planting our first garden

Gardening season has arrived in the ABQ. A few weeks ago Dale ordered us some raised beds from Sam's Club and on Saturday we put them together. It only took us about 10 minutes, if that, to build the beds and then the real fun began.

Next we headed to The Home Depot to get some dirt! This is my first time planting my own garden and I had no idea how much dirt it really takes. 10 bags of Miracle-Gro garden soil later we were prepared to get our beds ready for plants.  

5 pinterest recipe success stories

cajun chicken pasta

I think one of the greatest things about being a couple is cooking together. Dale is a really good cook and I'm not too shabby either. Cooking together has been something we enjoy doing together since we started dating. In fact, for our third date we made dinner for my family in Spokane.

Now that we live in the same city, we make dinner together almost every night. We make a menu each week and, as part of that process, enjoy scouring Pinterest for new recipes to try. Here are five Pinterest recipes we've made and enjoyed over the past few months:

finding my future husband

I never thought I'd find my future husband through online dating.

Several friends encouraged me to try it out, but it took me several years (yes, you read that right) before I was ready to even make an attempt. In December 2013, while living in Chicago going to grad school, I created profiles on LDSsingles.com, LDSmingle.com, and Match.com. It felt weird and uncomfortable to put myself out there, even a little bit. I'd closed myself off from dating for a long time and wasn't ready to fully thaw. So after only one week and talking to just one guy, I deactivated all three of my accounts. Online dating was not for me after all--or so I thought. 

new traditions: conference morning crepes

Before the Saturday morning session of General Conference, Dale treated me to one of his family's traditions...making crepes. We used Dale's special crepe pan and tools provided by the wonderful Aunt Shirley. Dale is certainly the crepe pro, but he encouraged me to try my hand at making my first-ever crepe. I'm happy to say it turned out quite well thanks to my excellent teacher.

What made the crepes extra delicious was what we put inside them. The night before we made Aunt Shirley's favorite lemon curd recipe from Ina Garten, better known as the Barefoot Contessa. Note: the recipe calls for 3 lemons but Aunt Shirley uses 4 so that's what we did too. After a late night trip to Walmart to replace our food processor, the curd couldn't have turned out better.