Thursday, April 26, 2012

Bon Aniversere Libby

Last weekend we celebrated another wonderful one of our fabulous friends.  It was Libby's birthday and we celebrated by throwing her a colorful parisian themed birthday party!  It was such a fantastic party, Bethy and Angie were the geniuses behind it all. The festivities were held in Bethy's colorful house which went along with the theme perfectly!  Our menu was made up of all french food, we had an assortment of pastries from Les Madelines, French cheeses & crackers, croque monsieur sandwhiches, and French macarons, and



I have to take a moment to rave about these french macarons, we get them for every party/ get together we have because they are AMAZING! We get them from Kelly with le Petit Macaron in Provo and does the most spectacular job.  They are so fun and colorful and there are so many delcious flavors to choose from.  For this party, they ordered an assortment of all the different flavors and had such a fun time trying all of them and trying to pick which ones were our favorites.  My favorites from the night were chocolate mint, orange chocolate, raspberry and hazelnut.  If you are having a party, you should probably order some of these, they will change your life and they are gluten free!  yay!




Libs and Crystal


Angie made these parfaits and they were just heavenly!  She layered differnt kinds of berries with hand whipped, ROSE whipped cream and crushed meringue cookies!  Seriously, it was the best parfait I have ever had in my life!  





I love these garlands that Angie made simply by sewing together a bunch of paper circles she cut out using a paper punch, so easy and so fun!
Dubie of course needed to be a part of the party, he was a good little kitten and posed for pictures with everyone, he is such a little social cat!



For drinks we had several differnt flavors of Lorina lemonade, all were delicious and so refreshing and such fun colors!








We handed out take and bake french baguettes as take home favors so everyone could enjoy some warm, freshly baked french bread over the next couple of days.



                    We dined in the living room wich also had some fun and colorful parisan decorations!







We had a lot of fun accessories to wear to make for fun pictures.  Guests were asked to attend wearing black and white striped shirts, skinny jeans (either black or in a fun bright color)  and were given a fun, colorful neck scarf when they arrived.





It was a fun and relaxing evening full of friends, food, fun and lots of fun conversation. Happy Happy birthday Libby!

Monday, April 23, 2012

2011 - 2012 Season

Even though we had a dismal amount of snow this winter I still had quite a few fun snowboarding trips this past season.  I have posted some of these pictures either on past My Musings posts or on my My Life in Pictures blog, but I wanted all my cool snowboarding pics in one place, so lucky readers you get to see them twice!  I made it up more often then I did last year, but I still would have liked to have gone a few more times, but it was still a pretty successful season!

My first trip of the season was with my favorite snowboarding buddy, my sister Bethy. We hit up Brighton on a beautiful sunny december day.  Driving up the canyon I was nervous that there wouldn't be any snow up at the resort becuase I was seeing grassy hills when usually I see fields of deep, powdery snow. But turns out there was plenty of snow to have a good time.  It was sunny and clear and there weren't any long lift lines which all equal a perfect day of snowboarding!





When we stopped at the lodge for lunch we found Santa out on the patio bringing cheer to all who were near.  We, being the people that we are, HAD to get a picture on his lap.  We were the only grown ups in line and when it was our turn we asked him if it would be ok if we could sit on his lap and his reply was "Of course pretty girls can sit on my lap, I may be old but I'm not stupid!"  bahahaha loved it, Santa is so silly.

Snowboarding trip number two was the Burton ski day, when Karin and her family came out to visit.  We take the older Burton boys skiing every year when they come for Christmas, this year a couple of their cousins joined in the fun!  It was such a nice day for boarding, it was a little overcast with a few light snow flurries which made the snow nice and soft and fresh every run!  I say it every year and I'm going to say it again.  I am so surprised at how awesome at skiing those boys are, they only go once a year and they rock it every time!  I love that they like to go skiing, I'm hoping some time they will want to try out boarding, maybe I can convince Ben and Will ....




This season my best friend, Lisa, worked up at the Sundance Mountain Outfitters shop so she would invite me to come up and board with her since she was up there about every day.  One day she offered to teach me how to ski!  I was so nervous, but I figured this is probably the best offer I will ever get if I ever wanted to learn how to ski so I just went with it.  It started off pretty rocky ... the first half of my first run wasn't the proudest moment of my life.  Luckily, Lisa and Phil, my ever so patient and nice teachers worked with me so by the end of that run I felt ok and on my second run I didn't fall down at all, not even once!  Learning how to ski is a million times easier then learning how to board, it took me like 8 full days of being on the mountain to finally understand how to snowboard.  After a couple of exciting runs on skiis we all switched out our skis for snowboards and finished the day out with a couple of great runs.  It was such a fun day!




A little later in the season Emily, one of my favorite people in the world, came down to provo for a day of snowboarding up at Sundance.  She is such a blast to be with, we had a great time boarding it up.  Later on, when lisa got off work, she joined us for a couple of runs.  It was such a great girls day.  After a few hours on the mountain, we got some dinner at Smash Burger then went back to my house and watched a chick flick and painted our nails. Thank heavens for the S club 8!






On Presidents Day I had the day off of work and I was determined to do something awesome with it since I rarely get days off anymore.  So I convinced Bethy to come boarding with me at my favorite place, Snowbird.  I used to have a season pass there and Lisa and I used to go like three days a week but since I don't have a pass there anymore I try to make it up there at least once a season.  It was a beautiful sunny day, the snow was a little lacking and slightly icey, not not too bad. The crowds weren't as bad as one might think for a holiday and the views that we got from the top of the lifts were breathtaking.  It was a fabulous and fun day up on the mountain.


Yes this is the same picture as the one above but I was having a good time playing around with the lightroom color presets and thought I would include both becuase I thought they both looked awesome.






I love the tunnel, I feel like I am in Disneyland going through the Matterhorn every single time I ride through it and I love that they have music playing in there, it is such a party!





My last day of the season was probably one of my favorite.  It was the definition of spring boarding, the sky was blue, the sun was shinning, the snow was slushy and soft, and it was around 65 degrees up on the mountain.  Lisa had invited me up for one last day of fun before Sundance closed for the season.  It was such a fun party!  A bunch of her coworkers were up there as well and everyone was dressed in their best spring boarding outfits.  Seriously, it was a blast!
Phil's outfit was my favorite

Some of the workers had created a lake at the bottom of the mountain, so part of our day was dedicated to a pond skimming party where everyone would do their best tricks in and out of the pond.  It was so fun to watch.  Some people killed it and did awesome tricks, some people just skimmed across the surface spraying the spectators with the slushy mountain water and some people didn't have enough speed to make it across so they would slowly slide back to the middle of the pond.  All skill levels were awesome to watch and cheer on!



Many thanks to everyone who made my 2011 - 2012 snowboarding season so much fun!  Can't wait for next year!