Style File 1-15-11

 

 Well here is another style file! I got the tripod situation taken care of, so I was able to get some pretty decent shots for you! This is one of my other favorite outfits this winter. Leggings are so comfortable. 

 I just got these boots at DSW last week. I just love them! I love the height on the heel and the little buttons on the side. I've probably worn these boots six times in the last week. They were even on sale too!

When I get cold I throw on this sweater. I'll just be honest and say that I get cold about 85% of the time. So I'm usually wearing this sweater over it. You can't really tell in the picture, but the sweater comes down past my hips, so it's a bit longer. I love it. My mom got it for me for Christmas a year ago (as in Christmas 2009). I'm also wearing her earrings from the 80's for this outfit.

I had fun grabbing these pictures. But I will say it's a bit awkward because my neighbors probably think I'm nuts. Oh well!

Pages!

I have been a busy little Scrapbooking Bee since I finished up my semester and got my cricut. Here are a few of my finished pages. I'm going to spread these out over a couple posts because I seriously have 13 pages. Too many for one post!

 My first page with my very own Cricut!

 I cut the letters and the frames on the cricut. I'm still figuring out the potential power of the machine, haha. So hopefully my pages will get more complicated? The circles I cut using the Creative memories cutting system. I got it as a graduation gift from my Aunt-in-Law (I think I just invented a title) and let me tell you what, I love that system. I have a big border template, the circles, and ovals for it. You should get it too because it's stinking awesome.

I really love the way the easter page turned out. I like the colors and how the flowers I cut on the cricut go so well with the flowers on the background. I've had this 12 X 12 paper for a very long time. I tend to hold onto pages I really like until I find just the right pictures for it. Sometimes I think the paper is too pretty to cover with stuff, lol. I am so weird sometimes. But I am glad I found the right pics for it! You'll notice I tend to keep my layouts simple. It's because I like to put multiple pictures on a page because the purpose of a scrapbook, in my opinion, is to preserve memories. I see a lot of layouts out there were there is only one photo on the page and the rest is just stuff put on the page. Those pages look cool, but I just don't have the time to do one photo per page. I like to group pictures together to give an accurate representation of the event.

What's for Dinner? 1-10-11

Baked Ravioli is what is for dinner! Here is what I used: Frozen Cheese ravioli, one left over spaghetti sauce (Prego Veggie Smart) without meat from when I made Lasagna (then froze the sauce), and one left over sauce with meat in it from when I made Spaghetti earlier this week.You'll probably start seeing two patterns in my cooking: We love Italianish food and I'm sometimes very imprecise. We are not afraid of carbs here, and I don't like measuring sometimes. When it comes to stuff like this, it's not really essential that you have the exact amount of sauce I do. It's all a preference; go with what feels natural!

 

 Step one is to boil water. I know you probably know that you have to do that, but I can't leave anything out. It's a thing with recipe sharing.

 When the water is boiling, add the ravioli. The beauty of this recipe is you can use as many or as few raviolis as you want. For us I cooked 14 (I had the left overs for lunch today).

 The raviolis won't take too long to cook, but in the mean time spread some of the sauce in the bottom of a pan and turn on your oven to 375 degrees. The key with keeping prep short is to heat the sauce before hand. That way everything is basically heated through before you pop it in the oven. Then all you have to do is wait for the cheese to melt. I'm all about the short cuts. Since I used leftovers, I didn't have to use a bunch of meat or anything, but if you were making a large batch of this, you could use 1lb of ground beef or turkey, brown it up, and combine it with a jar of sauce. We're saucy people around here, so I used a lot of sauce in comparison to the amount of raviolis I used. If you are less saucy, this recipe will still taste great if you reduce the amount of sauce. Ok, i think that's all I have to say about the sauce.

 When the raviolis are done (you'll know they're done because they'll start to float), drain them and arrange the first layer in the bottom of the pan. You're going to end up doing a lasagna style layering. After the first layer, put some sauce down, and add a second layer. I kind of staggered them so the second layer was on top and between the bottom later, in the space between the raviolis. I hope that made sense. Anyway, after you have the second layer, finish with the sauce. It should look kinda like this:

 

Then top with cheese and pop it in the oven for 15 or 20 minutes.Again, I didn't measure the cheese. I just went with what looked good and appetizing. You could certianly use less cheese if you wanted.

  

 When the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbly pull it out and serve it up. We had wine with ours. :)

Style File 1-8-11

So I bought a tripod basically so I could take pictures of myself for the blog (wow, that sounds vain...) and I received it yesterday. I was very very excited because it was relatively inexpensive and got great reviews. As I got it out to use it for the first time (for this style file, actually) one of the legs snapped off! Surely the hinge should have been engineered to withstand being used for its intended purpose. So then I had to go fish the box out of the dumpster (because i threw it away yesterday) and now I must send it back. Until I get the tripod situation taken care of my next style file may be delayed.

Anyway, without further ado!

 This is one of my absolute favorite outfits. It's so comfy, I love the tunic. I bought it this fall, but when I got cold I started wearing this brown sweater over it to keep warm (it's 3/4 sleeved).

 You can't really see it well in these pictures, but I'm wearing a necklace that my parents gave me for my birthday. It came from a Renaissance festival.

Thought since I was wearing ballet flats I would showcase third position complete with some ballet hands. :P

Sweater- Kohl's
Tunic- Kohl's
Jeans- Forever 21 (but I got them at goodwill)
Shoes- Gap; super on sale for four dollars. They're even leather!

What I've been up to! (Lots of Pictures)

With the holiday's and everything, time just got away from me! The last "real" update I made was about our Christmas tree and all that stuff. I mentioned making Christmas cookies in that post, so I thought I would show you how they turned out.

They were pretty labor intensive, but man they were fun to make! I also tried a different cookie recipe and I really like it. It was almond-vanilla and they gave the cookies just a little extra oomph. I wouldn't want to try these with a plain sugar cookie because the frosting is more of the supporting character in the Cookie Movie.

Brad and I had the chance to travel up to Michigan to spend Christmas and New Year's with my family. We had such a great time! As seen in my first style file, my mom borrowed some snow shoes and took us snow shoeing. None of us had ever gone before, so it was kind of an experience. I think it probably would have been more difficult had we not been on groomed trails, but it was still soooooooo much fun. We also went to see my brother's wrestling tournament on New Year's Eve. In this particular match my brother didn't win, but he wrestled hard. In the tournament last night he beat a kid 14-3 or something like that. Go Sean! (Note to my Mother: I plan on burning all these photos and sending them to you on a disc. For some reason I forgot to copy them to your flash drive when I copied over the Christmas morning pictures).

The holidays were great. For Christmas, Brad got me a Cricut Expression cutting machine. As he puts it he "Made a major sacrifice to the cult of Scrapbooking". I keep telling him it's not a cult; just a way of life. Oh well. Anyway, my parents got me a lot of stuff to go with the cricut (including four cartridges!). I think I'm set for a while because I have a total of seven now (I bought one with some Christmas money), three font cartridges and four shape cartridges, but a couple of the shape cartridges also have a font. I've been a scrapbooking maniac for the last couple days, I am so proud of my pages now that I have the cricut, haha. 


Aside from the scrapbooking stuff I got some clothes, really nice make up from my grandma, Chocolate Haus stuff, Donkey Kong for Wii and a random assortment of other little things that I love but don't really feel like typing about them. Brad got a Keurig coffee maker from my parents, and let me tell you what... that thing is awesome. I've been enjoying a coffee every morning since we got home! It even makes the coffee at a drinkable temperature. No more burning my mouth on too hot coffee. Whoever invented that thing is a genius. Genius, I'm telling you. He love it too, which I suppose is a good thing. :)
(I just really love this picture of my grandparents. I don't think either of them particularly like having their picture taken, but this is just a really fun snapshot. One for my portfolio, I think!)

As for New Year's we had a pretty low key celebration, which is the way I like it. We had been at Sean's wrestling tournament all day, then stopped at the mall for a bit to exchange a few gifts that didn't fit correctly (some awesome pants my mom got me just aren't made for tall girls. BLAH!) and then we came home to watch TV and ultimately watch Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve thing. You know, where the ball drops in NYC. Then we spent New Year's Day chilling with the family, meeting with Amy and Shawn to catch up a bit, and packing up our stuff. We came home on Sunday the 2nd, bright and early.

Since we've been home I've been making lots of pages. I'll snap some pictures and post them probably next week for my first Scrapbooking post. It will be fun! I also ordered a tripod for my camera. It should be here sometime today, so I'm hoping to be able to make another style file post on Saturday. Taking pictures of yourself is pretty difficult without a tripod! I think that's going to be my Style File day, Saturday. What's for Dinner? will probably come on Mondays, and any scrapbook posts will just get posted whenever I get them up. Occasionally in place of a style file, I might post a collection of things I wish I could be wearing, but those won't be too often. I'm really hoping to get people reading my blog. I always feel so inspired after I watch Julia and Julia to make a really awesome blog. How do you get people to read? I'll have to ponder this more. Until next time!

What's for Dinner? 1-3-11

Pizza is what's for dinner. Here's how I normally make it... but tonight I'm cheating. Freschetta is in the oven as we speak.

1.) Mix up dough in bread maker. Recipe:
                For 1.5lb ball of dough
                1/2 tsp. salt
                3 cups all purpose flour (I use two cups of whole wheat and one of all purpose)
                1 1/2 tsp Bread Machine Yeast
                1 cup water  
                2 tbsp Olive Oil
        Dump all of the ingredients into the bread machine and run it through a dough cycle. Sometimes for mine  I have to watch it ball it up because sometimes it's too wet or too dry (I blame it on the humidity). If it's too wet/dry, i just add flour or water until it mixes into about the right consistency. This is what you should have after the dough cycle (on my machine that's an hour and a half).

2.) When it's done in the bread machine, roll it out into a pizza shape. I put it on a floured surface and knead it a few times first, roll it out then I put it on a lightly floured pizza stone, like this:

 3.) This is the most important part. Brush dough with olive oil, sprinkle on some oregano, and then pierce many times with a fork. If you don't do the piercing it will get bubbly and poufy and make crappy pizza dough. Then you bake it in a 400 degree oven for 2-5 minutes. Bake it until the dough is firm enough to lift off the stone. Put on the sauce, cheese, and other toppings of your choice.

4.) Carefully transfer the pizza from the stone to the racks in the oven. Put a cookie sheet under the pizza to catch any drippings and bake until cheese is melted and bubbly (I usually bake it for 15-25 minutes. But I always start checking it at 15 minutes)

And there you have it. My usual pizza! :-)

Style File 1-1-11

Happy New Year!!! I have been enjoying my visit up in Michigan with my family. We've been doing a lot of relaxing, which is great. I love just relaxing, haha. Later this week I will tell you  more about my trip, but as promised here is the very first style file. I decided to do an "Up North Style File". Enjoy!

The pictures aren't necessarily the greatest. I am feeling lazy and don't feel like cropping anything or editing them. I'm still on vacation, right?

This style file features what a fashionable Northerner would wear to snow shoe!

 

 I made this scarf. I knitted it a while a go. Probably when I was in high school?

 Borrowed these boots from my brother and the snow shoes from my mother's co-worker.

Big leather gloves. Kept my hands warm!



Jacket: Old, bought it when I was in high school.
Hat: Christmas gift last year
Gloves: Borrowed from my dad
Scarf: Knitted
Jeans: Levi's
Boots: borrowed from my brother
Snow Shoes: borrowed



Ok, ok, my first style file was a bit of a joke. I'll have a real one next week. I just need to figure out how to get good pictures by myself without a tripod. I might need to invest in one.