Christmas

So, I am a month late writing about our Christmas. Better late than never? The holidays were nice. Our planning and money saving turned out to come in handy as we were able to get the gifts we wanted without going over our financial means. Don't get me wrong, we did not have the kind of money we would have liked. But we were able to get things that we actually wanted. Funny how as you get older, your "wants" and "needs" change. Gone are the days of wanting toys, coloring books and stuffed animals. Now I want makeup, dish towels and clothes!

The best friend had us over the weekend before Christmas. We enjoyed an amazing turkey dinner and hurt our bellies from laughing so hard while playing Cards Against humanity. We had been wanting the game for quite some time,  but always found that it was out of stock. The best friend always comes through when it comes to things that I really want. The game is an "adult" version to the famous Apples to Apples. The best friend's husband got the card. "How did I lose my virginity?". The card he chose to answer the question was, "The Make a Wish Foundation.". We were afraid he was going to suffer from a stroke. The whole room was filled with laughter and tears. I mean, it cannot get much better than that. Oh, besides the Keurig that I got!! We sure are spoiled. Hello hot chocolate and apple cider any time I want! 

Of course I had to deal with some family drama during the holidays. What's new? My mom chose to spend time with me the weekend before so that she could have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my siblings. Still hurts, but I am getting used to it. I swung by my brother's house on Christmas eve afternoon to deliver presents. I did not feel as welcome as I would have liked and my niece said a few rude comments, but overall it was what I expected. The brother surprised me with a Keurig as well. I was surprised considering that most holidays he forgets to get me a gift. I returned it and got a cart full of stuff in return :) 

Christmas Day was a little unusual as the husband had to work. I woke up early to go grab us some McDonald's breakfast. I should have made something nice, but this was fun and easy. We stuffed our mouths and then opened our presents. I sent him off to work and spent the day cooking and cleaning up. Of course I had to make themed food...

Our fancy Christmas morning breakfast

Magic Mike and Chocolate? He sure knows me well.

My festive meatloaf.

My cherry Jello pound cake. It turned out REALLY good. Except, I had accidentally gotten sugar free cherry pie filling. It definitely needed the sugar. Click here for the recipe. 

Happy Holidays! Only 330 days until Christmas! 

Taco Pizza

I have been trying my best to incorporate at least one "new" meal into our weekly dinner menu. I don't want our dinners to get boring and we enjoy trying new things. My latest creation was found on Pinterest of course. We love everything taco related and thought a pizza would be fun. It tasted great even with the healthier options!

Ingredients needed:

8 pack of burrito sized flour or wheat tortillas

1 can fat free refried beans

1/4 cup chicken broth

Taco seasoning

2 cups Mexican shredded cheese

1 cup of monterrey jack and sharp cheese grated

Canola oil for frying tortillas

1 small can of mild enchilada sauce (we are sissies and do not like spicy)

1 can of sliced olives

1/4 cup sliced green onion

1 8oz package of cream cheese (I use 1/3 less fat)

1.5 lbs ground turkey (we no longer cook with beef)

I first placed the oil and tortillas in a frying pan to get them a little crispy on each side. Once the tortillas were done, I threw them onto a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil. <-- important. I then spread the cream cheese and beans (did you know that adding chicken broth to the beans will make it more creamy and bring out the flavor better?) evenly across the tortilla. Top with the meat (with taco season mixed in) and some of the enchilada sauce generously placed across the meat. Then throw a handful of cheese on top. 

I then placed another tortilla down and topped it with the cheese mixture, olives and green onions. 

Bake @ 400 degrees until cheese is melted. 5-10 minutes. 

I garnished with some shredded lettuce, Mexican sour cream and a scoop of white rice. I made two pizzas which ended up being more than enough for the husband and I. We even had enough ingredients leftover to make more taco pizzas the following night. Success! 

Top 13 in 2013

In no particular order of course.

1. SEEING THE EAGLES! Sorry for the excess of using caps lock. I still get excited when I think about the 3+ hours of listening to one of my favorite bands. It was magical.

2. Experiencing the "Ride the Ducks" tour in Seattle.

3. Winning tickets to see Bruno Mars!

4. Snoqualmie date with the husband.

5. Conquering the 3 mile hike to the Ice Caves. 

6. Heather getting her lung transplant! 

Six month post-op! 

7. Visiting Roloff Farms

8. Being able to relax on the beach while seeing Haystack Rock for the first time.

9. Seeing Teresa Caputo!

10. Picnic adventures with the husband.

11. My many trips to Seattle 

12. Going to the zoo. I think it is much funner when you are an adult!

13. Winning $654 at Bingo! 

I was surprised with how easy it was to come up with 13 of my favorite memories from this past year. Some other honorable mentions include:

- Going to the EMP

- Winning Melissa Etheridge tickets

-Winning REO Speedwagon tickets

-The Fish Ladder? Scary, but fun!

-Visiting the Goonies house

-Trying Beth's Cafe finally

The husband and I went to the movie theater more this year and made sure to spend some quality time together as often as we could. This past year brought a lot of adventure and joy. There were some sad moments such as loosing my grandfather. I am still trying to figure out where I belong here in this world. I have yet to find the reasoning of why people are so inconsiderate when it comes to my feelings and why it takes so long for karma to return the favor. I look forward to what the next year will bring. I will be turning 30! (gulp). 

Happy New Year everyone!  

106.1 Kiss FM Jingle Ball

As I was driving home after an exhausting/emotional day, I turned on my favorite radio station and starting singing at the top of my lungs. Isn't funny that we all sound amazing while singing in our car? Watch out American Idol. Anyway, the station had announced that they were giving away tickets to The Kiss FM Jingle Ball Bash. They had 10 sets of tickets available and were in Target's parking lot. The only problem was that I was 30+ minutes away from the store. I quickly grabbed my phone *I do not condone texting and driving, but this was an emergency situation. Better than Facetiming? That happened once.* and messaged a few of my friends who lived close to the store mentioned. You can imagine my surprise when one of them called me back within a few minutes and said she had picked up two of the tickets! She happened to be driving by the store when she received my text. It was fate.

Neither one of us knew who would be performing. I turned to the Internet to find out.

- Selena Gomez

- Fifth Harmony

- Austin Mahone

- Paramore

- Fall Out Boy

- Icona Pop

- Travie McCoy

- New Polotics

- FLO RIDA

When I read that Flo Rida would be there, I knew I had to go.

The arena was small and there were many empty seats. I was surprised that such big acts were performing in our small town and the show was not sold out. Definitely a lot different from seeing Bruno or The Eagles this past year. I did not know who a few of the acts were, but I thought it was fun seeing so many different bands perform one right after another. It was unlike any concert I had been to before.

Selena Gomez sang a whole lot better than I had expected her to! She really put on a good show and got the crowd excited. I actually enjoyed her!

Icona Pop was a crowd pleaser and the everyone went wild when Austin Mahone came out. I was not a fan of his, he barely sang and his dance moves were not impressive. New Polotics showed off their amazing break dancing moves and Paramore even brought a teenage girl on stage to sing with them. Travie McCoy was great even though I am sure he was highly intoxicated. It was fun to hear everyone sing about how bad they wanted to be a billionaire. 

Fall Out Boy put on a great show, but I felt like Pete Wentz was a little cocky. He did apologize for asking people to come back to his hotel afterwards...naked. 

Hands down, the highlight of my night was Flo Rida. During his performance he handed out roses to the ladies near the stage. He even brought people up on stage and danced with them *insert jealous rage here*. The best part was when he sat on the Santa's shoulders and went through the crowd. When his shirt came off, my heart skipped a beat. He was dreamy. His chest was beautiful with sweat glistening from the lights. Had I been closer, I would have for sure thrown my body onto him. I definitely had a good feeling ;)  

Overall, the concert was something that I will never forget. I am glad that we got our tickets for free as I think I would have been disappointed to pay full price for them. Hopefully my winning streak continues in 2014! I already have my Journey tickets purchased and have begun the countdown. 200 more days!!

Thanksgiving Staycation

The husband is offered one personal paid day off per calendar year. He likes to utilize that day around Thanksgiving so that we could have some extra time together around the holiday. His job recently instated a new rule that you could have the holiday off as long as you placed yourself on the "I will work if needed" list. Meaning that at a moments notice he would have to report to work and if he chose not to...it would be an unpaid day. This meant that he had Thanksgiving off (sorta) as well as Friday for his personal day and he also took off Monday so that we could have five whole days together. This hadn't happened since we got married, four years ago. We are not big travelers, heck he hasn't even been in a plane before! We decided to have a staycation. We would stay home, preparing for Christmas, shopping and spending as much time together as we could before getting sick of each other. Kidding. Mostly.

Instead of cooking a big meal on the actual day of Thanksigiving, we decided to leave that for Friday. We spent the holiday delivering cupcakes to my family and going to the best friend's house to enjoy their deep fried turkey. YUM! She makes the best food. Her homemade potatoes are creamy, the turkey was moist and the pumpkin pie was to die for. (So the husband said, I hate pumpkin pie!) We hurried to get the dishes in the sink so that we could make it to Walmart in time for their first sale event at 6 o'clock! Call us crazy, but we love that sales are now offered on Thanksgiving. We make it our goal to get all of our Christmas shopping done before December first. Shopping these amazing deals allows us to save a ton of money. People are passionate about stating that it isn't fair that others have to work on Thanksgiving to help run the sales and that they should be home with their family. Hogwash. My husband always has to work the holidays and what about the troops that cannot even see their families during this time?  Be grateful that you have a job during this rough economy. Rant over.

Caramel apple cupcakes with a caramel on top of caramel apple flavored icing and Pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. 

Walmart ended up being more chaotic that I had anticipated. People were grabbing things off the shelves before they were supposed to and many items that were advertised, were not even in the store. We left frustrated with many things not crossed of our list. We then made our way to Target where we had to stand around the darkest spot of the the building for over an hour before doors opened. I sat on the concrete where I proceeded to lose all feeling in my lower extremities. There was a moment where I was sure that hypothermia was setting in. It didn't help that I had come down with a nasty cold just days prior. This made it hard to taste on the one day that food is most important to me. Perfect timing. The anticipation was getting high when we finally saw the line start moving. People were trying to cut in front of us and push their way to the front. Not going to happen. My husband is a big guy at 6'4" and 250+ pounds. He did a great job of holding them back while we made our way to the door. I liked having security present for the out of control shoppers!

Target was much less chaotic than Walmart. They were organized and had everything on our list that we intended to buy. We split up at first to insure that we got all of the doorbusters that we wanted. A Nook HD for $80! Yes please. It has better reviews and the same specs as the iPad Mini for a fraction of the price. Oh and a Blu-Ray DVD player with WIFI for under sixty. Merry Christmas to us. Hellllllo Netflix in our bedroom.

Checkout was a breeze (besides finding out much later that there was a security breech!) and we left feeling like we had gotten a lot accomplished and checked off of our list. We dropped stuff off at home and headed to the local mall to stock up on products from Bath and Body Works. Did you know that you can use unlimited amounts of coupons on Black Friday?? You're welcome. They even had a limited edition candle available that day; mint buttercream. After grabbing the VIP tote ($110 value), my limited edition candle, eight wallflowers, fourteen soaps, 6 hand sanitizers with two holders and some perfume, my total came to $276.50! With my coupons I only paid $80.46 including $6.78 in tax. CHA-CHING. That's what I call saving money. I love a good deal. We got home a little after 1 am and promptly fell asleep.

The reciept was almost as tall as I am! $202.82 in savings!!

Friday we made our Thanksgiving dinner and sorted through our shopping haul. We also started the process of bringing out all of our decorations. We decided to get the outside done first because it would end up being our only dry day.

The linen pumpkin napkins were found last year after the holidays. Got two, two packs for under a dollar! Oh and we make our turkey in the crockpot. It is easy and turns our perfectly moist each time.

Saturday was the day that we would decorate until our bodies hurt. Thank goodness we only had the inside to get done. This was our favorite part! We blared the music while I bossed the husband around as we decorated in our best holiday spirit.

My favorite addition this year were the paper snowflakes. Found them at target for a couple of dollars. I also liked our metal NOEL sign, also found at Target. Hello, my name is Melissa and I have a Target addiction.

We even got a light dusting of snow during our staycation, which made it even more perfect. And by "light" I mean barely enough to cover the grass. Better than nothing?

Sunday was our day to treat ourselves to our favorite buffet restaurant. I mean, why not? We already ate our weight in Thanksgiving food, why not stretch our pants to the seam and continue on our gorging path? To my delight, the buffet had two new fountains to go along with their chocolate one. White chocolate and caramel! HALLELUJAH! The angels have never sang louder. I also indulged in my favorite garlic and cheese biscuits and mini corn dogs dipped in mustard. Fat girl heaven.

Below is a video of one of our favorite light displays we enjoyed after dinner. We go each year and make sure to bring along a donation. This year the home owner had collected 1400 pounds of food and over $3000 dollars, he was even featured on the local news! He does a great job and adds something special year after year.

Monday was our day to recuperate. We watched our fair share of movies, caught up on reading and enjoyed some quality time together. It could't have been more perfect.

Real men use Snuggies. 

Halloween Treats

I didn't have plans for Halloween night besides passing out candy and watching scary movies on TV.  I had found some fun Halloween recipes on Pinterest and thought it would be fun to make the husband a themed dinner for when he got home from work.

I first started with making Witch brooms. It was as easy as placing a pretzel stick into a Reese's cup. I used the mini cups, but think the regular sized ones would have worked better.

I then tried my hand at making spider eggs. I made deviled eggs like I normally would and then cut up some olives for making the spider body and legs. My only mistake was that when purchasing the olives, I picked out a can of  "colossal" size. I had never seen then before and thought they would be fun! They turned out to be a tad too big. However, I liked the olive taste with the deviled egg.

COLOSSAL! 

While I threw a meatloaf into the oven, I started working on my pumpkin cheese ball! You can thank me later for including the recipe. 

                                            -16 oz cream cheese {2 packages}

                                            -2 cups grated cheddar cheese

                                            -3 tablespoons minced onion

                                            -3 tablespoons salsa

                                            -2 cups of Doritos chips

                                            -Step of one green pepper

*I chopped up the rest of the green pepper and added it to the mixture*

Use a mixer to combine the cream cheese, cheddar, onion and salsa. Mix until creamy. Scoop mixture onto plastic wrap and use the wrap to form a ball. Place the ball into fridge for two hours. When ready to serve, roll the ball into crunched chips and top with pepper stem. I served it with tortilla chips.

That Frankenstein sure is a creeper. 

We ate this masterpiece for the next two nights. It was to die for! I am going to make another one for Christmas (minus the Doritos and pepper stem) and serve with Wheat Thin crackers. I am thinking of adding red pepper to the mixture for some holiday color. 

We finished the night with making orange colored Halloween hot chocolate. It tasted like plastic and we ended up dumping it out. It was fun to make though!

Reese's Cupcakes

I love finding something fun and yummy to bake during the weekend, especially if it is holiday themed. 

Anything with chocolate and peanut butter is bound to turn out delicious.

These owl and pumpkin cupcake liners? Adorable!

The filling that came in the box was not only easy to make, it tasted heavenly. I am sure some crack was included as I had a hard time putting down the spatula.

 Not Kidding. 

The above picture was my first attempt at making a famous Jiffy boxed frosting that I have heard good reviews about. It was easy to make, but tasted like cardboard with a tad hint of plastic. Into the trash it went.

As a backup plan, I grabbed some S'more flavored frosting from the cupboard, which also tasted gross! Hoping that the third attempt would be a charm, I tried my hand at making homemade chocolate frosting. WINNER!.

                                              - 3 cups powdered sugar

                                              -3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder

                                              -1 stick of softened butt      

                                              -1/4 cup milk

                                              -1/4 teaspoon vanilla

First mix together the sugar and cocoa and set aside. Mix butter and vanilla, then slowly incorporate the cocoa/sugar mix along with the milk. If the frosting is too thick, add in some additional milk. 

Finished product! And those little Reese's Pieces? I found those at Walmart and thought they would make the perfect garnish. They were also great for eating by the handful while waiting for the cupcakes to cool.