I recently read about these cute little edible icing sheets from Ticings. Be sure to check out their website! Ticings makes modern press-on edible icing sheets which you just add to your own cupcakes for a unique look. How cute would these be for at your next party? Love them!
My hubby hates Peanut Butter (how they let him in the Navy, I’ll never now…I’m pretty sure a hatred for PB is about as un-American as you can get!), so whenever he’s gone, I make lots of peanut butter desserts. I made these for a Spouses Club meeting the other night…they’re one of my go-to desserts, a little different, super easy, and YUMMY!
They’re called “Squirrel Bars”. They come from a cook book called Just a Matter of Thyme, and the woman who created the recipe originally called them “Swirl Bars”, but her daughter had trouble saying “swirl”, so she renamed them “Squirrel Bars”. Love it! Anyway…here’s the recipe:
Ingredients
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together peanut butter, butter, brown sugar, and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour and baking powder. Spread mixture in a greased 9″x13″ pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top and bake for 3 minutes. Take out and “marbelize” the top (run a knife through the melty chocolate chips one direction, and then the other, kind of like you’re cutting them, and swirl chocolate around). Return to the oven for another 18-20 minutes. Cool and cut into bars.
Enjoy your weekend!
After I finished cleaning out the Man Cave, I just couldn’t stop, and I went right on organizing and uncluttering in the garage! I cleaned out our garage a few months ago, but somehow garages seem to require more maintenance to stay clean than other rooms of the house. So while it didn’t need a full on purge like the Man Cave did, requiring me to pull everything out, sort it, and then put it back, I did consolidate some tubs and organized everything so that it looks neater. I didn’t take any before pics, but here’s what it looked like after:
It’s still pretty garage-y looking, and all my tubs don’t match, but at least it’s nice and organized! I also got a refill for my label-maker. I forgot how much I loved that little gizmo! And now all my tubs have nice little labels:
After all this cleaning, I took a load of stuff to the Salvation Army. Now I just need to sell a few things on Craig’s List and persuade my hubby to take a load of electronics to the electronics waste place, and my spring organizing will be done (Spring Cleaning is a whole different matter…)!
So I’ve been itching to do some organizing down in the Man Cave for quite some time now. We have this wall of cabinets, which is awesome…but in the year and a half we’ve lived in our house, they’ve gotten a bit out of control, and a lot of the neatly organized and labeled bins were still nicely labels, but they held things we didn’t use or even need! So this weekend, I begged my hubby to sit down with me and go through some things. This is what it looked like at approximatly 3:00pm on Sunday:
Anytime I’m doing serious organizing, whether it be a room, a garage, or a jewelry box…I start by taking everything out. This may seem a bit counterintuitive, but it is actually an essential step. Seeing all the items you own out in front of you allows you to see for yourself exactly what you have–you can then ask yourself “Do I really need this?”, “Do I use this?”, “Is there another place or way to store this item that may be more effective?”. This is the hard part! But once you take the time to ask yourself all these questions, and then act on your decisions, putting things away in nicely labeled bins seems like a walk in the park! And after a day of organizing and uncluttering, this is what those cabinets look like now:
With room to grow…
I’m pretty excited! We got rid of a lot of outdated electronics, outdated, and things that we just don’t need! I took all the camera equipment out of those little bins in the first picture and put them in those larger bins with no lids. Now that I’m blogging, I use the camera almost every day, and I needed to have a place where the camera stuff could be contained, but where I wouldn’t have to mess with lids and such every time I got the camera out! I also had all our linens jammed in a cabinet half the size of the one they are in now. I realized it just wasn’t working! What isn’t working for you in YOUR house? Don’t just sit there…GO FIX IT!
P.S. Please don’t judge the decor in the Man Cave…it’s the next big room I have to tackle in my adventures in decorating…until then, we’re trying to make do with what we have!
Well folks, it’s happened again. My hubby leaves for one day and all hell breaks loose here at home. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it really is kind of ridiculous how many crazy things happen when he’s gone! You see, a few days ago the hubby noticed that we were having some kitchen sink issues. He was doing the dishes and put some things in the garbage disposal, and then they backed up into the other sink. Gross, right? We bought some liquid plumber, and used a little of that, and it seemed to do the trick…or so we thought. Last night, per my hubby away M.O. I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning cleaning and organizing. At midnight-ish, I decided to do my last chore before going to bed–the dishes. This turned out to be a horrible idea. As I was putting the last of some week-old beef stew down the garbage disposal, I saw that the sink was once again backing up! Drat!
I determined that there was probably a clog in a pipe, and that I felt confident enough to tackle taking apart a bit of pipe to check for clogs. I got a pan to put under the sink to catch the water that would drain out of the pipes and started taking apart the pipes. While I was prepared for a bit of water, I was NOT prepared for the fountain spray of week-old, beefy, stewy water that sprayed EVERYWHERE. It went all over the place underneath the sink, ran out onto the floor, and soaked me. Yes. I was covered in old, beefy, stewy water. Ick. Paul the Dog on the other hand, seemed to love it! The worst part about it all? There was no clog in the pipes! I have since determined that there is some sort of jam/ leak in the actual garbage disposal…but that seems too advanced for me, so I’m waiting for the hubby to come home tomorrow to address that! For now, the sink is at least usable again…not sure what I did, but it’s flushed out enough to be able to wash hands and such. However, the garbage disposal is leaking so I’ve kept a pan underneath the sink.
I did manage to take a picture of the beefy, stewy aftermath. It kind of looks like someone barfed underneath my sink. Icky!
P.S. Dear Hubby, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re planning on reading up on garbage disposal repair on your way home tomorrow 
.
Well…I’m back in my grey pants, have just consumed XXX perfect chocolate chip cookies (that number has been blocked out for the protection of our younger readers), and I’m watching The Little Couple on TLC. Yes. You’ve guessed it, my hubby has left me again. I shouldn’t complain. He’s just left this evening and he’s only going to be gone for a few days, but still! Somehow this knowledge has not kept me from my lonely navy wife habits. Enough about me though…on to Twenty Dollar Tuesday!!!
Your tip for today: use your placemats. No this isn’t another neurotic rant on the importance of using placemats at the dinner table…I’m suggesting you use them on the wall! Wall art can become pretty pricey pretty quickly, and lets face it…most of us have a lot of walls that need decorating! Placemats are usually only a few dollars, and you can find them almost anywhere! I’ve found that Target and Pier One both have pretty neat placemats (that are often on sale) that work pretty well.
In our guest bedroom, I have placemats on two different walls, well technically two placemats and a charger:
You can see in that first picture that I hung two of the same placemats together. This is a great household hint. Whether your hanging plates or photos or placemats, hanging items in groups of two, three, or twenty adds visual interest. Of course, you want to compliment this by hanging some items by themselves, too! Below is a picture of a placemat I have hanging in a random space between two doors in our living room.
This was a random space that needed something. One day, I’d like to hang a piece of artwork here…but until that day, this $3 placemat will work just fine. Also note that you can turn placemats all different ways to create different looks. Hanging them in different directions can completely change the look. I hope you’ve been inspired!
Yes folks. I have found it. The PERFECT chocolate chip cookie. Soft and chewy, sweet and a little salty–perfect. Well, just about as perfect as a cookie can be. Part of me wants to hoard this recipe away where no one can find it and everyone will forever be impressed with my chocolate chip cookies, but I’m not that mean. Or maybe it’s just that I can’t keep a secret. Either way…you can find the recipe over at The Cookbook Chronicles.
I’m not even going to rate these, because I would give them a perfect score! Really, they’re just that delicious. What makes them so puffy and yummy? Bread flour and high quality ingredients (chopped up chocolate rather than the standard Nestle Tollhouse Choco-chips). I’m here to tell you, they make a difference! If you make these, let me know what you think! Happy Baking!
I have a number of coffee table books, but I usually only leave out the ones I really like. A few of these are the ones from the PostSecret series that my hubby purchased for me a few years ago. These books are ALWAYS conversation starters with guests and I highly recommend them for your coffee table.
Never heard of PostSecret? It’s a community art project featuring postcards on which people have anonymously revealed a secret they have never told to anyone else. People mail these secrets to project creator Frank Warren, who puts 20 or so postcard secrets up on the PostSecret blog every Sunday. He also features them in books and museum exhibits. It’s pretty amazing. Some secrets are hilarious, some are sad, some are scary, but they are all pretty amazing, and the overall project is pretty darn fascinating. I love these books and encourage you to check them out sometime soon…or the website at the very least!
Here are a few examples of some “secrets”.
I believe I told you a few weeks ago how the flash on our Nikon randomly stopped working. Well last weekend we took it to a camera repair shop, and found out it would be $170 to fix the camera! We asked if they could test the camera with an internal flash to see if it would work with one, and luckily, it did! So rather than spend the $170 to fix the camera’s flash, we ordered a new external flash, which we kind of wanted anyway. We received it in the mail, and it’s great! Here’s an adorable pic of our golden, Paul…
Pretty great, eh? Now I have NO excuse to take crappy iphone photos for the blog anymore…I give you all permission to chastise me accordingly when I do!
I saw these over at design*sponge and immediately put them on my list of projects to do! They’re just so cute! I’ve been on a great coaster hunt more than once. You see, I’m extremely picky about my coasters, but I love the modern yet traditional look of these. You can learn how to make them over at design*sponge. Happy Thursday!