Cake Batter Cookies

These are now my favorite cookie to make... I have a delicious recipe from my mother for the worlds best chocolate chip cookies, and they still are the best tasting. However, I found the cake batter cookies on Pinterest and had to try them. They can be made so quickly and are so delicious!

The only ingredients are a box cake mix, 2 eggs, baking powder and vegetable oil. I pretend like there's no sugar since I didn't actually put it in there myself... I won't even look on the cake mix box.

I used yellow cake mix and it was good but not my favorite (don't get me wrong, I still ate them all). Next I am going to try vanilla and strawberry. These things are heavenly and I will be making them for my birthday! (Happy June!)

Brady Spruce Up

My mom and I decided we needed to spruce up our space in Brady. We made some decorations to hang in front of the ugly curtains and added some smaller little items. I painted a couple children's brooms, we both did some fabric flowers (mine were pins, moms were magnents), and mom added another chair. I think we easily have the cutest little space in Brady, Tx! 

I added a flower pin to a couple of the necklaces I had made the week before, super cute!

I've seen photographers take pictures similar to this in a mirror, I am not a photographer but wanted to try it :) Go Rangers!

Chicken Salad

I like chicken salad sandwiches but have only made them the way I like it once. I have no idea what I did that made it good and every time I try to recreate it, it's no good. The ingredients that I am sure of are...

Hard-boiled. I made 3 and then remembered that Jade doesn't like the egg in it so I ate the 3rd one for a pre- chicken salad snack

 The part that I mess up every time is the dressing/mayonnaise/miracle whip... I don't know what to use. Hughes family if you'll think back with me to Ruidoso trip 2010. I made a huge thing of it and it was disgusting, I used miracle whip and I used too much. This time I tried the real mayonnaise.

It's not important but this is what it looked like...

Jade said it was great. Will even ate it (he thought it was a dinosaur salad sandwich). I thought it was a lot closer to perfect but still tasted salty, but I don't know where the salty taste would have come from. Oh well, maybe next time I'll try a different brand of mayo.

Just FYI, for a fancier version of the chicken salad sandwich, add little pecan bits and green apples.

Prairie Dogs, Pink Chairs and Piles of Fabric

We used to be frequenters of the Prairie Dog Town at San Angelo State park. We would feed them the baby carrots that didn't get eaten at our house and therefore dried out. Since the high has been in the triple digits every day we haven't made it out there. This week the boys and I hit our "2nd week of summer" itch and absolutely had to get out of the house. So we put sunscreen on the blonde boy and ventured out!

 The prairie dogs also eat M&M's but they never made it from the house to the park. They very rarely come out of their little holes but this time they did. Poor things must have been starving!

Eating our carrots!

 

This ones a baby.

This is one of my better pictures, I just had to share (sarcasm)

Sweet boys and the cutest park ranger I've ever seen!

In the midst of the "2nd week of summer" itch we made a quick trip to the in-laws house and because I have the best FIL (father in law) in the world, the boys stayed there to play and I came home to be productive. One of the small joys I miss out on is getting to paint in the middle of the house and not have to worry about if it's nap time or if someone is going to drag pink paint through the house. So this was the one project that got started and finished in the same day!

My dining table has 5 chairs... 3 that match and 2 that don't. The 3 that match are black, of the 2 that don't match, one is white, the other is a toddler sized chair that Max stands in to eat. The white one got a make over. Before...

After....

I have dubbed it the "queen" chair and behind it is Will wrestling a catfish. I think he won!

I mentioned in my last post that I am putting some of my necklaces in a cute little shop in Brady. Mom and I drove there yesterday and set up my cute little display! I love how colorful it is!

And this is a random pile of fabric in my living room floor after my MIL (mother in law) and I picked out fabric for 4 more necklaces for me to make.

This picture just made me happy... I love fabric! 

Funsys

 A couple fun projects I did yesterday I wanted to share. I showed you the play garden that is a big hit, well yesterday Will (and I) painted some fun cans to use for potting plants...

I am putting a clear coat of poly urethane on them so that the paint does not chip off while it sits outside in the sun/rain/mud/dirt. Can you guess which can I painted? :)

I also am going to try to sell some of the fabric necklaces I make in a store in Brady where my mom has some of her furniture that she paints. I needed to figure out some kind of price tag to put on them so I ventured to Hobby Lobby and this is what I ended up with.

I made a bunting thing to put above the window in my front living area and I totally love it!

And made the recipe for cookie cutter cookies, didn't cut them but drizzled vanilla icing over them. They're so good we had to give them away to get them out of the house.

Planty Planterson

Monday was lovely... We ran errands, fun errands. I bought plants, I worked in my classroom and actually made some progress and played with the boys.

One of our errands was Lowes, Jade had to look at boring things so I went to the garden area and promised not to get carried away, and I tried real hard not to. I usually get a couple plants to add to my pots but I got some for inside this time, I'm real excited!

This little guy is adorable, stands about 5 inches tall. I have nothing to put it in,  I just know I'll find something perfect.



My house is pretty old and ghetto so I try my best to make it look like a cottage and one of my favorite things is to fill the front stoop with flowers and plants. I had some already but added yesterday. I'm probably half way to full...

On Pinterest I saw an awesome idea for a kids play garden, a space where they can plant their own plants, make it look however they want and more importantly for my boys, play in the dirt and with bugs. We did one of these for the boys yesterday, it's so much fun!

On a completely separate note I forgot to share one of my favorite projects I did a couple weeks ago. It's a heart map, all you do is get an old map (I went to TXDOT and got about 4 for free) Cut out a heart around a place that is special to you, I chose Port Aransas, one of my favorite vacation spots. I put an old piece of burlap for the background and put it in an old frame I already had and tada...

As soon as I get a New Mexico map I'm going to make one with Ruidoso, our honeymoon spot.

And as I'm typing this morning this is Max's outfit of choice, I think it's absolutely adorable

Success!

This week I tried some new recipes and it turned out wonderful! The first was Bacon Avacado Grilled Cheese Sandwich. The recipe called for apple but I left that out, didn't sound too good to me. On Jades sandwich I used pepper-jack cheese and on mine I used american cheese. They were both wonderful!

I also made some oven baked Parmesan Seasoned Fries. I took the before picture and forgot to take the after picture :) I have been doing that a lot.

They tasted yummy and I will be making them again. This was an excellent meal.

Another night I made Black Bean Enchilada Bake. While I was baking it I had a suspision that it was going to be great so I had to invite some friends over to share it! The taste was really good, I thought it was a little dry but with sour cream as a garnish it was perfect. This is a good dish to make a lot of and then have left overs. We had a salad as a side and it was a great meal.

And of course dessert... Chocolate Chip Pie. This is one of those things that I wasn't crazy about how it turned out but for some reason I couldn't stop eating it. The recipe says to use a refrigerated dough that you can buy, I just made one from scratch so that I didn't have to go to the store. Next time I will use the pre-made one. Heated up with ice cream is for sure the way to eat this.

On another note the boys and I decorated the drive way yesterday morning while it was still below 100 degrees.