Good weekend!

Last week was very hectic, but we had a very nice weekend to make up for it.

On Friday night I worked on a quilt, which looks fantastic so far, but I can't decide how to finish it.  I started to free motion stitch it, but it looked really bad so I picked it out.  Then I started trying to stitch around the blocks, but that looked bad as well so I picked it out.  I think I need more practice.  But if you know me, it has to be perfect! I also made this pumpkin/cream cheese bread I found on pinterest, but I did mine in muffin tins.  It was pretty good, but you could taste the Stevia pretty strongly and we don't love the aftertaste.  If you don't mind it, though, it's pretty decent health wise with the whole wheat flour, applesauce rather than oil, egg whites, etc.

Funniest thing that happened on Friday:  I'm sitting there sewing, and Sam turns around from the computer and exclaims, "you fed me TOFU!?".  He had just read the blog post about tofu manicotti, almost two weeks after I fed it to him.  Hehe :)

Saturday morning I headed up to the Provo temple.  It was a lovely session, and I felt a lot of peace and clarity :)

After the temple, I came home and made sweet potato and red chili ravioli.  I used my Grandma Frache's pasta dough recipe and rolled it out with one of my favourite Christmas presents ever-- a pasta machine.  I have used it to make noodles before, but this was my first time doing ravioli.  It's so easy, a lot of fun, and way better than store bought stuff.  It takes more work, sure, but I have such fond memories of making chicken noodle soup 100% from scratch with my grandma, so I am very thankful that I have the equipment and know-how to be able to make pasta with my own kiddos some day!  I'll post the recipe sometime :)

My new shoes, and the shirt that
 makes me look like I don't wear pants
(I have running shorts on, I promise!)

Next stop was the gym for a good 10 mile run.  I just bought a second pair of running shoes-- the same ones as the ones I have right now-- that I'm working on breaking in.  I'm going to alternate between the two pairs this time around for marathon training.  Just a tidbit of knowledge: if you have a high running mileage and you run every day, you should rotate between two pairs of shoes.  It takes 48 hours for your shoes to retain their form.  This helps reduce injury, allows you to rotate between shoe types (like if you have road shoes and trail shoes), and it increases the life span of your shoe.

When I got back from the gym, we ordered our dinner from a local deli.  They had come around earlier that week offering us a free meal as a promotion, which we definitely accepted with happy hearts.  It's called the Red Deli, and they're a pretty good price for pretty good food!  The fries were very good, and the bread is made in the store so it's super fresh!

Saturday evening was the adult session of stake conference.  It was fantastic.  It was one of those meetings where it felt like every talk was written specifically for you.  

We didn't get home from conference until 9:30, so we decided to hide out for the rest of the night watching a movie.  

Sunday was the general session of stake conference, which was also very good.  Sam picked up a massive bag of potatoes at the grocery store, so for lunch I did a lighter version of twice-baked potatoes with fat free sour cream, low fat cheddar, garlic, and onion.  Later we went up to Alpine to celebrate Chris and Jamie's birthdays, then headed back home to get ready for a new week!  I made "quinoa bites", another recipe I need to share!

It was a productive and uplifting weekend, and a great recharge for what lies ahead (a LOT) this week!

PS: I set my alarm to go running at 5am. LOL.  That didn't happen.  If I "had to" go running in the morning I would never go.  Work out when you work out best, people! If you can get up at 5am, that's great, but I almost always do it at night and that's just fine.