don't forget about numero uno

When you're a teenager and you get your first paycheck, you think of all the things you can buy with that free money.  New shoes, a new outfit, that super cute purse from Anchor Blue.  When you're older and start to gain more responsibility, it becomes "which bill should I pay first?" or "I'll put this money towards something more expensive later" or even to "i'll just put it in savings for a rainy day. " 

I'll never forget when my aunt told me "always buy yourself at least one thing with your paycheck, that way you at least feel like you're getting something for you work instead of just seeing it go to everyone else"  and I thought that was so true. So i'm going to keep trying to do that and treat myself with something from every paycheck.  I see more big sunglasses and things pink leopard in my future.  What would you treat yourself with??



What to do with #2??

As a newlywed, there's still a lot of things i'm learning about being married. How to say things differently so your spouse don't get his feelings hurt, when to NOT say anything and just let it go, when to push them a little bit because you know they want you to, as well as other traditional rules like what kind of anniversary presents are for each year of your marriage. The last part I did not know about!!!

You know the saying "If I knew now what I know then..." well I feel that way sometimes about our wedding and the beginning of our married life. I didn't know there were all these things your expected to do. Like gifts for each other on your wedding day, notes to each other, and other things like that. For our first anniversary, we didn't really do presents, we just spent a lot on ourselves and took a really nice trip. But I didn't know you're supposed to give a "paper" gift....does our reciept count???

Last night I was thinking that I have about 3 months until our 2nd wedding annivesary and I don't even know what the 2nd anniversary traditional gift is.....so to Google I went!! Did you know the traditional gift for your 100th anniversary is a 10 carat diamond ring???? Whoever wrote these must have known that no one hardly ever gets to their 100th wedding anniversary, but it sure is nice to dream!! haha. Well...for the rest of you who are like me and don't know these rules...here's a list to help you out. Looks like someone is getting a bag of cotton balls this year! If only... :)

Traditional Wedding Anniversary Gift List

1st Paper

2nd Cotton

3rd Leather

 4th Fruit, flowers

5th Wood

6th Sugar

7th Copper, wool

8th Bronze, pottery

9th Pottery, willow

10th Tin

11th Steel

12th Silk, linen

13th Lace

14th Ivory

15th Crystal

20th China

25th Silver

30th Pearl

35th Coral

40th Ruby

45th Sapphire

50th Gold

55th Emerald

60th Diamond

75th Platinum Diamondlike Stones, Gold

80th Diamond, Pearl

85th Diamond, Sapphire

90th Diamond, Emerald

95th Diamond, Ruby

100th 10 Carat Diamond

This..must..be...POP!

       As a kid/ pre-teen growing up you always remember your first crush right?  Well I was a child of the 90's and was involved in a major boy-band revolution growing up.  Around 6th or 7th grade was when I could feel the divide happening within my group of girlfriends.  Not only was it a question of which Junior High were you going to in town (the preppy school or the ghetto school) but it was which boyband did you undyingly support and plaster you notebook with pictures of? Backstreet Boys? or *NSync. There was the occasional 98 Degrees and O-Town supporters but that's a different secondary breed :). 

      I was a BSB-er until my dying breath and if anyone wanted to throw down with me I was ready to go....even with my best friend.  It was the classic tale of two best friends, different in most ways but always had an underlying similarity that connected them.  She had blonde hair, I had brown hair, she was tall, I was average, but we both had brown eyes.  There was also the BIG elephant in the room....she was crazy about my enemy...*Nsync!!! *GASP!!!* How DARE she!!!! We would throw gentle banter around like "*NStink* or BackSuck Boys  (because that makes sense..) but there was always a little bitterness there of "Oh my gosh, how can they seriously like them??? they're so lame....ew"  Fast forward 10 years and both of us are jumping around in a sweaty crowd jumping up and down to "Back...streets...back...ALRIGHT!"

This morning I was reminded of this particular time period of my adolescense when I heard a radio commercial for the upcoming NKOTBSB concert  (when our powers combine.....) and all of a sudden all these memories came FLOODING back into my brain.   Then I thought about my mother who had to endure this stage twice with both me and my older sister.  My sister was obsessed with NKOTB during her teen years and my mom thought that was the worst of it....until I came along :)  As luck would have it, the three of us were able to get great seats to the show coming up in July and can't WAIT for.

Now the pop quiz portion of this blog.  I'm going to show some pictures of boy bands, see if you can remember who they are: BAM!

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5



How did you score?

#1- 98 degrees

#2- Backstreet Boys

#3- *Nsync

#4- O-Town

#5- LFO

Groupon ON!

A few weeks ago I got a little crazy with the online shopping and bought two awesome Groupon deals.  One was pay $15 and get a gift card worth $30 at Famous Footwear, and the other was spend $20 and get a gift card worth $40 at Old Navy! So this weekend i'm going and getting stocked up on some great items for summer. I also need to stop at my good ol' Target and get some more hangers to hang my new garbs. My closet is PACKED...but that just means I need to get creative with storage right?? :)   I've already scoped out the websites and here are some of the perfect summer items i'll be on the hunt for!

From Old Navy:

From Famous Footwear:

This is going to be fun!!!! :)

Flash Gordon

I know people say "time flies" or "I remember it as if it were yesterday" especially when it comes to kids. I never really believed that until I had kids of my own...and by that I mean my neices.  My sister has blessed me with two little girls who I love and they love to drive me crazy.  One is almost 6 and the other is almost 5 and I can't believe how fast time has gone by.  I remember calling everyone when my sister had my oldest neice and saying "It's a girl!!" and how everyone was doing.  I also remember when I was at church being named my littlest neice's Godmother and imagining that she would stay little forever.  Now they are going into "real" school and they're already learning how to read, write, while my youngest neice is able to rival my computer skills already. I was looking back and couldn't believe that it's been almost 6 years that i've been an Aunt and I can't wait for the future. I hope to be that aunt that they can come to when they're worried their mom will get really mad at them or they're not really sure how to work something out or they can't think of the name of that classic Britney Spears song they heard on the "oldies" station.  Here's some pictures I found that take me back to a simplier of 2005 when these crazy girls came into my life. 


                                         This is the moment I back when I first became an Aunt.

Then to this:

Blue Eyes!

Then when she became the Big Sister:

And now a big kid

I'll have to add some more pictures of Nikki from when she was a baby, but one of the many cute ones I have is this one, when she took a picture of herself, by herself with my camera.

They grow up so fast, and I just hope my memory can keep up with them.  I love my girls!!

Cupcake Pops!!

As you've been reading, I've been starting to bake more im hopes of getting better and my skills and to gain the ability of making yummy treats in a jiffy for my family and friends.  My girlfriends Leah and Jax introduced me to making cake pops. Apparently they are all the rage in the baking world and we attempted to make them "a la chocolate".  Basically you bake a cake, mush it up, put a stick in it and dip it in chocolate or something.  I decided to make a Devil's food cake ball dipped in mint chocolate. I recently saw Andes baking chips at Target and thought that would be super yummy as my first trial.  Of course the day I decided to go, they were on sale for a RIDICULOUS price of $0.85 and were completely sold out......story of my life! They had a bag of the normal candies for $4.00 so ya, I wasn't going to pay that.  I then went to the Dollar Tree and got a back of orginal Andes mints for $1. HA! in your face Target (just kidding I love u!! )

So I got home and started getting out all my ingredients and supplies.  I've come to find that if you lay everything out before you get started, it helps to stay organized.  Also {of course this has NEVER happened to me...} you can realized ahead of time if you are missing something instead of starting the process and then realizing you can't finish it half way through.....but that's a whole other blog in itself :)  Here's a picture of the stuff I needed:

I decided to use Gluten Free cake mix A) because it was on a great sale and B) so that everyone at work could have some regardless of allergies. 

So first thing I did was mix these with water and then followed the directions on the back of the box.  I knew my oven worked a little differently so I adjusted the time a bit for baking but it came out great. See:

Then once the cake cooled, I broke it up by hand and put it into the KitchenAid mixing bowl:

followed by  some frosting right out of the can dumped right in:

Then I mixed it up real well for about 3 minutes until I couldn't tell where the frosting stopped and the cake started.  Then I got an ice cream scooper and scooped out little balls.  After I scooped them, I formed them a little better before putting them onto 2 non-stick pans to sit.

The next step is to let them cool in the fridge for 2-3 hours.  But before I did that, I cut up some of the mints I was going to use and melted them, then I dipped the skewers in before putting them in the cake balls.  That way when I put them in the fridge, the chocolate would harden and secure the skewers to the cake.

So I let those sit in the fridge for a few hours, and right before they were ready, I chopped up the rest of the Andes mints I had.  Depending on how thick/runny the chocolate was melted down to, it usually take one piece of candy to cover one pop fully just to give you an idea of how much candy to chop.

I melted the chocolate in a little dish for aboue 30 seconds, and then stirred it around.  When I first took it out of the microwave, not all the pieces were melted, but right after I started stirring it around, every thing ended up melting.  Make sure to not overheat the chocolate or it will burn and not spread properly.

The chocolate dried REALLY fast once I dipped them in chocolate, so immediately place them on wherever you want to keep them overnight and don't try to move them or else the chocoloate will smudge around and no one wants that. 

After I dipped them in the chocolate, I put them in fridge for the night and said "peace out" until the morning.  I grabbed them right before I left for work and they were crisp, chilled, and looked devilishly delicious.  I brought them to work and everyone gave rave reviews about them. YUM!!! Here's what it looked like after I took my first bite:

So it's pretty simple to make them, it just takes a lot of time in the fridge so don't try to rush them or they won't come out right.  As I get better, I plan to make my own batter/frosting, but for now, the cake mix is my best friend. My next idea I think will be something with red velvet,....and maybe white chocolate....hmmm...ideas ideas!!!