Life lately

Life has been busy, busy the last week or so. It also happens to be fantastic, things are going well and we have  a lot of fun things to look forward to! But, since we are busy here is a little run down of life lately with the help of some Pinterest quotes.

So, I changed my mind about a master program.... again! This time, I think I have really found what I want to do and I am excited to go forward with it. I have now decided to get a Masters of Clinical Social Work, instead of a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy. It was definitely an in the moment decision and I'm glad I listened, because the more I look into it the better I feel about my decision. 

I found this quote the other day and totally fell in love with it. Since pinning it, it ( or the idea of the quote) has come up in conversation multiple times! Beliefs are only worth something if you actually behave the way that you believe!

Laren and I saw The Vow last weekend and it is hands down one of my new favorite's. I was warned that it wasn't what I thought it would be and that was correct, it was so much better! It was so thought provoking and presented some ideas that really resonated with me about life and really helped me appreciate what I have so much more. 

I love to travel, unfortunately we are poor college students who have no money to travel. Thankfully we have family who live outside of Provo and give us the chance to take mini trips. Curtesy of my wonderful parents-in-laws, Laren and I are headed to Denver and Colorado Springs for a mini spring break with his parents in a couple of weeks. 

It is that time of year where Utah cannot seem to decide whether it wants it to be spring or winter and all these sunny teaser days have me itching for summer. Unfortunately this spring/summer Laren and I will be in school and working, so Utah will be our home and we can't just be beach bums for 3 months. I am craving some beach days and lakehouse days so much that Laren and I have already picked a week in August to head to Oregon and bum it out at the family lakehouse. YES! So until August 13th I will be daydreaming of Sandy Toes and Salty Kisses

Have a wonderful Wednesday! XOXO

Baked Cheesy Chicken Penne Pasta

I absolutely loved this recipe. I saw it on Pinterest almost a month ago and have been dying to make it. I finally got some time Monday night and ooh was it delicious! 

RECIPE

Ingredients:

2 Boneless chicken breasts

1 lb of Penne

8 oz of white mushrooms

1 cup of sliced and drained sun dried tomatoes 

6 cups of milk

1/2 cup and 2 Tablespoons of flour

6 garlic cloves, minced. ( I traded this for garlic powder so it wasn't so overwhelming!)

1 teaspoon of Olive oil

1 1/2 cups of shredded Provolone

1 1/2 cups of grated Parmesan 

6 tablespoons of butter

Directions:

Bring a large pot of water to boiling and cook the pasta 3 minutes short of al dente.

While the pasta is boiling heat oil over medium heat. Slice the chicken into manageable strips and then season the chicken with salt, pepper, and any other seasonings you want. Cook the chicken until slightly browned on each side. While the chicken pan is still hot add the mushrooms and saute until brown. 

In a large pot melt butter over medium. Add flour and garlic, cook and whisk for one minute. While whisking gradually add milk in. Keep whisking until the sauce thickens to your desire. Add sun dried tomatoes and mushrooms. Cook for one minute. Remove the pan from heat and stir in provolone and parmesan. Add in pasta and chicken as well as any extra seasonings. 

 Pour the pasta into a buttered pan. You can split it between two pans and freeze one, I just did one big pan because Laren does a pretty good job of eating large amounts of food quickly. 

After pouring it into the pan top it off with leftover cheese. 

Preheat the oven to 400 and cook for 25 Min or until the top is golden brown and bubbly. 

Serve up and enjoy!

This dish was delicious and lasted us three dinners and two lunches. I am a fan of anything that lasts more than a day and a half in our house!! The sun dried tomatoes were wonderful and added just the right amount of flavor. 

I whipped up some homemade honey cinnamon butter 

and paired it with some tasty Rhodes rolls ( thank you Costco!)

I hope everyone is having a wonderful shortened week, and if not the weekend is almost here so hang on :) 

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Pretty in Pink. Happy Birthday Brooke.

Yesterday was Brooke's 27th birthday. After she went missing we decided to celebrate her birthday by buying a new pair of shoes in her honor. I know it sounds weird, but she LOVED shoes. I am pretty sure that is where my obsession for shoes came from. She would have absolutely loved to get a new pair of shoes for her birthday and probably would, so since she can't we do it for her. It has almost been 8 years since she disappeared and not a  day goes by that I don't think of her and wish she was right her next to me. I'm so grateful that I was able to create memories with her and was old enough to remember those memories and remember her when she left our lives! This year when I was thinking about what shoes I wanted to get, I ran across a pair of pink sparkly Tom's and I immediately knew they were the perfect pair.

These shoes are Brooke to a T and I have no doubt that if she was still here she would own a pair. 

And just for your entertainment, a little photoshoot :)

yes, I am a giant nerd. NBD.

Sorry for the duplicates. I was playing around with my new actions in photoshop. This is the vintage action and I totally love it! 

More action loving.. sorry!

Apparently, according to my husband we don't have good enough lighting in our apartment to get a good jumping photo.. hence this incredibly horrible photo of me.. hahaha. 

Hope it gives you a good laugh up there in heaven Brooke. We miss you so much and wish you were here everyday. You are one of the greatest people I have ever known and I know you are up there watching over us. I love you so much and hope that heaven throws good birthday parties, because you deserve the best :) I can't wait till we can celebrate together again!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! 

xoxoxo, jessicada 

Valentine's Day

Sorry this is a tad bit late, but life has been super busy and I am just now finding time tonight to blog. Also, Laren just downloaded Photoshop onto my computer so I can finally edit photos. Yay! Valentine's Day was so much fun this year. We started our day off making cookies together. There is something about homemade sugar cookies that makes life feel wonderful. Laren had never made sugar cookies from scratch so it was fun to have him help me. He was a peach and made the frosting for me!

When I was a kid my favorite part of sugar cookies was getting to use the cookie cutters and cut out the dough!

mmm.. I wish we still had some!

I was playing around with one of my new actions in Photoshop. This one is titled "Vintage". I really love the dramatic flare it gives the photo. 

After a long day of class and work I came home to this. Laren really is the sweetest! He drew everything on the chalkboard and had flowers and chocolates, yes! Then after all of this, he told me we had reservation in Salt Lake, but would not tell me where we were going. To my great surprise, he had bought me tickets to the Lady Antebellum concert. I have been wanting to see them for so long and was dying to go when I found out they would be in Salt Lake. 

Everyone pulled out their cellphones and the arena looked like it was filled with thousands of stars. It was pretty cool!

A little Darius Rucker

He is seriously the best ever!

Ahh, I just love that boy of mine. He made Valentine's Day so much fun. He is so thoughtful and kind and I am so glad he is my forever valentine!

Valentine's Day

So yesterday was Valentine's Day and it was a fabulous day! I'll do a post with more details on my lovely day later, but let me tell you I have the best husband in the whole world! Not only did he spoil me with chocolates, flowers, and lots of love, he treated me to the Lady Antebellum concert in Salt Lake ( I have wanted to see them for at least three years!) as a Valentine's Day surprise.

                   

I love this band, so much and I had so much fun seeing them in concert!! 

All thanks to my oh so wonderful husband! 

Pictures and details to come soon :) 

Time flies when you're having fun.

Today Laren and I have officially been married for 6 months or half of a year! I cannot tell you how fast time has flown. We have been married for half of a year... it gets me every time I say it. It seems like just yesterday that we were getting to know each other and starting to fall in love and here we are married and still falling in love more and more everyday.

What started as this 

Became this

and this

and finally this! 

and now here we are 6 months later loving life and so grateful to have each other! 

Keep Calm and Carry On

Life is hard. And no, this won't be a post of me complaining about how hard my life is. I realize that life is hard for everyone and while life seems a little harder than it used to these days, I am constantly being reminded of the Lord's hand in my life. In the midst of everything hard going on, he always let's me know that he cares and that everything is going to be alright. Today just happened to be one of those days. I am currently researching professors that I want to possibly work for and do research for in their labs. I was talking to one of my professors today and he presented a couple options to me that I didn't even know were available to me. His ideas really opened up my options and got me to think outside my little box. It was so wonderful and I can't wait to get started on everything and see where I end up. It was also one of those days where I know without a doubt that BYU is the place for me! I love where I am at and love where I am going even more. Life is wonderful! The only thing I wish I had a little more of in my life are these cutie pies.

Aren't they adorable? I wish we lived closer to them so we could play with them all the time!

I am also missing all of them as well! Someday soon we'll be able to take a vacation to see everyone (hopefully sooner than later!)

Birthday Shenanigans

Friday Laren turned 23 years old. Woohoo. I absolutely loves birthdays and they have always been a big deal in my family so I wanted to do something special for Laren on his special day. I spent most of the day making his cake which you will read about in a little bit. It was a long process and I learned a lot about cakes, but it was fun and I was glad I got to do it for him! Friday when he came home for the day I made him fettuccine alfredo with chicken. It was delicious :) We spent the rest of the evening enjoying our time together, watching Law and Order and playing Farkle. Then I surprised him with his big cake! I decided that I was going to make him a football cake. Laren loves football and BYU is his favorite team in the whole world, so I made him a big football field with BYU on the endzones and a football in the middle. Now a few things before I the pictures

1. I am not a cake designer

2. I have never worked with fondant before

3. I don't profess to be good a baking/ cake decorating, although I hope to be somewhat decent someday.

The point I'm trying to make is I am not a professional and this was my first attempt at making something more than a simple box cake with frosting, so it is what it is, but I'm pretty proud of it :)

Here is the football. It is probably the cleanest part of the cake! I used two circle cakes to make it. I cut out the middle of the cake and the stuck the top and bottom pieces to make a football. I used brown fondant, (which by the way brown is an incredibly hard color to make!) and Laren's rice paddle to texture it. 

This football field is a well-worn field! Getting the fondant to lay nicely over two sheet cakes without tearing was pretty impossible, so I went for the used football field look. 

I loved how the colors turned out!

I had to throw this picture in, because yes, that is Toddler's and Tiara's on the TV in the background... hahaha. 

My handsome birthday guy!!

This was his first attempt at blowing out the candles. He did it too fast, so I made him do it again so I could get pictures!

This was the 2nd time around. 

yay! Happy Birthday!

This is one of my all time favorite pictures of him. I love it so much!!

Saturday we slept in and then got up and went to go get Laren his birthday present. He has been needing a new pair of shoes so badly and so I decided that that would be a perfect present. He found a pair that he loves and we both ended up getting a pair... After we picked out our shoes we headed to lunch at one of Laren's favorite restaurants the Wild Ginger with all of his buddies. We had a great time visiting and eating yummy Chinese food. We spent the rest of the day studying/relaxing and it was wonderful!! 

He doesn't look too thrilled here, but he is. He loves them so much that he is wearing them right now in honor of today being the Super Bowl. 

Yeah.. we are kind of nerds and bought matching shoes.. go ahead and make fun :)

I love Laren so much and it was so fun for me to spoil him on his birthday and really make it a special day. He makes everyday so wonderful!