In-N-Out Burger opened their first Utah locations within a few months of each other at the end of last year, and as far as I can tell they are always busy. The Orem location always seems to have 20+ car lines so we were excited when the American Fork location opened and was not quite as busy so we could finally see what all the hype was about. The hype is about a delicious hamburger and darn good fries. That’s pretty much all they have on their menu, besides a couple flavors of shakes. It’s so good, though. We’ve probably eaten there four or five times, and considering that could be half of the times that we’ve outen out since we moved here, I’d say we liked it.

One of the great mysteries of our church building in Utah is the lack of coat racks. At first I just assumed I wasn’t finding them, but then I realized that there was only one (pictured above) for the entire building. I would guess that about 500+ people meet in that building every Sunday, yet there is just that one measly coat rack for all those people. In Minnesota there was one at every entrance, I think. The other mystery is that it is always nearly empty. Every time I hang up my coat there I feel like I’m breaking some unwritten code, but I still do it. Who wants to carry around their coat throughout church?

Not to suddenly turn into a craft blog, but I thought I’d post some of the little projects I’ve been working on lately because 1) I’m proud of them, and 2) you can see the lack of blog updates lately isn’t due to complete laziness. Just partial laziness.

First of all, Devon and I discovered this home fabrics store that is amazing. Their regular prices on the big decorator fabric are about a quarter of what they are at JoAnn’s, and they have a clearance section where you can get a yard or two of fabric for a couple dollars. The fabric is all beautiful, and I’ve had this compulsion to go there and buy fabric several times since we discovered it. It’s almost a sickness, I think. I buy the fabric, bring it home and wash it and then fold it and put it in the closet (more on the beautifully organized closet later) to be forgotten. Finally I decided I couldn’t get any more fabric until I used some of the stash, so I decided to make Valentine’s Day placemats. I got to use three different kinds of the fabrics I had bought, and made use of the fact that a couple of them frayed beautifully in the washer.

The second project was making a napkin to match the placemats. Not napkins. Napkin. It’s really cute; it’s on the table underneath the chocolates and bottles. Luckily I washed one before I made others, though, because it came out all wrinkly and I decided that although I can occasionally iron placemats, there’s no way I would iron napkins every time I want to use one. Therefore, it is now a decoration.

Project three was decorating the coke bottles that you see on the table. We have a plethora of the soda bottles thanks to Costco and the lack of curbside recycling in our town, so I sewed fabric covers for them for the heck of it.

I had to thank one of the teens that I teach at church for something she did, so I took one of the decorated bottles and filled it with cola candy and topped it off with some oilcloth and a note:

Cute, huh? You have to shake the bottle like a crazy person to get the candy to come out, but I didn’t realize that before I filled it. Oh well. Next time I’ll do brown M&Ms or something.

One of my favorite local companies here is the Sweet Candy Company. Basically, they make the best sugary candy ever. I was introduced to their candy back in Minnesota by a friend who had brought back some cinnamon bears from Utah and was generous enough to share them with me. Once I realized we were moving out here I think it took me maybe a week before I realized that one perk of moving to Utah was getting those cinnamon bears any time I wanted. Then, once we were out here, I learned that they don’t just make cinnamon bears. They make all kinds of sugary goodness, like jelly beans and gummy things and candy corn-ish things. When the grocery store put all their candy 75% off after Easter I raided the Sweet bins and got this:

Doesn’t look like a lot to you? Let me put my hand in there for size reference:

It was a lot of candy. I put it in a tupperware and we gradually worked on it for a few months until I gave up some time in July and threw the rest away. Some squirrel somewhere got a huge buzz, I’m sure.

Also, given my love for conversation hearts, especially cheesy ones, Sweet’s hearts win hands down for the best phrases. Where else are you going to find hearts that say, “Slow Down”, “Not Now”,  and “No Way”?

The scene: A board meeting at the Sweetheart Candy Company

Suit One: Sir, I think this year we should try to update the phrases on our conversation hearts.

Boss Man: Update? Why, didn’t we update a few years ago? We added “SMS Me”.

Suit One: I know, and that was a good move. But Brach’s now has “Text Me”, which frankly more people understand, and I think we need to do something to stay on the cutting edge. We still have “Fax Me” and I’m not even sure that our teen consumers know what a fax is. We don’t want to end up in a rut like Necco.

Boss Man: Okay, what did you have in mind?

Suit One: I don’t know. Something related to the World Wide Web, I think would be good.

Suit Two: My son has been doing this thing he calls “tweeting” a lot lately. Apparantly it’s big with the younger market.

Boss Man: Tweeting? Never heard of it. But if it gives us a leg up on Brach’s . . .

Suit One: I’m sure it would, sir.

Boss Man: Okay, let’s make a “Tweet Me” conversation heart. We can take out “Fax Me” this year. Look who’s hip now, Brach’s . . .

One word you learn soon after moving to Northern Utah, especially in the winter months, is “inversion”. That’s when a mass of warm air sits on top of the colder air underneath and basically acts like a lid on the cold air. It happens frequently in the Salt Lake valley because of the mountains all around that prevent air movement. One of the unlucky consequences is that pollution can’t escape and builds up in the valley. Due to a week-long inversion event, Salt Lake had the honor of rating the worst air quality in the U.S. this week. Congrats, Salt Lake!

Salt Lake City. Really. It's in there.

Here are finally some pictures of the gifts we made for Christmas. Well, mostly me, but Devon did demonstrate that with very little effort he can sew better than I can. Then he left me to finish the gifts.

I’ve recently discovered that I love oilcloth. It’s this laminated fabric that just looks so cool when you sew it into something. Of course, it’s an extreme pain to sew with. It’s thick and not too flexible, and it has the shiny outside coating that grabs onto the sewing machine foot and doesn’t want to let go. But it looks so cool when it is sewn! I made lunch bags for my family . . .

And more fancy rubber gloves:

And luggage tags for Devon’s family:

So fun!

A couple years ago, Ryan sent me the link to this website (http://carissaknits.blogspot.com/2007/06/r2d2-beanie.html) that describes how to knit an R2D2 hat. He wanted me to make one for Rhett and although it took me a while to get around to it, I decided to knit one up for Rhett this Christmas. I know that a knit hat isn’t a very exciting gift for a three year old, so Devon and I got a little R2D2 action figure for him so he’d know who R2D2 was and would be pretty excited about being able to look like him. That idea worked like a charm, as you can see here:

That’s pretty much that result I was expecting. We eventually did get him in the hat, and he was cute.

It turns out the hat fit Elle better and she was darn cute in it. I don’t think Rhett is going to fight her for it.

Devon’s sister Rikki was Betty Haynes in her school’s production of White Christmas this month. One of her costumes included a muff and she fell in love with the idea of a muff. A big soft pouch to warm your hands and possibly hold your cell phone and some lip gloss? Awesome. Unfortunately, muffs are not easy to find in this day and age. Since I can knit and my mother-in-law can sew we decided that between all of us, we could make a muff. Here’s the steps if you want to make one for yourself:

1. Go to a local yarn store and fall in love with the coolest yarn you can find. Don’t look at the price, because how expensive could it be? While you are there, decide that this super cool yarn needs to be paired with a carrier yarn to make the finished product a little bit thicker. Pick out this carrier yarn and also buy it without looking at the price. And while you are there, pick up some super fancy circular needles because all your needles are back in Utah.

Super cool yarn. Look at all the different textures. Oooh, cool.

2. Go to JoAnn fabric and find the softest furry suede fabric you can find for a lining. Does it also happen to be one of the most expensive fabrics in the store? Perhaps.

3. Knit the cool yarn and other yarn in a tube on your new, super cool circular needles.

4. Sew the lining into a tube, put elastic in the ends and hand sew into the knitted portion.

5. Put on the muff and admire how cute you are.

Fuzzy soft lining

By this time you may have realized that your muff costs roughly a million dollars. Don’t worry, though. As Rikki has assured us, this muff will be a family heirloom and passed down from kid to kid in your future family.

So this is what it looked like after a few days of constant snow:

It feels like it’s been snowing for days. Oh wait, it did.