G-Force Cookies

This team of delicious peanut-butter cookies is inspired by "G-Force," the Walt Disney Pictures film starring a spy squadron of specially trained guinea pigs. Your mission: try not to eat them all!

RECIPE INGREDIENTS:
	1/2 cup butter, softened
	1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
	1/2 cup brown sugar, tightly packed
	1/2 cup sugar
	1 large egg
	1 teaspoon vanilla extract
	1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
	1 teaspoon baking soda
	1/2 teaspoon salt
	Peanut halves
	Mini chocolate chips

1. Cream the butter, peanut butter, and sugars. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract until fluffy. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt, then stir them into the wet mixture, just to blend. Cover and chill until firm, about 1 hour.

2. Heat the oven to 350°. Form level tablespoons of dough into cylinders, pinching the ends a bit to make rough guinea pig body shapes. Use a knife to chop the peanut halves in half, then add peanut-piece ears and mini chocolate chip eyes to each cookie. Place the guinea pig cookies 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake until firm, about 8 minutes. Makes about 28 cookies.

don't do on first date

1. If you can’t handle your alcohol, try not to get drunk.

We know alcohol is a social lubricant, and we know people drink to make things less awkward and nervous during dates. Go ahead and drink. Just don’t drink so much that you think it’s a good idea to cry in public, fall down the stairs, steal your date’s iPhone, and start a bar fight. We’ve heard some pretty wacky things in our community forums about drunken dates, and the overwhelming consensus is that they suck.

2. Don’t talk about your ex.

A cardinal rule of dating: it’s generally not okay to unleash your baggage on someone you barely know, so no sob stories about the ex on a first date. Honestly, people hate hearing about their significant other’s ex(es) even after years of dating, so why would anyone want to hear about one on the first date? Focus on the person you are with, not the one you used to be with.

3. Don’t talk about yourself nonstop.

It is so not fun to hear someone drone on and on about themselves. So you volunteer at an orphanage, a soup kitchen, and the animal shelter, you recently got a huge promotion at work, you have 2 PhDs and everyone says you look like George Clooney? Good for you. You might be impressive, but you’d be a lot more impressive if you ask questions about your date and show you’re a good listener rather than just a non-stop one man talking machine.

4. Don’t lie, and don’t hide important facts about yourself.

You will get caught. Even something as seemingly insignificant as saying you read a book you never actually read will get you caught. How? Because it always happens. Also, don’t hide important facts about yourself. Your date doesn’t need to know everything about you, but they deserve to know if you have kids, are married to someone else, are pregnant, live with your parents, or are currently homeless. What you divulge is up to you, but skeletons do come tumbling out of the closet eventually, so you might as well be clear up front.

5. Don’t use your cell phone.

We know you’re super excited about Zoosk Mobile (now you can flirt with Zooskers anywhere and everywhere you go!) but it’s rude to use your cell phone during a date unless it’s an absolute emergency. Being preoccupied on your phone is a sign you aren’t mentally present, which is a huge turn-off for the person you are with.

6. Don’t talk about money.

Zoosk recently conducted a study of over a thousand singles all across the United States, asking about sensitive issues like dating during a recession, unemployment, and going on dates that involve free activities as opposed to dining out extravagantly. What we found was that money can’t buy love, and that people don’t really let factors like money influence their decisions too much when it comes to dating someone they really like. For many, money is a touchy subject, and one that’s best avoided on a first date.

7. Don’t talk about your future together.

Even if you’re sure it’s love at first sight, don’t tell your date about your plans to Photoshop their Facebook pictures into fake wedding pictures and that you’ve always wanted two kids. That will only serve to make you seem creepy. And insane. Going into a date without any expectations is a good rule of thumb. Be pleasantly surprised if you and your date hit it off and make plans for the future, but it takes more than dinner and a movie before you get to marriage and kids.

Sponge Ball Square Arms

Here's a reusable alternative to a summer favorite, the water balloon: colorful, multi-tentacled sponge balls.

CRAFT MATERIALS:
	For each ball:
	3 plain kitchen sponges
	Scissors
	Strong string
	Bucket
Time needed: 30 Minutes or Less

1. For each ball, you'll need 3 plain kitchen sponges fresh from the package and still slightly damp. Use scissors to cut each sponge lengthwise into 5 strips about a half-inch wide. Stack the strips as shown.
2. Loop a piece of strong string around the center of the stack and pull tightly. Double-knot the string and trim the excess.
3. For a fast cool-off game, have two players stand a few feet apart, each beside a bucket of water. See how many times they can toss the ball back and forth, taking a step apart and dunking the ball in a bucket before each throw.

Learn how to make a butterfly bouquet!

I saw this butterfly bouquet in the Summer 09 Martha Stewart Weddings magazine and just loved how beautiful and unique it was. When Laura Normandin married her husband Ben this year she created this lovely bouquet and we found instructions at Martha Stewart Weddings on how to make it:

Tools and Materials

• Assorted floral butterflies, floraltrims.com has a lot of options
• White floral-wire stems
• White floral tape
• Ribbon

Butterfly Bouquet How-To

Floral butterflies come on wires, making this project super simple. Tape the wires close to the butterfly bodies with white floral tape to cover them and create a uniform appearance. Then gather together a few butterflies and tape their wires together using white floral tape. Stagger the spacing, or tape the wires only at the ends so you’ll have lots of wire to bend.

If the wires are short, or if you want the butterflies to be able to be bent farther apart, attach individual butterflies or clusters of butterflies to floral-wire stems (lay the wire from a butterfly alongside a wire stem with a 1- or 2-inch overlap, and tape the two together). Make several clusters, and tape them together to create the desired shape. Finish the stem by wrapping it in ribbon.

Yellow and Black Wedding (caleb's fave colors- says his wedding will be like this)

Create your own Yellow and Black wedding theme. My inspiration:

“Palm Springs” Yellow Invite and butterfly cake photo from KenzieKate.com, Bride photo via

iamstyle-ish.com, black and yellow favor box from A Modern Proposal, and elegant yellow and black themed table scape courtesy of Bella Fluerny.

Have you decided on yellow as your wedding color but not sold on the black accent?

Contact Nim's Invitations (469-222-5974) to do your wedding invites and thank you's!

10 Tips for Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

1. Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up stories about it.
   
   
2. The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is. There is the situation or the fact, and here are my thoughts about it. Instead of making up stories, stay with the facts. For example, "I am ruined" is a story. It limits you and prevents you from taking effective action. "I have 50 cents left in my bank account" is a fact. Facing facts is always empowering.
   
   
3. See if you can catch the voice in your head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background, there is the awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are becoming free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind.
   
   
4. Wherever you look, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for the reality of time—a rotting apple, your face in the bathroom mirror compared with your face in a photo taken 30 years ago—yet you never find any direct evidence, you never experience time itself. You only ever experience the present moment.
   
   
5. Why do anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering.
   
   
6. People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness. They don't realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly. They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn't have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have. And so they miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that lies beyond what is happening or not happening. Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is untouched by time.
   
   
7. The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be; otherwise, you will be forced to relive the past again and again.
   
   
8. Equating the physical body with "I," the body that is destined to grow old, wither, and die, always leads to suffering. To refrain from identifying with the body doesn't mean that you no longer care for it. If it is strong, beautiful, or vigorous, you can appreciate those attributes—while they last. You can also improve the body's condition through nutrition and exercise. If you don't equate the body with who you are, when beauty fades, vigor diminishes, or the body becomes incapacitated, this will not affect your sense of worth or identity in any way. In fact, as the body begins to weaken, the light of consciousness can shine more easily.
   
   
9. You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you and allowing that goodness to emerge.
   
   
10. If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace.

one of my new save the dates and one picture of my ticket invitation

I can put this ticket for any type of event, and use any kind of picture!
this is just one of my many Save the Date cards

new announcements

Top picks for wedding colors this fall

Trendy fall wedding colors this year include chocolate brown and taupe, burnt orange and chocolate brown, celadon and chocolate brown, and chocolate brown and yellow. Brown in big this year.

July (so far)

Sorry I haven't posted but man have I been busy... we had the fourth, and we cooked, grilled, baked everything for that day.. it was a busy weekend for that matter... then we got a new grill that the hubby just had to try.. he brought it home and put it all together himself, so it like we had to grill everything that weekend.. you know how men get.. sometimes worse than women i swear..

then I have been working on invitations, I want to make some just to have to show what I can do.. ya know? Someone might see one of those and really like them... so I have been busy creating and making announcements and invites.. and I found some software to help make some cool ideas that I have been seeing for cards.. I get that tomorrow.. then I will be busy making all kinds of things.. lol...

oh and did you hear we are in this month parenting magazine, in the article about picking your battles with your kids.. let me know if you don't see it.. I can find you a link...

How was your fourth? what did you do? Anything crazy happen?