Design House Digital has been having a birthday celebration for the last week. Today is the last day to score on their website!
Yesterday, I scored…big time!
I got this full kit for $1!
It’s not on sale for $1 anymore, but I have been checking out some more of the full kits because they are still 30% off through today!
I made THIS with a 30% off purchase from Robyn’s new line Flora while cropping with some great ladies on Frida night.
I would take a cold-press coffee over pretty much any beverage (besides water). I love the taste and it is so refreshing in the summer time. During winter time I still drink my cold-press coffees, but never right before going outside!
I’ve been trying to figure out an easy way to make it at home, so it will keep for a few days and always taste fresh. Currently, I’ve been brewing a nice French roasted bean (the darkest) in the coffee pot, letting it cool, then transferring it to a plastic pourable container and sticking it in the refrigerator. Some days it’s fantastic and some days…meh. I have to use the French roast because when you drink a cold coffee you need that strong flavor to last after it’s been cooled, hence the iffy days.
Now I’ll back track a bit…Coffee Presses!!! The absolute best coffee I’ve ever had in my life has been made by a Coffee Press (French). If you’ve never experienced this type of coffee…splurge and try a cup. Locally, I know that Terra Coffee in Coralville makes there coffee right when you order it by a coffee press type of method. Delicious!
Moving Forward: I’ve been dying to get THIS coffee press for over a year now, but for some reason I just didn’t want to splurge the $40ish at New Pioneer to get it. Yesterday, I splurged. James and I both love a good cup of coffee and now that he’s working regular hours he’s been either grabbing a coffee every morning or making some at home and taking it in. I decided that since both of us would be using it…it was worth the splurge.
Late in the afternoon we decided to give it a go. We had a great Colombian bean from New Pioneer that was a light-medium roast. All I can say is WOW! It was even better than I thought it was going to be! The coffee was so flavourful and rich…we polished off 12 cups and then made another batch! We were about to go to my group’s holiday party, so I didn’t partake in the second round.
Consequently, while hanging out at the party last night our hostess (Jess A.) who had taken a trip to Panama was wondering if anyone in the room was a coffee connoisseur…only me and James (April and Krystal were both out sick, so I totally scored). We told her we had just bought our French Press that day and were thrilled with it. She gave us a pound of beans she brought back from Panama, a nice light roast. We opened the bag last night because I wanted to try and make a Cold Press batch (which takes 12 hours of steeping). The aroma was to die for!! It was light, but stout. My mouth was watering just from the smell. I still have about 2 hours until it’s time to press my batch and I cannot wait to give it a try!
If this interests you, but you don’t want to splurge…know that we bought the biggest one at New Pi. There are 3 cup, 4 cup, etc Presses that are cheaper. I have also found quite a few articles and “recipes” online for making your own Cold Press (without needing an actual coffee press), so I’m going to share the best two I’ve found. You never know, I may have to resort to this method on the days James and I are fighting over the Press 
The next thing I’ll be trying to figure out to make the best Cold Press coffee is whether to start with hot or cold water. Last night was hot, so we’ll see!
Note: grounds must always be coarse when using a press or mimicking a press.
NY Times
“…you can also bang it out with a Mason jar and a sieve. You just add water to coffee, stir, cover it and leave it out on the counter overnight. A quick two-step filtering the next day (strain the grounds through a sieve, and use a coffee filter to pick up silt), a dilution of the brew one-to-one with water, and you’re done. Except for the time it sits on the kitchen counter, the whole process takes about five minutes.”
My brain was going into overdrive last night while I was sleeping, thinking about what I should make for the group holiday party tonight.
I had crazy dreams where I started to make a recipe and something would happen, like Booker threw up on my foot, I forgot to buy a net to catch some fish (I’m sure I had a really good recipe for hand caught fish!), or the fire alarm went off because I threw a pile of burning marshmallow at the fire alarm (I remember screaming in my dream and being annoyed that the fire alarm wasn’t alerting the 2wheatens to save themselves!).
My original thought was to make my mom’s famous Taco Salad. It’s served cold and is topped with Catalina dressing. I know that when people hear the words “taco salad” together they are not thinking it’s going to be cold or have salad dressing on it. However, this tasty dish was so popular at gatherings while I was growing up that one of two things would happen: 1. there would be nothing left and people would complain that there was nothing left or 2. there would be a small portion left and people would fight over who took it home. It got to the point where my mom would make approximately three batches worth and had a special tupperware bowl she had to tote it around in. I remember this bowl, too. It was the biggest plastic bowl (with lid) that I had ever seen and to this day, I haven’t seen one to match its size. It was kept downstairs because it didn’t fit into any of the cupboards in the kitchen. I always knew when mom was going to be making the Taco Salad…because she’d come up from downstairs with this enormous bowl aka “The Taco Salad Bowl” in her arms. It was literally only used for Taco Salad and I swear that that bowl probably weighed 8 lbs when it was filled with Taco Salad.
Now, this is just a memory from about 15 – 20 years ago, so it is possible that if I saw the bowl today I would think…oh, that’s not as big as I remember. I think I should see if they still have it, because that would be fun to see…but I digress.
So, I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I want to make this Taco Salad…and now that I’ve dug up an old memory of that gigantic bowl…I should probably just go for it! And since there isn’t a patent on mom’s Taco Salad I’ll share the recipe! I hope you’ll give it a try because it’s great as a main dish or as a side dish…and great to take to potlucks!
Taco Salad
*1 lb. groud beef
*1 cup of Brooks Chili Hot beans (drain some of the sauce)
*1 cup of mild taco sauce
*1 head of lettuce (or one bag, since you can buy lettuce in bags nowadays)
*2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (mom uses mild, but you could use sharp)
*2 chopped tomatoes
*1 bag of Taco Doritos
*2 bottles of Kraft Catalina French dressing (if you use fat free, it tastes the same)
Brown the beef and drain. Add the beans and taco sauce.
Cook on low for 10 minutes and cool (in your serving bowl in the refrigerator).
Add the rest of the ingredients and keep it refrigerated until you serve it.
Serve cold.
Every year I get a new calendar (usually one that displays wheaten terriers) and I add everyone’s birthdays and things that are coming up. The earlier I get the new calendar, the earlier I prep it. And every year I always have a smigeon of disappointment when I realize that there is barely anything going on in my life.
Then I grab my old calendar and flip through it to see if I’ve forgotten anything…and every year I forget that life is what you make it.
Some things come up out of nowhere and some things you sign up for. The key is to remember to write it down! Even if you started out doing one thing and ended up doing another…write it on your calendar! Or anywhere!
When an opportunity arises that you want to do, but you think you should really be doing something else, take the opportunity…even if you only end up doing it or staying somewhere for a little while.
Challenge yourself to sign up for something new, try a new restaurant, or simply schedule “me” time or “couples” time every so often in 2011. Plan an activity or date 4 months out. Fill your calendar with things that matter.
When next year comes around…I’m going to remember this and I’m going skip the smigeon of disappointment (and negative thinking that my life is small) and plan for something awesome, instead!
———-
This post was inspired by an offer from a couple of good friends to hang out and scrap tonight. I originally said, no, because I really have an overload of work to do and I have some other stuff going on this weekend. I need to take my own advice NOW. I’m going!Even if I’m only there for a couple of hours, it will be an awesome start to the weekend!
MO5 $5 crop for anyone else who wants to have some fun tonight. I’ll be there at 7, but it starts earlier!
Normally I would quote the old saying that the early bird gets the worm, but since I’ve been playing Angry Birds on my phone…I have to say that the Early Bird gets the Pig (snorting, laughing pig).
I’ve always been an early bird. If I wasn’t out of bed by 6 or 6:30 I felt like I was being lazy. James and I have had many confrontations revolving around the fact that I think he’s wasting the day away by sleeping too late. He likes to wake up around 9am – 11am on the weekend. By 11am I am usually so antsy that I can barely contain myself and HAVE to wake him up. My normal argument is that I feel like I can’t do anything or make any noise because he’s sleeping. He usually just tells me he doesn’t really care what I do, he’d probably sleep through it.
I recently moved to a 9-6 shift at work and I originally thought I would hate it, especially since 9am used to be half-way through my work day. I really did want the promotion I got, so I decided to take that happiness and try and look at my new shift as a positive. I was, on one hand, not going to be able to spend as much time working and chatting with Krystal (who was awesome through my sadness over Deb leaving and all the other stuff that was happening), but on the other hand the new shift was going to give me an opportunity to work on myself. I saw the potential for me try and “relax” – I don’t remember a time where I ever actually felt relaxed. I’m always on the go and trying to cram as much into one day as possible. The new shift has also offered the opportunity for James and I to hang out before and after work…he gets up BEFORE me during the week. It’s really weird, but I really like it. And I’m still getting up before 7am, which gives me 2 hours to do whatever before I have to go to work.
The 2 hour time frame leads me to reason behind writing this post…Target opens at 8am! Yes! I can tool around Target when there are basically NO people around, for almost an entire hour!! No mad rushes to Target during lunch hour to get this or that, no dodging the people running in front of my car to get into Best Buy, and no lines at the registers! All I have to do is spend a little less time lounging in front of the TV on any given morning and head to Target before work. Woot!
I came to this realization while I was in the shower. The best ideas always come to me in the shower! This morning I ran over to Target and got some awesome pens (on sale) to make a task at work more fun and then I got my boss, Renee, a calendar. Twice this week I’ve had a momentary freaked out because I thought we were behind to only realize that her calendar was Dec 2010 and not Jan 2011. So, I picked out a calendar “that looked like Renee to me.” I think it’s super cute and it’s a happy calendar.
Target is my 5/365 (and part of my “aha” moment of the week):
Short story.
I decided to grab a cod fish sandwich and a diet pepsi from Culver’s for lunch yesterday. I was in a time crunch and they have a nice flakey white fish sandwich. I actually feel like I’m eating fish, not a ground up unknown substance.
I got home and let the 2wheatens out of the bedroom and Bella came over to lie by my feet while I ate my sandwich. Well, part of the flakey fish fell out of my sandwich and landed by my foot. Bella was unaware, so I pushed it with my big toe and said “clean up, Bella” – she pounced on it. It must have been super tasty because as I was eating the rest of my sandwich I felt a weird sensation on my big toe, so I looked down and Bella was licking my toe. Apparently, she wanted to get one last taste…off my toe!
All in all, I guess I’m lucky I still have a toe!
According to the insane dream I had last night:
If you are trying to get away from dangerous criminals who want the shiny object in your pocket…the key is to insert yourself in the middle of a sloth of bears swimming in deep water.
Note: these bears must be brown and they will NOT attack you or try to eat you when you are swimming around in the middle of them.
HA!
I think some people know that I am known to have these crazy dreams. Most of the time the dangerous “animals” I encounter are alligators and crocs. I’m pretty sure that my mind was going to go that route last night, but then it’s possible that my mind remembered the cute little alligator plush toy I signed up to make at Home Ec…leaving me swimming away from criminals, but directly in the middle of brown bears. The only sense I can make out of that…my mind believes that alligators are too cute and that criminals are no longer scared of them. It totally makes sense! You know it does!
The dream dictionary I googled says that the bear symbolizes this:
Bear
To see a bear in your dream, symbolizes independence, the cycle of life, death and renewal, and resurrection. You are undergoing a period of introspection and thinking. The dream may also be a pun on “bare”. Perhaps you need to bare your soul and let everything out into the open.
Interesting! The water part in the dream dictionary goes hand in hand with that, so maybe my mind knows more than I give it credit for sometimes.
Happy Tuesday!
I’ve decided to give Project 365 a try again this year. I believe I made it a whole 5 days last year, maybe longer. I think I can do it this year because I have my Droid Incredible that will automatically upload to my flickr account. So, I really should have no excuses. Besides that…I am going to try not to only takes pictures of the 2wheatens. This is a hard, hard thing! Cute little balls of floof!
I’m going to keep my Project 365 photos in my 2011: 365 flickr set …I decided not to join any groups for it. It never really keeps me motivated…more so, feeling like a slacker, when I haven’t kept up!
I hope everyone will find something to challenge them in this new year!
This was today photo. It’s not meant to make me seem like I think I’m a sex kitten…I was merely trying to showcase the cute necklace I wore to work today. It was originally a $50 necklace, but I got it for $8 on sale at the outlet mall during a Christmas sale. Score! And those chunky bangs always fall in my face…
I updated by adding a photo that shows the necklace more, unfortunately this picture is a sad reminder that I was blind and stumbling shortly thereafter…
2010 got me hooked, severely, on digital scrapbooking and sewing things other than quilts (although quilting is still one of my favorite hobbies)!
So, my first purchases of 2011 stem from some of the best times I had in 2010:
1. Pink Trike Designs
I’ve been a huge fan of Robyn’s, for ages, and was super happy with all of the digital kits I purchased from Pink Trike Designs (through Design House Digital) in 2010, that it was only natural that one of my first purchases in 2011 would be something digital from PTD! I purchased the Love Me full digital kit because I absolutely loved the color combination of the pinks, yellows and the grays. And the adorable birds made my heart flutter (so cute!). I also purchased her Mocha kit, which actually goes nicely with the Love Me kit. I’m looking forward to making some cute pages of myself with James and the 2wheatens with these kits!
Note: Robyn’s designs are available until Jan 9th at DHD for a discounted price!
2. The Project Girl
I stumbled across Jen Allyson because of following Robyn’s digital progression. Also a member at Design House Digital, I was really fascinated by Jen Allyson’s organiztional stuff. We all know how I drool over anything organizational, so when I saw Jen’s 2011 Weekly Planner my eyes widened with glee. I did not purchase it, because I’m already quite organized, but I can imagine quite a few of my friends really loving this! Available at DHD at a discounted price until January 9th, I highly recommend this planner for a fresh start in 2011. This planner is fully printable once downloaded. Jen also has some other organizational things on her website for free (FYI)!
What I did purchase from Jen Allyson was a crazy adorable Vintage Findings-Pink Paris digital kit! I loved the soft pinks and the details in the papers and embellishments.
3. Home Ec Workshop
I love this store! Home Ec has some of the most ecclectic fabrics around…even though there isn’t a huge inventory (although it is quite satisfactory!), the fabrics they have are some of my favorite fabrics I’ve ever owned! Focused more on personality than quantity, I love wandering into Home Ec whenever I’m downtown. The atmosphere is so friendly and calming. I love the colors and crafts that hang around the shop and the kitchenette is so adorable. I can see why people go there to hang out and knit! The yarns for knitting and crocheting are also hand-picked and very pretty. I thoroughly enjoyed making my crochet piggy there in 2010! I took 3 classes there in 2010. I made two different bags and a crochet piggy (which still needs to be pieced together)!
In 10 days, Connie and I, will be taking the Sew an Alligator class! When I saw the newsletter for this cutie pie, I knew I had to sign up! It’s a two-part class and I can’t wait to get a start on it!
4. Kindle Books from an Amazon gift card.
Anyone who knows me, knows I love to read! In January of 2010, I bought myself a Kindle. I’m not sure what my problem was in 2010, but I didn’t read as much as I had in past years…it may have been my “worst” year in reading history (only 18!). It had nothing to do with the Kindle because I was still reading “old fashion” books, while I was using my Kindle. Regardless of how 2010 went, I’m super stoked about the 4 Kindle books I purchased to start my 2011 year in reading! And now I’ll share my choices with you:
Following Polly by Karen Bergreen
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
I’m really excited about the couple of new mysteries that I purchased, but I really can’t wait to read The Thirteenth Tale. I was urged to read it back in 2006 by a friend, but at the time I just didn’t feel like it. For some reason, I am now ready and can’t wait to give it a try!
5. iTunes tunes
Last night I purchased Natasha Bedingfield’s new album. I got a gift card from my mom and dad for Christmas and was happy to plop down the $13 for this album. I’ve only listened to it once, but I really liked her past stuff, so hopefully I’ll enjoy this album as much as the previous ones. And though, it was technically in 2011 – I did recently purchase Duffy’s new album, Endlessly, which I’m totally loving!! And because it’s iTunes…I like purchasing odds and ends when it comes to songs (Forget You from the Glee soundtrack, featuring Gwyneth Paltrow), so I’m looking forward to some new music coming out in 2011 (like Adele’s 21).
6. Lie to Me (season 3)
I’ve been trying to catch up to the current episodes of Lie to Me. Tim Roth is insanely talented and I am absolutely in love with his character, Dr. Cal Lightman, on Lie to Me. I did a marathon over the course of 4 days of season 2. Then, I “rented” the first three episodes via iTunes yesterday. Now, I can watch the next few for free via the internet and be caught up for the new episodes that are coming! Yeah! So, the purchase was the 3 rentals for $0.99 a piece. Well worth it!
Other things I’m looking forward to in 2011…finishing Patchwork Party 2010 and some other miscellaneous projects. Also, I’d like to do some more decorating in our house to make it feel more like a home! And I’d like to open myself up to any opportunities that come my way. Open mind, open heart.
*I’m totally in love with these pretty little desserts that could be given as Holiday gifts or taken to a party. Packaging = adorable! How simple would it be to give someone some cookies wrapped with string?
*This makes me imagine a light and airy version of a Tim Burton type of Christmas story. A mix of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…fun and wonderful and the hint that magic is real. Love it!
*I’m imagining the smell of this ornament…old parchment! It’s is one of my favorite smells. It makes me think of all of the wonderful times people used to have before television. Sitting around playing music, telling stories, and reading each other books while cuddling by the fire to stay warm…maybe some hot cocoa? Mmmm!
*This redbirds journal makes me remember the times at my granny Dot’s old rented house. I would blow my hot breathe on the window and make hearts and holly and berries with my fingers and wait for the cardinals to come and perch on her weathered, but comfortable front porch.
*Decor! There isn’t anything I’ve seen (in at least the last few years) that has made me as happy as seeing Rachel Denbow’s Christmas makeover in her house in 2008! Made me drool with jealously! You probably already saw it, but you have to see the flickr set, again! You must! The lady is oozing with superiority when it comes to decorating…the vintage bulbs, her craft space, and that huge red free standing cupboard…gorgeous!
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