Super Bowl Eats - Unhealthy Recipes

 

Amen sister friend!

 

As you may or may not know,

I'm not really a football fan.

That being said, you don't have to be

to know that the 49ers & Ravens

are meeting up this Sunday for the Super Bowl.

In fact, this is all I've heard about at work.

 

While I'm not a die hard football fan,

I find it fun to research food for the big day.

Here are a few recipes I thought you might enjoy
(especially my mother-in-law, Anne) hehehe.
All recipes from Closet Cooking.

Bacon Double Cheeseburger Dip

Artichoke Bread

Bacon Guacamole

Bacon Wrapped Buffalo Chicken Jalapeno Poppers

Buffalo Chicken Dip

Buffalo Chicken Potato Skins

Chicken Fajitas

Hot Cheesy Corn Dip

Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip

 

Pizza Dip

Potato Skins

 

The Closet Cooking site has an email you can sign up for

as well as cookbooks you can buy.

 

I don't have any experience with the recipes,

but it's a nice little benefit if you find

that you are interested.

 

Sacramento Museum Day

Via

If you live in the Sacramento area,

you might want to take advantage of

Sacramento Museum Day.

It is February 2, 2013 from 10 am - 5 pm.

All participants offer either free or 1/2 price admission.

 

Participating Museums are:

Aerospace Museum of California
California Automobile Museum
California Foundry History Museum
The California Museum
California State Military Museum
California State Capitol Museum
California State Railroad Museum
Center for Contemporary Art
Crocker Art Museum
Discovery Museum Science & Space Center
Don & June Salvatori California Pharmacy Museum
Fairytale Town
Folsom History Museum
Governor’s Mansion State Historic Park
Heidrick Ag History Center (Woodland)
Leland Stanford Mansion State Historic Park
Maidu Museum & Historic Site
Museum of Medical History
Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum
Old Sacramento State Historic Park
Roseville Utility Exploration Center
Sacramento Children’s Museum
Sacramento Zoo
Sacramento Historic City Cemetery
Sacramento History Museum
Sojourner Truth Multicultural Arts Museum
State Indian Museum
Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park
Wells Fargo History Museum (Capitol Mall)
Wells Fargo History Museum (Old Sacramento)
 

You'll have to let me know if you go.

I'd be interested to find out what museum you visited,

and how you felt about their exhibitions.

Workin' Hard

I was busy the entire weekend doing this and that.

Saturday I dropped some stuff off at Salvation Army,

and then proceeded to go inside the store and

purchase a few things.

It's a no win situation for me when I go there -

I've got a problem,

I really do.

 

I then ran over to Kmart to see if they had

any curtains that I liked.

Surprisingly they did, so I bought

1 panel and brought it home.

HATED it!

I tell you, I cannot for the life of me

figure out what window coverings I want on

our stinking windows.

 

Next, I headed over to Starbucks.

Grande, non fat, decaf, black and white mocha

thank you very much

(Todd and I like to call it a "why bother?")

 

When I got home, I cleaned and did laundry

for the rest of the afternoon.

 

Sunday, the laundry continued and I got a

bug up my bum and wanted to organize

our bedroom and closet.

So I did.

It was exhausting!

 

Todd decided to split so he wouldn't have

any chance of being conned into doing

my project, and he went for a hike with

Sindy and Special.

They were gone for about 5 hours.

Todd came dragging himself through

the door, almost unable to lift his legs.

Sindy wasn't in much better shape.

Special was bouncing around like

she could do another round.

 

About 5 PM we called it quits

and headed back to our bed where

the heating blanket and movies are.

 

Sindy recuperating from her hike.

Me enjoying a nice afternoon snack after all my hard work.

 

Was your weekend as exciting as mine?

Please tell me no and let me live

vicariously through you!

Fast and Easy

That's what these cookies are!

I believe I have posted about them before,

but they are so cheap and easy to make,

it bears repeating.

You will need:

Some chocolate cake mix - 1 box

3 eggs

1/3 cup vegetable oil

Some sugar

Heat your oven to 375 degrees,

and then...

take whatever chocolate cake mix you like 

( I usually get the butter chocolate one, but I had German chocolate on hand),

add the eggs and the vegetable oil and mix thoroughly.

Drop spoonfuls on your cookie sheet

(I used about a tablespoon and it makes about a dozen cookies,

the smaller the spoonful, the more cookies it makes -Duh!),

and slap that baby in the oven between 8-10 minutes.

I like my cookies more on the undercooked side, 

so I put them in there for 8 minutes, but just play 

around with the time until you get the cookie 

consistency that you like.

Whatever you do, do NOT cook them until they look cooked.

Guaranteed - they will be burned.

Anyways... moving on,

Let the baked cookies sit for a couple minutes,

then place them on wax paper to cool and top with sugar.

 Voila!

Cheap and easy cookies.

Give it a try and let me know how it turns out.

Have you ever tried this recipe before?

If so, what mix did you use?

Anybody make it with a white cake mix, or lemon?

Happy Weekend

Via

Happy weekend all!

Enjoy your days off, and think of me.

I'll be buried under about 7 loads of laundry!

That's right, nothing but fun around here.

 

See you back here on Monday!

I've Got An Itch

that I want to scratch,

but I don't know where to begin.

Wow, that's sounds pretty weird-

let me explain.

 

I have several projects that I

want to start/finish, so many in

fact that I don't know where to begin.

 

Here are a few examples of some

of the them:

 

Get curtains for living room.

(easy enough, but I can't decide what color or length I want).

 

Finish painting the kitchen ceiling.

(easy enough, but Todd threw away the paint can,

and we can't remember the color)

 

Organize bedroom

(again, easy enough except I don't have anywhere

to store anything.)

 

Get some artwork/photography up on the walls.

Um ya, I can do this one.

 

Pick out fixtures and various other things to redo the bathroom.

(I have no idea where to go with this, so I can't proceed

until I do decide)

 

Figure out what to do with the barbecue and utensils.

(Did some research already - hit a brick wall)

 

Pick out some cushions/pillows/umbrella for patio furniture.

Perhaps this is one I could tackle.

 

Blog - new direction?

(Started research on this - MUCH more to do)

 

New faucet in the kitchen.

(Again, I need a direction and I'm not sure what I want to do).

 

Take tile and doors piled up outside to Habitat for Humanity.

Maybe a project for this weekend!

 

Take pile of carpet outside my window to the dump.

Perhaps another project this weekend.

 

So, you get my drift.  A couple of the projects could be

accomplished but the end of the weekend, however,

a majority still need some major Internet

research done on them.

 

Oh great!  I just gave myself another project on my to do list!

 

So does anyone else get so overwhelmed with projects

that they decide not to do any of them, and instead

go to a corner and crawl under a chair?

Via

It's Time...

for some 

Cuteness Explosion!

Why?

Because I had a particularly boring and long day,

and I just need to look at some cuteness.

Who's with me?

Via

He looks like I feel today.

On the bright side, we're half way through the week.

More Physical Labor

Because the previous day was so fun,

we decided to come back for more,

only this time we had Austin & Lexx.

Austin & Lexx headed to load up a bunch of old lumber.

 Look at my little pumpkins hard at work.

Work site necessities:  coffee and safety shovel -

in that order.

Sindy helping me supervise the workers.

After Austin & Lexx were done loading up the lumber,

they cut some of the scraggly branches on the scrub oaks.

Me supervising - without makeup - or brushing my hair.

Eeegads!

Pretty fire.

You know I have to throw a random picture in my blogs 

for absolutely no reason.

We had another little visitor on day 2 -

a cute little tree frog.

Todd getting the job done.

What's wrong with this picture?

A happy Todd with his little Fisher Price chainsaw. - tee hee hee.

He got as far as he could with this chainsaw, 

and now he is going to have to break out the big boy.

I forgot to get a picture of what we had completed,

so I got up early this morning and took a couple

not so good pictures from the window.

You can see what is left of the big pine tree.

If you look to the right of the front of the quad,

that is what we need the big boy chainsaw for.

Look at all that progress.

No more messy pine tree on the ground.

We do have some firewood out there

that we need to load up and bring to our shed.

A project for next weekend perhaps?

Productive Weekend

Remember that huge pine tree that fell on our 

property sometime last year?

We finally got around to cutting it down (mostly).

It's been a two day project, and we are still not done.

It was a beautiful day, in the 60's I'd say.

Because it wasn't too cold and it wasn't too hot,

we decided to attack this project that we should

have done a year ago.

Oooppps!

So what happens when you take a tree that 

has been down for a year,

and you mix this?

Nice little fire.

It made me feel like we needed marshmallows.

This was what we were dealing with.

Todd worked so hard, the chain on his 

chainsaw came off and he had to fix it.

I don't know if you can tell, but his 

chainsaw looks like it's a kids toy.

Couldn't resist a picture of the 

sap falling with the sun behind it.  

It looked golden.

We had a couple visitors come to help.

Austin helped Todd with all the heavy logs and lifting.

This hawk supervised the project.

By the end of day one, this is how far we made it.

Not too shabby.

It's amazing what a day or two of a little TLC 

can do to make your property look better.

Happy Dance, Happy Dance

Via

What am I doing this three day weekend?

Absolutely nothing.

That's right -

Be jealous!

What are your plans for the weekend?

Les Miserables

Via

I had planned on seeing Les Mis on New Years,

but as you know, those plans didn't work out so well.

So I happened to talk Todd in to going with

my this last weekend, and to my surprise,

both the kids wanted to go and were available.

(That just never happens!)

So the consensus....4 stars.

I loved the music in it, however, I don't

remember one time that the actors actually spoke.

They sang the entire movie

(as far as I can remember).

I found that to be slightly annoying.

Also, and this is dumb and I know it,

everyone was soooo miserable - thus the name.

Les Miserables means miserable or forsaken,

so I shouldn't expect anything else,

but I found it to be depressing.

It became even more depressing when I did 

a little research (and by little - I mean very little),

and found out that Les Miserables was 

actually a book written in the 1800's, and a few

of the characters are based on real people.

I cried in the theater, then got home, did the research

and cried some more - 

I know - BIG BABY.

Other than that, those are the only real criticisms that I have.

Why 4 stars instead of 5 then you ask?

I compare everything to Phantom of the Opera.

I've seen two live musical productions, 

own the movie and the soundtrack.

To me, nothing compares, and Todd felt the same way.

 

My absolute favorite song was sung

by Anne Hathaway.

She played Fantine and sung 

I Dreamed a Dream.

Because the actors/actresses sing

without going to studios and dubbing in a perfect 

sounding song, you get much more emotion

the way this movie was filmed.

It literally had me bawling!

 

I also loved Hugh Jackman (Duh...who wouldn't),

but his acting, not his singing is what made

his performance so good.

He played Jean Valjean, the main character.

 

So what do you think, would you go see it based on

my short and very incomplete critique?

Cool Little Doodad

I came home the other day to find these

cool little doodads waiting for me.

Todd bought them for me for Christmas,

but the order got here late...

so I got to enjoy an extended Christmas.

Yeah me.

This is a remote control to my camera.

each year Todd's family takes a family portrait.

I bring my camera, set it on the timer and run back

to the group so that everyone there is included.

This year I happened to be in the back row.

That meant that I had to push the button 

and run from the living room to the dining room

via the kitchen.

Suffice to say, I'm not in great shape

and the latter pictures were NOT GOOD of me.

When I opened this, I was thinking to myself,

where were you a week and a half ago!

Anyhoo -

It comes with a remote (duh!), and little thingy mathingy -

and yes that is the technical name for it.

The remote is tiny - awwww isn't just a little cutie.

The thingy mathingy is shorter and fatter and

sits on top of the camera,

thus the reason I don't have a picture of it.

I'm so proud because I actually got it to work all by myself...

no help from Todd.

I even took a picture of me which you don't get to see

because it was

U-G-L-Y!

But trust me, it works.

Although, even after reading the instructions, I'm not

quite sure what all the little things are on the remote.

I just figured out that if you slide the little lever 

all the way to the right,

it works.

Good nuff!

The next thing I got was a camera wrist strap.

I absolutely love the color and have actually been

lusting over a camera strap for about a year now, 

but just never pulled the trigger because there were 

too many options and I loved them all.

Todd picked out a favorite, so now I don't have to decide.

Perfect!

It's a pretty brown, aquaish and orangeish color. 

Oooohhh pretty.

The inside is so nice and soft.

I love it.

Todd was mad though.

He thought he bought me a neck strap,

and when it came in it was a wrist strap.

I say, I don't care....I love whatever you get me

(mostly - unless it is a tool or a car book or something 

really boring like that).

I love both of my little surprises and can't wait to get

some real use out of them.

So did you have any surprise Christmas presents come your way?