Foto Friday

Last night, I had an interesting meal for dinner. As I was in the middle of eating it, I realized, of course I should take a picture, and show it to others! Sadly, I had already finished one part of it, but I can still describe. As I’ve said before, Husband has left me to my own devices this week. Usually, when we’re home together, we make a dinner, it has many food groups represented, and it takes time to make. For instance, the Monday night before he left, we had chicken, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Delish. Tuesday night, my first alone, I had a Totinos pizza (well, half of one) and a bag of steamed mixed vegetables, but I only ate about half the bag. Then Wednesday, I had a salad and a bologna sandwich. So last night, I thought I’d eat my leftovers, so for dinner, I ate leftover mashed potatoes, leftover vegetables, and the leftover 2 slices of the mini pizza. It was delicious, but a very odd combination. But I felt pretty healthy, having eaten vegetables for the 3 days while he was gone. Usually when I’m alone, all I eat is mac&cheese, so at least I’m growing up a little. Ha, that’s not true. Anyway, here’s my plate (minus the pizza)

Delish!

Chai Spice Cupcakes

I found this delightful recipe on Twitter a week or so ago, and decided to make it. Husband is out of town right now, which leaves me with ample time to do what I’d like, one of them being baking. I could do it anytime, but I like to bake when I’m home by myself, and I can sing at the top of my lungs, and dance around the kitchen with no one to judge me. So I set my speakers on high, and got to baking.

This recipe called for tea – so I had to do something I’ve never done before, steep tea bags. For those that don’t know (and I didn’t, I had to Google it) steeping is when you put the tea bags into hot water (I used milk, for baking purposes of course) and then let them sit for a little, maybe even dipping the bag up and down. Doing that made my hands smell delicious, especially after I had to squeeze out the bags to retain all the milk.

Then you just make the cake like normal, and fill up the cups. I used a cream cheese frosting to round it all out, and it tasted pretty good.

After I had done all the baking, frosting, etc, I realized, I didn’t have any cinnamon! (Even though I SWEAR I had some, I couldn’t find it) So I set the cupcakes aside, and went to the store to get some cinnamon. The one I found had really big holes for the cinnamon to come out of, which made the ‘cakes look a little weird, but I still did those. And this, my friends, is the final product:

So there they are, Chai Spice Cupcakes. They are pretty good, but they’re a really dense cake, they almost taste like a muffin. The recipe made 24 cupcakes, plus about 10 mini cupcakes. I’m looking to give these cupcakes away – so I don’t have to eat them all myself. Because if I had the chance – I probably would.

Stamping & Chatting

Every month, Chelle holds a Stamp & Chat. For those who have not heard of this, it’s a class in which she teaches those of us who come to make cards. It’s 3 cards that we make, and of course, there is a theme to the cards each month. I’ve blogged about Stamp & Chat before, long ago, but here I am, again, so deal with it. Chelle is freaking amazing at all things stamping, creative, card-making, etc, whereas I am like a 3rd grader. I have to helped along at every turn, and walked through everything, and she just zips along, so quickly at everything that I do slowly. But I improve, slowly, and I work at it still.

Last night was Stamp & Chat. It’s usually held on Wednesdays, but this time, we had it on a Tuesday due to conflicting schedules. It was a lot of fun, and the treats afterwards were delicious.

And these are the cards from last night. The theme this month is “Thanks”, which I love to make thank you cards, as I believe they will come in handy later. I don’t give out too many of my cards. I’ve been attending S&C for a while now, and I’ve only given out about a handful of these cards. Its because I work so hard on them, I don’t know that someone else will appreciate the effort I’ve done here. So I have my cards, and I hoard them like crazy. I keep thinking I’ll start to give them out, but so far, I still just like keeping them. I’m just selfish, I suppose…

Things I’d Like

Well, we’re 8 days into the month, and so far, I’m already out of things to blog about. Doing this every day sucks all of the ideas out of me, but today, I have one that I just thought of. It took me a while, but I think I have a very interesting topic. It’s called: Animals I’d Like to Have.

The first one is a Munchkin Kitten -

Come on, how cute is this?! I don’t even like cats, but this is cute, so I would like one. But once it grows up, it might be a regular cat, and I wouldn’t like it anymore, but come on. This is a cute cat. I’m name him Mr. Mittens. (unless it was a girl, then Miss Mittens. Obviously she’s not married)

The second one is a turtle. But a specific turtle -

Its a small one! The size of a grape – which is too cute. Now, I fully realize that with an animal this small, the chances of me stepping on it or losing it are high, but if I kept him in a tiny cage, he’d be ok. I’d call him Tuttle.

And finally, we come to these two -

I would like to have penguins, but if I had them, I’d like to put them in tiny sweaters, like these. I know that they don’t necessarily need sweaters, being from Antarctica and such, but nothing makes a cute animal cuter than having clothing on. And on a slightly serious note, the reason these particular penguins have the sweaters on is because the little guys were involved in an oil spill. And the sweaters were knitted by an Australian Relief Society. I thought that was pretty cool – so I especially wanted these. I’d probably get 2 penguins, and I’d name them Zippy and Brigitte. What a fancy couple they’d make.

Now, I realize that all of these animals are just small and cute, but I like my animals small and cuties. When an animal is too big, I’m just like…meh. I get the appeal of the big animal, and sometimes, I like to cuddle with a big dog sometimes, but usually, I like my animals small and able to be held in my arms. So if anyone is looking for ideas of Christmas gifts for me…

Miscellaneous Monday

Today, I woke up before the alarm went off. I couldn’t get back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. You know, doing the things that you usually do…fake that you didn’t wake up, in case your body can be tricked, I just lay there with eyes closed, not moving, hoping to fall back asleep. I didn’t want to look at the clock, because I didn’t want to know how much time I had before the alarm clock went off. If its too close to the time, usually I just say, screw going back to sleep, I guess I’ll get up. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally gave up and looked at the clock. Yup…4:30. I had at least an hour of sleeping before I had to wake up! So I tried…and tried…and I think I may have fallen asleep for a while. But dang it that I woke up in the first place.

I have finished with a little more of my house painting! Slowly but surely, I will finish it. This weekend, we finished painting the laundry room, and I finished painting the trim in the kitchen. Now all we have left is a stairwell, and a little section in the upstairs. Its so close…so close… I can feel it…

I got my towels back! I came home from grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon, and there they were, just sitting on the couch in the living room. Now, does this mean that they came into my house while I wasn’t there? Yes it does, but I’m not focusing on that, instead, I’m just glad that I got back my few bathroom towels, hand towels, and a few kitchen towels. (Seriously, how did they “not realize” that they had taken this many towels? And what were they doing with my kitchen towels anyway?)

Husband has a cold/flu right now that manifested itself yesterday. I had a tiny cold like, 2 weeks ago, so he claims that I must have given to him, but he’s wrong. He couldn’t really stand up (which means I braved church alone, what up? *high five*) and he was so out of it all day. And he kept cracking “jokes” that he thought were funny, so he’d say one, laugh at it until he coughed, then lay still like he died. And I was trying to be nice, and do things for him, get him things, but I was also avoiding him like crazy to make sure I didn’t catch anything. That’s a tricky line – helpful avoidance. I hope it wasn’t obvious what I was doing.

And that's the end.

Well, tonight, RSL had the Western Conference final. They played against the LA Galaxy to see who would be going onto the MLS Cup. The game was at LA, sadly, and I just couldn't afford to go, but that would have been amazing. But I set the TiVo for the game, and settled in to watch.

The teams were pretty evenly matched. LA scored first, and we scored within 5 minutes. We stayed 1-1 until the end of the first half. When the game resumed, everyone was playing really well, and I actually didn't know who would win. After about 20 minutes, LA scored-dang it! Then a few minutes later, they score again- the score was now 3-1. RSL fought and fought and sadly, never came back. The game ended, LA 3. RSL 1.

It sucks that we lost, but at least we played well in the last game. I would have loved to go onto the final again, but this year it just wasn't meant to be. And now, the season is over. There are no more games - which is actually ok, because now its getting too cold to sit at games. But hopefully, we'll regroup in the off-season, and come back better than ever. And next year, we'll win the Cup!

If Only I Could Invent My Own…

I love ice cream. Really, I love all sugary treats, (Well, for the most part. There are a few that I just don’t like) but ice cream…mmm. The great thing about ice cream is you can eat it even if you’re full, because it just kinda fills in the little cracks, because it’s all soft and melty. So even if you ate a big dinner, eating a little ice cream makes everything ok still.

I really like the Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, for many reasons, one of them being that they come in those little individual containers. I know, the serving size of one of those things says its like, 4, but really, its not for 4 people. Its for one, maybe two. There are a lot of delicious flavors, but I really like a few, them being:

This is a really good kind. It’s a vanilla ice cream, with fudge-covered potato chip clusters. Those are crazy – you’re eating a little chocolate ball, and once you bite into it, its Lay’s potato chips. It messes with your mind, but boy is it delicious. I recommend. Another good kind:

This one is awesome – it’s vanilla ice cream with a caramel swirl, and fudge-covered waffle cone pieces. (Wow, I just realized how similar these two ice creams are. Hmm.) When this one first came out (a few years ago) it was really hard to find, I could only find it at like, one Albertsons in Orem, and only once a month or so. But now you can find it anywhere, which is great, because it is delicious.

Tonight, I tried a new flavor of the B&J ice cream. It is:

This is so good. I love me some pumpkin cheesecake, because of the Olive Garden one, and this one doesn’t disappoint. I think the only thing that could make it better is if I added whipped cream to some bites, but maybe that would be sweet overkill. I recommend all of these flavors, but there are so many more that are also good. If you haven’t ever had a flavor of theirs, I say, stop waiting, and go get some post haste, and I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed, no matter what kind you get.