The holidays are over, but the work is not!

Why hello there bloggers!  It's been awhile since we've connected hasn't it?  But that's okay! Because today is a day for photos and other creative moments.

First, Christmas.  It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work.  In my previous post you can see our $2 Christmas tree.  We never did take a photo in front of it together, but we did roll it up to save for next year.  We're thinking it's gonna work out as a fun tradition.  That is, if we manage to have enough construction paper because, geez that used a lot of it.

Of course, what do you expect when you make it over 4 feet tall?

Christmas was a wonderful time to be thrifty, and I am excited about two present ideas this year.  One, was not fully my idea. I was looking on Google to try and find a fun present to give that didn't cost a lot of money and I found a suggestion to give a 'movie night.'  The person who suggested it said to put a blanket, some popcorn and candy, and a movie into a pretty basket (and any other things  you might associate with a movie night).  And I thought that was a super idea, so I went for it!  A few family members received our thrifty gifts and they were well received.  We picked movies from the Walmart bins (and had a GREAT time digging and picking them out), and I used fabric paint to decorate a fleece blanket.  Then we split up a few boxes of popcorn, and BAM! Awesome non-expensive family-friendly present.   It made me happy.

It wasn't until Christmas day that we had to come up with our second idea.  It seems we were part of a cousin-exchange and my husband forgot.  Whoops.  With guilty hearts we used the new gift we recieved (Pyrex mixing bowls with lids! So very useful), and tried to find a gift to give.

Thus, when the stores were open again we were back at Walmart.  And I had an Idea! (Yes, capital I.  Idea!)  I swear there was a lightbulb above my head that clicked on with a *Bing* and began shining away.  The gift had to be shipped, and as I learned with the first presents (whose shipping was incredibly close to the actual gift cost) it needed to be light weight.  We bought two throw pillows and another fleece blanket and took them home to personalize.

I crocheted a few coordinated colored flowers, sewed them on, and BAM!  Custom made throw pillows and blanket.  Shipping cost? Too much as always, but better than the cost of shipping a blender.  And, the thought behind it made it shine that much better.  Especially since it's going to show up two weeks late.

Here are photos!

 

David's job was to make the card, and this is the adorable one he made.

Less than a week later we had another plan.  This time we were headed to Raleigh (a good 2.5 to 3 hour drive) to see the new movie Avatar at an IMAX theater.  I'll admit, I thought David was over the top to come up with this idea.  I mean, why not just watch it in a normal theater like normal people?  But nope.  Such is this man.  The movie wasnt until 10pm and we arrived (two friends in tow) at about 5 pm.  With time to kill we decided to eat out (Cheesecake Factory!) and then explore the local mall.  Which was absolutely beautiful and had all of my favorite stores ( I miss you Victoria's Secret), including....

THE LEGO STORE!

That's right folks, an entire store of LEGOS! They had sets of PEOPLE, they had a whole wall of PIECES separated by type and color (my organizationally anal dream!!)  and they had a cake mold.  It was silicon and red and in the shape of a lego man.  David's friend went to buy something at the front of the store for a family member and came back with the mold for us as well!

Now, if you knew my man and his family you would know that they can't do anything the easy way.  David decided that not only must we make his friend a lego cake (which I am very much pro doing as a thank you), but he decided that all the parts must be the right color.  Thus the trial and error ensued.  There was icing everywhere.  Bowls with blue, red, and yellow cake all over the place.  And tape.  Because it became my job to figure out how to block the colors from running all over.

Our first attempt?

Looked like this:

Notice the smiling face.  And the awesome color separation!

Of course, there ended up being a catch.

As David proceeded to tell me, "Jess, we can't ice this"

"Why not?" I asked.

"You'll lose all the details! You wont see the face or anything."

Thus, dear reader, notice the little white dots along Lego man's feet?  That's icing.  Which was pushed into the cake using a giant needle syringe that we found in the cooking section at our favorite store.  Well, it's basically our only store.... stupid empty little town.  But that's neither here nor there.

Now, the best part of this Lego cake was eating it! AND we even had left over batter. Which I put together to make us a rainbow cake. It was beautiful.

Wanna see?

 

Unfortunately it wasn't exactly even.  Lol.  I blame the cake, and not my pouring skills.

Anyway, more soon. I have a lot of crochet projects to show off and link to! Hooray!
Until next time....

Take that Rachel Ray!

Today was my mom's birthday, and for her birthday my aunt took her out to dinner.

This story has nothing to do with my mom though.

(Happy Birthday Mom!)

Because mom was gone, it was just my dad and I for dinner.  Yesterday he'd mentioned how he loves stew but hasn't had it in awhile. I figured, well I do nothing else all day, so I'll make dinner! Yay!

In my family, my dad is the main cook. So it's not as if we were going to starve with mom gone.  As the newly married one though, I figure maybe I'll get some cooking practice in.  So before we went to lunch I pulled out two very old cookbooks, both at least older than I am.

One had a recipe for "Beef and Onion Stew," the other for "Old Fashioned Beef Stew."  I decided to just combine the two and make it up as I went.  The ingredients we lacked at home were stew meat, carrots, and all spice.  Okay I lied, we did have carrots. Baby carrots.  But I'm just not a fan of those slow cooked. I really don't like them a whole lot raw, and since I was the chef I bought the kind I liked.

After lunch (mom's birthday Red Lobster meal) we stopped at the store to pick up my ingredients (and happened to pass the craft stuff on the way so I came home with more seed beads and a really cool storage container for the tiny beads).  I was VERY happy to find out that the meat was already cut up! Hooray!

I hate to cut raw meat. I had to handle raw meat.  But I especially hate cutting it.  It's flesh.  Actual flesh. That you have to saw with a knife and then squish in your hands while  you put it in the pan.  Can we say "ew"?

Ew.

So we got home and I started cooking.   I prefer to chop over cook. So I did the peeling and chopping first! Carrots (6), Potatoes (4), Garlic Clove (1), Onion (1).  Three years ago I could have chopped an entire room full of onions with zero tears. Today, I had to take my glasses off and put a wet cold towel on my face. My eyes didn't tear as much as they BURNED.  But dangit, my onion was CHOPPED!

I browned the meat- proceeding to get oil everywhere.  Oh wait, stop.  I must add a very important fact- I am an extremely messy cook. Extremely.  Thus, oil is splattered on the stove top, the counter next to it, my arms/shirt, and even the microwave above it.  Then I tossed in the onions and garlic, browned it all.

Next on the recipes was either 2 cups water or 2 cups dry red wine.  I found a can of beef broth and a can of tomato paste.  Those went in. An hour later, I tossed in the veggies and covered with water.  20 minutes later I remembered to turn the heat back up to make it all simmer. Lol.

At this point I have veggie pieces all over, oil all splattered, paper towels littering the counters, and the smell of allspice floating in the kitchen.

Allspice. What is it?  Neither of my parents could answer this question. I used it, I still have no idea.  But I do know that it costs $2.43 at Walmart for a very tiny bottle of it.  Like maybe an ounce.  Probably not even that.

Anyway, I put in my dash of allspice and then could only smell that in the air for the next hour. That was a problem.  Luckily in the end it all tasted good, but for the future I'm thinking just to use half a dash of allspice.

Then, I was bored.

I'm not much of a patient person.  (background laughter)
Okay fine, I'll be honest. I have no patient bone in my body.

So I made muffins. Peanut butter muffins, a new recipe.  They're yummy but boring. Next time I'll add more peanut butter and chocolate chips.  A nice touch was my melted butter/sugar mixture I brushed on right out of the oven. You can never have too much sugar.

So I got to serve my dad dinner at 6pm.  We had Beef Stew (the Jess version) where the veggies were practically falling apart (mmmm) and the meat was tender (which dad told me since I'm not a beef person and didn't try it).  Then for dessert, a peanut butter muffin.

Can we say SUCCESS?

Look out husband, delicious meals are on their way! =)