thanksgiving dinner

What's your favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner, as in the food?


Mine is sweet potatoes. Yum. I could skip the turkey and just have sweet potatoes.


We all know the best part is being with those we love and remembering the blessings we have. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

what are you thankful for?

I am so thankful for so many things this year. I've posted recently about a few things, but I have so much to be thankful for!!  Some big and small things, some that are non-important and some essentials.

I am thankful for my curly hair (Mom, I bet you never thought you would hear that).  The older I get the more I like it and the more I appreciate how easy and fast it is for me to do it in the mornings. The older I get the more I fear that I will lose it when I start to have kids.  I don't think I would know what to do with straight hair- plus the curly hair it's just part of whom I am at this point in life. It's funny, whenever someone sees a picture of my family, they all ask in surprise: "are you the only one with curly hair?."  Along with being thankful for my hair, I am thankful for Darcy, the wonderful lady who cuts it. You may laugh that I drive 2 hours to where I used to live just to get my hair cut, but she is so worth it.  Most people don't know how to cut curly hair and she does.  After cutting, she also does it so cute- she finger curls it and then it dries in ringlets.  Here are pictures on day 2 after Darcy doing it. (I probably should not announce that).

Darcy and her family has had a rough year this year, and yet she is always there greeting me with a smile and asking about my family. She even woke up at 7 am on a Saturday to meet me at her salon and do my hair for our wedding.

I am thankful for sunshine.  Today it is has been sunny and is melting the snow. This alone is a miracle. As my sister will tell you, the sun just doesn't shine in Utah much during the winter. All biases aside, I really don't remember it being like that in Colorado growing up.

I am thankful for nail polish. It makes me happy.

I am thankful for a loving Heavenly Father and for His Son, Jesus Christ.

I am thankful that I have been able to learn Spanish. (even though I need to practice it more before I lose it).

 I know I posted already about how grateful I am for Jake, but I am so thankful for how hard he works to support our family.  He currently has 3 jobs right now and even though our living room currently is filled with one of them:

I am so glad that he is such a hard worker and that he is good at so many things. I am so thankful that Heavenly Father has always provided for us and taken care of us. It is such a blessing that both of us are employed right now and have the good jobs that we do.

I am thankful for music. I just made a playlist of tunes I am grateful for while I work on something special for tomorrow. If it turns out, I will be very thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving!  What are you thankful for?

wordless wednesday

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

HP7

Saw Harry Potter 7 Friday night.  Asked Jake if I could die my hair like Narcissa Malfoy's in the movie (I can't find a picture anywhere online for this movie). He said he didn't like it too much. I think it's awesome.

I also decided I want Hermoine's outfit here. Mostly the blue sweater.

Oh, and we emjoyed the movie too.

thankful part 3

I am thankful for my husband.  I am so glad that a loving Heavenly Father led us to find each other.  I can count on less then one hand the amount of times I was asked on a date by a boy. And somehow, despite that I found Jake. What a wonderful man. He is kind, gentle, loving, protective and strong. I am blessed.

knowledge and imagination

When I think of something that has greatly influenced my life, it is the ability to read. Without it, things would be much different.  And as a result of reading,  my knowledge has increased and my imagination has traveled the world and gone back in time, and flown into the future.

I am thankful for knowledge and imagination today. And for a God who gave us the ability to experience both.

vacation mode

I am already in vacation mode for the upcoming holidays. It's bad, but I am so ready for them to come. Not ready as in the gifts are ready and the decorations are up, but mentally ready to relax and enjoy the company of family and friends. The problem is that I have started too early. My house is a mess, I haven't done a great job of doing dishes this week and my clean laundry that was done on Monday was just barely put away last night. The work week has gone by, but has been fairly uneventful.
Although last night I did spend some quality time with my sewing machine.  I still have more projects I want to do and somehow in spite of sewing last night I still didn't do any of the mending. It's just not as exciting as the other stuff!!
I do want to figure out how to make one of these.  I found this tutorial, but it doesn't have the little pockets and stuff. Can all you experienced sewers out there tell me how to add them?  I may just suck it up and buy one, but I would love to learn how so I can make them for others.

thankfulness

Lately I have been thinking of how grateful I am for my body. Not in a vain way, I am just grateful that our body allows us to function in so many ways, that it can heal and that we can learn new skills with our hands.

I read this in the book Little Bee yesterday and it beautifully described how we can be grateful about everything:
"...I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived. 
In a few breath's time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile."

In this season of Thanksgiving, I hope we can all be more grateful for even the sad words and look at the beauty in everything. What are you thankful for?

wordless wednesday

photo credit

who needs pumpkin pie?

I love doing something I have never done before, no matter how small the accomplishment is. On Sunday, Jake and  I made cheesecake for the first time.  I've made the no bake kind before but never the real thing with the crust and all.

It is a long process, but turned out great. We followed this recipe. 

Who needs pumpkin pie when you can have pumpkin cheesecake?  

brave

Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave. 

-Mary Tyler Moore-

Yesterday I passed this invitation around to all the sisters at church. I am being hopeful that out of 80 or so we get at least 12 to participate, but we will see. If any of you want to join, let me know, we would love to have you participate.
What did you do that was brave lately?

November 12of12

Happy November. Can you believe it's already the 12th?

this activity shows me just how boring my life is. but it's fun anyway.

1. my magazines that arrived in the mail today  2. my space heater keeps me company during the day

3. gym 4. our date tonight  5. Jake ripped his brand new shirt  6. ellen eccles  7. my favorite (and only) Thanksgiving decoration 8. Ramona and Beezus, this was a great movie! 9. quilt top and back ready to go to the quilter 10. main street Logan 11. free Chick-fil-a- it opens in Logan next week! 12. Jake is so bummed about his shirt- he just got it yesterday! 

friday thoughts

I got the email with my friend for the handmade gift exchange today and I am super excited!!

And...I want a fun name for my blog. Does anyone have good ideas? I am just not that creative but I think Kristen & Jake or The Perschons is a little bit boring. How did any of you come up with your blog names?

12 of 12 to come later. Is it sad that my life is pretty boring so I can't imagine taking 12 pictures in a day?

sisters

photo courtesy of this awesome sister

I have wonderful sisters and sister-in-laws. Each time I am around each of them, they teach me so much and make me want to be a better woman, a better friend, spouse, etc.

I wish I lived closer to them all so I could have some of their wonderfulness rub off on me.  I have grown up watching them and following so many of their wonderful examples.

My sisters are such good homemakers, they are amazing at being creative. One has inspired in me a love of photography, the other a desire to learn how to quilt. Both are kind and patient to listen to me talk about my life while they have so many more important things to do with their amazing children.

I can't wait for Christmas when the Sheffield's will all be together to enjoy the craziness of it all. I'm sure there will be plenty of laughter, disagreements, late nights and love. and I can't wait.  The last time we were all together was at my wedding in May of 2008.

And just to show you how truly amazing one of my sisters is, she let us stay at her house on Friday night and had her amazing lavender cookies waiting on  the bed for us.  How kind and thoughtful!

wordless wednesday

randomness

I am going to do this. I think it sounds a lot of fun.

Handmade Gift Exchange

On another random note, I really like this week's resolution on the Happiness Project.  I am going to get organized and really work on this for the next year.  I think it would be really fun to start a Happiness Project group.  (Can you tell I need friends?)

and more randomness...
I have been looking at cute fabric for baby quilts lately. Here are some of my favorites. What do you like?

Tiny top
Zoologie
All Star
Marine
Urban Circus

most of these are aimed more toward boys since several friends seem to be having boys rather then girls. I wish I had money to buy them all and time to make quilts out of all of them.

and there's still some fabric I want to get my hands on before it is gone (even though I have way too much already) such as Tufted Tweets, Wild Thyme and Hunky Dory. A girl can dream, right? And collect. 

circle quilt class

After spending Friday night down in Utah county with family and Saturday morning at my niece's baptism, we rushed back up to Logan so I could make it to my circle quilt class. Using this die cut machine with our fabric, we cut out all the circles then stacked them and put them on our quilt. The great part about this quilt is that it requires very little sewing. You just glue the circles on and when you take it to the quilter, the quilter sews them on. Once you wash the quilt, the circles have the look of a rag quilt.
While I absolutely love the fabric I used for this quilt, I think it wasn't the best choice for this type of quilt. If I had to do it over again, I would probably use solids or a different line of fabrics that had more colors in it.
But, here is the quilt so far before gluing the flowers on.  What do you think? Is it just too hard on the eyes? I feel like I have started at it for so long that it is so busy it makes you dizzy.

If any of you ever wanted to do this, I would love to have a class at my house. The lady will teach it if we have at least 4 people and (I believe) you would just need to bring your fabric. 

an experiment

I took down my black wreath after Halloween and went to put this one up.  It is just a plain one that we got for free at a yard sale, but I decided to add some of the leaves I saved from when Jake was raking the lawn on Saturday and I like it.

finished mini quilt top

My little quilt top is finished. The pictures aren't the best, but you get the idea.

wordless wednesday

photo credit

we voted

did you? 

Hopefully we see some positive changes because of it. 

remaining quilt blocks

Here are the rest of my quilt blocks for this small quilt pattern.  Why do so many people who make patterns choose such ugly fabric??  I thought this quilt was going to be super lame when I found the pattern, but it has been great because the different blocks are teaching me different quilting basics. I don't think I'm ever going to use it because it is one of those small ones you hang on the wall and I haven't ever really been into that, but it has been fun to do.  The trick will be to see if the blocks all come together the right size in my remaining class today. We will see.

traditions

What are your Halloween traditions? Jake and I don't do much because honestly, I think Halloween is kind of a dumb holiday.  But we always include carving pumpkins and our traditional dinner in a pumpkin.  What about you?