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2011/04/naan-indian-flatbread.html

They turned out FANTASTIC! I meant to take a picture of them, but suffice it to say that if you look at these pictures from Mel's Kitchen Cafe Blog, where I got them, you will be looking at my Chicken and my Naan. Homemade Naan is so good you will not be able to stop eating it and it is way better than store bought. It is also easy to make although a little time consuming to bake as you have to bake the Naan one or two at a time.

I am making this for Nana and Bumpa for dinner tomorrow along with this Strawberry CreamPuff Cake I found on Mel's Kitchen Cafe Blog also. I love this blog. Everything on it is wonderful!!!

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2009/10/strawberry-cream-puff-cake.html

Strawberries are in season and on sale in the stores right now and all you need is creamcheese and cream and strawberries. You should have everything else for this easy and delicious dessert.

Love you all and have a wonderful Saturday.

PS Check out Eric's blog post and let's see some family participation on our blog!!!

Conversation Starters

My good friend Kendel has a blog where he posts weekly thoughts and inspiration and this week he posted about something he found on a blog called raptitude, which I just added to my google reader.

The post, How to always have something better to talk about than the weather, talks about overcoming conversation awkwardness and shyness, something I think some of us have had to deal with. On my mission a few companions jokingly called it "applicando la Giffordiana" or basically standing back and saying nothing when there is a need to speak up. Raptitude says this about it:

• "I suspect that most shy people are not hardwired to be that way. They don’t lack any innate social talent, they just had one or two bad social incidents early on, and in an effort to avoid further social pain they began to err on the side of silence. Where last time they said something and regretted it, the next time they said nothing, and did not regret it.

• "Unbeknownst to them, this seemingly innocent little lesson is actually the seed of a devastating habit. Every shy person knows that the safest thing to say is nothing. Once a person chooses this safe approach a few times in a row, an insidious snowball begins to pick up speed."

Now I recognize that some people are just introverts and that is fine, but this really rang true with me. The blog talked about some of the myths that the silent tell themselves to feel better about not speaking up. The author gives a couple of solutions

1. "There are two primary pieces of advice I received, and now give. The first is watch how more skillful people do it. There are always opportunities to watch people interact. How do they begin conversations? How do they end them? How do they change topics? Even watching bad conversations can give you a great idea of what to do instead. Just watching people can give you a short go-to list of ways to open and close conversations. Make conversation-watching a habit.

2. "The other piece of advice is, of course, to practice speaking up. And practice always means allowing yourself do something badly until you can do it not so badly. It means making habit of doing things that are uncomfortable at first. So when it comes to overcoming shyness, that means speaking more than you feel like speaking. If you’ve established a habit of leaving most of the speech to others, it will feel unnatural to open up. That’s good, do it anyway. Discomfort indicates growth. Always say a little bit more than you’re used to."

It goes on to talk about some of the topics we always default to like the weather. I really enjoyed it. I was very shy as a teenager and starting college and my mission but have grown a lot. I think that I really only deal with this in a few situations now, but I decided I am going to make a conscious effort to both watch others and practice speaking up. Go check out the post and share what you think.

Also, for those of you in the family that never have any problem speaking up --- ahem---- Mom, Britta, Spencer --- feel free to share any tips!

Eric

Gramma G's visit to meet Charlotte!

Customize your own photo album

Front Door Robins

Photo slideshow made with Smilebox

Birdie

This photo slideshow made with Smilebox

2009 Year in Review in Pictures

Digital slideshow made with Smilebox

Frosty Morning in Sidney

slideshow created with Smilebox

Dad's Snow Tour

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Blog Stats/Awards

Well its been almost two years (approx. 22 months) since we have started this blog so I thought, being as how activity has picked up recently, I would do a little survey of who has participated so far and share some basic statistics on the Gifford blog:

• There have been 27 posts so far on the blog
• There have been 48 comments on those posts
• 9 of those posts have included multi-media material (pics, links, smileboxes, etc.)
• The longest period without a post is 374 days from Oct. 10, 2008 to Oct. 19, 2009 from the post "Preserving Marriage - Proposition 8" (Eric) to "Autumn is My Favorite Season" (Britta)
• Shortest period between posts: 24 minutes on Jan. 2, 2008, between "Hey family! Welcome to our very own blog!" by Reesy at 4:04pm and "Happy New Year From Mom!" by Mom at 4:28pm
• Day with most posts: Tuesday April 8, 2008 with 3 posts
  

And now to the stats on the bloggers themselves

• Biggest blogger: tie between Eric and Britta at 7 posts each (although technically this makes 8 for me)
• Most multi-media friendly: Mom and Eric (honourable mention: Reesy). I have four posts with multi-media, 3 pictures and 1 link, mom has those two smile box things. Reesy also has posted her homemade stuff which is great, and actually I just realized she created the blog and created the logo so I think she actually wins and Mom and I get honourable mentions. Nice one Reesy!
• Biggest commenter: Britta wins by far with 19 comments, Mom is second with 14.
• I won't create a "prize" for least participating because then that creates an incentive for behavior we don't want, but if it did exist Jessie wins, where are you girl? Also Karen and Spencer are just as responsible and I don't think can hide behind me and Britta. Reesy, are they added to the blog? If not please add them to receive email notifications so they can post!
  

I think we should also discuss who has made the most advancement technologically with the blog. Is it dad because even though he knows the most about technology he is the least likely to blog? Is it mom because she has learned a lot about technology and is even on facebook now? Is there someone else you think should get it? Please reply and lets have a discussion! Also keep in mind we can use this venue to discuss Christmas ideas, schedules and other stuff.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Autumn is My Favorite Season

So no one has written on here in about a year so I just wanted to post something.  I figure this may be a good thing to get back to using since we are even more spread out than we have been.  (Not that we don't talk to each other on the phone all the time, but you know, sometimes we forget to tell each other stuff.....Jessie :) )  Anyway, not much really to report right now.  

Spence and I went with our friends Jeff, Missy, their daughter Erin, and Spencer's brother Josh and sister-in-law Steph and our nephew and niece, Drew and Natalie to Southridge Farms.  It's an orchard/farm/pumpkin-patch a little way south of Provo.  They take you on a hay ride out to a pumpkin patch and let you wander around for awhile and find a pumpkin (or six) to buy and take home.  They also have those cardboard cutouts that you stick your head in with pictures of ghosts and pumpkins.  It's a lot of fun.

We actually went there last year with Eric and Karen, so they know what we are talking about.  This was so much fun because we were there with a couple absolutely adorable 2-year-olds.  They were so excited to ride on a wagon pulled by a tractor and then see horses at the pumpkin patch.  Erin found a perfect little pumpkin just here size while Drew wasn't content till he made his dad take home the biggest pumpkin he could find.  But the best part was that both kids stopped every time they saw a camera, posed, made a cheesy grin and said "Cheeeese!"  It just cracked me up, they are such little camera hogs!  Ha ha! :) (I'll post some pictures when I get a chance to load them on my computer.)

The saddest thing was that the farm no longer sells their homemade cider.  It was the best stuff ever!!  Just ask Eric and Karen, they'll concur I'm sure.  I think it's cause it's not pasteurized or something so there are regulations....or whatever.  But I sure miss it.  But they did still have their apple cider donuts which are quite delicious.  Mmm, mmm!  And homemade ice cream (which I have never actually had because it's much too cold for that.)  It was a great day though and I ended up finding some of those mini gourds and a wicker basket to put them in.  So now I officially have one fall decoration for the season.  Ha ha!

Preserving Marriage - Proposition 8

Hey, just this Wednesday (October 8) the church had a special broadcast about preserving the sanctity of marriage which was especially aimed towards California members and voters. Proposition 8 is an amendment to the California constitution that will define marriage and limit it to be between a man and a woman only. This will not take any from any of the civil union rights and benefits that homosexual citizens already enjoy, it would only secure the definition of traditional marriage.

Why is this important to anybody else not from California? The more that these ideas are accepted in law the more they demands be made that we agree. If homosexual marriage is given an equal position as traditional marriage then the law will demand changes. For example, Catholic based adoption agencies in Massachussets have opted to close since that state has legalized gay marriage. The state forced them to either let gay couples adopt children or shut down. Because of their Christian values they opted to shut down. Tolerance is a two way street and means as we can accept that others disagree we ask them to accept us as well. Christian groups should not be discriminated against because of their values. Follow the link below everybody to find out some more about this issue!

i have too much spare time

Hey family. So we don't really do much with this blog, so I'm just going to put whatever I want on it. I don't know what my deal is, but I've been in super artsy mode lately. I've got a myriad of projects I've been up to and I feel good about putting them on the blog. I just made a pillow today (yeah!) and this one turned out way better than the one I did last night. Red rose pillow - good, yellow owl pillow - not so good. That's okay though. Mom, if you still want the yellow owl pillow for the room downstairs, it's all yours. You won't see any amazine feats of sewingness on it though. Maybe you can hide it under a bunch of other pillows, like in ET when he hides in all the toys. Also, please observe the bird pattern gift wrap - made out of the inside of a grocery bag. Why gift wrap, that just get's ripped off eventually? I don't know. But it's fun. Last, but not least is the desk. I made it to match the dresser I did a while ago. Too bad after I painted everthing blue I had a brilliant new idea for decorating my room that only involved green. Oh well, blue is soothing right? And there's no way I want to paint all that stuff over again. I really do like it though - but painting the leaves and stuff was a little harder than I expected. Anyway, that's your Martha Stewart moment for the day. Love you all!

PS - I had a weird dream today about having to stand up in front of a class of teenagers. There was weird yellow wallpaper involved and I think I knew the teacher and she wasn't happy I was there. I wasn't happy I was there. Other than that I don't remember much. Random I know - I just wanted to tell someone about that.

525 West Morrow Drive

In case you all were wondering how our old house that we had built in Phoenix is doing I checked it out on Google Earth. Here you go:

Temple/Announcements

Ok, so this is April 26th, I believe, of this year. It is the day Karen went to the temple. You can see a picture and her and me at the top on the way in. Then there's one of all of her siblings in Utah and Britta and me. I believe you know all of them. Afterwards we forced everybody to spend about an hour stuffing announcements. We had a ton to do and i don't think it was everybody's favorite activity but they were very kind in helping. I put in a picture of Reesy and Britta and also Nikki and her husband Mike (holding the fan of temple announcements - way more than we needed). He wasn't able to make it out to California for the wedding so you all didn't meet him. They are tons of fun.

On later news. I've begun my research with my professor. So far so good. I'm working on two studies. One is an update of a study on solidarity in remote Mormon villages. My professor went to Escalante, UT in May and did over 40 1-2 hour interviews with a variety of residents there to learn about different aspects of life there (its waaaay out there in the boonies). I am now transcribing those interviews so that they can be read and then we can look for different types of trends in the answers. The other interview is about marathons in Utah and how they affect the families of those who run them.

This morning Karen and I went with her Uncle Ron and her brother Nate and Mike and some of her cousins out to do some target shooting. It was very early but it was fun. We shot .22's, .38 revolvers, some shot guns, and then some other big nasty guns. It was fun. Later on in the summer Ron is going to invite us over to do some canning, they have a huge garden with plenty to spare so we are excited.

Oh and last night was July 4th. Reesy, Anita, Karen and I had an awesome Mexican bbq. I cooked up some thin steaks and made some awesome guacamole. Reesy and Karen made some classic "Carol's bean dip" and Karen made Reesy's famous brownie recipe. It was amazing. Then we watched the fireworks out at Sugarhouse park. It was a delightful evening and it was great because I hadn't seen Anita in forever. Well thats all, this may not have been funny but for the mean time you know what we've been up to. I'll still be posting some wedding/honeymoon pics soon so wait with bated breath.

Catch up #1 - Violin Recital

Well I've finally gotten around to posting Reesy's violin recital pictures, please see Britta's former post concerning the event from last March or April. I personally think Reey's fits in nicely with the fiddling group due to her home-on-the-praries-esque attire. Unfortunately the video was taking forever to upload, I think there was some kind of problem. I'll try posting it again later for your viewing enjoyment. You'll also notice I added a picture of Britta dutifully supporting her sister in this new endevour, doesn't she just look delighted? I think she's trying to ignore that old man talking to her on the right. Soon more catch up pictures and video coming from Karen's first day at the temple, the wedding, Hawaii, receptions, etc....

need some stuff

Hey guys, so we need to put up some photos and posts about our recent and significant family events. Since I don't have any photos available at the moment though, I decided our blog needs something to pass the time. Most of you already saw this dresser I did, but just in case, I thought I'd put it up. It makes me happy. I will also put up some pictures of the table and chairs for Eric and Karen, they turned out so good! Anyway, call to action - put some photos of the wedding and open house up! Yeah!

The Cave in the Closet

So, I have decided that our family watches far too much "Dr. Who." Well, at least I do. I have just finished the second season (I know, I'm extremely far behind all of you!) and am about to start the third season. Recently I found David Tennant's video diary from the making of the show (on YouTube, or the Dr. Who site, I can't recall at the moment) and have taken to watching that as I am waiting for one of those fabulous little red envelopes of magic and wonder to arrive in my mailbox from Netflix so that I may continue my journey through space and time (and David Tennant's dark brown eyes and charming smile.)

I say that I have watched too much because last night I had a dream. A dream in which The Doctor and Rose were in my room in the dark creepy basement of my house. There we found a hole that had been dug into the wall of my closet hidden behind my coats and clothes. We noticed people who appeared to be sleeping there and I knew instantly that this hole led to another dimension or some alien cave where some other race was trying to take over/destroy the earth. Suddenly, one of the people in the hole noticed us and rushed to close off the hole. We struggled to jump in before the hole was closed off and I noticed, just before I jumped in, that I didn't have any shoes on. I ran back to my room to grab my shoes, all the while The Doctor and Rose yelling for me to hurry. And then, just in time I jumped through the hole as it closed behind me. I looked around. We were in some sort of cave with odd drawings and rocks all over the place. The Doctor began to wonder aloud at the drawings...where had they come from, what did they mean? Then, a flash of realization hit me and I knew, "These drawings were made by my sister!" I said. And as we looked each drawing had the distinct crisp scrolling design that Reese often embellishes with. And there at the bottom of each drawing on these walls was her signature! What could this mean? Was Reese affiliated with some other time and space? Did the tunnel at the other end of the cave lead to monsters or some other race? How did Reese get in my closet? And just as all these questions began bubbling up and we were about to descend through the tunnel.....my alarm rang and I woke up.

Very disappointing, I know. I was hoping for something a little more dramatic or crazy myself. Well, that's the way dreams work I guess. Maybe it will be a reoccurring dream and one day I'll go down the tunnel and find out why Reese was drawing things in a cave in my closet.

shameless

So I am afraid that what I am about to write has nothing do to with my resolutions for the year, dreams for the future, or memoirs of the past. It is a shameless brag in my amazing culinary feats. My beautiful plum cake, eaten by so many of our esteemed members of the family who can attest to it's beauty, tastiness and downright awesomeness. Now I know what you're thinking, a plum cake huh? That sounds healthy, fruity and lacking in dessert necessities such as butter and large quantities of sugar, can it really be that good? And I say to you, yes, yes it can. It may even be better than my wheat chocolate chip cookies - from which I swear I can feel myself getting healthier the more I eat. (That was just another shameless plug for my other incredible edible accomplishments. - here's another - check out my other blog, The Saturday Lunch Club)

Well, pretty much that's just my random post about nothing but stuff to eat. Good times.