Easter!

Sunday was a beautiful, wonderful day! We had a fantastic service at church and then had lunch. I forgot to take any pictures until after everyone had already left and most of the food had been eaten...

Oops...

However, it was a really fun time and these are the dishes I decided to make (mostly eaten):

Rachel at The Atwoods had posted about these Loaded Potatoes and Broccoli Cornbread. They looked like they would make plenty of food for the amount of people we were having over so I started there. The other thing in the picture was a failed attempt at baked okra. It turned out alright, but I know what to do next time to fix it. I'll let you know when I try it again, haha.

The broccoli cornbread was a big favorite and I was really pleased with how these potatoes turned out and of course, I love potatoes period. Thanks for the recipes Rachel! =]

I had to make some veggies and I chose to go with green beans and corn (because they were in the fridge and I was doing this Easter meal on a budget =)). I just heated up the corn in the microwave and then added a little salt and pepper. The green beans I heated up for a about 5 minutes in the microwave and meanwhile I poured a little olive oil into a pan and added a can of vegetable broth to it. I let that heat up on the stove and when the green beans were done I added them to the pan. I let them simmer for about 15 minutes and once the broth was absorbed, I added a little garlic salt and some pepper to season them and then let them simmer for 5 more minutes. Easy Peasy.

And here's the one piece of brownie that was left, haha. We had those for dessert while we played Cranium (awesome game by the way). =] 

Easter was really fun and everything went off without a hitch (well except the okra). But more importantly, we took some time to reflect on the reason we celebrate Easter and the amazing gift we've been given.

P.S.- next holiday, I will actually remember to take pictures (hopefully)

I Want Tips!

Can we just talk about coupons for a minute? I know most people don't use coupons (at least from what I've seen when I'm in the store and from talking to co-workers, etc.), but I have been attempting to for a little over a year now and I finally feel like I'm getting the hang of it... Sort of... But I want more tips. If you coupon and you have any hidden coupon secrets, then please share them with me =]

I've been very pleased with the results I've seen so far.

I shop at Publix almost exclusively now and I follow I Heart Publix and Southern Savers as they post the weekly deals for Publix with coupon matchups. I attended a coupon class about a month ago and since then my coupon-ness has kind of taken off. I go to the store once per week (as that's how often the deals change for Publix) and my personal goal for each trip is to save more than I spend or to spend less than $40. So far I've either met that goal or come under it! So that's pretty good to me. Of course, it does take a little work to prepare for a trip now. When the weekly deals are posted on I Heart Publix, I go through and write down what I need/want out of that list and print out the associated coupons. I also go through my personal coupon collection (coupons from the paper or that I've printed out previously) and get what I need. I clip them together and then take my list and coupons to the store. When I get there I always go to the customer service desk first and ask them if they have any new coupon booklets and then I look through that in case there might be a coupon for something I want.

These are the main things that I do and so far it's been going well, but if you have any couponing tips, please share! =]

14 and Rainbows

So my little sister McKenna turned 14 on Friday! I asked her how it felt and she said, "Pretty much the same as 13." Haha.

On Friday we went out to dinner and then she opened her presents.

Last year for her birthday I asked her what color scheme she wanted for her party (yes, I am dorky) and she said rainbow. I made her blue cupcakes because I am mean. Well, mainly because I didn't have much time. Anyway, this year I wanted to honor the rainbow request for her sleepover Saturday night. Better late than never. My BFF Sharon was in town on Saturday so she came over to my mom's to help me get everything ready for the part-ay.

My made a mess of my mom's kitchen and it was really fun. We made queso blanco for the girls.

 

And we made this rainbow cake as her birthday cake.

For dinner, we made Pioneer Woman's tomato basil pizza. Always a favorite and really fun to make.

The finished queso blanco

The cake all put together and waiting for frosting.

And the finished product! Sharon and I were so proud of this...

Candles in the shape of 14. When we put the candles in, Sharon informed me that there we 14 candles... How ironic!

After the first piece was cut:

McKenna was so amazed by how the cake looked. That's the reaction Sharon and I were going for.

Rainbow-y!

And Sharon and I with our creation! =] That's my other sister Mallory over there on the right.

Super fun night! Happy Birthday McKenna!

Queso Blanco!

Hola! My friend Parneet whose still in town until Tuesday, invited us and our friend Matt over last night for Taco Night! I wanted to try making queso blanco so I searched for a recipe to try and of course I picked the easiest one and that one with the least amount of ingredients.

You can access that recipe here if you're interested, but here's the skinny:

Get yourself a pound of white American cheese, 2 4 oz. cans of green chilies and 3/4 cup of heavy cream.

We put the chilies and cream in and once it warmed up, we added cubes of the cheese in slowly. Once it was melted, we heated it up a little more and that was it! We, of course, had tortilla chips with it and it turned out really well for a 3-ingredient recipe.

We brought cayenne pepper to put in it if it didn't have enough kick, but I was OK with it the way it was. Everybody else ate jalapeno peppers with it anyway sooo that's kick for ya right there.

And here's the queso up close and personal. It tasted just like the dip you get a Mexican restaurants around here where we live.

Oh, and this recipe makes a LOT of dip. As in, the four of us could not finish it all even though we were snacking on it all night. So if you have a Taco Night any time soon, this is something for you to consider. =]

Muy bueno!

Dinner Party(?)

My good friend from work, Parneet, is in town for two weeks. She lives several states away, but about every month and half she comes here for two weeks and works where I work. I met her last summer for the first time and we just clicked! So every time she's here we spend as much time together as possible. Last Thursday I had her and our good friend Matt over for dinner and here's the low-down on what I made.

There are no pictures (I'm so sad about that...), but I made Herb Cheese and Spinach Sauce Pasta which I got from this site. It was my first time making it, but it's so easy and there are only a few ingredients and I actually already had them all on hand anyway. That's always nice.

I also made a hashbrown casserole, but I altered it by adding in fresh zucchini and squash. Love those two veggies, yum.

And in the interest of making something that I had actually tried before, I made parmesan green beans as well.

I was surprised at how well the spinach pasta was received and I was also happy that it made a lot because I had lunch for the next few days. Always good. To finish off the meal, we had fresh strawberries and whipped cream. I would like to consider that a dinner party even though it was just the 4 of us, but either way it was fun and if you like spinach you should give the spinach pasta a try. =]

Spring Break!

Oh wait... I don't get one of those... But my BFFs do! Last week they were here and I took advantage of it. Kelly is in pharmacy school (3rd year) and Sharon is in physical therapy school (1st year). They are both super smart and I'm very proud of them.

On Tuesday, BFF Sharon and I got hot chocolate and shopped til we dropped.

On Wednesday, BFF Kelly and her fiance Bobby came over and we partied.

Then Sharon joined us for root beer floats and we watched Despicable Me (which is super cute if you haven't seen it yet).

We also danced (Just Dance 2 for the Wii = my new favorite game).

On Thursday Sharon and I got together again.

Yes, we are crazy.

We went to Sonic. Yay!

And it was St. Patrick's day so how appropriate is this next picture?

We had planned to use it as a St. Patty's day prank, but then we couldn't think of anyone to prank... Fail.

On Saturday Kelly and I got to have lunch with our friend who is expecting her second child very soon. =]

Then I got to play ultimate frisbee and that night Kelly and I threw a surprise party for our friend Matt!

We made oreo truffles and chocolate-covered pretzels.

 The finished product!

We also made a birthday banner for him. Any fans of The Office out there? We made this based on the banner that Dwight made for Kelly's birthday. =]

And of course we posed under it.

So sad spring break's over and my bestie's are gone! But now I'm looking forward to summer. =]

I Was Totally Amazed!

This is so random... but on Sunday after lunch, I was passing by the library and I stopped there so I could get some books. I LOVE reading, but unfortunately have not read much in a while. Growing up I read all the time and loved checking out my own books from the public library and from the school library.

We had Accelerated Reader at my school (did any of you have that?) which is a program that gives students points when they read books and then take a quiz on the computer about them. When you got to a certain point level, you would get a prize. I eventually won all the prizes in my school because I read so much. (dorky? yeah, probably).

So anyway, I was super excited to get to go in and grab some books. I headed immediately for the mystery section (my favorite...) and grabbed 4 books. I headed to checkout and as I was walking over to one of the librarians, but then I noticed these 4 little kiosks. I didn't know what the kiosk was for, but I stepped back with my books and checked it out. There was a touch screen above a glass table top and there was a scanner just under the touch screen. On the screen there was a button to checkout so I hit that and then it said to scan a library card. Done. Then the screen instructed me to place up to 4 books on the glass table top. I was incredulous (you like how I tossed that fancy word in there?), but set the books down anyway. Automatically, each book's title and information appeared on the screen one by one.... There was no scanning, no laser, nothing....

People, I was amazed by this. The screen then read that the books were checked out and I was done! I relayed this information to a group of friends last night and one in particular didn't seem too surprised and was explaining about some chip being in the books, blah blah blah. Still, I am in awe of this technology and thought you all should know.

Oh, and did I have enough parentheses in this entry? I think I could have used a few more...