Happy Birthday Ema!

My sweet niece turned 1 year old this week! Here she is looking as cute as ever while she eats her present

Sauteed Bananas

Did I spell Sauteed right? It sure doesn't look correct.

Okay so I know this is another example of a not so appetizing picture but I just had to post this recipe and I couldn't get a good picture of the results because I was too lazy.

This is a great recipe if you are anything like me and you try not to keep sweets in the house but you do keep fruit. So when you are craving sweets you score How to Cook Everything for ideas on how to turn said fruit into dessert.

It is pretty simple, here is what you will need:
4 Bananas ripe but not too soft.

1/4 C flour

4 tablespoons of butter

2 tablespoons of sugar, plus some to pass around

Slice the bananas (does anybody else sing that song while spelling that out?) in half length wise and then again vertically so you have 4 quarters. Dredge the bananas in flour and shake off excess. Melt butter in pan over med high heat until the foam subsides. Cook the bananas until golden brown, turning often. The recipe says it will take 10 minutes but it took my bananas about 5 so make sure you keep an eye on them. Sprinkle with sugar and cook 1 more minute. Remove bananas from the pan and sprinkle with extra sugar.

This is something worth trying for several reasons:

-if you buy bananas you probably already have all the ingredients on hand

-the crunchiness of the sugar and the softness of the banana are so delicious

-counts as a fruit, right?

Frosted Art

What does a unicorn have to do with fancy cakes?

Note To Self

Don't go scrolling around in new cooking blogs right before lunch when breakfast didn't happen. Please, please, I am begging you, don't look at the pictures in "Heidi's favorites." Your stomach will hate you for it.

This week I am totally attempting to make homemade gnocchi.

Weekend

I have come to realize there is no point in saying, "we don't have plans this weekend" or "these are our plans for the weekend" because it almost never turns out that way.

Here was our original write up for the weekend
*friday: clean and do laundry

*saturday: in laws come to town, eat at hip dallas restaurnt (The Porch) then ride the Dart rail to the Balloon Festival.

*sunday: church, church school, relax, relax, relax

Here is how our weekend went:
*friday: waited for the dryer to be repaired then went to dinner with high school friend, her husband, and their adorable 15 month old daughter. called up the 'rents and they were at my high school's football game, decided to meet up with them. loved watching the marching band!
found out the girl I babysat is now a senior in high school. sadness.

*saturday: picked up mr.tc from getting his car repaired, went to grapevine mills, did some shopping, drove to mr.tc's home town. Ate at same place we usually eat, went to the mall, went to the tractor supply store.
Found out that ils have figured out which john deere tractor they are buying for our not yet concieved child.

*sunday: church school, nap, house hunting with hs friend. they were nice enough to show us the neighborhoods around their casa and even put up with us as we toured all of the houses we were able to go in to. returned home for laundry and cleaning. decided at 8:30 pm I wanted to bake some cookies. After starting I realized the cookies had to chill for 2 hours. We baked two cookies (one for me, one for the mr), rolled the rest into balls, put them in the fridge and went to bed.

Now it was an awesome weekend, but you can see how fun things just pop up and plans get changed last minute in our household. It is monday, so far we have no plans for the upcoming weekend but who knows what is in store? I'm hoping a trip to the lake house will pop up.

That is all for now. Now get off my back for not posting enough.

ps. my ils did give me an herb garden for my b-day, pics to come. I can't wait to use the lemon basil in something, it smells interesting!

Go Cowboys

A great way to watch the game

Happy Birthday to Me

And a happy day it is indeed

Good times

At grapefest

my special birthday present

my hubs is terrible at keeping surprises, TERRIBLE! I am not any better, but that is not what we are discussing right now. It isn't like he always tells me what my presents are, but he HAS to let me know that he has gotten me something. Or, if he is keeping a surprise he does things that make it obvious something is up.

this birthday surprise was no different, except he was able to keep the details under wraps. I knew he was up to something due to his hiding the computer screen when I walked in the room and hiding papers when I walked up to his truck, but I had no idea he had such a wonderful night planned.

It turns out for the last month or two he has been planning a dinner party for with some of my girlfriends. He cooked and even did wine pairings. When he did all of the final cooking at Sherri's house he wore his chef's coat. ooo la la

We went over to my friend sherri's house and she had bought a new GORGEOUS dining set that had not been sat in yet and busted out with her wedding china that had not been used in the 5 years or so that they have been married. I already felt special just walking in and seeing my girlfriends there and having this beautiful set up.

We started with some Moscato D'Asti that he had opened to use in the cooking. That is definitely a good way to start a party.

He made lobster bisque from scratch, all the way down to the live lobster, with brie topped french bread. The wine he served with it was a pino grigio and it was perfect. He said it was served with that because the acidity from the wine would clear away the cream in your mouth and it cleansed the pallet for every bite of soup. YUM!!!!!

For the main course we had petite lamb t bones with a thyme merlot sauce served with a potato and smoked goat cheese custard, carrots and snow peas. It was a beautiful presentation. He served it with a syrah. Oh my, it was so tasty!

For desert we had Napoleons which he took phyllo dough and baked it with butter and powdered sugar. He filled layers of the crispy dough with pastry cream and topped it with a raspberry sauce he made from pureeing raspberries and sugar. He topped the pastry with blueberries and served with fresh peaches. This was served with a Moscato, another great pairing!

To finish off we had champagne. He asked the wine dude where he bought the wine from what he favorite all time wine was and it was this champagne. It was good but to be honest I had enjoyed all of the wine from dinner a little too much to appreciate it fully. It did make great mimosas on sunday morning!

I think I'll go ahead and keep my sweetie!

To Whom it May Concern at Sears

My husband and I purchased our first dryer about a year ago from Sears. We did our research on the top dryers and decided on a Kenmore 800 series from Sears because we had heard about Sears’s great products and service.

Unfortunately our experience with our Kenmore dryer is not what we were expecting. Because the dryer was installed incorrectly we had to have it serviced within its first three months of being in our home.

More recently however we were having some problems with the dryer making a very loud noise and not fully drying the clothes in one cycle. We called Sears to have it serviced and it turns out the motor and fan both have to be replaced because a nut was loose on the fan and melted in to the motor. This is clearly a manufacturing defect, but because our warranty is one month out of service we were going to have to pay $412 to get it fixed. $412 for our brand new dryer that cost us $600. We spoke with Service One and they informed us that they would reimburse only $100 for the cost of the repairs but this does not seem like a fair amount considering the dryer was brand new and this problem was not something we created.

Due to the poor quality I do not intend on purchasing a Kenmore or shopping at Sears ever again.

I do appreciate how kind everyone has been through the process but this experience has led me to believe that Sears does not stand behind the quality of their products.

VA

stupid crappy dryer

We bought a dryer about a year ago. Actually one year and one month ago. I know the exact date because we are exactly one month out of warranty. I know that we are one month out of warranty because my dryer has broken down for the second time this month. It is going to cost $475 to fix it. Actually they are so generous, they are going to reduce that by $100. Thanks a lot, that makes me feel SO much better.

I no longer will trust consumer reports, sears, or kennmore. All three of them stink big time.

How I Spent My Labor Day Weekend

Arts and Crafting! I had so much fun doing it! I decided that it was September 1st, and in most other parts of the country September kicks off the fall season so I can put out fall decor. The only problem was I did not have any, so I decided to whip some up real quick like.

Here is a display of all of the work I was able to do:

Now to zoom in.

First, something I made for my six year old niece. It is a compilation of ideas I have seen around the internet. I heard about wrapping scrapbook paper around a canvas to make some art for my home and I thought it would be cute to add my nieces name. This was really easy to do. I hope she likes it!
Speaking of wrapping scrapbook paper around a canvas. I did this for the area above my sink in the kitchen.



A close up of how they turned out. Do you think the order looks right? I thought the squares should go in the middle, to break up the flowers. the hubby thought the white should go in the middle, to break up the dark colors. I think he is right. I also think this would look a lot better on a wall with some color but we don't have any of those.

Next, the glitter pumpkins. This was by far my favorite thing to do. It was so fun, when I was done I was trying to think of other things I could glitter. hubby probably shouldn't stay in one place for too long or he might be next.
This was the big thing to do last year but I did not have any extra money to spend on glitter and glue last year so this year I was bound and determined to do them. Even if they weren't in style anymore. cause that is how I roll.

I know this is silly but I actually thought these looked cute on the green plates because it was kind of a pumpkin patch thing going on, but alas they couldn't stay there.
They ended up here, by our door on a candle tray I thought I threw away.

I know you already got a close up, but look how beautiful these are. They would be gorgeous next to some candle light but unfortunately I used funkins and they say not to put these babies anywhere near open flame.

Next I made a fall arrangement center piece. I got this idea from this blog. If you strain your eyes hard and look really close you can see I am missing a candle. I plan on replacing the white candles with some pumpkin candles to make our living room smell like fall. I just have no idea where to get such candles so who knows when that will happen.

Here is how this piece landed. I love it!

Finally a fall wreath, an idea I stole from amie. Hers is obviously much cuter. I wish I had looked at the pic of hers before buying supplies because I prefer the use of the mums. I also think the placement of the flowers on mine looks off but if I rotate the wreath they are even which looks worse. Anyway, I will probably be redoing this when I muster up the courage to try again.

Thanks for looking at my fall creations! Every time I see them it puts a pep in my step that fall is just around the corner!

fyi, I did all of the fallishish stuff for less that $50 and the other two projects for less than $10. That includes the white platter. I looked at how much it would cost to buy a wreath and that alone would have run $30-50! Yay for labor day!

Lovin labor day