Baking Saturday

Usually I wait until Sundays to make things in large batches, since that seems like the day you should! But Sunday is Judah's only day off, so I decided I should try to do that on Saturdays instead.

It also helped that I wanted to make Homemade Brown Sugar Cinnamon Poptarts for our anniversary tomorrow morning! By the way, check out that link. They take a bit of effort, but these homemade pop tarts are SO worth it. Once I make them a few times, I will probably post the recipe step by step myself, but for now refer to Sally's Baking Addiction's original post. SO GOOD!

I also have been lacking with stand-by lunch items, though I am incredibly proud to say that Judah takes a salad nearly everyday now :D So I decided to make a big batch of pizza dough and make my spinach calzones. I figure with 1/3 whole wheat flour in the dough and putting spinach in them makes them healthier ;)  They also taste great, freeze easily, and work well for Judah to bring to work.

I still want to make waffles today and I accidentally mixed the egg wash with the pop tart filling, so I need to make some oatmeal muffins to use that up. My bad...

I'm glad that I have finally been able to keep our food bill down this month! We've been spending nearly $500/month, which is ridiculous for two people, especially when vegetables only cost me about $80 for the month, including what I buy for the guinea pigs. To be fair, last month a lot of the grocery bill went towards stocking up on canned goods, which has helped lower this month, but I know we are way lower than we usually are! We've been eating many more vegetables too, which has been great. Dinner typically consists of a meat or beans and then two or three types of veggies. I am also making everything homemade. Bread, ice cream, tortillas, cookies/desserts, pizza dough. I would love to make my own pasta, but I haven't been that adventurous yet! Plus we have about five pounds of it laying around.. That makes me feel great. My only wish would be to have my own garden so I can control my own produce, but unfortunately that won't happen until we settle down or at least know we will be in a place long enough to have one. If I had planned it out, I think I could have had a garden here. Maybe next year :)

I'm nervous for my interview tonight. I almost wanted to cancel it, but I figure the worst that happens is I don't get the job or I get it and don't want it so I tell them no. But I do seriously need to find something to take up more of my time while we are here so I might as well go interview tonight and see if I like it.

I can't give much detail at this time, but we found out the other night that Judah's mom has cancer. It does appear to be advanced and the prognosis is not good, but I am sure there are lots more tests and discussions that need to take place before anything is finalized. Please if you could include her and Judah's family in your prayers as we navigate through this difficult time.

I hate cancer. I've been incredibly fortunate that it has not affected my life until two months ago when my mom was diagnosed, but I feel its presence now and it is an evil, devastating disease. Having another loved one stricken with this terrible ailment makes me wish I had the right degree to go into cancer research and find a cure for it. I really like the image I found above.

"The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still"

- Exodus 14:14

Friday Cookie Day!

Happy Friday everyone! What are your exciting plans for the weekend!?!

I wish I could say Judah and I planned an amazing, awesome, action-packed anniversary weekend (three months on Sunday!!)... BUT we didn't. First, he's been working crazy hours at work for the past three weeks and there have been rumors of working Sundays. With our luck, we would plan something and then we'd have to cancel because he has to work! Then we found out that his roommate from last summer, who I got to know pretty well from spending so much time with Judah, is back in the area working for a different company and we told him to join us for dinner this weekend if he can (that was our fault, haha). And finally, we are putting a lot of money towards the truck still, so it's not really in the bank account for us to spend money on hotel rooms and other stuff. We enjoy our company enough that we don't HAVE to go somewhere else to have fun :) We decided since we earn about $30-40 in credit card rewards each month, when we have enough money for a hotel room, we will use those rewards towards it. So probably next month we will get away for a night. Also, it seems Judah may get some time off after this job and we'll go on our honeymoon finally, so we can save money up for that instead if we want :D

**edit - while writing this post I received a phone call from the Old Navy store I applied to and I have an interview tomorrow night! I guess it was best that Judah and I don't have serious plans :D


Anyways... it has been a while since I posted a recipe! Sorry about that. I've come across some good ones so I will be sure to post them throughout the month. Today's recipe share is fantastic. Remember way back in an earlier post I said that I usually will try recipes that are on product bags? Well that's exactly where this one comes from. My friend Lindsay claims she is a horrible baker and so I invited her over to help me bake cookies and hopefully learn a thing or two! For me, baking is incredibly easy and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it.

On to these amazing cookies:

Photo cred to Lindsay since I didn't think to take any pics (again!)

Toll House Nestle Chocolate Chunk Cookies
    2 sticks butter
    3/4 cup sugar
    3/4 cup brown sugar
    2 eggs
    1 tsp vanilla extract
    1 tsp baking soda
    1 tsp salt
    2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
    11.5 oz package (1 3/4 cups) semi sweet chocolate chunks

Cream together the butter and sugars, then add the eggs, vanilla extract, baking soda, and salt. Finally, add the flour and chocolate chunks. Spoon tablespoon sized dough onto baking sheet. Bake at 375 for 9-11 minutes, until the bottom is golden brown (the top may still be slightly underdone).

This is a simple, straightforward recipe, but it tasted SO GOOD! I have seriously eaten three cookies a day since we baked them, and it required a lot of self control to stop at 3 ;)

Here are a few of my baking hints that I shared with Lindsay:
- Let the butter sit out for a couple hours before baking - I usually take it out the night before
- Cream the butter and sugar first (unless otherwise instructed) - it's easier to combine these ingredients first
- Next, add in your smallest ingredients (less than a cup) - I feel that it ensures they mix in evenly with the rest of the dough
- It is better to take your cookies out of the oven early than let them sit in too long - cookies will continue to bake on the pan once out of the oven
- freeze cookies for ultimate lasting freshness! We made these cookies on Wednesday, but when I take them out of the freezer and let them come to room temperature, they taste exactly the same as they did that day!

Finally, I'm excited to show you guys the decorating I have done around the house! With Labor Day passing, it seems everyone said goodbye to summer and hello to fall (even though we still have a week and a half technically), but I couldn't bring myself to get into fall mode when it was nearly 85 degrees outside! This past storm we had though brought in a cold front and the high for the next week is 73 so I decided now would be a good time to get in the fall spirit. :D

Everything is courtesy of Walmart. I absolutely love the owl sign :D My favorite change has been the candles and new tarts for the wall plug ins I bought though! The house smells so good now :)

I have lots I want to share with you guys, including the new logo on my page for Sweat Pink, Jamberry nails, and more recipes! Be sure to keep coming back :)

It's been a while!

Sorry for the lack of posting (if I even have any followers out there ;P)

It's been a busy couple of weeks around here. Judah and I went back to WI to visit. I was there for five days, while he was only able to stay for one. But I completed the paperwork for my new license!! :D It should arrive in the mail by the start of next week. We also were able to get Judah's new truck, which weirdly enough I haven't taken a picture of... but it's pretty much like this:

She drives nice and Judah now gets free fuel from work so that will save a couple hundred dollars each month :D Can't complain about that!

I had a pretty good time while I was out there visiting with the in-laws and Judah's friends. WI is pretty gorgeous in the summertime it seems. Too bad it has too many months of winter for my liking :P I told Judah we can live there between October and December for hunting season and the holidays, but the rest of the year we better live somewhere in the south!

Here are a few pics from when I went to the zoo with my sister-in-law and our drive back from WI.

I am loving the fact that now I have a vehicle. I didn't entirely mind walking everywhere, but I definitely don't miss it now! It makes me so happy that I don't spend three hours going to the gym and back and my workouts actually feel better too because I'm not tired from walking four miles (go figure). I also can go grocery shopping on my own, which allows Judah and I to spend more time together doing other things. He absolutely hates shopping and frankly, I don't need him there, so it's easier all around to be able to do it myself.

I also get to drive myself other places! Yesterday morning I met up with my friend Lindsay and we got coffee and visited a park nearby. We had an awesome time! We saw lots of deer (nearly twenty total!) and a group of ducklings with momma duck.

And can you believe that the McNuggets are one month old today??

They're not as big as I thought they'd be by now, but to be honest, I have no idea how fast they grow! But they are doing very well and they make my day go by much faster :)

So there's a pretty good update on the past three weeks... I will post a bit more often now that all the excitement of traveling has died down. I have started a new workout program (Lean & Lovely) and have found a new obsession that I want to share (Jamberry), so keep coming back!