St Patty's Treat!

I know that I've been super MIA...school and work are just taking up all of my time!  But I had to share this wonderful treat for the St. Patty's Holiday!

I love when St Patrick’s day rolls around each year because that means that McDonald’s brings back the shamrock shake!  Delish—of course!  But also packed with calories!  Total in the small?  Over 400!

So Wednesday I decided while craving one of these tasty treats that I could re-make it!  After all it only contains the ice cream, green coloring, and high fructose corn syrup that is spearmint flavored, plus the whipped cream and cherry on top.

So Rene and I made a trip to the grocery store….on the list?

Almond Milk (we already had this but I’ll add it here anyhow)

Sugar Free Vanilla Ice Cream

Spearmint Extract

Green Food coloring

1 cup almond milk (sugar free vanilla) (45 calories)

½ cup of sugar free vanilla ice cream (100 calories)

1t spearmint extract

3 drops of green food coloring

Blend—Pour into a glass and enjoy!  Total calories in one of our healthy Shamrock Shakes?  145  and perfectly delicious! 

Seeing Red

I'm wearing my red today for Valentine's day are you?  Here's wishing you a very Happy Valentines Day.

The Mr. and I will be enjoying a nice quite dinner at home tonight - together!  That's super exciting since we've been only seeing each other a little in the morning and then right before bed.  Yes, we'll still be working on work and school stuff but at least we can enjoy each others company.

Chinese New Year

Did you realize that yesterday was the Chinese New Year?

  I was wearing red for good luck, were you?

One of my colleagues families celebrate the Chinese New Year, so she and I checked out what my horoscope had in store.

I was born in the year of the rat..."Chinese horoscope 2012 predicts that people born in rat year will be energetic and demonstrate high endurance and withstand in the adverse circumstances. However, all the rats are prone to stress and full of stress sometimes due to illogical reasons"--I guess we will see what the new year brings!

Welcome 2012

Today is a bit of a lazy day here at our house.  We got to sleep in, and have been lounging our PJs all day!  Rene's been enjoying some down time playing with his new Nintendo DS games and I've been crafting away.  Here's hoping you are having a nice relaxing and enjoyable start to your 2012 as well!

 Here's Stitch in his very dapper new collar (made by me)...

He's starting off the year on the right foot looking cute as ever!  Though I may be a little biased!  More crafty pics to come later!

On a side note, I postponed the start to my detox one day to tomorrow.  My family always had pork and sauerkraut for New Years day.  And now I've actually gotten Rene to eat it too!  So we couldn't pass up tradition.  

I looked into the reasoning behind the pork and sauerkraut tradition since in Texas and Florida no one seemed to eat it, and I just figured it was a northern thing.  Down south everyone eats black eyed peas for good luck in the New Year.  So I decided to see where the pork and kraut tradition started and why.

In looking around online I found that the tradition goes back to the Pennsylvania Dutch and New Englanders and it is said that eating this on January 1st would bring luck and prosperity to you in the new year!  

It seems the reasoning for the New Years day foods are pretty much the same.  

So are you a black eyed peas person or pork and kraut person to start off your new year?

Weekend of Crafts-Card Tree

The first of my weekend projects turned out pretty cute the Holiday Card Tree idea that I found on Pinterest.

I started off by taking our holiday cards and tracing circles of different sizes onto them, cutting them out.

(some with fun edges and some with plain straight edges).  

Then cut away a triangle piece so that the circles can be rounded into cones.

Cut a Styrofoam ball in half to serve as the base, and stick a small dowel rod in the center.  Then start placing the cones (largest to smallest) on the dowel and top with a bow!

You can shift the cones around on the rod to ensure that it is spaced out correctly.

  And this is the finished product-super easy and a cute way to keep cards each year! And it can now serve as a decoration.

It took a total of 15-20 minutes to finish it up and at the same time you cut down on the clutter post-holiday!

Next up? a revamp on an old pair of heels (to replace the cape project-let's just say that project got started and just didn't come together quite right....)

To Dos for the Weekend

 I know it's New Years weekend-but lets be honest....between working and school Rene and I really just look forward to lazy weekends and this is just like the rest!  Though we did grab 2 bottles of bubbles to celebrate the new year.  Fun fact--enough New Years Eve back at UCF was really the start of our relationship when we rang in the new year together in 2006! So this marks the 6 year mark of our relationship too!

Anyhow...I've created a bit of a crafty to do list of things that I want to make/try this weekend.

First and foremost if you remember a previous post Pinteresting Thursday on a Friday I had 2 items that I wanted to make. 1. the cape and 2. the little Christmas trees made from holiday cards--both of these will be made this weekend (hopefully)...

Next up is a little treat for New Years eve....Pizza Monkey Bread...yes another Pinterest find!

Doesn't it look tasty?

I'll also be trying my hand at homemade pasta tonight compliments of my new pasta maker from Rene!

Get ready for some follow up posts this weekend about all these great little creations!

Happy Friday!

Santa Delivers!

It was a wonderful Christmas at the Blanco's this year!

Here are my favorites from Rene!  A pasta maker and beautiful marble cheese tray and knives

And also some nice fuzzy Ugg slippers (which just so happen to be on my feet today in the office).

Rene did very good with his shopping list this year! 

It's almost that time, Christmas is right around the corner and we're looking forward to a bit of a break between work, and school and rounding out 2011! I haven't even started to think of goals/resolutions for the new year--whoops!

Here's wishing you a very Happy Holiday season from Dallas!

 

Macarons!

As promised I figured I would post some of the many cookies I've baked in the past couple of weeks...I will have to say though that not one of these remains the office and Rene and I gobbled them up!

I am a big fan of macarons and these were perfect!! A basic butter cream and chocolate butter cream filled delight!

I would highly suggest trying the recipe listed on FoodNetwork's website...our first batch was wonderful and produced the above, however I tried again last weekend and Rene used a little bigger item to trace for the cookie and they didn't turn out nearly as good...so maybe I'll try again this weekend.

The trick is whipping the egg whites enough but not too much....quite tricky!

More cookies to come in the next few days!!

In the midst of the hussel and bussel

Just was I was getting ready to log off the computer today and hit the books I stopped and caught up on a few of the blogs that I read. I stopped and as I was reading through Julie's post on Peanut Butter Fingers about an email she received about a little 8 year old boy fighting lukemia and his Christmas wish was to recieve 1,000,000 Christmas cards in the mail this year warmed my heart!
So needless to say I was wrong and not ALL of my cards have been sent out just yet--8 year old Max in PA will be getting a card from Texas!
If you want to join in and help Max's Christmas wish come true too here's the address to send off your cards!

Max c/o Hailey Remish
417 Jones Street
Belle Vernon, PA 15012

Happy Holidays!

MIA?

Yes I've been completely missing since Thanksgiving! Whoops!

It's been a whirlwind of a couple of weeks to say the least with craziness at work (it's audit time so there are a million and ones things to be done)...and school (finals and assessment test for this semester just about done)....Christmas decorating (at least a little bit), Christmas shopping, and baking cookies (for both mine and Rene's offices and the apartment)!

As you can see it's been busy but I figured I needed to post a quick little update!

I am happy to say that all of our holiday cards have been mailed off, the presents are all wrapped and under the tree, and those heading to Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Arizona are ready to be dropped off at the post office on Monday.

The office audit will be officially over this Friday at 5pm....Almost all of the cookies and treats are baked for our offices and by the end of this week it will be the official end of the Fall semester-- so hopefully this time next week it will be calm just in time for Christmas....though we are looking forward to a very low key, wake up whenever, sit in our PJs all day type of holiday.

It will be nice to not have class for 2 weeks and enjoy a little bit of a long weekend coming up though I have a feeling Rene will still be working on the computer most of the time, at least he's in town and not traveling :)

I'll be sure to try to post of pics of the holiday decor and cookies sooner rather than later--until then!

Re-Invent Thanksgiving Leftovers

Lets be honest you can only have so many turkey sandwiches after turkey day...so I always try to come up with some easy ideas to re-invent and re-use those turkey leftovers!

This year we did a whole lot of reinventing! I must apologize though I forgot to snap pictures of a couple of the items.

First off here was our Thanksgiving Dinner--lots of food = lots of leftovers!Re-invention #1 - Sausage Egg and Cheese "muffins"
First take a muffin pan and put a little of the stuffing in the bottom (we used our apple and sausage stuffing) next pour a little egg white or whole egg onto the top and bake approx. 12 minutes at 350 degrees-top with a little cheese and melt. Quick and easy breakfast/brunch!

Next up? #2 - Turkey and Noodles (no picture sorry)
Take turkey bones, sage, and thyme and create a delish stock-simmer at least 2 hours!
Add in some veggies we used carrots, onion, peas, and corn
Next add in your shredded turkey (light and dark meat)
Simmer and then add in your noodles. The longer you cook the noodles the thicker everything becomes rather than a soup it's like a little turkey and "dumplings"

Re-invention #3- Turkey Nachos!
For anyone who has ever been to an Ale House this is a play on their Chicken Nachos

Super simple! Layer tortilla chips, then cheese, turkey, more cheese, jaleponos (optional) and bake!
Serve with sour cream, salsa, and guacamole!

#4 --Cranberry Almond and White Chocolate Chip Pancakes!
(sorry no picture)
Make a basic pancake mix, add in cranberry almond sauce and some white chocolate chips! Delish!

#5-Spicy Pumpkin Soup
See the pumpkins in the mail photo? We baked our stuffing inside the little pie pumpkins then used them in our soup!
First start with a little chicken stock (about 3 cups) add in onion, and pumpkin flesh. Allow to simmer for at least 30 minutes.
Next add in cayenne pepper, salt, curry, and red pepper flakes to your own taste--continue to simmer another 10 minutes until the pumpkin has started to fall apart.
Next in small batches or large depending on size of your food processor, blend until nice and smooth
Return to stove and add 1 cup of heavy cream, and 3 tablespoons of brown sugar, stir until combined.
Our soup is in the freezer for a nice cold day this winter!

And last but certainly not least! #6 - Turkey and Winter Greens Eggrolls!
We used what remained our our winter greens and mixed them with some shredded light meat turkey and reheated it in a saute pan. Next we then took egg rolls and wrapped the mixture up and brushed with a little melted butter and baked at 400 degrees for about 12 minutes!
Served with a little gravy it was a nice crunchy treat to end out the weekend!


And thankfully we used up almost all of the left overs!

Countdown to Thanksgiving!

The past couple of months have been a whirlwind to say the very least and now it's T-minus 4 days until Thanksgiving! Yes it will just be Rene and I again this year for turkey day but that doesn't mean that I won't be cooking a meal fit to feed at least 6-8!

What can I say I enjoy cooking #1--this is the 3rd year that I am cooking a full turkey.... and #2 it gets us away from the "chicken and veggies" routine at least for a couple of days. We decided this year that we wanted to make everything pretty light and simple with lots of veggies rather than starchy stuff (minus the stuffing). So what's on the menu this year? A whole lot of delish! Check back tomorrow for the full breakdown of the menu (mainly all ideas from the Food Network Magazine). And believe it or not we didn't completely break the bank either!

We went shopping for Thanksgiving, as well as our typical weekly groceries and only spent around $200 which is pretty dang good if you look at the fact that 95% of the items we buy are organic, we came and home with a 14 pound turkey (I told you I cook like we have a house full of people!).

What are you cooking this year?

Get in the holiday Spirit

Join me over at forever88 for her annual ornament swap!

Here are the rules:

- sign up below by Friday, November 20th - you'll get an email to let you know who your partner is!

- buy or make an ornament for your swap partner [$10-15 limit] and mail by November 29th so your partner can enjoy their ornament throughout this years holiday season! Make sure to check out your partner's blog and try and make it fit their style, interests, hobbies, etc.

- include a holiday card for your partner and share a little bit about the ornament and yourself!

- have fun and make sure to take a picture of your ornament displayed on your tree/in your home and share it with all of us!

I just signed up and think that you should too! It's super easy! Just follow This Link and then click the link on the bottom of the page to enter!

Sad Halloween

I am quite sad today, it's official that Rene and I aren't making costumes for Halloween this year.


With the trip to Orlando and UCF's tradition of super early morning tailgating on game days plus the homecoming parade if we get to campus on time...we figure that going out at night is a shot in the dark if we will "last" that long.


So I guess out super awesome idea will be held off until next year...*tear*

Pinteresting Thoughts&Finds for Thursday

So since I spend roughly of say 10-14 hours a day on the computer I often spend hours at a time on Pinterest looking around for fun new ideas. Most recently I turned a find on Pinterest into one of my recruiter's birthday cakes--it was a huge success the office loved it!

Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Icing, surrounded with KitKats and topped with M&Ms...Chocolate Delish if I may say so!

So I figured why not share some of my favorite finds on Thursday's blog, especially since I've been slacking when it comes to my Friday Book Club since I am slllllowly making my way through Freakanomics still.

So here's the official First Ever "Pinteresting Thoughts&Finds for Thursday"

Thanksgiving Ideas!!

A thought for changing up the dining room decor for turkey day!
A little idea of something to make for the office
A new twist on leftovers? I love turkey pot pies and turkey and dumplings...but little springrolls/egg rolls type goodies...why not?

I know it's not even Halloween yet and I'm jumping into Thanksgiving but trust me I'll be updating you soon on our Halloween costumes for this year....Disney themed of course!

Happy Easter!

I'll be spending my Easter working on a term paper all day so not much to post...I promise to post yesterday's yummy breakfast recipe later though!

Also, a quick money saving find for you! iTunes is offering a special this weekend with select new albums for only $6.99 so go take a look and buy yourself a little Easter gift of music!

Happy Easter Everyone!

It's coming to an end...

Where has December gone? Christmas is over and we are heading full speed ahead to 2011 and I am at a loss as to where the year has gone. Nonetheless the Blanco's had a very relaxing Christmas and spent the majority of our day in our PJs hanging out watching Scrubs and an array of Christmas movies.

Now it's back to real life and work in the dreary rainy weather that has come to Dallas. As I sit in my office on the 9th floor and look out the window its completely black and I can't even see the Galleria Mall which sits across the tollway. Not exactly the best way to start out a Tuesday.

While I always love for work weeks to fly by (which this week should since its only a 3 day week then we are off to Memphis) it is bittersweet because the faster this week flies by the sooner 2011 arrives which means its time to reflect on the year and plan for the next.

I feel like I was able to accomplish a lot from my list from 2010! I read 16 books aside from textbooks, started and now 1 year through my MBA, planned a trip for our anniversary as well as a second trip in May, "officially" became Mrs. Blanco, I've gotten a little more calm when it comes to money, I've gotten back to the gym but the holidays did put a bit of a speed bump in that....2009 "issues" are so far in the past that they don't bother me at all, and I'm up to 6-7 bottles of water a day! Not too shabby! Though I will admit that the scrapbook from the wedding is still unfinished.

In looking at 2010 we had some unexpected things that happened to us as well! Rene finished the CPA exam and got a promotion as did I and it really feels like Dallas is starting to be our "home" at least for the time being :)

Here's looking forward to what comes in 2011--now if only I could catch up and prepare myself for the new year as well!

Someone is ready for Christmas!

I somehow have let the entire month of December fly by me without making any posts about Christmas or the holidays! It's just been busy with finishing up the semester and of course (story of my life) work.....

Nonetheless, little Stitch is very excited about his first Christmas at the Blanco house!

He and Nala have been sniffing around the presents for the last couple of days after we finally wrapped everything up and put them under the tree.

I promise that over this weekend I'll try to post some more of the little Florida vacay and Christmas with the Blancos.

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's the one day out of the year when it's ok to forget about eating healthy!
And now its officially time for Christmas music, decorating the house and Black Friday Shopping!