Jessika, Author at JESSIKA REED

Anna Moyar

Anna G. Moyar

1913 – 2009

My great grandmother passed away on Monday March 30, 2009. She was an amazing lady with a wonderful memory and the most interesting stories. She was 95 years old and was able to live to become a great great grandmother. I was able to see her one last time on Sunday night. She was still sharp as a tack and was surrounded by loving family. I will miss her great stories and her sharing all of her memories of the great and long life she lived. She has left a great legacy.

I love you grandma.

WE ARE GETTING A HOUSE!!!

This week has been very stressful and quite a roller coaster ride for us, but we have gotten through it. We started looking around at some houses and then condos and town homes a couple weeks ago and then found this great town home in American Fork, Utah. It is brand new and will be ready in just a couple of weeks. We made an offer and had some complications with getting a signed contract after all of our verbal agreements but everything has been worked out, because we have an awesome agent, if you are ever looking for a house I know the lady you should talk to for sure she is very aggressive and will do what she can to get you into a house, we are very thankful. Anyway so we started packing yesterday and things are starting to look bare around here, but we are so excited!

It is a three level town home with a one car garage, 3 bedrooms (all on top floor), 2.5 bathrooms and an unfinished basement that could have another full bath and a larger living room!

Here are some pictures of the place unfinished! It will look better when they get everything put together!

Front of house!

Kitchen! This is my favorite part!

Our amazingly large back yard! HA it will be great though!

A GARAGE! SWEET! We are determined to fit both of our small cars in there even though it is a one car garage, but it is deep so we will have to try it out!

The master bathroom! We are just excited to have more than one bathroom!

The master bedroom!

my valentine

So valentines day this year was perfect! Stephen and I just spent the day together and had a great time. We gave each other some gifts, Stephen got me three cute pairs of earrings.

I gave him a jar with 101 reasons why I love him, individually written on white and pink pieces of paper. (inspired by http://believeittoseeit.blogspot.com/2008/02/valentines-breakfast-with-my.html which I found from http://www.tipjunkie.com/ – great site!)

Then I gave him some shirts for us to wear when we go to see Flight of the Conchords in May (the tickets were a gift from me for both of us)! My lovely mother spent some time with me this week to help me make the shirts!

He had a Jr. Jazz game in the morning and while he was out I made him the best chocolate cake ever with homemade frosting that I added pink food coloring to, so it would be festive. Then we went to La Cocina with my mom for lunch were I gave her a book of “52 reasons why I love” her. I heard about this project from my friend and coworker Natalie, I found one on http://www.tipjunkie.com/ but I googled it to find something a little different and was inspried to make my version from http://herandmescrappin.blogspot.com/2007/06/52-reasons-i-love-you-dad.html really fun stuff!

Then we did our weekly grocery shopping (how romantic right?) When we got home we watched a couple of movies, the first one was “My Sassy Girl”, I didn’t really like it and it was a chick flick so that is weird, Stephen thought it was alright. The next one was “The girl in the cafe” it was named the best made for TV movie so we didn’t have high hopes for it, but it was done by HBO and it was very interesting and quite a good movie. Then we both put on aprons and cooked dinner together, it was a lot of fun and quite cute, if I do say so myself. The food was delicious, I was very impressed with ourselves, and super impressed that Stephen went out and found the recipe on his own. It was steak lover’s fettuccine alfredo.

Of course I had to take a picture with the Dr. Pepper, it makes any of my meals complete!

Steak Lover’s Fettuccine Alfredo Recipe – from http://www.razzledazzlerecipes.com/

1 ounce clarified butter (we used just plain old butter out of laziness, and it was great!)

4 ounces beef tenderloin tips

1 cup broccoli, red pepper, portabella strips (we cooked the portabella on the side so Stephen wouldn’t have to have any!)

1/4 cup corn, scallion, red and green peppers (small diced) (we did not add corn or red peppers)

1 tablespoon fresh garlic

1 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup fresh Parmesan

8 ounces cooked pasta1 tablespoon sliced green onion

Heat butter. Sear meat and add veggies. Add heavy cream and reduce down. Add Parmesan cheese. When it begins to thicken add to pasta. Serve hot, topped with scallions and Parmesan cheese.

We then finished up the night by watching “The Holiday” I just love that movie! And then we enjoyed the yummy cake that I made earlier, it really was the best and I don’t even like chocolate cake that much!

THE BEST Chocolate Cake EVER Recipe – from http://www.kevinandamanda.com/ (I love that girl, my favorite site right now!)

1 box devil’s food cake mix

1 package Jello instant chocolate pudding mix

1 cup sour cream

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups mini semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a VERY large bowl (4 qt), mix together everything except chocolate chips. Batter will be thick. Stir in the chocolate chips. Pour batter into cake pan of choice (I normally use two 9-inch pie pans). For cooking time, I use the cooking times on the back of the devil’s food cake box as a guide and usually add 10 mins to whatever it says. Then I do the toothpick check, and if it’s not done, I check on it every 5 mins after that. 🙂 It usually takes around 45 mins for two, 9-inch pie pans.

Buttercream Frosting – from http://www.kevinandamanda.com/ as well!

1 cup shortening (crisco)

4 cups powdered sugar

1/4 tsp salt2 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup heavy whipping cream

(we added neon pink food coloring!)

In a mixing bowl, cream shortening until fluffy. Add sugar and continue creaming until well blended. Add salt, vanilla, and whipping cream. Blend on low speed until moistened. Beat at high speed until frosting is fluffy.

Overall it was a great day together!

I hope you all had a great day as well!

Crafter

So I decided that I want to stay at home and just craft all day! I am feeling super creative right now… which is good because I need to finish up my samples for my website so I can get that up and rolling and it is almost the weekend so I can get started on that! I am excited for valentines day tomorrow. Such a fun holiday, I don’t take it too seriously, I just am excited to have a fun and loving day with my husband… who by the way sent me beautiful tulips to celebrate February 11th! What a lucky girl I am!

I am making the best chocolate cake ever, from www.kevinandamanda.com it is pretty much my favorite site right now, although I have found some super cute ones today! Her enchiladas and mac and cheese are sooo good and quite easy to make! Oh and she has some really cute fonts to download for FREE! on there and so I love her even more! You should check it out if you want to get some good ideas and cute fonts!

I want to learn how to make digital scrapbooking paper and templates. I make my cards and they are really cute but ya know, I could just do so much more, but I don’t really know where to start. I think I should take a class and get some more knowledge of photoshop for sure! I’ll let ya know how that goes.

Everything else is great so far in this world, I like my job, I am getting more used to it, I have an amazing husband and I am just overall happy as can be!

Have a fabulous friday and thanks for reading!

I’m Back!

It has been so long since I have posted anything on here. I think I have been putting it off because so much stuff has happened and I feel like I always have to give every detail but here is a super quick run down. I married the man of my dreams, great honeymoon in San Diego, yay Sea World, building up a collection of card designs to start a website, hate going back to work and want to win the lottery so I can sit at home and design stuff all day, made the best steak I have ever had or made (I will post the recipe sometime), Twilight movie came out I have seen it 3 times and will see it again tomorrow, I bought a refillable cup at a Larry H Miller Theater and it was well worth the purchase, had a great Thanksgiving. Okay so that is pretty much the big stuff up to this point biggest Wedding and then the steak next! HAHA J/K anyway.

So my mom is featured as vendor of the month on a site called “Twilight Moms” this is the link to her blurb about her and guess what? I am on there too!!! Her stuff is really cute and she already has a ton of orders today, I am proud of her! Check it out if you want http://twilightmomsforums.freeforums.org/december-simply-bitten-t19001.html.

My latest work in the card department is desgning wedding thank you cards for myself and then a christmas card for Stephen and I. I designed a card for a coworkers daughter and received a copy of it and I had to put it on my fridge because it was so cool to see my work in action and it wasn’t just for myself where I have a baised opinion. I should start posting some of my card designs on here… oh I have some pictures at work so here is what I worked on last night… but as Stephen is well aware I am sure I will come up with quite a few more designs before I pick anything!

HaPpy HaLloWeEn

These are our costumes this year!

These are the admin girls at Tanner LC. (L-R) Jocelyn, Natalie, Me, & Sarah! Besides one other partner, we were the only ones to dress up! It is fun though!

Then there is Stephen, love of my life, went all out this year, funny and creative, good job babe!

Bridal Shower Pictures

Here are some pictures from the bridal shower on Saturday.

This is the cutest centerpiece made of towels by my very creative mother!

Here is a closer look of the towel cake that goes with the centerpiece!

This is my super cute cousin Jaycee!

Just Me!

Jake’s girlfriend Brittany, my sister Joella and me.

This will be part of my halloween costume.. modern chef?? The apron from my grandma is so cute!!!

First Snowfall!!

I love the first time it snows for the season! It is so pretty and not usually ever enough to stick and cause problems on the roads. After the first snowfall, it starts to come much more frequently and the roads suck, I have a really hard time appreciating it and seeing it for all of it’s beauty so I try to appreciate the first time of the season so there can be some joy from the winter weather! This year it came a lot earlier than I can ever remember. It has all melted already down here in the valley, but I got some good pictures from yesterday morning. The sky is so white, you can’t even see the mountains that would take up that whole back drop of the first picture! The cold weather is still here though so maybe there will be some more to come soon.