Kitchen DOMINATION

I am having some serious cooking/baking triumphs this weekend, I'm on a streak!

First up I made this Cake Batter shake courtesy of Oh She Glows. I'm been very doubtful of the "frozen banana soft serve ice cream" stuff. I figured it was nonsense, that it would be healthy food poorly masquerading itself as ice cream. Which is just mean. But yesterday I had 2 bananas going bad so I figured, "why not?" If it turns out good then I have a whole new breakfast.

Holy crap you guys, this was SO GOOD. I made it this morning too, and while I was waiting for the oatmeal to soften in the fridge (the oatmeal soaks in 1 cup milk for an hour to soften it up) I was like "is it shake time yet, now? Now? SHAKE TIME!" There's 1/3 a cup of oatmeal in the shake, and today I upped it to a half a cup, which is the serving of oatmeal I normally make myself on the stove. It is a light breakfast that kept me full all morning. I added chocolate syrup instead of carob powder and used skim milk instead of almond milk. Oh also I used peanut butter instead of cashew butter. SO GOOD.

Then I made my husband and I spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, who was just getting back from an overnight cross country meet. I used this recipe from Julia's Healthy Italian Cooking and Ryan has already asked that it make a repeat performance, so they are officially on the rotation! I love adding stuff to our meal rotation that we normally have things on hand for-I suck at trying to buy and use up specialty/out of the ordinary stuff before it goes bad. Or I forget about it. I made so much we both have portions for lunch this week which excites me so much that I know I'm getting old.

Still riding high off of frozen-bananas-tasting-like-cake-batter, I made Oh She Glow's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls in preparation for a "blizzard". You basically make up some banana soft serve and blend in these cookie dough balls for a DQ-esque Blizzard, according to the recipe. These might not last long enough to make it into any blizzard, they are so delicious and the perfect little snack. I used almonds instead of cashews, white sugar instead of cane sugar and honey instead of maple syrup. These are the perfect little sweet bite that I don't feel guilty about.

Also yesterday I made Ryan homemade vanilla bean caramels, as he's a huge caramel fan. I would say that I wouldn't cook the caramels to such a high temp again-I'd pull them off the heat after they hit 335/340, because these caramels are so hard and chewy that they could yank a filling out! They soften up after you jaw on them for a few seconds, but I like a softer caramel. This was my first time making candy and using a candy thermometer, and it was much more straight forward than I thought it would be! I won't shy away from similar recipes in the future.

Whew! I've had some major cooking failures lately so it's nice to have some new recipes that work for us.

What have you cooked lately?

I'm Dumb

So I went to put in a load of laundry and was out of soap. Weird, I thought, I could've sworn I just made it! So I get everything out and start to make a double batch since I ran out so fast. 5 minutes into making the double batch and I see a handful of jugs of laundry soap on the very top shelf in the laundry room. There all along.

So...anyone need laundry detergent? I guess I won't have to make it for a while!

Here's the recipe I use, it has saved me a ton of money-we do stupid amounts of laundry for 2 people!

Homemade Laundry Soap
Grate one third a bar of bar soap (I use Ivory). Dissolve in 6 cups hot water on stove. When dissolved add half cup each Borax and Washing Soda (they had both at WalMart, $2.50 each for big boxes). Add soap mixture to 26 cups hot water (that's 1 gallon plus 10 cups) in 5 gallon bucket. Let cool and store in clean milk jugs or laundry detergent container.

I'm sure I saw this recipe somewhere but its been a bit.

I forgot to add that I use a half a cup per load, and to leave an inch or so of space in your containers because you need to shake it a bit before you use it.

Why You Shouldn't Let Your Dogs Wear Collars Unless You're Going Somewhere

It's taken me over a week to be able to sit down and write about this without getting upset all over again! We had quite the scare last week-our sweet puppy Oscar came way too close to dying on us. Spoiler: He's alive and very well!

Last Tuesday night I was sitting on the couch watching TV. Ryan was in the master bedroom (on the main floor) watching TV on his laptop, and both dogs were outside playing the yard, like normal. All of a sudden I hear this awful screaming from the back yard. I flew outside, and saw the dogs in a corner of the backyard. I knew that something was v

ery, very wrong, but I got upset so fast and couldn't figure out what was happening - it looked like a ball of panicked dogs thrashing around. I thought that maybe Ninja had seriously injured Oscar? I stupidly tried to break them up from what I thought was a totally-out-of-character-vicious fight, and Oscar bit the snot out of my left hand. Apparently I was screaming this entire time because I turned around and Ryan was vaulted off the deck and running towards me, asking me what was wrong.

I was sobbing and shaking and panicked and I had no idea what was happening. Ryan was crouched over the dogs at this point, and he yelled for me to go and get the scissors. I dashed in the house and grabbed them, then ran back outside and handed them to Ryan. At this point Ryan tells me that Ninja somehow got Oscar's coll

ar wrapped around her back teeth and Oscar was choking. He couldn't g

et any slack on the collar to cut it off of Oscar, after attempting this for 10-15 seconds. Then Oscar passed out and went totally slack, and Ryan cut the collar off.

I was across the yard losing my mind while Ryan was hunched over Oscar trying to get him to wake up. He was 100% unconscious and nonresponsive. Ryan picked him up and carried him inside and laid him down on the kitchen table. This was my worst moment..Oscar's head was flopped back and his eyes were wide open, with the pupils rolled back in his head. I thought he was dead. We laid him down on the kitchen table and Ryan is yelling at Oscar to wake up, to start breathing. Ryan rubbed Oscar's ribs and did some light chest compressions, and after 30-60 seconds of being out, Oscar raised his head up and wagged his little tail.

2 minutes later we were in the car with both dogs on the way to t

he emergency vet. Verdict: Fluid in lungs. After puking up blood and other gunk, and an overnight stay with pain killers, we picked Oscar up 7 hours later and brought him back home.

It was the absolute worst night of my life. I have never been so out of my mind scared. I didn't know what we'd do with poor Ninja if anything happened to her brother...we adopted them as a pair from an animal shelter, they've never been separated. They were kept in the same kennel at the shelter from day 1.

So yeah. If I get that worked up over my dog, how am I ever going to handle kids? These dogs are my babies, we were entrusted with their care

and well-being. If Oscar was a 12 year old dog who had had a good long life, that's one thing. But he's only 9 months old, I would be devastated if anything happened to him. And what would poor Ninja do?

What gets me the most about the whole thing is the fact that that is a scenario I never dreamed of. I've imagined them running into the street, or something, but strangled by his own collar in his sister's mouth? Now every time I come home and let them out of their crate I think "how could they have fatally injured themselves while I was gone, what if they aren't breathing, what did I not think of?" I check on them every 5 minutes, now I'm psycho mom. Also what hit me hard was how quickly I lost it, and how worthless I was. If Ryan hadn't been home, what would have happened? On the way to the emergency vet, Ryan told me he hadn't heard the dogs making all that noise at all, that he heard me yelling and that's why he ran outside. So maybe it really was a team effort. How sweet is he to be trying to comfort me on the way to the vet when all that had just happened and Oscar is laboring to breathe on my lap?

Anyway, moral of the story, please take your collar off your dog(s) unless you're en route or on a walk. Our dogs are micro-chipped, so if they somehow get lost, they are easily identified. I remember the vet saying how puppies will bite at each others necks, but I never dreamed something like this could happen. I wish I could say it was a fluke, but the vet said it's happened to her dogs before.

Quite the reminder that everything can change in an instant. Now every time I let the dogs out, they get petted and told how much I love them.

Puppies in March, when we first got them

Family Pic, May 2011

Whew! I was reeling all last week from this, it took me this long to chill out enough to write it down.

Any freak accidents ever happen to your pets?

Finally

I'm on the Twitter. Wanna be friends?

1 Year

Sunday was our 1 year anniversary. I had no idea a year could go by so fast! We made this year count too-we bought a house, we both started new careers, and we adopted 2 puppies. No wonder it's gone by so fast.


Here's the highlight reel, mostly because I just haven't gotten over how much I love our pictures yet:

All photographs courtesy of Gail Fleming.

This is how vain I am: I purposefully did not preserve my wedding dress (or um, have it cleaned, *cough*) so that I can try it on every year on our anniversary. Because I'd prefer that it continue to fit.

So it's Sunday morning, and Ryan and I are sitting down to a lovely breakfast that included the best bacon of all time (from a no-hormone, no-antibiotic, happy pig farm), and Ryan goes "So how bad is my day going to be if this dress doesn't fit?" Luckily we didn't have to find out! It zipped right up like a dream. Don't you wish you could wear your dress again? It reminded me how much I love my dress. And how much I need to get mine cleaned! It's filthy. But the dry cleaning costs like $150, and I am not excited about dropping that much cash. Maybe with my Christmas money!

How was your first anniversary? Did your first year of marriage go by fast too? Did you preserve your dress? Are you vain like me and busted it back out?

It All Ends Here

Or, my un-asked for opinion on the last Harry Potter movie.

I rocked the premier with the sisters and Alli's sweet boyfriend Chris. We all wore Harry Potter shirts Alli made for past movie releases. Mary and I are way too lazy to just make our own. We got to the theatre last Thursday at 7:20 to get in line for Part 1 at 9 p.m. We watched part 1, then had an hour wait until they started part 2 around 12:25. (REALLY WEHRENBERG)

Friday at work sucked, but it was worth it! We were in line behind Hagrid-and the guy was huge. He even had an umbrella!

We decided that me and Alli are Ravenclaws while Mary is a Gryffindor. Can you tell me and Mary apart? Having a sister who grows up and suddenly looks just like you is like getting a twin in your 20s. Kinda freaky!

I loved the movie, but I do have a major issue with the director changing sh*t just for giggles. Little, minor things....like, do you honestly think you can improve upon the book? Because you can't. I really hated that Harry didn't go into the headmaster's study after killing Voldemort to see Dumbledore crying tears of joy as all the other headmaster's applauded. And he didn't fix HIS wand with the Elderwand before he destroyed it! AHHHH. I did appreciate the focus on the trio of Ron, Harry and Hermione. I thought that was very sweet. And I cried and cried when his parents, Sirius and Lupin showed up. No surprise there, I bawl my eyes out at that part in the book. I guess the movie was just like every other HP movie-some parts honored the books while some didn't.

I do think they could've made it longer. And had more battle scenes. And extended the epilogue a bit, especially to include Teddy.

I'm so sad it's over. Harry forever!

Did you catch the final installment yet?

To Do List

There are so many projects I want to and a very limited amount of time, with all the summer traveling we've been doing! Courtesy of the blogs and Pinterest, I end up with a year's worth of projects in a week's time.

This is just outrageously pretty. I'm going to start shopping for embroidered pillowcases ASAP. My friend Jodie just had a girl, and I'm starting to think maybe I just need to have a little stock of homemade bibs/receiving blankets/baby paraphernalia since lots of our friends are getting knocked up.

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A bed for the dogs needs to be next on my list. We're hoping to transition them from their crate to a bed in our room at night, and we need a bed for them first. All the cushions I've found have been so expensive-like $30/$40! I want something decently sizable so both 17ish lb dogs can cuddle up, so I'd have to up the size of this bed big time.

Seriously, what cat is going to sit on a bed designated by someone other than themselves?

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I want this skirt SO BAD. I LOVE the chevron. I have all pencil skirts, and I'm trying for some slightly more full silhouettes, this being an ideal transition. And the chevron pattern? I could wear this to work once a week. My grandma says this would be a good beginning apparel sewing project....I have a tendency to dive into less than simple apparel projects that end badly. No more. I need to start at the bottom. I've conquered an apron, so I feel ready for this skirt.

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It's the new Ginger pattern from Colette patterns.

This is a no-brainer project that requires me to only remember to buy magnets, because I already have the dish. Sticking pins into the pin cushion is clearly exhausting, and it would be so much less taxing to hurl the pin into the dish.

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So my husband is a classic piler. He has little piles all over the house with vitally important stuff. Maybe if I could have enough storage bins then the piling would be more contained? I just like storage bins. I want one for the dogs stuff, I want a handful for the laundry room, and I want a few for my nightstand. Also for my sewing room. I want lots of these. And one for the guest baths.

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This is just super cute.

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This is potentially the cleverest bit of embroidery I have ever seen. I want to make throw pillows for our bed then embroider this on them.

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Originally stitched by Buitenlander25 via Flickr

Um yeah. Also I'd like to make a quilt for my sister sometime. Then I have a finished quilt top that needs to have a completed backing and then finished up completely.

Someday, I will get to some of this. I'm smack in the middle of a present for my sister, and I'm working on a t-shirt quilt for one of Ryan's cousins. After those 2 things, I am closed for business for a good while so I can catch up on some stuff for myself....I'm really bad at sewing away for other's, but I tend to backburner my own stuff.

What are you working on this summer?