Recently...

As stated before, I want this blog to serve as a sharing ground... from me to you on the things I am discovering, and from you back to me on your feedback, suggestions, and thoughts for further discoveries and improvements on my discoveries. Feel free to add suggestions, or your own experiences in these areas.

In the future, I want to have several different categories that I will post about. They will include but not be limited to, Photography, Home Decor, Recipe triumphs and failures of the week, What we are reading, Did you know... Medical adventures of a medical family, Parenting 101, Classic literature and entertainment, Creating, Learning, and discovering, Shill adventures and many many others.

To kick off, I thought I would do a brief summary of some of the things I have discovered and created in the past year.

Last year at this time (September, 2010) We looked like this:

... man I miss those jeans. (I ripped out an entire seam when I tried to get them on four months pregnant. Ah lessons learned.)

We were at the Denver aquarium celebrating 6 months of being married. For our 6 month anniversary (September 12th, 2010) Otto made me this: (I have to give him some props for creativity on this blog as well.)

 

It was a book including every text message and instant message we had sent each other from the first day we exchanged phone numbers and email addresses to our six month anniversary of being married. Yes, somehow he had EVERY SINGLE ONE saved. It has been so fun to have that as a part of our history. What a fabulous (and creative!) gift!

The following summer, early one morning our paramount, most prized, and cutest creation arrived. He came to us on June 15th, 2011. He is the joy of our lives, and the one all our creations and discoveries are now based around as we work to build a home worthy of such a perfect little spirit. (If you don't believe me, here is proof of how perfect he is) 

(This photo is courtesy of Sarah Shill. To see more of her beautiful photography, go here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.453518248306.250015.613318306)

... and here is proof that he looks like his daddy...

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and here is proof that he just keeps getting cuter... (7/15/11, 1 month old)

and cuter... (8/15/11, 2 months old)

and cuter! (9/15/11, 3 months old)

Happy 3 month birthday little Elijah! 

While Eli is my favorite little creation to look at, talk about, discover and learn about, I have been busy with a couple other things in the last year..

For Valentine's Day, Otto bought me a beautiful Nikon camera along with photoshop and a zoom lens, and even free classes on how to take better pictures. I am FAR from knowing what I'm doing, but I have been taking a billion pictures and trying to learn all I can. All you photographers... I welcome any advice on what I can do to improve my pictures! Here are a few samples so far. 

In May, I took my brother-in-law's engagement photos. (Don't ask how I got roped into that, but it starts with an O and ends with a tto.) I may have lost sleep over it, but in the end (while not professional) Josh and Amy were happy with how they turned out and that's all that matters. Here is the one they put on their announcements:

and here are three of my favorite Eli pictures to date:

The last one is my favorite... he looks like he is up and excited to go places... in true Shill style. (He gets that from his daddy!)

Part of the fun of being home is trying new recipes for dinner. It helps that Otto doesn't get home from class until 8:30 at night, so I have a little more time to experiment. Here is our all time favorite new recipe as of late. (Courtesy of my sister Laura) Cornbread with ham and fresh peach salsa. You can find the recipe here:

http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/06/cornbread-shortcakes-with-ham-and.html

I used my own cornbread recipe which is:

1 cup flour

2/3 cup white sugar

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup butter

1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking soda

Cook about 30 min or until it passes the toothpick test (what is the official way to say that?) at 350. 

Yum. We are the Shills, and we approve this recipe. 

My favorite project lately has been making little books for different family members on different occasions. I made one for my sister-in-law Sarah for high school graduation. Here is a quick excerpt out of it... (excuse the quality of the pictures)

I also made a book for Otto, full of letters from family members and friends the night before he took the MCAT. The cover looked like this:

and I made a book for my sister Robin before leaving to spend a semester in Jerusalem with the BYU study abroad program. Here are a few excerpts from her book:

The book consisted of a large letter on the left page to a description of that letter on the right. Some examples are:

B is for...

                                                                                           E is for....

N is for...       S is for....

.. and so on. The first one was hand made and hand bound. The second two I used power point, printed everything out, glued it onto colored paper and spiral bound it. It has been such a fun creative outlet for me. 

Here are a few of our new fall decorations around the house: 

 Wheat that gives me a little piece of home in my new home...

 I LOVE sunflowers but am still trying to find the perfect place for this piece.. (right now it's by my front door)

 My fall wreath (base and supplies came from Michaels... I put it together last fall)

 My cute little fall people. I picked one up at Smiths last fall, figuring I'd save money by just buying one, but Otto decided I needed them both and picked the other one up for me a week later. I love them!

All other items came from http://taipantrading.com/, one of my happy places. Now that we are headed to med school, it looks like I'll only be window shopping there for a few years. Goodbye incomes... you were nice while you lasted. 

Another adventurous attempt: growing tomatoes on our balcony that does not get much sun because it is blocked by a huge pine tree. Not to mention... it's a covered balcony. 

At the end of the day... we have two incredible plants that grew approx. 4 beautiful tomatoes that cost us about ten bucks each. But MAN did they taste good!

Finally, one of my newest adventures has been this:

My fellow domestic friend Breanne and I have now made peach jam (and we made 8 jars with a box of peaches that cost us 3 dollars!) dill pickles (my grandma's recipe, yum!) and salsa. We are having fun, and our husbands are in heaven. Win/win.

FYI for anyone else who is thinking of getting into canning, we found a great deal this week on steam canners and all the accessories. You can find it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-400A-7-Quart-Aluminum/dp/B0000DDUCJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315944467&sr=8-1

This afternoon our next attempt will be homemade whole wheat bread. (Complete with grinding our own wheat! Assuming it turns out, I'll post the recipe. :) 

So now, a year later, we look like this:

... and life is good!

Check back for more experiments, adventures and creations. And don't worry, not all posts will be this long. :)