Well, I couldn't leave you guys thinking I was a completely incompetent domestic engineer. Actually, I just wanted you guys to know that it is OK to come to my house and eat :)


Ta-Da!! Chrissy and Mom, you guys can rest easy now and Mr. Freeman, this was not photoshopped. I was so inspired by my clean kitchen that I headed over to Fly Lady and looked up her directions on shining my sink.

Taaa-Daaaa! Are you impressed? This took some serious elbow grease but you can literally eat out of my sink if you like. That would be an interesting dinner party approach, fill your sink with the main dish.

If you are unfamiliar with Fly Lady's website I highly recommend you head over and take a look. She has a great 31 day plan to baby step your way to a clean house and organized self. And when I say baby step, I mean baby step. Day 1 is shine your sink and day 2 is to put on lace up shoes!

Keeping it Real

The following photo was taken after my cooking extravaganza weekend.

This picture serves two purposes:

1. To give my mother and Chrissy a hard attack. Yes, I did not clean up after myself.

nany nanny boo boo

2. To let all my friends who think that I am a cleaning freak know that , well, I am not.

Ha!

Friday Night Fun

Tonight I made a light dinner of sauteed broccoli raab and mashed sweet potatoes. (You can laugh Karla because I said that just for you). I made a light dinner so we could eat a very not light desert, Chocolate Hazelnut Pizza.

I used Giada's recipe as inspiration but this recipe for my dough. I love this dough recipe because it is so easy and you do not have to wait for it to rise. You literally just mix the ingredients, dump it out, knead and roll into a circle.

Do you like how my computer is sitting right next to my dough?? I thought you might. I had to do this because I have yet to print the recipe. While it's there, why not turn on itunes...

I made my circle too big for my pan so I folded it over BUT I stuffed marshmallows inside the folds. Aren't I clever? I brushed the dough with butter like Giada said but then I sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar.

I baked the crust in the oven for about 12 minutes and then spread Nutella over the warm crust. That part made me very happy. Then I sprinkled the chocolate chips and marshmallows all over the top. With help from a certain someone of course! I popped it back in the oven for about two more minutes.

Voila!

Yummmmm. This was so good because you had the chewy no sweet dough and the creamy sweet chocolate. The marshmallows were kind of fun because they reminded me of melted cheese.

As you can see, Matt enjoyed the pizza immensely.

what I am stuffing my face with at the moment

For some reason bananas ripen unusually fast at our house. In case you did not know, you can peel and freeze these little gold nuggets. I have a huge freezer bag full of them for baking, smoothie making and such.

Well yesterday I had my usual bunch sitting on the table getting ripe ( I bought too many this weekend) and so I decided to make some banana muffins. I have a few recipes that I use, so I decided on one by Giada De Laurentiis. In case you did not know, I have a small crush on her. I wish I had her hair, fashion sense, and the ability to look super hot while I am cooking for my husband.

Anyways, I made her muffins yesterday and have decided they are my favorite. They are sooo easy to make, do not require any equipment, and sooo good! I would take some kind of
artsy-cool photo of them, but I am too lazy from eating too many.

Banana Muffins with Marscarpone Cream Frosting


Ingredients
Muffins:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 ripe bananas, peeled and coarsely mashed

Frosting:
3 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup mascarpone cheese, room temperature
3 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted

Directions
Line 18 muffin cups with paper liners. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Whisk the flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a medium bowl to blend. Beat the sugar, oil, eggs, and vanilla in a large bowl to blend. Stir in the banana. Add the dry ingredients and stir just until blended.

Divide the batter among the prepared muffin cups. Bake the muffins on the middle rack until the tops are golden brown and a tester inserted into the center comes out with no crumbs attached, about 25 minutes. Transfer the muffins to a rack and cool slightly. The muffins may be eaten warm or cooled completely and frosted.

To frost the cupcakes: Using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the mascarpone cheese and then beat in the honey. Spread the frosting over the muffins. Sprinkle with the walnuts.

**The recipe says that it makes 18 but I get two full pans. I have made these with and without the frosting. I think the frosting is more for desert or special occasions because it is very rich. When I made these yesterday, I omitted the frosting because we will be eating these all week for breakfast and snacks and because I did not have the ingredients:)

Earth Day Savings in More Ways Then One

Happy Earth Day!

Walgreens is running a great deal today in honor of Earth Day. Print this coupon and receive a free tote bag and %15 off select items.

I found some recycling fat for you to chew on today as well.

Aluminum Recycling Facts
A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest!
Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled.
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product.
Because so many of them are recycled, aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA estimates.
An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!
There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can be recycled.
We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year.
At one time, aluminum was more valuable than gold!
A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel. In one year in the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy to heat and light 18,000,000 homes!


Paper Recycling Facts
To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.
If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket goes through 60,500,000 paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are in the U.S.!!!
The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year!
The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person.
The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.
In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic yards of landfill space.
Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!
The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.


Plastic Recycling Facts
Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!
Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.


Glass Recycling Facts
Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!
The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.
A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.
Mining and transporting raw materials for glass produces about 385 pounds of waste for every ton of glass that is made. If recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw materials, the waste is cut by more than 80%.


Solid Waste and Landfills
About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material!
Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted.
The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.
The highest point in Ohio is "Mount Rumpke," which is actually a mountain of trash at the Rumpke sanitary landfill!
The US population discards each year 16,000,000,000 diapers, 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, 220,000,000 car tires, and enough aluminum to rebuild the US commercial air fleet four times over.
Out of every $10 spent buying things, $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away. Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.
On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.


Miscellaneous Recycling Facts
An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space -- that's almost 40 football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Oil can be recycled, re-refined and used again, reducing our reliance on imported oil.
On average, each one of us produces 4.4 pounds of solid waste each day. This adds up to almost a ton of trash per person, per year.
A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers -- make sure they're recycled!


These recycling facts have been compiled from various sources including the National Recycling Coalition, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Earth911.org. While I make every effort to provide accurate information, I make no warranty or guarantee that the facts presented here are exact. We welcome all polite corrections to our information.Please also feel free to contact us if you have additional recycling facts to share.For even more information and additional recycling facts, please visitThe National Recycling Coalition

It's a Long One

For the past couple of months Richard and I have been talking about getting a dog. On Monday I finally said let's do it and go to the pound. We have spent weeks looking at the dogs online and I finally saw one, well a few, that I really wanted.

So all three of us loaded up and drove to a local animal shelter. We spent about two hours looking and playing with dogs before finally settling on a border collie mix. When we picked this dog we had no idea what kind of dog a border collie was. We just knew this one was playful, sweet, and did not freak Matt out! Before we left we had to fill out an adoption application and were told it would be a few days. Matt was devastated that we had to leave the dog there in the cage. Honestly, it broke my heart too but we told Matt that in just a few days, we would bring her home.

On the way home Richard and I were talking about the dog when I made a comment about what if we were rejected. Richard just laughed and said there was no way. So for the next two days Matt and I looked at her picture on the Internet and talked about bringing her home.

Well...a few days later...when we played back our messages ....we were officially rejected!!!!

I don't think I have ever seen Richard so offended! Matt was standing there when we played the message and of course he became upset. It was a mess! He was crying, I was crying, and Richard was just flat out mad. He immediately called the pound back and asked why. Guess what they told him...because the dog would be in the backyard!! Hello. It's a border collie!!

By the time he got off the phone it was my turn to get mad. I called the shelter back and asked to speak to the supervisor. I told her how offended and upset we were, what I thought about their application process, and how upset my son was. We cleared up the backyard issue because they realized the dog would come in and be crated while we were gone and at night. However, they had already given the dog to another family but we could come back and choose another animal. When she said this I almost busted out laughing. I thought thanks but no thanks. We will never go back to that shelter. I know that sounds cold and harsh because the animals have nothing to do with the management. But until you are told that you are not fit to own a dog (after raising a toddler!!!) and watch your son bawl, you have no idea.

Anyways, on with the story. After I got off the phone Matt was still understandably upset. We sat down and talked about how God has a doggie for us and that dog was not the one. We prayed for the dog we lost and her new owners and then we prayed for a new dog.

(This is getting really long, sorry)

We decided to go on a walk to distract Matt. Before we headed off I walked over to my neighbor's house to tell her the story. Halfway through, she interrupted me and told me to look in her backyard. There sat the most pitiful puppy. She was soooo skinny, kind of ugly, and looked scared out of her skin. I busted out laughing and said "you have got to be kidding!!". I'm not sure if I was talking to her or the Lord.

I yelled for Richard to come see and he was just as shocked. The same day we were rejected by the pound, there is a stray across the street.

We told her we would talk about it on our walk and let her know. On the way back home, two houses down, there was the dog; she had escaped from our neighbor's yard. We found out that another set of neighbors had found her a couple of days before and had been taking care of her. They told us how sweet she was and we asked if they were keeping her, to which they replied "no, do you want her?" We stood there for a minute and then said "yes!"

So before I go any further, let me introduce you to Lola.


This was the first night we had her. She is curled up in our cat's bed while looking rather pitiful. Can you see how skinny she was?? Look at that backbone.

Two days later after a trip to the vet looking pretty ridiculous.

Here she is modeling her pretty ears and shiny coat.

Great Purina Puppy Chow ad.

Our ancient cat Rascal was not too thrilled about her new housemate. She is hiding in a chair under our dining room table.

But now they are best friends.

So far Lola has been the perfect dog. Yes she has had some accidents, but she is sweet, playful, not a yapper, and obedient. Sadly, if she would have been at the pound, we probably would have passed her by. I'm so glad that God is in control.

Strawberry Pickin'

A couple of weeks ago we went to Froberg Farms in Alvin for some good ole' strawberry picking. If you have never done this, I highly recommend it! We all had a great time.

We ended up picking 26 pounds of strawberries. What do you do with all these little beauties? Have a jam party of course. I ended up with 25 jars, 4 1/2 quarts frozen, and one fabulous strawberry pie.

What a great day!