Thursday, December 18, 2014

Sausage Ball Muffins, Faux Ice Cream

Another set of Snack Night experiments!

First I whipped up these Sausage & Cheese Muffins, which are supposed to be similar to sausage balls ~

Sausage Ball Muffins

These were very good, but much more light & bready than the dense sausage ball taste I was hoping for. I guess I'll have to try making real sausage balls one day!


And for dessert I made this faux ice cream I'd been drooling over for a while. Just mix chocolate pudding with Cool Whip & freeze!

Faux Ice Cream

It's toted as a 'light ice cream' if you buy light Cool Whip & sugar free pudding, but I just got the regular versions of both. I normally make pudding from mix, but since I knew I wouldn't be using the whole thing, I just grabbed a 4 pack of pudding cups. After a taste test, I ended up adding all four cups ~ not sure how much that measures out to in actual cups!

I love Cool Whip and chocolate pudding, so I knew I would love this. My husband was skeptical, but he was impressed & agreed it was really good. It came out rich & creamy, just a touch icier than the real stuff. Just make sure to let it sit on the counter for about 30 minutes before eating because it come out of the freezer rock hard!

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Birthday Round-up

This year I mostly got money for my birthday, which is not a normal occurrence! I thought it would be fun to round-up the different things I spent it on to show you some of the stuff I am loving right now.


Besdata Smart Cover, in purple - I watch a lot of Netflix on my iPad while I'm cleaning around the house, and I was tired of having to awkwardly prop the iPad up. So far I'm really liking this $10 bargain cover, and the purple color is lovely (I won't be getting it mixed up with everyone else's!). The back piece also keeps the cover from falling off, which my husband's Apple cover does constantly. My only complaint is that the cover does not magnetically snap to the back of the iPad, but it hasn't really been a problem either.


iPod Nano, 3rd generation, in silver, 4G - I've been wanting an MP3 player for working out or walking around the neighborhood, but it didn't need to be top of the line. I shopped around on eBay & was able to find a 3rd generation iPod for about $30. I've spent the last week going through old CDs & adding them to iTunes, and finally got everything loaded on the iPod last night! I have about 450 songs and it looks like 4G will hold about 600 (not quite the 1,000 advertised).



Pentatonix, "That's Christmas to Me" - Speaking of music, I've been a little obsessed with this 5 person acapella group ever since they won The Sing-off in 2011. I've loved seeing their successes over the years ~ sold out concerts, #12 You-tube channel, and they were even in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade this year! Their Chirstmas album this year is great, but I *really* love last year's "PTXmas".



PTX, Vol. III - All three of their albums are on my Christmas list this year, and I had just enough money left to grab the 3rd volume for $5. Amazon has a cool feature that even let me listen to the album immediately after ordering the CD!



Suburbia - Justin's birthday is 3 days after mine, and we both chipped in some money for a board game. Ever since discovering Catan a few years ago, we have our family & friends high addicted to board games!  If you've only played games like Monopoly or Trivial Pusuit, you are missing out!



Little Big Planet - Now that we finally have a Playstation, ther are so many games to choose from! I'm starting out wirh some oldies like this and Katamari. What are your favs?




Lip balm stain - Lipstick has never looked right on me, but I found out that I can wear lip balm stains. And even when they wear off, they leave a nice tint on your lips for hours! I previously had two Revlon shades, "Honey" (mauve) and "Crush" (deep berry), which run about $5-6 on big-time sale. This time I tried Wet 'N Wild "Rico Mauve", and Jordana "Candied Coral" and "Rockin' Rouge" (red). These only cost $3 each at Walgreens, and I think I like them even more!



Born Pretty Store nail stamping plates - I've ordered studs from this super cheap site before & heard they make some good quality plates too. I picked up 02, 17, and 19 at $1.50 each. Shipping is free, but they do take several weeks to arrive.



And finally, clip on bangs! Girls, you have got to get in on this one. I felt like my haircut could use some bangs, but with little kids I knew I wouldn't be able to deal with the upkeep & they would just be pinned out of the way constantly. Search around Amazon & eBay and for $5 you can get removable bangs in your color, trim them however you want, and even style them with low heat. They even passed my skeptical husband's test once I'd styled mine!

Friday, December 5, 2014

Pinky Spiral Manicure


How was everyone's Thanksgiving break? We had a productive, stressful, & also a fun week off. The first weekend the house got a much needed cleaning & we knocked off a few to-dos. Tuesday was my birthday, and my 4 year old helped daddy make me a nice breakfast & drew and awesome, giant birthday card (you can see my toes peeking below it). Then went to visit my grandma, which unfortunately ate up the rest of the day & we had to delay our dinner out.

11-14 Orson's bday card

We alternate Christmas & Thanksgivings with our two families, and this year Thanksgiving was at my husband's side. Our nieces complimented my nail art before, so this time I made sure to bring my stamping stuff and we had a great time stinking up the place, haha. I got them to paint their own base colors & then stamped three nieces, one sister-in-law, and my own nails. We rarely get to see our nieces, so it was nice to bond with them a little!

And it was nice to do a little nail art again! Since Pandora was born I've barely had the time or motivation to paint my nails. In the last year I've probably painted them about a dozen times, and on half of those I did some very minor art (like adding a few dots!). I need to get back to it!

Pinky Spirals Manicure

For the base I used Jessica's "Smitten Kitten" (though I would not recommend the polish, grab a different pink). I covered that with Sinful Colors' lovely "Pink Glitter", an awesome & cheap-o glitter topper. I stamped with Konad special black polish & Cheeky plate CH52. I was planning on stamping just a few accent nails, but the black spirals kind of took over & looked too different from the plain pink, so I stamped them all.

At the end of the break we celebrated my husband's birthday (he's 3 days younger), had some friends over to play the new Smash Brothers game, traded in the Game Stop money I've been hoarding for nearly 2 years & got a PS3 for $3, and I had a good time shopping around online with my birthday money. Now I'm impatiently waiting on the mail & hoping to drag out the Christmas decorations this weekend. The weeks are flying by!