Does any one know what time it is? MALLOMAR TIME!!!!

I must confess: I love Mallomar season. It's back baby! 

Since Mallomars are only produced September thru April, I have to get my Mallomar love in now! They've always been a favorite and I knew I loved them because they were a treat at grandma and grandpas house. My mom told me that it was my grandfather who would sneak them to each of his grandchildren and that my grandmother disapproved and knew when he would sneak them to us because she could smell the chocolate on our breath! They are still a favorite of Northeasterners to this day! With about 70% of their sales still in the New York area. Thank God I can get them in the South!

Happy Eating!

Wendy

Manual Organization

I must confess: I've done this one before, but I think it bears repeating. Anyway, if you're like me you have dozens upon dozens of manuals. And they are allll over the place. I really needed to get them organized and in one place. So I created the Big Binder.

I only have 3 tabs: Kitchen, because lets face it, half the crap in there is for kitchen stuff. Household, for everything not in the kitchen ie: iron, vacuum, etc and Outdoor/Pets for weed whackers, outdoor fire pit, etc and the one pet thing I have a manual for, a dog bed. What? Moving on.

Just using protector sheets with the top opening, and viola a very big but semi organized binder. We buy something new that comes with instructions or a manual, I know exactly where it goes and it's not in a drawer somewhere!

Happy Organizing!

Wendy

Infertility (you knew this was coming, right?!)

I must confess: I'm infertile. Hubby and I are passed the point of feeling sorry for ourselves and have moved on with our childless life. We are happy and still in love with each other. We enjoy all the children in our lives: our nephews, our friends children and our cousins children. Adding a child would have been fantastic, but it wasn't meant to be for us. We are OK with that, we have each other.

Our journey starting in April 2008 when I went off the pill. When we didn't get pregnant by April 2009, we sought out additional assistance. Long story short, dozens of tests, dozens of people praying for us, 1 miscarriage, 1surgery, 5 artificial insemination's, 1 IVF and thousands of shots and pills later, (not to mention thousands of dollars) we ended up with nothing by May of 2011. It was at that point we decided that if God wanted us to have children He'll bring us to it. Adoption, at that point, was out because we spent everything we had on fertility treatments.

We have adjusted to our childless lifestyle, not that we know anything else! We are used to being together just the two of us. If we want to drop everything and go out to eat, we do, if we decide we want to run errands or go to the movies after wards, we do. No worrying about naps, babysitters, bed times, etc. It's a sort of freedom, that most parents do not have, so we enjoy it.

If we hear you are pregnant, we ARE happy for you, we really are. It's not your fault that it wasn't meant to be for us, so stop feeling sorry for us! Let us enjoy your pregnancy and child, too. Is that too much to ask?

Yesterday, hubby was given a baby shower invitation from a guy at work he barely knows. The guy is fairly new to the company of over 500 people and hubby has had very limited interaction with him. My very even keeled husband was kind enough to take the invitation, but informed new guy that we would not be attending the shower. New guy insisted on knowing why. This frustrated my hubby as he explained to him that they were 'not friends, the wives don't know each other and our families are not friends'. New guy said to hubby 'you don't know how hard it's been for us to get pregnant' to which my hubby responded 'actually I do know, I know first hand, I'm sorry, we won't be able to make it' – new guy responded with 'you can still get us a gift, we're registered at XYZ'. Hubby came home so mad, and for anyone who knows him, he's the even keeled one, I'm the hysterical one. It made me realize that the pain of not being able to have kids of our own is still a wound that will probably never completely heal, and I'm not the only one who feels it. People always feel for the woman, but seem to forget about the man. Except me, I haven't forgotten about my man. He has the same pain as I do, we talked about it at length while going through the process and continued long after our journey was over.

We knew that certain things would trigger the emotions, but I thought it would be more me, than him. I was wrong. He experiences the same run of emotions I do, just different things trigger it. Do we want to be invited to your baby shower, of course, but ask your self these questions:

Do we really know you? Are we related? Are we friends? If the answer to any of these is YES, then by all means send us an invitation!

A BIT OF ADVICE!!!

If you have questions about our infertility, please ask us! Don't whisper behind our backs, we know you're doing it.

Please don't feel sorry for us, we don't.

Please don't say a prayer that it will happen for us, it probably won't.

Please don't say 'relax, it will happen', it hasn't.

For the complete list of things not to say check out this site, it is right on target!!!

http://laugheduntilwecried.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/top-eleven-things-%E2%80%93-not-to-say-to-someone-experiencing-infertility/

Living life to its fullest!

Wendy

Breakfast Burritos

I must confess: hubby is a big guy and needs a big guy breakfast. Nothing is ever enough, and he's usually hungry by 10:30 for lunch. This doesn't work when we don't have dinner until 6pm. I found a recipe on Pinterest for a breakfast burrito and decided to give it a try. They were a big success and I wanted to share what I did, because I did deviate from the original recipe, based on hubby's requests.

First the ingredients:

frozen hash browns

dozen eggs

tortilla shells

cheese

green peppers

scallions

precooked bacon

 

I start out by cooking half of the 26oz bag of hash browns that I bought. This takes forever so while that's cooking I have hubby chop peppers and scallions. 

Once the hash browns start turning brown and crispy I add the 12 eggs that I've prescrambled with a little milk salt and pepper. And start cooking them together. This helps keep them in one solid mass instead of crumbling out of the burrito.

 

And yes that is a Storm Trooper spatula courtesy of Williams Sonoma. Hubby is a big geek too. 

Once the egg/hash brown mixture is cooked, I lay out the tortillas and put cheese on the bottom, we used a taco blend this time. And I start layering, egg/hash brown, bacon and veggies.

Then we roll them up and freeze them and he takes two a day and sticks them in the microwave for 2 minutes.

 

They keep him full enough until lunch time which is good because then he can he a smaller lunch later in the day and doesn't come home starving for dinner.

Happy Cooking!

Wendy

Snicker Cookies

I must confess: I love baking, especially chocolate chip cookies! I came across an idea (on Pinterest, of course) for adding snicker bites.

So I mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. 

 Chopped up some Snicker bars and experimented.

I just put one piece on each cookie scoop.

Added a little more cookie on top and popped in the oven for the usual amount of time.

They came out like this....

I'm thinking they should have been more in a ball and maybe less cookie dough OR next time I could just chop them up and just add them to the batter.  Yes I think that might be better!

Happy Baking!
Wendy

 

Basil Burger Awesomeness

I must confess: I love a good burger. Duh, who doesn't, I know. I found this recipe on the food network and HAD to try it! Having a fresh basil plant around doesn't hurt either.

The recipe can be found here:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/perfect-summer-basil-burger-recipe/index.html

What I did was the following:

First I threw two burgers on the grill. I didn't add my usual onion powder soup mix or ranch mix, because I wanted the basil sauce to stand on its own and see how much flavor it really had.

But I did add some mozzarella cheese on top once I flipped them.

In the meantime, I mixed: mayo, sour cream, garlic, basil, Worcester and salt and pepper and put them in my mini-processor, which I didn't even know I had until the other day! Yay!

While the burgers were cooking I mixed this all up. Until creamy. 

I toasted English muffins for burger buns, because they have less bread and you get more of the burger taste instead of a mouth full of bread. 

They turned out AMAZING!!! Hubby loved them and I will be making this again! Another thought I had was to freeze whatever was left over, then I could make in batches and use when needed.

Happy Cooking!

Wendy

The $5 Savings Plan

I must confess: I love saving money. Not much of a big confession, but still. A few years ago I read about a woman who saved all of her $5 bills. Over the course of so many years she had accrued a nice tidy sum of over $10, 000. WHAT?!?! So I decided to give it a try and see what I could do. So any time I received change back that included a $5 bill. I tucked it away. Even if I gave someone a $20 for something that was only $4 and received $15 in fives, I put them a side.

After about a month I had about $100, I was surprised at how quickly it adds up, but its not so big that you would miss, it like a $20 or so small that it would take forever to add up, like spare change. The first thing I did with what I call my '$5 money' is I went Christmas shopping with it last year. It paid for my lunch, shopping and even an afternoon pick me up snack. And I still had $5 left over to put right back into my savings plan. You'd be surprised how quickly it adds up and even my hubby gives me any $5 bills he has. It has given us the opportunity to do something when it might not have been in the budget that week. It was the best thing I had read about saving money in a long time. And I will continue to do so!

Happy Saving!

Wendy

Birthday Blessings

I must confess: I tried something new for my birthday this year. I have everything I need in life so this year for my birthday I decided to do something different. I wanted to give back. Our local food bank was low on food, as in 3 jars of peanut butter and 1 box of cereal. With over 500 families (not people, families) asking for assistance every month, feeding them gets difficult. So I took my $5 savings plan money (about $100) and went to Aldi. Best prices in town! With everything on their list that they were desperate for, I could have easily spent $1000. But I too, am on a budget. We filled up the cart before even leaving the first aisle. Then we took it all over to the local church for donating.

 

It doesn't look like much but there is $100 worth of food there. I hope it helped them out and made a difference in many lives. I will continue to help the food bank and when I find a good sale I always pick up extra because I know that someone somewhere needs it. And that feels pretty good. 

Happy Giving!

Wendy