Help!!

I've been really bugged lately by my lack of awesome-wife cooking skills. :( I feel like I can't look at the ingredients we have and make something out of it. So, whenever I do want to make something cool or delicious or just different than the usual, I have found that I have to spend time, and more importantly, MONEY to go to the store to buy just three or four ingredients. It gets really expensive going to the store two or three times a week for just a couple of ingredients each time. Don't get me wrong, I like making cool and delicious meals but I can't do that every night...

So, here is my question (directed to anyone and everyone who is good at cooking): how do you all do it? Where do you get your ideas? I've looked in several cookbooks but most of them require ingredients that I just don't have (as mentioned before). Do you all just stock up on random ingredients? Or do you have cookbooks that have recipes that are more simple? Or are you all just geniuses and mix together what you have to make a masterpiece?

I'm starting to feel like I'm never going to get good at cooking. And poor Ben has to suffer through my hardcore lack of said skills.

Does anyone wanna teach me? Lol or alteast let me copy some recipes? How about a recipe exchange in the near future, eh? Haha help!!

Vegas, Marriott, birthday, finals - Whew!

One of my favorite things about this time of year is all of the get-togethers everyone has. We had lots of fun spending time with family over Thanksgiving, can't wait for Christmas, and have had a blast at all of them:
- We went to Las Vegas for Ben's cousin's wedding and it was gorgeous! I loved it! But... we forgot our camera so no pictures. Oops!
- Every year the Lyman's get together around Christmas and stay in the Marriott in Salt Lake for a fun Friday night with the fam. It was really fun to be with the whole group :) I wish I had known that we would have been walking around Temple Square and such though - I would have brought a coat! ...And shoes other than flip flops hahah
- Ben's birthday was on Saturday and he did NOT want attention or anything fancy. We spent the morning with his family (at the Marriott) and enjoyed a relaxing day with no homework or worries! Then, instead of spending a bunch of money going to a fancy restaurant, Ben insisted on going to Wendy's for his dinner. Haha what a stud.
- Finals are this week. I think they stress me out more than they do Ben. Go figure.
- We are getting excited for all of the Christmas parties! But can't people all coordinate with each other so that we can go to all of them?! Seriously, there are like 5 just this weekend... :( We're bummed we have to miss some of them.

We're just loving life! Still no pictures of anything. I'm really bad at bringing the camera around... I'll do better :)

Love it.

I saw this picture and thought it was so cute that I had to put it on my blog. I will be trying to do this sometime this winter. It looks like it would take a lot of practice and time, but it'd be worth it.

So cute!