It's a Jungle Over Here!

Yesterday morning I was in the kitchen when I heard Bella run face first into the screen at the sliding glass doors. I laughed and went to check out what would make her forget the door wasn't open and there sat a baby bird, just staring her down!

It taunted her long enough for me to snap a few pictures, seemingly unaware that with a flick of my wrist, I could have unleashed the beast on her (or him).

We've noticed this year that the birds seem to be less afraid of us. A couple of weeks ago we saw a bird in the bushes by the front door that just watched us come home one evening, undisturbed by the people walking mere feet from it. I actually thought it was hurt till I noticed later it had flown away.

I guess there's a momma bird somewhere near our yard who has yet to tell her kids not to speak to strangers.

Then, this morning, as Chris goes to leave for work, he finds a groundhog hanging out on the front porch in front of the door! He lumbered down the steps and around the garage upon hearing our voices, but have you ever heard of such a thing?!

Something must be in the water here in Swedesboro.

Flowers Make Everything Prettier

I have an announcement to make.... (drumroll please)

WE NO LONGER HAVE THE UGLIEST YARD ON THE BLOCK!!!!

This is what the house looked like on moving day:

And with the exception of the pesky hostas that sprouted everywhere the following spring it has remained largely unchanged.

As much as I love designing anything having to do with the inside of the house, I am left utterly clueless when it comes to landscape design. The best strategy I've got is "flowers are pretty", but with all the hostas, there was no where to put them. We have also neglected mulch for the last three years (yes three!) since you couldn't even seen the flowerbeds through the folliage.

Finally, after putting my back into digging up the majority of the most bothersome hostas this spring, when the ground was still soft with rain and before they got extra leafy, I have real flower beds again. Check them out.

On a $100 budget I bought 8 bags of much needed mulch, 2 plastic planters, a flat full of light and dark pink inpatients, and one coleus and mini petunia for each pot. Plus a couple of tomato plants since I can't seem to get through a growing season without hoping that this year, they'll be successful. I even ended up with $20 left over!

What a difference. It makes me so happy I look out the window randomly at my pretty pink flowers. This summer, I love my yard!

Welcome Spring... I Think

I love warm weather, so any excuse to shed winter coats and multiple layers definitely makes me smile and I'm so happy to smell spring in the air. One of the unfortunate downfalls of spring, however, is making me realize something I've pushed out of my head for three whole months; how awful my yard looks! I know I've complained about hostas before, and really, I'm giving them a bad rap, because they're not all that horrible. I'm just up to my ears in them since the last people to own my house seemed to think they were the be-all end-all of landscaping and put them everywhere. Last year I dug out 8 enormous ones that were smothering my AC unit. The first year we moved in I took out 5 or so that were planted around a dead tree. Now, over three years since moving in, I'm at it once again, hoping that I've started early enough to deal with the rest of them.

There were 18 of them randomly planted along my neighbors fence, and they had been placed so close to it that they were now growing under and around the fence. Even with the softened ground from all the rain we've had, they did not go quietly. One was so stubborn, it chose to die a horrific death; leaves and dirt strewn about like feathers surrounding a guilty looking feline. Yesterday I was a shovel welding superhero ridding the yard of evil, one hosta at a time.

Very Cool Commercials

It's almost that time of year, the time of year when millions of people settle in to watch the biggest commercial viewing event of the year... the super bowl. Now I'm sure Sherwin Williams doesn't have the budget or the proper demographic to justify a super bowl commercial, but as I was dwelling on the only reason I'll be tuning in to the game this Sunday I remembered my most recent favorite 30 seconds of tv interruptus. Take a look.

When so many of the commercials I see make me cringe, roll my eyes, or even verbally abuse my tv, it's refreshing to be awed by one. I love the concept, the colors, the progression of the animation and am even grateful that there's not a single line of dialog. I want to know every paint color on every swatch and find myself trying to read them as they go by. Crazy, I know, but I can't help myself, I'm a nerd for paint colors!

There's this one too, which I like almost as much as the bee.

A Grown-Up Dollhouse

Being more of a tomboy as a kid, I was much more intersted in climbing trees then playing with dolls, but how cool is this??

A real architecturally designed dollhouse that swings open, has tiny modern furniture available to furnish them with, and there's even these creepy dolls to live in the houses.
I get that they're supposed to be like the wooden drawing figures, but why the googlie eyes? They also supposedly have muscles that flex like real biscep and calf muscles. I guess so the doll man can invite the doll lady to the gun show?

Check out the whole inventory at Brinca Dada's website. It doesn't take much to make me happy. I don't actually want one; I built enough scale models when I was in school to not need to pay for another one to sit in storage. But I still think it's pretty nifty.

Wish Me Luck!

I know I've mentioned before how much I love Bakerella's blog because you've seen my attempts at her adorable cake pops. Well, not that long ago I saw her post about a cupcake contest hosted by Scharffen Berger chocolates where they give you a list of adventure ingredients to choose from and you must create your own recipe. Since I enjoy baking so much I figured 'why not?' and proceeded to do a trial and error experiment to see if I could come up with something worthy to submit.

The list of adventure ingredients are stout beer, ricotta, buttermilk, coconut butter milk or cream, saffron, molasses, adzuki bean, fresh beet, sweetened condensed milk, fresh or dried chili pepper, bee pollen, meyer lemon, almond flour, and sumatra coffee bean. I choose to use ricotta cheese and coconut cream in my recipe and I think it could actually be a contender, but even if it's not, I had fun playing in the kitchen.

The end result, and they were just as good as they look! If I do say so myself. So wish me luck, the prizes are pretty sweet!

Here's the recipe if anyone is interested in trying them out. And the site for the contest in case you're interested in doing some baking yourself.

Chocolate Ricotta Cupcakes with Coconut Ganache

Cake
3oz. Scharffen Berger 62% dark chocolate, chopped
1 cup unbleached flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup butter room temp.
1 ¼ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ cup ricotta cheese
1/3 cup milk

Ganache
½ cup coconut cream
3oz. Scharffen Berger 62% dark chocolate, chopped
toasted coconut

Preheat oven to 350.

Put chocolate in heatproof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Stir till the chocolate is melted and smooth. Remove from water and set aside to cool slightly.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside

Beat the butter and sugar in an electric mixer on medium speed until smoothly blended and creamy. Scrape sides of the bowl during mixing as needed.

On low speed add the melted chocolate till just blended.

On medium speed add the eggs one at a time, mixing till each is blended into the batter.

Add vanilla and beat until the mixture looks creamy and the color has lightened slightly.

Mix in the ricotta cheese until there is no white remaining.

On low speed add half the four mixture until it’s just incorporated. Mix in the milk. Add the remaining flour and mix until the batter looks smooth.

Let the batter rest on the counter for 10 minutes, then spoon into paper liners in a cupcake pan and bake for 20 minutes.

Once the cupcakes have cooled, put the remaining chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set aside. In a saucepan, simmer cream of coconut until it lightens in color and bubbles in the center of the pan. Pour over chocolate and whisk together until the chocolate has melted and is smooth. Spoon over cupcakes a few at a time and sprinkle with toasted coconut before ganache hardens.

Enjoy!!

Learning Something New

As many of you know, Mom and I recently undertook an experiment in re-upholstery. She had two wingback chairs, I had two more, so we decided we had nothing to lose in taking them apart and trying to put them back together again, only prettier. I think both sets of chairs were very successful, take a look at the process.

There you have it! Hopefully it's inspired you to some creative thinking of your own!

I Need More Stars!

No, not cake pop stars, although they were very good, I'm referring to those stars you get to rate things like movies and books on sites such as Netflix, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble. We have an account with Netflix that we love, especially since they've added the watch it now feature which, among other things, helps us cut down on our mailed movies (currently just under 200 which will take us over 3 years to get through).

My complaint, as you may have guessed, is only having five stars with which to rate these movies once we've returned them. Once Netflix receives the viewed movie, they send me an e-mail asking what I'd rate it. Good system in theory, then they can recommend movies for me, plus I can remember which ones we've already seen if I can't recall. But I only get 5 stars (and not even half stars) to use when I rate my movies:

1 = hated it

2 = didn't like it

3 = liked it

4 = really liked it

5 = loved it

I'm sorry, that doesn't even come close to covering it for me! I've always loved watching movies, and I also love being a critic, discussing with whoever else has seen the movie what was good, bad, could have been changed, and if it was a keeper or a stinker. I'm a talker and so probably more then most people I can spin ideas and theories on what could have made it better, why the decision was made to use part of the story in such a way. I especially love when books I've read are made into movies and make Chris crazy by giving him a verbal lashing comparing the print to the visual.

So, I propose a new rating system! 10 choices which split my original 5 stars into halves so as not to totally reorganize the system (I could use monkeys if I wanted to, this is, after all, my blog). So here goes.

0.5 = truly heinous, it'd probably be more fun being fed to lions

1 = congratulations, you turned a semi-interesting story into poo

1.5 = horrible but in an odd way kind of likable

2 = good acting, too bad the plot was garbage

2.5 = didn't suck

3 = predictable yet mildly entertaining

3.5 = had good parts I didn't already see in the trailer

4 = worth adding to my personal collection

4.5 = only Leonardo DiCaprio/Rachel McAdams could have made it better

5 = wow...

Stars and Stripes

Following up with star shaped cake pops for the 4th of July. I think they turned out great.

And to make them more portable I made a bunch without sticks.

Cake Pops!

A while ago, okay, over a year ago... I'm such a slacker... I blogged about cake pops. I raved about these little treats on a stick and vowed to make them myself, then promptly neglected to inform my faithful reader(s?) that I did, in fact, make them. And not just once since then, but three times did I try my hand at these and as with anything new, all three had successes as well as things to learn from.

Cake pop trial 1: Crab feast cake pops.

So, I had a theme, and after finding small squeeze bottles, I also had an idea for the decoration of the pops. CRABS, of course!!

I found an image online, printed out a sheet of properly scaled crabs, and used a squeeze bottle to pipe little crabs on the waxed paper taped over my templates.

Then I shaped my mini cupcakes and prepared to dip and decorate.

And voila! (if only it had been that easy) cute little cake pops with crabs on the top!

And the lessons I learned from these cake pops? The sticks were way too long and those, combined with the heavy cake on top, made them bend precariously as they were transported, and resting before consumption...

I also learned that allowing them to harden in the freezer made them sweat when they cooled off and the red and brown bottoms rubbed off on the white tops as they came to room temperature. Which brings us to...

Cake Pop Trial 2: Birthday cake pops

In June we celebrated Chris's Masters from Rutgers, Steph's b-day, my B-day, and Father's Day all in one shot. So I figured it was a good excuse to make more cake pops! This time I simplified the design and instead of shaping mini cupcakes, I just rolled the cake out and used a flower shaped cookie cutter to make these.

They were much easier then the multi-colored (meaning twice dipped) cupcakes from before, and the flower shape with an M&M center was decoration enough for me to be happy with them. This time around I learned that even the fridge is too cold, they still sweat, but the candy hardens fairly quickly at room temperature. They also have to be thoroughly frozen (like overnight) before they're dipped in the melted candy or they fall off the stick. Wrapping them with the cellophane and ribbon made them easy to transport and the shorter, 6" sticks was better at supporting the weight of the cake.

Cake Pop Trial #3: Cheesecake Pops

Not long after the birthday cake pops we had a church BBQ competition and I figured it'd be another good cake pop occasion, but this time I wanted to try cheesecake. Just simple balls shaped with a cookie dough scoop, then dipped in chocolate and rolled in crunchy topping.

They were cute, and yummy, but lasted about 3 seconds in the 90+ degree weather before they became cheesecake shooters in those cellophane bags.

Next to try? Star shaped cake pops for the 4th of July!

Breakfast foods

Besides coffee, which I drink all morning now that I'm home most days (although I have switched to half-caff so Chris doesn't have to pry me off the ceiling when he gets home) I've never been big on breakfast. I love food and generally enjoy eating, but I just don't really care for eggs, and sweet things like syrup, donuts, or danish make me a little ill. Trust me, I try every once in a while, like Friday afternoon when mom and I stopped at an Amish stand on the way home from Lancaster. If you had smelled those fresh cider donuts, you would have done it too.

In high school I used to skip breakfast alltogether. I'm sure part of it was a teenage girl's crazy way of cutting down on calories, but it was also because I just wasn't a fan of the options. I have since learned how unhealthy it is to skip meals and I try not to do that anymore, but there are still mornings when I think I could just be happy with my good ol' cup o' joe.

I know exactly where I get it from. A perfect example of the apple not falling far from the tree; my dad is exactly the same way. Whether it's because there's an actual gene that rejects syrup and scrambled eggs or if it's because I grew up enjoying breakfast with him when there was leftover lasagna or coconut custard pie, who can tell? But to this day I still count those as some of my favorite breakfast foods, although any cake or pie will do and pizza will take the place of mom's lasagna in a pinch.

So the morning after I turned 30 years old I thought, who says I have to act like a grownup? And I cut myself a healthy slice of leftover birthday cake to have with my first cup of coffee. And it was good!

Snow!

I just can't believe how much snow I've seen already this year! First we picked out Christmas tree out after a storm left 3-4 inches of snow on my Grandparent's farm in Virginia...

I don't even remember the last time I was in Culpeper when it snowed!

But we still had no problem finding a perfect tree!

This weekend I was going to hitch a ride with Mom and Dad back to the farm for another visit before Christmas. We hadn't gottne more than 20 minutes from their house and Grandma convinced Dad to turn around since they were calling for over a foot of snow.

We get back to Delaware, but rather then let the night go to waste we brought back an old Bartlett family tradition back and Kringled John and Steph with a Christmas tree since it seemed they wouldn't have another chance to get one. We left beer and wings too... a few of John's favorite things. :)

Today I've been watching snow fall steadily past the windows filling up the backyard and making quick work of Chris's shoveling efforts. Church was cancelled last night before the first flake even fell from the sky, and I've been enjoying an afternoon of unhurried Christmas preperations.

Yet another perfect Pepermint Christmas tree!

One picture from our front door...

...and one from as far out in the driveway I can get without being up to my knees in snow drifts.

My Latest Project

Right around the time Chris and I got married, my grandparents sold their house in Maryland and decided to live full time on the Christmas tree farm in Virginia. It worked out great for us since it gave us a house full of furniture to pick through and fill our new home up with, however, five years later there are still things floating between family members waiting for a permanent home. My mom gave me this wall shelf when we moved claiming I had wanted it but didn't have anywhere to put it in my old house.

But I still didn't really know where to put it in the new house, so it's sat in the basement until I finally got my creative juices flowing and painted a mural down there.

Then it just made sense to use the leftover black paint, and paint the shelves too. So I sanded it down and put two good coats of black paint on it.


I cut craft paper to fit the back shelves and used modge podge to adhere them to the shelves.


Then took them outside to spray them with a coat of lacquer. It took just about the whole can for this one shelf.

Then added new hardware to the drawers and voila! I love it, and I've already got it filled with a lot of my craft supplies that were unorganized and scattered throughout my corner of the basement.

My Favorite Place

If I were in 9th grade again and going back to school a month ago, I undoubtedly would have been assigned an essay on what I did over my summer break. Fortunately I am not in 9th grade and never will be again, but I did have a most unusual summer break which I'm hoping will be ending soon, one way or another. More on that some other time. But Chris and I did go on our first week long vacation since our honeymoon and having traveled back to the Outer Banks after way too long, I'm inspired to assign myself an essay.

I know there are beautiful, exotic places across the world to visit with centuries old architecture to marvel at and different cultures to explore and be a part of, however brief. And I do hope to visit those places too someday, but I think OBX will always be one of my favorite places on earth, and for reasons no other place could compare to. As a kid we had family vacations every summer with the Bartlett's, and I'm too young to know how the location was selected but we went to Myrtle beach, Disney World, Sandbridge... basically a different place every summer; until we found Nags Head. After that first summer, we never looked anywhere else.

Here's a picture of the cousins on the beach somewhere around my junior year of high school.

My family is crazy, just like everyone else's, but we enjoy spending time with each other, and for a week we got to all be under the same roof half a block from the beach with a pool table in the basement and at least one hot tub on one of the many decks on the house. We played games and got to spend time with our cousins who we didn't see nearly as much as we would have liked to. We body surfed with my Dad and shopped at the outlets and the Christmas shops with my Mom. We stayed up way past normal bedtimes walking on the beach and making new friends with the other kids in the neighborhood. As we got older the tradition continued, the house got bigger so we could bring friends or significant others on the trip. It is hard to explain in words what makes it so special to me, it's such a wonderful combination of history, family, and of course, the beach.

A little over six years ago on the last family vacation to OBX, I invited my then boyfriend to join me on vacation. We arrived very early on Tuesday morning to a sleeping household and crashed so we could enjoy our first day of vacation on some sleep. As usual we were up late with everyone, playing games and having a good time, but Chris wanted to get up early the next morning to see the sunrise. Needless to say, after going to bed sometime after 2am for the second night in a row, I was not thrilled to see him at 5:30 the next morning shaking me awake so we could see the sunrise. I stumbled after him down the street towards the beach, still in my pajamas, rubbing sleep from my eyes, and wondering if this guy was crazy. But as we sat on my favorite beach, watching the sun slowly rise over the ocean, he asked me to marry him in what would have been a very romantic setting had I been awake enough to appreciate it. Watching him slip the ring on my finger however, was better then any cup of coffee I've ever had.

As we walked back to the house, we happened to look up at the street sign as we passed. The house we had rented for the week was on Engagement Hill. So of course, we took pictures. (sorry for the poor quality, it's a picture of a picture.)

Until two weeks ago, we hadn't been back since, but years ago we planned that for our five year anniversary we would rent a house and celebrate with our wedding party plus a few extras. We got an awesome house, right on the beach and I had a fabulous time. Here we are at the same sign post five years later...

High five seemed most appropriate.
But we had to try the sign climb again...

Not quite as successful as the first time. ;-)

It was a great vacation, catching up with friends we don't get to see very often, as well as hanging out with family we don't see as often as we'd like. We played games, enjoyed the cozy hot tub, ran around on the beach, and of course, read while lounging on the beach or by the pool. Ironically, I was awake almost every morning for the sunrise. I have more pictures then anyone wants to see at a time, but these are a few of my favorites.

You've got to try this!

Several weeks ago I was out and about with my mom running errands and enjoying her company for the afternoon. She was getting ready for the annual crab feast and we were stopping everywhere looking for plants and decorations and any odds and ends she wanted for the party. One of the stops she insisted we make was Willy's which is a garden center, farmer's market, and so much more. If you know me at all, you know I enjoy cooking in general, but especially baking and trying new things, so when I came across these in the bulk foods section, I couldn't resist.


Cinnamon drops (or chips as I've been calling them) sent my mind spinning through the possibilities. I've never heard of these before, what would I put them in? Muffins? Snickerdoodles? Scones? I couldn't decide so they have been in my fridge waiting patiently for me to make up my mind. This week, I finally decided on scones and I have to say, it was the right choice. I love this recipe for scones which hasn't failed me yet. It calls for raisins which I've never used because, well, they're just not my favorite, but I have used craisins & lemon, chocolate chips, sprinkled raw sugar on top, dried blueberries, and now I have made them with cinnamon chips.

I'll be making them again in OBX, and I think I'm going to start stocking up on cinnamon drops to see what else I can make with these awesome little pieces of goodness. Let me know if you have any ideas!