Update: Valentine's Day Eve Idea

So if you're wondering if I followed through with my idea. I did. I'm not sure why I didn't think to snap a picture of my super cute sugar cookies, but I didn't. Oh well, there's always next year right?

The cookies were cute... for some reason my darling mother has sent me lots of different Valentine Day themed cookie cutters. I think I have a heart cookie cutter of almost every size possible. But my favorite is was the set she sent me several years back... it has an X, O, and lips!

Anyway, the new recipe worked great and I recommend it completely. Definitely cook them the shorter time stated if you're looking for super soft. In my recipe digging of late I found another sugar cookie recipe that I might just have to try. I'm not the biggest sugar cookie fan, but the picture of this looks oh so good and to be honest, the cookbook that it comes from I'm simply loving right now... you can check out some of the other recipes she has by visiting here, so I'll have to let you know what happens when I give it a whirl.

Valentine's Day & Fire Drills

So what exactly do Valentine's Day & Fire Drills have in common?

Nothing. Unless you're me, and then you have the odd ability to make crazy things happen when you least expect or desire them to. My skill set here is amazing, but that's a story for another day.

So here's how it all went down.

We decided not to do anything fancy-schmancy for Valentine's Day this year; so instead, we planned to go to dinner and agreed that anything we did do would just be simple and heart felt. We were stoked about going to dinner, mainly because on special occasions we consider going outside the typical "spending zone" meaning we got to go to one of our favorite restaurants in the world I think...

We avoided the craziness of Utah restaurants and their no reservation policy and decided to go on Thursday before Valentine's Day weekend. I love this idea and would apply it to almost any holiday because it means that you get to spread out the celebration and have more fun than if you agreed to only do things on the specified day.  Anyway, dinner was super yummy and we enjoyed the evening out. 

I still wanted to do something sweet for Benj, so I decided to get up and make breakfast for him on V-Day. He had to work that morning, but that was ok with me... I could definitely get up and have breakfast ready for him to eat before 6AM right? 

What was I thinking!? Do you know how early a 6AM deadline feels like when you've spent the majority of the last week pulling late nights and early mornings and stressing over what appears to be the craziest 2 weeks of the last semester of your MBA program thus far? Despite my exhaustion, I was determined to succeed on this, so I planned the breakfast and told Benj about my idea so he could anticipate the moment rather than just be rushed that morning on his way to work. 

5AM came early as usual, and I jumped out of bed as my alarm went off and hustled to the kitchen to quietly fix breakfast while Benj caught a few more zzzz's. This was definitely a breakfast I was capable of... pink heart pancakes with strawberries & cream, bacon, and fresh squeezed orange juice. The pancakes were turning out super cute, the bacon was crisping up nicely on the broiler pan in the oven (I had just opened the over door to check on it) and was working on snapping a quick picture of these little beauties, when I was greeted with the shrill sound of our smoke detector...ahhhhhh!

Somewhere in all the multi-tasking that was occurring in my exhausted state and in the wee hours of the morning, I had forgotten that ventilation was a necessity in our basement apartment when cooking such things as... well, bacon. My opening the oven door had produced just enough smoke that our smoke detector thought it was time to tell the world of its capabilities. I grabbed a dish towel and started waving it furiously to get the smoke away from the little beast. Then it dawned on me that our incredibly great upstairs neighbors had sleeping children and probably thought their house was burning down because they could hear our smoke detector. It was only a matter of seconds that the darn thing had been going off, but I panicked at that thought & opened our bedroom door to call Benjamin to the rescue. 

Poor prince charming leapt from his bed, but the gush of air that came from me pushing our bedroom door open silenced the smoke detector almost instantly. So there we both stood, me in my panic and Benj looking half asleep yet ready save the day once he figured out exactly what I was chattering on about. 

I just smiled, gave him a peck on the cheek and told him to go back to sleep for the next 5 minutes before his alarm went off. 

The picture of the pancakes is terrible, but you can take the poor lighting as proof that it really was snapped just as that beastly smoke detector went off. I guess I could have taken another one, but then Prince Charming woke up, smothered his pancakes with strawberries & cream and devoured them. He was also kind enough to laugh at the early morning wake up call and just shook his head as I acted out the whole thing while he ate breakfast. Sometimes I think he wonders about his crazy wife, but at least I keep his life exciting!

Valentine's Day Eve

So with Valentine's Day almost upon us, I've decided that I'm going to stick with tradition. Growing up we'd make a treat and write up our little dinky school-kid valentine cards and then go to the farm. Despite the fact that Grandma and Grandpa knew we were coming, it was always fun to drop our treats and run. When we got older, we really got creative. First we'd hit the back door and run to the front of the house, and then we'd drop another set of treats at the front door (which my grandma says is the more "formal" side of the house) and then run to the back.

Seeing that we're in Utah and a drop and run to the farm in Gilbert, AZ might be a little bit out of our reach I suggested to Benj that we drop and run to his sisters & their families - who both live nearby here in Provo. He agreed and I'm excited to try out a new recipe for sugar cookies.  Also, because I'm new to the blog thing, or actually just because I didn't think about it when I posted about it previously... the awesome recipes for orange rolls and Cafe Rio pork that I mentioned can be found on her site as well.  So far, everything I've tried here turns out amazing, then again...she is from Arizona so what else would you expect.

Life in the Tanner

Lately I've felt like life outside the Tanner building has been pretty limited. The last 2 weeks have been pretty jammed packed with meetings, classes, homework, and more meetings. Busy, busy, busy!

Often, when I'm outside the Tanner - say when I'm at church, or with family and friends - people ask me "so how's the grad program going?" And I usually make my response as short as possible. Not because I'm trying to put people off really, but because I'm trying to have my time outside be as "Tanner-free" as possible. 
But here I am, almost done with my 2 year program, and beyond Benj (who I move to sainthood for putting up with my antics, crazy schedule, and vent sessions; & my amazing parents who have been incredibly supportive despite the fact that they know for sure now that I'm completely nuts) people don't really know what it is I do everyday. So, here's just some of what keeps me on the move.

This year I've spent quite a bit of time with this:

I was recruited to be the Events Director because somehow people heard that I used to "do that for a living".  I laughed when I heard that, mainly because my days event planning were surreal - oh the stories from that job! Despite the craziness, its been a good time because 1) I get to work with some pretty talented people; and 2) I've had fun working with the marketing director on the logo redesign (the new one is above) and creating this years theme for the event. 

This semester's classes are all electives, which has been nice for a change. I have a couple of HR classes - Talent Management is by far my favorite, probably because it seems the most applicable. If I'm not in class I'm probably studying or reading for class in "the office".  Michelle (an MBA buddy) and I study on a specific set of couches on the fourth floor of the new wing. I guess we're there so often that the administration (who's offices are also on the 4th floor) have taken noticed and have talked about getting us name plaques for those couches. I guess it's true that we do spend quite a bit of time there, the other day I was there by 6:45am, left for a class, then returned and stayed until my next class at 2pm. 

When I'm not in "the office",  I'm working. Yes, that's right... "working". I'm a coach for an undergrad field study. When I agreed to this I was excited about the estimated hours, 2 -2.5, that were to be clocked each week. I adore the team of undergrads that I mentor, the project isn't too hard, and grad pay is pretty nice, but a more truthful time estimate would be 5-6 hours. I'm not opposed to that, but there's that issue about budget and being able to compensate me. So I'm desperately trying to still do a good job but scale it back.

And finally, I'm researching this semester - women in business. I started the project last semester but we're finishing up with our qualitative research this semester, which means focus groups! So evenings are filled with MBA women and treats with the topic of discussion being focused on personal experiences in the program and how we can recruit more women into the program. The saga that I could tell on this one is lengthy, so if you really want the full beef about how to get more women in BYU's MBA program ask... otherwise, just take my word for it - it's more complicated than it sounds!

So there you have it. My life in the Tanner.