Recent Happenings.

I finally organized part of my birthday present from the hubs. He bought me new silverware and a tray to go with it. After purchasing 3 different sets, we finally settled on this one. However, we got it for less than half the price listed at this site thanks to the clearance section at TJMaxx. It actually ended up being the cheapest between the 3 sets and came with a 5 piece server set. It's simple and classy and I love it :) And I love how much more organized this drawer is. Have I mentioned I am a complete organization freak enjoy organization more than the average person? In the empty white tray will go part of our old set incase we need some back up pieces.


I also thought it would be appropriate to give myself a pedicure. Sure, no one sees my toes this time of year because they are layered in socks/boots/shoes, but everytime I get a glimpse of these hot pink suckers, I think of summertime and flip flops. I must say this shade of pink is just great for a pedicure :P


Speaking of hot pink, check out this terrific scarf the hubby got me as another part of my birthday gifts. I absolutely love it. And the fact that it was pretty cheap is an added bonus in my book. Walmart has great scarves for $5!


And since we're on the topic of scarves, check out this lovely scarf I have. It had no price tag on it at Target so I asked the checkout lady if she could tell me how much it cost. She looked at it, found a small hole and immediately assumed I wouldn't want it. I clarified and said that I could sew the small hole and that it wouldn't be seen with how I wear it anyways. So she asked me how much I'd be willing to pay for it and asked if I would pay $3.98 and I of course said yes! I love the colors of it and it goes well with lots of things in my wardrobe. PS-check out hubby's new coat :)

Valentine's Day Hike

Wondering what we did for Valentine's Day?  No, we didn't go to some hoity toity restaurant and no I didn't get 12 red roses (boring!).  Peter surprised me on Friday by picking me up and having a lovely bouquet of flowers for me already.  He started V-Day early :)  After a dinner at Eat N Park (let's be serious-we love Fridays there because it's the only day they serve clam chowder now), we headed home to a relaxing evening.  

On Saturday when it was actually Valentine's Day, we woke up at our leisure and then headed to Boyce Park for a nice little hike.  Sure it wasn't even 30 degrees, but that didn't stop us.  Except for the skiing area, the park was nearly empty.  It was nice to get outside, fill our lungs with some fresh, crisp air, and just be together.  No TV, books, computers, outside influences of what we should be doing for Valentine's Day.  Just us and God's beautiful creation.  We talked and played and laughed like we were kids and it was one of the best, if not the best, Valentine's Day I've ever had.

Peter loves this picture of me so I had to post it for him.  I didn't realize it until now, but I had red on.  Not intentional, just a nice heavy fleece :)

Here are some pics of our hike.  We saw this great log house and tried peeking inside, but it was all locked up.  

Here's a good picture of Peter trying to see what's inside.  There was stuff in there, but it was all covered in plastic.

Little memorial rock in front of the house.

Another view of the house.

Almost 200 years old!  

We had an ice storm with high winds again this week and saw fallen trees all over the place.  Some looked like they had been there for some time, but some looked like they may have recently fallen over.

The small creek had thawed from the warmer temps the previous days (after the ice/wind storm haha).

Another fallen tree.  The white circle is actually a snowflake.  It started snowing while we were there which was fun!  Nothing to accumulate much, but there was something nice about being in the park while big fluffy flakes started falling.

Peter even squeezed in time to practice his javelin throwing skills.

Here you can see some of the snow sticking to the bark.  It was so pretty by the the time we left.  :)

As you can see, it was mighty cold so we definitely bundled up in layers :)

This is one of my favorite pictures of the park from our hike.  So peaceful.

After our hike, we headed home and thawed out.  Then we watched some movies and made grilled chicken salads for dinner.  We finished out the evening cuddling on the couch while watching movies that aired on TV.

Banana Muffins

Makes 12 regular size muffins or 36 mini muffins.

Ingredients:
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 ripe bananas
1 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:
1. Mix sugar, oil, and egg until creamy and light yellow. (And no, I didn't use a yellow bowl on purpose, haha)


2. Add bananas (I used a hand mixer here to smooth out the lumps in the bananas more easily)
3. Add flour, baking soda, and salt.
4. Mix until completely smooth.


5. Spoon the batter into greased muffin tins.
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees.

I cooled the muffins by putting them upside down on wire racks.


And then I ate two right away while still warm! They are sooooo yummy!!

Applesauce Recipe

Ingredients:
8 apples
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon

Directions:
1. Peel, core, and chop the apples into small pieces.


2. Add water, sugar, and cinnamon.


3. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes, or until apples are tender.
4. Cool for a few minutes and then mash with a potato masher.

Remember the time I told you I burned the applesauce to a crisp? Here's the proof. This is definitely not what you want to do.

This is how it should look. Golden and delicious.


As you can see, it makes quite a bit, but it freezes very well and also stays good in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks.


I love applesauce, especially with chunks of apples in it so I don't mash mine to pieces. If you want yours to be really mashed, you could also use a hand mixer.

An eventful week.

As we gathered with friends this weekend we were asked how I week has been. I like Peter's answer of "eventful" the best. What has made it so eventful? Let me catch you up...

Monday: Normal with work and then a chiropractor appointment.

Tuesday: Work and then our new Small Group (which is quickly becoming a large group :) ) study at church.

This is what it looked like Wednesday morning when we woke up. Ice was everywhere and made getting to work a bit tricky. We made it though.


I really like the way ice looks in the trees and everywhere. I just don't like how dangerous it is to travel in haha.


We had a bit of trouble getting the doors open. I took this picture from inside the car. As you can see it was covered in about an inch or so of ice.

Weds: Braved the ice for work and then came home. I wasn't feeling well in the evening and thought I was catching a stomach bug. I was getting ready to hit the sack and hope I felt better in the morning. Peter got up to get new batteries for our remote and said he heard something in the basement. When he asked me if I heard it, I said no. He went to investigate to make sure everything was ok and didn't even get the whole way down the steps before smelling gas and saying we had a gas leak. I called my mom and she said that gas companies have emergency numbers so we called them. The lady from the emergency line told us to just stay put, not turn anything on or off and someone would be there within the hour. The roads were a little tricky so it would take a lil while. We just sat on the couch waiting, but not feeling safe so we bundled up and grabbed Cadi and sat in the car until the gas guy came. He found the leak and said it was 5%, which I didn't think was bad, but apparently it's explosive level. We were just in the car to get away from the smell and didn't think blowing up was a factor! The gas guy had to turn off our gas and we called some plumbers who have 24 hr service and set up for 2 companies to come in the morning. The roads were getting really bad and we'd have to pay for the late night service, so we decided to wait until the morning. Luckily we had an electric space heater that I've had since I was young and we just bundled up for the night. I actually didn't even notice we didn't have heat because we shut the bedroom door most of the way. Until I woke up and went outside the bedroom and saw it was 48 degrees on our thermostat!

Thursday: I stayed in the warm bedroom most of the day while my awesome hubby took care of the problem. He gave me updates on what was going on and we made decisions on which plumber to use together, but other than that, I stayed in the warm bedroom and Peter was in the cold house taking care of business. We were told our hot water tank might need fixed because it was leaking, but it ended up being excessive condensation which we were very thankful for! We said we'd fix it if needed obviously, but wanted to see if it was just condensation because of being so cold. It was kind of coincidental so we were glad it wasn't broken. I was so happy to hear the furnace kick on again. We kept in touch with our bosses and ended up taking the entire day off because we thought the gas company would be back in less than an hour after we call them (because that's what they told us Weds night), but they couldn't guarantee that and could only say it'd be sometime that day. By the time the plumber and gas guy left it was after 2 PM so it was pointless to drive the hour to work to work for 2 hours and drive an hour home. We ended up being glad we took the whole day because around 4 PM we heard a hissing sound and the pilot light on the furnace went out again. The same plumbing/heating company sent a guy back out to fix it and we had heat again. Both the plumbers and the gas guy had said how lucky we were with hearing the leak and getting things taken care of so quickly. We could've died in our sleep or the house could've exploded! I thanked Peter for saving my life because he was really the one who discovered the problem, but ultimately consider us blessed to have not had a bigger issue than we did. We had heat all night and it was still on when we woke up on Friday!

This is how it looked outside on Thursday. Not a good day to not have heat!

Friday: Went to work and came home to a freezing cold house. Our pilot light on the furnace went out again! We were so tired of dealing with this issue and called the same plumbing/heating company and they sent another guy out. He replaced the thermocouple and tested it and really did what needed done. The other two times I guess they just cleaned it out and lit it. Apparently it was a really small flame and when this guy left it was a gigantic flame in two spots. So we were really happy with that and he didn't charge us anything-not even for the part! This is really a great company. The only problem was that the plumber guy who fixed the pipe wasn't experience in heating so didn't know how to fix the furnace problem with replacing the thermocouple.

Saturday: Had breakfast with Pastor Tim and then bummed around during the afternoon. In the evening we had a get together with the couples from our Small Group. It was great fun to hang out with folks outside of Tuesday night and to get to know people a little better. We even met another new couple that only started coming to Hebron 3 weeks ago. We ate tons of yummy foods, talked, played Mafia, and laughed our heads off.

Today we went to church and then ate lunch with Jerry. We also did a few errands and afterwards came home and took an afternoon nap. It was so nice to get an extra bit a sleep in! Then we went to a Soup-er-bowl party. Jerry made 3 yummy soups and we watched the Superbowl with some other friends/church folks. We left at halftime to avoid being out late and being on the road at the same time as the drunk drivers haha. We're now relaxing at home, listening to the game in the background, and vegging out before another eventful week starts. I'm really looking forward to "The Office" after the game, but might need to tape it. I don't know if I'll be able to stay up that late!