Illegitimis Non Carborundum

Ask & You Shall Receive!

2012-02-14T11:48:00.000-08:00

Go figure...I posted about my "wants" and two of 'em happened pretty fast! If only everything worked that way, right? Is it sad that the owner and his wife know me by name? The second I walked in, I heard "Hello Erika!" with big smiles and waves. I shop there way too much.

I popped into my beloved Slegers and right off the bat I see this fantastic old world globe. Sure, it'd be nice to have one that has actual information on it, but I think this one is MUCH cooler because it has paintings of sea monsters, astrological signs and old latin terms for various continents. The globe even rotates on an axis so you can adjust the degree coordinates! LOVE! AHH!! Everything is applied on old parchment paper, so I'm curious to do a little more research behind this particular goody.

Then I made my way upstairs since that's where I remember the church benches being. Given, I had the choice of a single seater, or a double seater. After debating and debating, I ended up putting a deposit on the double seater "just in case" since it was the only one left, but there were two single seater benches. Before I went and bought the thing, I had to make sure I ran it pass "The Man" since I was basically buying it for him. Ya see, he has this knack of tossing his uniform all over my kitchen table in addition to his hat, change, other doo-dads that aren't clean..on my nice, clean kitchen table. See where I'm going with this? So, yeah..this bench is for "his" corner where he can hang his hat and other junk.

It's obviously been sun bleached, but I'm not really worried about it right now since, hey, it's a bench. Once we move back to the States and we're re-united with all of our stuff that's in storage (like my power tools), I'm going to strip it down and stain it darker. It's solid Oak, so it's going to last a lifetime and I'd prefer having the color match the rest of our furniture :)

For the time being, it's still over at the antique place since I need to find a spot to put it (yes, shame on me for buying it without a designated place), but it also gives me time to get rid of some more stuff. Luckily, the owners don't have a problem with it staying there. As the owners wife put it, "You'll be back. You always come back".

Want Want Want...

2012-02-12T05:43:00.001-08:00

I gotta say, over the course of the last three years, I've managed to score some pretty awesome stuff. There's still some things I want to find before we make our great migration back to the lovely United States even though my house is on the verge of bursting due to my current collection. It's a sickness, what can I say? If you had all this stuff at your fingertips, wouldn't you take advantage of it?

*A church bench*

Random for me, right? I'm not religious what so ever, yet I want one of these for the (future) foyer when we're done moving around. During my many antique hunting trips, I've stumbled across a few that are beautifully carved and look pretty fantastic.

In all honesty, I can thank Pinterest for wanting the bench because I love how people have set up a bench with a nice line of hooks for jackets and other goodies. If I manage to get my paws on one, it'd DEFINITELY be used in an area where Eric can kick off his boots and leave his uniform on that rather than scattering them all over the house for me to clean up (our kitchen seems to be a magnet for those things!). Not a fan of being a maid!

*A trunk*

Given, I have two pretty cool trunks, but I want just one more that really *pops* in terms of how our decor is. My husband picked this up for me while he was away for work related stuff. I LOVE all the carvings! We keep this one downstairs since it holds our throw blankets & pillows (we use 'em to cuddle up on the couch).

This one is upstairs in the guest room to hold shoes as well as socks since there's a removable tray. I actually bought this off of someone who was moving away.

And this is the one I'm aiming to get from a local antique store. Once I get this, I'm done in terms of "storage things" for around the house.

*A globe*

I really want one! I especially want a vintage looking one because they're SO cool!

*A nautical compass*

Silly, I know...but I think it has something to do with all the old things I enjoy, especially since all of it ties in to traveling :)

*A vintage camera*

I've been on the hunt for one of these things for a WHILE...as in, the last year. Between scouring various antique places as well as eBay, it seems pretty impossible to find one that's in semi decent shape, or that isn't ridiculously overpriced. It's going to be used as DECOR..that's why I refuse to spend $200+ on it since it's going to sit on a shelf.

Lots and lots of wants.... le sigh.

Chicken Ticky Tava

2012-02-09T09:42:00.001-08:00

We've been stationed here for three years now..well..just shy of three years by two weeks, but still, three years! Throughout our stay, Eric has always asked me to find him some Chicken Tava whenever I make it over to the Turkish market. While I'm picking up our produce from over there, I ask one of the vendors about this mystical thing Eric speaks about and they look at me like I'm some sort of nut. Truth be told, I've heard other people talk about it, but those people were either stationed in Turkey at some point in time, or knew of a restaurant that served it four moves ago.

Well, a gal on my Facebook ended up posting a link for a Chicken Tava recipe, so after reviewing it and reading the ingredients off to Eric, it was settled that I needed to attempt this sought after meal (all while Eric was giddy with delight).

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into 1 inch cubes
1/2 (12 ounce) jar roasted red bell peppers, drained
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes with juice
1 (6 ounce) jar mushrooms, drained
1 onion, diced
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons of butter
salt and pepper to taste
1 (16 ounce) package shredded mozzarella cheese

It's actually a REALLY straight forward recipe. Super super simple. If you don't have a Tagine, you can totally do this on a crock pot if you're wanting to have it cook for several hours. It'll make the chicken very juicy and allow the flavors to enhance, or, you can always do it in a tall stock pot and have it ready within twenty minutes. It's all up to you, really :)

Take the roasted red bell peppers and drain out the juice, then toss them in a food processor / blender. Since I don't have either, I put them in my Manual Food Processor and worked 'em till they were practically a sauce consistency.

After I was done blending, I tossed in the minced garlic and let it sit together while I finished prepping the rest of the ingredients:

Once everything is opened up and chopped, toss in the Tagine / crock pot and set on medium low heat..set it and forget it. Yes, it's really that easy!

I let mine cook for a little over four hours and it smelled amazing!! I made some rice to go with this, topped with some mozzarella and bam:

Eric looked like he won the lottery when he walked in the door because it made him think back to when he lived in Turkey. Apparently he lived off of Tava for quite some time, lol.

So, there ya go! Chicken Tava that actually gets the husbands "thumbs up" since he's actually had it from Turkey :)

Corn Mac

2012-01-30T05:37:00.001-08:00

Whenever I bring my Corn Mac to a party, I get tons of compliments, people asking for the recipe, or people offering to pay me to make it for them since it doesn't come out the same way if they make it themselves. Not bad, right? I actually wrote out the recipe in a "Note" on my Facebook account, but I still get asked about it being posted on here since some people like visual instruction verses just words, so, here we go:

This a REGULAR serving size recipe, which can feel 4-6 people. The amount that's pictured below is for a large party I'm cooking for in addition to personal orders people make when they find out I'm cooking this recipe. So, don't freak out when you see the amount of butter and Velveeta is used :)

Preheat 350

Grease a 9x13 pan/dish

2 Cups - Macaroni "elbow" pasta

1 Cup - Butter (unsalted, or 1 stick salted and 1 unsalted..I prefer using "Challenge Butter")

1 - 16 oz. Block Velveeta - cubed (sometimes I add more since we like things super cheesy!)

1 - can Creamed Corn

2 - cans of "Fiesta" Corn - Drained

2-3 T. - Onion Powder

2-3 Tablespoons of Tastefully Simples "Onion Onion" (yes, really. Add more as you're making your sauce if you like)

* You can also use fresh onion; do about 1/4 cup give or take. Make sure it is finely chopped if you do!

Ground black pepper (optional)

Boil macaroni till tender. While you're waiting for that to finish, you can mix together the creamed corn & Fiesta corn together.

I tend to prep other things while I'm waiting on pasta to finish cooking, so I measured out my onion powder as well as Onion Onion. Now that's ready to go when the time comes:

Once the macaroni is ready, drain and put in a large mixing bowl.

2. Add the creamed corn and the drained cans of corn to macaroni. Stir to evenly combine. Set aside.

In a sauce pan, melt the butter, then add onion powder & "Onion Onion"; saute on a low to medium heat for 10 minutes. DO NOT get it so hot that'll allow the butter to burn!

Then, add the Velveeta cubes and stir until completely smooth and combined (lots & lots of stirring). Again, don't allow it to burn or it completely ruins the sauce.

Pour the cheese mixture into mixing bowl and stir until macaroni, corn and cheese sauce is evenly combined.

Place the combined mixture into your 9x13 baking dish. Sprinkle with ground pepper pepper and Onion Onion (however much you're wanting to use).

Bake for 20 minutes with aluminum foil, then bake uncovered for 10 minutes. BAM! You're done!

If you make this earlier in the day and it's meant for dinner, you can put it in the oven at 200* and just have it sit in there till you're ready. By leaving it for several hours (mine cooked for 4 hours), the onion flavor comes out better and the cheese seems to "soak" into the macaroni.

FLUFFY!!!!

2012-01-30T02:51:00.000-08:00

IT'S HAPPENED!

It finally snowed!! AHHHH!!

We've been hearing rumblings and rumors about potential snow on and off for the last several weeks, yet, it never snowed. You'd bet your life on it that we were gonna get snow then because it was FREEZING for the last month, but still, no white landscapes or anything. Truth be told, I was getting a little jealous of my friends in the States who were posting pics of their snow days and what not. I'm a cold weather person, what can I say?

Anyway, Eric came in the bedroom to wake me up with his good-bye kiss, he said "It snowed last night and it's still snowing right now". The the front door! Really? I didn't wanna believe him because I know he likes to screw we me, especially when he knows I'm still groggy from just waking up, lol. Sure enough, SNOW! SNOOOOOOW!! Even Piper was excited to check it out!

Once she was all done investigating (and getting snow all in her beard), she decided she wanted to appreciate the new scenery from inside our nice, warm house :)

More importantly, I FINALLY got to use my snow shovel!! I'm sure you're wondering why I'm so thrilled to use it. Ya seeeeee.... when we bought it during the winter in 2010, I couldn't find one on the economy since they were all sold out. Everywhere. So, I bought one off of Amazon for a reasonable price..but they wouldn't ship to APO. Long story short, I used my Ship-It-APO account because, hey, the shovel doesn't weigh that much. I didn't take into consideration that the length of the shovel would jack the shipping price up astronomically. Between Amazon and Ship-It-APO, I now am the proud owner of a $150 snow shovel.

By the time it finally showed up, all the snow was gone.Yup.

It took a year, but it's finally been Christened.

More Stuffs

2012-01-27T11:57:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, so I did a post last week about Trogs. Since I have a bit of an addiction with them, I did some hunting online to get some sort of inspiration in terms of decorating with them aside from using them as a fruit bowl, or a dog toy bowl, or even a dog bed. Sure enough, I was scrolling around Pottery Barn and saw a good idea in terms of candles:

So, I attempted to copy cat it without spending gobs of money on high end candles. Plus, I also happened to have a "mirror" style ornament to put in the trog (like the one in the PB picture). The only costly part was finding a "filler" to actually hold the candles up. Between debating on rocks, sand, seeds and everything else under the sun, I settled on coffee beans. Yes, coffee beans. After all was said and done, I used about seven pounds of beans...and here's how it turned out.

All in all, I think it turned out pretty well. Not to mention, my foyer now smells like a coffee bar :)

In other news, I completely forgot about this awesome chair my Dad bought while he was visiting us back in 2010. Man, time flies! Anyway, he ventured over to the De Kringwinkel with Eric in search of a fairly reasonably priced desk since he didn't wanna use the one that was in my office. Makes sense, right? lol. Well, when they came back, they dropped off this killer chair:

I'm absolutely in love with the carvings it! Plus, the cushions are leather and extremely comfortable. I totally see why my Dad snagged this thing! Apparently this was the only chair they had, but it was supposed to be sold with a matching couch. Obviously, we weren't in the market for a couch...nor were we willing to drag it up the narrow spiral staircase to where my Dad was staying, so, my he had to haggle in order for them to just sell the chair. As you can see, he got his way:

I meant to blog about it forever, but I kept forgetting even though it's a really pretty chair. Honestly, I've been hunting for another one like it, but none of the ones I've come across have the carvings on the front and sides, which give it a lil extra "niiiiice" factor. Then again, it's probably for the best that I don't get another because this thing is HEAVY! Along the lines of..hmmm...50lbs? Yeah. Momma's gotta do some serious spring cleaning to make sure we don't go over our weight limit when the time comes to move!

Quick & Easy Doughnuts

2012-01-27T04:30:00.000-08:00

I actually gotta thank Stef for this! She posted about it the other day when, coincidentally enough, I was really wanting a doughnut. Given, the Belgians make some pretty tasty ones, but I didn't wanna deal with driving into town since it was a busy time of day.

Pretty much, all you'll need is:

Pillsbury biscuits

Vegetable oil

Something to cut holes with; Stef opted for a shot glass while I'm using my Pampered Chef "Apple Corer"

The Apple Corer actually made tiny bite size doughnut holes about the size of marbles. Not bad since we ended up using them as treats for the dogs since they were circling like sharks in the kitchen.

I busted out my Le Creuset saucepot and filled it up with enough vegetable oil to where the biscuits could easily float and be turned without a problem. Then I turned up the heat to where the oil would easily fry whatever was dropped in it...it took about 5-7 minutes for it to get warmed up.

Carefully plop in the biscuit dough into oil.

MAKE SURE TO WATCH IT! It only takes a minute or so for it to start browning. Flip it over to cook the other side:

Once they're done, let them dry & cool off on a paper towel.

If you're wanting some flavor on 'em, you can do a mixture of cinnamon & sugar on it. If you don't have a ready made bottle of it, just mix together cinnamon & sugar together in a shallow bowl, then press the doughnut into it. Tah-Dah!

I actually like frosted doughnuts, especially if they taste like maple. So, if you're interested in making this glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup of milk

1 teaspoon of maple extract

Blend it all together then dip the doughnuts. I let 'em sit for a little bit so the glaze will actually dry.

In total, this entire process took MAYBE ten minutes! Enjoy!

Brussels Impact!

2012-01-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

I embraced my inner red neck last night. Yes, I admit it. I went with Eric to watch some good ol' fashioned male soap opera....which is also known as TNA Wrestling.

We had actually traveled to London last year for Eric to attend one of their events..I could've sworn I did a blog post about it, but apparently not. I blame my shiny syndrome for that! Anyway, we did the whole shebang then by taking the EuroStar train through the Chunnel, arrived at London St Pancras Station then hopped on the Tube to get to our hotel by Wembley Arena.

He went solo to the wrestling match while I stayed at the hotel and got pampered with a spa date. Hard life, right? He had a blast and told me all about it..he sounded like a lil kid because he was SO excited about the entire thing since his favorite wrestler was actually there. In fact, here's a picture that he accidentally took of himself last time...he looks totally enamored:

Annnnd here's a picture of his favorite wrestler, Rob Van Dam:

Due to him having such a fantastic time at the match in London, I decided to snag some tickets for us to check 'em out in Brussels since that's only an hour away from here. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for heading back to London since I love it there..but we're both all busted up between his back problems and my knee being out of whack. It's for the best that we didn't trek all over the place like last year. I don't think either of us would've survived, lol.

So, we headed out last night with some time to spare since we knew we'd hit some sort of traffic because, hey, that's how Brussels is. Unbeknownst to us, we didn't realize how cluttered Brussels downtown actually got. Then again, neither of us have ever experienced that city via car...we've always taken the train. It all become crystal clear why we always took the train, lol. My TomTom said we were only fifteen minutes away from the arena, but we were stuck in traffic for forty stressful minutes. Why was it stressful? Well, taxi drivers in that city apparently have no morals, ethics, or souls..they cut people off when there wasn't any room to begin with, almost caused multiple accidents and we have several close calls. Oh, by the way..we were in my Xterra which isn't very common here. With that being said, people had a knack of staring at the vehicle rather than the road, which caused a little more of an issue when it came to moving along.

By the time we arrived at Vorst Nationaal, we were a little late for the start of the show due to the traffic AND since we had to park a kilometer away (that's all that was available for parking). But, it's all good since we didn't have to wait in a huge line to get in the door. In fact, we were able to walk right in, get our tickets scanned and off we went to find our seats. When we walked into the seating area, this is the first thing we saw:

The camera makes it look so far away, but we were actually pretty close to the ring! Plus, the arena wasn't packed at all, so we got to sit wherever we wanted unlike when Eric went to London (he said it was absolutely PACKED there). When the wrestlers were in the ring, you could hear them clearly (no microphones) and you weren't straining to figure out what they were doing.

The first match we got to watch was Douglas Williams verses Gunner. When you watch these guys on TV, they look absolutely massive. I mean, they're big dudes when you see them in person..but Gunner didn't look AS buff, lol.

The match was pretty interesting....in the end, Gunner ended up winning and the Belgians DID NOT like him at all! They were boo'ing and yelling at him. When he was exiting the ring, he was flipping everyone off. Niiiice! Then Douglas Williams waved to the crowd and thanked them for coming to the event, everyone was cheering and rooting for him. At least they were nice to him :)

The next match was with Samoa Joe verses Crimson. Eric was rootin' for Joe while I was going for the "big ginger", as he lovingly refers to Crimson.

After a variety of chop slaps, slams, kicks and all sorts of other technical stuff I know nothing about, MY guy won! HAHA!! Of course, Samoa Joe was a sore loser and had a bit of a hissy fit..attacked Crimson and screamed at fans. Ya know, kept his cool:

Then there was a match with the "Knockouts" which is with the female wrestlers. Honestly, I didn't watch the majority of the match since I was trying to fix Eric's camera and clear some of it's memory. Perfect time to do that, right? He had a ton of pictures on there he never removed (I'm talking a year and a half worth of pictures)..so, lots of deleting took place. Turns out, two of the female wrestlers I liked, which is Tara and Mickie James, won their tag team match against Madison Rain and some other chick.

One of the next performers was actually from Georgia, and not too far from where Eric grew up. AJ Styles!

AJ ended up wrestling against a guy named Bully Ray.

To be honest, Bully Ray was so gross. Given, I understand these guys have a character to play, but some of the things this guy did was absolutely repulsive. He'd hock a loogie into the air and try to catch it (or it'd spatter into the crowd), or he'd spit out the side of the ring which looked like it went into the crowd. Just...GROSS. So, I was VERY happy when AJ ended up winning the match. The Belgians REALLY did NOT like Bully Ray..AT ALL! They kept screaming "YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK!". It was pretty hilarious considering they all had really thick French / Dutch accents while shouting that at him.

Then there was the "main event", which was a three man match. It was with Kurt Angle, James Storm and Bobby Roode. If Kurt sounds familiar to you, it's because he won a gold metal in the Olympics back in 1996.

Lots of slaps, throws, slams, and a "Double DDT"...

All three guys got knocked out for a lil bits..

After several minutes of high flying stunts, Angle and Storm ended up losing the match to Roode, but they still celebrated with some bottles of Duvel which is a fabulous beer to get drunk off of.

Beer showers!

They LOVED Angle!

Angle and Storm were thanking the crowd for coming to the event, which made the fans go nuts even more. THEN, Storm grabbed the Belgian flag from a fan and was waving it around the ring. They fans went bonkers, chanting his name and really got excited!

Honestly, I was amazed with some of the stuff these guys did, the hits they took (although some were fake, some weren't) and the fans were absolutely hilarious. When you hear Belgians (with their accent) screaming some of the wrestlers names (sounds NOTHING like it) and throws insults at the bad guys in Dutch..it sounds like a comedy skit. Eric was entertained by not only the wrestlers, but apparently by some of my facial reactions to some of the stuff that was going on, lol.

All in all, this is what I really cared about:

My husband had a great time! Despite the traffic and dealing with being late, he still had a blast, had a chance to get loud and rowdy with the rest of the fans and watch some good ol' wrestlin'!

Hopefully we'll still be here around this time next year since TNA announced at the match that they'd be returning to Brussels again :) *fingers crossed*

Antiquers Anonymous

2012-01-23T11:06:00.000-08:00

I have a bit of a problem. It's really bad. I mean, BAD.

In the last week, I've been to Slegers Antiques three times. Yes, three. Given, the first time I went, it was to check out some various stuff since a friend was hunting for a cool trunk to put in her house. Sure enough, we found one for a killer deal and she has it all set up & looking fabulous in her home.

In the process of checking out various things throughout the warehouse, I was telling her about the trogs and how valuable they are in terms of buying them in the States. I think she thought I was pulling her chain till she saw my post later that evening about "dough bowls" through Pottery Barn. So, we ended up going back the following day to snag some trogs for her :)

Over the weekend, we attended a going away party for a friend and he had mentioned to me that he had never been to Slegers, yet he's lived here for five years! BLASPHEMY! Given, it's not really his kinda "scene", but he told me he wanted to check them out before he leaves cause he wanted some cool stuff to take with him when he moves. So, I met up with him and his wonderful girlfriend there today to do some hunting. The second I walk in the door, Mike (the owner of Slegers) started teasing me because, hey, I'm back yet again! The first thing he asked was, "Are you going to come in every day now??" ...nooo. I'm trying not to. Really, I am. I promise!

After two hours of showing them around and looking at various things, they ended up finding a very pretty wall clock in addition to a wood wine rack with some pretty designs on it (kinda similar to the trunk). In the process of exiting to take them to the ATM, I stumbled across a little hutch table that was buried under several various vases and some clocks. After digging it out and checking it's condition..it NEEDED to come home with me. Correction...it WANTED to come home with me!

I think I'll attempt staining it a smidge darker so it'll match the other furniture we have.

It has the same "Tudor" style legs like the dining room table I had bought earlier last year, so, I figured it'd fit in perfectly with the rest of our stuff:

Hi. My name is Erika and I'm addicted to antiques.

Antique-y Decor

2012-01-20T12:39:00.000-08:00

I really enjoy antiques. Love love love 'em. I especially love using them as decoration around my house :)

I went over to my favorite antique store yesterday to pick up another trog since I couldn't get that particular one outta my head since I saw it on Thursday. It's HUGE, and stained dark (which I love!). Eric was joking with me that it should be a dog bed since it's large..so, I humored him and put it on the ground. Low and behold:

Wasn't expecting that, hunh?

When we first got here back in 2009, I started collecting these things called "trogs", which are basically little troughs that farmers would use around here to feed their livestock. Over the course of various trips, I've picked up more here & there and actually sent one to a friend back in California because she fell inlove with the ones she saw on my blog. I can't remember who mentioned it to me, but I was told that Pottery Barn actually sells them...but, for a much steeper price! Of course I thought it was silly that these things were insanely expensive back in the states, so I looked it up..sure enough..lots of money for 'em.

Keep in mind, I pay (roughly) 20€ (about $26) for the medium size trogs and up to 40€ (about $52) for a HUGE trog. When I say "huge", I mean I use it to store all of my dogs toys along with their harnesses and leashes. So, of course when I saw how much Pottery Barn was wanting for their "dough bowls", I almost choked. Honestly, I couldn't imagine paying $200+ for a wooden bowl, so I hopped onto eBay out of curiosity...most of the bowls listed on there ranged from $145-$550!! Seriously?? WOW.

Here's the ones I've picked up since we've been here. You can kinda gauge their size cause of my Dachshunds that were checking them out :) My husband had given me a fair bit of grief over collecting these things, but they're growing on them since I use 'em for decoration, a holder for the dogs toys, and various other little things.

I will say though, that PB's site gave me some great idea's as to how else I can decorate them! Now I'm on the hunt for some staggered candles and some decorative pebbles to put in the super long trog I just picked up (it's in the above picture, lower left). Actually, I think I'll just use coffee beans instead of the pebbles so my foyer will smell like a coffee house AND they'll hold up the candles nicely:

So yeah, there ya go! Trogs (or "Dough Bowls) are pretty awesome things to have around your house in terms of adding some shabby decor with a new twist :)

Bavarian Garlic Soup!

2012-01-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

Ahhhhhhhh...I love garlic!

It's good for your heart, not to mention, it helps keep vampires away. Although, I wouldn't exactly turn this one away or anything...

Anyway, when Eric and I visited Bavaria back in 2010, there was this fabulous restaurant at the base of Mt. Jenner we went to that made this absolutely amazing garlic soup.

The fabulous Bavarian garlic soup at the restaurant:

We were in the area for several days, and every single day..we went back there for this soup. It's insanely delicious! The day before we left back for Belgium, I talked to the gal who actually made it and asked if I could "possibly" get some sort of run down for the recipe so I could attempt to make it when we get home. Ya know, for reminiscing purposes, lol. She actually gave me the recipe! How cool is that??

1 tsp garlic salt

3 tbs unsalted butter

16 cloves garlic

1/4 cup sifted flour

1 cup cooking cream

1 1/2 cup chicken (or vegetable) stock

2 tbs chopped parsley, plus additional for garnish

2 slices crusty bread

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan, preferably with a rounded bottom (easier for whisking). I'm sure you can use already minced garlic, but I prefer to do everything from scratch with fresh ingredients :)

Keep the butter on a low heat and add the garlic, finely minced or squeezed through a garlic press. Sauté gradually, on low heat, making sure the garlic does not brown.

When the garlic has softened (5-10 minutes), begin whisking in the flour so that it forms a thick paste. Add the milk and whisk (use a silicone whisk). Add the stock and garlic salt; whisk.

After you let it cook for about 10 minutes, use a fine strainer to pour the soup into (have another bowl or pot to put the soup in it). The strainer will catch all the lil chunks of garlic so you don't have floaties in your soup. TRUST ME, it's not a nice texture when you leave the garlic in there!

Cut the bread into croutons and toast. Serve the soup topped with croutons. (obviously, I didn't use croutons)

This is a GREAT soup to make when it's really cold outside (like it is here) and it's VERY filling! I double the recipe since there's three of us here and the guys like having left overs for the next day. So, I highly recommend that you double it if you have a family...ESPECIALLY if you have family members who eat like mine! The only real time consuming part is peeling all of the garlic, but I tend to look past that since the final product makes the effort worth while.

Enjoy!

Phoning in this post..

2012-01-18T11:56:00.000-08:00

Well well well, it's been a smidge since I've done a post. Lots of stuff has been going on which has taken most of my attention. Our house is pretty much the "walking wounded" right now because Eric messed up his back (some how) and I blew out my knee. Not only is my knee screwed, but I've been dealing with some serious abdominal pains (yes, I have a doctors appointment to get checked out). Between dealing with my stuff AND Eric's, I haven't been too froggy to go raise hell like I usually do.

Random, but I was actually up and coherent for sunrise! The weather here as of late has been pretty shitty...lots over overcast, rain, wind..blah blah blah. Any, the sunrise looked so pretty that I couldn't pass up taking a pic of it!

In other news..

Last week I went to the Turkish market with a friend of mine and we popped into the Kringwinkel (it's like Belgiums version of Goodwill). After snooping around for a lil bit, I ended up finding a really cool side table I really couldn't live without. Then again, I tend to think I can't live without a whole lot of things!

Here's the goody:

After cleaning it up a lil bit and adding some decorations, here's how it looks in the house:

Not too long before that, I haunted my FAVORITE antique warehouse with the thought of "I really want an old vintage phone"...ya know, the rotary kind. I'm hunting for vintage looking things like old old alarm clocks (the type with the two bells and a mini hammer on top), a Yashica TLR camera, smaller old film reels, and a phone. As I'm looking around...I'll be damned, cause look what I found:

It's from the 50's, a very hard plastic, and VERY heavy! Ever watched a movie and there's a fight scene where someone grabs an old phone and hits someone with it? The person who gets hit ends up being knocked out? Yeah, I totally believe that's possible because this thing weighs at least 5lbs! After a lil cleaning, it shined up and looked good as new! When I bought it home, Eric rolled his eyes , but, at least he understands there's a REASON why I'm collecting this stuff and not just a random purchase.

Other than that, not a whole lot going on aside from taking care of myself and Eric! I've been focusing on eating better and have lost 8lbs since the beginning of the year, working out as much as I can despite the bum knee, currently in the process of planning another girls trip to Poland for some pottery, and doing some personal assessments regarding various friendships.

Busy busy, but nothing new, right?

Project: Girly

2012-01-07T09:34:00.000-08:00

It was bound to happen.

Eric was told he's gotta go to NCOA (Non-Commissioned Officer Academy), which means when the time comes for his graduation ceremony..I gotta wear something pretty. By pretty, I mean a dress. I don't do dresses. To be honest, the last time I wore a pretty dress was when we got married...hmmmm..four and a half years ago:

I've worn a few dresses here and there when I was thinner, but since I've packed on weight, I haven't really wanted to put one on cause I feel like a pig wearing a garbage bag. Yeah, not flattering. So, since I'm working out and trying to get healthy...yet again...I have a goal dress in mind for what I wanna wear for his ceremony. Luckily, I have some time to actually work towards this dress so this isn't something I'm shooting for to squeeze into within a week (that's just NOT realistic). I have two-ish months, almost three, to work on my figure :)

Anyway, I found this dress at Kiyonna which carries plus size clothing for us curvy gals. I'm absolutely lovin' it cause it's got that retro look to it and looks classy. Plus, saving 25% off on it wasn't bad either since I just went back and checked their site and the sale isn't going on anymore. Good timing on my part, eh?

Annnnd now I'm on the hunt for shoes. Buying shoes *here* is pretty ridiculous since I wear a 10, 10.5 or sometimes even a size 11 shoe. Those sizes are considered monstrous over here in Europe. IF I even find a pair of shoes in my size, they're absolutely ridiculously hideous. So, I'm hittin' the ground running and scouring the internet to find some cute heels to wear with my spiffy new dress. Here's the top contenders I found..I'm just torn on which one will look best with the ensemble!

Of course, I'll totally post pictures when the time comes for me to actually wear the whole she-bang cause Eric will be wearing his Air Force Blues (hahaha). He hates dressing up, so at least both of us will be out of our comfort zones together, HA!

Photo Fun!

2012-01-05T11:40:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh it's been a few days since I've posted! I've been getting into the swing of trying to start the new year off right by eating healthier (again), losing weight (again), and trying to work out (yet, again). To be honest, I started a health journal blog to document all the things I've been doing, but I'm not really comfortable with making it public just yet.

ANYWAY!

A earlier last month, a friend of mine, Melissa of Melissa Schantz Photography, came over and took some "puppy pictures" of all the fur babies for us (remember this post). Here's how they turned out:

Cali aka "Cali Momma"

Goofy dog!

Izzy aka "Momma Bear", aka "Izzle Momma", aka "Brown Dog ", aka "DPF", aka "Wurstbrooden".

My little weeeeenie! Who could resist that face??

Cole aka "Bubby", aka "Chunk", aka "Snarfle Bear", aka "Stoofles", aka "Smotebollen". Yes, lots of alias's .

The look on Cole's face makes me think, "Yeah. I got this!"

Macie Mae aka "Mayness", aka "The PUFF", aka "Puffnator", aka "Little Wrecking Ball".

Fatty...lickin' her chops.

...and then, there's Piper aka "The Peeper" aka "Peeps!" aka "Beard Face" aka "Meat Mop".

This pic makes me think of a lil man with a puffed out beard for some reason.

I absolutely LOVE how they turned out!! There's so many that we're going to have printed and framed...ahhh! Love love love!!

Then, Melissa got a new spiffy camera for Christmas from her awesome hubby, so she asked me if I was willing to be a guinea pig for some shots. Sure, why not! We made a day of it since she's also a makeup artist, so she glammed me up & played with my hair..then we did various pics throughout her house with her awesome four year old entertaining us the whole time. Here's some of mine and Eric's favorite shots:

I really like how these turned out! Now if I can just get rid of my double chin, I'd be a billion times happier, lol. Here's to looking forward to more pics with her in the future! I know we're planning on having our family pictures done through her during the spring time at a local Japanese garden that'll have some awesome cherry blossom trees growing.

THE Chair

2012-01-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

We're a "gamer" family. It's not much of a secret if you know us..we have an Xbox upstairs as well as downstairs, although the upstairs is the official "man cave". So, whenever I wanna actually play some sort of game, I gotta bust out my folding chair since the rest of the seats are wayyyy in the back of the living room.

One of the main "perks" about my folding chair is that there's a little pop up "side table" I can use for drinks...

...but I rarely get to utilize it since Piper REALLLLY likes being near me. So instead of sitting on my lap, she gets a premo spot on the tray while bundled up in a nice blankey. Hard life, right?

Anyway, as "comfy" as the chair is for her, it's not all that comfortable for me because it's not really supportive and not exactly designed for gaming. Which means, I can't sit and play Fable III for more than an hour at a time because it screws my back up. Sure, it could be seen as a "sign" for me not to sit on my ass and play games for that long, but sometimes I need that "stress reliever" to just blow stuff up for the sake of some satisfaction.

SO..

There's a store just down the road from me called "De Kringwinkel" which is kinda like a Belgian version of Goodwill. Whenever you wanna get rid of something, you can just drop it off there and they resell it to the public...and if you're wanting to get something for fairly cheap, that's the place you go to. I've haunted that store pretty frequently since being here considering I've scored some super killer deals, like a set of dining room chairs for only 20 euros ($26.50), a really bitchin' chair my Dad picked up for 15 euros ($21.75), in addition to random wine goblets and beer mugs (usually $.50 a piece) rather than paying 20 euro a pop through the beer stores.

I popped in there the other day to see if I could find a fairly decent chair (kinda like the one my Dad found) without having to fork out a ton of money.

I ended up snagging this plushy chair. It's actually made really well and VERY comfortable, despite it being a burnt orange color..totally screams that it's from the late 70's or early 80's, lol. I'm actually debating on getting it professionally reupholstered, most likely whenever we get back to the States since I *know* I won't do a very good job with doing it myself. The frame is in fantastic shape and I just need to sand down the wood and restain it a walnut color so it matches the rest of our stuff. Not bad for 15 euro ($20):

Thing is, it's so comfortable...I barely get to sit in it!

Freakin' dogs.

2011

2011-12-31T09:14:00.000-08:00

I was a busy little bee throughout 2011. What did you do all year long? Here's a list of the things I did to make my time fly:

January

I began selling for Tastefully Simple!

Had the pleasure of taking Eric to London for the first time so I could show him around the city in the midst of seeing a TNA Wrestling event.

February

I traveled to Mechelen with a group of friends to check out some old world tapestries from the De Wit company.

My tickets to go home to California for a two month vacation were officially booked!

March

Checked out a killer farmers market in a near by town called Zolder.

Found an amazing scale at my favorite antique warehouse.

Scored an antique coffee grinder from the same warehouse a week later :)

April

My fashion forward Dachshund gets a rain coat.

Went on a great adventure back to Poland with some awesome friends.

Experienced the Spring Bazaar at Spangdahlem, Germany

May

Found our rhythm when it came to making a lot of food for the upcoming week.

My beloved Blackberry went to the great cell phone tower in the sky.

Did some retail damage in Germany while visiting some friends.

June

Movie dates with my lover face.

The horses in the field next to our house had another baby!

Began experiencing one of the wettest summers in Belgium's history.

My landlord broke ground right next to us to build a duplex :-/

Three whole days of summer!

July

I put a deposit down on my dream table!

Went blueberry picking!

Eric and I spent our four year wedding anniversary in Venice, Italy!

August

FINALLY organized my office!

My spiffy dream table finally arrived!!

We realized our landlord is filthy rich.

Scored a nifty old school clock!

September

I went..went..back back to Cali Cali.

Adopted a $2k puppy from the SPCA (cost after fees, buying a new plane ticket, carrier, vet bills, etc)

Drove to Oregon and Washington!

Met my brand new baby cousin!

Won FIRST PLACE in a photo contest!

October

Made some awesome blankets for my son and husband

Visited Stefanie!!

Missed my old stomping grounds in San Luis Obispo

Got my Dad hooked on a video game.

Invaded Pier 39 in San Francisco with my Dad.

November

Got pictures done with my Dad

Date day to France to buy some Le Creuset

Lovin' on some European Christmas Markets

Discovered the black hole that is Pinterest

Finally obtained Steve

The goodies I acquired while in California finally arrived! Eee!!

December

Finally came across something quite useful for my Scentsy warmers after being here for almost three years!

Made arrangements for Eric & I's FIFTH wedding anniversary !

I've come to realize that Belgium likes messing with me.

Turned my kitchen into a cookie factory.

Took a crack at being a couponer...and failed.

Here's to hoping for a productive 2012!

Couponing...Bah Humbug!

2011-12-30T13:57:00.000-08:00

I'm sure at some point, you've heard about TLC's "Extreme Couponing". If you haven't heard about it..lemme explain how it works: It's a show where people spend ridiculous amounts of time hunting for coupons to maximize their savings when it comes to grocery shopping. In most cases, they get hundreds of dollars worth of food for a fraction of the price. That's fantastic, right? Yeahhhhh....'bout that...

The new year is right around the corner and, of course, it's time to start eating healthy all over again. We're about a year out from potentially moving, so we're tightening our purse strings even tighter so we can save more money just in case we move back to the States, although, I'd really prefer to stay in Belgium. That's to be seen, though. Anyway, eating healthy isn't exactly cheap. And by that, I mean it's usually expensive. So I got a wild hair up my tail and decided to see if I could save some money via coupons..YAY!

After several mind numbing hours, dozens of websites, registering with fake emails for "exclusive" deals, fiddling with my fussy printer...and an Excederine Migraine pill.. I ended up with this:

I already had the Dryel coupon, the Benefuls "Snackin Slices" coupon, Challenge Butter coupons and "Finish" dishwasher coupon from previous purchases...the majority of the headache clearly came from finding coupons online. I don't have the luxury of having coupons readily available just down the street in the newspaper stand since, well, I'm not in America. So, I can't just gather up a bundle of those lil buggers and clip clip away..instead, I gotta click click click...click...click...sigh...click.......click....

I think the frustrating thing is that I really couldn't find any coupons for "healthy" things...if I was wanting a killer deal on Poptarts, soda (lots of soda), anything Pillsbury, Spam (really??), cookies, candy, blah blah blah, I would've hit the jackpot. I felt like I was on a hunt for the great Dodo bird since I wanted coupons for stuff like Birds Eye for frozen veggies, or even Libby's for canned veggies, and various other things that weren't slathered in fatty happiness. I'm not on a mission to build up any sort of treasure trove of all my killer deals (also known as "stockpiles") like some of the people you see on the Extreme Couponing show. Shit, we have weight limits when it comes to moving and I CERTAINLY don't want to waste my limit on food! I rather put that towards kick ass European antiques:

So, after my purchase of sixty six items and with all the effort of twenty five coupons, I managed to knock $22.50 off of the final total (a saving of 12%). Not too shabby, but honestly, not worth all the headache it took to find the coupons. It's no wonder the people who are featured on that show dedicate 8 HOURS a day to couponing..anywhere from forty to sixty hours a week! Great googly moogly!

At least I stayed under my budget, but I can thank my grocery list for that since I ONLY bought what I wrote down what we needed verses "window shopping"..which is what really racks up the cost for most people when they have their adventure in the grocery store.

Meh, oh well. At least I gave it a shot.

Wall Time

2011-12-26T04:57:00.000-08:00

We ALL know of this social networking site. Wither you love it or hate it..we all know it as:

I've been a member since..hold on, lemme check my Timeline...ah, yes. November 14th, 2007. Although I'll admit that I didn't really start getting into the swing of it till 2009 (I was still clutching onto MySpace). Since I've been on the site, I've managed to get in contact with all sorts of people whether they're old high school friends, people I've met from when I've moved around or even new people from when we've moved here. Instead of calling to check in and catch up, Facebook makes life a little easier (and lazier) in a matter of seconds rather than racking up minutes on the phone when I wanna drop a line.

I can't help up notice though that there are people who abuse the shit out of the site whether it's knowingly or unknowingly. Odds are, they know they're being douche-y, but that's to be determined by others since no one will obviously admit to being a jackass on a public site. Well, it's not necessarily being a douche or jackass, but sometimes people put the most RANDOM stuff out there, way too much information, or assume everyone is interested in every intimate detail in their life as tedious as it may be.

"Check In" at Home, etc.

I'm amazed that people even do this, especially when they list their actual HOME ADDRESS when they check-in! Great way to allow people to stalk you, especially when you have 1k+ plus "friends". Or even better, you post that you're no where near your house and people know you live on your own. Hopefully you don't have anyone on your friends list that's interested in jacking some of your stuff while you're out, bill collectors since now they know where you live, or someone who wants to just "drop in" to say "Heeeeeey" ...in the middle of the night while you're sleeping. Safety first, folks!

Bitching CONSTANTLY

I love Debbie Downers, don't you? Always posting complaints, pessimistic things or just downright spiteful stuff can get very old. I realize we don't ALWAYS piss rainbows and sunshine, but you can't always be spewing your hatred for the world, either. There has to be SOMETHING in your life that's awesome, otherwise, why are you even here? Constant bitchers are "hidden" for a while , then I'll revive them on my News Feed to see if they've changed their sad ways...and if they haven't, they get removed.

"FML"

FML = Fuck My Life. Hmmmm...because you couldn't get your favorite Starbucks drink, you say "FML"? Or because you broke a NAIL, or your hair is frizzy, didn't have enough ingredients for a meal you "planned"...just, stop saying "FML" over trivial things. I'd understand saying it if you broke your leg and you can't work for several weeks without pay and you have bills. Hell, even if you became an amputee...but fucking your life over something small and stupid. Puh-lease.

Cliff Hangers

Vagueness. Oh, how I loathe, thee. When people post a status that's so ridiculously vague, it automatically prompts people to comment asking "Is everything OK?" or "What's wrong?" ...in which the original poster will say "I don't want to talk about it". Makes perfect sense, right? Then why post it in the first place if you didn't want anyone bugging you?! Someone want attention...

Games / Applications

Even if you have a strong desire to use countless Facebook applications, avoid sending every app invite to all of your friends. Nobody wants to get yet another Farmville, Frontierville, Castleville, and blah blah blah app requests. The more applications you sign up for, the more clutter will appear on your homepage and bog down the News Feed. It's one thing to have fun but an entirely different matter to bug everyone with 50-100 apps invites every week. I used to be into the games (hardcore, actually) and they're MASSIVE time thief's...you never realize how much time you're wasting when you actually stop playing them to do other PRODUCTIVE things.

Churchies.

You love God. I get it. I understand that he's your Savior and died for your sins. I realize you go to church and feel like a better person...that's FANTASTIC. I'm not religious and I don't have anything against people who DO believe in something, to each their own. BUT. It gets annoying when I see biblical quotes multiple times every day, rants about how God is great and how we should all accept Him into our hearts. Not EVERYONE feels that way! Sorry!

"Real" Friends

This is geared more towards us military folk. We move fairly often and have to make new friends wherever we go. It sucks having to leave great friends behind, but we knew it was part of the deal when we married someone in the military. Thing is, you make new friends wherever you're at. It's a tad bit insulting after you hang out with your current friends frequently (who you claim you have a blast with) and post about how much you miss your "real friends" back at home. Am I not real? I feel real. Apparently not.

Do Not Publicly Post Private Events

Are you are planning a private event for a select group of Facebook friends? If so, don't publicly post the event for every single person on your friends list to see. Make sure you keep the event private so you won't risk offending your other, uninvited friends. It's a virtual slap in the face to the people who weren't invited, but are obviously aware of the event that's taking place. Smooth move!

SHUT YOUR MOUTH.

Although you may find your comment hilarious, if it is embarrassing to your friend, do not post it on their wall. Remember, despite Facebook’s optional privacy settings, it is still a social network, which means many people will be able to read what you have to say whether it is positive or negative. With the new Facebook scrolling notification on the top right of your screen, it allows people to watch a conversation without ever having to go directly to your Wall to eaves drop.

"Virtual Balls" Syndrome

Oh, how I love people with "virtual balls". They will never say something to your face, but if they're on Facebook, they have an infinite amount of courage and say whatever they feel like without waiver...ESPECIALLY on your Wall for everyone to see. If you don't have the stones to say it to someone in person, then why say anything at all? You eventually gotta run into that person, so are you willing to repeat yourself for the real life response? Didn't think so.

IT'S JUST FACEBOOK.

Sometimes, there are people who you just DON'T get along with. It happens. Not everyone meshes. If everyone got along all the time, we'd never have wars, right? Your Facebook is your "bubble" and you have the right to delete people that you don't want in your "bubble" at any time. Why keep someone on there who you don't necessarily care for? It doesn't make sense. People KNOW when they don't get along, so why force a "friendship" when there isn't one to be had? So, if you get deleted..it's for a reason. Don't talk shit or cause a big stink over it when it's an obvious "I don't consider you a friend" move, especially when you feel the same way. When people suggest that I just "hide" someone rather than "unfriend" them to avoid being rude...uhhh..isn't "faking" rather rude? Why tolerate someone who bothers me for the sake of pandering to their ego? It's JUST Facebook and it's JUST the internet. They'll survive.

Status Updates

Facebook is not Twitter, so I don't need to know every time you visit the bathroom, your baby’s feeding schedule, or what you had to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My favorite it when someone is pregnant and I get to experience their entire pregnancy every day with them because they update how far along they are (week and day) in addition to craving and hormone craziness....hourly. Or even better... football season. I get the play by play for penalties, touchdowns, scores, and everything via MULTIPLE people posting it in their statuses! Isn't that what the PROFESSIONAL sports commentators are for?

Grammar

Use it. When you get lazy and tlk lyk dis n dat 2 git ur (sigh, can't keep doing that) status across, you make my brain hurt. Don't be lazy when it comes to writing out a simple status. It's not flattering when you come across stupid. I understand that the English language can be tricky sometimes, but come on, it's not rocket science.

Gross Pictures

Please don't post pictures of your infants shitty diaper blowout, their vomit covered face, YOUR vomit covered face from a night of binge drinking or anything that would be deemed as "gross" to anyone aside from yourself....your friends will appreciate it. Trust me.

Do Not Tag Your Friends in Unflattering Photos

Do you have a picture of your friend and in that picture, he or she is looking at their worst or doing something extremely embarrassing? While you may think it is funny, they certainly will not if you tag them and post the photo for the entire Facebook community to gawk at. Remember, paybacks a bitch!

While on the Subject of Photos

Never under any circumstances post a picture of someone else’s kid without getting the parent’s approval. A lot of parents are afraid of putting their kid’s picture online considering all of the perverts lurking around in the cloak of anonymity of the internet. Ask before you post; it is a matter of consideration.

So, there ya have it. Those are the top bothersome things I can think of off the top of my head. Yes, I've violated some of these at some point or another in the span of my Facebook life, but at least I'm owning it. Most people will deny that they do any of the things that I listed.

On that note, cheers!

Merry Christmas :)

2011-12-24T02:35:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone has a VERY Merry Christmas!

♪ Music Junky ♪

2011-12-21T12:23:00.000-08:00

Alright, this blog post is pretty tardy. Why? Because...I meant to write this not too long after I got back from California. I have awful "shiny syndrome", what can I say?

As a birthday present to myself, I went on the hunt for some bitchin' headphones. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE my Skull Candies. I've been a loyal Skull Candy believer for a few years now, especially when I need something to listen to while I'm in the gym.

But, they don't do all that well with noise cancelling when it comes to loud outside static, ohhhh...like crying babies. Heh. My flight from California to Amsterdam was ten and a half hours, so I really didn't wanna risk listening to a grumpy baby (again) during the majority of the flight because, well, that's just my luck. My Skull Candies did pretty well on the flights over from Brussels to Monterey, but they started to hurt after a while since they're the ear bud style..so you gotta stick 'em in your ears. Try doing that for over seventeen and a half hours (thank you, layovers)...it starts to hurt. And yes, it was necessary to drone out noise with music or movies for that amount of time!

I used to have a pretty cool pair of Skull Candy Lowriders and they worked really well... in the beginning. They had great sound, nice bass, light and fairly compact when I needed to fold 'em up and stuff 'em away in my purse / backpack...but, they didn't hold up very long. They started to warp because of the way they folded together, which in turn started to pinch up the cord and effected the sound quality. Plus, they sit ON your ears, not around them..so after a while, it started to hurt. After about a year of having them, they were retired out and I went back to my little ear buds.

Back to my birthday present... I had been keeping my eyes on some headphones called "beats by dr. dre", but wasn't sure if I was willing to commit to the three hundred dollar price tag that came along with 'em. Yeah, three hundred smackers..and that's not the super expensive model, either. My main reason for not getting them, aside from the price tag, was that there wasn't anywhere around *here* in Belgium that I knew of to where I could pop in and listen to the quality. Are you gonna drop cash on something you haven't tested out? No. If you do, then you're silly. So, I held out till I was stateside and I had access to my beloved Best Buy to check out the different models to see which one was best suited for me. After bopping back and forth between all the different styles..

.... I ended up getting the "Studio" headphones that go over the ear. They're VERY comfortable, noise cancel and the sound is UH-mazing!

For head phones that fold up, they're actually really sturdy feeling!

The red cord is detachable from the head phones so you can store it without bending / straining the wires like you would if they were fixed to the actual unit.

You also get a jack to plug into whatever electrical musical instrument you happen to play, AND, you get a adapter plug to use for airline flights. I got to test that out on the flight and it was FABULOUS! Amazing "surround" sound :D

And, you get a hard shell case to store your stuff in rather than letting it get all messed up or losing the cords...you know how it is. Things get lost regardless of how hard we try to take care of it.

I've had these for a little over a month now, and I can genuinely say that these have gotten used DAILY. Between using them for some down time in my office, or when I wanna watch a movie on my laptop without disturbing everyone else...these have phenomenal sound, minimal outside sound disturbance and I can wear then for a LONG time without them becoming uncomfortable. AND...when I wore them on the flight, there was a bratty two year old throwing hissy fits every other half hour and I never really knew it was going on till I took my head phones off. YES, they're amazing!

My only complaint....of course they came out with pink ones AFTER I bought mine and got back to Belgium...pshh!

Lush ♥

2011-12-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

Ohhhh my goshhhhh.... I love LUSH.. Love love love. I've blogged about it here and here.. yeah..LOVE them.

Last week, I went over to Maastricht over in the Netherlands to check out their Lush store since I stumbled upon it a week or so earlier. If I knew they had a store there, I wouldn't have driven all the way to Aachen to get my fix!! Anyway, this amazing shower gel is currently available called "Snow Fairy"..here's some info about it from the site since they'll obviously describe it better:

It smells UH-mazing! It's as if bubble gum & cotton candy had a secret love child and this is, in fact, their love child. I actually use it as a shampoo in addition to a body wash..it makes my hair so soft and helps keep it straight, which is AWESOME since the weather has been rather soggy (in turn, makes my hair not so straight). I believe this is the third or fourth year they've had this available ONLY for the Christmas season. So, I was pretty sad when I realized I only bought two bottles of it...how is it the stuff I always end up liking isn't something that's always available?? Pshh....

Over the last week or so, I've been feeling really crappy due to some health issues, so, Eric and I took advantage of the fact that he's off today (and all week) since I wasn't feeling as bad as I have been....take advantage of it, right? So, where do we go for date day? Aachen, Germany. I love date days with him because it makes me think back to when we were first dating all over again..we catch up on all kinds of various things, laugh our asses off about stupid stuff, people watch and just have an all around good time.

At the end of date day, we ran into Lush there since he was wanting to get some body wash called " The Olive Branch" since he's needing something in terms of moisture for his skin. Right next to that was ...sigh...Snow Fairy, but in the medium sized bottles rather than the large. After staring at it longingly, we made our way over to the register since we were just gonna get Eric's stuff and hit the road. In the midst of ringing him up, I asked the gal at the counter as to when they'd be getting more of it in and she replied with "Once those bottles are gone, it's gone. No more will be coming."....epic sadness I tells you. In my head, I was thinking I'd just get home, log onto their US website and order a bunch and have it shipped here..then I remembered they don't ship to APOs. Le sigh.

Eric piped up and said to me "Go grab some from the shelf. Love you".

Sometimes, it really IS the little things :)

Cookie Exchange Mayhem

2011-12-19T02:52:00.000-08:00

Over the last three years, I've participated in a really fun Cookie Exchange that one of my friends has thrown. Every time, she's changed the theme so people can get pretty creative with their cookie names, designs and even how they dress. Sadly, this is her last year doing it since she'll be moving back to the states in the middle of this up coming year. *pout*

Being true to form, I stuck with my traditional cream cheese cookies since they seem to be a hit every year, despite never winning "Best Tasting". I don't get that..I really don't, lol. Every year, I get loads of compliments on them, always get asked to make more, but I never win that specific category.

This year, I figured I'd box up all the cookies and would keep my fingers crossed for hopefully winning the "Presentation" category. So, I scoured the internet while I was back in California, found some "Winter Wonderland" themed cookie boxes and had 'em shipped here. Honestly, I was pretty shocked at how nice they actually were considering they weren't all that expensive. For the life of me, I can't remember where I ordered 'em from :(

Pictured below are all the ingredients I used to make this cookie factory come to life:

25 cups of flour

10 cups of sugar

10 cups of butter

56 ounces of cream cheese
10 egg yolks

YES, that's a whole lot of cookies to be made with that amount of ingredients! When I originally RSVP'd to the exchange, I could've sworn that participants were required to bake A LOT of cookies...like thirteen dozen. Apparently, I really didn't read the directions properly because people only needed to make FOUR dozen..go me! So, everyone ended up with a dozen and a half cookies each box...and I made eighteen boxes, lol.

My trusty Pampered Chef Cookie Press:

I ended up using six of my stoneware pieces to cycle through all the cookies that needed to be baked...aye aye aye..

By the time I was done, I made a total of 400 cookies in which 288 was used for the Cookie Exchange. The others were given to friends who asked for some when they found out I was making them, lol. I ended up doing coconut frosting since that seemed to be a massive hit last year, verses using my traditional lemon frosting. Eric was absolutely thrilled *please note my sarcasm* to help me "paint" all of 'em since it gets really tiring, yet wasteful, to dip all the cookies in the icing.

Here's how everything looked by the time we were done :)

Oh, and I won "Best Presentation"! YAY!

Third Belgian Winter

2011-12-18T09:29:00.000-08:00

When we originally found out we were moving to Belgium, we were told that it NEVER snowed here. Never. Since we were coming from California, we didn't have any cold weather / snow gear since, hey, we lived on the beach. Of course, the first winter that we're here...we got snow. LOTS of snow:

December 20th, 2009

Everyone told us that it was a fluke that there was so much snow because, hey, it NEVER snow here. So, here comes winter 2010 and we weren't too worried about getting a snow shovel or anything because it shouldn't snow again. WELLLLL....2010 was by far the worst winter Europe had seen in a VERY long time. By "a very long time", I mean one hundred years:

December 16th, 2010

At that point, I don't believe a damn thing anyone tells me anymore when it comes to weather in Belgium. I've already figured out that it's pretty unreliable when it comes to sunshine. By three in the afternoon, expect rain or high winds. So, I finally broke down and bought a pretty bitchin' snow shovel since our driveway turns into a massive slip 'n' slide when there's snow / ice caked on it. Of course, by the time it arrived, the snow was gone..but hey! I'm prepared for this year!

December 18th 2011

I AM PREPARED! I am READY for some snow! I got not one, but TWO snow shovels readily available for some bitchin' snow storms since we've had two snowy winters thus far. There's GOTTA be some snow coming our way!

This is what I woke up to this morning:

Barely a "dusting" of snow..and it all melted off by the time Eric and I left to go to the movies. I checked the weather forecast and it's going to be raining for the rest of the week...no snow.

I. AM. DISPLEASED.

Get with the program, Beglie!

Fairy Tale Road Trip

2011-12-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

Color me excited!! Wait, what color would excitement be if it were a color?? Anyway...

I'm already in the process of planning Eric & I's vacation for our fifth year wedding anniversary. Fifth!? Wow! Time flies! Yes, I realize it's not till July, but still...you gotta be on the ball when it comes to taking time off from work and making reservations where ever it is you're wanting to go, especially in Europe.

So, we have about a year left in Belgium (sigh) and I don't wanna leave Europe without seeing some really beautiful, fairy tale style castles. Sure, I've seen various castles throughout Belgium and the Netherlands, a few there and there in Germany..but I wanna see the ones that'll make you stop dead in your tracks and stare in awe. After checking various sites, I found a hotel for us to stay at that's only 10 minutes away from three fantastic castles!

Neuschwanstein Castle

Whoever hasn't heard of this castle must be living under a rock. Word on the street is that Neuschwanstein was the inspiration for Walt Disney's famous fairy tale castle that you always see at the beginning of his movies.

Then again, there's so many gorgeous castles throughout Europe..especially Germany, it wouldn't surprise me if he made a hybrid castle out of all the various ones they have. Here's some info on the place via Wikipedia.

Number two is a different style of castle I wanna check out is Hohenschwangau Castle. Obviously, it's nothing like Neuschwanstein, but hey, it's Germany :) What else would you expect? Info from Wikipedia.

The third castle is Hohes Schloss Castle. It's not as high profile as the others, but it's still a castle to check out :) It's one of the oldest standing Gothic castles they have for that area.

While we're in the midst of all that greatness, I really wanna check out the Museum of Bavarian Kings.

When Eric and I were in Berchtesgaden last year, we learned some pretty interesting things about the various mountains and lakes and the kings they were named after. So, I figured it'd be pretty interesting to see some of the actual things from the kings who owned these amazing castles and their history, aside from their fantastic homes. Although if I remember correctly, it was King Lugwig II that built the majority of the massive castles in southern Germany.

Last but not least...

Hohenzollern Castle

This one was actually suggested to me by a gal here since she & her husband had visited it. She even said that this particular castle is better than the previous two I listed! That says a lot since Neuschwanstein Castle is a pretty heavy hitter! Here's some amazing information on the castle provided by Wikipedia.

We'll be hitting this one up on the return leg of our trip since it's about three hours from where we'll be staying. After looking through their site, I already know that cameras aren't allowed within the show rooms (which is everywhere I wanna be), so, I'll see what I can do in terms of getting some sort of pictures during the visit :) At least they offer guided tours! I figured it'd be for the best that we get there, go on a tour and take our time since it looks like a pretty large castle, chill for the evening then head out the next morning back for home since it's a five and a half hour drive.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVED our trip last year when we went to Berchtesgaden (here's the second part of that trip) , but that was such a long long drive that by the time we got home, we were pretty spent.

I'M EXCITED!!!! :D

Sweet Tooth

2011-12-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

Ever have a sweet tooth that it's so bad, nothing can really relieve it? ESPECIALLY when there's a specific type of sweet thing you want? That's me...right now.

Despite living in the chocolate capital, I REALLY miss having my See's Candies. Yes, See's. I've been stalking their site for the last hour by debating on what I've wanted to buy since it all looks so amazing. Sadly, my favorite type of "chocolate" is ONLY available in the stores...I can't get it from their online site, or even their catalog! What type of candy am I talking about?

Orange Bon Bons.

Their bon bon collections are some of the few types that See's actually does by hand still (shaping, dipping and decorating). Ohhh how I miss them! The insides have this amazing orange butter cream, and the shell is a hard..candy coating. *Drool*

Eric, on the other hand, loves their Butterchew chocolates (in Milk or Dark). As long as he has those, he's a happy camper. I ended up buying him (I kid you not) about six pounds of that stuff so he can nip off of it till it's time to move. He'll make it last that long since he sticks 'em in the freezer, and pulls out one or two when he has a sweet tooth.

They have these seasonal candies that are out of this world...but it makes me SO ...SO sad because you can only get them for a few weeks, then you gotta wait a whole year till they pop back up again! Boo!!

Butter cream centers covered in either milk or orange chocolate:

White chocolate mint truffles:

Egg nog truffles:

Sigh. I need some See's. Now.

Totally Necessary

2011-12-08T10:57:00.000-08:00

Gah! I wish I knew about these things when we first moved here!

I was over at a friends house a week or two ago and I noticed she had these things plugged in for her Scentsy warmers.

It's a converter for 110v to 220v that can adapt up to 1,875 watts! Sure, you're probably thinking "Ok, big deal. It's a little converter"...lemme explain... when you're used to 110v items and live in a county that runs off of 220v, it makes things a little more challenging when you're wanting to plug in YOUR stuff. That means, you have to use a transformer which can range from a "dinky" 100 watt converter ($35 a pop) to a whopping 2000 watt converter ($200+). So, imagine how costly it can get when you have SEVERAL of these around your house. Keep in mind, Europe has really...REALLY expensive electricity, so when you use these transformers, it can really make your power bill shoot through the roof.

I normally run my Scentsy warmer off of a 100 watt transformer, but it's a little unsightly since it's a black box that looks like an anchor to my pretty warmer. It's ugly and I hate it.

Now, I got a couple of these to test out around the house..and so far I'm loving them! Especially since I can take the ugly "anchors" off of my stuff! Yippy!

If you're interested in some of these lil guys (and you're stationed in Europe like me), here's where I found 'em on Amazon: Simran Converters .

Now...I need to point out that the site lists what you CAN NOT use these for (computers , lap tops, hair dryers, etc). These are best for something small that doesn't need to be plugged in all the time. So, it works perfectly for your warmer if you're wanting it plugged in long enough to make your house smell pretty.

Enjoy!

Cali Love

2011-12-08T04:26:00.000-08:00

If you know anything about me, you know that I absolutely LOVE animals. To be more precise, I love dogs.

In fact, we have five. Yup!

When I met Eric, I knew he was someone I wanted to keep in my life because he had Cali, a goofy Boxer who had the attention span of a three year old. The way someone treats their dog is the way they treat other people, and that's SO true! If you didn't know any better and he was talking to you about her, you'd think she was his child rather than his dog.

When we lived in California, I'd take her to the doggy salon so she could get pampered and dolled up:

The day we brought Izzy home from the breeder, Cali took care of her as if she were her own puppy....

....and usually stole Izzys bed.

Then when we brought Cole home, she did the same thing with him. They are INSEPARABLE! Basically, when one gets up and goes to another part of the house, the other follows.

When John was younger, he liked to wrap her up and play "Hide the Cali", then rough house with her. Yes, she's a VERY patient dog! lol

She always brings us "presents", whether it's a sock, towel, or torn up toy..she always wiggles and gives you a present right when you walk in the door followed by a nice kick to your knee cap.

Whenever we had a chance, we'd let her loose over at the beach and she'd run herself ragged FOREVER!

As we all know, time ticks on and we all age. Sadly, dogs aren't excluded from that. Cali is now teetering on twelve or thirteen years old...and you can tell the age is wearing on her. Eric still swears that she's five and not a year old. Her cataracts are making it very hard for her to see stuff that's put right in front of her face, she has (MAYBE) 4 decent teeth she can use to eat with..arthritis flares up really bad on her hips...agh..it's heart breaking. All she does now is sleep, which I can't say I blame her.

Eric is madly...madly in love with her and it completely breaks my heart because I know when "the time" comes..he's going to be a hot mess. Well, all of us are, but he's going to take it the worst.

A few months back when I noticed her health wasn't doing all that well, I came up with an idea to do "Puppy Portraits". Sounds silly, right? One of my friends here, Melissa, does professional pictures / portraits..so, I hit her up to see if she'd be willing to do some guinea pig tests for the Puppy Portraits since I love her style. With five dogs to choose from, I ended up using Izzy as the guinea pig to see how it'd work out since she's a bit of a skitzo and really spazzy when it comes to new places. Her pictures came out AWESOME!

This one is my FAVORITE!! She always burrows into her blankey, so this was fitting for her picture:

So, since things went so well, I'm gonna have pictures done of all the fur balls. For Cali, I really want to get a pretty picture of her "heart" pattern on her chest..I just wish Eric was available to get some pics done with her, ya know? I don't wanna schedule pictures on the weekend since that's "family" time for us, not to mention, I'm sure Melissa wants to spend time with her husband!

I went trolling through Amazon to see what I could find in terms of a shadow box or something, and I found this:

It's pretty cool, but runs about $35 a pop..and I didn't see any that you can hang on a wall (this one is supposed to go on a desk / table). After doing a little bit of research, I figured out that I'll be making ours myself since there's an Ikea around here that I can get some cool shadow boxes from, I found a recipe to make some "Easy Crafting Clay" so I can do molds of all the fur balls paws, and I can do all the matting myself since I have the tools for it. Plus, I want to put a mounting bracket in it so I can eventually put their doggy tag in there.

Don't look at me like I'm some sort of nut case. We just want a nice memorial thing for Cali. Besides, when we look back at the pretty pictures and what not, you'll see all of their furry faces, each of their little paw prints, and all the good times we had with our fuzz balls.

Nutella Cocoa

2011-12-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

'Tis that time of year where it's getting pretty chilly, especially at night..so, how do you fix that? Duh, hot chocolate!! What makes hot chocolate even better?

yes.

Who doesn't like Nutella? Seriously, who?

If you're a fan of Starbucks Hazelnut hot chocolate, then this will help you with your "fix" if you don't have a Starbucks near you, or don't wanna dish out almost four bucks for one. The closest location to me is about an hour away, and I don't wanna deal with the traffic, not to mention, I don't like paying for my Starbucks in Euro. Whatever you pay in the States, just slap a Euro sign in front of that...then do the conversion rate. YEAH. EXPENSIVE.

So, for this recipe, you'll need:

2 Tablespoons of Nutella

1 packet of Swiss Miss

1 cup of milk

Yeah, that's it. Yup. I swear! Keep in mind, this is for ONE cup of hot chocolate, so if you're wanting to make more for other peeps, just double, triple, etc the recipe to see fit.

Take the Swiss Miss and put it in whatever cup you're intending on using. My family likes their hot chocolates really chocolate-y, so they use a whole packet. You can use half a packet if you want and go from there to see if you wanna add more:

Then in a small sauce pan, pour in the milk and plop in the Nutella.

Whisk the Nutella into the milk till it's thoroughly blended:

Once it's to the desired temp you're wanting, go ahead and pour the milk mixture into the cup that has the Swiss Miss:

Make sure the Swiss Miss powder is blended so you don't end up with any powder balls in the midst of sipping on your fahhhbulous hazelnet hot chocolate. And, of course, add a good helping of whip cream...my whip cream amount is less then what I was aiming for, but my husband is a whip cream smuggler and barely left me with any. Grrr.

Enjoy!

Teeter Totter

2011-12-03T15:09:00.000-08:00

Where to begin...where to begin... this is an entirely different topic compared to what I normally post about.

My amazing husband and I have been together for five years, and married for a little over four. He's my best friend, my soul mate, my rock, and honestly, my everything. I couldn't imagine my life without him! Even though he's military, that's caused us be apart from one another for...hmmm..four weeks, tops. Yes, I realize I am VERY lucky & appreciate it DAILY. Any other time apart, which totals up to almost five months (EEEESH!), comes from me due to when I helped my Dad out when my Mom passed away, traveling back to the United States to visit friends / family..or when I do little trips around Europe with friends since Eric can't always get time off.

With that being said, we get asked A LOT about when we're going to have kids. It's almost like it's a staple in a marriage to have kids right away once you're married. At least, that's how it seems when you live in the military world. Everyone I know has at least two kids with another one on the way. We have my step son, John, who just turned fifteen years old. Now, I'll do the math for you: I just turned twenty nine last month while my husband is thirty four. He had John not too long after he turned nineteen, so that means I was fourteen when he was born. Imagine the looks I get when I'm out and about with him (I refer to John as my son, by the way), and people ask me if I was a teen mom. Er, no. I wasn't. I guess since John has pretty blue eyes like me, people think he's actually MINE MINE, which is fine since I do everything for him like a Mom would..he just doesn't have my DNA. I've even dealt with people calling me out by saying I'm NOT an actual Mom because I'm a step-mother, regardless of making personal sacrifices for the benefit of my (step)son. Fine..that's fine.

For a long time, I was VERY "ok" with not having any kids. I kept thinking to myself that I'm still really young and want to enjoy my life. There's still a lot of things that I want to do...and now I'm almost thirty. GASP. THIRTY. Sure, that's still "young" in terms of having a child..but come on, let's be honest..do you wanna have a young child when you're getting ready to retire? Nope. There's parts of me now thinking, "Should I have had a kid sooner? What if I can't get pregnant now? What about adoption? Would we even be able to adopt?"...which is usually followed by, "Oh my gosh, there'd be such a massive age gap between John and a baby....John's almost eighteen, why start all over again? Eric's about to retire from the Air Force, does he really want to deal with a baby during retirement?"...oh, ya know..just thinking about stuffs.

Other things start coming into play..like my weight. I've ALWAYS been overweight despite my efforts to lose it. Between watching my calories, exercising, dieting, and praying to the weight loss fairy..I've done anything and everything in order to lose weight. I realize that being over weight is definitely not a good thing when you're pregnant. My Dad is Diabetic and that's a MAJOR concern to me since I'm at risk of getting it as well. I'd shit a brick if I had gestational diabetes because I'm scared to death of needles. Not only is my weight a concern, but my back problems in addition to my severe migraine issues. My back is a problem more than anything and can become rather debilitating, especially when it comes to lifting things...so I can only imagine how bad it'd get during the third trimester, never mind picking up a newborn / baby / toddler. The migraines are life altering for me since they last for SEVERAL days at a time, even with medication. One of my major concerns would be that I couldn't take my meds while pregnant..so, I'd be in some serious agony from time to time without really getting any relief. And no, Excederine, Tylenol, Advil and Aleve don't help at all. That's like seeing a massive car wreck and asking if a little bit of touch up paint will make it better. It doesn't, just for reference.

So, we've talked about possibly having a surrogate.

In all honesty, I only know a very...very select few that I'd even trust with something like surrogacy, and even then, I couldn't even begin to ask them if they'd consider doing something like that for us. I don't like the idea of trusting someone else along the lines of carrying MY child. I guess it makes me feel helpless cause I can't control the situation...not like I could really control it if I was carrying him / her, but at least they'd be with ME. The whole cost of surrogacy is another thing.. it's expensive. Very..expensive. Just..blah.

Last but not least, there's adoption. I'm SO torn on it. On one hand, if we're wanting a child so badly..we can adopt one into a loving home. The only thing is, I'd want a baby...not a child..and I know that sounds horrible. I'd want a baby because it wouldn't have memories of how their life was before, especially if it came from a neglectful home. Then on the other hand, it makes me wonder how his / her parents were...was the mother healthy during the entire pregnancy? Are there any family medical problems that the child had inherited? Will I have to deal with an open adoption (which is something I WOULD NOT want)? Would I have to deal with the biological parenting fighting for their rights years down the road? Lots and lots of concerns pop up.

I dunno..just a lot swirls around in my head when it comes to this topic. We're on the fence about a lot of things, and we're not getting any younger. The main factor is our next base. If our next base is overseas, odds are, we won't have our own child. We don't want to deal with moving internationally with all of our dogs in addition to a very young child. Sure, I know PLENTY of military families do that..and that's fantastic for them, but I don't wanna go through that. I want to be planted in one spot where my kid can grow up with stability. If we end up moving back to the States after this base, there's a high chance we'll start possibly trying for a kid..but I'll be thirty one and I'm concerned about my ability to have not only a kid, but a healthy kid since my eggs will be older, plus, Eric will be thirty six at the time.

Ugh. Lots and lots of thoughts on my mind.

If you end up leaving a comment, please, no lectures. I'm really not up for it. It took a lot out of me to even put this out there. Thanks.

Christmas Spirit

2011-12-03T10:18:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh!! I finally got my Christmas stuff up in the house! Yes, I really slacked this year since I normally do it the day after Thanksgiving..but seeing how we had TWO Thanksgivings, and I haven't been feeling like a million bucks..it got postponed a little bit.

So, we hammered it out today since the weather was pretty cold & yucky (blah!)...and we weren't really willing to go anywhere. Once a took down all my beloved fall goodies, Eric dug out the "Christmas vaults" from the garage and we started throwing all the Christmas cheer around the house:

Our foyer..obviously this is my area:

This is Erics area because of not only the sign, but because it has the Thugnifiscent Santa triplets.

Speaking of Santa..look who I caught in my kitchen!! He knew where the cookies were stashed!
What a fatty!

Next up was the living room. Since I overran it with Fall stuff, Eric and I made a deal for me to tone down all the Christmas-y stuff on the entertainment stuff. I guess it's "distracting" or whatever. Hey, it's not everyday that it's CHRISTMAS! It's only one time of year, psssh. So. I only put some poinsettia vines as well as our animal Santa there:

Our standard stockings with the stocking holders I customized a few years ago:

OUR CHRISTMAS TREE!!! I'm actually really surprised how many little blown glass ornaments I've collected since we've been here. Where ever I travel to, I get a glass ornament for it as a reminder ( a clock for Germany, beer stein for Belgium, polish pottery bell for Poland, etc). Sadly, our tree doesn't have lights on it this year since they seemed to have burned out while in storage. As much as I'd love to go buy more, I really don't wanna since we have one Christmas in Europe left, so I don't really see the point in doing that. I mean, HOPEFULLY we'll end up staying overseas (I'd LOVE that!) but I'm not gonna count my eggs before they hatch:

Yes, that's a hedgehog. Why do I have one? Because, we have had several visits by Rosalee ever since she introduced herself back in September of last year. I've been on the hunt for a cute hedgehog ornament for a while, but all the ones I've found made 'em look like they had rabies or something. It just so happened when I was in California putzing around Macys, they had their Christmas stuff out (gotta love retail stores!!) and they had these really cute hedgies! The whole thing is blown glass, but the back has a fuzzy felt on it. I ended up buying two JUST IN CASE one happened to get smashed in the process of shipping them here. Luck was apparently on my side since neither of 'em were destroyed (YAY!) so now I have two hedgies in my european tree :)

Even my office has some Christmas spirit in it. I busted out my new Scentsy warmer that's called "Blizzard"...it's so pretty!! It's got a glossy finish to it with areas punched out in the shape of snowflakes. Then when you turn it on, you have snowflakes glowing:

I love it! Plus I have my favorite smell, "Silver Bells", in the warmer so my office smells all cozy :)

Last, but not least, my Santa chicken. Yes, a Santa chicken. There's an awesome florist store in a near by town that I love to stalk because they get these really quirky little chickens in through the various months. I've ended up getting a few different ones (a chef, angel, one with a apron, etc), so I thought it was fitting that I get "The Big Guy" to go along with the others..even though he'll only make an appearance once a year. It's the thought that counts, right?

In the midst of going through the Christmas vaults, I found some old outfits I picked up for the weenies when they were little. Sigh, I miss it when they're puppies..nice and small... Anyway, Piper has stayed pretty small, then again, she's only eight months old, but still..she's petite. To Eric's disapproval, I found the infamous Elf hat! Guess who got to sport it??

As you can see...A very happy Peep!

Yes, I'm THAT kind of dog owner. Don't judge me.

(Early) Kitchen-y Christmas

2011-11-28T10:38:00.000-08:00

I love getting mail. Well, FUN mail...not bill mail. Who likes bill mail? Not I!

While I was stateside, I managed to buy a lot of stuff which wouldn't fit in my suitcase allowance..hey, what can I say..I go for gusto. Anyway, I had to ship a lot of it home, which included some Le Creuset I managed to get my paws on from Gilroy. Given, I bought these about a week before I actually went to the Le Creuset factory, but I didn't wanna risk waiting and the factory not having my color (by chance). And, good thing I DID buy them when I had the chance since the factory store, shockingly, didn't have it. They had some items in the "Flame" color, as you see pictured in the tea kettle I got for Eric, but they didn't really have anything in the "Caribbean" blue which would've been a total buzz kill for me. Not only that, but I ended up getting these pieces for WAY cheaper than I would've got them in France..and yes, it was still cheaper even when shipping them here.

My 7.25 quart round French oven and my 2.75 quart sauce pan:

As silly as it sounds, I was stoked about the tea kettle cause the handle on top folds down so it'll allow you to put it in the pantry / cabinets.

Plus, my "Flame" peppermill came in!

In addition to getting my Le Creuset stuff in, I also mauled Amazon for some cookbooks since our "Book Mark" at the local commissary didn't happen to carry them. Buying books on the economy isn't all that easy considering everything is in Dutch...besides, we seem to live off of Amazon anyway! So, I'm really excited to try these out:

Oh, and I did an experiment. Ya see, my cute Belgian house has not so cute cubbard space, especially above the stove area. I like to cook, which involves using spices...a lot of 'em. When ever I try to pick out a specific bottle of whatever it is that I'm looking for, I usually end up with an avalanche of stuff falling all over the place..makes things REALLY frustrating. So, I cruised all around Amazon and ended up find this pretty cool spice rack:

It fits PERFECTLY (thank gawd for accurate measuring) and holds 18 bottles. Not only that, but it holds the drawer when you pull it out, so you don't have to worry about it actually falling out all the way when you're looking for that specific spice because it locks into place. Now that I know it actually fits AND works, I'll be buying a few more so I can organize the rest of my spice cabinets!

Aside from those goodies, I got my handy dandy "Candy Thermometer" that I ordered from Pampered Chef. 'Tis the season for candies, and when it comes to making a specific kind of fudge..I gotta make sure I'm hitting the right temperature for it:

Last but not least, there was a "scooper" I found while I was shopping around Carmel, California. As I plugged around this amazing store (seriously, it's like Toys R Us for cooks!), I came across this Texas size scooper. In the picture, the one on the left is the Texas sized one while the scoop on the right is Pampered Chefs largest model:

"Gluttony" sized, is how I refer to it.

SO, there ya have it! Merry EARLY Christmas to meeeee!!!! YIPPPPPYYYY!!!

Lazy Sunday

2011-11-27T06:58:00.000-08:00

Well, it's definitely a chilly Sunday. When it's this chilly (and windy) I don't really have desire to go anywhere or really do anything...well, anything super productive, that is. Of course I logged into Pinterest and started to poke around to see what I could find in terms of recipes. Then, I found this:

It's called "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies".....OMG.

Must. Make. NOW.

So, I instantly repinned it then went onto the actual hosting site where the recipe is, which is called Brown Eyed Baker. The gal has a slew of drool worthy recipes, but my main focus was the cookie dough brownies. I mean, come on, you know you've eaten a fair share of cookie dough in your life at one point or another.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies

Yield: 32 brownies

Prep Time: 40 minutes | Bake Time: 25 minutes

For the Brownie:

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups light brown sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour

For the Cookie Dough:

¾ cup unsalted butter
¾ cup light brown sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons whole milk
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups mini chocolate chips

1. Prepare the Brownies: Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line a 9×13-inch pan with foil, with enough to hang over all four sides. Butter the foil. In a medium glass bowl, melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30-second increments, stirring after each, until melted and smooth. Set aside to cool slightly. In a large mixing bowl, mix the butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract, scraping the bowl as needed. Mix in the melted chocolate until combined. Reduce the speed to low, add the flour and mix just until combined (don’t over-mix). Spread the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake 25 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool completely.

2. Prepare the Cookie Dough: In a medium bowl, use an electric mixer on medium speed to combine the butter and both sugars. Add the milk and vanilla and mix until combined. Reduce the speed to low and mix in the flour just until combined. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the chocolate chips.

3. Spread the cookie dough over the cooled brownies. Refrigerate until the dough is firm, about an hour. Use a sharp knife or a pizza cutter (my favorite way to slice brownies!) to cut the brownies. Store the brownies in an airtight container at cool room temperature or in the refrigerator.

It looks and smells AWESOME! Although, after making it..I wasn't hungry anymore. Does that happen to you? The entire time you're cooking, you're hungry...then you're not hungry once the food is ready. Kind of annoying. I'm sure we'll test it out later this evening, though :)

Pocket Peeper

2011-11-26T14:37:00.000-08:00

Alrighty...I've had Piper for...hmmm.... just a smidge over two months now. This little fluff ball is pretty spoiled, not even gonna lie. She's pretty traveled since I take her everywhere with me due to her very social personality; she's never barked at someone while we've been out & about and she enjoys meeting other dogs where ever we go. Honest to gawd, she's this little walking ball of sunshine and I get a lot of compliments on her.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I now have "Steve" which is my beloved iMac that I've been trying to get the hang of using. For years, I've been a PC user, so it's taking some time and effort on my part to figure out how to use him correctly and to unlock all of his awesome potential. With the being said, Piper is not digging the lack of attention. Don't get me wrong, she gets fed / watered / played with and what not..but she REALLY likes being a lap dog. I can't say I blame her since I am pretty squishy and I'm always running really warm..she's not a fan of the cold weather here so she practically crawls under my skin to stay warm.

Well, I was working on Steve this evening due to some very time consuming work I was doing to the support board that I own / run and "Peeper" Piper pops in wanting to sit on my lap. It wasn't the time for snuggles. I'd put her down on the floor with a doggy bed and she just wasn't havin' it. Ok, this is totally what I deserve for spoiling her...I'm working on it. So, I looked around to figure out where I could stick her since she basically wanted to be near me, but warm..and *DING*...I figured it out:

I opened up one of the drawers in my desk and stuck a super fluffy towel in it so it was like a make-shift beddy for her. The white thing you see along the wall is a heater, so not only did she get closer to me, but she was able to stay toasty as well :) And, as you can see, she even wears a little sweater to fight off some of the chill. The poor little thing was used to some gorgeous California weather (in the 70's), then comes here and it's been in the mid 40's, lol. Sucka!

So, there ya have it. Now I have a little "pop out" pocket beddy for the Peeper whenever she wants to hang out with me in my office. Spoiled dog.

T-Day 2.0

2011-11-26T14:04:00.000-08:00

For the last three Thanksgivings since we've been overseas, we've actually spent them at a friends house with practically half the base because she makes UH-mazing food! It's all Southern style, that's all I gotta say. But, Eric and I made a deal that I'll still make "Thanksgiving" the following day so we'll have our own stockade of Thanksgiving goodies to live off of for the next however many days. Mainly, so we can back some pretty bitchin' "T-Day" sandwiches. Hence, T-Day 2.0

I made the usual spread which consisted of a turkey (this year it was almost eighteen pounds) as well as "gluttony" potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, cranberries, and baked rolls. Then for dessert, I made a Pumpkin Trifle since I'm not all that fabulous at making pumpkin pie. AND, I actually got to bust out some of my pretty table settings and plates since we had a couple over for dinner. Since we've been over here, it's kinda sad that we don't have events at our house due to limited space.

Here's my turkey...it's "rub" consisted of thyme, sage, garlic, and garlic olive oil. It may look a little shiesty cause of the thyme, but it came out SO good! The turkey was practically falling apart :)

My "gluttony" potatoes consist of red potatoes, mushrooms, green onions, bacon, garlic, pepper and butter. YES, it's calorie friendly! In fact, you'll lose weight when you eat 'em..'scouts honor.

I made a green bean casserole as well, but I didn't manage to get a picture of it since our guests arrived and we were all pretty hungry at that point. SO, I was able to get a quick pic of our mini T-Day. Compared to how we normally do Thanksgiving (when we're stateside), this feel so incredibly dinky cause we have such a small kitchen / dining room to work with. When we pulled out both leafs on the table, it made it so you couldn't get to the other side of the room unless you were willing to crawl under it.

Makes me a little sad because I'm used to doing larger dinners when I'm back home with the rest of the clan. When we did it in California, the main table in the dining room would be used in addition to a secondary table in another room to fit everyone.

I guess you can say that's one of the few things I miss about being in the States. Not only would I have all my loved ones available to cook for, but I have more room to work with when it comes to a kitchen and dining room!!

"Steve"

2011-11-23T08:41:00.000-08:00

For the last..oh I dunno... several months...I've been really wanting a Mac, but I've REALLY been starting to voice it within the last three months. Over the years, I've been a faithful PC owner in which I've ignored some of their troubling issues. Which issues, you ask? Mainly when I have to deal with daily updates / downloads..when Internet Explorer / Firefox / Chrome (as of late) like to freeze up my applications (again, daily)..it gets rather frustrating. I guess you can say the icing on the cake was when Eric helped me pick up a Toshiba laptop a few months ago (here's that post).. "hate" isn't a strong enough word to describe how I feel about that thing. Anyway, onward..

Due to the joy of living overseas, I don't want to deal with paying for an iMac via euro since it'd be PAINFULLY more expensive than if I bought it online and had to ship it here. So, I went through my regular source for shopping, which is good ole' reliable AAFES. If you know me OFF of the internet, you heard about the lovely experience I've had with them over the past two weeks...so I won't need to go into detail about the amount of frustration they caused. All I gotta say is...lots of persistence finally paid off because I now have Steve:

Ahhhhh, I'm so inlove! I was so torn between getting the 21.5 inch monitor and the 27 inch..after debating long and hard, I went with the 21.5 inch screen (and I'm SO glad I did) because I have a pretty limited amount of space on my desk. The 21.5 inch fits on my desk PERFECTLY without having to fiddle with the height setting or possibly having to raise the top hutch to accommodate the larger screen. Whew! Plus, I got the model with the 1 TB hard drive, so I won't have to worry about storage space for all my pictures..at least for a while. Since I'm so used to moving all of my files over to a passport drive, I think I'll just keep with that routine for the sake of ..well, routine.

When you buy the iMac directly from Apple, they give you the choice of whether you want the wireless keyboard or wired, as well as a mouse or wireless Magic Trackpad. Since I bought mine through a retailer here, I automatically got the wireless keyboard as well as a mouse. Call me a fuddy duddy, or someone who is used to working with numbers, but I opted to buy the 10-key keyboard because I CAN'T stand to use the numbers on the top of a regular keyboard. When I use the 10-key, I just fly with my numeral inputs and roll onto whatever else I'm typing out.

I also opted to get the Magic Trackpad which replaces the standard looking "mouse" that a usual desktop has. This thing is SO cool! It responds to your finger movements and allows you to scroll like normal, flip through pages, zoom, rotate things while editing, etc. I already love that 10x better than a mouse :)

I love love love love love my new toy! Ahhhh!! I gotta remember to take some breaks and interact with my family cause it's so cool to fiddle with all the new options this thing has. Not to mention, it's so preeettty!!! When we finished setting it up last night, Eric gave me a kiss on the head and told me, "Love you very much. I'll see ya in a few weeks", lol. Poor guy knows I'm going to be sucked into this thing like a black hole till I get the hang of it! I really can't wait to figure out how to use it's photo editor program!! EEEEEE!!!

Oh..and Piper is displeased with the amount of attention "Steve" has received since he's been here.

Brat.

P is for...

2011-11-21T04:15:00.000-08:00

...AND procrastination. Oh my gosh..how many hours of my life have I lost on that site? WAY too many, that's for sure! But, it's SO addicting! Gah! If you don't know what Pinterest is, lemme lay it out for ya:

It's basically a virtual cork board so you can "pin" whatever ideas / things you like. So, instead of cutting out a million little pieces of paper from magazines and keeping them in a folder of "Things I like"..or dog earring tons of magazines to keep hanging around the house..this site makes it WORLDS easier. I used to add a lot of "Favorites" to my search engine tab whenever I found something I liked so I could check it out later, but since my laptop is awesome (sense the sarcasm?), it kept wiping out all of my information. It got old pretty fast.

This site is pretty awesome! Once you make your account, you can start adding friends via your personal email or through your Facebook connections..you'd be amazed by how many people you know on the site! When you're all set up and ready to roll, you can actually search for stuff by subject. So, whether you're looking for home decor inspirations, art, pets, photography ideas...you'll find SOMETHING on there:

Plus, you can have multiple "cork boards" so you can organize all the things you end up finding. At this point, I have thirteen different cork boards, and I'm pretty sure I'll end up making several more as I plug along the site:

Here's the best part: It's not just pretty pictures. The majority of the pictures you find will have a connecting link to it so it'll show you how to do whatever it is that you liked enough in the first place to "Repin" to your board. Example: Say you're cruising around on my board for "Foooood" and you happen to like the picture of "Crockpot Cream Cheese Chicken Chili"

When you click on the picture, it'll bring you to the next page where it shows the actual thing and a description of it. On the top right corner, a link should be listed which shows where the picture originally came from..if you click on that, it'll take you to where you can find the full recipe. Awesome, right?

Like I said, I've lost many...many hours on this site, but it's also helped me expand my ideas when it comes to what I wanna do in terms of DIY stuff, new recipes, things I want whenever we stop moving around, etc. Just be warned: it's HIGHLY addictive!!

Winter Cleaning

2011-11-20T14:10:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "There's no place like home". That's what I kept in mind while I was in California for two months. Don't get me wrong, I loved visiting all of my friends and family there, but I really missed being in Belgium and in MY house. My bed, my office, my kitchen. my stuff...mine mine mine. I think that because I was gone for a while, I was able to assess what I want to keep / sell / toss considering my Belgian house is pretty tiny...and we have A LOT of stuff. Given, we've found some pretty awesome goodies since we've been overseas, but we also dragged a lot of stuff with us over here that is pretty useless or we'll never use. Once I got back here, I truly realized how much we have in terms of knick knacks and random bobbles that can find homes where they'll be appreciated more.

With that being said, I'm falling in line with what Stefanie has started to do, which is getting my house a little more organized. Pretty much, write out a list of places in your home that are repeat offenders when it comes to getting rather cluttered:

"Junk drawer"

Spice cabinets

Pantry

Kitchen "tools" drawer

Pots & pans area

Stoneware racks

Under the sink

Refrigerator / Freezer

Storage shelves

Cabinets

Laundry soap storage space

Under the sink

Medicine cabinet

First-Aid supplies

Old towels

Makeup bags and drawers

Desk top

Drawers

Filing system

Junk drawers

Storage cubbies (I have a ton of them in my house)

Pampered Chef inventory

Tastefully Simple inventory

Scentsy over load (I have WAY too many waxes & warmers)

Scrapbook supplies

Drawer of random electronic knick knacks

Entertainment center (inside / outside)

Mini entertainment area

Under all of the furniture

DVD / video game storage

Drawers in the coffee table

Blanket trunk

Couch (you'd be shocked with what you find in those things!!)

Under the bed

Nightstands (two)

Closet; mine & Erics (shoes/tops/jackets)

Dressers; mine & Erics (tops/pants)

I've already made a pretty good dent in the kitchen and I feel LOADS better! Even though it's not visible to someone right when they walk in, I feel the difference and that's all that matters, lol. This week is gonna be where I really hammer down and start purging lots of junk because my house is making me feel rather claustrophobic...yes, really! Lots of boxes, random things just hanging out..so, if it doesn't have a spot or we haven't used it in a year, it's going "bye bye" :)

My sickness....has returned....

2011-11-18T10:05:00.000-08:00

Ahhhhh...this that time of year when the Christmas markets around Europe return! When the Christmas markets pop up, that means I'm able to get some pretty bitchin' blown glass ornaments for my tree. Today was the opening day for Aachens WeihnachtsMarkt (here's posts from the FIRST and SECOND time I've attended) and it was everything I was expecting! Although, it seems like they spread out the vendors more than last year, but the majority of the same people I bought from were still there. In fact, a lady I bought my Jim Shore animal Christmas statue from two years ago (and last year) remembered me! How cool is that? I guess I leave a lasting impression? :)

Anyway, I made a straight shot for my favorite vendor, Inge's Christmas Heirlooms, who sells blown glass ornaments:

I have a thing about collecting glass ornaments for our tree of various places we've visited, or things that remind me of important events...so at this point, the Christmas tree looks like a massive passport stamp cause it's got stuff from all over on it. Last year, I bought what I considered "Big Ben", but when I showed it to Eric, he said it looked like the bell tower in our town. Now every time I look at it, I don't think of our trip to London...I think of my town center, lol. If only I could find a blown glass pear, then I'd be a happy camper! My town is "Peer" but it's pronounced like "Pear"..and our town mascot is a dude hugging a pear, lol. It seems impossible to find one as a glass ornament!!!

Since Eric and I went to the market together today, I was able to get his opinion on which ornaments to pick up since I didn't wanna pick out something (again) and get my happy bubble popped. Here's what we ended up getting:

There is NO freaking way this can get mistaken for something in my town! It's Santa dressed up as a Royal Guard standing next to Big Ben! I was torn between this or an iconic red phone booth, but this pleased Eric since it has two alarmingly obvious things that symbolize London!

We've been doing quite a bit of traveling this year, so I thought it was father fitting to get some luggage ornaments. The white one is mine while the red is Erics:

Of course, since we have out newest fur baby addition to the family, I wanted to add another puppy to the mix for the tree:

I meant to get one of these last year, but by the time I made it back up to the market to snag one, they were sold out :( It's a Lebkuchen cookie (kinda like gingerbread) that says "For You" ..makes me think of my Grandma cause she got them for me when I was little :) There was one we kept in our house for YEARS that said " Ich liebe dich", which means "I love you".

And this...is my FAVORITE this year!! When I saw it, I said "OH MY GOD. This is coming home with me!" ...totally PERFECT since I love taking pictures and I really wanna hone my skills! I showed it to Eric and he said the same thing. How cool is this??? And it was VERY reasonably priced compared to some of the simpler ornaments they had.

I'm still on a mission to find an Eiffel Tower as well as an Edelweiss to add to my collection, although for some reason, they're really hard to find! Given, there's eBay and what not..but some of the people on there are asking ridiculous prices for some of those things! Oh well, I have several more weeks of various Christmas markets to explore, so, fingers crossed!!

Tagine Test Drive

2011-11-16T11:58:00.000-08:00

As you read in my last post, I picked up a Tagine from Le Creuset and I was really itchin' to try it out! So, I scoured the internet earlier today and figured out what kinda recipes I wanted to try, wrote down all the ingredients and made my way over to the store. Here's the recipe I found:

3 medium carrots, peeled and cored (if core is bitter) and sliced in half lengthwise
6 chicken thighs, in 1 inch pieces
1 large peeled potato, cut in 1 cm thick rounds
1 large green bell pepper, cut in chunks
1 medium red onion, cut in 1 cm thick rounds
2 medium tomatoes, cut in 1 cm thick rounds
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 tsps ground ginger
?? tsp ground pepper
2 tsps paprika
Dash of yellow food colorant powder, or a few strands crushed saffron

cube or 1 tsp chicken bouillon powder
1-2 tsp salt (to taste)
Handful of pitted green olives
6 -8 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup of water

Splash 4 tbsp of oil on the bottom of the Tagine. Layer your ingredients evenly in the Tagine, starting with carrots, then going in order they are written. The carrots must be on the bottom, and the chicken pieces should be on top of the carrots, not touching the bottom of the Tagine (When the carrots start to burn, they add a delicious flavor and protect the rest of the ingredients, but if anything else burns, that's not going to taste very good.) When you get to the spices and salt, sprinkle them evenly over the vegetables. Spread your olives on top, then drizzle the olive oil allover. If water is needed, add it now. Close your Tagine and cook until your vegetables are tender, on a very low heat. This may take up to an hour andmake sure you have liquid in the Tagine or it will burn. On the other hand, watch out for too much liquid or it will bubble over.Once it's cooked, turn off the heat and drizzle the rest of your olive oil on top. Let the tagine rest for about 10 minutes to cool off, and enjoy!

Of all the spices, I've never worked with Saffron, which is a VERY potent and widely used in European, Arab, South and Central Asian, Persian, and Turkish cuisines. A little goes a LONG way! So, I was pretty nervous to use it since it's really unfamiliar to me...not to mention, EXPENSIVE! No joke, I paid $10 for a few GRAMS of it. I definitely didn't want to screw this meal up! Some things I altered were the olives..the commissary didn't have any plain green olives that were pitted, so I picked up some that had jalapenos in them (a lil spice isn't a bad thing), and instead of using powdered ginger, I used fresh minced stuff that's from Gilroy, CA (twenty five minutes from my home town). Oh, and I didn't have chicken readily available without having to defrost it like crazy, so I used a schwank roast that was already available to be used :)

So, I set to the task of chopping everything up like usual...once all the veggies and meat were ready to put in the Tagine, I layered 'em up as the recipe stated. To be honest, I was a little worried about how it looked like I was stacking and sticking stuff on top of one another...so it felt like parts of the food weren't going to get cooked properly. Just what I need..give my family some kind of food poisoning when I was trying to convince them to "broaden their horizons" when it came to tasting new things, lol. Once I finished stacking and adding the seasoning, I put the lid on and walk away.

Here's the before:

Anddddd after:

I was honestly SHOCKED as to how much the liquid level raised and everything was so tender within an hour of cooking! The stove top was set on low! This thing is basically a super crock-pot! So, I was pleasantly surprised and Eric was even impressed with how everything turned out. It tasted FANTASTIC! The seasonings and veggies melted together perfectly and the sauce didn't taste like some watered down broth. When we were ready to dig in, we had some white rice available and piled some of this on top..Uh-mazing! I'm in love with this thing and look forward to using it a lot more :) Definitely a worth while investment since my husband AND son were raving about the recipe and how everything came out!

Date Day @ Le Creuset

2011-11-15T12:44:00.000-08:00

It's pretty humbling to think that this time last week, I was still relaxing in California..and now here I am in Belgium and already venturing around again. Honestly, I definitely appreciate that I'm even able to do this!

My amazing husband managed to take some well deserved time off when I came back, so we're wanting to take advantage of it! Later this month, I'll be heading to the Le Creuset factory outlet store over in France with a group of gals since it'd be pretty cool to get it straight from them verses a retail store, if that makes any sense. Well, Eric was actually really interested in going, but not with a group of women since he'd be the only guy... and he's not one for being in a hen house, lol. We were planning on going over to Chièvres, which isn't too far from the border of France, so we figured we'd go the extra hour and a half distance to actually go into that country to check out Le Creuset. I see it as not only spending time with Eric, but it's like I'm doing "intel" for the other gals who are going on the trip later this month in terms of finding out pricing, what's available in the shop, ect. And...I'll be able to get familiar with the area so when I do the drive again, I won't get so lost :) See? Win win.

The Le Creuset is located in Fresnoy-le-Grand, France, which has a pretty massive factory. There are rumblings that a second factory for the company is being built per some Le Creuset employees I've talked to during my purchasing adventures.

Photo provided via Le Creuset

In case you don't what Le Creuset is..let me explain. They make some of the most fantastic cast iron cookware, ever, and that's what they're known for. The company was founded in 1925 (86 years ago!!) and is still going strong. My grandmother actually has a piece of theirs which she got in 1947 and it still works AND looks amazing! Now, I'm psychotic about having nice cookware in my kitchen (Hi. I'm Pampered Chef consultant and my kitchen is PIMPED out)...so as time as rolled on, I've collected a few little pieces here and there from Le Creuset. Eric is a loving and supportive husband, so when I told him that I wanted to get a few Le Creuset pieces, he didn't bother asking why since he knew I had already done all the research...and basically that I was a woman on a mission till I got what I was looking for.

So, we made our way over to France bright and early since I figured out the store was open for a few hours in the morning, closed for lunch, then re-opens back in the afternoon. It takes just a wee bit over three hours to get there and the first hour and a half was spent in Brussels traffic (ick). Once we got past there, it was pretty smooth sailing for most of the remainder of the drive:

The sites along the way were pretty cool! We drove through numerous little French villages ....we even passed by several bunkers that looked like they lived through some history. There were even some really interesting churches along the way, but we didn't have a chance to stop since the French seem to enjoy drafting our Xterra and there really wasn't anywhere we could pull off to in order to allow people to pass. Le sigh.

Once we found the outlet, I was kinda surprised by how small it was. I mean.. I knew in the back of my mind that it was small, but not as small as it actually is considering it's RIGHT next to the factory.

For those interested in visiting the Le Creuset Outlet here is the address & hours as of today's date:

Rue Olivier Deguise, 02230 Fresnoy-Le-Grand, France.

Tel 03.23.06.22.45

Hours: Closed Monday & Sunday. Tuesday-Saturday 10-12:30 & 2:15-6:30

As long as you're walking in without a specific color / particular thing in mind...you'll be perfectly fine in there. The majority of the colors they had available in their cast iron stuff was black, red, blue, flame, a few pieces of yellow as well as eggplant here and there.

When you first walk in, they have a table on the left that shows off what they currently have a promotion for. This month, if you buy any of the "Ocean Blue" colored items, they'll take 20% off of it for ya. I actually thought of one of my friends since this is TOTALLY a color she'd go for. In fact, I think this is one of the colors she picked in our pottery class to glaze the goodies she had made.

One aisle has all the main cast iron goodies like oval and circular dutch ovens, frying pans, doufeu's, woks, etc.

They also carry silicone pans for muffins, cakes, loafs, even muffin liners and colanders!

Throughout the store (but mainly in the very back) they have a collection of stoneware to pick from. Like I said, if you don't have a particular color in mind...that will totally work in your favor. The color varieties ranged from off white, to eggplant, red, flame, black and a mossy green color. It just really depends on what they have available at the time when you go.

In the other aisle, you can check out various tea kettles as well as mini little stoneware pieces you can use for little desserts, etc. Lots of colors available in those!

Tagines!

Aside from all the standard cookware stuff, they also have kitchen tools available like wine accessories, silicone spreaders, whisks, trivets, even little magnets for your fridge that look like baby cast iron dutch ovens.

While walking around and figuring out what I wanted, I found a price sheet that they had readily available for people to use rather than to lift up each individual piece to check the price on the bottom. Tell ya what, that thing was a blessing cause after lifting the fourth or fifth piece of cash iron, it gets a little tiring. Here's the price sheet I'm talking about.. the light orange is the price of the unit in the store, the white part is what the piece NORMALLY goes for, and the dark orange tells you how much you save. (If you click on the picture, it'll enlarge so you can see the prices better)

Once we got our fill from looking around and debating, we ended up getting a 2 quart.Tagine in "Flame". If you don't know what a Tagine is, here ya go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajine Also, here's a little video on how to use one:

I've been pretty interested in getting one for a while since I'm wanting to expand my cooking arsenal with different types of recipes aside from all the usual stuff I made. Eric was even open to trying new things, so hell, why not get a Tagine :) We both agreed on "Flame" since Dune (a bone white color) was a little boring, and the Caribbean Blue isn't available in the size we wanted. The gal that helped me was FANTASTIC! When we told her what we were wanting, she went in the back and pulled out a box since all the big items are pretty much displays...she pulled the Tagine out and checked it for dings, imperfections and whatever else could possibly be wrong, showed it to us them boxed it back up for us to take home :)

I love how large it is! The bottom holds up to 2 quarts of whatever deliciousness you wanna cook, and as you can see, it's pretty deep so you don't have to worry about it overflowing onto your stove top.

The top is made of stoneware while the bottom is cast iron..all together, it weighs around 7lbs.

Price wise.....errrrrmmmm... it's not all that much cheaper than what you can get in a regular retail store, at least in the US. When I was in the Le Creuset outlet in Gilroy, I manged to get my 7.75 quart round dutch oven for $115 (originally $280), a sauce pan for $75 (originally $170) and an awesome pepper grinder for $20 (originally $60). When I did the conversion rate for what I paid for my Tagine from the factory, which was 119€, it comes out to $160.65...about a $15 savings compared to what the going rate is online. Then, add in the cost of gas round trip (which is 80€)...it kinda took away the feeling of "saving on the price" by getting it directly from the store in France verses getting it on Amazon (which offers free shipping). I suppose it just depends on what you're really looking for since you can get better savings on certain items, but, it still ends up being pricier than anticipated and how much you really wanna dig.

Overall, it was a beautiful drive around France in the process of finding this store..it was something Eric and I got to do together in addition to helping me figure out how to get there for the next time I'll be driving some ladies to the store. Now I just gotta find some cookbooks for Tagines as well as other cast iron dutch ovens...'tis the season for hearty soups!! :D

Stefanie Elizabeth Photography

2011-11-12T01:16:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it, I talked about a photoshoot (here), that Stefanie was gonna come up and do for me since I was really wanting to get some "Father & Daughter" style pictures done with my Dad. Well, she came this weekend and I was SO grateful , especially since I'm flying home in a few days!!

If you ever look up pictures of Monterey, 90% of the time...you'll see Cypress trees. Hell, even the seal for Monterey County has a Cypress tree on it! So, it's not really a shocker that Dad and I wanted to have Cypress trees in our pictures since we both really love the coastline as well as the local trees:

There's a pendant that I'm almost always wearing that's a Cypress tree. Can you tell I'm rather fond of this place? Although, half the time people think it's a Bonsai tree...lol

We went over to 17 Mile Drive, which is a VERY famous part of Monterey / Pacific Grove / Carmel here in gorgeous California. Think in terms of an amazing coastline, breath taking landscapes, Cypress trees growing on cliffs...and bazillion dollar mansions! Boy, they made me feel reallllly poor....but at least we were able to enjoy some fantastic sights while getting our pictures done!

The Lone Cypress behind Dad:

Stef thought this would be a great shot while we were relaxing at Johnny Rocket's in Cannery Row:

Tell ya what...walking on rocks in heels should be a right of passage for some people.

Overall, I'm VERY happy with how the pictures turned out. Although, after seeing myself...totally makes me wanna get back in the gym, lol. Stefanie did a fantastic job with the shoot and made it very VERY enjoyable for my Dad and I. So, if you live in the Santa Maria (California) area..definitely look her up!

Curlformers 2.0

2011-11-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

"I busted out my awesomeCurlformers since I KNEW Stef was gonna fall inlove with them. I've attempted several times to do them in my hair, but I'm "girly challenged" and have a hell of a time when it comes to putting them in...sooo I got some practice in with Stefs hair :)

Instead of me attempting to remotely explain (correctly) how to use these, here's a video by the actual company:

I spent about an hour putting them in Stefs hair since hers is SO thick (lucky!)...this is how they turned out the next morning since she left 'em in all night long:

Awesome, right??

I ended up using the curlers on my hair this morning, but the results didn't come out as awesome as Stefs. Oh well, at least I got some volume! lol

After:

Ok, so I did that blog entry on the 15th of October. I actually ended up giving Stefanie that set of Curlformers because she REALLY loved 'em. Think in terms of her hugging them all. Yeah. LOVE. Anyway, since my hair is so thin, I figured I should try to switch over to "Long & Extra Wide" Curlformers to try to make thicker curls :

In case you're confused as to how different my " Long and Extra Wide" curlers are compared to the "Extra Long & Wide"...here's a fabulous example to show the various sizes:

Short and Narrow (blue and green)

Long and Extra Wide (yellow and magenta)

Long and Narrow (blue and green)

Extra Long and Wide (pink and orange)

Mine are the yellow and magenta color :)

So, I did the whole song and dance with putting all the curlers in my hair before I went to bed. I'm REALLY not used to doing this sort of thing, especially on my own..so it was definitely a "learn as you go" type of experience:

Here's how it looks from side to side:

When I walked around the house with them on, I was called all kinds of names...like "Rasta Erika" or even "Coolio"...I'm pretty sure my Dad was getting a massive kick outta them! Truth be told, they're REALLY not comfortable to sleep in! They feel like a stiff seat belt material, so it was hard to find a way where I could drift of to sleepy land without them pulling my hair really bad. Despite all my effort to sleep well..it just wasn't possible so I got up at 3am to take 'em out, but this is how my hair looked after having the Curlformers in for seven hours:

Not too shabby, hunh? Thicker curls and it added more volume to my hair, which is desperately needed! Yes, I have some crazy roots showing, but I managed to get my hair touched up yesterday..but I took these pics a few days earlier :) PS: Apologies for the less than enthusiastic picture, lol. I was REALLY tired due to the lack of sleep / tossing & turning all night.

All in all, these are very cool curlers! From now on, I think I'll put 'em in after a shower then I'll just lightly blow dry them into shape rather than waiting however long it takes hair to dry naturally (which is forever with me).

Illegitimis Non Carborundum

Ask & You Shall Receive!

Want Want Want...

Chicken Ticky Tava

Corn Mac

FLUFFY!!!!

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Brussels Impact!

Antiquers Anonymous

Antique-y Decor

Bavarian Garlic Soup!

Phoning in this post..

Project: Girly

Photo Fun!

*THE* Chair

*2011*

Couponing...Bah Humbug!

Wall Time

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♪ Music Junky ♪

Lush ♥

Cookie Exchange Mayhem

Third Belgian Winter

Fairy Tale Road Trip

Sweet Tooth

Totally Necessary

Cali Love

*Nutella Cocoa*

Teeter Totter

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T-Day 2.0

"Steve"

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Winter Cleaning

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Tagine Test Drive

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Stefanie Elizabeth Photography

Curlformers 2.0

THE Chair

2011

Nutella Cocoa