Before & After

This is what the fridge looks like on Thursdays before my sweetie comes home.  Stocked full of salad, fruits, vegetables, etc.  

And this is what it looks like on Sunday.  All that's left is some leftover fruit salad, a few sad vegetables, bottled water, eggs and condiments.

The Thursday Routine

Like most people, I suffer from bouts of OCD, and I am very OCD when it comes to Thursday, each week. That's the day my sweetie gets home and I like things to be 'just so' when he gets in.  

What I do is not something he has ever asked for, or told me was expected of me as a stay at home wife, but over time it's become a routine that I look forward to.  He works so hard, drives and sleeps odd hours. When he gets in, he's exhausted and he's either chilled to the bone in winter or dying of heat exhaustion in summer.

If the grocery shopping hasn't been done, I'll get up really early and go that morning, however I usually do it on a Tuesday or Wednesday, so as to plan the weekend menu.  I spend Thursday morning making the dinner salads, putting together fruit salad, tuna fish for sandwiches, coleslaw and pre-cooking vegetables.  Sometimes on Wednesday night I will prep the crockpot so it can start cooking when I get up at 7.  

I like for Russell to come home to a clean house, so I vacuum and dust the whole house, and clean the bathroom.  All the trash is taken out.  I do whatever laundry is left so that the hamper is empty too. Clean sheets and towels are a must for when he gets home.  In the winter, I warm the house up with all the heaters on.  Conversely in summer, the a/c and fans are cranked.  Dog toys picked up, kitchen table paperwork put away or left out neatly, if needed.

Then there are the little things that I like to do as well.  His towel is hung on the bathroom doorknob, easy to reach when he finishes his shower.  I make sure to replace the bar of soap if it's gotten real small.  His comfy clothes are taken out of the closet in the bedroom and put in the bathroom.  In the winter, I'll run them through the dryer for a few minutes to warm them up.  There is always a bottle of water and some cough drops on his nightstand.

Out in the living area, the dishes are done from all the dinner prep, dried and put away.  The fridge & freezer are stocked with his fave foods and ice tea drinks.  The kitchen usually smells really good from whatever soup, chili, crock pot meal, etc. I've got going.  I love seeing his face light up like a Christmas tree when he walks through the door and smells the food!  I will also do a few errands in the morning and get his fave scratch ticket, which waits on the table next to his chair.  I also put the remote control, or 'clickah' as he calls it, on the table because he likes to surf channels and watch his shows.

While he is in the shower, I unpack his computer and set it up so he can get right to his games.  I finish making dinner and bring his salad and drink to the TV table.  After he's showered, comfy and has eaten his salad, I bring him his dinner.  Anything he needs, I am happy to get for him.  If I go out to do errands, I'll stop and get him his fave iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts.  I spoil him rotten all weekend long and, having never experienced that in his life, he's more than happy to let me.  It brings me great joy to see him so happy, and very appreciative too, I might add.  When he leaves, I always pack a lunch for him and enclose a love note on a yellow stickie.  

I figure it's the least I can do for the love of my life. 

Sunday, Sunday

March started off cold and icky.  I just cannot take much more of this crap.  It's gonna go from this to hot and humid with no spring at all, I just know it.  

I'd had the hubster home for a week, so my first day without him was really blah & lonely.  It was cloudy and grey.  I came home from dropping him off to find the bread bag on the floor.  It only had a couple slices in it, but I was careless and Sagan got it off the counter, but didn't get to eat anything because I got home so quickly. See how pleased he is with himself?  He tried to convince me that he had no idea how the bag got on the floor!  There's Pepper's little nose.  I'm sure she was in cahoots but of course played innocent too.

Then I was cornered against the counter by them till I bought my freedom with biscuits.  

This was a project I saw on Pinterest and I'd saved the picture quite awhile ago but never got around to making it.  Here is the Pinterest picture.  Whoever made this was able to draw their own TARDIS.  I, however, am not that talented.  Their canvas is also a bit bigger than mine was.  They used 32 crayons but I could only fit 23.

I first painted the canvas black, then hot glued blue, white & silver crayons to it for melting.  I'd printed a TARDIS picture off the internet and used thick foam double stick tape to attach it to the canvas, to give it a little 3D depth.  Not sure what I'll do with it....I wouldn't really call myself a Whovian, but I am enough 'in the know' of their fandom.  If Christopher Eccleston had remained on for a few seasons, I would definitely have gotten into it more, but he only did one season and I was gutted when he decided not to return.  His one season really left an impact on me, to the point where I will never be able to see a gas mask again without hearing that little boy's voice saying, 'Are you my mummy?'  *shudder*

Anyways, here's my version of it.  As they say in Pinterest-Land, "Nailed it."

I made the all important discovery that self adhesive rhinestones do not stick to metal at all well.  That meant removing nearly every single rhinestone in all the keys I already made, and re-adhere them with E6000.  It was time consuming and tedious, and so I only had time to make 3 new ones.  

I am wicked sick of eating cereal, cheese & crackers, sandwiches and canned soup.  So I made a couple quiches (one for freezing).  Spinach, onion, mushroom & feta.  

I'd also pinned a recipe for 'the perfect mac & cheese' from Picky Palate.  I'd never made a roux before and it came out pretty good.  I'll definitely make it again.  The recipe stopped after mixing the cheese sauce with the pasta, but I added panko and baked it for a bit, then turned on the broiler to brown it.

Overall, not a bad way to spend the day.

Stormy Day

We had a very stormy day at the end of June, which, fortunately, ushered out a period of very hot & humid weather we'd had the week earlier.  The skies grew dark by 10:00 a.m. and I had to shut down my computer as the thunder and lightning started.  Pepper and Sagan were keyed into it, so I tried to do my best to act like there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, even though I don't like thunderstorms either.  It was the perfect opportunity to finally clean the fridge and give the kitchen a good cleaning too.  And vacuum.  And dust.  Both puppies stayed glued to me and were somewhat underfoot as I was back and forth to the sink as it stormed outside.

It was raining so hard that water leaked over the top of the kitchen a/c unit, hence the towels.

After I finished cleaning by about Noon, I logged back onto the internet, only to hear more storms headed into the area, so off went the computer again.  I tried to watch TV, but Bean and Boo were so terrified that they were trying to climb on me, whilst panting and drooling.  I thought about heading into my craft room but the last time we had thunderbumpers, they were jockeying for positions under the craft table, which wasn't optimum and I knew would be difficult, at best, for me to craft with them under the table.  I'd thought about colouring, but I was too busy trying to keep them out of my lap, so that wouldn't work either.  At this point, there was a very bright flash and immediately thereafter, a thunderclap so loud and so long that all the window crystals rattled against the windows.  It scared the crap out of me, and it sent Boo and Bea right over the edge.  I remembered that I had Rescue Remedy  so I put some on biscuits and gave them to the pups, in the hopes that it would work.  

I decided to cook, since that would keep me busy and keep them from climbing on me.  I made my new fave chicken recipe, (which doesn't include the vanilla icing also seen in this photo).

Spread mayo on boneless chicken breast tenders.

Cover them in panko bread crumbs and parmesan cheese.

I cook them for 25 minutes in the NuWave Oven.  I assume the cooking time would be the same in a conventional oven.

While the chicken cooked, I also mixed up a batch of Suddenly [Pasta] Salad.

Added my own veggies to the pasta and dressing mix.  Yum!

While all that stuff was cooking, I also decided to make funfetti cake.  I split the batter between a cupcake tin and a small cake pan.

The thunderstorm finally moved on and the rain was stopping too.  Pepper went into the livingroom to have a snooze, but Sagan was still assisting as my Sous Chef.

"Kiss the Cook"

YUMMMMMMM!!!!!  I like my chicken nice n crispy!

A delicious late lunch!!!  I added some feta cheese to the pasta salad on my plate, but not to the main batch in the fridge because Russell's not a huge fan of cheese and I want him to be able to eat it too!

And for dessert.......cupcakes!!!  (Left a few unfrosted for my honey bunny).

Have I mentioned how much I love being a domestic goddess and stay at home "wife"?

Tie Dyed Cupcakes, Part 2

Now that the cupcakes are baked and cooled, it's time to do the icing.  I got the step-by-step instructions HERE, and it was a lot easier than I expected it would be.  You will use gel or paste food colouring for the icing, rather than the liquid dye used for the cupcakes.  However, they are MUCH harder to mix to obtain a good orange, and purple was out of the question.  I could not find a good mix of red and blue that worked at all, even when I used the tiniest dot of blue with the red (applied on the point of a toothpick, no less). The blue was just way too overpowering, so I didn't use purple and didn't really miss it.

I found a decorating kit with tips and disposable bags.  Disposable icing bags are a must for this project.  I ended up using 4 of them.

I got 2 cans, 'just in case', but only ended up using one.

Use a glass to hold the empty icing bag upright.

Using a stiff-bristle paintbrush, paint the gel dyes into stripes on the inside walls of the icing bag. Then scoop the icing into the bag and squeeze it from the top down to the tip. Don't push the icing down with the spoon because that might mess up the colour stripes. Squeeze out the first bit of icing into a bowl till the colours start coming out.

That's what the icing looks like with the colour streaks.

My "palette".  The smudges on the left was the attempt at purple.

VOILA!!!!  The first two uses of the icing is the most vibrant.  Then it starts to get a little more pastel as you go.  I used 4 disposable icing bags for 1 batch of 12 muffins, to keep the colours as rich as possible.

I know my icing technique isn't terribly good, but I'm pretty pleased with the final results!!!  I was so excited that I was dancing around the kitchen, squealing and saying, 'COME LOOK! COME LOOK!" to the squeeze.  He took one look at the plate and said, "Boy those sure have 'hippie' written aaaallll over them...."   

He said  these looked like "Heat Miser Hair", which is funny because I thought the same thing.  lol

I used one bag with just green and blue dye for a couple of them.  Not sure what I was going for with that green and blue design...sorta looks like a sea anemone.  

And sampling the final result!!!  Nom nom nom nom

I can't emphasize enough how much fun this baking project was.  Easier than I thought, but definitely time consuming. So worth the end results though!

Tie Dyed Cupcakes, Part 1

The other day on Facebook, Kris, of JustKris fame, posted a photo of professionally made cupcakes with beautiful tie dyed frosting.  My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.  That's when I decided I HAD to find out how to make them.  A simple Google search of 'tie dyed cupcakes' yielded easy instructions, so I went out the next day to purchase everything I'd need to make them.  

Start off with any white or yellow cake mix.  I used white cake.  Make the batter according to the directions on the box.

Line the muffin tin with paper cups

Divide the batter evenly into 6 bowls (one for each colour).

Use liquid food colouring for the batter dying.

Mix the colours per your taste; I used 30 drops of dye per bowl to start out for the red, yellow, green & blue, then added more as needed.  For the orange and purple, I started somewhat conservatively with the dyes and then kept adding to achieve the desired shade.  

I started by layering with the purple at the bottom, and building up in the colours of the rainbow with red on top. I knew I overfilled the first cup.  

After doing 2 with rainbow layers, I started getting a little more creative with them.  This cupcake is only red, orange and yellow.

Then I used a toothpick to swirl it a little.  Don't mix too much or else the colours will run into each other.

Here's a swirly one that's only using blue, green and purple.

With my last bits of batter, I made one that had all 6 colours done in 3 layers.  This is the bottom layer.

And the top.

Ready to go in the oven!!

Cooking away.

A little overflow never hurt anyone.  ;-D

Side view to show the layering effect.

The squeeze isn't much into sweets, especially not icing, so he asked me to save a couple un-iced ones for him.  I was tickled to see that the tie dye effect carried through to the paper! 

Waiting patiently for icing.