Shutterfly Giveaway

So in the Blog World there are many giveaways of free goods and services. I have tried very hard to win several of these. Well a giveaway that I just found is from Shutterfly. Shutterfly is offering a free 50 Christmas cards....I KNOW! How awesome!? I really hope that I can get these free cards. I have seen many things on the Shutterfly webpage and they have really cute things. Go check our this website and see about getting some for yourself! If you already have your Christmas cards handled, you can just check out their website for other products that they offer.

Halloween Fun!

Some people don't think Halloween is very fun or exciting (hint hint JANET!) but I think it is awesome! I don't even know why really, because this year we didn't get to into it. Well we kinda did, but not really. We went to a Halloween party and we carved some pumpkins. We made some pretty awesome costumes from stuff at the DI and stuff my sister had. So I really don't know why I like it so much, I think it's just fun! Dressing up in fun costumes for no reason and having unlimited excuses to eat candy. I think it's all just what you make of it really! Everyone celebrates it in different ways. I know my sister makes homemade donuts on Halloween. My parent's neighbors go all out on decorating their yard, they even have a 6 foot tall Frankenstein they put on their porch! What are some of your traditions?

We found Katelyn's costume first, she was an alien, and we thought it was so cute so we took the theme and ran with it! My shirt had glow in the dark stars on it and Mike was an astronaut! Pretty creative huh!

These pictures were taken a few days after we carved them, so they are a little saggy, but Mike's pumpkin is on the left and it's Frankenstein. Mine is in the middle and it's just a big smiley face and Katelyn's is on the end (carved courtesy of Mike's brother Jeff).

Hidden Chocolate

Has anyone ever have one of those days? You know those days that just aren't going your way? Oh good, I'm not the only one. Well a few weeks ago I was having one of those days. Nothing was going right and I was extremely frustrated with life. I can't even remember the details, I just knew that it was not a good day. So I was leaving to go somewhere (and running late I might add) and it was a little chilly. Well I couldn't find my usual coat, it had gotten put away somewhere, so I grabbed an older jacket, it was the first thing I could find. After putting Katelyn's carseat in the car, I was hopping in and I put my house keys in the coat pocket. I felt something in there! Actually 2 things! I then pull out 2 Dove chocolates. I don't know about you guys, but Dove chocolate is DIVINE! I absolutely love it. I think I must have had the forsight to leave these two little chocolates in this coat pocket, knowing that some day in the future I would desperately need some chocolate! Thank you past self, you saved the day!

Blog Dedication

I have been addicted lately to looking at craft blogs. I love looking at all the fun creative ideas and tutorials and dreaming about being able to do them. Some of the ideas I actually have done, which makes me very proud of myself! I have been doing a ton of things lately and then I just realized, why am I not blogging about all of this! I love looking at other people's blogs, so I bet they would like to see a few things I am up to (hopefully!). So here it goes! I hereby dedicate myself to being better at updating my blog! (Now that I've said it in writing, there's really no going back!) So I hope to share some of the fun things I've been up to and the pictures I have been storing on my phone in hopes of one day updating my blog.

So here it goes!

To start things off, I wanted to show you this hilarious picture.

This is a picture of our dog Annie (the left) and my inlaw's dog Sandi (the right). This picture doesn't do the size difference of these two dogs any justice. Annie is probably 1/6 the size of Sandi, if not smaller. But you know that saying it's not the size of the dog in the fight it's the size of the fight in the dog? That very much applies to our little Annie. She is playing tug of war with a sock with this big dog! Needless to say, she didn't win, but she gave it a good fight and once she even got the sock away from her! (but the rest of the time she was tossed around like a rag dog) But hey, they had fun!

Housewife success!

So apparently all I needed to do to become a better cook is have a child!! Well that and practice...and ask recipes from all of my family...and practice some more...and have good friends that help me practice! Lately I have had several success stories when it comes to the kitchen! Those of you who know me know that this is a pretty big deal to me.

First success story was a dinner that I made for Mike and I. Actually, it was breakfast foods but we ate it for dinner. I successfully cooked bacon, pancakes, and eggs! There was no burns on me or the food!

(I thought I had had a positive cookie baking experience until I took the cookies out of the oven and burned my bicep, that's what happens when you grab too far on the sides of the cookie sheet and then bend at the elbow to pull the sheet out)

Here is a picture of the breakfast/dinner

Thanks to my mom, sister, and grandma I have made several different recipes over the last few weeks. I made banana bread, a chicken and rice recipe, stir fry, and a few other things, go me!

The next adventure was a little more aggressive. I watch way too many cake decorating shows, cake boss, ace of cakes, famous cakes, ultimate cake-off, and many others. I have always wanted to try fondant on a cake, but I have heard that fondant is super hard to use. I have a good friend who was willing to let me use her expertise (and her kitchen!) to attempt this task! We bought all the stuff we would need and we used a special recipe for Marshmallow Fondant, which is supposed to be slightly easier to use. It was sooooo much fun! It was a little labor intensive but not too bad. Here are some pictures!

Here is my friend mixing up the fondant. It looks way sticky but it was pretty easy to knead and make it firm.

I forgot to take a photo of the middle step, of just putting the fondant on, but we put the fondant on the cake and then decorated it with frosting. So much fun!

The finished product! Isn't is so pretty?! I was pretty proud of us, thanks Kelsie for helping me!

I'm going to try and keep updating my blog more often, it's a work in progress but I'm working on it!

Cooking adventures!

I have never been a very good cook...in fact over the years I have made many humorous mistakes in the kitchen. Not all are disasterous but most are pretty funny. Well getting married didn't really help me in this area, in fact I've probably gotten worse! Some of my stories include using salt instead of sugar in chocolate chip cookies, leaving the stove on all night long, and using corn meal instead of bread crumbs for a chicken recipe. My most recent story happened just this last week. We had invited Mike's cousin Kristi and her boyfriend Richie over for dinner and games. I was in charge of the main dish and a salad and Kristi was going to bring rolls and dessert. I decided to make chicken fettucini alfredo. I bought all of the ingredients and I had everything ready. The morning of I took a bag of chicken out of the freezer to begin the defrost. I looked at them and thought "These look a little strange" I even took a picture and called my mom to ask her if chicken can go bad in the freezer. She got my text picture and said they didn't look bad but check them more as they thaw. Here is the picture for you to judge for yourself!

Looks like perfectly good chicken, right? Can anyone guess what I had done? What I believed to be a bag of chicken breasts was actually pork chop...yup I was preparing to make pork chop fettucini alfredo. Well by the time I had realized my mistake I was running short on time and wasn't sure I would have time to go to the store and get chicken. Then I rememebered that they make pre-sliced, cooked chicken breast that would be perfect for my recipe. I rushed to the store to buy myself some. While I was at the store I decided I would get a cucumber to add to my salad. As I'm searching the poultry section, I can't find ANY of those little strips! By this point, I really didn't have time to do anything else. I called my mom, frantically, and she said she had some that I could use. So I bought my cucumber, and drove like crazy up to my mom's.

On the bright side, the salad turned out GREAT! See?

I began making the alfredo and cooking the noodles. I had purchased two packaged of fettucini noodles. I started cooking one of them and then decided that maybe I should cook both. Apparently I misjudged the amount of noodles, because I ended up making WAY too much. Oh well, it's better to have plenty of food than not enough!

Look at all those noodles!!

All in all, the night went really well, we had a lot of fun and every one promised that the food tasted good. It's my goal to become a better cook and not be so stressed about the entire cooking process. Hopefully things go better, if you have any amazing cooking tips, feel free to let me know!

We're having a baby!

Ok ok...this might not be news to everyone seeing as how I'm 6 months pregnant, but I'm really bad at keeping the blog up to date! But here it is...We're PREGNANT! We are having a baby girl due May 21st. Things are going pretty well! We recently bought our first home, it's a two bedroom town house that is very nice and we love having a place to call our own. Mike was just promoted to manager at his work and things are going very well with his job, we are all so proud of him!

Here is a picture of our very first crib! Mike set it up the other day and we put the bedding in it.

Since we're having a girl, we're going all pink with this baby!

Here is a profile shot of our baby girl, isn't she adorable?!

Her cute little foot is the second picture and third is proof that she's definitely a girl!