The Big Picture.

I came across these startling images today and felt the need to share with you all how badly these animals are also being effected by the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. I really hope this gets taken care of immediately and that those who are found responsible for this are punished. This is so sad....

To view the entire story go here

Best. Alfredo. Ever.

My good friend Angela has made this a couple times in the past for us when we've gone over for dinner. I finally asked for the recipie and gave it a try tonight..if you know me, I don't like to cook nor do I do it very well, when I saw there were just a handful of ingredients I figured I couldn't mess it up too badly :)

Anyhoots, it was super easy and fairly quick! Steve was impressed and it did the trick of filling him up, which can be hard to do :)

I had a few people ask for the recipe so here it is:

Ingredients:

Garlic Salt


Heavy Cream


8oz cream cheese


1/2 stick butter


1/3 cup Parmesan cheese



melt the 1/2 stick of butter
once the butter is melted add the cream cheese (cubed so it melts faster)
after the cheese was melted, I added the 1 C of heavy cream
stir to blend
add the 1/3C cheese
sprinkle in garlic salt

and you're good to go!

I used these noodles:


let me know what you think!
(Thank you Angela :)

I need a facelift

On my blog that is, maybe it will get me posting more often! Apologies for being a huge slacker lately, but I promise I have a bunch of photos coming soon to make up for the delay! In the meantime Im trying to win a new blog makeover from Studio M Designs! If you'd like to enter your blog into the drawing you can do so here!

Rainbow Cupcakes:: Happy St. Patricks Day!

In order to get a jump start on St Patrick's Day, I thought it would be fun for Jacob and I to make these creative and colorful cupcakes I saw online the other day. Who doesn't like a cupcake every now and then? :) Besides, they only required 3 ingredients, not bad.

All you need is:
Whip cream
plain white cake mix (oil, water, 3 eggs)
food coloring (red, yellow, blue, green)

we started out by mixing up the cake batter

first with the water...


then the oil


...finished with the eggs






I then seperated the batter into 6 different bowls. (Pampered Chef has a great set of 6 glass bowls that worked perfectly for this!)


random picture.


From there, Jacob and I squeezed the appropriate amount of coloring into each bowl in order to create the desired color. *We mixed red/yellow for orange and red/blue for purple


now came the time consuming part
(aka, the part in which I sent Jacob into the other room to watch a show)

I took the first color (purple) and poured a little bit of batter into each cupcake mold, I had a small spoon I used to spread it out so it was covering the the entire thing.
(forgot to take a picture of this part)

I then took the next color (blue) and did the same thing, but this time, I just made sure to spread the color over the purple so it was hidden


I did this again for green, yellow, and orange.






Finally, I topped it off with red, which was probably the hardest color because I was about to overflow the cupcake pans! Make sure you dont put too much batter in, otherwise you'll run out of room!

...I put the cupcakes into the oven and cooked them as suggested on the box

once they were done, I made sure they had plenty of time to cool. This was the part where I crossed my fingers and prayed they didnt sink!

After a good 30 minutes, there were still nice and puffy!







It was a success, not only did they look cute, but they tasted amazing. So moist and soft!
We topped them off with some whipped cream and viola!



I'd suggest doing this activity with a child ages 3 and up...Jacob did great up until when I had to layer the colors, then he quickly lost interest. I didn't even try to involve Norah as she would have just dipped her fingers into the batter :\

...keep in mind, you're not going to get as many cupcakes out of this recipe as you may think. We only got 12 and I think the original said you can make 16. I think I made mine a little extra full!

Enjoy and Happy St Patrick's Day!

These boots were made for walkin'::

When I came home the other night, I took off my boots and left them on the floor. I thought nothing of it until I heard the strangest sound coming down the stairs...it almost sounded like someone was falling, just very slowly. I ran to the bottom of the stairs to find this:





Jacob had found my shoes and was wearing them. It. was. hilarious! He was bound and determined to get those suckers on! I had to take a picture (you know, the one that will definitley show up at his wedding on a slide show :) Im so mean, but I have to admit, it was so cute!

*This was right before bed so he's wearing a diaper...just in case! He wears underwear during the day...

DONE!

I somehow managed to blog the entire month of November, thus completing NaBloPoMo 2009
Hooray :)

Dont forget, today is the last day to enter for your chance to win 1 of 2 gifts Im giving away tomorrow! You can go here to enter, good luck!

Tragedy in Lakewood::

Early this morning a city not far from where I live, was completely turned upside down. 4 police officers were tragically gunned down while catching up on work at a local coffee shop. It was an obvious ambush and the suspect fled on foot. From what it sounds like, they have a person of interest and other police agencies are coming together to find this suspect quickly.

Not only do I have friends that knew one of the officers very well, but a friend from church was working at that very coffee shop this morning. We are all praying for her...and the rest of the people that had to witness such a horrible act. I also ask that you pray for the officers familes, which combined, have 9 children. I hope justice comes to the shooter and peace will be with those affected by this tragedy.

RIP::

Tina Griswold


Ronald Owens


Mark Renninger


Greg Richards

Black Friday Fun!!:

Steven and I joined in the madness yesterday day morning and woke up very early to join the hundreds of people already in line! We were successful in buying all of the doorbusters we were looking for and are so thankful for our parents who took both kids for the weekend! It made shopping so much easier and so much fun! It was as if we were back in high school, roaming the malls together like we did when we were dating! Here are most of the stores where we marked our territory!

Score!::

First of all, I hope you all had a delightful Thanksgiving with the ones you love! I have so many things to be thankful for this year as Im sure we all do! I am thankful for our health and that we have yet to come down with any illnesses this year, I am also so very thankful for my husbands constant employment in an tough economy and I am so thankful for my amazing family.. not only am I blessed with wonderful parents, but awesome in laws as well! Whats even better, is that they both get along so well, which allows us to be able to do every holiday together as one! It makes is so much easier! We had a wonderful afternoon at my parents house, the food was delicious and our tummies are full. We watched football while the kids entertained us :) now, our house is quiet, Steve is putting in some recessed lights while I listen to Christmas music and make my plan of attack for the morning. Each set of grandparents took one of our kids so we could go by ourselves in the morning, such a blessing!! It looks like we've got a date with Target at 3am, wish us luck! :)

I just wanted to give anyone a heads up who was looking to go to Best Buy tommorrow morning, that I was able to get what I was looking for ONLINE..which was around 9:00pm, you might want to hurry though because I noticed things were already starting to sell out. I also got free shipping as well. So now, instead of having to wake up at 3am, I get to go to Target instead :)

Free Photobook::

I have already gotten 3 of these guys tonight!

-First of all, I went here: http://www1.photoworks.com/

-Then, I uploaded the pictures I wanted to use.

-Next, I began to create a "photobook" (located on the bottom left hand side) They should be size, 8.5 x 11 I chose the "personalized cover photo book"

-Once my book was completed, I "checked out" and entered: "BONNIE" into the coupon area.

-Not only were my books free, but they even covered the cost of shipping! Both would have cost over 50.00!



*I made each book on 3 separate orders, but...I was able to do them all under 1 account.