Punkin’ Chunkin’

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving.  Hope you all had a great day with your families and loved ones.  We celebrated in style with my parents and family (all 23 of us) and had a great time.  Someday I’ll have my mom write a blog post about cooking for massive groups of people because she’s been doing it well for decades.  Anyway, that’s a digression.

Steve and I both LOVE Thanksgiving…it’s both of our favorite holidays.  We had to do some negotiation on this when we got married since our families live so far apart.  Last year was our first Thanksgiving together and we headed to Steve’s side of the family.  This is the first Thanksgiving Steve celebrated with my side and I really wanted to bring some of his tradition into mine.  One of his favorite things to eat at Thanksgiving?  Pumpkin Cheesecake!  I had it for the first time ever last Thanksgiving (my sister-in-law bakes a FANTASTIC cheesecake) and love it (surprising because I hate pumpkin).  I got the recipe from her and whipped up one of my own this year.

This was my first EVER baked cheesecake attempt and it turned out AMAZING.  She uses this recipe from the Cheesecake Factory and I pretty much followed it to the letter.  If you are interested in making your own…I didn’t follow the direction about wrapping the spring form pan in foil and nothing seemed to go astray with this omission.  In addition to that renegade move, I always add a little something extra to my graham cracker crust (a few dashes of cinnamon — I just dump some in my hand, but I would think it’s probably the equivalent of 2 tsp or so, some sprinkles of vanilla — again about 2 tsp and an extra tsp of sugar).

Sadly I didn’t get a picture of it fresh out of the oven and it’s gone so I can’t recreate it for you….but it definitely looked almost identical to this.

Source 

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!!!

What do reindeer use to decorate their Christmas trees?

Horn-aments….  I love bad puns.

Anyway, we were feeling festive this weekend and decided to get all of our Christmas decorations out and get the house ready.  I have been excited for Christmas for awhile now, it’s the first time we get to decorate our very own house!  Steve bought a Christmas tree 4 Christmas’ ago (right after we started dating) and I still love it.  It’s artificial but has very real looking branches.  He scored a mega deal on it at Ace Hardware, it was 80% off after Thanksgiving (and no, we never buy seasonal decorations before the holiday actually happens).  We have red and white bulbs (it’s Husker town after all) and then fill in the rest with meaningful ornaments from our childhood.

and yes, Kirby will spend all of Christmas in that very spot.

I had a tree as well, mine was much smaller and we decided to set that one up in our dining room.  We figured 1) it would look nice from the street and 2) maybe we’d be distracted by the pretty bulbs and not notice that we still need to finish mudding the drywall.  This tree has a purple theme.  Our wedding colors were purple and silver and we were originally going to be getting married in December, so we had a stock of purple bulbs to use for various decorating items.  Fast forward 2 Decembers (we got engaged in December of 2009) and we still have a LOT of bulbs around.  Decorating a purple tree seemed like the most logical step.

Yep…it’s crooked (turns out, the top of the tree and the bottom of the tree don’t fit together as well as they should) after a lot of “doctoring”, this is as good as this is going to get.  The only tree skirt we had is burgundy, so if we go ahead and do a purple tree every year, I’m going to have to find a different tree skirt.  Oh well, it’s not perfect, but our house feels so festive, I don’t mind

After we got the tree up, I headed to pinterest to see what other crafts I could pursue with the ornaments.  Steve reminded me of a youtube video I showed him last year on how to make a wreath.  After a quick Google, we found the video back (check it out here) and got to work on our own mini craft night.

We had a hanger on hand from dry cleaning, so we pulled that apart and shaped it into a circle.  Then, I headed down to my basement stash for some ornaments.  We hot glued the tops on so they wouldn’t pop off when we moved them around the wreath.

I just took some hot glue and plopped it around the top.  The top is hidden eventually so you don’t have to worry about being neat.

Steve did a lot of the strategic stringing onto the wire.  We found it easiest to bend one end of the hanger and then string 10 or so bulbs and then alternate them to a full pattern.  As we got small pieces done, we would put a piece of painter’s tape on the hanger to hold the pattern we had.  We weren’t too strategic about it, just tried to get a fairly even disbursements.

This was the trickiest part (and yes, we literally used 4 sets of pliers), once we had the bulbs all strung, we had to carefully bend them in to place.  This is important to do sloooowly otherwise, you’ll break some of the ornaments.  Thankfully, we only had 2 fatalities in the process and we twisted the wire back around itself.  As he mentions in the video, there were a lot f weird gaps between the bulbs.  We didn’t have any garland on hand (and didn’t feel like going to Walmart), so we improvised with some leftover tulle from the wedding.

We wound the tulle through the bulbs until we had it tucked in so it looked nice.

Here’s the finished product, we tied some white ribbon and glued some smaller bulbs throughout the wreath to add some dimension.  We have it hanging on our closet door right now, it was too thick to put between our front door and our storm door.  I like it on the inside, it’s just so festive and makes me smile.  I’m so glad Steve remembered the random idea from last year.

If we did it again:
1)   We wouldn’t fill the hanger full to the end, it was pretty heavy and hard to keep perfect shape.
2)   We would have spent even more time forming the circle on the wreath
3)  We would have attached the ribbon hanger before we did the tulle stuffing.  We did it as our last step and it was tricky to make it look integrated into the wreath.

Any other pre-Thanksgiving decorators out there?  Any more ideas for me and my plethora of ornaments?  Do you get ridiculously excited when your husband suggests craft night??

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Jacuzzi Ick

Our master bathroom came with a Jacuzzi tub…I’m not a big bath person and the state of our Jacuzzi did not make me too interested in “jumping in” to the world of baths.  Why?

It was gross….really really gross.  Hard water stains on the jets and who knows WHAT inside them.  We were planning this tub for a goner when we toured the house, but our housing inspector told us that 1) it worked and 2) it was possible for us to clean it without ripping it out.  We have ignored his advice for the last 8 months and for whatever reason, we finally decided to tackle this cleaning monstrosity this weekend.

To start the cleaning process, we filled the Jacuzzi up with hot water and turned the jets on high.

The good news is it looks less gross full of water.

Once it was full and the jets were rolling, we added dishwasher detergent to the water.  Our home inspector told us this was good because it would clean without foaming everywhere.  We used the liquid kind…I’m not sure what the powered version would do.  We let it go for about a half hour.  Then, drained it and braced ourselves for what we would see.

To our surprise, it was mostly rusty hard water deposits.  HURRAY.  This made me feel better.  We wiped that out, scrubbed the jets with a magic eraser and then repeated the process, this time using vinegar instead of dishwasher soap.  Wiped it out again and it’s looking pretty darn good now.  I’m still not positive I’m ready to take a bath in there yet, but maybe a few more cycles and we’ll be set.

Does anyone else get weirded out about “used” bathtubs?  Any other Jacuzzi cleaning tips for me?  How do you take a hot bath and not get all sweaty?  Important questions this Monday afternoon….

Thunder House Toes

I love awesome finds….you know, when you find something you tell all your friends about because it’s so awesome?  I’m sitting here appreciating my latest such finds and thought I’d tell you about them.  Not sponsored or perked, just stuff that works and I love ‘em.

First up?  The THUNDER SHIRT.  Lucy has an anxiety problem…she is the best dog either of us have ever owned, but she hates thunder, fireworks, and the car.  When she gets nervous, she gets an upset tummy, hides under things, drools a lot and is generally miserable.  The vet has tried to give us medicine for her, but there is nothing that’s really worked…the closest we came was some medicine that had her out of it for a full day after the car ride was over, so that’s not an option for us either.

It was time for her to go to our new Omaha vet a few weeks back and we were talking to her about Lucy’s anxiety.  She recommended the Thunder Shirt.  It came with a money back guarantee, so we had nothing to lose.  It sounds a little crazy, but that thing WORKS.  We had it on her during Halloween and she didn’t get worried about the doorbell ringing.  She wore it the whole way to South Dakota and actually managed to curl up and go to sleep while wearing it (the first time she’s ever slept in the car).  The concept is simple, it’s basically like swaddling a baby.  It puts consistent tight pressure on her and makes her feel at ease.  If you have a nervous dog, it’s definitely worth a try.

It’s super simple to put on and keeps her tight and cozy.

Kirby has the opposite issue, if he’s nervous, he gets aggressive.  We’ve noticed a big difference in his demeanor using the Thunder Shirt with him as well.  He wore it on a walk last night and it was one of the most pleasant walks I have had with him in the 4+ years I have had him.  Instead of barking at every leaf, dog, person, and rock he could find, he just trotted along beside me.  If I had known that for $40.00 each I could get 2 really sane dogs out of the deal, I would have bought one of these ages ago!

All in all, they were definitely worth it for us and we highly recommend them!!!

Next up in my trifecta of awesome, have you heard of Vibram Five Fingers?  Ya know, those goofy looking toe shoes?  I’ve been thinking about getting some for awhile now and finally took the plunge!  I have had a hard time wearing tennis shoes for over a year now…my heels ache, I get blisters on my toes and my shins hurt.  Every pair of shoes I’ve tried has started the same — felt good, and then after a week or so, back to pain in my heels.

Now, I LOVE shoes, but I’ve never liked to wear shoes.  My mom tells stories of how hard it was to keep shoes on me when I was little…I basically spent all of my summers barefoot growing up.  I was in the marching band and would spend the long days on the football field barefoot, played driveway basketball barefoot, and really everything in between.  After this self-realization, I decided it was finally time to head to the store to pick up some toe shoes.  I found the CUTEST pair and I put them on and they fit like a dream.  I haven’t had a problem adjusting to them (you need to take it a little slow and build up the muscles in your feet), I love LOVE love them.

I’m waiting for Omaha winter to see how cold these things get, but so far, it hasn’t been too bad (only one super chilly morning had my baby toe a little numb).  I’ll keep you posted if my love affair changes, but so far, love love.

My final new discovery? Houseblogging.com.  It’s an awesome site that is basically a repository for several different house blogs.  I love it because it’s quick and easy and if I’m using a computer that doesn’t have my bookmarks, I can still get to many of my favorite blogs.  If you love house blogs, you should check it out too!!  You can link up your own blog if you are a home blog as well, so it’s a win win for everyone!

Hope you all are having a great Sunday!!  I’m getting ready to 1) more work travel and 2) Thanksgiving!!!

Don’t Cry For Me Argentina

Just thought I’d pop in to wish you a happy Saturday.  I know I’ve been MIA for awhile, but things have gotten crazy over here!  I have been doing a lot of work travel this month, and have a lot more to go…It will be settled down though in a few weeks AND I found out I got a brand new job!  I’m really excited to be doing something more with my strengths and interests.  Bottom line, it’s been crazy and the house is a disaster.  We’re getting back in the groove of things, so I’ll have more updates for you soon…

And in case you are feeling super sad that I’m travelling for work…I was in Orlando 2 weeks ago and they were out of rental cars…the car they gave me?  A 2010, red, Chevy Camero, convertible.  The weather in Orlando 2 weeks ago?  Sunny and 80…rough life I lead sometimes