I had never had homemade ice cream before from a maker that you cranked yourself. So I was pretty excited when Mark started looking up recipes for homemade ice cream. We didn’t have one of our own crank ice cream makers so Mark decided to borrow one of his Dad’s.

We took the ice cream maker to a family dinner at Adam’s Park one night and the whole family helped make it. There were lots of nieces and nephews there willing to crank it for us. The first time we tried making ice cream we made two different recipes. A super rich vanilla ice cream (with real vanilla in it!) that was pretty involved and a second vanilla recipe that was less rich and less involved. I loved the rich super creamy one. It was so good…so thick.

Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe (my favorite, more involved one)
Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe (less involved, but still good one)

It was fun to be at the park, having everyone take turns cranking the ice cream. I really wanted to get our own crank ice cream maker sometime. We looked on-line, but they were so much.

Mark’s sister Heidi, happened to find one for us at the D.I. for $6.00 the other week. It was a cool retro-y looking one. It had all the parts except for two missing scrapers on the paddles. Mark one Saturday easily cut some new ones out and we were in business!!

I suggested this time we do something chocolate. Mark used a vanilla recipe, but then crushed and added Oreo cookies to it.

MARK’S A GENIUS!

We got the boys involved and had them help crank the ice cream on the back porch with us. It was a fun family activity to do together. And the ice cream was way good. I want to try other recipes and add all sorts of things in like, strawberries or cookie dough or chocolate chips.

First one with correct answer gets a tropical-y prize!

Need to be pretty specific…City and State. And Carrie, sorry, your exempt.

Good luck! And there’s a hint in the title of this post, “Paradise isn’t where you think it is”. Oh, and all three were taken at the same place.

Click image to make larger!

First Impression- I’ll be honest, I wish it was still Eddie’s. They are in the same location of my favorite rib joint that left a few yearzz ago, and I can’t help but wish Eddie was still there, lazy eye and all. After Eddie’s left, it was a Sushi place, and some of the Asian decor is still lingering today and to me just seemzz weird for a burger place. I told my Mom this azz we were going in the restaurant, and I wazz properly scolded by Mom and told to “Give it a chance”.

Ordering- At my Mom’zz suggestion, I ordered their house burger. Beef patty, ham, bacon, american and swizz cheese. I also decided to get the home cut fries, it cost a bit more, but I thought it would be fun to try.

Service- The two girlzz running the front seemed nice. I got the impression that one girl must have been related to the owner, because I saw her in a lot of the pictures behind the counter and on the wallzz. They were fast taking our order and answered our questionzz about the food..

Decor- We sat ourselvezz at a table after getting our self-serve fountain drinkzz. The tablezz and chairzz were kind of a hodge podge of different stylezz and colorzz. Local newspaper cutoutzz of the Aggies and what I call “motel art” dot the white wallzz. I liked the one of Christ they had up. There is a flat screen tv above a brick fireplace at the end of the dinning room.

I looked around for a high chair and after asking the girls at the front for one, found out there was only one, which happened to be in use at the time. One high chair was my only real complaint about the whole place. But eventually the family who was using it left and we snatched it up for our baby.

The Food- Our food came pretty quick. Me, Mark and my Mom all ordered the same burger. And Hilly got the chicken nuggetzz. The home cut fries that I had gotten were not that great, I wouldn’t get them again. Instead I liked the normal French fries that Hilly had. The burger was good, I liked the ham. I’d have to say that their house burger is very similar to one of my favorite burgerzz, the Mt. Ogden burger, found at Warren’s in Ogden. The beef was good, and it all tasted great and cooked perfect. I LOVED that the bun was toasted too. In my opinion, a toasted bun makes a great burger better (who says that?). The best part about the burger was the price.

I tasted some of my son’s chicken nuggetzz and they were just your-run-of-the-mill nuggetzz. Not bad, but nothing special. He liked them.

Overall- I had wished they had better dessert options. Dessert wasn’t apart of their main menu. There was a dry erase board to the side with a couple dessert choicezz. But I’m one of those people that choose what dessert they’ll have before they decide on the meal.

(okay, I’m stopping the whole two “zz” thing, it’s even annoying me!)

I would like to see their decor more unified and pulled together, so it all makes sense.

I liked it and I’d go back. I’m interested in trying their breakfast. And a lot of their menu items looked tasty!

As a side note, I was happy with our service, although the table behind us, had a lot of their orders incorrect, the waitress wasn’t very helpful and they seemed pretty un-happy with THEIR service.

Has anyone else been there? I would love to hear what you had and how you liked it?

A few days after they came to clean our carpets, we received in the mail free Jamba Juice coupons along with a thank-you-for-your-business letter.

Then, we got MORE coupons with our referral (one of our neighbors in the Blackhawk Condos used them) not to mention….25% OFF OUR NEXT SERVICE (the smoothies were fun, but this really is the best part).

Thanks for the fun Jamba Juice coupons BGSC!

Read our full review of local buisness, Big Green Steam Clean.

He’ll tell me when he’s a police officer and I refer to him as “Officer Welly” for as long as he wants.

He loves to take his guns with him places, like to the grocery store, but I usually make him leave them in the car.

I’ve let him wear his Policemen pajamas all day before.

He calls bullets his “bullups”.

I’m now the expert on where to get cheap toy guns and police gear! (Six Star Party Outlet! I’ve actually gotten the same policeman set twice now! It comes with cop sunglasses, a badge, handcuffs and key, two guns, bullups and a holder for the bullups. And targets to practice shooting.)

I really do love that he loves all that tough boy stuff. He’s pretty cute with it. I love our tough guy!

I think they look so cool! Someday I’m hoping we have a game room in the basement of our dream house. I’d love to do a retro themed bar or small kitchenette area and it would be awesome to have these in it! I think I’d get RED…So they’d match with our current red sparkly bar stools.

Also in our game room, Mark and I would both love….

Black light Carpet!

You know, like the kind you see in bowling alleys.

I would also kill for one of these…And happily put on in our living room right now If I could get my hands on one. Even in the bedroom (if you can’t tell I want one pretty bad).

Probably not an actual Wurlitzer, but it’s gotta have that look. I’d love to find a non working one, then get Mark to modify it to play mp3’s, maybe even a touch screen. Someday, someday….

What’s something that you wish you had?

White Cake
Strawberry Peach Jello
Vanilla Pudding
Whipped Topping
Strawberries
Bananas
Peaches
Kiwis
Repeat (until no more room left in the dish)
Hide from Husband or else this happens…

“JUST GET ME A SPOON!”-mark

Hilyard is wearing his older brothers t-shirt and Wellington is wearing my shirt that matches his. Those are both shirt.woot.com shirts we got for free!

I was trying to practice taking some night time shots (obviously). I was using the slowest shutter speed to see what it would do…I was taking an awfully long time doing it, so from the car behind me Mark was yelling things at me.

I had watched the entire series of Travels to the Edge, a show about a National Geographic photographer (who mostly does wildlife photography) and in one episode he said that sometimes to get that PERFECT shot he’d lay in waiting for hours, sometimes he couldn’t move so he’d have to urinate on himself. I heard Mark say something about taking my time and I might have to urinate on myself…and I started laughing.

I think next time I’ll bring my tripod and leave Mark at home. Just teasing, it was so fun have Mark come along with me, he usually doesn’t get to. Mark was very willing to drive me back and forth between the University and the Temple to get some fun sunset then night time photos.

We got there in the early evening with all of the cousins and the kids played their hearts out. Marky couldn’t come right away since he was waiting at the clinic for someone to come that was looking at the truck. He ended up taking forever and didn’t show up until around 7:45, but we forgave him because the guy ended up buying the truck (yay, full price, didn’t even ask if we’d take less!)

While we love our filthy carny fair food, we have been resisting the temptation lately, and instead we just eat after we leave the fair. Our wallets thank us, AND our arteries thank us (but those funnel cakes did look mighty tasty). Here are some pics of this years fair fun: