Keep Calm and Carry On

I just love that this poster is popular again!

How incredibly appropriate for today's trying times.

If your interested I found a great Blog featuring this slogan in a bunch of different colors and in a high megapixel count! Check it out at m+d (June 5, 2009 post)!

Also just for fun, here are a few of my favorite spoofs of this classic WWII saying:

Via  Amazon.com and

Via Penny Arcade (my husband just LOVES these guys)

Via Cafe Press

Tuna the Other White Meat

In the spirit of lent here are two tuna recipes that I absolutely love!

For both of these recipes I am using Albacore tuna that has been canned in water.  

     ~In my opinion the only kind of tuna to buy is the white Albacore tuna that has been canned in water.  Albacore tuna truly is the “chicken of the sea” it even has a similar texture and look as that of cooked chicken (but not taste!  It's still tuna ya know he he)  Other kinds of canned tuna have a weird pink color and, in my opinion, a creepy texture. 

     ~Make sure to buy tuna that has been canned in water NOT oil.  Tuna stored in water is significantly healthier for you and it tastes sooo much better.  (I am sure the bagged albacore tuna in water is also very tasty but I’ve never tried it.)

Starkist ad from the 1960's

Tuna Sandwich Recipe Numero Uno:
 
Much to my surprise the secret to really great tuna isCavender's All Purpose Greek Seasoning Greek Seasoning.  My husband opened my eyes to this amazing spice concoction and I have never looked back.  Its not expensive so go ahead and try it. You won't regret it.  


Per 1 can of drained tuna.
  ~mayonnaise
  ~Cavander's Greek seasoning
  ~chopped up pickle or celery (optional)

Add desired amount of each to a bowl and mix together. Eat it on crackers, toast or ,my personal favorite, as a tuna melt!  Melted cheddar cheese on this tuna mixture is Yum! 

Tuna Sandwich Recipe Numero Dos:  healthy! 

I stumbled across this bad boy in a magazine years ago in a doctors office and quickly scribbled it down.  Boy am I glad i did because it is healthy, tasty and so easy to personalize to your own specific taste! 


Per can of drained tuna
  ~ 1 hard boiled egg - sliced or chopped
  ~ fresh  tomatoe - chopped
   ~1 to 2 artichoke heart - chopped
   ~several black olives - chopped
   ~drizzled with Red Vinegar to taste

Add desired amount of each to a bowl and mix together. serve on Crackers or bread.


   

I hope these tuna recipes makes your lunches this week are a SMASH HIT!

   

Waiting

This doesn't happen to me very often.  I don't normally look at a picture and instantly relate.  I do that with music all the time, but pictures? Not so much.

But this photo describes my current situation perfectly and I am captivated.  

And in response I find myself amazed at how God can use something so simple, like a photo, and use it to remind me that he understands.

How very comforting.

http://www.filemagazine.com/thecollection/archives/2009/07/waiting_for_the_1.html

Spring cleaning....Check!

Thanks to my Super Secret Birthday Mission I had some pretty righteous motivation to get my house cleaned.  Although since I had to keep it secret I couldn't just suddenly go on a cleaning frenzy....that would have been much to suspicious.  So I spread the job out over a month. We keep our house pretty clean so honestly cleaning house wasn't a big deal. But the "studio"...oh... the... studio...well lets just say that room was previously known as the "H" room.  Why? Because it contained all of the things that we didn't know what the "Hell" to do with! lol! ( I guess my husband picked up the term from one of his grandparents and i think it is Hilarious).

The "H" room is actually suppose to be our Music room so Rob preferred it to be called the Studio.  Which had a nicer sound to it but, lets face it, the "H" was more appropriate considering it was a challenge get to the drum set.
Allow me show you what I mean:

 
As you can see the "H" room *cough* studio  has been a glorified air conditioned storage facility. 

How did we collect so much crap?  There is this phenomenon that  occurs when you get married.
You get married, you move in together and magically all of your glorified "single stuff"doesn't have a home anymore. 
here are a few examples of "single stuff":
*Posters you originally bought to hang in your dorm room and then hung up in every new apartment after that.
*Screaming pink sheets, with a mysterious blue stain, that didn't match your bedding but made you sleep like a baby.
*Yellow, Thrift store lounge chairs that you and your roommate high fived each other over because they were a steal and  "practically brand new".

These silly, little things defined you somehow while you are still single.

Yet when you get married these once important items are deemed useless and have no place in your new world and, as a result, get thrown in a box or given away.  The boxed items are stored with the hope that they will be loved by you in the very near future.

A year and a half into marriage my husband and I realized that those items still had no use in our wedded bliss and at about that time my parents come to visit bearing BOXES with my childhood items.  Items that I boxed in the hope of loving in the near future when I started highschool and then again when I moved on to college

I think there is a pattern here. Perhaps parenthood will bring another purging?

The Reckoning had begun.

It took A LOT of self control not to keep every little memory. 

Here is a little surprise I found while I was going through all of our boxes.

My greatest feat: After going through old photos, stories, drawing, notes etc from kindergarten to 12th grade, I somehow managed to get it down into 2 three-ring binders worth of memories.
  and I was thanking God that I am not a scrapbooker.

Finally after days of hard work.  My job was done and the result was glorious:

Which meant it was time for a Jam session! 

I hope you also get to finish a project that has been nagging at you!

Happy Spring Cleaning everyone!

Birthday of the Future

*Robot Uprising Influenced by Surprise Birthday Weekend*

That should have been the headline on the front page of the Sunday paper this week.  This weekend was just that Legendary.
My husband always has some kind of awesome birthday party plans but this year he found himself turning 25 ,finishing his thesis and with most of his friends moved away.  So he decided not to plan a party.
Then entered... this post by the Dating Divas! It gave me the most amazing idea...I should throw my husband a surprise party! but then I immediately dismissed it. I can't throw a party! The whole reason Rob doesn't want to have one is because he feels like no one will come. But then I had a wild idea! What if I could get his best friends to fly in and surprise him?! Then Rob could have a party AND he could celebrate it with his friends!
So I sent out the "Super Secret Mission" emails to 3 of his best friends that he use to live with.  And Praise the Lord they all agreed to arrive in Las Cruces two months later! The party was officially in motion!
The plan was for the guys to sweep in like the cavalry and save the day!  Leaving my husband with his batteries recharged so he could finish the fight and graduate with his masters.
I lost many a night of sleep this last two months dreaming that I had let the secret slip, but amazingly we successfully surprised Rob!
The guys dropped in this last Thursday night.  First one rang the doorbell and when Rob answered the door his jaw just about dropped and you can imagine his response as the 2nd and 3rd guy walk in the door about a minute apart.  Next thing Rob knew he was standing in his own kitchen surrounded by his best friends and he was pretty much speechless.
What followed was a pretty legendary weekend.
Luckily Rob knew I was up to something so having his friends show up on Thursday threw him off the scent that I was also throwing him a surprise futuristic/robot party!  He thought we were going to dinner at a friends house but much to his (Genuine) surprise he had a whole crew of people ready to party with him!
Below are the details of the Party! Please don't give me all the credit...I had a lot of help!

The guests were asked to wear some sort of futuristic accessory but if they forgot or didn't have any.  I made sure they were covered with glow necklaces, glow bracelets and futuristic sunglasses. 

 

We put metallic tables clothes and steamers up and we put robots everywhere!  Of course I made sure to put up the Robots that my husband thinks are awesome

Robot chicken with a Storm Trooper?

 Transformers!  I would have made them look like men but I didn't know how. lol

Zero from Mega man amongst a few other seriously sweet robots

We Love Star Wars!  Shout out to my parents for letting me borrow all your sweet collectibles!

 A little old and new school for all you Lost and Space fans out there

 

 

 

 

 I got this sweet transformers banner at Wal-Mart and it Lights up! Which was perfect because our entire party was under blue lights...very futuristic.

 

My husband isn't really into cake so every year I make him a GIANT peanut butter chocolate cookie.  Only this year my friend made him a the coolest fondant topping ever! 8 bit Mega Man!

These toothpicks from William Sonoma were pretty
much the perfect accessory to our chocolate Fountain

Here are some sweet action shots from the party!  We had some seriously sweet costumes there and the blue lights made for some cool pictures.  

Mission Success!!!

I Heart Sunday Comics

I read the comic below by Bizarro and literally laughed out loud! You probably won't laugh as hard as me since you probably don't work at a financial institution like me, but hopefully it will make you smile. 

Here are a few other comics that I hope bring a smile to your face and start your week off right : ) 

If you don't get what this Foxtrot is referring to then you have to have to HAVE TO check out this youtube Video.  So funny. 

ha ha ha ha.  Stone soup you slay me.

Pearls before Swine how do you always make me laugh at the most inappropriate things and make me love you for it?

 

Cake Pops!

I've done it. I've finall done it.

I...made...cakepops!!!

Cake Pops were created by Bakerella and they are delicious! Basically they are cooked cake and frosting rolled into a ball (cake balls) and then put on a stick (cake pops)! People go crazy with them!  I am frequently daunted by the amount of creativity people people put into them.  Bakerella has make them into anything from a mini cheeseburger to Micky Mouse!

So I decided to take my own Valentines day advice and make cake pops for my one and only.  Since I was making these for valentines day I decided to make them in the shape of a heart with a cute cookie cutter I already had.  I had originally intended to make red velvet just as Bakerella did in her Red Velvet Cake Balls but apparently in my town red velvet boxed cake is not to be found....anywhere.  So I moved onto plan B and decided to fall back to our favorites: Pillsbury Funfetti cake mix and Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip frosting!  Traditionally Bakerella uses cream cheese frosting but I seriously cannot resist rainbow chip.  

These are the ingredients I started out with but do to unforeseen circumstances I did not end up using the white chocolate and red food coloring. *sigh*

 So I cooked the cake, cooled it, crumbled it and mixed the cake with the frosting just as instructed in: red velvet cake balls and but to make the cake pops themselves I looked at her blog for instruction. I also watched the video she posted on her amazon page for her book.  Its a good instructional video! Check it out at Cake Pops or click on the cake pops picture.

Once the cake mixture was ready I rolled the mixture into a giant ball flattened it out slightly on a cookie sheet and then cut out the shape I wanted with a cookie cutter. I used the heart shape for valentines but you could use any shape....maybe even a shamrock or an Easter egg?

Melt a small amount of the chocolate. I used semi-sweet chocolate to balance out the sweetness of the cake, but you can use any kind of candy melt.   Dip one end of the candy sticks into the melted chocolate about a 1/4 to a 1/2 of an inch and then place it into the shaped cake about half way.  Then pop the cake pops into the freezer until they are very firm and will hold their shape.  

While the cake pops are freezing melt the rest of the chocolate either in the microwave or in a double broiler.  Once melted dip the cake pops into the chocolate.  DO NOT stir the cake pop in the chocolate instead use a spoon or butter knife to help cover the pops with chocolate.  

 I found that to keep the shape of the heart I needed to form some the chocolate with a butter knife.  Otherwise the chocolate wanted to clump up at the top of the heart which made it look more like an oval. I would recommend putting the shapes onto a stick because shaping the chocolate without a stick was more work then it was worth.

Then Bakerella suggests that you set each cake pop stick into a brick of Styrofoam so they will stay upright.  I...um...forgot to buy one so I just put some in mugs or laid them down on some foil. I found in both cases the cake pops looked great! The photo below shows some of my different alternatives to styrofoam. 

Let the chocolate cool and Wa-La you have cake pops!

Once they all cool I put them all together and made a candy pop boquet! 

So you may be wondering what happened to the white chocolate and food coloring  that I have in the first picture.  Well I was going to drizzle the white chocolate on the cake pops and make them look more festive.  Then I thought if I add red food coloring to the white chocolate it will look even more amazing BUT for some reason when I added enough food coloring to the chocolate it change from super creamy to basically a solid! Weird! Next time I am buying the colored candy wafers!