Food Fun Family

Sugarloaf Mountain in Fall #PSF Give Me Your Best Shot

Lolli — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 22:00:17 +0000

My mother-in-law came to visit us last weekend, and we took advantage of the beautiful fall weather and an extra day off school to hike around Sugarloaf Mountain. We made it back with just enough time to eat some dinner before heading out to trick or treat. It was a perfect way to spend Halloween!

The weather is cooling down quickly, but it’s so pretty that I’m ok with it.

How is the fall in your neck of the woods?

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli

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An InLinkz Link-up

Cousin Power! #PSF Give Me Your Best Shot

Lolli — Fri, 12 Sep 2014 02:25:29 +0000

Cousin Power! While the kids and I were in Utah this summer, we spent a lot of time with cousins. My mom and dad have 14 grandchildren between the ages of 17 (almost 18) and under a year. Sadly, not all of the grandkids were together at the same time (we had one group of 12 together at the beginning of the summer, and then at the end of the summer, we had 13 together!). Here are just a few of our random big-group gatherings.

And if any of you heard me mention the craziness of having 16 people living in the same house, here’s a peek into one of our last meals together (and, yes, there were more than 16 of us there that night!). I made Cafe Rio sweet pork in the crock pot, whipped up some cilantro lime rice in the rice cooker, and chopped up some fresh pico de gallo (which I’ll be sharing the recipe for shortly). It was one of the best dinners of the summer!

Can you tell that these kids are all related?!

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli

An InLinkz Link-up

Ogden Temple Open House #WW

Lolli — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 05:37:03 +0000

Today, my mom and dad, 3 of my kids, and 3 of their cousins and I toured the newly completed Odgen Temple. What a beautiful temple Open House! If you ever have the opportunity to attend a temple open house in your area…do it! Even if you’re not LDS, go!

Ogden Temple Open House

And of course, we had to stop at Farr (Better) ice cream for some of the best ice cream any of us have had in a long time for a special treat!

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An InLinkz Link-up

An Adventure to End 2013 #WW

Lolli — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 22:00:07 +0000

My mother in law has been in town for this past weekend, and in an effort to get out of the house with all of the kids yesterday, we piled all five kids in the car and drove to Cafe Rio for lunch. After a fantastic lunch (have you seen the copycat recipe I posted yesterday??), we drove to Five Below, where I needed to make a receipt adjustment, and where we can always find things to fill our cart.

Shopping with five kids is no easy task, even when they’re big…

We finally made it back to the car, with just enough time to drive home to get KitKat changed and off to work.

And the car wouldn’t start.

30 minutes later, after consulting with several people (we happened to be parked next to an auto parts store), we gave up. We decided to walk a half mile to the nearby theater and catch a movie until Dad could meet us to try his hand at getting the car to start. But we weren’t exactly dressed to spend 30 minutes outside.

We headed back to Five Below, stocked up on hats and gloves and a few scarves (and one fleece jacket for a certain 8 year old who had escaped the house in short sleeves) and walked the distance to the movie theater.

This morning, we donned our hats and gloves to recreate the scene next to our van before taking Nana to the airport.

Despite the fact that we weren’t overly thrilled about the circumstances, we ended up having a fun adventure. What a way to end the year!

What have you been up to lately?

Shutterfly Photo Story App for iPad Photo Book Giveaway

Lolli — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 16:04:39 +0000

This post on how to create a photo book via the Shutterfly Photo Story iPad app has been compensated, but all thoughts and opinions about the product and process are my own.

Back in the day, I was an avid scrapbooker. As I took more and more of my pictures with a digital camera (and then started blogging), I found that I was sharing my pictures differently. Instead of printing them off once a month, my pictures lived on my computer. Flash forward another handful of years, and with Instagram, Facebook and a smart phone in everyone’s hand, I’m finding that another shift in photo sharing has happened. I love the photos that I take with my dSLR, but my phone is always with me and my phone is the camera that ends up capturing more of my family’s day to day life.

It has been a little while since I faithfully created a yearly family scrapbook or digital photobook. One of the main things that holds me back as I come to the conclusion of a year is the daunting task of gathering the “right” pictures to represent our year. I take thousands of photos each year, and scanning through them to find the best of the bunch literally takes me hours….days. And so I usually end up putting it off for other tasks that aren’t quite as burdensome.

A little over a week ago, I sat down with my iPad, downloaded the Shutterfly Photo Story App (for free), and began playing with it.

I discovered that I could easily add photos from my iPad’s Photo Library, Shutterfly, Instagram, Facebook or my computer. I chose to populate my book with Instagram photos; I clicked the Instagram icon in the app, signed into my Instagram account and simply clicked on all of the photos that I wanted to use in my book. The app gives you the option to auto-populate the book with your photos or manually add them one by one.

I loved that photos “disappeared” from the available list once I had placed them on a page…one of the hardest things about creating a photo book is remembering which pictures I have and haven’t used already.

I was impressed with the variety of photo book styles to chose from – from Bright and Bold to Bon Voyage to the Creative Type. I chose the Pictogram style because it seemed to go so well with my book’s Instagram theme.

For each page, I chose a background color and a photo layout style based on the number of pictures I wanted to add. I can’t stress enough how easy it was to change layouts, colors, and photos. All it took was a swipe of the hand and a click of a finger to see what different options would look like.

I was impressed as well with how easy it was to edit a photo (crop, center, or edit for color). Clicking on a picture on a page brought up a simple editing screen. Again, I appreciated the simpleness of being able to click and see what a specific change would look like before settling on my favorite.

Adding captions to the pages was quick and easy to figure out as well, and you can change around the fonts, sizes and colors of your captions. Bonus: you can either type out your captions or use their speech-to-text feature.

I was shocked – totally floored – that I was done with my photo book and ready to order in less than an hour. Photo books used to take me days of work to organize and put together. Instead, with the Shutterfly Photo Story App, I was able to make a book, from start to finish, in one sitting.

More amazing things about the Shutterfly Photo Story App:

You can customize digital pages with audio, which is such a fun addition when making a photo book as a gift for a grandparent or another special someone. The audio track can be recorded within the app and “attached” to a page.
Completed books are easy to share. In fact, I was so excited about my photo book that I immediately shared it with my mom. Later that night, she texted me to let me know that she had loved it so much that she ordered a copy herself! She was able to view the shared book on her iPad and order through her own Shutterfly account. But if she didn’t have an iPad, she could have still viewed the shared photo book on any computer or device.
Did I mention that the app is free? So is creating digital books and sharing those books with friends and family. You only pay when you order a physical copy of the book.
Instead of being tied down to my desktop computer and photo library, I can now create photo books anywhere I go with my iPad. I love finding projects that I can do while I supervise homework (or relax on the couch!).
My hard cover photo book arrived yesterday and I was thoroughly impressed with the quality and color. I’m loving looking through my new book!

Check out the app in action:

Ready to download the free app now and give it a spin?

Enter to win an 8×8 hardcover photobook

Enter on the Rafflecopter form below to win one 8×8 hardcover photo book of your creation (to be ordered through the app). Giveaway will end on September 12 at midnight and winner will be chosen at random and notified via email.

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Baptism Day! #PSF Give Me Your Best Shot

Lolli — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:00:04 +0000

When my oldest daughter was baptized in January 2005, I was pregnant with my youngest son, AJ. I remember how old and mature I thought she was – my oldest was 8! Now here we are, 8 years and a few months later. My oldest is 16 and my baby boy is 8. As grown up as he may be, I still see him as my little boy.

My parents and my sister’s family were able to join us for the baptism day this past weekend. It was busy but so wonderful to have so much family together.

Of course, we took a billion photos…

Me, my mom, and my sister

Before we took this picture, KitKat said, “These are NOT going to be our Christmas card pictures. Promise.” Ha! I have a feeling that by the time December rolls around, my older son will be towering over me…

My niece really loved the gummy lifesavers on top of the cupcakes that a friend of mine made for the party after the baptism.

Aren’t these the BEST cupcakes for an 8 year old birthday?!

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli

AJ’s 8th Birthday – #WordlessWednesday #WW

Lolli — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:37:10 +0000

AJ’s 8th birthday weekend was wild and crazy with grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, and cousins in town…but he had so much fun!

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