Happy New Year All... yeah I know I am a little late to the 2013 Party but it has been a fairly busy week so I am just now getting around to it. Hope everybody wrapped up a great year and I for one am really excited to see what is on the horizon for this year.

Now down to business:

Let me give you all a little background info:

Patrick and I have two cats and a dog living in the house right now. The oldest of the bunch, Storm (Stormy if she likes you) she has a bit of devious streak. See she doesn't much like it when she is sitting on a table or chair if there is anything on the table or chair with her. She feels so strongly about this that she will often knock this "delinquent" items onto the floor when they "look at her funny" 

Picture it, our house, about a month ago. Patrick and I were cleaning up our kitchen. This involved pulling things out of the cabinets and reorganizing things. One of the things that we pulled out was a beautiful Lenox serving platter that was a wedding gift from my grandmother and late aunt. I kept in it's box with paper wrapping to keep it safe. (Turns out this was a fruitless attempt) Apparently putting the serving platter on the table for safe keeping didn't suit ol Stormy so she gave that box a quick swipe and managed to shatter my beautiful dish.... cue tears

Not too long after that Patrick suggested we take the shards of my platter and turn it into something else beautiful. So with a little planning we did just that.

It really wasn't even that hard to make.

1. Picked up some other plates from Walmart and Patrick and I smashed them with a hammer. (We needed lots and lots of pieces.)
2. Purchased a good piece of wood as the backboard.
3. We did a test run and placed on the pieces to see how it would look.... We loved it
4. Then we slathered some plaster on the wood and started resetting the pieces in the plaster and let it dry (took like a whole day, so I had to leave it alone for a while)
5. After it was dry Patrick grouted the cracks between the pieces and then let it dry again.
6. After that he built the frame around it and hung it on the wall.

I love it so much and I invite you all over to take a look at it.

Recipe of the Week

In my every effort to be the best possible housewife on the block a couple of months ago I decided to start trying some new recipes. I have a ton of cookbooks and I hit them up from time to time but since Pintrest came into my life I have such a convenient new way to find new fun yummy treats. So let me give you a quick rundown of the highlights.

The goal has been to try one new recipe per week. And Patrick has been a pretty good sport about the whole thing. To be honest Patrick is kinda a picky eater. He calls himself a "texture eater" and they are lots of textures he doesn't like.. ex: mushrooms, most of vegetables. So you can see this has been quite a challenge for him.

Things that were good:

Taste like Lasagna Soup- This is a knock off a Paula Dean recipe and it is totally delish. The first time I made it I followed the recipe as written, but the next couple of times I made it with ground turkey and it was still totally banging.

Overnight-Crockpot French Toast Casserole- I made this for a staff breakfast at work. It is a super yummy filling breakfast.

Crockpot Chicken Tacos- This was freaking awesome. Really simple and quick and totally yummy.

Things that were bad:


Crock-Pot Chicken Cordon Blue- I have a feeling that this recipe would have been really yummy... except I burned the tar out of it. I believe it should have been cooked about 4 hours in the crockpot. I left it in about 9... While I would classify it as still edible... I cooked a frozen pizza for Patrick that night.

Baked Apple Pies- Not a bad idea and it didn't even taste bad. The problem was it was tricky to eat so tricky it really isn't worth making. Save your time chasing a baked apple around your plate and just cook baked apples into pie form

Grocery Store Epic Fails

I have spent a lot of time lately at the grocery store and I have noticed quite a startling and terrible trend... products that just look gross or disgusting.

So lets chronicle some of the worst of the worst from the grocery aisle:

Coconut Wave soda: I wonder who out there in soda land though that anybody should make a soda like this. I like to imagine that the "soda inventor" (using this term loosely) was eating a Almond Joy and thought coconut let make a soda out of that... well this was not and could never be a good idea. Give it up bro.

Spam Microwave Meals: unless you live in Hawaii there is no reason to eat Spam on a regular basis unless you absolutely have to. So who thought you know what would be good, "lets take the spam and add other salty and preserved ingredients and make it microwavable"... that is a terrible idea and I don't even want to think about the salt content.... pass me the water please.

Fudge Pops: Lets call a spade a spade... this looks like poop. POOP. Then to make matters worse the title of the products is 1 "O" short of actually being called Fudge Poops. I like fudge and I like freezy-pops but this seems like one product that didn't need to be combined.

Angry Birds Jewelry: or Angry Jewelry as I like to call it. When I think of fine jewelry obviously Angry Birds doesn't come to mind... but who in their right mind thought this was even necessary to produce. Literally if I ever see anybody (including a child) wearing this I will laugh out loud.

Furby: My mom bought me one of these years ago and it scared me. I wondered why these were created years ago and I continue to wonder. I hope these aren't popular when I have kids because they will never get one...Sorry not sorry

Lady Gaga Toothbrush: call this the Lady Gag Toothbrush, the idea of this is that it sings to you for the length of time that you should brush. When the toothbrush stops singing you are done brushing. I hate to state the obviously but what exactly is wrong with counting to a pre-designated number and you brush until you get to that number. Where are we as a society that it is needed for us to be entertained during the 90-120 seconds that we are brushing our teeth. (PS: What song does the toothbrush sing? ... Poke-R-Face????)

Red Solo Cup Halloween outfit: This is just crazy stupid. I am sure that ever 21 year old male thinks, "What is that perfect Halloween outfit?, maybe I can dress as a giant cup, that is sexy right?"... No it is not and this is just stupid. This may or may not have been invented by the same genius that devised the Coconut Soda....crazy

X Hose: have you seen this commercial. This is not the worst idea in the world, but it might be the worst name for a product in history. What Don Draper-wannabe thought X Hose was a good marketing name for anything... Congrats sir, you are officially a idiot.

Well as per the usual I am nearly constantly absent from my blog... oppsie I have been busy but hopefully if you have been crying daily about my absence from the blogosphere. I hope this will help you get through. Heaven knows when I will post again.

Like most of my friends and family today I have seen snow... lots of snow (don't get me wrong I have seen more snow in the past) but seeing as I view snow as a unnecessary nuisance. I believe that any snow is too much. Snow and weather should stay where it belongs... Colorado.

Snow's Natural Habitat

Not Snow's Natural Habitat... Home

But we had snow and it got a bit dangerous today so my work closed early and I got a ADULT SNOW AFTERNOON!!!!! Until not that long ago I worked for a resort (that happened to make a large portion of their yearly profit from skiing.) When you work for a ski resort, even if you don't work for the ski part they kinda expect you to show up even in bad weather. In 7 years working for this company I never got to leave even a hour early due to bad weather.

So what did I do with my ADULT SNOW AFTERNOON???

I was lazy, I sat on this sofa with this blanket... (there was a cat there but she got scared of the camera and ran away.)

Then I watched a couple hours of Gossip Girl (you know you love her XOXO.) I have watched so much Gossip Girl lately I think Serena and I are now besties... call me S for some latte, xo K

Now I am waiting for Patrick to get home from work and then the plan is to make some waffles for dinner and since we both have to work in the morning it will be off to bed to face the treacherous roads tomorrow.

Hope everybody is safe and warm and had a great holiday. (Since I have been so absent the holiday I am clearly referring to is of course... Halloween, Vetern's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas)

My Next 30 Years.

I have been talking about this for a while and it finally happened people as of this past Saturday September 15th I turned 30 and I am not going to spend this entire post talking about all the awesome things I have done in my 30 years, (partially because I did that in a post last year.) I want to spend this post talking about some of my hopes and dreams for the next 30 years. So here goes.

In the next 10 years I hope to:

1.  Start a family with my husband.
2. Buy another house, especially now that we really know what we want in a house.
3. Take part in another triathlon (without getting a concussion and forgetting the whole thing... because that happened.)
4. To finally visit a Caribbean island.
5. To cook a souffle perfectly.
6. Feel confident that I can actually work my alarm clock without screwing it up.
7. Go to a NFL game. I would obviously prefer a pilgrimage to Lambeau but  I am not picky, as long as the Redskins are not playing.

In the next 20 years I hope to:

1. Work for myself... if I haven't won the lottery yet.
2. Have a extensive collection of seasonal bathroom accessoriies. (Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick Day etc.)
3. Blog as often as I should
4. Write a book. Even if nobody ever reads it I want to be able to say that I did it.
5. Consider myself a decent housewife, like the kind of wife that actually cooks and cleans daily.
6. Become the kind of person that wears heels regularly.

In the next 30 years I hope to:

1. Retire
2. Spend my days studying wines and culture around the country.
3. Actually complete a scrapbook. ( I have started 7 and completed 0)

In the everlasting words of Tim McGraw... "Drink a little lemonade and not so many beers, Maybe I'll remember my next 30 years."

Me 30 Years Old with a Lamb.... Forshadowing?

I think I’ll take a moment, celebrate my age
The ending of an era and the turning of a page
Now it’s time to focus in on where I go from here
Lord have mercy on my next thirty years

Hey my next thirty years I’m gonna have some fun
Try to forget about all the crazy things I’ve done
Maybe now I’ve conquered all my adolescent fears
And I’ll do it better in my next thirty years

My next thirty years I’m gonna settle all the scores
Cry a little less, laugh a little more
Find a world of happiness without the hate and fear
Figure out just what I’m doing here
In my next thirty years

Oh my next thirty years, I’m gonna watch my weight
Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late
Drink a little lemonade and not so many beers
Maybe I’ll remember my next thirty years

My next thirty years will be the best years of my life
Raise a little family and hang out with my wife
Spend precious moments with the ones that I hold dear
Make up for lost time here ,In my next thirty years

In my next thirty years