Feelin' Crafty?!?!?

The husband knows how much I love crafts & projects. I love them even more when it requires his help so we have the chance to work together! I have been wanting to put together something like this for a while.

I started collecting bottle caps & with the help of my friends I finally collected enough. So,I went to our local hardware store and had them cut a piece of wood for me. This one is 24x6. I came home right away and painted it dark brown. Then I read somewhere that to make perfect letters, just print them off of word in the size and font you wish. Tape them down and then trace the letters with a pen.

 IDK if you can see the indention the pen marks made, but it was great for painting letters on wood.

The husbands job was to screw in the eyelet hooks to hold the bottle caps. He also put holes into the top and bottom of each bottle cap making sure they were directly opposite each other. (he should have drilled them but lost his small drill bit so he used a nail and hammer instead) Once all the caps holes in them, I divided the caps into families and assigned each a color. Once the paint on the circles dried, I used a Paint Pen to write the name and the date on each circle. I used only the number of the date, because each circle will hang under its respected month.

Here is the final product b4 hanging it on the wall!! I'm pretty proud of it. But I think that in the future I may need to redo the bottle caps and change the colors. I should have used a white paint pen instead of black!! But I still love it!!

Mmmmm Shrimp!

Yesterday the husband and I decided to travel down the romantic road. This Romantic Road stretches 200 miles from Wurzburg to Fussen. It was named by U.S. soldiers during WWII. The route links a number of picturesque towns and castles. In medieval times it was a trade route that connected the center of Germany with the south. Of course we could not travel it all but we were excited about the trip. Sadly though it was so foggy and misty there was no view besides the traffic on the road. :o( We decided to stop in the town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. It is a medieval town that had some cool things going on such as the cobblestone streets, cute and colorful buildings, the city wall that you can still walk on and the gruesome but fascinating crime museum. Although it had some great features, the town caters to tourists (since it's listed as 1 of the top travel destinations on the romantic road) so there seemed to be nothing but hotels and restaurants and so many Asians in tour groups. LOL We had to pay to see the church and truthfully it was not that impressive. Since we have seen so many beautiful places in Bavaria we were just not impressed with this town.

Since we never had a "romantic" V-day dinner I wanted to make something that would make the hubs happy!! I know that any kind of seafood will make him :o) so..... I wanted to try shrimp. I have never cooked shrimp before (unless you count the kind from the freezer section of the grocery store than you just preheat and eat. YUM!) and I was amazed at my talents!!! It was the BOMB!!!!

It was so simple too!

Line baking pan with foil. 

Cut 1-2 lemons into slices, put on bottom of pan, drizzle with 1 stick of melted butter.

 Sprinkle one pack of Zesty Italian seasoning on 1/2-1 lb raw shrimp and toss. 

Put the shrimp on the lemon and butter, then put them in the oven and bake at 350 for 10-15 min

I squeezed a lil bit of lemon on them after baking. 

Enjoy!

Happy V-day People!!!

You know you've been married for too long when you don't get presents or goodies for V-day anymore....sad me :o(    LOL no really it's all good, I did something special for him & that makes me happy enough.

 I was excited to show some love this Valentine's Day to all the soldiers in my husbands unit. I have made it a tradition to make these "special" sugar cookies for the guys. They take so long to decorate but I love doing it and I love these guys!

I got a lot of smiles from the guys when they noticed what they were. They loved them.

This year I was excited to use my mom's sugar cookie recipe. It brings me back to the times we made them for Christmas every year. They were so yummy!!

Sugar Cookie Dough
3/4 cup shortening
2 eggs, slightly beaten
3 t. baking powder
1/3 cup milk
1 cup sugar
3 1/2 cups flour
1 t. vanilla

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Sift flour and baking powder then add to creamed mixture, alternating with the milk. Add vanilla. Let refrigerate to stiffen. Roll out onto a floured surface and cut into desired shapes. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

For the icing, I use Wilton's color flow icing recipe. It hardens fast and is great for decorating! You can find the recipe here... http://www.wilton.com/idea/Color-Flow

Enjoy!

Mushroom Burgers...YUM!

As we started into this new year I have told myself I would try hard to make/eat healthier food. Besides my Dr. Pepper addiction, I have been doing pretty good. Of course I use pinterest to collect some new healthier recipes but another source I get recipes from is The Chew. I am in love with this show and the husband actually likes it too which is very surprising!! Not all the recipes they make are healthy but a few are. So one that I tried was excited to try was mushroom burgers. I was a little skeptical at first but was excited to try them, & hey, I love mushrooms so it had to be ok, right?!?!

....& they were great. (the husband actually liked them better on day 2). The main ingredient..... 3 different kinds of mushrooms. They were so pretty cooking, I had to snap a pic. It isn't often I find food "pretty." LOL I should have chopped them smaller but it still worked. I had trouble flippin them too, but the husband came to the rescue.

I paired it with baked fries. I was excited to use my new mandolin to dice the potatoes. I seasoned them and sprayed a lil olive oil on them and baked them @ 400 for 20 min. They would have been great, except for I accidentally picked up & seasoned them with cinnamon. OOPS!! Would have been great if they were sweet potatoes. :o) But hey, we ate em anyway. lol

Here is the link to the recipe from "The Chew." http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/the-chew/recipes/Mushroom-Burgers-Clinton-Kelly

Tucker!!!

In January we welcomed a new addition to the family!! Born in November, this little ball of fur is a joy to have around!! We definitely fell in love with him and his antics.

We wondered how Bella would react to having him around. She has taken on the roll of big sister. She cleans him, shares her space with him and at times I would swear I have seen her roll her eyes at him. They are fun to watch as they learn to deal with each other.

WOW....

I can't believe my last post was in October! Sad!! Life was so busy throughout the holiday season and then well, I guess I just forgot about my blogging adventure. So much has happened and so much travelin' was done in the past few months!!! My M-I-L visited. We had such a good time although all the traveling was so tiring!

Here are some pics! The highlights of our holiday travels.

Oktoberfest

I now it's been a while since I posted last....my bad!!!  Life kinda gets in the way!! I wanted to share our adventure to the "real" Oktoberfest with ya! So we decide to take the train. It's ends up being a 2 & a half hour ride & it was so packed our whole group - 4 guys, 3 girls, & 2 children + a stroller- had to stand the entire ride & we just so happened to be crowded by the bathroom so that was really nice - NOT. We should have known from this that our day was not going to go as planned. haha & boy do we have stories to tell about the train ride, from a stinky guy and about 15 people crammed into a space meant for 5 or so to the many people who decided they should squeeze through our group to get to the bathroom. & believe me they have no idea what personal space is either.



After that painful ride there we were so happy to finally arrive in Munich! We started our 15 min walk from the train station & it felt like we were in New York, so many cars & people trying to cross roads to get where they were going! Finally we start seeing people dressed in their lederhosen and dirndls so w know we are close. The crowds were overwhelming! We find a tent & we went in to find a bathroom and a seat.

As you can see, finding a seat in the tents for our group was impossible! So off we go, & by this time the guys just wanted a beer and we all wanted food!!! And then we find out you have to be seated somewhere to get served beer so the hunt was on!! After looking for a seat for what seemed like forever we found 2 tables near each other that would hold our group & although we had to b separated we were just happy to sit.

 

And probably the best time we had was when we met ^this^ guy and his friends from Australia. They were so fun! They traveled all this way just for Oktoberfest. After a couple of hours of just sitting we decided to leave our table which we knew we would never see again :o(  to go check out other things. This is when it all went to hell.  ^this^ girl gets lost in the crowd and has no phone and no one can find her. It was terrible! Although we tried to look for her it seemed impossible and it was, we never saw her the rest of the day or night. [she ended up catching a train  & made it back safe-thank goodness] but the guys we were with didn't really know her and they [including my husband] wanted to do something fun so we went off to try to enjoy the rest of the day.

                                        Me & the hubs!!! Love making memories with him!

                                           I love this guy [^Corey^] he is so much fun!!

I was upset I missed my opportunity to get a pic on the Ferris wheel Corey made my whole night by capturing this shot from the top of a roller coaster him and the guys went on!!! Beautiful don't you think!!

Overall the rides and well everything was over priced, we had to elbow our way through the crowds, and the lines for the bathrooms were never ending. Although we did make some good memories there I would never want to suffer through that again!