#79 Own a nice purse

This weekend was such a whirlwind. Fun, but lots going on. Last minute Friday I was texting back and forth with my friend Wendy when she mentioned going to the outlets in NY Saturday. She then asked if I’d like to join her. At the time, hubs and I were thinking of hitting some appliance stores because Thursday night, our dishwasher broke. We decided against it as we were still doing our research and had a couple of leads at different places already so I told Wendy I’d meet her at her house at 8 am since it takes 2 hours to get to the outlets and they don’t open until 10 am.

Most of my reason for going to the outlets was for Coach but I was excited to check out the other stores (we weren’t able to hit them all though!). When we made our way to Coach there was a line going outside to get in and once you were in it was jammed packed so I grabbed a couple of purses I liked and kept wandering. Wendy had a 25% off coupon which means they would take that extra percentage off whatever clearence or sales were going on which is awesome. This fact also explains why the store was so crowded. I was making up my mind on one purse when I saw another in brown. I’m not a big brown wearer but I saw the style and liked it and commented to Wendy that I wished they had it in black. She found a sales rep who brought us to the black version. Huzzah! I was meant to be with this purse! The straps are big and stable (one of the purses I had in my hand had flimsy handles) and it was the perfect size to keep a wallet, cell phone and even a book (this is always important to me!).

Wendy scored major deals on their sneakers. I almost tried on a pair but I figured to start out, the purse was enough. I’ve always loved well made designer purses. It will last a lifetime and if anything ever breaks, you can send it back to Coach and they will fix it for free – that’s how strongly they feel about the construction of the purse. I even had a friend who sent a purse back for repair and they couldn’t fix it so they sent the broken one back along with a new one!

I felt some slight buyers remorse later on only because I don’t spend that much on purses but I haven’t bought a purse in a long time and I will get a lot of uses out of this one. And I told hubby that it was a Christmas/birthday gift so I’m all set.

So that’s my first item off my list of 101!

Recipe: Monkey Bread

As I promised, here’s the recipe for Monkey Bread. My husband introduced this recipe to me because his mom would make it often for him and his brothers. It’s a fun recipe and quite tasty. Enjoy!

 

Monkey Bread

 

Ingredients: 

3 cans of biscuits – each biscuit cut in half (if you use Grands, cut into 1/4 pieces)

½ cup sugar

1 ½ tablespoon cinnamon

Bundt pan (well greased or pam’d!)

 For the syrup:

1 stick of butter (melted)

¾ cup brown sugar

 Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mix the brown sugar and the butter together in a small bowl.  Set aside.

Roll the cut biscuts into balls.

Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a medium sized bowl.

Dip the biscuit balls into the sugar/cinnamon mixture and coat well.

Drop half of the balls into a well greased bundt pan (about 30 balls)

Drizzle half of the syrup over the balls in the bundt pan

Drop the rest of the balls into the bundt pan.

Drizzle the rest of the syrup over the balls

Bake in oven about 30 minutes

 

Let cool and enjoy!  It’s called Monkey Bread because you typically eat it with your hands and pick at it (much like monkeys!)

Halloween 2009

I’ve been meaning to upload these photos for a while now. Might as well post them now before it’s Christmas and nobody cares about Halloween anymore

This Halloween we stayed home – just the two of us. And I have to say it was one of my favorite days ever! The weather was very warm and windy – perfect Halloween weather. We started the day making monkey bread for breakfast – yum! I’ll post the recipe another time.

After breakfast and putzing around a little, we set out to carve the pumpkins we bought the week before. Our friends carve amazing pumpkins every year and this year was no different. We were sent photos of the Severus Snape, Oogie Boogie and Jack Skellington they carved and they blew me away! Turns out they got the patterns for them from Zombie Pumpkins so we perused the site and picked out a couple patterns ourselves. We even have some for next year! So here are ours from this year…Scott chose Boo from Mario:

I chose a black cat as I have an unhealthy obsession!

And here’s our front steps all festive like:

When we were carving pumpkins I was so excited I broke a couple of our little tools. Fortunately I found a bunch for 90% off this week so I stocked up! It was so much fun.

After carving we set up the crock pot to make mulled cider. This is so yummy and a recipe from my mother-in-law. Pretty much you get a gallon of cider, some mulling spices (which now you can find at your grocery store), cinnamon sticks and some slices of orange and lemon and you put that all in a crock pot on low/warm for as long as it takes to warm up and then enjoy for the night! We love hot cider and we love when it is mulled.

We watched Nightmare Before Christmas while we got a few trick or treaters. I had never seen that movie all the way through so it was fun to watch on Halloween

No 7 Quick Takes

Hi! I’ve been seriously MIA because I’ve been hit with a nasty cold. Last Friday I got my seasonal flu shot (finally!) and Saturday was a wonderful day spent with hubby. I can’t wait to share a post about Halloween and photos because I had one of the best Halloween’s and we didn’t even go anywhere.

Sunday I went to the Baptism of one of my favorite little girls…and the priest was something else. That’s a post for another day. But during the ceremony and the luncheon after I just wasn’t feeling myself. I started to get a sore throat, runny nose and chills. Lovely! By the time we came home it hit me really hard and I was whiny and miserable. I stayed out of work Monday and made it through Tuesday and Wednesday.

Thursday, I awoke feeling faint and pale and just not right. I made it into work after being stuck in traffic due to a car fire for over an hour…which is not fun when you’re not feeling well. My coworker told me I looked horrible and convinced me to go back home so I rescheduled my clients for the day and headed to my mom’s who had made chicken soup the night before. She met me at the house and she heated up some soup. It was wonderful – sometimes you just need your mom when you are sick – no matter how old you are!

Suprisingly I feel much better and actually have some energy today. I actually cannot wait to be able to clean the house as it’s been sorely neglected while I parked my butt on the couch. However; I did get to watch some of my favorite movies again like Sex and the City, Steel Magnolias and Toy Story as well as watch a disc of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and a couple episodes of Brothers & Sisters. Oh! And I finally caught up on the last 4 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy that I had on TiVo. The best part of being sick is watching your favorites – it’s like a big comfy blanket!

Forgetful

It’s no secret that I’m getting old. We all are. But the problem I’m having lately is forgetfulness.

I’m not talking the kind of forgetfulness where you miss an appointment or your main reason for going to the grocery store is to get milk yet that’s the only thing you don’t come home with. I’m talking about misplacing things.

For instance, a couple weeks ago, on a Monday no less, I locked my office keys in my office. Because I do research, my office has to have a different lock than the rest of the clinic so not just anyone can let me back in. Nope, I have to wait for maintenance or the clinic director but the director comes in later in the morning and of course this was at 8:45am. Two calls to maintanence later and I was in.

Last Thursday I locked myself out AGAIN! This time it was because I decided to be a genius and instead of carrying around a bajillion keys with me, I pared it down to (what I thought) was the only key I needed on me at all times. That one? Was the key to my desk. Not my office. I thought that I could lock up the rest of the keys in my desk so I could have the desk key and that’s it. I walked out of my office after liberating myself from the plethora of keys to wash my hot cocoa mug and came back and the minute I saw my door realized I had no way of getting back in. Fortunately for me, it was the same time the janitor starts coming around my hallway to clean so I asked him to let me back in. Ugh.

But it gets better. Last Monday Scott was sent home to make sure his laptop and phone works at home for work (yet he can only use this in an emergency. That’s another story). He emailed me, “Wow, you must have been tired this morning. I opened the glass cabinet and your iced tea container was in there!”

So yeah, instead of putting my iced tea in the fridge, I put it with the glasses! I’ve caught myself doing that before but this is the first time I’ve actually done it.

That’s old age for you!

7 Quick Takes – Halloween Edition

For this week’s 7 Quick Takes, I thought I’d post some photos of some of the things I have been for Halloween in the past. I’m also including a couple that my family has been. This year, hubby and I decided to stay home and hand out candy. It will be our first time doing that since buying our home over 15 months ago (last year we went out for Halloween and our neighbors were sad that we weren’t home). We plan to have hot cider and beer available for our neighbors when they come by.

Feel free to link me to photos/posts of your Halloween costumes!

.1.

When I was younger, my mom made a lot of our costumes. She’s very artistic so she was great at imagining something and putting it together. Here is my brother and I Halloween…circa 1990. I am a cat from Cats and my brother is Captain America (I think). I wish you could see my face paint better – I actually won a school contest with that face paint!

.2.

Same year, but this is my dad…as a Ninja Turtle! Excuse the sign language – I just think it was a fun costume!

.3.

I’m a huuuuge Wizard of Oz fan so it’s only natural that I be Dorothy! This costume got a lot of use – I wore it a couple of halloweens and one of my roommates did as well! The shoes I always wore were my junior prom shoes and Toto is a beanie baby!

.4.

In 2002 Wendy and I scored tickets to the Boo Bash which is a huge Halloween party thrown by a local radio station. They usually have a couple of musical artists (I think Dirty Vegas was one of them that year….). Since we decided to go so last minute, we whipped up some costumes. Wendy had a corset/shirt from a Renaissance fair so I borrowed that to be a pirate wench. Wendy’s costume was great though – she was a greek goddess and she used sheets and gold rope! I still can’t get over how well it came out!

Yes, that is my old bedroom with a poster of Ben Affleck! Lol!

.5.

Ok, so this one is my brother-in-law Craig. He works for Disney World and is great at putting together costumes! He works on them forever and you can tell in his attention to detail. This is a photo of him….maybe 3-4 years ago as Jack Sparrow. Amazing right? His costume was so good that when he went to DW with it for the Halloween party, they asked him not to take photos with others! I think a girl even asked him to go to prom!

.6.

On our honeymoon, we spent part of it at Disney World. They throw this huge Halloween party called Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. Scott and I went and had a fabulous time! We had dinner at a restaurant with the characters and even they are dressed up for Halloween. Here I am with my I skull Pirates shirt and Goofy

.7.

Last year we went to a sports bar with a bunch of friends for Halloween. Hubby borrowed a real surgical uniform from his mom who works at a hospital. We were not allowed to put fake blood on it (yet it still sits in Scott’s closet!) so that wasn’t fun. I decided to get a nurse uniform so we can be all barfy and couple like. It was fun. Our friend Andrew suprised us and dressed up like our patient! My favorite costume was our friend Bill who was Shaun from Shaun of the Dead! Loves it! Here’s most of us that night.

What are you going to be for Halloween? What have you been in the past?

Goals

So I finally wrote down the 101 goals I have to be completed in the next 1001 days. It took me about 2 weeks to complete but here it is. Maybe you’ve heard of it? The Day Zero Project and completing 101 tasks in 1001 days…it’s been linked on a ton of other blogs but I finally caved. I do find that if I write something down, I’m more apt to complete it (or carry it over onto 10 other lists, but eventually it’s completed!)

I’ve already shared it with hubs and I plan to pass it along to friends and family so that they can help me accomplish this task. Maybe I can help a friend or two come up with their own lists. Either way, I’m excited to accomplish some (if not all ) of these items!

Do you have a list?

Lately I

…have been letting my hair be its natural self: curly and wavy. Mostly out of laziness but also because I know people kill to have hair that has some curl to it. But I’m excited to get my hair cut tomorrow. Typically I only go but three times a year. I may treat myself again for my bday in a few months. …have realized that I fall asleep much quicker when I have my head down on my hubby’s chest. It’s the truth.

…have not been drinking coffee or having much caffeine. One day a few weeks ago I just stopped brewing coffee and unplugged my coffee maker. I started making myself tea – one at home and one for the road but even now it’s not that much. Some days I go the whole day without any caffeine which is fabulous. Today I am sipping some tea but that’s it for my caffeine intake. …am drinking much more water. My lovely SIGG is getting me through the day with a couple of fill ups. On the weekends I sometimes treat myself to a soda but that’s still rare. I do love my Newman’s Own Iced Tea with Lemonade but I don’t drink that every day. When I drink more water I feel so much better and I swear my skin looks better.

…am not watching much reality TV. That sound you hear? It’s my husband cheering. I stopped watching America’s Next Top Model all together. The only “reality” I watch is home improvement/house hunting/food cooking shows. And my brain (along with my husband) thanks me for it!

…am at peace with all the changes that will be coming in 2010. It took a little while getting there but I am a firm believer in that old adage that “everything happens for a reason.”

What have you been up to lately?

Recipe: Applesauce Meatballs

Ok – so you read the title and were slightly grossed out right? Well, these meatballs are the yummiest things ever! They are even great heated up the next day!

This recipe was one of my grandmother’s and my mom used to make it occassionally. When I moved out and in with the hubby I had to have this recipe. Sadly I’ve realized it’s only graced our [coffee] table once before. With the New England weather getting colder and crisper, what perfect time to make some yummy meatballs! So on Friday night I set out to make these for dinner and had my handy little BlackBerry available for photo documentation….

 

Ingredients

  

Applesauce Meatballs

Ingredients: 
1 egg                                     
½ cup milk                                         
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 ½ cup herb-seasoned croutons                    
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon crumbled sage
1 can (10.5 oz.) cream of celery soup
1 ½-2 lbs. ground chuck or*ground turkey              
½ cup water
2/3 cup thick applesauce
3 tablespoons finely chopped onions

 Directions:
 In a large bowl, beat egg, and blend in milk; add croutons.  Let stand 5 minutes until croutons are soft and have absorbed most of the liquid.  Stir smooth with a fork.
 Blend in meat, applesauce, onion and seasonings.
Shape into balls.  Place in shallow baking dish. 
Blend celery soup with water; pour over meatballs.
Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
Serves 6.  Makes approximately 24 meatballs
Recipe can be doubled.

*note: if using ground turkey you may need to add additional bread crumbs if meat mixture is soft.

Finished

I used all Turkey meat and it wasn’t the same. Next time I’m using half turkey and half beef.

7 Quick Takes Vermont Vacation

Check out more posts like these here (http://www.conversiondiary.com). Err, she’s not doing it this week. Oh well, I still am!

.1.

This is the large farm table that was on the screened in porch. You can see the wonderful lake view (this is actually where I wrote this post).  We ate breakfast, lunch and dinner out here!

.2.

This is Steve! He Kayaked by the first day we were at the cabin. When my family first started coming to the lake we rented cottages at Mountain Lake. We met another family who happens to be from my homestate and became fast friends. For many years we would vacation at the same time and spend a week with Steve. He’s now all grown up, engaged, and living in Vermont. Turns out that my husband’s friend (and of course, now my friend) Bill’s family used to babysit Steve when he was little. Small, small world.

.3.

I’m telling the truth when I say the sunsets here are gorgeous. Each night we’re treated to oranges, pinks, and dark blues. I took this photo right out the back yard of the cabin. Because it’s the end of August, it’s not a popular time to vacation on the lake so it was usually very quiet and peaceful, especially as the sun sets.

.4.

There’s a used bookstore in town that my husband and I love to go to each vacation. Usually we walk away with a bag full of books and this time was no different. This photo is of one wall in one of the rooms – it’s not even a quarter of the books here! It’s fun to search and search for a title you are looking for or just browse until something jumps out at you. Hubby bought Atlas Shrugged which he is still working on! I bought some chick lit.

.5.

Ok, back to the sunsets. See, I wasn’t lying! It’s so breathtaking! Each night my mom and I would go outside to watch the sunset and snap away.

.6.

No trip to VT is complete without a stop at the Farmer’s Daughter! This is an iconic sign outside the store so of course we had to take a photo. It’s a fun general store with a ton of gifts and knick-knacks!

.7.

Dad’s boat

My dad coming to dock his boat. The main reason why we come up to this lake is because of my dad’s boat. He fishes at dawn and dusk and takes us for rides during the day. One of my favorite things to do on vacation is ride with my mom and dad and speed out to the opposite end of the lake.