Products I'm Lovin

I'm still sick, so this post is taking my last ounce of energy. I thought I'd just share a few products we've been using that I absolutely love...and wish I had known about years ago!!

First up, are onion goggles....and yes, I own this very same stylish pair in pink. If you are like me, I get halfway through chopping an onion and have tears streaming down my face and have to call the husband in to finish the job. Well, if you own these handy glasses, then you put these on and they form a nice comfortable seal around your eyes and you can chop onions all day with no pain! Normally people who do NOT wear contacts are more sensitive to the onions.

Next are the Cascade ActionPacs. We had been using the powder detergent and our dishes weren't getting cleaned all of the time-- sometimes we had to run the whole load through a 2nd time. I read on the internet to try these because most people use WAY too much detergent and this controls the amount. Since moving to these our dish cleanliness has improved to nearly 100%! If you go to Sam's you can get a huge tub of them- I think contains over 100 of them.

I've posted about these before, but I love the makeup remover towlettes. I usually buy the store brand or whatever ends up being the cheapest...then I cut them in half once I get home cause find I usually don't need the entire towlette with eash use. It feels so refreshing to clean your face off and is so easy to just dispose of when finished!

Lastly, the electric toothbrush!!!!! Dustin has been using it for years, but I just recently switched over and it is fabulous. I didn't care for it at first cause it just tickled, but now I'm used to it and love it. I still have the occassional accident where it splatters toothpaste all over the mirror, but I'm getting there! It is a little pricey to continue to replace the brushheads, but just keep your eye out for rebates or coupons.

Amazon deal...and some good sites

I've been loving Groupon ever since I discovered it last year. However, there are many other great sites out there that have daily deals. Today I was able to get a $20 Amazon gift card for only $10. Not the best deal ever that I'll go scream it from the rooftops, but I'll take a free $10!

The site I used today was Living Social, which you can click on to link to the site. This is very similar to Groupon.

Another one is Tanga. I've ordered few magazine subscription deals here for a great rate! The best deals are when you can use a coupon code for the magazine on top of the sale.

And my aunt had told me about this site, but I have yet to use it- Brads Deals. It looks like this will show you coupons and good deals currently available around the internet.

Happy thrifty shopping!

Golden Globe reviews

I've been more absent than planned lately cause I've been dealing with a miserable cold. When my head is this clogged, even sitting here typing a blog seems like too much work! Anyways, I did have hours to spend devoted to the tv watching the Golden Globe red carpet and awards.

In the last 2 weeks just by coincidence I had seen 2 of the movies nominated- Inception and The Kids are All Right. I don't think I've added these to my movie review page yet, but I'll probably give Inception a 3. Dustin really enjoyed it, but it was just not my style of movie. Hated the ending- that's all I'll say. The Kids are All Right was better....but still don't think it's near award-worthy! I'm toying between rating that a 3 or 4. I really want to see a lot of the other movies nominated- Social Network and Black Swan are at the top!!

Now, on to the most important part of the evening-- who looked the best and worst! One trend that I was a little surprised with was the number of long-sleeved dresses. In my opinion, Angelina Jolie was the only one that pulled off the look...Anne Hathaway came in 2nd-- I didn't care for the poof on the sleeves, but her dress had an open back that was really pretty. The rest all looked disgusting.

I'll continue on with more looks that make me say- WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!




And now my selection of the best looking dresses/people of the evening-- there were a lot, so was hard to narrow it down to the best. Obviously I really liked the black dresses and champagne-ish colored ones! Eva Longoria and Piper Perabo also had very classy looking black dresses, but I just got lazy and did not include their pics. All the women below deserve A's in my book!

And lastly, the fashion critics did not give Natalie a good review, but I thought she looked great!

Last batch of recipe ideas

I found a few recipe ideas that could make for cute small gifts to hand out. My plan is to tackle some, if not all, of these this year.

These first 2 are from Plain Chicken's blog. First up is homemade butterfinger bars which only use 3 ingredients and is made from candy corn (yes, how strange is that?)! I'm not a huge butterfinger fan normally, but they are fairly tasty and if you can nab some leftover candy corn after halloween, this would be a really frugal xmas gift! Check out here for the recipe and pictures.

Another item super simple to do is homemade vanilla-- only 2 ingredients! Click here for pics and the recipe. Below were some cute packaging ideas I saw.

This next idea is for homemade Limoncello. I had never had limoncello until last year when some friends of ours made a bottle....and let me tell you- it was AWESOME! Now Plain Chicken does have a recipe here on her blog, but it is for a creamy limoncello. I will probably choose to attempt a more simpler recipe such as this. Following are just a few pics of cute bottling/label ideas.

And lastly, my sister had some homemade toffee that was DELICIOUS...I sadly devoured my last bite of it last night and am having an intense craving for it tonight! I'll have to get the exact recipe used, but I found this on All Recipes that has good reviews/feedback and doesn't seem to hard.

A few more xmas recipes

When I have the time, I really love cooking for dinner and trying new recipes...however, I never really bake or make sweet things. Probably because my husband is a moron and doesn't like chocolate, so it seriously rules out about 90% of desserts! At the last minute, I took a stab and making some tasty treats for me to munch on over the holidays and to pass out to family. I swear both these recipes are SO easy and taste awesome that anyone can tackle them!

First up was Sugar-n-Cinnamon pecans. You know those kind you'll smell at the mall or a fair and then just HAVE to buy them to satisfy your craving?! I mixed together a few recipes for these and here's how you do it:
Sugar-n-Cinnamon Pecans

Ingredients
3 egg whites
1 T water
1 T vanilla extract
2 pounds pecan halves
2 cups white sugar
1.5 t salt
1 t ground cinnamon

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Grease baking sheet.
2. In a mixing bowl, whip together the egg whites, vanilla, and water until frothy. In a separate bowl, mix together sugar, salt, and cinnamon.
3. Add pecans to egg whites, stir to coat the nuts evenly. Slowly add the mixed dry ingredients into the nuts and toss to coat well.
4. Spread the nuts out on the prepared baking sheet.
5. Bake for 1 hour stirring every 15 minutes. This is important so they don't burn!


Since that went over so well I decided, I love peanut brittle let me see if it's possible to make that at home. Seriously, I did not even know that you could make this yourself! So I found a recipe on the internet that used the microwave and no special candy thermometer or odd gadgets. I read zillions of user comments on the recipe to get all the tips, so I'll summarize below what worked for me. It seems everyone's cooking times vary, so you may need to adjust depending on your microwave.

Peanut Brittle

Ingredients
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 cup salted spanish peanuts
1 T butter
1 t vanilla extract
1 t baking soda

Directions
1. Spray cookie sheet with non-stick spray (or use butter). I then turned on my oven to 350 degrees and let the cookie sheet warm in there. (I had read this from other users that it will help in the end when you pour the brittle on here).
2. Combine sugar and corn syrup in a 2 quart glass bowl (I used a 9x9 glass square pan) and microwave on high 3 minutes. Note: I read several reviews about dishes cracking, so be aware this gets hot and you need glass or something sturdy.
3. Stir in peanuts and microwave on high 3 minutes more. I just eyeballed this and used about 3/4 of the container, so was a little more than the 1 cup.
4. Stir in butter and vanilla and microwave for 1 minute.
5. Stir in baking soda until light and foamy. Pour onto cookie sheet and tilt cookie sheet around to try and spread the brittle. Do NOT try to use a spatula, knife, etc. to spread the brittle cause will just ruin in.
6. Cool completely and break into pieces and serve.

A few tips: Do NOT soak your glass dish immediately when done or it may shatter. But once it is cooled down, do soak it and your cleanup will be super easy! Act fast when adding the ingredients between your microwave sessions, you don't want the mixture to start cooling down. I also sprayed my spoon with non-stick spray in between each microwave session so that the brittle wouldn't end up terribly sticking to the spoon. I made another batch with cashews cause I LOVE cashews, but the spanish peanuts really tasted better in my opinion. Hope you give it a try and enjoy!!

A few xmas recipes

Hi, I hope everyone had a great xmas and new years...I know I enjoyed the time with family and friends and some relaxing!! Here are some cute recipes to tuck away...

First up is something my sister had got at a cookie exchange and I couldn't believe I had never seen something like this before! They are little mice made from a Hershey kiss and cherry. After looking around the internet I see there are several variations of this, but basically she just dipped a maraschino cherry with stem in melted chocolate. Then dip the flat side of a Hershey kiss in the melted chocolate and attach 2 almond slivers to form the ears. Then attach the kiss (head) to the cherry (body). She then just used a toothpick to dip in the melted chocolate to make the eyes. Here is a link to more detailed instructions I found and here is a picture of the ones my sister had:


Next up was something I had seen various versions on the internet for-- Smores jars you assemble and give as gifts. These were more time consuming than I had planned and was disappointed with how they baked...but hey, the jars looked cute! I would recommend playing around with the recipe some and it may be better-- I think the butter needs greatly reducted-- maybe try with 3/4 stick instead. Basically I had a 1 Quart mason jar from Michaels and filled the bottom with 1 sleeve of crushed graham crackers. Then I added 1/3 cup brown sugar and really patted it down to compress as best I could. I found cute xmas tree peeps (but you could make these for easter, halloween or any holiday and use those peeps) and used 1 peep and about 1-1.5 cups mini marshmallows. Again, I'd keep pressing them down to cram in as many as possible. Then fill with about 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Close the jar and attach a cute tag with the baking instructions. Here is a pic of my jars after they were filled:


Front of the tag:


Inside of tag with instructions:


I'll have some more recipes later this week for you too!