Happy Mother's Day

Here I am with my mother. She's a wonderful mom.

And here she is being a wonderful great-grandmother.

I know you're all thinking about your own mother today. I hope you love your mom as much as I love mine, and that's a lot! I think that I was very blessed to have this fabulous woman as my mother. I got to see her the other day and a feeling of happiness and gratitude washed over me as soon as I saw her. She is an amazing person. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I love you very much! And, I hope all my grandchildren's mothers each has a very happy day as well. I love you ladies too!

My First Attempt

Laura has been the major user of my Cricut. One time, she asked me to cut some circles for her. I panicked. She sadly shook her head at me and my panic. I overcame, and cut the circles.

For awhile, I've had a saying that I made up in my head that I knew I wanted to put on a tile, like this one that I bought from Quilted Bear several months ago.
I had never worked with vinyl, I'd only seen Laura's finished projects. Last night I forged ahead! At first, my frustration level was off the chart. After wasting 1/3 of a page of vinyl, I finally got the settings right so the blade wasn't cutting all the way through the vinyl plus the backing, but was also actually cutting the vinyl instead of just marking the letters without really cutting through it. Here's how it turned out.
My spacing isn't perfect, and it's all shifted up too high, but at least I got it done. Knowing me, I'm going to scrape it all off and do it over, but until I do, I'll set this on the mantel for a daily reminder.

And aren't you glad I didn't talk about coconut today?

Orange Coconut Cake

Karen's probably boycotting my blog by now since I'm still talking about coconut. Sorry, Kake. This will be the last one for awhile. I made this cake a few days ago. Oh my, yum-o.
If you want to know how to make it, just click over to our ward Relief Society blog. I know Karen isn't going to click. Hey Karen, you could just leave the coconut off, and then you'd like it! Remember how you used to love orange cupcakes from the Hostess Bakery Outlet? Click over, Karen! Click! Click!!

And The Winner Is...

Happy Cinco de Mayo, but I don't celebrate it, so we're going to talk about something else.

Thanks to Jenny, I found what I was looking for! Macey's only had the candy bar size- you know- the small little bag, where one serving size equals the entire bag.
Look at the white one. Can you see the little palm tree on there? How cute is that?
But I know you're waiting to see how they compare to the Almond Joy Pieces. Here's a size comparison for starters.
Remember how I complained yesterday that all I could taste of the Pieces was the candy shell? M&M's shell isn't as thick, and you get more coconut flavor simply because the candy is larger. However, with Pieces, you actually get little bits of coconut in the candy, while the M&M is just coconut-flavored chocolate. So which one is better? It's harder to choose than I thought it would be because I really like the bits of coconut in the Pieces, but there's more flavor in the M&M's which for me would give it the winning edge. But- they're harder to find. I guess I'll just stick with a real Almond Joy bar on the rare occasions that I actually eat them. If I were to bake with either of these I don't think there would be much difference in the finished product.

Have You Heard?

I saw a recipe a while back that used coconut M&M's, but the M&M's were only a limited edition and you can't find them anymore except on eBay for a ton of money. Then I saw a commercial about Pieces. We've all heard of Reese's Pieces, but now they have York, Hershey's Special Dark, and Almond Joy Pieces. I found them first at the BYU Bookstore last week when I was at Women's Conference. I shelled out the $3.49 plus tax because I was so interested in seeing what the Almond Joy version was like.

You're dying to know what I think, right? Well, I was a little disappointed. The candy shell is a little too thick and that's pretty much all I could taste. There's a hint of coconut in there somewhere, but I wonder how they compare to the coconut M&M's. Guess I'll never know unless they make a comeback. And I won't pay three and a half bucks for these again. But maybe they'll be okay in a 7-layer bar.

Compensated

Last February we went to Red Robin in West Valley. We like their food, so we took Agnes there for her birthday dinner. We had the worst service imaginable. It was so terrible that I took the time to write a formal complaint online. I received a quick reply that said I should be hearing from the restaurant soon.
It took a couple of weeks and another reminder online before I heard from anyone. After some back and forth attempts and some phone tagging, I thought it was all resolved, and was told that some "comps" were in the mail. They never came. Just for fun, I wrote one more time to let them know that the comps were never received, but that it was no big deal.
The manager wrote back and said she was coming to my office to hand-deliver my comps. She showed up today. S-C-O-R-E! I was totally surprised at how much free stuff she gave me! It was almost $60 worth of freebies, including free food at Red Robin, but also a Maverik gas card for $10, and a Megaplex movie pass for $22!
I felt bad to learn that our waitress was officially written up, but perhaps now she gives better service.
I'll give them another chance. After all, I have free food waiting for me.