Cakes, Nails and Chicken

This week at work was....well less than the ideal week, and as often happens on a stressed out week, my nails suffer. Off they come. Anyway I did paint my short little stubby nails and like the look. The purple is kind of fun. I am just waiting for spring.

On Monday I helped my friend who's two sons . decorate cakes for a scouting activity. The theme was mexico. For the first cake we made a Mexican flag, made with marshmallow fondant. I probably should have done the cake in regular frosting so he could help more with it. He did help with the chocolate eagle design in the middle of the flag. This is only my

second time dealing with fondant and I am still learning that is for sure. But I thought it turned out well.

The second cake we made was a tostada cake. Started with a thin cake and frosted cake in yellow frosting. Melt Reese's chips &

chocolate chips in a bag & squeeze on frosting then spre

ad for refried beans (add a little bit of frosting on top to hold on next layer). Crumble chocolate cake for hamburger, Tear pieces of green fondant for lettuce. Cut up cinnamon bears for tomatoes. Dye coconut yellow & sprinkle on for cheese, Melt 3 large marshmallows in ziplock bag, make large cut in corner & squeeze out for sour cream. Chocolate circles for olives. It was such an easy fast cake! And the 11 year old did it almost all by himself. I love that we ran out of regular white frosting and melted the marshmallows because that really set of the whole thing.

The boys had fun I think, I know I had fun.

I didn't try very many new recipes these week. Go back to the first statement about work. I pulled out a hamburger helper lol, haven't done that for a while. Today I did try a new recipe, I found http://www.heatherchristo.com/cooks/2011/04/13/greek-chicken-and-potatoes/ Ok seriously a yummy and easy recipe :D Greek chicken and potatoes,

has lemon in it :D how can you go wrong with lemon?

I spent so much time this weekend finding new ideas for nails. I came across a great blog for nails http://www.kaylashevonne.com/ I love the blog, she blogs things that I can do, compares different brands of products. It is just a new love of mine :) Here I am with all these new ideas and no one to paint nails of. So I call a friend to see if I could borrow her girls. Oddly enough they were more than willing to come and have their nails done :)

The bottom one you can't see perfect, but it is white with blue lines and then doodles on it. To look like school paper with doodles on it :D So cute!

80's Movies and nails!

Last weekend my daughter came home from college and my niece came to visit. What to do with these 2 college girls? 80's movie marathon.

The girls hadn't seen some classics that honestly I was appalled they hadn't seen. It needed to be rectified. We started off with Ferris Buhler's Day Off...because honestly that is the logical starting point to me.

So here was on the playlist for the weekend....Let me know what we missed as far as 80's Teen movies.

Ferris Buhler's Day Off

Say Anything

Pretty In Pink

Sixteen Candles

Breakfast Club

One Crazy Summer

Some Kind Of Wonderful

We had Better Off Dead but ran out of time. I can think of a couple that we still need to add to the list but what are your suggestions?

While we were sitting there watching movies we did nails. My niece we did a nude color with high gloss high glitter top coat. It was so cute!!!!

Lizzie I found a picture on Pintrest to try out. I am so proud and excited of how freaking cute these turned out.

They took a while to do but still were so great.

We ate so much junk food while watching movies....trying to channel our inner Gilmore Girls or something. Made home made pretzel bites, so easy and so yummy, you really need to try them out. http://www.justgetoffyourbuttandbake.com/?p=932

The rest of the recipes on this site are great too. Don't you just love getting a link to the blog for one thing then find yourself stuck there for a couple of hours finding all kinds of fantastic ideas?

so question

I am not sure who even follows me. But I have been having such a great time on Pintrest and have found so many wonderful recipes on there. I seriously love it. Tanner says he likes me trying out all the new recipes..it is working out great for me he says as he rubs his stomach. LOL I love that kid.

So I think I am going to start posting things I have been making, the link and then how easy it was or hard, time consuming. How much everyone liked it and the such. Hopefully this will be a way I will feel like I have something to post about and share a bit.

Last week we tried the following:

http://jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com/2009/12/pepperoni-rolls.html

They were so incredibly easy. I think if you made your own dough they would be easy too. I made them again Wednesday night and

they were still great, but I put in way more cheese (like blanketed it with it) I think it was too thick and didn't get quite done inside (that was blanketed with slicked cheese not grated) But over all they were fantastic and I will make them again. Ev

eryone loved them and they were gone very fast. I guess that is a sign of them being good.

We also made http://life-as-a-lofthouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/parmesan-pull-aparts.html to go with some pasta Alfredo (made with Parmesan and provolone cheese....let me just say

delicious!!!) these pull a parts were so beyond easy. I did change the recipe up and used Pampered Chefs Parmesan-Garlic Oil Dippin Seasoning http://www.pamperedchef.com/ordering/prod_details.tpc?prodId=26449&catId=12&parentCatId=12&outletSubCat= I love this stuff I need to get more (I use it for seasoning chicken, pasta, all kinds of things besides what it was intend

ed for). these were fantastic and we ended u

p making a second batch that night. (My daughter was home for the weekend with college and we had a couple of other college girls there for the weekend, so at least we ate that much but there was 6 of us there that weekend)

Two weeks ago though I won major points with my 16 year old son, and made home made taquaitos. He came downstairs and asked what I

was making and was so excited when I told him. I just slow cooked a roast and then used my kitchen aide to shred the meat (seriously the coolest thi

ng ever) I seasoned a little different since I couldn't find some of the ingredients, I ended up using a habenaro chipotle salsa that was not a chunky salsa. http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/06/baked-chipotle-beef-taquitos/. I love that the recipe calls for baking them not frying them. I actually have made them twice. They are a bit time consuming to put them together, roll them up and cook them but not too bad. I ju

st put on a fun show to watch while I did them. They are so incredibly yummy. I do think they end up being more expensive than the freezer variety that you buy in the store, but way better tasting and they were bigger too.

The other attempt at a new recipe (I really have been having fun trying new things...have I said how much I love pintrest?) Were some chocolate chip cheese cake bars. They were amazing. http://www.mrfood.com/Cheesecakes/Chocolate-Chip-Cheesecake-3194/ct/1 I didn't take a picture of these, they went to fast. We actually just made up some chocolate chip cookies, and when I make these again I will make a double batch of cookies because the top layer of cookie dough was pretty thin.

My other fun thing in pintrest is finding new ways of doing hair or nail

s. I did Lizzie and Sara's nails. Did some really cute hair styles, but I didn't take pictures. We tried the sock curls but instead of doing the donut type we did (and I love this video blog, she does the cutest styles and makes the videos very easy to follow) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CzJKdHglFck.