AFCU

We don't have anything super interesting going on other than the fact that I went to training this week for my new job as a teller for America First Credit Union. As such, I don't have any pictures for this post. :( Sorry!

The first two days were a new employee orientation training. I liked the people working at the training-- everyone was so nice! If you don't know the difference between a bank and credit union, let me fill you in with some of my notes from the training. A credit union is a group of people who save together and lend to each other at a fair and reasonable rate of interest. Credit Unions are owned and controlled by the people who use them. They are also democratically controlled by their members. So, in a credit union the member (rather than customer) is more important than the board of directors, president, etc. The profits made from a credit union are returned to the members through means of much lower interest rates (and in the building of new branches and payroll of employees). Banks are run by shareholders, to whom the profits are returned. Customers have no rights under the organizational structure. The board of directors represents the interests of shareholders and investors rather than members. Essentially, banks are profit driven whereas credit unions are member-service driven. As a patron of AFCU, I can definitely see this member importance from instances when I've gone to the bank. Even in this training it was evident that, even though we were employees, we were also members to be treated with courtesy, friendship and respect. The days were so long but the information present was so good (even the section on what to do if you're robbed! Yikes!).

The second two days were spent on teller training. Oh man, there was so much to learn! I did pretty well on the test they gave me but I'm scared of messing up when it actually comes time to help members. I'm sure I will get used to it within the first couple of weeks. Our trainer in these meetings was really cool as well and made it easy to learn. These two days were also very long! I start in Spanish Fork on Monday and I am nervous and excited all the same.

The Whitney Whisk

I was just going to make a little add on to our blog with a page full of recipes that Bryan and I each grew up with. When I decided I wanted to add pictures I realized this would be one long page! So, {drumroll please} I'm proud to introduce The Whitney Whisk. I never really thought I'd make a food blog because I'm mostly good at following recipes, not creating them! I just wanted a place to share our family favorites. I also decided it would be a great opportunity to review great recipes I find online and share them with all of you. Maybe some day I'll be a good enough cook that you'll see something posted up there that I've invented all on my own.

Birthday Fun

Last Friday, the 7th of October, was my birthday. Yes, I am 25 years old. Sigh. I must prepare myself for a month of jokes about how I am older than my husband... courtesy of my husband. Honestly, I am less stressed about getting older this year than previous years despite being astonished that I'm actually 25. This probably has to do with the disappearance of that ticking clock in the back of my mind that I always had prior to getting married. No matter how old you get, you always feel like yourself, which is probably why I always take some adjusting when I come to a new age. I think we all have these perceptions about what we'll be like when we reach a certain age or stage of life. For some reason, when I got married I thought I'd feel different but I still just felt like the same person I was before I got married and not that that was in any way a bad thing. Anyway, I digress.

This year I had a nice, relaxed birthday. I slept in and then opened presents with Bryan. It's nice to have someone to do this with now-- in previous birthdays I would end up opening packages from home by myself. I got several nice things that I am very excited about. A little later I was watching the newest episode of The Office and I got a phone call. I've now been offered the position of teller at America First Credit Union in Spanish Fork. It's nice to not be worried about that any more but, as with starting anything new, a little nerve wracking. I start training on the 17th and then I will officially start on the 24th. It's nice that I'll have this week to get things in order.

In the afternoon my new sister in-law, Shelley, took me to lunch at one of my favorite places in Provo-- Kneaders. It was more packed than I have probably ever seen it. The food was delicious and the company delightful! Later that evening we went out with a bunch of good friends and got dinner at Brick Oven. Afterward, we all went back to our apartment for cake and ice cream. Alicia made me a white cake with lemon cream cheese frosting and it was to die for! We ended up just talking until after midnight. It was so fun-- we just told stories and laughed a lot.

The next day we had a family birthday party with the Whitneys. We went to Cornbelly's Corn Maze and then came back to Shelley's house for lunch and presents. The pictures below are from the fun we had at Cornbelly's.

There was a "Princess Playland" that supplied little girls with princess dresses to wear for the day. Ella was a little bulky in hers because she had her coat on underneath-- it was pretty cold out!

Here we are in the maze, figuring out a clue. Well, I'm behind the camera, anyway. It had rained that morning so we were slipping and sliding around in the mud.


After we finished the first time Bryan and Mike decided to go again, determined to make it to the very top of the maze and back.

Bryan and I did a little duck racing next, which I won both times! Then some people came and took our ducks... oh well.



We did a few other things that I didn't get pictures of but at the end we all took turns in the big rocking chair. It was definitely a fun day! I had a very good birthday weekend and am excited for next month when we celebrate Bryan's birthday.

Life in Provo

Well, I'm finally updating the blog. I've had many comments on my long hiatus. Bryan has been threatening to update with a picture of a scared pug if I didn't post something soon! I have an excuse, though. My trusty camera has met an untimely end. Yes, one day I turned it on to find the LCD display screen looking cracked. The glass was fine, it was just the inside. Luckily, Bryan had a camera at his mom's house so we brought that back. I still dragged my feet getting pictures taken and figuring out how to upload from his camera, so sorry for that.

So, we're back in Provo! We had a great summer in Boise but boy, am I glad to have furniture again! I'm also happy to have the rest of our belongings again. It makes a huge difference in the feeling of a place to be surrounded by your things. I feel a lot more homey now. We moved into Union Square Apartments-- married student housing. Despite the fact that I thought they had dissolved all special wards into family wards, we attend a Provo Married Student ward. I have never before lived in a ward that had the exact same number of men as women!

Bryan seems to be doing well in school this semester and enjoying most of his classes. A few classes he has really been enjoying are Ethics and Computers in Society, Software Engineering and Cryptography. One reason he likes the first two so much is that they share the same professor, who is excellent. In Cryptography he is breaking down ciphers, something he has done as a hobby since he was a teenager so he's really enjoying it as a class.

I am still job searching. There have been a lot of ups and downs in the process and, as yet, nothing has panned out. I had a pretty severe disappointment yesterday when my temp agency, OfficeTeam, called saying they had a job for me. I had an interview elsewhere and told them I would call afterward with a definite decision. I decided the position OfficeTeam offered was a better one for me right now but when I called back she'd given it to someone else! Oh well. I'm still waiting to hear about the actual interview, though.

Anyway, a wise friend once told me that no one wants to read full text in a blog so I thought I'd take some pictures of our apartment as introduction to our new life in Provo (I mean, these are the reason I haven't updated in so long so they better be pretty good, right?).


Here is the first thing you see when you come to our apartment (sans my lovely shadow). In late August my parents came out to visit and to see my half-sister Tammy's adorable new baby girl, Hannah Blanche. My mom brought a surprise with her! She'd had our favorite wedding picture printed on canvas and took me out to have it framed. She also decided she wanted to do something nice for me and get a wreath for our door and a welcome mat. We found this nice wreath on Etsy and the mat at a personalization store online. Unfortunately, these were lost in the mail for a couple of weeks! I realized I'd been giving the wrong street for part of our address. What a disaster! Luckily, I called the DMV in time to correct my address before they sent out my Drivers License!There is another apartment 309 in this complex so I assumed the packages had gone there but they hadn't seen it. We ended up finding a house with the address I'd been using and they had kept the packages there for us. This doorstep was well worth it! The wreath makes our apartment smell amazing.

This is what you see when you open our door. Notice the Christmas lights lining the walls-- those were absolutely free! Courtesy of our wedding decorations... I even have a LOT left over. I love hanging Christmas lights-- they bring such a warm homey feeling to our apartment.

Here is the canvas picture that my mom framed for us-- we love it. We also have an army of WiiMotes chillin' under there in the entertainment center and a brand new Blu-Ray player. We had some money left over from our wedding on our Target gift card and decided it was worth the purchase. It connects to HuluPlus, NetFlix, Pandora, Picasa, YouTube, etc. It has 3D capabilities which is nice because we one day intend to own a 3D TV.

This is an unfortunate attempt at taking a picture of the curtains I sewed for our apartment. No matter how I took it, during the day they were simply not to be seen on film. Suffice it to say that they are two panels of fabric that hang from a rod (held up by Command Hooks) on either side of a window...

Here is a better idea of what the actual fabric of the curtains is like, though. This was the only pattern in JoAnn's that I really liked for it. It's not lying flat because I kept them hanging and held it up to the camera by my hand.

The entertainment center they provided with this apartment was not going to work with our wide, flatscreen TV so I turned it into a much needed book/game shelf. I think the couches are pretty nice, actually! We got a throw pillow from IKEA for it that you can faintly see in the dark picture above. It was very difficult figuring out how to arrange the furniture. We finally decided to have the back of the couch act as a hallway into the apartment. So, in a way, I guess the couches really section it off as it's own room. The gap between the chair and couch is slightly narrow but do-able.

We call this our "office." It really just shares the living/family room but it kind of feels like it's own little place. That may or may not be Pinterest up on the screen. I've become slightly obsessed.

I just wanted to zoom in on this part because I really enjoy the decorations we have up here. Minus the fish food. Darn, I should have moved that when taking pictures. I only just noticed it now. This is Bryan's our beta fish, Gordon. No, it's not after Gordon B. Hinckley. Instead, he's named after Gordon Freeman. In his old age (1.5 years) he has gotten rather ornery! He puffs out his gills at us if we just walk by him! Poor Gordon.

Yes, uninteresting but I thought I'd post our vanity. Be happy I left out the pictures of the shower room. Bryan said, "No one wants to see our toilet." You know, I'm sure he's right. I was just taking pictures of everything.

I just like this closet because there is a lot of opportunity for storage. I don't feel at all cramped in this apartment.

Same bedspread, more decorations. Luckily, this coloring followed the same theme I had when I was single so I just used the same pillows to spruce it up. Other than this, we have a couple framed wedding photos on our dresser. The only other interesting thing is comparing our closets. Talk about polar opposites!


Bryan snapped this not-so flattering picture of me last night.You can kind of get a better idea of what the curtains look like, though they are closed in this. Oh! And there is the aforementioned IKEA pillow!

So, this is our life for the next 8ish months. In April, Bryan will graduate. We hope to be back in Boise with him working for Clearwater Analytics, where he had his internship. Come next May we will probably be moving somewhere! It's exciting for real life to really start.

The Whitneys Say Goodbye Boise

Well, it's that time. Bryan and I have packed everything up into the front room to load into the car tomorrow morning. I have mixed feelings. I am happy to go back to Utah for a year because I've really missed friends and family. Today, I was driving to a friend's house to unload all our leftover food on her and a bunch of memories of driving on that road with Bryan popped into my head of the specific places we were going and the like. That made me a little sad to go-- we've made a lot of good memories here. In the above picture we are out late watching the Perseids meteor shower a week or so ago (Bryan saw four and I saw zero, I guess I just was never looking the right way). However, life moves on. It'll be good to go back to Provo for a year and have that time to be surrounded by loved ones.
Here is a picture of probably only half the stuff we have to load into the car and car top carrier that was so graciously loaned to us by my half-sister, Stacey.

It's hard to believe that it is time to leave but I think we're ready. So, goodbye Boise! We've had a great summer here!

A Day at the Museum

I've been keeping up with the events that are going on in Boise this month so that we could take advantage of them. I saw that the Idaho Historical Museum was having a "Hands on History" even about the Golden Age of Superheroes! I thought of comic book superheros and cool displays on their evolutions and storylines. I thought it would be a fun thing that was out of our ordinary lazy Saturdays for Bryan and I to do together and it would be something we both enjoyed. Well, we didn't get quite what I expected. The museum had mask making, lassoing villians and a superhero scavenger hunt... but I wouldn't say it had much to do with the superheroes I'd thought of. Still, we had fun and we're glad to get out and do something.

Here I am figuring out one of the clues in the elevator (the rest of the clues had to do with exhibits).

Bryan lassoing a villain!

I was so close to getting him my last time!

Mostly, we just looked around the museum. That was fun. Bryan said he'd even like to go back just to look around. Next time we are back east for enough time I think we need to go to the Smithsonian!

Here is the Blacksmith Forge Bryan will have one day! :)

Ladies' Sidesaddle!

Apparently two-headed cows existed in Idaho at one point...?

This massive fish swims in rivers here in Idaho!

They had different rooms from older houses displayed. Here is my personal favorite room-- the kitchen! Luckily, I live in the 21st century.

There was a sign that said I could get in! I wasn't breaking any museum rules! The name of this kind of boat has slipped my mind for the moment but here I am traveling with Lewis or Clark and their dog, Seaman.

So, we had a nice day out and about. Later that night we went and saw Super 8, which we both really enjoyed. The night before we saw the Green Lantern, which was just sub par. It is nice to get out and do things! In less than two weeks we'll be back to Utah and we'll be able to see friends and family again. That will be nice but we have had a nice, relaxing time in this charming city.

Adventures in Making Ravioli

I have always loved to cook but since I have been married and had the chance to do it every day for dinner my array of meals has dramatically expanded! I have learned that I loved to cook even more than I thought. Right now I am a stay at home wife while we're in Boise. It gives me a lot of time to spend experimenting with different foods. I've begun straying from recipes and making things my own.

Lately, I have really enjoyed making foods from scratch. It started when I saw a tutorial on Our Best Bites for making your own flour tortillas. I was like, "I could totally do that." Well, it wasn't as easy as I thought. I hate to say I found a better recipe elsewhere when I love this site so much... but I looked it up YouTube and found a very good video for it. They turned out almost perfect! You know how tortillas are supposed to be, well, round? Well, mine weren't quite round... but they sure did taste good! I used them to make taquitos and I ate several just plain... they are way better than store bought tortillas. I am making some quesadillas this week and sadly bought store bought tortillas because I have a cup less flour than I need and I'm definitely not going to buy and whole new sack of flour for less than two weeks left in Boise! Anyway, tangent over. The next time I made something from scratch it was Pierogies filled with mashed potatoes (served with sauerkraut and kielbasa) because the store didn't sell them and I was set on the meal. I was like, "Wow, making pasta isn't as hard as it seems!" So then I decided to try my hand at ravioli.
I wanted a meat filling so, after looking around on the internet a bit, I found one using ground beef, garlic, onion and parmesan cheese. Well, I know I bought an onion but when I went to make the meal there was none to be found. I was very frustrated and had images in my head of it rolling out of a bag into the parking lot of the grocery store and me, none the wiser, walking away and leaving it there behind to be run over... So I made due with what I had. The filling was okay. Next time I think I will make half the batch with a ricotta cheese filling and half with browned Italian sausage, seasonings and fennel seed (an idea I got when we went out to a delicious and authentic pizzeria one night.

The dough is very simple. Mix flour and salt and add a whipped egg yolk.

...but then it wasn't really making a dough. The recipe said to add enough water to make it a stiff dough.

Voilà! It needed to rest for about half an hour after this.

I don't have a pasta machine yet so I had to roll it out with a rolling pin. This is hard work on your arms! I've definitely added a pasta machine and ravioli cutter to my Smith Family Times gift registry for my birthday or Christmas.
I needed to roll it out paper-thin, so that I could see my hand through it.

A lot of people will take one sheet of the rolled out dough, put dollops of filling on it, then put another sheet on and use a ravioli cutter. I don't have one yet so I used an upside jar to cut circles. This took as long or longer as the rolling out!

My meat filling dollops.

Folded over, with the edges crimped. I used an egg yolk to effectively glue the seams together.

Then they boil for 4-5 minutes.

You can freeze these for later use but, since I was just going to use them that evening, I put them in the fridge in a covered container (you don't want them drying out!). As it was, they kind of stuck together. I also wanted to make homemade sauce but couldn't find a recipe that looked good to me. So many of them called for tomato chunks in addition to paste or sauce. I do not like chunky things. Especially tomato. This is why I generally like traditional bean and ground beef chili from a can... too many people make it with chunky tomatoes. I also added some leftover ground beef and seasoning mixture from Our Best Bites.




Here is the finished product on Bryan's plate. I would say it was pretty good but not mouth-watering. It wasn't something I'd look back on and say, "That was so good. I need to make it again." I need to keep experimenting with fillings and sauces and one day maybe it will be so.