Menu Planning

Since the week is mostly over, I decided to plan meals for the week! I just finished putting everything down on paper, and I realized, every single meal is chicken (except Sunday Dinner - we'll be eating at Josh's Parents' house). Granted, lunch is leftovers, that still means I've planned three meals - in a row - of chicken (plus a lot of poultry leftovers). Easy chicken, and pretty "not-too-bad-for-you" chicken. Still, that's a lot of chicken. I guess I plan a lot of chicken because I think it is better (read: fewer calories, less fat, generally healthier) for you than ground beef.

For the love! Please, link some recipes in the comments!! Preferably sans chicken (I didn't need to add that though, right?)

For now, I think I may swap out the chicken meal on Saturday for pork chops. Side dishes will stay, and the chicken eating will resume Monday.

Adventures in Baking

Sunday was Josh's Mom's birthday. Since I'm so on top of things (like birthday presents...woops!), I'd had thoughts about making a really tasty and different cake, or at least trying to decorate (with more than just frosting) a less fancy cake. I ended up deciding to try to improve the physical appearance of an otherwise average cake. How did it go? Well...let me put it this way: You win some, you lose some.

Since her favorite color is orange, we dyed a white cake orange. It took a lot of fancy food coloring, and in the end, I think it wasn't super successful. We didn't bake the cake long enough, and then when we tried to level off one of the round cakes (for the bottom layer of the cake), it ended up, well, mutilated. Evidence below:

*Let me go ahead and apologize now for not being one of those ultra talented people who take really good pictures of their food and figure out the lighting so you can actually tell what you're looking at* 

Sorry. 

We dumped the orange cakes, and started over. Good thing we buy eggs from Costco - you know - bulk. Luckily, we had 2 of the 3 eggs needed for Cake number 2 (or 3 and 4, if you count each round separately, and sometimes I do). So we borrowed an egg from our neighbors and commenced baking cake #2.

This time, we decided to make a chocolate cake, and just dye the frosting. Much better plan. I had this idea in my head for a couple of days, that I wanted to do something different, and try my hand at something I learned from Bakerella once. My MIL really likes the phrase "We do not doubt that our Mothers knew it" (from the story of the Stripling Warriors in the Book of Mormon) and would like that on her headstone. So I thought I would use that phrase. 

I had a bag of orange candy melts on hand (but only 2 eggs, yes, I understand the irony) so I melted them in my squeeze bottle, and wrote out "We do not doubt that she KNOWS it!". I wrote on lined paper with a sharpie, and then taped the paper to a cookie sheet, and taped Waxed Paper over the top of it, like so:

When the candy melts were melted, I traced over the words with the squeeze bottle. Remember in grade school, when you would be gluing something, and all of a sudden the glue would pop because there wasn't enough glue down by the nozzle? Same thing happens with squeeze bottles of candy melts. Only difference is, it leaves a weird blast-looking hole in your candy melt craft. 

{Side Note: Only shake the squeeze bottle up and down, not back and forth - even if you're SUPER frustrated with it. I ended up with orange candy melts on my neck and arms.}

After I got all the words written out with candy, I drew some hearts and put the tray in the freezer to harden the candy melts again. 

The cake baked, and frosting made, we just had to assemble it. I should have done thicker layers on the words. I did "she" in cursive writing, and that was the sturdiest of all of them. I should have just done the whole thing in cursive, and it wouldn't have broken in so many places. Oh well. We stuck the words and hearts all around the edges of the cake. 

You can see where the "N" cracked. :(

We dyed the excess frosting pink (Josh picked and mixed the color) and I wanted to write "Happy Birthday to a Mother who knows"...but that didn't work out exactly as planned. I was pressed for time, so instead of whipping out my decorating tips and bags, I just grabbed a ziploc bag, shoved the frosting in (well, Josh did that) and cut the end off and wrote that way. Unfortunately, I cut too much off of the ziploc bag, and the lettering came out fat. So it said "Happy B-day to a Mother who knows". Not too bad. Except that it looks like Harry Potter's birthday cake from Hagrid. 

It wasn't until we were on our way to my parents' house that I realized how I could have fixed the fat lettering. I should have just dropped that ziploc bag into another ziploc bag, and cut a smaller hole. Oh well, now I know. 

and at least she knows we love her and we did our best. :)

Happy Birthday, to a Mother who Knows and does not doubt. May the next 60 years be as great as the last. 

xoxo

In the Jungle...

A few weeks ago, Josh's Mom, Sisters and I, hosted a baby shower for Karen and Baby Charlie (Welcome, Charlie!)

Baby Charlie's room is Monkey/Jungle themed, so we decided to have a Jungle themed baby shower. Here are a few of the details:

I made two dips: Toffee Crunch Dip, and a Chocolate Chip Cheeseball (tasted like frosting with mini chocolate chips in it)

We had Cinnamon Bears, and Animal crackers, Circus Animal cookies, and Teddy Grahams as well as fruit, for the dips. 

Those two mounds of dirt are the cheeseball(s)

We had "King of the Jungle Nachos" with shredded Pork (crock pot - super easy!!), olives, onions, tomatoes, avocados, sour cream, cheese, and salsa (homemade by Temaire)

We played the infamous "Diaper Game" and then a game similar to Scattergories. These are the prizes the two winners received. They each got a bath brush (what are these even called??) and a little box of lotion, bath gel, and bubble bath)

Each of the adults at the party got to take home a jungle animal loofah

Each of the kids (all the nieces were invited) got Safari Lip Gloss as a party favor...

...and everyone got cupcakes from The Sweet Tooth Fairy (my FAVORITE cupcakes!!) We added the animal shaped sugar toppings. 

Thanks to my friend Megan (Hi Megan!), who throws marvelous parties, I found all the Jungle/Safari prizes and party favors at Pier 1 Imports. I don't think I would have even thought to look there, but she saved the day! Thanks, Megan!!

We had a great time, and then beautiful Baby Charlie was born on Tuesday (at 4:36 p.m. - I guessed the exact time. I'm still proud of that!) He is such a cute little guy, and we're so happy he's finally here safely, and that Karen is doing well too!

Have a great weekend!

xoxo

Back Room Redo: Part 1

Josh and I were making breakfast on Saturday morning and planning out the day. Josh asked if I wanted to start sanding down the back bedroom, and I agreed. I'm so sick of all of my textured walls. Don't misunderstand, I think textured walls are lovely, when done right. Every single wall in my home is textured, and I'm a little tired of it. If this back room is any indication of what the rest of the house is like, the texture is merely there to cover up a LOT of impurities in the walls. Yikes. One room at a time.

Here is the bright blue wall before. The color isn't as true in this picture, but you can really see the texture (we'd already been sanding a little bit - not much though).

Look at all that texture...

10 minutes into the sanding...

I called my Dad to see if we could borrow some tools for sanding, so I ran over to his house, and by the time I got back, most of the first wall was "unpainted". Apparently, they used so many coats of the Latex paint when they painted (they = previous owners), that when Josh peeled back one piece of paint, it came off in a big sheet. It was like one of those plastic shower curtains. Totally strange - but very helpful. 

You can see how it just peeled off in sheets

After we peeled the paint off of the first wall, and part of the next, we realized what kind of shape the underlying sheet rock was in. We are planning on just putting up new sheet rock, which means we won't have to peel any more paint off. :) Yay!! We want to get started on it on Friday night, and give the mud some time to dry over the weekend. Here we go...