I’ve been craving a handful of Muddy Buddies (also known as “Puppy Chow”) for a while now, and when I needed something quick and easy to take to a New Year’s Eve party, I decided to whip up a batch!

What you need:

9 cups Chex Cereal (any grain)

1/4 cup of butter

1/2 cup of peanut butter

1 cup of chocolate chips

1 tsp of vanilla

1 and 1/2 cups of powdered sugar

Measure out about nine cups of Chex (it’s ALMOST a whole box) and set aside.

Combine chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter.  Microwave for 1 minutes, take out and stir, and then microwave for another 30 seconds.  Try not to eat spoonfuls of this mixture. Add vanilla. Stir.

Add chocolate mixture to Chex.  Mix gently (you don’t want to break those little guys)!

Scoop mixture into 2 1-gallon bags (or 1 2-gallon bag, or 8 1-quart bags…you know, whatever).  Add powdered sugar and shake to combine!  Be sure to close the top of the baggie.  I forgot to do that today, and I got powdered sugar everywhere!

And ta da!  You’re done!  These puppies are light and chocolatey and delicious.  What more could a girl want?  Enjoy!

One of my favorite new shows on air this fall is the Fox series “Glee”.  I was hooked from the moment I saw the pilot released last spring.  Who knew campy covers of pop songs and show tunes could find a place on broadcast tv?!?  My favorite song that the Glee cast has covered is non other than the karaoke favorite, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”.  You can watch the Glee cast sing it here:

While I love this song, I’ve been having some trouble with the lyrics…what exactly do they mean?  I’ve asked several people to help me figure this out, and I’ve done numerous google searches, but I’ve come up with empty-handed. Here are the lyrics:

Just a small town girl
Living in a lonely world
She took the midnight train going anywhere
Just a city boy
Born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train going anywhere

A singer in a smoky room
A smell of wine and cheap perfume
For a smile they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on

{Refrain}
Strangers, waiting, up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlight people, living just to find emotion
Hiding somewhere in the night

Working hard to get my fill
Everybody wants a thrill
Paying anything to roll the dice
Just one more time
Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

{Refrain}

Don’t stop believing
Hold on to that feeling
Streetlight people

Weird, right?  What exactly are “streetlight people” and what do they have to do riding a train at night?  And what are we supposed to be “believin’”???  Someone please explain it to me!  My sister’s theory is that these are the lost lyrics cut out of all of Journey’s other songs, while my husband thinks this may be one half of a two person conversation.  While I feel these are both possibilities, I’m still skeptical…any thoughts?

The hubby and I don’t have any big plans for New Year’s Eve this year.  We’re heading to LA the next day to fly out the following day to New Orleans where we’ll meet my family and embark on a cruise boat for my mom’s 50th birthday celebratory cruise!  If you are looking for ways to make the evening extra special, I hope some of these sites might help you get inspired!

This first pic is from MarthaStewart.com.  I think I only have one analog clock in my house, so I don’t know that this would work for me…but I do love this look!  Martha has a lot of cute New Year’s ideas here and here if you want to check them out!

This photo is also from Martha Stewart.com. To replicate this idea, just stick silver scrapbook sticker numbers on your standard champagne flutes!  So cute!

This next photo comes from the Hostess with the Mostess blog, but I believe the photo is originally from SocialCouture.com.  If you’ve never visited Hostess with the Mostess, I encourage you to do so right now!  They post oodles of fun entertaining ideas–from baby showers to bat mitzvahs!  They did this cute feature on New Year’s parties a few days ago.

I hope that you’ve been inspired! If you have any fun ideas, be sure to share them in the comments!

Danke. Merci. Takk. Asante. Gracias. Spasibo. Thanks.  However you say it, saying thank you is very important!  With all the hubbub finally coming to an end, it’s time to take a moment to thank all of those kind and generous people in your life who made this holiday season special!  Any form of thank you will do, of course, but I’m a bit on the traditional side and like to send snail mail (or hand delivered) cards.  If at all possible, I prefer to hand make the thank you cards.  I find that while I’m putting together a card, I have a few minutes to really think about the person I’m making it for. This helps me fully appreciate the gift or favor that person did for me, which in turn, helps me to write a better thank you note! I’ve been trying to improve my thank you note writing as of late.  Rather than write the boring,  ”Thank you for xxx, I plan to use it a lot…bleh bleh bleh, ” I’m trying to make them a little more thoughtful. So if you get a thank you note from me sometime soon, let me know how you’d rate it! Anyway, take a look at the thank you cards I made tonight! Be sure to look closely at the envelopes, too! Let me know which ones you like best!  Enjoy…and start writing those thank you notes!

One of the hardest things about being a military spouse, is being far away from my family!  Although today’s many modes of communication make it easier than ever to talk to my family on a regular basis, I still miss participating in the activities that I would if I was right at home right now–going to movies, eating dinner together, playing board games, you know, family stuff.  My all-time favorite board game is Trivial Pursuit, and I have a hard time convincing my dear husband to play any board game with me, let alone Trivial Pursuit (it can sometime become a bit drawn out).  Tonight was no exception…our game lasted more than three hours! BUT, we played it with my dad and sis in Missouri over video chat, so the game was a lot more fun!

My hubby set up the computer with ichat and wired the computer to the tv so that the window with my dad and sister came through on our big screen tv.  We pushed the couch close to the tv for optimal game play.  We set up the game here in California, but in Missouri they got out a deck of Trivial Pursuit cards and a dice, so they could read questions and roll the dice from their end, too.  My hubby and dad were on one team, and my sister and I were on the other team.  It ended up being really fun, despite the fact that in the end, we lost to the boys (so sad!).  Here’s a pic of our setup (although it isn’t the most flattering pic of me).

Playing Trivial Pursuit

Being far away from family is a problem for many of us these days, not just those of us military families.  But with all the amazing technology out there today, I encourage you to find an unorthodox way of keeping in touch with your family!

I hope you’re enjoying the day after Christmas–playing with you new toys, watching movies, and eating leftovers!  Need a quick treat to take to a party sometime in the next few days?  I made these to take to our friends home on Christmas Eve…they were fast, easy, and soooooo good!  You can learn how to make them over at the Hostess with the Mostess Blog!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!  We weren’t able to head home this year, so we did Christmas morning present-opening via webcam with our family, headed to dinner with some Navy friends, and rounded out the evening with a trip to the movies to see Avatar (In Imax 3D….sooooo worth it!).  Merry Christmas from our house to yours, but before I go for the evening here’s a picture of Paul the Dog with his Christmas present.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a regular post…see you then!

I admit it.  These aren’t quite as nice as the ones my mom made when I was a kid, but I made these without a pattern (turns out the “pattern” mom mailed me last year included all the patterns in McCalls kit EXCEPT the stocking, so I had to use my childhood stocking as a rough pattern).  I also had a small fight with my sewing machine.  I’m pretty sure it was user error, considering I haven’t used a sewing machine in about six years, either way it was really frustrating…but  I figured it out!  The first stocking took me an hour and a half to make with my sewing machine battle.  The second stocking, took ten minutes (thank goodness, as I started stocking #2 at around 11pm!)

All that being said, I’m really happy with how they turned out!  Once again, I love the material, it really goes with the Christmas decor I’ve got goin’ on in our living room.   And even though they aren’t perfect, I love that I made them!  On that note, I am wiped out, so I’m headed to bed.  Happy Christmas Eve!

Okay, I’ll admit it…I was one of those dorky people at the Apple store on the first day the iphone was released.  I’m not ashamed!  The iPhone really is an amazing piece of technology. Of course, the coolest thing about the iPhone is its ability to become any sort of device you need, by just downloading an app (“There’s an app for that.”).  What is my favorite app, you ask?  Zenbe.  Well, Zenbe lists to be exact.

First of all, it’s a great list-making program. It allows you to create as many lists as you want, and set due dates and write notes.  Each item has a little check off box next to it, and when you touch the check off box the item changes color and moves to the bottom of your list.  All very neat.

I have grocery lists, work To Do lists, lists of things I want to buy for our house, movies I want to see…you get the idea.  The coolest part of the program though, is its ability to be shared!  You can invite someone else to “share” a list with you, and if they accept your invitation, they can also check things off the list! They can then check items off or add/delete new items.  It’s very cool!  Zenbe is GREAT for sharing the ongoing grocery list between my hubby and I! Lastly, you can also use Zenbe as a website based program, so you can create a list online and it will sync with your phone!  Or you can use Zenbe on your computer, even if you don’t have an iphone (you lose the mobility factor, but it’s still a nice way to stay organized!).   Still not sold?  Watch the Zenbe Demo.

First of all, I’d like to say THANK YOU to my dear sister, Caroline for filling in for me while I was away!  And where was I, you may ask…well, I was fancy camping!  For my dear hubby’s birthday, I booked a weekend for us at El Capitan Canyon in Santa Barbara.  My husband loves to camp, and unfortunately, we haven’t done much of that lately.  Well that may be a bit of an understatement.  When we got married two and half years ago we got a bunch of camping gear as a wedding present, and well, we’ve never used it!  That is…until this weekend!  El Capitan is a “nature resort” that’s made up of little cabins and safari tents with beds in them!  Because it can be a big chilly this time of year in SoCal, we opted for the cabin, which had a bed, bathroom, wet bar, heater, and electricity!  It had two big glass doors that opened out onto a creek behind the cabin and a fire pit outside where we roasted hot dogs and made s’mores! While it wasn’t exactly “roughing it”, we experienced all the perks of camping without the sore back and lack of a shower (thus the term “Fancy Camping”).

It was an extremely relaxing weekend, and if you’re ever in the Santa Barbara area, I highly recommend a stay at El Capitan Canyon!