Baking success and failures

Last week I felt motivated to bake.  I love baking, it's relaxing and usually pretty easy to do.  I bake brownies, from a mix, every couple of weeks.  I admit it, I'm a chocoholic, so is my dad.  So last week I decided to bake chocolate chip cookies and some chocolate chunk brownies.  YUM right?  No.   The chocolate chip cookies were from scratch based on the Betty Crocker recipe.  The consistency of the dough was off, and the cookies came out sort of puffy and harder then normal.  Pretty frustrating I admit.  I might have to come up with my own recipe or try a few more out before I decide on the best one to bake from.

Well now you have a chance to bake and come up with a recipe that might win you a trip to New York City.  Have you been?  I haven't.  Pepperidge Farms has a contest where you can enter up to three recipes to win a trip.  The details are below:

Creating an original recipe is a culinary challenge that, when successful, can raise one’s status from skillful chef to dining diva! But what if that original recipe could win you and a guest an all-expense paid trip to New York City? Better Homes and Gardens, in partnership with the Pepperidge Farm® Puff Pastry brand, is encouraging home chefs everywhere to enter the 1,2,3 Puff! Recipe Contest for a chance to win a trip to The Big Apple!

From savory appetizers to seasonal entrees and sweet, flaky desserts, Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry has long been a staple in creating simple yet impressive dishes. Contestants may submit up to three entries, one for each category: appetizer, main dish, and dessert. To enter, contestants must create an original recipe with Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Sheets or Shells and upload a photograph of the finished recipe to http://www.123puffcontest.com/. Entries must be received by December 31, 2009.

Finalist entries will be displayed on www.123PuffPastry.com and visitors may vote for their favorite entries from January 15 through February 1, 2010. The Finalist with the overall highest number of votes will be revealed in March 2010, will win the Grand Prize of an exciting trip to New York City and may have their recipe featured in an upcoming issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine.

Additionally, there will be three First Prize Category Winners, each of whom will receive a prize package of professional baking supplies and the Better Homes and Gardens Complete Book of Baking cookbook.

Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Sheets and Shells are available in the freezer section at major supermarkets, grocery stores and mass merchandisers nationwide for a suggested retail price of $3.59 and $4.39, respectively.  For more information, recipe ideas and official contest rules, visit www.123PuffPastry.com.

This post is not being paid for nor am I being compensated in any way for writing it.  Just thought it looked like a fun idea for some of you that enjoy baking!

Happy 6 Months Birthday Oliver :)

My nephew is 6 months old today...well yesterday since it's 12:25 a.m. on the 7th of November. Better late then never right? My brother fed Oliver his first bites of homemade applesauce today and it went really well :)

Isn't he a cutie?

Time goes

I've been all over the place lately. I went to Walt Disney World with my mom, who had a work conference there. And most recently I went to Six Flags Great America for Fright Fest this past weekend.

At Disney we stayed at the Dolphin Resort which was really nice. It was right next to Epcot so we were able to take the ferry to Epcot and Hollywood Studios. We also took the bus to the Magic Kingdom. I enjoyed going to Hollywood Studios the most. I got sunburnt and read several books. It was a fun vacation. Here's my Whrrl story if you want to see photos I took with my phone.

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I came back from vacation and was excited to get back to work as well as sleeping in my own bed. I still need to develop all my photos of all the fun things I've done this summer and it will definitely take me a while to put all the scrapbooks together from the various trips. This past Thursday I took a class with my friend Sarah to learn how to make an Explosion Book. It's a really neat scrapbook that I'll be making many more of for gifts.

This past weekend was our Annual Six Flags Fright Fest trip. This year it was Sarah, Jakey, and myself. With the rain we've been having this week we decided to go to Fright Fest on Sunday and use Saturday as our fun day. We stopped at NIU for Sarah to buy herself a sweatshirt and show us the area. Then we went to Geneva where I bought a chocolate turtle YUM. Then we took a scenic route and passed many Pumpkin Farms. We went to Woodfield Mall where Jakey ended up buying two shirts. We picked up some cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory! I got Tirimisu Cheesecake. It was delicious. Then we went to Sweet Tomatoes for our dinner. If you haven't tried eating there you should. And after 9 hours of us making many stops we made it to the hotel.

Sunday was all about Fright Fest. Sarah & I bought Season Tickets for 2010 so Fright Fest was included. I'm excited because we are already planning on when we are going up next year. If you want to see all the trouble we got up to this weekend you can check out my Whrrl story for the weekend.

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Finding humor in the day

I'm giggling right now after reading this entry by Nicole...Check it out!

Blurb-a-licious

Yesterday when I arrived home from work I had the urge to take photos in black/white of the barns on our farm but I needed to take a nap before heading out to see Sarah and a few other friends. I hate putting off creativity for taking photos so I told myself I would definitely do it today.

The light was amazing this afternoon so I headed outside to use up the color film in my camera. I currently have 4 rolls of film from the past few months that are waiting for development. After climbing up into the loft of the barn I took 4 shots before my film was out. So in went the black/white film for more fun!

I found some glass bottles with lids (will take photos of them for you as soon as they are cleaned up) before heading over to take more photos of a barn that is half collapsed. I pet a few of the cows & then climbed over the fence to get up close to the barn. I am really interested to see how my up close photos of the barn come out. The cows followed me around and seemed to be interested in what I was doing which was pretty funny! After having blown up and framed photos for friends I have finally gotten around to creating a photo book with my favorites.

This is where my Blurb book comes in. After setting it up last week it arrived yesterday. It's really nice! I am sort of stunned by having my photos in a book, even one I created myself. It's hardcover with a slipcover as well. Pretty interesting to say the least. I showed it to my friends last night and Sarah was showing everyone the photos I blew up and framed for her. Once the batteries are charged I will add photos of the book so you can see. Thanks to Blurb and BlogHer09! I received a free coupon for a $36.50 book so I chose a Standard Landscape size which is 8 1/2 x 10 in landscape format (longer across then top to bottom)

Creating the book started off somewhat easy. You can create your own book in PDF formatting or use BookSmart, which is provided by Blurb. I first signed up on the Blurb website and then proceeded to download a program to create the book with. I created my book with BookSmart. While I used this program there were features about it that need to be a bit more intuitive. For example I used Ctrl + X to Undo or remove the photos I picked if I didn't like them since I wasn't sure if I hit delete that the photo would completely delete the photo from my choices of photos to use. I also didn't think it was very easy to edit the size of the box I was going to place the photo into. Sometimes I'd put a photo in the photo box and the box would be too big. I'd then have to edit the whole page in a grey grid area and not be able to see the photo to see if I was going to small or big. It took a lot of time as well as going between edit to know if the photo box was the right size. Another thing I didn't like was that the help button took me to the website which didn't really offer any help. I ended up having to email Blurb to get a few answers to my questions which is not as timely as being able to use a built in help screen.

Anyway, you start off by choosing your size and you can either upload photos or work alongside a photo program online. The programs include Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug and TypePad. I use Flickr so I linked to my Flickr account and chose photos that I was most interested in using. There is even a function that shows hides photos if you have used them as well as grouping them by date, tag, or name of set. You can also choose background colors, as well as preset photo pages. They have customizable book templates for easier creating as well. The choices include cookbooks, journals, comics and graphic novels, poetry, wedding and history books. So your book doesn't need to be as specific as mine was with only photos. Check out the amazing books that you can purchase at the Blurb Bookstore. And if you want to support me you can purchase my book too! I only make $5 off the sale but it's a great coffee table book :)

Thanks again to Blurb as well as the Shutter Sisters for hosting Blurb and Aurora in their suite at BlogHer09!

Wandering, a wondering

I think I've come to a decision about my working. Will be odd but I am going to let go of a job and only work at one place. This means I need to get on the ball about extra hours at the other job which can easily be done. It also means I need to get off my bum and print those business cards from ages ago with my various odd job abilities on them for mum to give out at work. I need to do this for myself...my health...my happiness...if not utterly ignoring the fact that I will be on one income. That is so strange. Makes me sound like I'm divorcing or going to be a stay at home mom or something.

This is going to be a new step. I will have a holiday this year. I will have 3 days off two weeks in a row for Christmas & then for New Years. YUP! I am soo excited. See I usually have Thurs & Sat off work so that means that since the holidays are on Fridays...yup you see 3 day holidays! I am so thrilled!!! This will be the first time after 3 years of NOT having any days off but the actual holiday itself.

Moving along...I'm interested in finally getting around to writing those reviews I said I would do. In my head I've already written the review of the test drive that Sahm Reviews and I took at BlogHer09. Oh you don't know about that...well that's because I've been putting off ALL the reviews of products I tried at/after BlogHer. I actually still have a wrapper from one food item so that I would remember. My brothers waterbed...well let me show you.

This is the bed...there are all my toiletries, and under part of the suitcase is Mr Potato Head and a few other items like the Energizer Battery Charger and all the batteries. So you can tell I really do want to write the reviews..but if I unpack those items I won't do it. So this is my motivation. It's also become a dumping ground for my scrapbooking supplies. You can see my amazing Epson PictureMate Zoom up top left as well as my container of basic supplies.

Dreamin'

Along with my crazy work schedule, I've thrown a going away party for one friend and attended another. Helped move a friend. Taken a Scrapbooking 101 class (didn't learn much but had fun & met some nice ladies). Worked crazy hours & had only one full day off between the 2 jobs as well as putting together a Blurb photo book (finally!) and purchasing said book so I have a nice copy to share with everyone. If you'd like to see a preview of this book you can click on it in the sidebar (to the right) and on the Blurb website you can flip through some of the pages.

I've also been absorbed in reading books...many books such as the Melissa Marr series starting off with Wicked Lovely and reading the next 2 books (only to find a 4th is not out yet), the first book in the Theatre Illuminata series by Lisa Mantchev (& twittering the author who is lovely), as well as a non-fiction book called The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose.

I've also been helping do a reset at the electronics store. It's a bit different in my department but as of today we have a couple new gadgets that I wouldn't mind owning! I've also been messing up my sleep schedule with naps since between my jobs they keep having me work odd shifts. Such as Sunday I worked 7 am to 10 am (we were done early), came home slept for 4 or 5 hours, then to bookstore where I worked 6 pm to 1 am...then came home and took a nap before heading to the electronics store for a 6 am shift where I stayed til noon and then...yes I came home and slept til 6:30 tonight.

All in all it works out to a very hectic schedule. Oh and I even found time to go to the doctor last week who told me I was stressed, need to drink more water, exercise 30 mins a day and not intake sugar as much.

I am trying to learn how to use new media as well. I set up a story on Whrrl but it didn't save & I'm too frustrated to re-do it at the moment but hopefully soon I will :)

Where in the world is Mel now?

Do you remember playing the computer game 'Where In the World is Carmen Sandiego?' I used to play that back when I was in grade school. My mom bought that game for us to play at home and I always enjoyed learning about the many places Carmen could go. Later on they even made it into a cartoon for TV. Obviously not as interactive, but still an educational experience.

I started thinking about Carmen when my supervisor (at the electronics store) asked me this last week where I'd be at during the weekend. Started thinking to myself, it's obviously gotten to the point when the people I work with know I travel around when they don't ask what I'll be doing, but where I'll be going!

This past weekend I spent Thursday helping my friend Sarah pack up her belongings as she was moving to start her new nursing job an hour and a half away. After packing up as many of her belongings we went to her going away party with many other nursing student friends and some former/current bookstore employees. It was one of those dinner parties where we should have called the restaurant beforehand to let them know we were coming but alas, we sat outside and put some tables together and all was well.

This is where I thank my friend Jen for helping me out with the purchase of many frames for photos I had printed for Sarah as her gift. Jen also helped me put all the photos into frames (in the back of my Jeep hurriedly when Jen arrived at the party).

Friday was packing up the U-Haul and purchasing of cleaning supplies.

Saturday was Sarah's dad and nephew in the U-Haul, Sarah's mom and Sarah in their car, and Ashley (Sarah's nursing school friend) and myself in my packed Jeep driving the hour and a half to the new apartment. I'm not sure how long it took us to unpack, maybe an hour, and then we were in the air conditioning (ahhhhh air!) and unpacking items from boxes and trying to establish where things belonged. We stopped for pizza and bread sticks from Pizza Hut and contined on with putting together furniture. If I knew where Sarah's camera was I'd show you the photos of me putting together the coffee table she is using for a tv stand. We also alphabetized her books and put them on her bookshelves (yes you can tell we did/do work in a bookstore) We washed dishes and put them on shelves in cupboards and we also had cable installed for tv and internet.

This would be where it becomes tricky. You see Mel apparently knows all about the internet...(huh?) so was asked to set up the wireless...which confused me. After calling the cable company and getting the wired part set up with the modem I decided to stop and just come back down on Wednesday to work on the wireless part. And this my friends is how I ended up returning Wednesday afternoon. I'm glad I have Thursdays off so I could stay over and hang out. Oh and don't think I'm capable of wireless set up..oh no...we called Sarah's amazing cousin Chris and he helped me to learn the following:

1. the cd's that come with Routers are horrid and not to ever use them!
2. don't use any wireless auto connect system on your computer other then the Windows one
3. you should never attempt to hook up wireless when you have a migraine (it's much better to go to sleep)

Last night we decided to find Joe's Crab Shack, after driving by the hospital Sarah will be working at, we located it, right in the middle of Taste of Peoria. Yup it was a one day event & we decided it would be more fun to try all the different foods. We ate chips con queso and another mexican food (can't remember the name), bruschetta, chocolate covered strawberries, crab rangoons, warmed brownies, strawberry smoothies. Yup I think that's all we ate. Sounds good doesn't it? Afterwards we went to Target (to return lights I had bought), a pet store, Best Buy for a shredder, and Borders to look for a map of Peoria. No luck on the map, but managed to order one.

And that brings us to this morning...well afternoon where I'm sitting on a new couch with Zoe (Sarah's dog) watching CSI and wondering where I should go for lunch.

Time to write

Since getting home from BlogHer09 I've managed to unpack and eat/drink most of the food/drink products I brought home. By far the stand outs are Goldfish Grahams Honey & SoBe Apple Pear.
I love the new Goldfish Grahams! They are crispy and oh so yummy. Plus I can eat them with fruit for a wonderful snack & feel filled up.
The SoBe Lifewater was new to me as I've never tried any of their products before. It lived up to its name and it tasted exactly like Apples and Pear in a water flavored form. I'm so impressed that I may start buying Lifewater over Gatorade which is my normal choice for a liquid to take to work with me.

I have yet to unpack the 'stuff'' suitcase but I have started going through business cards and sending emails/tweets to those wonderful ladies & gents I met at the conference. I've been enjoying checking out everyone's blogs. I need to get everyone on a blogroll or something so I know when people update now that I have so many new contacts that I want to stay in touch with. I bet the next thing someone will say is I should use Google Reader. I think that's the right name. I need motivation to set that up. Yup I'm lacking some serious motivation. Course I'm also lacking motivation to get my website re-set so it functions better then it currently does.

Things I want to tell you about:
1. Tried sending digital photos to the Camera Corner (a camera store) near my work to see how good of quality they would print out (after numerous FAIL's with Wal-Greens) and lo and behold the photos are excellent. I printed off 9 photos, split in 2 sizes, 5 x 7 and 8 x 10 and most are black/white (which i favor) and the others are in color. These photos are for my friend who is moving on Saturday to be an RN :)

2. I'm going to 2 going away parties, one tomorrow for my friend the RN and the other for a co-worker who is headed to Florida to go to University. I don't know which party I'm more looking forward to.

3. I would probably consider doing cash for clunkers if they didn't junk the cars since my car needs a few things fixed on it...but I doubt I'll ever get around to fixing them. Like the crack across my windshield and the rear wiper on the back window, and the place someone keyed me on the passenger side, and oh yes, the dent in my back bumper that someone did and didn't tell me about.

4. Right now I have a microwave, toaster, iron, printer and wireless router in my car for my friend because I wanted to help her save money..and my car is partially packed now for Saturdays moving day.

I think this is all I have energy to type about right now...

After the fun

So you may be coming here to see what I'm all about or you may be wondering if I have some interesting things to say? Let me find you a few of the things I can give as examples okay? The few posts under this are really just a rundown for me so I can remember what I did...when I travel I try to do that since I scrapbook and it's helpful for me and my photos to know what order I do things in.

I'm Crazy from March
Longest Time I've worked with a Customer from April
Activities & Mother's Day Party from May
Another Fun Update from June

Hope that helps! BlogHer gave me a huge sense of community. If people ask me about it I know I will be saying it was Indescribable! I loved meeting each and every one of you & you are all amazing women from different backrounds!

xo mel