Day 33: What you’re craving right now

A caramel apple from Disney World…. Mmmmmmm.

Or a Dole whip…

 

Day 11: Share your favorite recipe(s)

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE sweet things and breakfast food.  So the recipes I’m sharing are for my cookies and some awesome waffles.

 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 1/4 cup shortening
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 Tbs. Vanilla
• 1/2 Tbs. salt
• 1/2 Tbs. baking soda
• 3 1/4 cups flour
• half a bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Cream shortening and sugars.
2. Add vanilla and eggs, mix well.
3. Add dry ingredients until mixed.  Dough will be slightly sticky still.
4. Add Chocolate Chips
5. Roll into balls and place 12 on a cookie sheet at a time.
6. Bake at 325 degrees for 12-15 minutes
7. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

 

 

Belgian Waffles

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, separated
• 1/2 cup oil
• 2 cups milk

Directions:

Prep Time: 10 mins

Total Time: 30 mins

1. Sift the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
2. Separate the eggs.
3. In small bowl, beat egg whites until stiff.
4. Mix together the egg yolks, milk and oil and stir slightly.
5. Add to dry ingredients and mix well.
6. Fold in beaten egg whites.

 

Day 6: A list of what you ate today

Oh sure, on the day we have our Thanksgiving dinner I have this topic… here it goes

• Whole wheat toast
• Orange Juice
• Hamburger with Ketchup Only
• French Fries
• Strawberries
• Yogurt
• Coke
• Jell-o salad
• Sweet Potatoes (best ever, I don’t even usually like them!)
• Cranberry Sauce
• Mashed potatoes and gravy
• 2 Rolls
• Turkey
• Ham
• Carrots
• Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream birthday cake

Gwen's Turkey Ice Cream Birthday Cake

I just realized I didn’t eat any pie!  What on earth, guess I’ll have to make one tomorrow.

 

Berries

I’m currently sitting in the backyard so that JD can play outside for a little while. He LOVES being in the backyard and I imagine we don’t have a ton of nice days left for him to enjoy it. With me bring in school and sick all summer I think he only went to the pool once or twice. Guess there is always next year.

I was more than pleased to sit out here today because I found a bunch of raspberries and one strawberry. Yummy. We would have a lot more strawberries if the squirrel and Daisy would stop eating them! Daisy keeps trying to catch the squirrel but so far it has been too fast for even her. ((Update: I only got 2 berries because JD discovered them.))

A lady from the ward stopped by for a short visit and brought fresh baked rolls. It was a nice surprise. She happened to catch me in jeans today instead of PJ’. Amazing. Mom and I had to run to get a prescription filled and get JD some diapers. I had a $10 gift card to babies r us and a coupon for $3 off diapers. The store was offering a $10 gift card when you purchase 2 boxes of diapers. I was so excited about my $23 savings and had a box for JD and one for Gwen. About a half an hour later the manager told us their debit card and gift card readers were down. We finally had them hold the diapers (since they were the last 2 boxes!) and we get to go back tomorrow. Chances are good mom will end up going alone since I didn’t tolerate todays outing so well. Oh but if anyone is interested they also have all their clearance clothes marked down and its buy one get one for a dollar.

 

4th Fun

My uncle invited us to an awesome party at his place for the 4th of July.  It was amazing and we had SO much fun.  There was tons for little ones to do and JD didn’t want to leave.  Poor kid didn’t get to bed till after 10:30pm.  He really loved the cotton candy, Doritos, and the bouncy toy.  I’m so glad I was able to take him.  Jeremy was working at the Stadium of Fire so I made sure to take a lot of pictures for him, enjoy.

 

Adventures in Sugar

JD and I went on a little outing today to Krispy Kreme.  I thought he might get a kick out of watching the doughnuts be made.  I was right.  He would have stood there squealing with delight if I’d let him.  He also got his first taste of doughnut.  Really the biggest hit was picking the sprinkles off one by one and trying to eat them.  I think the pictures speak for themselves.

All clean again!

 

One Week Down

I thought I’d blogged at least once this week but I guess I was wrong, remember the good old days when I blogged every day.

Today we are having JD’s first birthday party.  YAY.  I will post pictures later.  I do have a picture of the cupcakes Melissa helped me decorate last night.  I think they turned out pretty cute.  They taste awesome, here is the recipe.

I really don’t have anything exciting to say other than that.  Oh I did get our taxes done last Monday!  WAHOO!  We’ll get a bigger return than we are used to since we had JD, so we made the decision to put ALL of it towards debt.  It was a really hard choice, I’d much rather take a vacation or get a new computer… but in the long run I feel SO good about our choice.  This will make it so that we are virtually debt free with the exception of our car and student loans.  It will be the first time I can say that since the divorce.  Boy doesn’t that feel good.

JD is walking all over the place now and he is so funny about it.  He now says mom, dad, and Elmo.  He still loves that red monster and goes to sleep with the little stuffed Elmo that Molly gave him for his birthday (thanks again Molly).  When I was at the book store this week he found some Elmo books and sat playing with them for a while.  It was quite cute.

 

Annual Gingerbread House Saturday

We had a great time making gingerbread houses yesterday.  I just couldn’t feel any inspiration until Jeremy came home later in the afternoon.  When he walked in the door all I had done was our roof.  The house wasn’t even put together yet.  We kept ours pretty simple but had a lot of fun making it.

 

Thankful for Happiness

The past two days have been amazing.  It’s not been fun being sick during Thanksgiving, but it’s been such a blast other than that.

Yesterday we went to my uncle and aunts house for Thanksgiving dinner.  The food was amazing and JD sure went to town on his first turkey dinner.  I couldn’t cut up the pieces of turkey fast enough for him.  It was the first Thanksgiving I’ve had in a long time that didn’t include 20 + people.  I must say it was perfect for our little family.

Today we headed out around noon do see if there were any good deals left to be had.  I’m not a big shopper in general, so “Black Friday” is something I usually avoid like the plague.  We grabbed some stocking stuffers and it ended up being a good day:

• Perfect pair of Jeans for Jer $15
• Security software for Jer’s computer 75% off
• 2 DVD’s $4 each
• 3 computer games for $10 total

After we went to Cafe Rio and shared a Chicken Salad.  The entire thing fed all 3 of us!  We’ll be sharing from now on, so much cheaper.  JD loved his first taste of Mexican food and couldn’t get enough of the black beans and tortillas.

His first taste of black beans

Fresh tortillas are so good!

We are staying at my grandparents this weekend so we can watch my aunts dogs.  Tonight everyone is gone except for JD and I.  I was installing Jeremy’s new security software when I looked down and saw that JD had taken Bonnie’s ball.  The dog was being very good and waited till he dropped it but the picture cracks me up.  I know it’s gross that he has a dog toy in his mouth… but it’s life.

 

Fun Update Time

I had a rough night last night so instead of whining about it I’ve decided to post some fun photos I have on my camera phone from last week.  I should learn to carry my actual camera around more.

Jeremy and I got the chance to go on an actual date Monday night.  Trish watched JD for us and we had Sushi then went to a game shop at the mall.  We found this little game that was inexpensive and sat in the mall and played it for about an hour.  I’m sure people thought we were nuts.  Excuse the self portrait, I can promise you this was the best one.

The next few pictures are of JD and Parker.  The boys just love playing with JD and it’s quite funny to walk into the room and find them playing.

JD also likes to crawl into the dog beds and play.  I’ve started to keep them quite clean because of it.  He’s such a funny kid.

Jd had his first cupcake the other day.  He played with it for a while but really didn’t eat it much.  I think he was more excited about being stripped down to a diaper than he was about the chocolate.