What I'm Loving Wednesday

Link up here

This is my 1st What I'm Loving Wednesday, yay! I am a pessimist at heart, it's true. Woe is me, and I have cursed Murphey many a time. I'm working on it. I will take any swift kicks in the butt encouraging positivity, so here goes!

I am loving...

Cute clothes for Keira with cupcakes on them. Really any dessert, but particularly cupcakes. I also love ones that have to do with daddy, so I squealed when I saw this one.


Nutella. So. Good. I've been putting it on banana bread, toast, bagels, and even in my oatmeal. It's basically a breakfast staple.
Drop Dead Diva. I will admit that when I first saw previews for this show I scoffed at it and knew I was too intelligent to like a show whose premise is about a ditzy model who died and "pressed the return button" and got sent back into a size 16's body. But the hubs works long hours and one evening I felt like a totally stereotypical girl show. I love it. It is my guilty pleasure. And is anyone else mad at Grayson?? LAME!
Finally, I am loving my little family. Kyler has been in combatives class the past 2 weeks and he's been able to come home for lunch, and have a normal 8 hour work day as opposed to the 14 hour days + no lunch we are used to. It has been great having him home more often. I am loving my baby girl, whose gummy smile melts my heart.

Foodgawker=weight gain

I. Love. Foodgawker. I find THE best recipes on there. Plus there are like 14 pages devoted to nutella. Win.

We had friends over for a BBQ and I made this recipe for Cherry Limeade Cheesecake.




I'm not sure why I fail at putting links in blogs, but...I do. Why can't I make it all cool and have wording that I want that you can click on? Sorry for my lack of bloggy knowledge. Love me through it. Edit: I am silly and had been blogging in html mode this whole time instead of compose. Woops :)

Anyway, it was pretty good...but honestly I couldn't taste any lime. And I added 2 extra tbsp over what the recipe called for. So...next time I'll be adding a lot more lime. I like my citrus.

If nothing else, it was really pretty!!


I also made these Smores Cookie-and they were awesomesauce. They are extremely addictive and such a gluttonous thing to do-put chocolate on top of a cookie on top of another cookie, but regardless, they rock.


This next one is a recipe from me, for Potato Salad. If you like potato salad that is swimming in the disgusting-ness that is mayonnaise, this recipe is not for you. I hate mayo. So much that we have not had mayo in our home, all 5 years that I've lived on my own, until I decided to make potato salad. It makes me gag. So enough of my mayo hatin', this recipe has a few extra kicks from your typical potato salad. Unfortunately I had a screaming monster so I didn't have time to take a picture, but I assure you it was yummy.

Potato Salad
Ingredients:
2 lbs red potatoes, boiled until fork tender, and quartered
1/2 red onion, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
3 hard boiled eggs, chopped
1/2 lb bacon
3/4 cup garlic and herb mayo
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp spicy brown mustard

Cook the bacon until crisp and set aside on paper towel. Chop into small pieces.

Combine the potatoes, onion, pepper, eggs, and bacon. Combine the mayo, sugar, salt, and mustard. Add the dressing mixture to the potatoes and stir. Chill in the fridge.

Super easy, yeah?

And here are a couple of pictures of Keira. Because she's cute.

She lives!

So I would like to introduce you all to the reason that I haven't blogged in nearly 4 months ;)



That is our beautiful daughter Keira, at 2 months old. She is birthday twins with my little sister, who was just tickled pink that her niece made her grand appearance on her birthday! I went in for a routine NST on April 14th and was told that my fluid was very low. They kept me and induced and I was expecting to meet my little beauty that evening. 36 hours of labor later, I stalled at 6 cm and they had to do a c-section. Turns out Keira was trying to come out face down-she has the battle wounds to prove it. Poor thing was battered and bruised :( We should have known she was going to be a little firecracker when she flipped us off in utero.

Keira takes after mommy in that she is a very hungry girl. Which translates to me nursing practically 24/7 for the past 2 months...and when I am not nursing her, she loves to be held, so I don't often have any free hands. I'm not complaining, though. She has brought so much joy into our lives. I can't think of anything that makes me happier than talking to her and seeing her cute little smile. :)

I get a few more free time breaks here recently...she will nap for a while and daddy takes her so I can do some laundry or just have some relax time. I will try to update more often now (more often as in not take a 4 month hiatus shouldn't be too hard) but be forewarned, my life revolves around lil miss now, so my blog probably will, too. :P

Live like no one else...

When Kyler and I were in college, we were, simply, stupid. We didn't work for the first couple of years except in the summer so we could "focus on school"...which really translated to have the optimum amount of free time. So, we ended up taking out tons of student loans to cover tuition and cost of living. We were still living on a seriously, seriously small amount of money per year...enter credit cards. They are really the epitome of evil. I hate credit cards. I've been making payments on the same credit cards for 4 years and making sadly little progress. It's such an easy thing to get sucked in to. Here is all this "free" money, you can buy whatever you want, and you don't even have to think about it right now! Until you get the statement in the mail and realize you spent more than you could have imagined in such a short period of time.

At our worst point, we had over 10 credit cards combined. I wish I was joking.

While Kyler was at Basic Training, I went to a weekly Dave Ramsey church class with my inlaws. I don't really know why it's taken us this long to put what I learned there into effect, but this month, we are starting to follow Dave's plan.

If you take a class or read one of his books or watch his show you'll hear "live like no one else...so you can live like no one else." In short, following his plan is not fun. You put as much as possible into debt as you can, you never buy anything unless you have the money saved up for it...but you know what is even less fun than that? Looking at your budget for the month and realizing you have very little fun money to work with because you have so many credit card payments.

So, this is what we're doing:
1) Making a monthly budget and strictly following it. We take out cash for the following categories: groceries, restaurant money, laundry, toiletries, necessities for our dog, and a Christmas savings-and put them into envelopes. When that money is gone, you're done! The point of that is when you use a debit card, it's so easy to just spend and spend and not realize where the money's going or how much you're actually spending. The idea is when you have to pay cash and physically hand over the amount and see the amount get smaller, you'll feel what you're spending and be more aware of it. And it's so true.

2) Putting $500 into a savings/"emergency fund" account. We can already check this one off the list-we just did this one today! It's so nice to know that if our car breaks down or we get a flat tire, or some other unexpected thing comes up, we have money right there to fix it without having to worry about where it will come from. If you have a higher income the recommended amount is $1000, and we'd like to get there eventually, but it's staying at $500 for now.

3) Paying off debt and NOT using the credit cards. If we weren't using our income tax return and Kyler's Army bonus on this, this one would be taking us ages and ages to finish. But we are hoping that once that money comes in (it should be any day now, please please!) we are buying the rest of the things we need for Keira, buying Kyler a grill and me a workout program for after Keira's here, and then literally absolutely everything else is going to credit cards. Yes, it's depressing to read and hear about all the really fun things other people are buying with their returns and bonuses...but I am psyched for this. We are hoping to pay off all but ONE credit card and free up over $300 extra dollars per month!!

4) You are supposed to "snowball" your debt...so, if you pay off one credit card, you take the payment amount for that one and instead of counting it as extra money, you put it towards your next credit card. You're also supposed to pay off credit cards smallest to largest balances no matter the interest rate, but since we're hoping to pay them all off at once this won't matter to us. And you're also supposed to put as much extra as you can per month. Right now, we aren't able to put any-but once we free up that $300, we'll be able to pay off the other things even faster.

I'm planning on us being debt free, other than student loans, within a year. We don't have a house and we own our car outright, so how amazing would that be to literally only have student loan payments. I'm so excited.

I'm going to read "the total money makeover" by Dave Ramsey to freshen up on exactly how this works, but there's the jist of it. Look this guy up if you are having money problems-it's not super complicated stuff, but it really works if you follow the plan.

Easy Lattice Pie Crust

I think I make a mean apple pie. It's one of my husband's favorite desserts, and that's coming from a guy who used to claim he doesn't like apple pie. I've been watching a lot of Pushing Daisies lately, and all the talk of pie had me wanting to bake (okay, and eat) so I surprised Kyler one morning when he got home from work by having one already made!

I love to put a lattice crust over it instead of just laying the top crust on, I think it looks so cool and like you worked really hard on it when really, you didn't. It is actually really easy-I swear!

First just roll out your pie crust on some wax paper. You can use a pizza cutter, which is what I normally do, but I couldn't find mine so I just used a butter knife and it worked out fine. Cut the dough into same sized strips, you can make them as big or as small as you want just depending on what you want your pie to look like. I make quite a few cuts.



Next, lay down strips vertically, even spaced apart-again, it all depends on what you want your pie to look like, so space it how you want. Now, just take every other strip and fold it back halfway.


Now, place a horizontal strip across...


And unfold the pieces back over it.


Now you will take the vertical strips that are running under the horizontal strip, and fold them back. Place another horizontal strip, and then refold those pieces.


You just keep doing this process-take the vertical strips that are running underneath the horizontal strips, fold back, place a horizontal strip, and refold until the crust is done!


Now to make the edges look pretty: trim off the excess from all of the strips. I wasn't able to do this very well because I used premade refridgerated dough and it wasn't big enough to where the bottom crust stuck out and had excess over my pan. But if you do have the excess from the bottom crust, just fold the bottom crust over the strips around the edge, and crimp it together.


The finished product! Only don't be a dweeb like me and break off some of the lattice by checking to make sure your apples are cooked. Oops.


Needless to say, the husband was happily surprised when he walked in and sniffed the awesome smell of fresh apple pie.

Please try this if you never have. I was really scared to at first, but it is really easy once you get the hang of it, and always a nice way to fool people into thinking you worked harder than you really did!

US Army: Thank you.

Usually, I don't put forth any effort to hide my dislike of the Army. I am not a "hooah" wife. I hate the stupid rules, I hate my husband being called at 4AM on his day off and told he needs to come in within 2 hours to have a drug test, I hate the 13 hour work days that the pay certainly doesn't reflect, I hate that if there's a day we just want to go do something together or simply stay in he can't just call in sick. This isn't even counting a deployment, so I can't imagine how I'd feel about it then. While there are definitely positives, I have not been a big fan of this life and I've made no secret that Kyler and I both are looking forward to civilian life again. I am definitely counting down until his contract is up.

With that being said, lately I have been feeling thankful for the Army for one big reason. If Kyler hadn't joined, I would still be in school at KU and finishing my degree. In order to do that I would have had to take out at least $15,000 more in student loans, and we would have probably wracked up more credit card debt rather than paying it off. Kyler would have been looking for a job right as the recession hit, and who knows if he would have found one. Our finances definitely would not have been in a spot where we would have considered having a child-we probably wouldn't even be married yet. We wouldn't have been at the place and time we were for Keira to be conceived.

I never understood why he wanted to join. This was not something that had ever come up before-in fact, he would have laughed in your face if you told him he was going to be a soldier. It literally came out of nowhere and when I would try to ask him WHY so I could understand, he never really had an answer other than he felt like he was supposed to.

I think he felt that way so that we could have our little girl. I wouldn't be 8 weeks from seeing our first baby and holding her little hand, I wouldn't be able to hold my belly while she kicks at me to let me know she's okay in there, and I wouldn't be looking through baby books and almost crying when I think about what I'll write as all her favorites or who she takes after. So, God-I didn't understand why on Earth You compelled Kyler to feel the need to join the Army, but now I do: thank you for Keira.

Easy Omelets

I love to cook, but other than cookies, I don't have many recipes that I can call "mine". I guess an omelet is kind of a lame dish to have a recipe for considering they're so versatile and pretty much anyone could make a "recipe" for it, but me and Kyler love these omelets, they are super fast to make, and they can be tweaked to fit anyone's tastes. (Unless you don't like eggs, and then you're just screwed.)

I like to make sure everything is all prepped ahead of time, because these suckers cook fast. So I start with chopping veggies. Pretty much anything you like would be good in these. We had tomatoes, green onion, and bell pepper so that's what I used. Onions and mushrooms would be yummy in it, too.


Next I get the eggs ready. I usually like 3 eggs in my omelets but you could make as big or small of an omelet as you want. I would suggest at least 2 eggs or it won't work out super well. Put them in a bowl and season them up...again, you can season them with whatever you like. See a trend here? I use salt, pepper, garlic powder, and minced onion. Beat the eggs until everything is all mixed up.


Next get your pan ready. I use a small skillet, spray it with cooking spray to keep the eggs from sticking, and heat it up. A medium low heat is good, just make sure the pan is completely heated before you put the eggs in.

Pour the eggs in the hot skillet and let the eggs cook and harden a bit around the edges. Once the edges are cooked, lift the edge with a spatula and let all of the runny part still on top run underneath the egg where you are lifting.


Just keep letting the edges harden, lifting them, and letting the runny egg slide underneath until there is no runny egg left on top. Now you can flip!


Immediately start putting your toppings on once you've flipped, because it cooks fast. I usually use cheddar cheese but we were out today, so I used pepperjack. Lay the cheese down first so it gets nice and melty, then top with your veggies. I also usually add some crumbled bacon. Put all of your toppings on one half only.


Finally, just lift the side without toppings and cover the half with toppings, it should look like this:


Now you're ready to eat! Yum yum. I loooove eggs with salsa so I always top my omelet's with salsa. And there you go! Quick and easy breakfast, lunch, or dinner.


Oh! And this is what you DON'T want to do-stick your wrist right on the super hot pan. Ouch. Now I look like an emo cutter. :(