Dear Friends, ...Merry Christmas.

Okay, I'm writing this post because I love you all, you are all important to me and I care about you enough to be your friend in real life and not just on Facebook. I'm always here if you need me, no matter what you are going though, no matter what time of day it is, no matter how long it has been since I have actually seen your face.

I know you all care about me just as much, which is how I already know that you wish me a Merry Christmas. 

Please, please, please, please, please. PLEASE. Plz? DO NOT mass text me tomorrow to wish me a merry Christmas. Unlike most people I still pay for my texts and there are very few things that ruin my holidays more than knowing that at least 15 of my friends are going to text me and run up my cell phone bill. So, if you really do care about me please, please, please, take that extra 10 seconds to uncheck my name from you mass text list tomorrow. I would really appreciate it and I would have a 'Merry-er' Christmas because of it. 

If you would like to wish me a Merry Christmas, you are more than welcome to post on my wall or comment on this post I will see it. Promise. :)

Thank you all so much and Merry Christmas.

Fa-la-la-la-la la la la la

Does this piss anyone else off, or is it just me?

It's that time of year again.

The temperature has dropped. The snow has started to fall. Christmas Carols can be heard twenty four hours a day on 94.3 The Bridge. And my neighbors have started putting up their Christmas lights.

Now, before I start this nice little rant let me say this, I like Christmas. I like Santa. I'm even cool with Jesus (regardless of the fact that he is NOT the reason for the season). I like hot apple cider, and Christmas cookies. I swear I'm not about to start a Jihad against Christmas.

However, I'm not okay with the sickness that seems to overcome people in this country around the holidays which allows them to blatantly disregard the energy crisis we are currently facing.

The United States of America makes up for 20% of the energy consumed in the entire world. That would be okay if we supported 20% of the world population or even if we were consuming energy mainly from a renewable source, but neither condition is accurate. We only support 5% of the world population, and our main energy resources continue to be refined fossil fuels.

I swear I must be the only one who throws up a little in my mouth when I see the Smith's over there setting up three six ft tall blow-up characters, a light up nativity set, Santa and all the reindeer on their roof, and about 912,670 lights.

Not only are these displays grotesque, but these people actually make money off their gluttony! There are bus tours for citizens who want to view their houses and make donations to their energy bills!

I know most of the people in this country are mindless wasting machines who have been systematically conditioned to not give a shit about how much they consume (this goes for food and manufactured goods as well), but it really comes out full force around the holidays.

Countless Christmas parties where we are invited to stuff ourselves so full we have to unbutton our pants a little under the table. Christmas morning arrives and where little boys and girls used to receive one or two presents from Santa, they now carelessly unwrap one toy and throw it aside to unwrap the next, not even taking the time to fully appreciate what the first toy was before discarding it. And lets not forget those lights, doesn't this bother anyone else?

Just so we're clear, I'm talking about this:

This is bad, if your house looks like this: seek help. 

Not this:

This is okay, it looks very nice. Good work. 

So, one more time. This:

No good

Not this:

Very good, tasteful.

Some lights are fine, they look nice, they are very Christmas spirit-y. I have three strands myself, and when I have my own house I'm sure I'll have more. I'm talking about the ones that are outrageous, the houses where you know they are spending hundreds of dollars on electricity for their Christmas decorations alone. It's wrong, it's selfish, it's wasteful, most of the time it's downright ugly, but mainly it's completely unnecessary. I promise your neighbors aren't going to think less of you if you don't plaster your house with the usual 300 ugly, light-up, blow-up, confetti filled decorations this year. In fact they'll probably thank you if you don't, since now they can fall asleep at night without drawing the black out curtains. 

Vibrating Bed Syndrome.

BOOM

CRACK

SMASH

"... eh, what? Honey, why is the bed shaking? Honey?"

I sleepily look around the bedroom. He's already left for the day. Humpf.

Time, according to the traitorous alarm clock? 12:00pm, Dammit why am I still sleeping?

(Could it be because I was up until 4:30am reading... again?)

(No, I think not)

(Denial).

This much I know based on sensory input:  I'm lying in bed... at noon...it's thundering outside (WTF it's November, come on!?)... and someone has mysteriously switched out our bed with one of those coin-operated vibrating beds during the course of the night.

Wait... what?

Yeah, that's right my entire bed is vibrating.

I'm confused.

Me too.

Hold on, what's that warm lump against my right leg?

I throw back the bed covers to find out.

A-HA!

I have discovered the source of the shaking. My basset hound Harvey has managed to weasel his way under the covers and is violently trembling next to me on the bed.

KABOOM!

Nope, now he's laying on me.45lbs of shaking, whining, terrified dog breath has shivered it's way on to my chest.

Okay, okay I'm awake, and ornery, and covered in puppy because OMFG IT'S MAKING LOUD NOISES OUTSIDE AND WE CAN'T HANDLE IT!@#(%^$&

Happy Monday    <- sarcasm

Homemade Christmas Cards!!

As some of you may already know, I am currently without gainful employment. Financially I am totally screwed, but it does leave me with a certain amount of free time. So my mother (who is also without gainful employment) and I got together these past couple of weeks and decided to try out my paper making kit! (If you are interested you can purchase one of your very own at the Paper Discovery Center in Appleton). So we spent hours and hours and hours making home made paper, then we spent more hours and hours and hours decorating that homemade paper and turning it into something wonderful and full of love to send to our family and friends for Christmas!!

See? Adorable!

 I, however, completely forgot that I wrote out my Christmas Cards last year, stamped them up, and totally missed sending them out. They are still sitting in my cupboard waiting to get their moment in the sun... er, snow... So, I'm going to go ahead and send those out to my family and friends and sell these amazing, homemade Christmas cards on Esty.com, with homemade envelopes to match! They are listed now. If you are interested there is a link down and to the right that will take you to my store where you can see them all.

 Now, if you are at all interested in making your own homemade Christmas cards without spending the money to purchase a paper making kit and stamps (which can be super expensive, luckily these were all things I happened to have lying around from more fruitful years past) you can find some pretty cheap card making supplies at craft stores like Hobby Lobby. They have boxes of cards already cut and folded, all you have to do is decorate them! It's a lot of fun, seriously inexpensive and it's something you can do with your sisters, mom, kids or girlfriends. It's like scrap-booking without the long term commitment!

The Comedian

So, in the blog world I inhabit most there has been a lot of talk about weight and body image lately. Well, I have something to say... Um, you all know me (and for those of you who don't, hi...)

I'm a good friend.
I'm a good listener.
I make people smile.
I'm the funny one.
I have an amazing fiance who loves me for who I am despite the rolls.

No one can deny that I'm overweight, I mean my Wii calls me obese everyday. Even my television thinks I'm fat (traitor). I go to the doctor and the nurse winces at the scale, my family gives me that look every time I load up my dinner plate for seconds. So I say something funny, usually at my own expense, and everyone forgets that I'm eating for a while.

When you're fat that's all you've got. Humor. You're not thin and pretty like the other girls, you're not talented in arts or athletics like the other girls. So you learn to be funny. It's like, if I can make people laugh at me maybe they'll like me even though I'm not pretty or thin? And it works, but that ache never seems to go away. Even though I can make the whole crowd around me smile and laugh I still feel like shit inside because I know that I'm not thin, or pretty, or smart, or talented. I'm just fat. And since that's all I see I feel like that's all anyone else sees.

James has never called me fat, not once. But I know he wants me to be healthy. For me. For him. For our future kids... If we ever have kids... Two months ago my doctor diagnosed me with poly-cystic ovarian syndrome. It's a hormone discrepancy in women of child baring age, it effects between 5%-10% of the population of the United States. The result of this syndrome is frequently infertility.  It's cause is thought to be weight related. I have a weight related sickness. I'm 22 years old and I have a weight related sickness that could potentially take away my ability to have babies.

You can understand why this might be upsetting... and do you know what I do when I'm upset?

I eat.

What's that you say?

Who makes me, me?

Pinky and the Brain

Lilly Allen

Constant Musical Jabber

Mr. Limpet

Who lives in your head? Let me know in the comments, or link me to your blog!!

Disclaimer:  Stolen from Barefoot Foodie

Breakfast toast cups!

I first found this recipe at The Noshery I thought it looked amazing so I saved it in my bookmarks for the perfect  quick breakfast for a rainy Saturday morning. And since today is a rainy Saturday morning I figured what better time to try it! Turns out it's just as fantastic as it looks, what you'll need:

6-cup muffin pan
1 3in circle cookie cutter
6 slices of bread
6 slices of semi cooked bacon
3 tsp of shredded cheese
salt & pepper

1) Preheat your oven to 400 degrees
2)Grease the muffin pan, you can use a spray like Pam or butter the old fashion way.
3) Cut out 3in bread circles using cookie cutter, I don't have a 3in circle cookie cutter so I just used a large beer stein instead :D
4) Press the bread circles firmly into the muffin pan, be careful though they do tend to tear!
5) Form semi cooked bacon into the bread cups, (bacon should be cooked through but still bendable, mine was not... it was left over from BLTs on Thursday night) Add 1/2 tsp of cheese in the cups. Bake for five min. allowing the Bacon to get crispy and the cheese to melt to the bottom of the cups.
6) Add 1 egg to each cup separating out most of the egg white to they fit nicely, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and bake for 10-12 min. This alows the egg to set but still be slightly goo-ey in the middle!
7) Pop our of muffin pan and enjoy steaming hot! mmmm delicious. :)

This is right after adding the eggs, before the second  bake. 

A couple of quick notes:
I tried both white and wheat bread, the white was delicious in the end but the wheat seemed to hold up better without tearing.
I also tried scrambled on one of them because I don't particularly like goo-ey yoke, it actually turned out pretty good the scrambled yoke soaked into the bread as it baked and it turned out really good, so that works as a sub as well if you don't like goo-ey yoke either.
My bacon was already completely cooked because it was leftovers so it got a little crispier than it should, but I am infamous for loving burnt food so if you don't like really crispy bacon I suggest cooking fresh so that it still has some crisping to do in the oven!

I  love the simplicity of this recipe and I can't wait to try it again with a few different ingredients refrigerator biscuts instead of toast, colby jack instead of cheddar, ham instead of bacon.... mmhmm

Enjoy with your morning tea or coffee, the perfect quick breakfast!

Rainy day project: Homemade bird suet cakes!

Remember this morning when I said I would tell all about the runny peanut butter in my next post? Well, here goes. A while back Jp bought some peanut butter at the grocery story becuase it was on the list, and strangely enough he's better at sticking to the list than I am...

"Oooh those look yummy.... honey why don't we try those this time? You know we need snack-y food, if we don't by it here than we are just going to spend more to buy it next time... Ah man, you suck." 


So, he got the peanut butter on the list and brought it home and put it in the cupboard. The next day when I came home from work he had this look on his face of complete disappointment like his mother had just then called and told him Santa Claus is in fact the Easter Bunny's not so nice Uncle Fred, it's been a ruse all along... I asked him what was wrong and he told me there was something wrong with his new peanut butter.

Hmmm... that's strange I don't remember our tub of peanut butter looking like soup in the past?
Um, that's because it didn't.
What is that thick, clear, watery film on the top?
Looks like peanut oil. 
Yuck.
Yuck is right. 


So we were planning on throwing it away... eventually... once we got around to cleaning out the fridge...  Then, when I mentioned it to my mother, she gave me this wonderful idea about using it for making home made bird suet. So I went over to her house this morning and we went to work, after a couple of tries we came up with this:

Home made bird seed suet cakes!

What you'll need for this recipe:

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup crisco

1 1/2 cups corn meal

1 1/2 cups bird seed

1 cup instant oats

string

saran wrap

4 small fun shaped cups (I found these at the dollar general for three for a buck!!) or a suet cage sized container. 

Makes four small suet cakes or two suet caged size cakes

Okay, so pretend that's saran wrap instead of tin foil and add corn meal to the picture.

First heat the peanut butter and crisco over medium heat until smooth

Add the corn meal and mix well

Now, the fun part! Add a total of 1 1/2 cups of what ever bird seed you'd like, or get really creative and make your own using raisins, nuts, bread crumbs, and seeds. 

Looks good enough to eat!

Now that can sit for a minute to cool. 

While it's cooling go ahead and line your little bowls with Saran wrap. Make sure you use enough to wrap them in later so it should hang a couple of inches over the edge of the bowls. 

Now take your string and cut three pieces for each bowl. You will want to knot and braid them together up to half way, then knot the braid off, and add double knots to the edges of the three tails (those will help to anchor the string so it doesn't slip out). 

The first set is just the strings, the second set is tied at the bottom end, the third set is braided halfway down and then tied off and the fourth set has the end tails each double knotted as well. Get it?

Now you want to fill each saran lined cup half way with the bird seed mixture, then press the string into the cups like so...

Then fill up to the top with the mixture and set the cups in the freezer to solidify for about 45 minutes to an hour.

They should be nice and solid by the time you pull them out. The suet cakes should pop right out of our handy molds. 

Then you can wrap them up in the left over saran over the edges and store them in your freezer until they are ready to be hung up!

If you get some red or green saran wrap secured with a festive sticker on the bottom these will be perfect for Christmas! 

These will keep in the freezer for up to 6 weeks, but I promise they wont last that long! Not only do the birds love them, but I already have mine set aside for friends and family!

Enjoy!

Long Night.

It's 3:00 in the morning. WTF?

Oh yeah, I took an Excedrin and that shit has caffeine in it. Damn.

Jp's not home, he's at a party for one of his friends 21st birthday. It's super weird when he's not home. I always feel like every time I let the dogs out someone is going sneak in the house and like eat all my food or something equally inconvenient. Usually when Jp's not home I lock the basement door because I'm too scared to go down there and check to see if any one is hiding in the smells-like-dead-things fruit cellar. You see, only people who are up to no good would hide in a smells-like-dead-things fruit cellar. BUT now we have a room mate who lives in the basement (not the smells-like-dead-things fruit cellar part) and it would just be cruel and unusual if I locked him down there. I think people go to jail for that kind of thing...

I was really looking forward to a night by myself to watch girly movies and binge on junk food with out his accusatory stare. Instead I'm lying in bed with this amazing fricken migraine that just wont go away. Jp goes out by himself like once every three months at the most. FML. I mean I love the guy, don't get me wrong! But  a girl needs her movie and binge nights every once in a while.

So, I started getting this headache at my parents house this afternoon when I went over there to drop off some really gross oily peanut butter (long story, next time). It started small, like a nail being hammered into my right eyeball. Then, it spread back to my right ear. I didn't really think too much about it, I took two Excedrin (this was at about 5:30pm) and continued on with our visit. Well, by the time we were back home at 8:00 my nail/hammered headache had turned into more of a hatchet/cleaving scenario. Now, let me take a moment to clarify something. Excedrin NEVER doesn't work for me. EVER. Even when I have the worst migraines it at least takes the edge off so I can function like a human. Not today, no such luck. So, little did I know you can only take Excedrin once every SIX HOURS. Needless to say, I proceeded to bury myself in my comforter in bed and whimper like a small child for the next three hours with no one to keep me company but my two basset hounds and one crazy cat. At 11:30pm I finally crawled out of bed and, keeping all the lights off, stumbled in to the bathroom to find the bottle of Excedrin. Ahh, sweet relief... finally. Now that it's too late to start my girly movie/binge night...

One wasted opportunity to watch girly movies and binge on junk food?
Totally freaking lame.
One bogus dud dose of Excedrin?
6 hours of complete suck.
One warm, snuggly slumber party with two adorable sympathetic hound dogs?
Priceless.

Way to much weekend...

So, I'm not complaining or anything but I have a three day weekend. Which means I have tomorrow off. And I totally love not having to work because my job is so far pretty terrible however, that simply gives me far too much time to look at my messy house. I mean seriously who is going to spend their time cleaning when there is a 'I didn't know I was pregnant' marathon on TLC?!

I know, totally no one.

How scary(addicting) is that show!? Every time I watch it I drive my fiancé nuts for the next three days.

'Oh my god, honey I have this really bad craving for taco bell! Maybe I'm pregnant, like on that show...  What if I've been pregnant this whole time and we didn't know. Oh my god, what are we going to do? I CAN NOT afford to have a baby right now!! This baby is going to have to sleep in a dresser drawer and only have smelly dog toys to play with... '


ANYWAY.

So, I made skittle flavored vodka instead... for, you know, mental health purposes.

This stuff is totally amazing, if you mix half a glass with sparkling water it literally tastes like liquid rainbow.

I love it.  We made a double batch by doubling the instructions below.

You'll need:
one large bag of skittles
one liter of vodka (it doesn't need to be super expensive, but not super cheap either we used UV)
five 8.5oz flasks (we got these 17oz flasks at world market but they were kind of pricey so you might want to shop around a little)
six large canning jars
paper towels
one funnel

-First sort out your candy in separate containers. 60 pieces of skittle to 6oz of vodka will do the trick!
-Then put your Skittles in the canning jars and add your vodka, we did 120 skittles and 12 oz vodka.
-Seal them up tightly and give them a good shake.
-Let them dissolve for at least three days, I like to shake them up intermittently but I hear that's not necessary.
-After three days of dissolving you will notice a think white film on the top of your jars. This is when you strain.
-Using your paper towels layer three on top of one another and strain the mixture through them in to the extra jar, changing paper towel when it becomes too clogged.
-After you have finished straining you can use the funnel to transfer your vodka to the flasks.
-Remember to rinse your straining jar and your funnel between flavors.

Enjoy!

 This mixture is sweet enough to sip straight out of cocktail glasses over ice but remember it is almost 100% alcohol so drinker beware!

So...

Me: I think I'm going to start blogging.

Jp: okay.

Me: That's it? Okay?!



Jp: ...um... yeah, why?

Me: No, like, words of encouragement?

Jp: *silence*


THIS IS THE STORY OF MY LIFE