ice ice baby

a (sort of) meal plan

So the week is almost over, and I am just now doing the meal plan for the week...yeah :) lol



Sunday- we had hamburger helper lasagna stuff. Mixed veggies from the freezer. Spinach salad.

Monday- Joe had leftovers, I had soup. It was gross and he ate the rest of the soup. haha

Tuesday- homemade pizza :) Chicken, olives, onion and spinach leaves

Wednesday- Diana and Matt were over and brought veggie pizza from Papa John's. It was tasty

Thursday- I guess we are going to have spaghetti sauce and rotini noodles. Maybe some veggies. All of our meat went bad during the power outage, so we are limited on options now :(

Friday- I get paid, and we can buy new food! I'm thinking chicken tacos. I LOVE TACOS!

behind the crowd

As excited as I am to finally have my new camera, I am also sad about the fact that I don't have any great job prospects. I am not doing any bridal fairs, I don't know a lot of people (except in Mountain Home), and you have to spend money to make money- and well, I don't have money.

I know I shouldn't let myself get down about it, but it's been on my mind a lot lately. I'm thinking about finding someone to partner with and getting a booth at the little Mountain Home bridal fair in February. Nothing super fancy. But there is a market for affordable photography services in MH, and I can provide those services. It's just finding that someone for a partner that's an issue...

anywho, tomorrow will be a good day. I'm cleaning the house, taking pictures somewhere (hopefully the weather is nice), visiting Jonesboro Bridal Fair and at night we are having some peeps over for a celebratory drinky drinky. Celebrating what, you ask? Uh...celebrating something...?!?

meal plan

Sunday: chicken fajitas with tomato, spinach leaves (better for you than lettuce!), olives, and salsa and whole grain tortillas



Monday: leftover fajitas! yum



Tuesday: Campbell's low fat Savory Chicken and Vegetable soup and sandwich



Wednesday: Spaghetti, veggies and bread



Thursday: Leftover Spaghetti :)



Friday: imagination night...who knows!

super...duper!

http://www.kait8.com/global/category.asp?c=151146&clipId=&topVideoCatNo=104015&topVideoCatNoB=109374&topVideoCatNoC=114876&topVideoCatNoD=109122&topVideoCatNoE=120883&autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=3338129




I was on tv last night.
I look dumb on tv.

But yesterday was pretty much a fabulous day, as is today! Classes are a nice mixture of good and not so good. I am kind of afraid of my News Reporting class and corresponding Lab. Photography class will hopefully get better. Today it was just about aperture and depth of field and such. I know what I think I need to know about that stuff...so it was kind of frustrating. I don't think I need to be an expert at it to know how to take good pictures, but I am going to study it all the same.

We should get our refund checks Friday, so I'm going to get my camera this weekend!!! WOO! And we may go to Mountain Home Saturday. Our niece's boyfriend is a Senior and he and his friend are wanting me to do photos of them with their dirtbikes.

I can't wait to get my camera!!!!! YIPPEE!!! :)

I love love!

My friend Kandice and her husband Andy are such an inspiration to me. Joe and I get frustrated with each other when we are in each other's way, when schedules don't mesh, and especially when I don't make dessert frequently enough (ha!).

But Kandice and Andy are apart for the majority of the year, and they still manage to keep the spark alive. It is so beautiful to witness their relationship! I'm sure it is hard being apart, but life isn't easy. They make the most of the time they do have together, and isn't that what matters??

I am trying to improve my relationship with Joe- I don't show that I appreciate him...we don't have a lot. The little things, though, are really the most precious. Like when we are going to bed, sometimes I can't fall asleep and he puts my head on his chest so I can hear his heartbeat and that puts me to sleep :) go ahead, say "Aww!" lol

Don't you just love love???

Fancy pants!

I must be feeling spring fever because I have been in a cleaning mood all weekend! Well, not so much cleaning per se, but organizing. I sorted out my sock/underwear drawer, and that lead to doing the other drawers, and then my closet. Then today we bought a new shower curtain and liner (our old ones had tears where the rings go thru the holes). Then I cleaned up the bathroom, we caught up on laundry, washed floor rugs, changed the bedsheets, and I reorganized the cupboard where we keep canned stuff and whatnot.

It has been a highly productive day! I tried a new recipe for dinner that Joe's mom gave me called "Dorito Chicken" and it was pretty good. It turned out better than I thought it would. And we have enough left to eat it tomorrow night, so my meal plan isn't going to work out this week.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes, and I don't want to go back...well, it's not that I don't wanna go, I would just rather stay home! And SLEEP! ;)

natural state of something

Here it is. The funniest thing you will ever see.

Anna Sellers in hair rollers.

Okay, so it's not all that funny, but it is humiliating. (And we all know how good I am at humiliating myself! haha!) I'm tired of my hair being so...like how my hair is. So this is test number 1. I will take another pic when it's down and see how it turns out.

If this doesn't work, test number 2 involves my sweet hairdresser Lucy and her magic scissors :)

I'm trying to resist that urge, but I'm bored with myself again!

Later taters!

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Edit:

The rollers didn't work well at all. I think I need to use the little foam ones- these just made my hair look the same way it does when I let it air dry without any product in it...so it was wavy and a bit bouncier, but I didn't like it.

grr! lol

meal plan 11/12-11/17 (next week)

Monday: homemade pizza (spinach, olive, tomato)

Tuesday: Basil and tomato penne, veggies

Wednesday: leftovers and sandwich night!

Thursday: lemon-garlic chicken and rice casserole, peas

Friday: leftover casserole

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This may look like a lot of cooking, but parts of everything comes from a box or the freezer, so it's not bad.

And Joe eats A LOT, so while most couples would have leftovers every night, we don't. He eats it all. And sometimes what's on my plate too. We joke that he has a tapeworm...it's even nicknamed Oscar.

I don't know why I felt inclined on sharing that...so. Um, yeah.

And another!

Oh! I have to type this quickly so I can go to bed (super tired!). I am sooooooo excited for classes to start next week!

I am also terrified, but the excitement is the overwhelming emotion right now. My class schedule is crazy, plus with work and squeezing in gym time, I'm gonna be a busy lady this semester! But I know I can do it. I really want to be more focused this semester and raise my GPA. This fall was hard- and it was just because I didn't study enough. I know it was my fault, and I know I can do a lot better!

Also, I am going to start up the meal plan again. Wednesday of this week (tomorrow), I am going to make up several batches of bread dough and freeze them in loaf sizes so that I don't have to keep the bowl of dough in the fridge for two weeks until I use it up. This way, when we want a loaf of fresh bread, we just defrost the dough in the fridge the day before and bake it up when we want it. Yay for yummy bread! I have really gotten interested in making our own. The stuff you buy in the stores are usually made with bleached flour which cuts out the health factor and could be loaded with preservatives and such. I know I eat stuff that I shouldn't (cheese, anyone?), but I think that this is a step in the right direction. I also found out that you can use whole wheat flour instead of white flour! We love wheat bread, so when I run out of all the flour I have stockpiled right now we will start doing it that way. Woo hoo!

Cause I'm so...cool?

I have been encouraged (yet again...cough cough) to blog more frequently, so here goes another lil entry in my journal o' fun!

So the other day I had a hunger pain, looked in the fridge. There wasn't much in there. Some ketchup, two varieties of mustard, a tortilla. So then I looked to the freezer with hope. And alas, I found a frozen bean burrito!

"Yes!! Burrito! That is what I want!," I thought to myself. So I got it out of the bag, stuck in on a plate and instead of cooking it in the microwave like I should have done, I set it on the STOVE and TURNED ON THE BURNER.

Yeah. I did. And then I spent the next 40 minutes unable to speak clearly cause every time I did I started laughing at myself (again).

It's these kinds of things that make me an interesting person, right? :)

Boule (Artisan Bread!) Recipe

This recipe may look frightening, but really it isn't. And even if it was, it would be worth it, cause this bread is AMAZING!!! :)





Special equipment needed:
A pizza stone
a 5 quart bowl with a lid (I believe Saran wrap would work too)
a pizza peel or a cookie sheet without a "lip" on it



3 cups water
1 1/2 tbsp granulated yeast (1 1/2 packets)
1 1/2 tbsp coarse kosher or sea salt
6 1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour
cornmeal for pizza peel or flat edged cookie sheet


Mixing and Storing the Dough:

1. Heat water to just a little warmer than body temperature (about 100 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. Dissolve yeast and then salt in water in a 5 qoart bowl, preferably one with a lid.

3. Mix in the flour by gently scooping it up, then leveling the top off but don't pat it down. Mix with a wooden spoon, a high capacity food processor with a dough attachment, or a heavy duty stand mixer with a dough hook. If hand mixing becomes too difficult, use very wet hands to press it together. Don't knead it! This step is done in a matter of minutes, and the dough should be wet enough to conform to the container.

4. Cover loosely- do not seal. Gases need to be able to escape. Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse, approximately 2 hours. Longer rising times, up to about 5 hours, will not harm the result. You can use a portion of the dough anytime after this period. Refrigerated wet dough is much less sticky and easier to work with than room-temp dough. It is reccomended that you refrigerate the dough at least 3 hours before shaping a loaf.

On Baking Day:

5. Prepare pizza peel by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal to prevent the loaf from sticking to it when you slide it in the oven.

Sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour, then cut off a grapefruit-sized portion with a serrated knife. (This should be about 1/4 of the dough.) Add more flour as needed to keep it from sticking to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on four "sides", rotating the ball a quarter turn as you go, until the bottom is a collection of four bunched ends. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it doesn't need to be incorporated.

6. Place the ball on the pizza peel. Let it rest uncovered for 40 minutes.

7. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a baking stone in the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray or casserole dish on the shelf below (this is for holding water).

8. Dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour and slash the top of the dough three times. This will allow the bread to expand during baking and the flour keeps the knife from sticking.

9. With a forward jerking motion of the wrist, slide the loaf off the pizza peel and onto the baking stone. Quickly but carefully pour about a cup of hot water into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the crust is browned and firm to the touch.

10. Refrigerate the remaining dough in your lidded (not airtight) container and use it over the next two weeks. The dough can also be frozen in portions in airtight containers and defrosted overnight in the refrigerator prior to baking day.