Return of the Blog

So I started this blog, and then promptly life took over, many posts I planned on making slipped away, and time passed.  I am planning to do a Re-Cap of 2012 (at least a 5 part series) and also a Re-Cap of the first half of 2013 (at least a four part series) .  I have already decided on bullet points for my Re-Caps, I just have to sit down and write them.  A task that is made difficult by the fact that I am constantly breastfeeding/entertaining my 2 1/2 month old (Don't worry, as I said I will catch you up).  Even though I spend much of my day on the computer while he is feeding, typing is tricky.  I have debated on laying the keyboard across him, but using him as a table somehow feels wrong.  So I have to wait for nap times.  Which are in no recognizable pattern at this point, so my days are a guessing game of hopes and tasks gone undone.  Right now though my little prince sleeps and I am concurrently making meatloaf, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, and writing this blog post.  Should he wake up the blog will have to wait, but the food has already been set in motion and my father is coming over for dinner tonight, so kiddo will just have to hang out in his bouncy seat as he often does when I am trying to cook.  It is a fun way of letting him learn through watching and listening, as I frequently will explain everything I am doing, all the cool gadgets I have and for sheer entertainment of his highness I will also sing and dance.  Should a neighbor be looking in my kitchen window they may wonder what I am doing exactly, but I don't care, it makes him smile.

A few weeks ago I was on Pinterest (my favorite thing to do right now during feedings), and I realized I have over 1100 recipes for meals, drinks, and desserts on my personal Pinterest boards.  By my calculation that means that if I cooked one new thing EVERY DAY it would take three years to try them all.  So lets be more realistic, say I make two a week it would take me 11 years to complete all of them, if I did only one a week my son could graduate from college before I finished.  Of course, this doesn't even take into consideration the fact that I will obviously find more and want to pin them, some of those pins represent more than one potential recipe, and that I have an entire bookcase of cookbooks with hundreds of flagged recipes to try.  Now please don't think I am about to do some sort of Julie & Julia thing and make them all, that is nuts, and I just don't have that kind of time.  However, I am going to try to start making more of them.  I also have enough craft projects pinned to last me 4 years if I did only one a week.  I will try to do some of those as well, and as I cook more, craft more, garden and take photos I will keep you all up to date on how successful (or not) I have been at my attempts.  I will teach some of my favorite recipes I have adapted over the years, if I use something from Pinterest I will give you the original link, as well as any alterations and tips I found while trying them.

The baby is stirring and I just heard a knock at the door...

Dinner was simple, but tasty; dad has headed on home, but had fun playing with his grandson; and baby boy is now fed and napping once again.  The meatloaf was tasty and was a very simple recipe I found on, you guessed it, Pinterest.  My homemade meatloaf is tastier, but for a quick and cheap alternative this was awesome.  I will absolutely use this trick again sometime, as it took less than 5 minutes to mash together and pop in the oven.  You can find the link under my Discovering Daily- Dinner board, or go directly to the link that Pinterest would give you: http://dancingthroughtheminefield.blogspot.com/2012/03/secret-ingredient-meatloaf.html

One of these days I will make my own meatloaf recipe and post that here for you, it is delicious.  Look for my catch up posts during the next week or so (as nap time permits).

Tomorrow is hubby's birthday and I am spending my morning watching him do a one hour powered parachute lesson (picture a go cart with a parachute attached, I will try and get pictures) and then we are getting together with family and friends for lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant to celebrate his and our friend Julie's birthdays.  They not only have the same birthdays their respective best friends have the same birthday as well...weird right.  After that I predict a quiet, hopefully nap filled afternoon.   Hope everyone is having a safe and wonderful Fourth of July Weekend!

The Christmas Party

Christmas 2011

Here is a post I wrote and never uploaded for the Christmas Party I was so excited about

So about a week before Christmas I host a Christmas Party.  I have to admit that I went a little decoration crazy.   

I was mostly trying to decorate with red, white and silver.  All of the glass ornaments hanging from the red cloth draped over the mirrors are the no mess glitter ornaments that I had made a few weeks before (see post below).  

The spread was pretty simple, though this wasn't done on purpose.  Two nights before the party I was making some zucchini bread and zucchini muffins and suddenly I noticed sparks in the back of my oven.  The heating element on the bottom of my oven had one spot and it was glowing orange and sending out sparks.  So I immediately turned off the oven and removed all the muffins and bread from the oven.  Luckily the muffins were finished, but the five mini loaves of bread all had to be thrown out, because they had not cooked through before this happened.  This is the moment I started to freak out, I had a chicken wellington wreath shaped entree I was planning to make for the main course, and a bunch more baking to do between this and my party.  So the next day at work I call every appliance part place I can find and they all tell me that they can absolutely get me my part, as long as I can wait about a week.  UM, NO!  Then I finally find a place (in a suburb that is of course on the other side of Dallas from where I work), but they had one in stock and would be open until 7pm...I was saved.  So now it is the night before the party; my husband and I drove all the way across town during rush hour to find this little hole in the wall shop that did have the exact part I was looking for, and all I could think was 'alright, if we get home get this fixed I can get right back to it and still have like 4 hours of baking time'.  We get home to repair the oven, now before you replace the heating element you have two options; the first is to pull the oven out and unplug it or second to use the fuse box to shut off power to the oven.  In my house we had two problems with this our oven and stove top was built into the existing counter and even if we pull out the bottom drawer you can not see the plug, the other problem is that not one of the circuit switches in our box turned off the oven light.   I know what your thinking, flip the master circuit breaker and boom easy, that is what I thought too.  In my house if you turn off the master breaker switch every light in the house goes off, except the one telling me that my oven is on. 

Long aggravating story short, I didn't have an oven for the Christmas Party.  I did however make some great crock pot recipes, some awesome crock pot hot chocolate and for the rest I either made no bake options or gave in and used store bought.  Either way it was a great party.

**Months later I would discover from my electrician that as long as the oven isn't turned on it is safe to change the heating element.  Oh well, now I know**