Day 27–Who Ya Gonna Call?

So today, Husband and I were driving to the store, and he looked over, and said, “Look!” I looked and I couldn’t see anything. I’m like, ok, I see a police car, and some other cars…? And then I looked a little closer.

Shoot, maybe you can’t see it in the picture here, but that is a real life Ghostbusters car! They have the sign on the side, and the lights and everything on top. I had to hurry to get my phone out of my purse, and hurry to take the pic, as the light had turned green, and we were supposed to go. This is the best I could get, and it made me smile.

Day 26–New Recipes

Last night, I tried a new recipe for dinner, and it was actually pretty good! It wasn’t too hard to make, thank goodness, and then when I bit into it…mmmm!

The Mac & Cheese pancetta sandwich. Essentially a delicious grilled cheese sandwich. In case you want the recipe:

1 cup elbow macaroni
3 tablespoons butter, divided
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour 
1/2 cup milk
2 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup (2 ounces) Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese, shredded 
1/4 cup (1 ounce) Wisconsin Asiago Cheese, shredded
1/4 cup (1 ounce) Wisconsin Romano Cheese, shredded 
2 tablespoons olive oil 
1/2 pound pancetta, thinly sliced
12 slices bread

In large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions; drain well and set aside. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in flour until well combined. Gradually whisk in milk and cook, whisking constantly, until incorporated, 1-2 minutes. Stir in cream cheese, then gradually whisk in Cheddar, Asiago and Romano, a handful at a time, until smooth, about 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat; add cheese sauce to pasta and stir.Heat remaining butter in grill pan over medium-high heat. Place 2 slices pancetta on one side of sourdough bread, top with generous scoop of prepared macaroni and cheese and then top with another slice of bread to create a sandwich. Repeat with remaining slices of bread and macaroni and cheese to make six sandwiches.Place sandwich in pan and grill, flipping once, until bread is golden and filling is heated through, about 2-3 minutes per side.

So, I wish you luck in trying this, and I say, enjoy!

Chewy & Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

I found a new recipe on Pinterest, and when I tried it, and I made it my own, they ended up being really awesome. The recipe:

2 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 and 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup light brown sugar, loosely packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips or chocolate chunks

Toss together the flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.

In a medium size bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the egg, then the egg yolk. Finally, whisk in the vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together with a large spoon or rubber spatula.Preheat the oven to 325F degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.Roll the dough into balls, about 1 Tablespoons of dough each. Bake the cookies for 11-12 minutes. The cookies will look very soft and underbaked. They will continue to bake on the cookie sheet. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Now, the recipe, when written by the original author said to put the dough in the fridge for 2 hours, but I was like, forget that noise, and I just put them in the oven, and they turned out crazy awesome. Like, super crazy awesome. I doubled the recipe, and it made about 40 cookies, which I don’t regret at all. And instead of doing 2 cups of chocolate chips, I did 1 cup of milk chocolate chips, and 1 cup of a chocolate bar I brought back from Germany, that we chopped into chunks. That was a great addition.

 

They are big, and great, and fantastic and soft and I think everyone should try these.

Day 25–Chicken Pot Pie

Today I was on BYU campus, to sign up for something, and since it was about noon, I grabbed lunch with a friend that teaches there. We went to the restaurant in the museum, and it was pretty good. I ordered this chicken pot pie, that was actually pretty small, and it was crazy delicious.

Look how fancy that looks! It was really good, too. I’m glad I chose it.

Day 24–Organization

Organizing makes me happy. I love to clean, I love to make everything have a place, and look awesome, if it can. Yesterday, I read a new way of being able to organize scarves, and since I have a few, I thought it would be a great idea, so today, I put it into action. You just use shower curtain hangers, and use those on a hanger to hold them.

I used two hangers there, because using one, the one was hanging pretty low from all the weight, but two was fine. This is great, and takes up less room, and that makes me happy too.

Day 23–A Small Mistake

Today when I went grocery shopping at Target, I was looking at the limes, to see their prices. I don’t know if everyone knows this, but there’s a lime shortage right now. There are a few reasons why, but for the time being, the prices are high. So I was over looking, and I noticed something a little…off.

Limes, $0.69 cents! But wait…these are lemons! I laughed as I noticed the sales signs were all one off. The oranges being called lemons, the limes had the signs for the oranges. I laughed a little, and would have gotten a picture of all of them, but a lady behind me actually wanted to buy some, so I got out of the way. But that definitely made me chuckle a little.

Day 22–Cookie Gets a Haircut

I love so much when Cookie gets a haircut. She is such a scraggly dog, she can look so homeless so quickly. I’ve let it lapse here a little longer than I normally do, so she’s been looking so awful! I got her in for a haircut this morning, and when I picked her up, she looked so fabulous.

It’s hard to get a good pic of this dog, she is so weird around cameras. This is the best I could do, while getting her neck kerchief in it. She does look way better, and this is the time I like to snuggle her, because she’s clean and smells nice, haha. I’ll have to make her get her hair cut more regularly!

Day 21–Tepanyaki

Tonight for dinner, Husband and I went to dinner with some family, we went to Sakura. When we go to places like this, he gets sushi, and I get the tepanyaki grill. I love this. I love watching it, I love their skill, and it makes me so happy. I snapped a pic of my favorite part last night – the onion train.

Really, all you can see here is fire, but it’s so fun to see them set it ablaze, and then choo-choo it along like it’s a train. It was so delicious and fun!

Day 20–New Shoes, New Shoes

There’s nothing better than putting on a new pair of shoes. And for me, running shoes are just as important, since I ask them to take care of my feet as I put them to the ultimate test. Today, I started the break in process on a new pair of shoes. I love the color of these.

Love them. These make me happy.

Day 19–Magnets

With recently leaving my job, I had to bring home all the stuff I had accumulated for the last few years. One of these things is magnets. I collect magnets. When I go on a trip, I get one. When someone goes on a trip, they bring me one. I didn’t even realize how many I had until I put them on my own fridge.

It took up over half of my fridge door! It makes me so happy to look at it.

Day 18–Troop

Today is both a happy and a sad day. This happy is about my first dog, Troop. My family has had many dogs, since I was a child, but Trooper was my own dog. She was a tiny dog that never grew very tall. Here’s one of my favorite pics of her:

She was so good about keeping that tiny hat on her head. This morning, in sad news, I had to take her to the vet to put her down. She’s been my dog since I was a junior in high school. so really, a long time. She’s been going downhill a little, and it was time for her to pass on. It was a really hard thing to do, but I know she’s in a better place. And I’m sure she’s up in doggy heaven, hanging out, running around.

Day 17–Family

Today, we had my niece’s baby blessing, and afterward, we took family photo. We’re all a bunch of weirdos, but that just makes things fun.

You can’t tell in this picture, but we gave the baby a Nerf gun to hold. Just because.

A close up. She’s tough.

SLC Half Marathon 2014

Today was the SLC half marathon. I have done basically no preparing for this. I ran 8 miles a couple of weeks ago, and that’s about it. But I woke up and was prepared for it. We got to the race with maybe 6 minutes to go. Trax took FOREVER.

It wasn’t raining this year, so already, things are improving after last year’s debacle. The weather was nice, and I enjoyed the race, for the most part. When we got to mile 8, PJ hit a wall, and couldn’t run anymore. We kept slowing down and down and down until I could no longer stand it, and I had to leave her behind and run. I sped up, and finished the race, and was so tired. When I got to mile 12, I kept chanting, (Out loud, of course) “1 mile left. 1 mile left.” and then, when I got near the end, I just kept saying “I can see it, I can see it” when I could see the finish line. I finished, and got my sweet medal, and then drank a half a bottle of water in one gulp. I was so tired and grimy, and I was glad the race was over. We were pretty smiley at the end though.

This is after we cooled down and stretched, and didn’t feel like dying anymore.

Day 16–Race Medals

Today, race medals are making me happy. It’s an amazing feeling to get finished with a race, and have a medal there at the end, letting you know how awesome you are for even attempting to race it. I got my race medal today, and felt awesome (not at the time, I felt like dying). But I am so glad I finished and it’s over.

A House Decorated

Today, when I got home from work, I saw this as soon as I drove up.

I was like, what? What is this? I got out of my car, and started walking towards the door, and that’s when I noticed the window.

You can’t really read it, but it was all nice things. Also, my favorite sign:

Is there anything better than the way children spell words? No. But this was a really nice end of a good day of work, but a hard day of work. I appreciate my sisters in law for thinking of me today. 

A Farewell

Today, I said goodbye to the company I have worked at for the last 8 years. It was a hard decision to make, but I know I’m making the right one. I haven’t been really sad about saying goodbye to the work/company, but I will miss seeing my friends every day, most specifically Chelle. She made today a really special day for me today, though, and I will be so grateful for that forever. After a delicious breakfast at Jamba, we went to lunch at Ho Hut. You pick the ingredients you want in your stir fry, and they cook it up for you’'.

Then you have a delicious meal!

That afternoon, we had some Death by Chocolate cake:

And it was yummy! Cleaning out my desk took a while, and it was really sad to see everything come down. Finally, the day ended, and I had helping taking my stuff out to my car. Then, with a few farewell hugs, it was over. I will miss my friends there, and miss seeing them every day. But I am excited to see where this new chapter of my life is going to take me. I hope it’ll be a great new beginning.

Day 15–Race Bibs

There is something really great about picking up your race bib, and seeing what number you have. It’s awesome to see what kind of shirt is included, and it just makes me so happy to have a race. Tomorrow, I’ll be running the SLC half marathon, and tonight, I picked up my packet.

4818 tomorrow. Hopefully, I won’t die!

Day 14 - Successful Hair

Today, my thing that makes me happy is when I can successfully do my hair in one try. Today, I had my hair in a ponytail, and (like it usually does) I started getting a headache in the afternoon. I took the ponytail out, and attempted a braid. It actually worked, without a mirror, the first try. I asked Chelle to take a pic, of course.

Besides the middle where it looks like it veers off into scoliosis, it ended up working out for me, and that makes me happy. I’m so worrisome about everything, so I take so long with my hair every day, because I want to be presentable, so when something happens and it works quickly like this, it brings a smile to my face.

Day 13–Pedicures

This is a day of happy that turned sour. My thing that I was going to be happy about was a pedicure. I love to get them. They make me happy, and my feet look pretty, and I just love them. I’ve been trying to find a new place, because lately, the places that I go are just annoying. The people don’t listen to me, and they make me so upset when I get done. So today, Chelle and I got pedicures, and we went to a new place, in Provo, near the mall. We get there, and the place is empty, which at first, I was like, hey, we happened to get here at a good time! We choose our nail colors, and take a seat. First of all, my seat is so uncomfortable, I can’t even talk about how it was. The massage on the chair was just awkwardly sticking out, so sitting in it, it hurt my back so much. I tell her from the get go, “please don’t cut my nails too short. It hurts, and I don’t like it, and I am sick of people cutting them, so please, only cut them to here” and I specified. She says, yes, it’s not good for the nails to be too short, so we’ll not do that. So then, as she’s taking off the old polish, she can’t get it off, and she finally gives up, and decides to take it off with a drill. This is after she gave me a lecture about how someone that had previously done my nails had filled them with a drill too much. Spoiler alert: nobody ever has ever taken a drill to my feet. This lady is the first. So then, she decides right then to cut my nails, and what does she do? She cuts them way too short. And then, she doesn’t file them, but she’s digging UNDER MY TOENAIL with a little tool, and it hurts. I straight up tell her it hurts, and she then gets mad at me! Like it’s my fault! She’s like, well, there’s bacteria, so… And I say, well, it hurts because you people cut my nails too short, and then poke under them, and it makes them hurt, and I am sick of it. She spent most of the time talking to her other person in Vietnamese. I hate when they do that. So then, she puts on the polish, and then puts on some lotion. As she’s lotioning, she’s lecturing me on the wrong and right foods to eat, and I’m like, this is ridiculous. Finally, finally, I was finished, with my crappy uneven nails.

I hate this place. I am never going back. My toes look awful. I am unhappy.

Day 12–Shenanigans

Today, my day of happy is doing silly things at work. Chelle is so good at doing the most random, awesome, fun things at the drop of a hat. Last week, I read on the internet that in the state of Utah, a lot of schools were going to do an earthquake drill at 10:15 today. So naturally, I put it in my calendar, and set an alarm. At 5 minutes to, I got a heads up that the alarm was going to go off. Then, at 10:15, the alarm rung, and we dove under our desks. We stayed there for a minute or so, making sure that the quaking had stopped, and then, we tentatively came out. Of course, we were laughing the whole time, and then we realized we needed to get pictures of this.

Thanks, Chelle, for practicing earthquake preparedness today!

Day 11–Magazines

My happy thing today is magazines. I have a couple of subscriptions, and otherwise, my mama buys the trashy magazines, and I get her leftovers. I love just relaxing with a stack of magazines.

I get to read all of these now…and I look forward to every minute of it.

Miscellaneous Monday

On Saturday night, we switched the turning of our ceiling fans. During the winter, we reverse the turn so that instead of making it cooler in here, it makes it warmer (I don’t get it, but I’m told that’s how it works). So, we switched them, and as soon as they started spinning the other way, SO MUCH DUST came flying down at us! We had to vacuum it all up, and I was dying laughing. I had no idea that could happen!

Today, I took Cookie to my parent’s house, to look around. We’ll be going out of town next month, so we’ll have my parents look after her. So, in she went, and took a look at my parents dogs, and immediately didn’t care for any of that. The puppy is too young and wants to play, and Cookie doesn’t like that. The other dog is too big and Cookie gets stepped on, and she doesn’t like that. She acts like a princess, which just makes me laugh. I’ll have her over there a few times to acclimate, and then, she’ll be there for a long time, alone, with the other dogs. I can’t wait to see what she does.

That magical time of year is upon us. The weather is warming, the bees are buzzing, and my TV shows are airing their finales. I’m jazzed this year, because I am so far behind on everything. Since we went on vacation, I’ve had 3 of every show I watch on the DVR. I’m in no rush to see them, for the most part, except for my shows! I am 2 weeks behind on Cougar Town, and I want to watch them all right now! But I watch them in order of what they record, or else I’d pick favorites and let everything pile up. I can’t wait until I’m all caught up. I’m guessing…July.

Day 10–To Do!

Today, my 100 Days of Happy is a weird thing. I like to-do lists.

I love to write down the things I plan on doing. Especially when Husband goes out of town, I make a to-do list to keep me busy. Not that I need it, but I really enjoy it. So, I expect to get a lot of use out of my new awesome to-do list pad (that I made with Chelle, and I love it) this week while Husband is gone. Plus, I get so much satisfaction from crossing something off.

Day 9–Sloth Noises

Sloths seem to be having a moment. I blogged a while ago about Kristen Bell and her love of sloths, and since then, people seem to love them. My sister sent me this video the other day, and holy cow, it is so cute!

Seriously, this is so cute! It made me laugh and I kind of want to cuddle one. That’s legal, right?

PS I don't know if this is right, in the spirit of 100 Days of Happy, since you're supposed to take a picture and then go from there, so I hope this still counts. 

Foto Friday

Tonight, we went to Village Inn for dinner, and I ordered pancakes, as one of the key things they do is breakfast. I had read this thing on the internet that said a really good way to eat a stack of pancakes is to cut a hole in the middle, and pour a bunch of syrup in there. So, I gave that a go.

It was certainly an interesting way to eat them! Basically, this makes the bottom pancake pretty soggy, the top one has syrup, but the middle one is dry. 4/10 – would not eat this way again.

Day 8–Phone Covers

Today, when I got home from work, I had a package! Yay! I opened it up to find this beauty inside:

I love phone covers. I search for them on Amazon.com all the time. I order so many that sometimes, people talk of having an intervention. I find really cheap ones, between $2-$5 dollars. They’re super cheap, but they come from China, so they take a really long time to get here, so it’s always a surprise when they come, because I’ve forgotten about it by then. This definitely makes me happy.

Day 7–Stamp & Chat

Today I had Stamp & Chat, given by Chelle. This is something that genuinely makes me happy. It gives me hope that someday maybe I can invent my own cards, plus it’s how I make cards to give to people, since I can’t make enough on my own! Tonight’s cards were literally some of the most adorable I’ve ever seen and made.

ADORABLE!

Day 6–Dinner

My happiness of day 6 is making dinner. Husband and I are lazy creatures. After working all day, when we come home, we just want to eat an easy dinner, so we go out most of the time. Occasionally. we’ll be craving something specific, and cook a dinner, but honestly, we usually just get something to go. Tonight, though, we got to make an easy dinner, and it was really good.

Homemade pizza! It’s not totally homemade, it’s a Pillsbury crust, but otherwise, those things were made by these hands. I didn’t know what came first, the toppings or the cheese, so I guessed toppings. It worked out.

Maybe I should do them both, under the veggies and on top of, so I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Otherwise, it was pretty good.

Day 5–Card Making

Today, my happy thing is also something that frustrates me. I like cards. They’re kind of fun to make, and they’re pretty easy once you know what to do. But when I try to think of a card, I can’t make good ones. I’m not being humble here; it’s legitimately something I can’t do. I don’t have the brain that makes that work. I can make a card if I copy another person’s work, or if someone has already put the idea together, but I can’t make one of my own accord. I have these 2 cards to make for card club, and these are the two I made:

The cowboy one wasn’t too bad. I had a template, I had a paper pack that let me know what colors went together, and I just had to put them together. The sympathy card is the bane of my existence. I struggled the other day with it, and I had draaaaama trying to put one together. Finally, I copied a card off the internet, and finished. Now, I have 3 months until I need to make more. I’m taking some time to cool down and then I’ll start.

Day 4–Cookie

Today, my 100 day of Happy is Cookie. I know that little dog drives me crazy sometimes, and she is annoying, and always wants a cuddle, but I’ll be danged if I don’t think she’s a cutie. She’s my tiny friend, and we hang out together. Plus it makes me feel good when I come home from work, and she’s so jazzed to see me.

Sorry for my legs in this picture, I was wearing shorts.

Miscellaneous Monday

Last Friday, Captain America: Winter Soldier came out, and Husband was so jazzed to see it. We had to pick up his brother from the airport, landing at 10:30, and then they had the great idea to go see it afterwards, at an 11:00 showing. Since I don’t do well with being up late, I vetoed this, but was ignored. On the way to the airport to get him, I fell asleep, with it being after 10 and everything. We made it to the movie, and I was so tired. I don’t think I fell asleep during the movie, but I sure was close. I kept having to close my eyes because they were just so tired!

On Friday evening also, we went out for dinner to Macaroni Grill. We ate the same things – shared the same appetizer, took a bite of each other’s meals, and even ordered the same drink (Blood orange lemonade, yum!) and then went home. After we’d been home about 20 minutes, we both got really sick. Like...awful sick. We spent the rest of the evening laying down, regretting all of our choices, but then we had to buck up and go pick up his brother. I basically lay my seat down in the car, and just lay there, willing my stomach to stop hurting. Luckily, I had no other problems after that, but I still felt awful all night. Curse you, Macaroni Grill!

We tried last night to break Cookie of her cage. Since we’ve had her this last (almost!) year, we’ve slowly introduced her to being a regular dog. At her old residence, she lived 24/7 in a cage, only coming out to go to the bathroom. When we got her, we would keep her in the cage during the day, let her out in the evenings when we came home from work, and then put her back in when we went to bed. Over time, the time she’s been left out has increased, and then a little bit ago, the only time she was going into her cage is when we went to sleep – she finally had earned our trust enough to be out when we were at work. So finally, this weekend, we decided to let her stay out at night. So, I did the normal night routine when we were putting her to bed, only I didn’t put her in the cage. She immediately tried to sleep in our bed. We took her out, put her in the cage, but didn’t lock it. She came right back. We set up a bed for her with blankets, and left her. I woke up this morning with her in our bed. So now, back to the drawing board. I don’t want her to be in my bed at night, but leaving her in the cage makes me sad too. I’ll figure something out.

Day 3–Ginger Ale

Today, my stomach hurts. I don’t know if I ate something that isn’t agreeing with me, or something wasn’t good, or maybe I just ate too much (I don’t think I did though…) but tonight, things aren’t going well for me. To try and combat this and feel better, I’m drinking this:

Ginger ale is making me happy right now.

Cookie Dough Cupcakes

I made a treat to bring to a family dinner, we were eating after we watched General Conference. I had found this recipe a while ago, on yourcupofcake.com, and made them myself. The ingredients are:

1 box White Cake mix
3 eggs
1/3 cup oil
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup mini chocolate chips

Cookie Dough Frosting
1 1/2 cup butter, softened
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 pinch salt
2 TB milk
2-3 cup powdered sugar
Mini Chocolate Chips (for decoration)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line pan with cupcake liners. In a large bowl, combine eggs, oil milk, sour cream and vanilla extract until smooth. Stir in cake mix and chocolate chips. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full and bake for 15-20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cookie Dough Frosting: Beat butter. Add vanilla extract, flour, brown sugar and salt and beat again. Add in about a tablespoon of milk, and 2 cups of powdered sugar. Add more milk and powdered sugar, until you reach your desired consistency. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes and top with mini chocolate chips.

This isn’t too hard – thank goodness, and they really taste like cookie dough, yum.

I picked the wrong frosting tip, because they ended up looking pretty gross, but they taste good, and that’s all that matters!

Day 2 - Crush It

Today,m for my second day of 100 days of happy is candy crush. I know people think this game is dumb, and believe me, I know it is, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still love it. It makes me happy to play, and it’s a good thing to do for a few minutes when you’re looking to kill some time. The levels vary from easy to nearly impossible. When I can’t pass a level, I get mad, but for the most part, it’s just so fun when I beat a level that I keep on playing through the hard levels to feel the sense of victory.

It’s fun to play on my phone, and it’s fun to play on my iPad. It just makes me…happy.

Day 1 - 100 Days of Happy

So there’s this thing that starts today, a 100 Days of Happy. People are doing it on Facebook or Instagram, but I’ve decided to do it here. Basically, you take a picture of something that makes you happy, and post it. That’s it. Chelle got me into it, and we’ll see if I can find 100 things in a row that make me happy. I bet I can! My first one is:

Sugar. Cupcakes. Cakes. Cookies. Cakebites. I like all of these things. I know they’re not particularly healthy and you know what? I don’t care. I like them, and they make me happy.

E-Money Meets the Inspector

Tonight, E-money came over with her parent’s for dinner. We put her up on the bed to lay down/sleep while we played a game. As we were doing that, we thought it would be funny for her and the Inspector to “meet”. So they did, and promptly got into a wrestling match. Inspector won, though.

But it was a well fought battle. I kind of can’t wait for her to grow up and me to show her that picture so she can say, “you guys were really weird”, and I’ll agree with her.

Pinewood Derby

Today was the pinewood derby for my scouts. Even though I’ve been in scouts for 2-3 years now, this is my first time ever going to the derby, and there’s a good reason for that. See, they usually have it in March, right around my anniversary, so I miss it, since we’re out of town. But this year, it’s in April, and I got to go! I sort of volunteered to make treats/was volunteered, so it worked out pretty well. I made some awesome treats:

Traffic Light brownies

Rice Krispy cars:

And then I just did some miscellaneous treats, and they were exciting. Finally, tonight, I went over to the church, and set everything up:

I liked it! I thought it looked really good, and I like the signs I ended up making. I was pretty proud of all the stuff I did, and everyone seemed to enjoy them too, so it was a good deal all around!