Bzz Agent Scores

Last week I came home from the pharmacy and found boxes and boxes for ME! I love when I get packages, which is why my loving mother sends me steals from the White Elephant in Sitka all the time. She knows I love my mail!

But these packages weren't from my mom. I had ordered some books on Amazon for an upcoming trip (yet to be disclosed on this blog) AND I received two packages from BzzAgent. Now I KNOW I've told everyone about my escapades with BzzAgent before (at least here and here)! If you aren't already connected with them, you should talk to me. For sure after you see what I got in the mail last week, you'll be wanting to hear more!

I'm participating in two campaigns because I'm so marketing magnificent (it doesn't take that to be a BzzAgent, it just so happens that I am). The first campaign is for L'Oreal. Sometimes I feel like BzzAgent does too many makeup campaigns. But I don't sign up for them, so I make my stand. Well this one was intriguing to me. Lately I've felt like I got a lot of verbal concern from people thinking I look sick. It's winter, people! On top of that, I'm genetically pale Irish. But my upcoming trip (yet to be disclosed) will fix all that... and this make up is sure to help as well!

BzzAgent sent me on behalf of L'Oreal the One Sweep Eye Shadow (intriguing, no? YouTube reviews were not so keen on the invention) for my beautiful gray/blue/something eyes and Double Extend Eye Illuminator mascara. The first time I ever did a makeup campaign for BzzAgent, the kit included a lipstick and mascara. I felt so bold going to work the next day with my new makeup... and no one said anything! That's a little shocking since I don't normally wear lipstick. I'll let you know what the results are with these lovely eye products.

The second box contained a treasure chest of Spring cleaning supplies. Once the wave of Lemon Pledge and Glade Sparkle of Spring scents hit our noses, we knew we were in cleaning heaven. And they didn't short change us with trial size samples. It was a hefty box with full size bottles! Oh YEAH! We immediately tried out the Scrubbing Bubbles toilet gels. The applicator is intriguing (to say the least), and I was skeptical pushing the "gel disk" inside the toilet bowl. But it's stuck so far and is said to last a week! We had so much fun and were so perplexed by this new cleaning toy that we did every toilet in the house!

The box also came with a Sweet coupon book. I'm stalking the SC Johnson products this week to see what I can snag for cheap or free. Don't worry, I'll share! Yes, if you are not already connected with BzzAgent, I have a feeling you'll want to be.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Mama Cavanaugh!

Les Mis

Scott and I watched the Franklin Theater Company performance of Les Miserables on March 19, and we were impressed! We saw this epic story gratuit as I was reviewing the play for Elk Grove Monthly magazine, April edition.

You can tell by the set that a lot of effort and time was put into making this play a success. There were some fantastic cast members as well - a few EXTREMELY talented singers, many average high school performers (who would "performance smile" during serious moments like before shooting at the barricade), and a couple comical students. It was clear to me that Master of the House was the cast's favorite song! In my opinion their best song was One Day More.

This Reviewer's Rating:

Going brought back great memories of theater, fine arts camp, and high school musicals. Scott and I sang Les Mis classics all the way home. In fact, the first thing he did when we got back in the car that night was to turn on Glee's rendition of I Dreamed a Dream. (P.S. Have you seen Lea's audition interview with People magazine where she sings On My Own. Like!)

Philadelphia Cooking Creme Party

Last Friday we held our Philadelphia Cooking Creme HouseParty at the Chandler home! I spent some time on Thursday making the desserts using the Original Flavor Cooking Creme, and then was pretty much busy all day Friday with party preparations. In total I made five dishes with the cooking creme, three entrees and two desserts. I made sure we had a green salad and drinks to go with the meal, and everyone was more than disappointed that the salad and drinks didn't contain cooking creme. Maybe next time!

Don't you love how Martie hobbled out (she recently had a terrible shower accident, if you haven't heard) to the kitchen table to tie up the Philly swag? She did an excellent job, even if I told her it could have been done just as well resting in bed. She doesn't listen!

Thank you Dr. Matt for your excellent poses! They are so realistic! I had forgotten to take pictures during the eating and reviewing action. But I can tell you that the food was all enjoyed.

Menu included:

Santa Fe Creamy Enchilada Soup
Creamy Bacon Fettuccine
Sausage and Veggie Calzones

and for dessert
Mini Lemon Cupcakes topped with Lemon Creme Frosting
Chocolate Shooters

For the cupcakes, if you substitute the original cooking cream for cream cheese, it actually has a better consistency (at least I think)! Plus the flavor isn't as strong, so the frosting has a more subtle sweet flavor. Excellent! I had enough of these minis to last us all night!

Thank you to Scott for being willing (SLASH ecstatic) to eat yet one more calzone. I'm pretty sure, from all the comments that the calzones were a party favorite! This is great news for me, because as I was making them I kept thinking that Scott would love the combination of sausage and garlic creme sauce, PLUS I'm pretty sure these would be easy to make and freeze for lunches or lazy nights!

The boys loved the fettuccine! FYI, not the best left overs. The creme gets absorbed into the noodles when refrigerated. But the fettuccine I thought had the best cooking creme flavor - Italian Herbs and Cheese! Yeah, it was nummy!

And of course, no Chandler party is over without games!

Thank you to the Kartchners and Danielsons for making this a real party! If you were in Sacramento, but couldn't make it to our HouseParty, we missed you! But don't worry, there are still swag packets left over! Come by to pick one up and give Martie sympathy!

My Bestie's Baby Turns One

As mentioned before, the main purpose of our visit to Utah was to see my best friend Maura and celebrate her son's first birthday! You must see all the beautiful Hungry Caterpillar party details on Maura's blog, because she would make an excellent party planner. She has an eye for detail and loves to incorporate the party theme in all aspects. Of course it helps that she has a darling little boy, Crew, to celebrate and inspire! Thank you, Maura, for letting us be apart of this awesome event! I always leave your house feeling happy!

Here are some of the pictures we took from our camera!

We visited this ubber cute shop village with candy store in Salt Lake City in search of the perfect lollipop decorations for the party. While I didn't buy anything, I was more than tempted by their amazing selection of old school candies, not to mention their expansive gummy candy selection!

Isn't Crew adorable! He was a trooper! The Lansford home was a busy hive, or maybe I should say cocoon, all day Tuesday putting together party decorations and preparing the food. I was so glad that I could be there make the party load a little lighter and of course to celebrate this little man turning one! I'm wishing a strong wish that I will be able to get from Oregon to Utah next year to celebrate his second birthday!

ReDiscovering Utah

Scott and I had an excellent time in Utah visiting with friends and family. The drive was fantastic on the way to Utah from Cali. We kept getting texts from friends suggesting we figure out who Jim Bridger was. Puzzled, we watched, and as we came closer to Salt Lake City began to see SO many yellow billboards like the one bellow. "Jim Bridger - Discovered The Great Salt Lake", aka the Pacific Ocean.

I was kind of shocked at the number of yellow billboards taken up for this cause. For those of you who don't live in Utah County or SLC, these billboards are for a marketing campaign SLASH research program. We heard from some friends that a survey would be conducted after having these billboards were around for awhile to see if the information was retained. Maura and I also had a discussion on how the website data should be used to show the effectiveness of billboards. Though, I feel like you would have to adjust the data for the massive amount of billboard space this campaign used. It was everywhere! We literally saw this billboard every few blocks and even on two sides of a four way intersection in Provo.

Friday night we played games with Westover relatives in the Provo area, including Christie and Bree who drove down from Logan. It had been a little too long since we all last played Loaded Questions, and as usual it was a doozy! I kept wanting to take pictures of the group, but felt like I would be the Blogging Cousin if I took out my camera. Is it uncool for me to be a touristy every where and just take pictures because I want to blog? I'm still struggling with that camera confidence. Though I couldn't resist taking this picture of Michelle and Erik's little girl, Brynlee, who automatically showed me a "Cheese" pose when I brought out the camera.

On Saturday we visited Springville and all of our friends there. I asked Scott if we could stop by the Real Deals in Springville, since the store is only open on Thursdays and Saturdays. I had to take pictures of their very cute items since I was using a gift card and only purchased one thing! Too difficult to choose! Spring was definitely busting out all over.

Saturday was a jam packed friend day! At lunch I randomly saw Cindy (my French study abroad buddy) with her friends from Korea at Cafe Rio. Cindy's the best, because she knew Scott before his mission, and then met me in France before I ever moved to Provo and met Scott. Had my camera... and I definitely contemplated a picture with Cindy or even just of Cindy at her table eating Mexican with her Asian amigos. Saturday night continued the friend tour with an amazing Springville peeps party, where I again shyed away from my camera. Stacy made an amazing white chili, and there were treats galore and babies to cuddle.

On Sunday we went to visit our old ward in Springville. It was so fun to see everyone, and they even made Scott go up during Sacrament Meeting to give an update at the pulpit to the ward since we were in town. We felt a little embarrassed, but mostly very loved!

The weekend was packed full of family and friends, food, and games. I told Scott that he could plan whatever he wanted during the weekend, but Monday and Tuesday were my days to spend with my BFF, Maura! Scott would then tell everyone we visited that we only plan trips to Utah when there is a one-year-old birthday party. Thus everyone needed to remember to invite us to their babies' birthdays, so we had another excuse to drive out. But if there aren't any one-year-old birthdays in the near future, don't be too worried...

Kneaders is always calling me from the four corners of the earth to come back to Utah! No trip would be complete without a Turkey Bacon Avacado on Foccacia! Being back in Utah surrounded by friends and family made us feel right at home, and maybe like we'd left a little too soon!

Home Again

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Someone obviously adorable (and mysterious) dropped this packet of love on our doorstep today, which by virtue of it's appearance makes us lucky!

This also means that we are home from our whirlwind trip to Utah! I am anxious to post pictures from our amazing trip, but am still getting myself organized back into Sac Town life. Unpacking, scheduling school work, planning tomorrow's HouseParty and my review of Franklin High's production of Les Miserables has given me very little time to blog.

So I'm going to get back to party baking with Philly Cooking Creme... with a promise to post about Utah next week!

Off to Utah

We're off to Utah for a super fun trip to visit my best friend!

Utah pillow photo from etsy site

Will blog with pictures when we return!

Phantastic Philly HouseParty Box

It's Here! The box of Philly goodies has arrived for our HouseParty next weekend!

The theme of the party is overcoming dinner dilemmas. We are planning a fun game night (Bunko perhaps, among other fun games) with a sampler buffet of Philly Cooking Cream dinner recipes! I was a little dissapointed that I couldn't find a dessert recipe. But I feel like I have enough culinary skills to make a dessert using Cooking Cream. Plus when you add cream cheese to anything it always tastes better! I'm pretty excited to try out all the fun flavors. Of course, it's always fun to give your family and friends free things too!

Any ideas for how to make this HouseParty special?

Christmas in March

No gifts. No decorations.

It just felt a bit like Christmas this last weekend when all of Scott's siblings were in town!

We celebrated by playing The Bowl Game that our friends The Jones taught us. Goes something like this:

Step 1- Find two medium size bowls (I think it helps if they are different colors)
Step 2- Give everyone six strips of paper and a pen. You'll also need a sand timer.
Step 3- Tell everyone to write a movie title on each strip of paper (so 6 titles)
Step 4- Play three rounds. We do teams - men vs. women.

Round 1- Try to describe as many movie titles as you can (within sand timer limit) to your team without using rhyming words or any words in the title. Discard guessed strips into the second bowl.

Round 2- Now that you've gone through the whole bowl, try to describe the movie titles using ONLY TWO WORDS!

Round 3- Now that you'e gone through the whole bowl of titles twice, SILENTLY act out the movie titles to your team mates.

The Bowl Game + The Chandler Family = hilarious!

Culprit Found

Pardon the interruption for this breaking news:

Four floaters were discovered in the fish tank this weekend, and the soul survivor is our primary suspect.

Dead is preferred. Reward in the form monopoly money or unwanted coupons.

I've never been a fan of the biggest new fish. Now I know why! Also, he makes the tank dirty. I promise I'm not making any of this up!

If you're worried that my blog is being consumed with our fish, you can breath a sigh of relief! Saturday's deaths and imprisonment of the culprit promptly end all fish stories.

SIL Birthday Fun

It was Amy's birthday last week and we ate out at Chevy's to celebrate. I knew that Amy would love to have all these pictures displayed on the internet, so I'm posting them as quickly as possible for her :)

Scott and I gave Amy this homemade goodie to help share the love in the Kartchner home. Inspired by the idea on this blog.

We all got fake animal tattoos from Christie!

And there was an exceptional team of balloon artists at Chevy's on Friday night to give the kiddos something fun to watch/play with. Thanks for having a birthday Amy!

Unsolved Disappearance Tip

After posting the obituary for Mr. Poopybottoms, a tip was received that suggested our fish may have watched this commercial on TV from his living room perch:






Mr. Poopybottoms was empowered to be more! Unfortunately, he did not have such coincidental supplies of water and extreme flying powers as the goldfish in the PBS commercial. Thanks for calling in, Dad.