Bring on the New Year!

Go for a bike ride in 2012!!!

I am ready for 2012! I never got use to writing "2011". So why not just get right into 2012? This past year I didn't have any resolutions. So, this year I'm going to set a few goals for myself to work towards. I don't like the idea of giving up things as a New Years Resolution. People will promise to stop smoking. They'll join a gym and give up sweets or vow to change their ways, give up cussing. But, I think you should work toward gaining something. Pick up a good habit instead of getting rid of a bad one. For me, it's easier to start doing something instead of stop doing something! Make sense?

I've made a lot of promises to myself in the past few years and I am proud to say I've kept the promises I've made......for the most part. I always have room to improve! And now that I have proved to myself that I can to it, I might as well keep going. So, in 2012, these are a few of my goals:

Start my childrens book......I've always wanted to write a childrens book.

Have a girls night out!........Me, the girls, dinner which I will not be cooking, a glass of wine and a movie or a trip to the karaoke bar. NO kids! Home after 10 pm.

A date night with my husband!!! We haven't been to dinner alone in a year or more! Gasp! We didn't even have a honeymoon!

Start a quilt. Notice I say "Start". I am not handy with a sewing machine. This is something I will be needing assistance with. Or maybe I should just do it my way, learn as I go!

Exercise more. And at this point, walking to the mailbox each day would be more activity than what I have going on now. Sad but true.

Start a garden! I'd save a fortune on my grocery bill!

Get a[nother] tattoo. Nothing major just 2 words to remind me of where I've been.

Avoid a guest spot on "What Not To Wear" on TLC........I am one pair of yoga pants away from being on that show, I swear I need to step up my game! My Mom bought me make up when I got married. I think it's time to start wearing it. I use to never leave the house without earrings. Time to revive that habit! Act like I give a crap!

Start the cookbook my Mom and I plan on working on.....In a way, I've kind of started already! I've been stockpiling the recipes that she has passed down to me. They are safely tucked away in my dresser drawer, the dresser drawer that I can't open. It's stuck!  

So, there it is. I have 12 months to accomplish these things. I don't think any of the things I've listed are out of my reach! Tomorrow is New Years Eve. I'll be playing Jenga with the kids and the husband, eating a spaghetti dinner and reminiscing over all of the things we've overcome in the past year or two. In other words, I will be playing it safe, staying off the roads and away from the drunk drivers! Hope you have a safe but memorable start to the new year! And remember to set realistic goals!

You are my Sunshine

My Aunt & Sister

I've been lucky enough in my lifetime to know some truly amazing women. Two of which, I call my sisters even though we do not share the same parents. We have a sisterly bond that has been tried and tested over the years. We don't always see eye to eye but we support each other. I can always count on my sisters to hear my gripe and bring a new light to the situation. I thank God for them each and every day.

Recently, in craft class, the teenagers and I were discussing women who inspire us. Over the last few weeks the girls have been exploring their options after graduation. It's hard to know at that age what you want to be when you grow up so I suggested that they look to someone who they are inspired by. A sister..... Maybe a friend who has made it through college, followed a dream and found a great job or someone who is going in the direction they could possibly see themselves going in.Or someone who has overcome major obstacles like my sisters. Ask a teenage girl to name a woman who inspires them and you will most likely hear something like "Beyonce or Oprah!" and that's great! Both women are strong, independent women who have made great strides. But I wanted  them to find someone a little closer to home who they could interview. Someone local. This got my wheels turning. I had to ask myself.......

Who inspires me?

Sisters

I'm inspired by the people who follow their dreams, overcome obstacles to achieve their goals. I'm inspired by people who don't stop, never give up! Live the dream! The single Mom who busted ass to raise a family and make it through college to get that degree and run with the big boys! The Mom who single handedly put her kids through college! The young artist who kept focused and followed a dream to be a photographer after she blew the boys out of the water with her tattoo skills. Yeah! I love these women. They are ROCK STARS! They jump lifes hurdles like Wonder Woman! When my day looks like it's turning to gloom these women bring out the sunshine and I can see clearly! They make me want to keep going. They are showing me everyday that it is possible! Dreams do come true. You just have to work for it! So, ladies and gentlemen......Don't give up!

Hazelnut Mocha Bundt Cake

I swore that the crinkle cookies I posted before Christmas would be the last sweet recipe I would post til at least February! Well, I guess I lied. Because here I am, posting this recipe and it's not even January yet!

I was blessed with 2 amazing sister-in-laws! Thank you God! And this Christmas they both helped make the holiday a little better for my children and one of them gave me a gift I've always wanted..........a fancy bundt pan! I'm serious. I have wanted a bundt pan for a very long time. I don't know what it is about a bundt cake. Maybe it's the fact that they don't need fancy frosting or decorative flowers. The shape alone is fancy enough (to me).

Look at that Hazelnut Chocolate Ganache topping! Mmmmm

So, anyway, I made this bundt cake today with the help of my son. I've hurt my back and actually couldn't lift the bowl of cake mix to pour into the pan let alone whisk the ingredients together. He's a life saver! But, this is an easy cake to make. I have been staying away from packaged cake mixes lately, devoting myself to made from scratch cakes and I'm finding that it's actually fun to measure things and follow a recipe. Speaking of recipe.....here it is!

1 (12 oz) bag semi sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup Nutella plus 3 tablespoons
3/4 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1 lg egg
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 table spoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup very strong coffee
1 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spray your fancy Bundt pan with non stick spray. I was generous with my spray.
2. In a small sauce pan, melt about 1/4 cup of your chocolate chips over low heat. Stir constantly! Adding your 3 tablespoons of nutella as you go. Once your chocolate is melted pour into a mixing bowl to cool slightly. Make sure you scrape the sides of the pan and get all of the tastey goodness out!
3. Meanwhile, sift your flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into a separate bowl. Or you can whisk it all together. I like to use my sifter.
4. Now, back to your melted chocolate......whisk in the oil and sugar into your chocolate mixture until smooth. Then add in your egg. Once you have that all mixed add half of your flour mixture and half of the buttermilk and coffee. Mix until smooth and add in the rest of the flour mixture and buttermilk and coffee.
5. Pour your beautiful batter into your bundt pan and bake in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Once the cake is done, place it on a wire rack to cool for about 8-10 minutes. Do not flip your pan yet!

6. While your cake is cooling enough to flip.......place the remainder of your chocolate chips in your saucepan, melt on low heat. Make sure to stir constantly! As it's melting add your 1/2 cup of Nutella. You can also add a tablespoon of canola oil to the chocolate mixture if you need to loosen it up a bit. When your chocolate is all melted, remove from heat and allow to thicken up a bit. While this is happening, you can flip your cake out of the pan onto your cake plate or whatever you plan on serving the cake on.

Now that you have your cake out of the pan you can pour your chocolate ganache onto your cake! There's no wrong way to do this! Just let it drizzle all over your cake! No need to smear it around. Just let it slide down the sides and look beautiful!

I used very strong coffee for my recipe! You don't have to use strong coffee if you don't want to! It will taste wonderful either way! And I would also like to say that if you're not a Nutella fan, you don't have to use the Nutella at all! You don't even have to substitute anything, just don't use it! But if you didn't know it was in there, you probably wouldn't be able to pick out the taste! The outer edges of this cake has a nice crunch to it while the inside was super moist! I am not ashamed to say that I ate 2 chunks of this cake! Tomorrow when I get up I'll have a small slab with a steaming hot cup of coffee! Breakfast of champions!

The BIG one.

Well, folks! I've hit my 100th post! This is it! I started this venture a little bit over a year ago and said "I'll try it for a year, if I don't enjoy doing it, I'll stop". I'm still going. Not because anybody likes it......I think the jury is still out on that matter. I am going to keep going because it feels like a purpose. One day, long in the future, when I can't remember a thing....I can look this up and say "Oh! I made that and it was cool!".....or "Oh! I do know how to cook".....Or "Wow! Did I really get on the roof with an airsoft gun to hunt down a rogue squirrel?"....."Did I really read 100 books in less than 2 years?".....Why yes I did!

100 posts about absolutely everything I can squeeze out of me....well, maybe not everything because this is somewhat censored! I cook, I craft and I parent with pure passion and slight touch of  motivation. And I do it because it makes ME happy. 
I want to thank every single one of you who have put up with me, followed me, took the time to read what I put out there and laughed with me. You were with me when I faced my fear of teenage girls and became a mentor to them. I am in love with these girls by the way. In the time that I have been doing my craft class with them, one of my lovely young ladies has found a forever home with a wonderful family. Another has moved on to college to become something great. I've learned so much from them. The thing I bring away from them is tolerance. I try to practice it each day...somedays it's a struggle.

I hope you stick around to see what I can get up to next. We read together, craft together and lately we cook together. In the future we'll review a movie or two together! I personally cannot wait to see "One for the Money" and "The Hunger Games". So, here's to the next 100 posts! Feel free to leave a line or two. Say hello! I do like to hear from you! Thanks again for your support! :)

Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies

You know I'm on pinterest every chance I get. I think it's a wonderful thing. Do I waste my time by browsing on pinterest? Heck NO! I gather a wealth of inspiration from pinterest! It gets my wheels spinning. Lately, I've been drooling over all of the yummy cookie recipes that everyone has been sharing. Thanks, by the way! If you follow my food board you probably noticed that it wasn't gathering many meal pins lately.....mostly tastey sweets! I'm trying to balance that out but before I do I want to post one more cookie/sweet recipe that I have recently toyed with.

My husband and I married back in August! Ahhhhh! Good times! He didn't have a whole lot to say about the wedding itself. He was more than happy to let me take the reigns and just run away with things. As long as I didn't ask for a lot of money. But, one thing he did say he wanted was a red velvet cake! I had no problem with that! As a matter of fact, there's a local Bakery called Sandra Kay's that makes the best Red Velvet Cake! My mouth is watering just thinking about it! So, I paid her a visit she loaded me up with a couple pieces of her tastey creation to take home to the hubby and believe it or not I managed to save him a bite or two. He fell in love with the cake and gave the thumbs up. So, I ordered our cake! It was small and beautiful. The best part, besides the tastey goodness of it.......It was very affordable! Thank you to my Mother-in-law for paying for it! I love her!

So, anyhooooooo, I keep seeing these wonderful crinkle cookies everywhere on pinterest! What is it about these cookies? I mean, they look so fun! Can cookies look so simple yet fun at the same time because when I look at these cookies I feel happy and knowing that they are somewhat easy to make, well that really makes me happy! I wanted to try to make Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies in honour of my recent nuptials! And this is how I did it:

5 ingredients

You'll need:

A box of Red Velvet Cake Mix

2eggs

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 cups powdered sugar


Preheat your oven .....350. Spray your cookie sheet with no-stick spray!

In a mixing bowl, mix the cake mix and baking powder together. I used a fork to make sure all of the lumps of cake mix were eliminated. Otherwise when you finish the next step you'll find it hard to mix it all thoroughly. Now add the eggs and the oil, mix til well blended.

(This is where I assembly line it, if you have an extra pair of hands.) Using a tablespoon, scoop out dough and form into balls. Then drop your dough-balls into a bowl of powdered sugar. Generously coat the balls with the powdered sugar. My son, scooped and formed the balls and I took care of the powdered sugar, making sure the majority of the powdered sugar stays on the balls.

Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies

Place the coated dough balls on your cookie sheet. Bake for about 10-12 minutes. Allow 3-4 minutes for cooling time on the pan. Then remove to a cooling rack. This recipe made just over 3 dozen cookies!

These are the best! Seriously! The powdered sugar gives these the right amount of sweetness. I love sweets but I don't want the sweet taste to overpower the flavor of the cookie and you will certainly not have that issue with these cookies! I hope this inspires you to make cookies. You could make these with any flavor of cake mix. I wouldn't mind trying carrot cake mix! Ooooh!

*Note: After I made these I had a thought. Instead of spraying the cookie sheet with cooking spray, it would be best to use parchment paper since the powdered sugar will soak up the spray! I didn't have parchement paper on hand when I made this batch! But when I made a chocolate version, I did use parchement paper and they turned out so much better!

Patience, My Child.

I don't know what I was thinking! My Mom recently sent a box of gifts for me to wrap! I have always wrapped my own gifts, for as long as I can remember! I don't mind! I like to wrap presents. So, anyway, she sent a box of gifts from Arkansas for the kids. I wrapped them while the toddler was napping. She is starting to understand what this Christmas business is all about. But she doesn't realize that what you give is suppose to be a secret. I didn't want her to tell the boys what I wrapped. And they would ask her to tell them. She wouldn't know any better. I wrapped the presents, placed them under the tree just so I could see how pretty it looked with gifts under it. Ahhhh! So beautiful. Then I got sidetracked by something. Could've been the dryer or something shiny! I'm easily distracted. Anyway, the gifts got left under the tree instead of hidden in a cabinet where they were safe from the toddler.

When the toddler, Miss E, woke up she discovered the presents and was so happy! Instant forehead slap! I explained to her that we had to wait for Santa to come and bring her a gift before we could open the ones under the tree! She seemed to be Ok with that. Whew! Well, not for long! I tromped off to the bedroom to put away laundry and while I was doing that the brothers tag teamed her and put the idea in her head to "tell Mama you want to open a present!". I love my boys but I think the influence they have over this child is criminal. That was the beginning of a horrible evening! For hours she could not be persuaded to wait! I wouldn't back down. I decided to leave the gifts under the tree instead of hiding them away the first chance I got. I'm trying to teach her that "No" means "Ain't happening! No matter how hard you scream! So get over it!"........Eventually, she calmed down and stopped screaming "Mama Mean!". Bedtime rolled around, I fell asleep, she stayed awake and the next thing I knew I woke up to "Thank you Santa Claus!"....................



Apparently she got into the snacks too!



Oh! NO! I forgot about the gifts under the tree! She got up and decided to open them! She ran into the bedroom, flipped on the light and said "Mama, look! My hat! Owl!"..........My Mom has a thing about owls lately! You'll see what I mean in an upcoming post. She buys Miss E pajamas with owls, shirts with owls etc. For Christmas she bought her this adorable Owl hat! It really is the cutest! Miss E loves it! I let her keep the hat but explained to her that Nana bought her the hat, not Santa. And we really should wait til Christmas day when Santa brings her a gift. She wasn't buying what I was selling so for a couple more hours I had to sweet talk her and coax her back to sleep.

So, my question......Do you wait til Christmas Eve to display presents or do you set yourself up for punishment by putting them out as soon as they are wrapped? I think for this household, we'll hide the presents from now on and I'll just chalk this one up to another Lesson Learned!

Best Pork Chops Ever!

I have recently started using my crock pot again. I bought a new one a few years ago when I was pregnant and craving bean soup, used it once and then hid it away in the cupboard, never to be seen again. Then I got busy.  Making a good meal was becoming difficult to squeeze in to the schedule. Plus, I have days where the little bit of motivation I have goes into laundry and straightening my hair. So, I don't want to cook. For some reason though I don't see cooking in the crock pot as putting out a lot of effort! Maybe it's just me.

I put the word out that I was looking for some tastey crock pot recipes. A friend of mine messaged me that she had the best pork chop recipe that I should try. She told me it was called Ranch house pork chops. I looked it up on pinterest and indeed.....the tastey pork chops were everywhere! It seems she isn't the only one that thinks the recipe is worth sharing. I changed her recipe up a bit though. Hers calls for real potatoes that you place in the crock pot with the chops. My family is more of a fake mashed tater family. So, I buy the pouches of mashed potatoes where you just add water! That's pretty simple.

I actually had 3 ingredients to throw in the crock pot:

Yes! I'm the frugal Mom who buys the clearance meat.....

Pork Chops.....I used 8! Boneless because I don't like the bones....Duh!  

1 10oz can Cream of CELERY soup

1 packet Ranch Dip mix

I tossed the pork chops in the crock pot, mixed the soup and Ranch mix together in a bowl. Then poured the soup mix over the chops. Place the lid on the pot, set at low and at my 4 hour mark I tested the chops. They were done. Practically falling apart! The gravy this made was absolutely wonderful! I turned the crock pot off and left the lid off while I made my cheater mashed potatoes and a side of broccoli. You won't see any broccoli on the plate in the picture because by the time I got around to making a plate to photograph the green trees were all gone! I'm considering growing my own next year! We go through a lot of broccoli!

I can tell you right now that I will be making this recipe often. Maybe playing around with it a little. I'm thinking that brussel sprouts would be darn tastey cooked in the soup and ranch mix! You could even make this with chicken instead of pork if you wanted! What is your favorite crock pot recipe!? Please share!