Me

Corpus Christi, Texas: North Beach and Fajitaville

What do you do when you are in San Antonio but want to go to the beach? You drive to the closest one. After doing a little bit of research, the Corpus Christi area seemed like the best option. It was all interstate and it was about an hour and a half to two-hour drive.

When we started planning our trip to San Antonio we asked the girls what they wanted to do while we were on vacation. The only thing the little one said was the beach. Well if you haven’t noticed, San Antonio is still kind of in the upper part of Texas. Now, I use the “upper part” loosely because Texas is huge and in comparison, it really isn’t, but what I mean is, San Antonio is more inland bound.

We planned on Friday of our trip to be our beach day. That still gave us a day to mill around San Antonio. Plus we weren’t driving 4 hours (2 hours one way) and then home 11 hours the next. We had that cushion day in there to recoup from the beach.

Hubby, being the researcher he is, really didn’t research where we were going to go once we got to Corpus Christi. We just decided to wing it. As we pulled into the area, we found North Beach. We did a slight bit of research on the road and decided that might not be a bad place to check out, so that’s where we landed. We stopped along the way to get some sand buckets and shovels and plastic cups… who doesn’t use plastic cups to play in the sand? It was all I could find honestly. And we were ready for a day at the beach. (more…)

Life Lately…

And just like that, it’s the middle of June. I have now slept in my house, overnight, 2 times. WHAT?!?! When did that happen? Well, I’m glad you asked. It happened Friday and Saturday night. Now, here we are Sunday night and I’m sitting in bed at my house. I was in the shower a few minutes ago reminiscing the last couple of months. Wow, it has been a whirlwind.

We have had tball practice, tball games, ended tball, made a trip to Kansas City for a weekend, made a trip to Kansas City for a day, had the last dance class for the year, had dance rehearsal, had dance recitals, had dance pictures, had tball pictures, bought furniture, put said furniture together.

The furniture consisted of (but not limited to) 3 desks, 3 beds, 6 chairs, 1 bench, 1 coat rack, 1 coat bench, 1 storage bench, 2 bookshelves, 1 vacuum cleaner, and whatever else I’m forgetting.

We have slept in our house, put pictures on the wall, restained a floor, put down new flooring, replaced tiles, found new tiles to replace, washed umpteen million loads of dishes, washed 548,912 loads of laundry, most of which happened this previous weekend.

Then we ended preschool, had preschool graduation postponed, had preschool graduation canceled, had flooding, had tornadoes, had more rain, had severe thunderstorms, driven into severe thunderstorms, hid in the basement during tornado warnings, started summer school, about to finish summer school and then… (more…)

I Baked an Angel Food Cake (The Kitchen)

Woohooo… go me, right? Oh… but… here’s where I mention that I baked an Angel Food Cake IN. MY. OWN. KITCHEN. WHAT!!??!!??

Yes! You read that correctly. I baked a cake in my kitchen. In my oven. So super exciting if you ask me!! Today I think I’ll focus on said kitchen. Then the next post will be about said Angel Food Cake. Deal?

The Original Kitchen

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Pigu {Italian Gougères}

Here while back, I came across a recipe for Pigu. What the heck is Pigu I wondered? Well, basically it is a little dough like thing filled with romano cheese. You start out by making the dough much like noodles, but I almost think it comes out tasting more like bread than a noodle dough. Basically, it is like an Italian Gougères.

Okay, I’ll bite (for you)… what is a Gougères? It is a choux pastry flavored with cheese (usually Gruyère), then usually filled with a savory filling.

So, we have dough, check.

We have cheese, check.

Well, it’s like an Italian Gougères, correct? We’re going to go with it and run! (more…)

Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel Bites

Over the weekend I found myself in Gravette, Arkansas. We were at a BBQ Smoking contest called Smoke on the Border. I’ll delve into that more in another post, but… as Hubby and Jared were moving stuff down on Friday afternoon, I found myself in the kitchen. I had it in my head I wanted to make something on the sweeter side, simply because of all that savory food I knew we were going to be eating over the weekend. That’s when I decided on Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel Bites. Still a little savory from the dough, but that sweet side from the sugar and the heat from the cinnamon. Just seemed like the perfect combination.

Handheld little bites of yumminess. Although as you can see on my hand above, being in a zip lock bag, I brought some of that topping out on my hand for a nice dose of stickiness too. Hey… you win some… you lose some… and in this case, I’m pretty sure I won because hello YUM! (more…)

Chicken Garlic Alfredo

Guys, when I made my baking/cooking bucket list, there were a few things included that I have done before. I just left them there though because I was modifying the list from Brown Eyed Baker for 1. For 2, I just hadn’t made them in a while and wanted to try my luck at them again.

This just so happened to be one of the items… Fettuccine Alfredo. Gosh, as a kid, I hated Spaghetti but loved Fettuccine Alfredo. My dad on the other hand wasn’t crazy about Alfredo, so really the only time I got it was when I went to a restaurant.

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Thoughts

Earlier this week when I jumped on Facebook, I saw some live feed about how the Greek’s were celebrating the Orthodox Passover or bringing it in or something. I equate it to Ash Wednesday but I could be wrong there… I don’t know. Truthfully, I have Greek blood in me and wish to know more, but at this point in time I just don’t.

So in the live feed they had dyed flour, blues, pinks, reds, greens. I’m not sure if that is signifcant, remember, I just stated I don’t know much about their traditions. And they were marching through the streets throwing flour. Personally, I thought, wow, that’s cool I want to know more.

I truthfully love learning about other cultures. I remember in my junior high school History class, we actually spent a couple months looking at all the different world religions. Now, when people hear religion and school they throw a fit, but he wasn’t pushing religion on us, he was informing us about all religions. Now not all, because hello we didn’t have that much time, but there were quite a few. I specifically remember, Judaism, Christianity, Islam/Muslim, Atheists, Catholicism, and I think there were a couple more, but remember that was back in Spring 2000.

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Mother Nature is Off Her Meds

I swear! So you know there’s also a Meme going around facebook that says something to the affect, Mother Nature is having a fight, storms out of the room, and then storms back in “And One More Thing.” Yeah, I believe that meme is true on so many levels.

The stupid ground hog (I know, don’t pick on the ground hog) predicted an early spring. It’s a known fact though that he’s only right 40% of the time when he predicts that… just saying.

The night that I went up to paint my bathroom, I hopped out of the truck, not like I was jumping out on dry pavement or anything… I actually hopped out slowly because it was icy out and bam, my butt hit the ground, my right arm slammed into the door, and my left arm caught me with the help of my running board on my truck.

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Triple Chocolate Cake

We’ve been working on our house, it feels like non-stop. Some days walking in there is so… almost depressing, but some days it feels like nothing is happening. It is… but it’s happening up in the attic where you just don’t see results other than more lights are popping up as well as electrical plugins. Oh… and an HVAC system. Heat… let there be heat!!

And I swear, our friends are the absolute BEST. We’ve had so much help from our dear, darling, beloved friends. There truly are NO WORDS to describe them! So, when I found out Shelby’s 21st birthday was yesterday, I knew I had to make her a cake!! (She’s newer to this bunch, this is why it was a new find of her birthday!)

Triple Chocolate Cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream, Homemade Strawberry Jam, and Chocolate Covered Strawberries with Chocolate Ganache

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Oreo Cheesecake Cake

Another birthday cake! Yey, I love birthday’s!! Although… the story about this cake…

  1. The person who I made this cake for apparently doesn’t celebrate birthdays anymore…
  2. I didn’t get to try any.
  3. I was told it was yummy.
  4. Life took over and I was afraid I wouldn’t get it to them on their birthday

I’ve been so consumed by the house remodel, I swear, that I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to deliver Dan’s birthday on time. I told him this the day before. That way he knew it was coming and I didn’t forget.

In the end, I got it there on Betty White’s 97th Birthday, aka Dan’s birthday. I did tell him it was a birthday cake to celebrate Betty White’s birthday since he apparently doesn’t celebrate birthday’s anymore….

Betty White’s 97th Birthday Cake (aka Dan’s Birthday cake)

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