Two Top Fives

I'm following along with Top Ten Thursday again---but I couldn't really decide on two things I had top ten's to list. So, two top five lists. Lucky you guys!!

Top 5 Things I Did Not Want in my Halloween Bag
5. Smarties. Really? That's what you're handing out for Halloween? Do you hate children? Do you want you home to be egged?
4. Those pumpkin colored taffies. They may look festive, but they taste like metal.
3. Anything sour. I think I broke my jaw eating sour candy once. No joke. The stuff is evil.
2. Kit Kats. I love chocolate---but for some reason, I don't think Kit Kats really have any place on this planet.
1. Candy Corn. Why don't you just give me sugar to melt instead. It's cheaper---and it'd taste better, too.

So, what candy did I buy to pass out at my parent's this year? Kit Kats and sour stuff. It's a survival thing. While I pass things out I have zero inclination to snack.

Top 5 Movies I'm Certain I'll Never Not Wanna Watch
5. Anne of Avonlea. Enough Said
4. Singin' in the Rain. Maybe the story is about Don Lockwood and Cathy Zelden, but I always loved Cosmo.
3. 7 Brides for 7 Brothers. The first musical I ever knew and loved. It's entirely possible I can quote this by heart. (Close behind are Newsies and That Thing You Do.)
2. Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. With the guy from 16 Candles, only he's way hotter in this. Plus, there's a red-headed side-kick. If that's not a recipe for success, I really don't know what is.
1. She's the Man. Full on hilarious and not even kind of believable. I could watch this movie 5 times in one weekend. Oh wait, I definitely have. With my roommate before she ran off and got herself married. That was a good weekend.

If you wanna play along with the movie top ten, check out this place. Or, you can find out the top ten uses of peanut butter and why I'm going to be eating it very soon over here.

How Do You Go Green?

Personally, I try to save on bathwater...by putting my niece in the sink when I give her a bath. And hey-while she plays around, I get the dishes done!

And while I did dishes, she helped me by wiping off the counter. (Her idea.)

Being green is SO much fun that my nephew wanted to join in, too.


And some things that are definitely NOT going green:

I am a summer girl. I LOVE the heat! But these Fall colors are out-of-this-world gorgeous, yes? I had my camera in my car and just took a few pictures of the trees around BYU campus. I couldn't get over how beautiful they were.

My mom thinks our neighbor's tree is the prettiest one around.

And here's the pretty fire bush I see every day when I come home from work.

Yes, I suppose the Fall colors make up for the fact that it's not 80 degrees outside anymore.

The Best Thing About Movies?

The soundtrack. Movie soundtracks can make or break a movie. I mean, when you think about Star Wars, or Jaws or Superman---isn't it all of .2 seconds before you start singing the theme song? And it's not just John William's scores that are amazing. What about Anne of Green Gables? Love that.

Rudy is my favorite movie and I'm not sure if I love it so much because of the music, or if I love the music so much cuz it's a great movie. Either way, if there were one without the other I'm pretty sure I wouldn't own both. Other good movies made awesome by the music: any and all Pirates, Pearl Harbor, Truman Show, Transformers...I could go on.

Master and Commander? Uh, horrid movie. Boring as all get out. The soundtrack? Awesome. Totally own it.

So, this past weekend I watched Collateral. Um...tolerable movie. I didn't love it all that much. Granted, I don't like Tom Cruise or Jamie Foxx, but I tried not to let that sentiment blindly prejudice my opinion. I only do that with Hilary Swank movies. Anyway, there's one scene in the movie where they've included an amazing interpretation of "Air" by Bach. It was amazing---best part of the movie. You might even say it redeemed the movie a little bit in my mind. Thank heavens youtube enables me to listen to it constantly now.

What about you? What soundtracks do you love?

Homemade Oreos

Our internet is down at home so I'm breaking one of the only rules I made for my work-self and getting on my blog at work. The things I do for this blog... Of course, watching TV episodes, browsing facebook and other peoples' blogs is totally fine at work. Please don't ask me what the difference is.

Anyway, CaJoh is doing Friday Feast tomorrow and asked for some recipes. I'm sending him my fail-proof homemade oreos. Fail-proof cuz everyone likes them and if I ever have the desire to make something for a boy, these are my first pick. These things ridiculously easy to make and so good. The only thing I don't like is that the frosting aspect can be time consuming. Anyway, here's the recipe:
Cookie
2 pkgs Devils Food Cake Mix
4 eggs
2/3 C oil
1/2 C flour

Mix with dough hook
Roll into walnut sized balls (I usually do bigger-who wants a small oreo?) and flatten a bit.
Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.
Frosting
I prefer store-bought frosting, you can pick the flavor of your choice and I'm not all that partial to home-made frosting. But if you want homemade filling:
1 lb powdered sugar
8 oz cream cheese
1 cube margarine

There ya go---hope you like it. I don't know what my deal is, but lately I've been addicted to food blogs. Mostly food blogs featuring desserts. Mostly featuring desserts that are chocolate and peanut-butter centered. There's a chocolate cake I found with Reeses mixed it and used for frosting...pretty sure I'm gonna need to make that. Soon. Maybe for movie night at my brother's this Saturday.

Top Ten Favorite Books

Gosh-I hardly know where to start, and I'll warn you, this post is kinda long. I just have so much to say about the books I love. I love to read. Love it so much that when I find a book I really like I will basically ignore the world that day and finish it all that same day. I love getting a brand new book and seeing all the pages I get to read. I'm always sad when I get to the end of a book---I get so excited to read a brand new story, and then it's over so soon! Anyway, now that I've revealed how much of a nerd I am (actually, it gets worse; just wait till you see the list) here are my top ten books.

10. True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Ruth E. Avi. I first read this book in fourth grade. Actually, my fourth grade teacher read it to our class and everyone, boys included, loved it. She read a lot of books to us and I had a hard time picking a favorite (Call it Courage, Banner in the Sky, Indian in the Cupboard series...all brilliant) but this one won out cuz I've re-read it the most. I even re-read it that same year with my mom. It's such an exciting book---seriously, all little girls should read this. And, I just found out it's being made into a movie. Yea!

9. The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss. Brilliant stories, fun words, silly rhyming. What's not to love? I'm not joking when I tell you my family quotes Dr. Seuss frequently (probly not hard to believe considering my blog name). I wrote a paper on the story/poem "Too Many Daves," in college. My brother sent us a picture from his mission of somebody wearing pale green pants like the ones in "What Was I Scared Of," and I still can't figure out why the south-going Zax didn't just let the north-going Zax leap-frog over him becuse that would've solved all their problems. It was hard to pick a favorite Dr. Seuss book, but since this one contained multiple stories it won out.

8. Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. I love the stories Shannon Hale writes. The fairly tale aspects she includes are always something new to me and so fun to discover when I read her books. The places she writes about are described so well that it's easy to imagine them as you read along. And the mother figures in her books are such wonderful woman; strong and honest and supportive, really such great examples.

7. Little House on the Prairie Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. One of my earliest memories is of my mom reading these books to me and my three older brothers. It was so fun to sit near her for a half hour or so and just enjoy these stories. Although, I'm fairly certain that my fear of panthers stems from these books cuz I remember Pa being chased by one in Little House in the Big Woods. I don't care if there aren't panthers near where I live, they're still scary! And I was always amazed at how much Almanzo Wilder would eat (Farmer Boy) and it always made me hungry.

6. The Goose Girl series by Shannon Hale. I just read the fourth one in this series last week and couldn't stop put it down. Seriously, I was almost tempted to miss the BYU football game I was so into it. But, since I knew I'd be meeting Pat, T and April, I decided to put the book down for awhile:) The characters in these books are so engaging and fun to read about. I think Shannon Hale did a wonderful job making these new stories from fairy tales. The last one, Forest Born, was so exciting and interesting. I think any girl age 10 and older should read these series.

5. The Work and the Glory series by Gerald Lund. I won't lie---I was obsessed with these books. As in, I've read them all multiple times. It truly was a big reason why I got so into Church History when I was younger. That doesn't mean that when I lived in Nauvoo I looked for Steed Row, or that I actually think Nathan went with Parley Pratt on his mission to Canada---I'm not that obsessed. But those stories made church history more alive to me.

4. Another series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan. This books may have scored higher on my list if I had not just re-read #3 and #1; honestly, they're all interchangeably wonderful. Anyway, I had been talking about Twilight with my then-12 year old nephew and he told me about this new series that he really liked, even better that Twilight that he wanted me to read. I was kinda reluctant, but after he gave me the first book he kept texting to me to see if I had started it. Well, being the awesome aunt that I am, I finally started reading it on a road-trip I was taking with some friends. Coudn't put it down. LOVED it. Riordan did a great job making Greek mythology fun and engaging and I seriously laughed out loud in all five books. Multiple times. When I was reading it on the road trip, my friends kept asking me why I was smiling or laughing or whatever...I felt kinda nerdy when I showed them what I was reading, but I got over it. They are great books. I bought the fourth and fifth ones the day they came out and had them finished that same day. Shocker. I also shared them with a good guy friend last year, this one was 28 years old, not 12, and he also loves them.

3. Enna Burning by Shannon Hale. (I know-could I have more Shannon Hale books on here? Clearly, the woman is amazing.) I was assigned to read this book in an LDS Literature class I took my senior year at BYU. I'm not entirely postive (my last couple years there are kind of hazy) but I think it was taught by this woman's husband. If not, I know I took a class from him---just maybe not that class. Either way, I loved it. I loved the imagery, and the relationships in the story and how easy it was to cheer for the heroine. I didn't know at the time that it was part of a series---but this will always be my #1 favorite in that series cuz it was the first I read and I learned to love the characters through it.

2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I will ALWAYS love this book. It's one of the few I had to read in high school that I didn't hate. I love Scout and Jem's relationship, and I think Atticus is amazing. And have you seen the movie? Cuz that's just as wonderful. When I grow up I wanna be Miss Dubois; a mean old lady who sits on her porch with a gun on her lap and yells at little kids, "Don't you say 'hey' to me, you ugly little girl, you say 'Good afternoon, Miss Dubois.'" Classic. I wanted to put this book at number one so I appeared semi-scholarly, but I had to be honest...

1. Ella Enchanted by Gail Levine. SUCH a good book. It's so sweet and sincere and I just adore it. I could read it over and over...oh wait, I have. The movie was horrid! Seriously, the most awful attempt at book to screen I could imagine. I'm still angry about it. But, to calm the anger, I can always go back and re-read the book. The whole story just feels so genuine.

Alright, I kind of cheated with putting whole series on, but how could I pick a favorite?! And there are so many more I could include (Nancy Drew? Chronicles of Narnia? Not to mention the books that are in the back of my bookshelf---the ones I don't want anyone to know I own cuz they're so cheesy but I continue to re-read them semi-often). I also really enjoy reading biographies...but I usually don't re-read those once I've finished them and every single book on my top ten has been read by me multiple times. Except Forest Born, but that's cuz I just finished it last week.

Check out http://www.itsabeautyfilledlife.com for other Top Tens.