Terrific Tuesday!

I am considering doing some changes to post order throughout the week. I'm thinking about switching to posting like this:

Tuesday- What's for Dinner
Wednesday- Scrappy Wednesday
Friday-Style Files/Update posts

I think this will just be better for my busy life. Haha. So starting on Friday/next week be looking out for a new post schedule!

As for what I've been up to... not much! I went to Salvation Army yesterday and scored a fantastic dress for five dollars. You'll get to see it on Friday in my style file. :)

Brad has been working on school a lot lately because he had his first project thing due yesterday. He has his first exam next monday, so we'll see how all of that turns out for him.

I applied to a bunch of jobs yesterday, but haven't heard anything from any of them. Oh well, such is life I suppose!

Today my plan is to make the bread, go to good will (i'm on the prowl for a few items, mostly a brown belt I can put around my waist for a few of my shirts and a black cardigan), workout, finally do my last page for my "Our First Two Years" scrapbook, and then start of editing and ordering prints to start my Australia scrapbook. So excited to start working on it. I'm guessing it shouldn't take me too long. I do have a lot of photos, but they're easily grouped together and will be lots of fun to put together. Looking forward to starting it, I suppose. :)

Have a terrific Tuesday!

What's for Dessert 2-7-11

Ok... so this one is a dessert! Probably one of my favorites that I've found. I modified the recipe a bit from Betty Crocker. So I am going to give you the original recipe and tell you how I modified it.

Cookie Dough Brownies 

1	box (1 lb 1.6 oz) Betty Crocker® turtle Premium brownie mix
	Water, vegetable oil and egg called for on brownie mix box
1	roll (16.5 oz) Pillsbury® refrigerated chocolate chip cookies
1	container (16 oz) Betty Crocker® Rich & Creamy chocolate frosting, if desired

	Print these coupons...
	About Concordance™

1. Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pan). Grease bottom and sides of 13x9-inch pan with shortening or cooking spray. See Kitchen Tip regarding disposable foil pan. Set caramel pouch from brownie mix aside. In large bowl, stir brownie mix, water, oil and egg with spoon until well blended. Spread half of batter in pan.
2. Break cookie dough into small pieces. Sprinkle pieces evenly over brownie batter in pan; lightly press into batter. Open pouch of caramel from brownie mix; squeeze caramel between pieces of cookie dough, using entire pouch. Spoon remaining brownie batter over caramel and cookie dough.
3. Bake 34 to 38 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely, about 1 1/2 hours.
4. Frost with chocolate frosting. For brownies, cut into 8 rows by 6 rows.

 Ok, first, I disregarded the brands in the recipe. I usually prefer Duncan Diens to Betty Crocker, but don't tell anyone! I also just used great value cookie dough. Other than that, just prepare the brownies as directed on the package.

 For the love of all things, I don't know how they made these brownies with one box of mix in a 9 x 13 pan. When I make a big batch (like for our small group once) I used two boxes because one definitely was not even remotely enough. But since I'm making a smaller batch, I used one box and a 9 x 9 pan instead of a 9 x 13. These get more cookie doughy, but I like it that way. :) Put half of the batter in the greased pan.

 Now crumble up your cookie dough like so and put it on top of the brownie batter. Push it down a bit to really get it in there. If you like more of a brownie texture use only about half of the roll of cookie dough.

 Then take the caramel pack that comes with the brownies...

 And squeeze it over the cookie dough.

Top it off with the rest of the brownies. Bake it for about 45 min, but definitely start checking it at about 35 minutes. I frosted these with butter cream frosting. But you can use whatever frosting you like, or just leave them plain. Enjoy them! I did. They're so moist and yummy! Definitely my favorite incarnation of brownies I've had in a while.

Style File 2-5-11

I finally had a decent day for a photo shoot! I'm still working on getting decent photos.

We had a teaser on Wednesday because it was 68 degrees outside. On Thursday (when I shot these photos) it was a mere 35 degrees. But despite the much colder temp, I wanted to wear a skirt that reminded me of spring. So here's what I came up with!

 I really just love how comfy leggings are. In truth, I hardly ever wear this skirt without tights or leggings because I feel really exposed when I wear it bare legged.   But I think it looks smashing with the leggings and belt. :) Also, I love skirts with pockets.

Don't try this at home! Haha. I took this one to show off my shoes a bit. They're just basic black flats. :)

 

This was actually an outtake photo, but I thought I would use it to discuss my belt. Haha. I like this belt, it's probably my favorite. It's stretchy and goes with just about anything I want to make it go with. Plus I like how wide it is. I have this weird thing about skinny belts. I feel like I'm not dainty enough to wear a thin belt. I'm weird, I know. The necklace I rescued from a pile of junk my grandma was going to get rid of and the earrings were my moms. I guess that means both pieces are vintage?

And lastly I wanted to show off my hair a bit. I was in the mood to play around, so I curled it all up and pinned it up. It's kinda off to the side and I can't decide if it needs to be over more so it looks like I did it on purpose or what. But I liked the end result, I think.

Blue long sleeved tee JC Penny

Earrings: Vintage

Necklace: Vintage

Skirt: Old Navy

Belt: H & M

Leggings: Kohls

Shoes: Kohls

Scrappy Wednesday 2-2-11

Can't believe it's February already! Today's pages are from my college graduation weekend. These particular pictures are from the festivities the night before graduation. The Ivy Cutting Ceremony and the Awards Banquet. I had lots of fun with these pages. I just discovered how to do "layers" on my cricut, so that's how I got the big flower thingies on there. They took a lot of time, but I think they look pretty darn awesome! The squared are just punched with a square punch and the lettering are "Spare Parts" Alphabet Brads. Again I incorporated the program from the two events to preserve them. I like to use things like that so I can keep a memento, but not clutter up my life.

Tweetific Tuesday!

Ok, so... I am on twitter now. I won't lie, it's mostly so I can attract traffic to here. Not sure how I'm going to accomplish that though, considering I don't have any followers. So you should follow me on twitter. :)

I haven't done any scrapbooking for about two weeks. Mostly because I've been feeling lazy, but also because I'm down to my last two pages for this scrapbook. Then I can move on to scrapping Australia, but for some reason I always lose motivation to finish a project. I think it's because I enjoy particular projects so much I don't want them to end? Maybe I'm weird.

I have been reading for fun lately. Something I don't do while I'm in school because I have to do so much heavy reading for class. I'm reading Agatha Christie novels, mostly. I like them. I'm also planning on re-reading some of the classics I read in high school to see if I can glean a better understanding of them. I've currently got Fahrenheit 451 checked out. It's one of my favorites (it's on my list of top ten books!). I haven't read it since I was 15 so I'm sure I'll appreciate it more now.

I'm also going to shamelessly plug this website: Eat Better America I love it.  They have tons of recipes, most of which I've had grand success with. I particularly enjoy the "healthified" versions of some of my favorite things. I've made the healthified pumpkin bread (which is my favorite recipe I've ever made. Perfect texture for pumpkin bread!) and the healthified oatmeal raisin cookies (just last night, actually). The reviews are always pretty helpful. But yeah, I recommend this site. Always has the nutrition facts and are generally delicious. So go there and use their recipes often.

Hmm... what else to update you on? We had a friend of Brad's stay the weekend (he's a friend from high school). The boys went to the aquarium and to a hockey game. I just wasn't feeling too great so I skipped both things. I wanted to go but I was really really tired. I was wondering if I had a little bug that I was fighting off. I did have a 99 temp off and on all weekend. But I'm feeling much better now. I plan to get back at running today (yesterday I was lazy and chose to do No More Trouble Zones instead). Fun times!

Anyway, follow me on twitter and i'll follow you!  Have a Tweetific Tuesday!

EDIT:
I am aware I didn't give you my twitter name. It's: ZilYdal. :)

What's for Dinner 1-31-11

Chicken Noodle Soup is what is for dinner! I love Chicken Noodle Soup. It's probably one of my favorite comfort foods. There's just something about it on a cold, January day that just really hits the spot. But I must admit that I make soups even in the summer. I just like soup! Anyway, here's how I make mine.

Ingredients:

 1-2 cooked and cubed boneless, skinless chicken breast

 2-3 stalks of celery

 2 cups crinkle cut carrots (in a bag. I'm lazy and don't like chopping carrots unless I have to)

2 32oz cartons chicken broth

Egg noodles (this time I used Smart Taste egg noodles, but my favorite to use are frozen noodles)

1/2 tsp basil

1/2 tsp garlic

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp thyme

Chicken boullion cubes and water (if you need to add broth at the end)

 First, you need to wash your celery. Give it a pretty good scrubbing. These had lots of dirt still stuck on it, so make sure you get it all. We don't want mud in our soup!

 Then chop the stalks up into small pieces; like so. The next step is totally optional:

While chopping celery, go ahead and chop your thumb too. Take a break from cooking to feel a little unsettled and bandage up that bad boy. DISCLAIMER: DO NOT PURPOSEFULLY CHOP YOUR THUMB. I know you all are smart enough to know I'm joking about actually doing it. ;) Anyway, I didn't injure myself too badly. I just took off the nail pretty far up on the nail bed, so I didn't actually chop off my thumb or anything. It wasn't even bad enough to go to the doctor.

 After bandaging up your thumb, dump the celery and carrots into a crockpot.

 Chop up the chicken. I used one (huge) chicken breast, but sometimes I use two depending on how thick I want the soup to be. Add it to the crockpot.

 Add in the spices and then put the broth in. Now, put on the lid and cook it on low for a few hours. DO NOT ADD THE NOODLES UNTIL LATER. I started mine at noon, and at four I was ready for the next step.

About an hour before you want to eat the soup, add in the noodles. If you add them at the beginning, the noodles will get all mushy and gross. Not something you want. Anyway, add in the noodles. I used a half of a bag of Ronzini smart taste noodles. My favorite to use, though, are frozen noodles. I just add the noodles until I feel like there are enough in there. Make sure all the noodles are covered, and then return the lid and cook for about 45min-1 hour. About 20 minutes after adding the noodles, check to make sure the broth level is good. For this pot, I had to dissolve two boullion cubes in two cups of water to make it more soupy. Keep cooking until the noodles are done and you're ready to eat!

This soup also freezes well. Any leftovers we have I freeze in individual serving sizes and pull them out when we need a quick and yummy lunch. In our house, lunches are generally eat what you want. There's no organization to it all. Haha.

Enjoy your soup!

I want this!

I mentioned earlier this week I was a bit out of commission. I had an overuse injury in my hips from jumping right back into running after taking some time off. Needless to say, I was miserable for a couple days but I'm doing better now. Perhaps the real reason I don't have pictures this week is because it's been rainy and nasty all week too. So next week I'll (hopefully) make up for it. Anyway, instead of a style file, I've put together an outfit I would love to just go out and buy.

Earrings: Moonflower Earrings from offbeet on etsy 
Dress: Front of the Lino Dress from Modcloth
Tights: We love colors (the picture isn't from their site, though. I couldn't find one in the right color. So who knows what brand the pictured ones are. Got it off of google images. BUT if I were to buy them, I would get them from we love colors!)
Shoes: Jessica Simpson Dreis Flat on DSW
Necklace: Picture Paris from trinketsforkeeps on etsy
Sweater: Refined Rosettes Cardigan on modcloth


There you have it! An outfit I'm drooling over!