Miscellaneous

I have tired brain this morning from waking up an hour earlier for my new work schedule, who would think that an hour would make such a difference?
On Friday I made up my own recipe just because I was too lazy to actually look up a recipe. It turned out so yummy even if it was a little messy to make.

Ingredients to Nikki's Wonderful Chicken
Chicken breasts
1 cup of Ranch dressing (I used peppercorn ranch so I didn't add more seasonings, you might need to if you use just regular ranch)
4 oz of sour cream
2 - 3 strips of cooked bacon - pulverized (I used my magic bullet, yes I have one of those, don't judge!)
1 - 2 cups of bread crumbs
1/2 cup cheddar cheese

Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350.
Mix ranch and sour cream together. Coat chicken liberally with ranch mixture and then press on bacon. Then coat chicken with bread crumbs.
For a crunchy top add some of the cheese now.
Bake for 40 minutes, take out to top with cheese. Bake for another 5 - 10 minutes.

In other, not food related, news. I went to a laundromat for the first time last week. If that makes me a little snobbish...well I guess there's no preventing that.
A couple weeks ago Winston came running in from the backyard with ubber muddy paws, ran down the hallway and jumped onto my freshly made bed.

Imagine those muddy prints in the picture above all over my new comforter. It was awful. Another awful thing is that the comforter is too big for my front load washing machine. I laid it out in the craft room until I had time and remembered to take it to the laundromat.

I finally remembered to go last week and I made John come with me, well, because it's a laundromat!

At first I felt very out of place and scared (sad I know), but after we plugged in my ear phones and started watching some Netflix I decided that laundromats are awesome! The soothing sounds and smells of laundry in the background, eating candy we bought from the gas station next door, watching TV shows on a little screen, how fun! I wanted another reason to come back, but I'm sure it would get old fast since I hate putting away laundry and usually just leave it in the dryer until it's time to do laundry again...can't really do that at a laundromat.

With a face like that though, I wasn't too mad about the mud. I just close the bedroom door before letting him inside now.

American As Apple Pie

John usually gets a roast from work around Christmas time, but the last two years it has just sat in my freezer. It's too big for just two people, in fact it's too big for 5 people, and it arrives frozen so I cant cut it into smaller pieces.
I asked him this year if he could just get a box of fruit instead not thinking that they'd send him home with 40 apples.
Well the apples aren't as fresh as they were a few weeks ago so I'm trying to use them up quickly before they spoil, last night I made apple crunch pie. It was so good, especially with vanilla ice cream.

Apple Crunch Pie

Ingredients

• 1 (9 inch) unbaked deep dish pie crust (or be lazy like me and use graham cracker crust)
• 1cup flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter
• 5 apples - peeled, cored and thinly sliced (you may or may not have left over apples depending on the apple size)
• 1 Tbs lemon juice
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 3 Tbs flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

Directions


1.Place rack in lowest position in oven. Heat oven to 450 degrees.

2.To Make Topping: Mix 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup white sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon; cut in butter or margarine until mixture is moist and crumbly, and clumps together easily.

3.To Make Filling: In another bowl, toss cut up apples, white sugar, lemon juice, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and nutmeg. Sprinkle in flour, and stir until apples are evenly coated.

4.Layer apple slices in pie shell. You will have a lot of apples, but they will shrink. Layer them higher in the middle. Pour left over juice from apple mixture over apples. Sprinkle topping evenly over apples to make a top crust.

5.Place pie on cookie sheet in oven to catch juice droppings. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 45 minutes to one hour; bake until center of pie has no resistance. If top starts to get too dark, cover with piece of foil. Cool on wire rack before serving.

Now I'm on the hunt for more apple centered recipes, I need these apples gone!

I wasn't all lazy this weekend

This weekend I took a break from my TV and movie watching to install a switch I bought months ago. John had quiet a list of things to get done around the house before we left for Cancun and he just never had time to put in the switch.
Since I'm an electrical pro I figured it was a task I could handle. It was a breeze to install and I had it programed in no time.

  It's a switch to have the porch light turn on and off on a set schedule. I'm very picky about wanting the light on all night and I like them turned on the minute it starts getting dark, but I'm not always home to do that, now I won't have to worry. I bought the switch off Amazon since no home improvement store in the valley had anything like it. It's wasn't cheap either, but very worth it in my opinion.
Lets just hope that it turns on tonight when it's suppose to.

I also bought a very tall plant this weekend and now I'm thinking, "this is a very tall plant!" It's suppose to go under that new light switch, but it's too tall for the space. I'll either have to find it a new home or return it for a shorter plant.

Before we left for Cancun John installed a new faucet for the downstairs bathroom. The old one leaked terribly and I didn't want Jonessa and Derek to have to deal with it. The installation really kicked John's butt and the faucet that got installed isn't the one originally bought. The first one came from Wal-mart, but once John got in put in place he realized that it was a used fixture and the hot water leaked. He had to take it out and put in a new one. After many hours of fighting with taking it out and getting the new one (one bought from Lowe's this time) he told me that I'm not allowed to buy any new plumbing fixtures for at least 6 months.

I wish I could say that the downstairs bath is now finished, but water is leaking under the tiles in the shower and leaving it smelling really damp and probably giving us a terrible mold problem. We'll have to take out the old tile and re-tile soon.

Cancun anniversary trip 2011

For our trip we decided to try an all-inclusive resort instead of a cruise just to see the difference. It was kinda a last minute trip since I could tell that John was getting burned out from work and I knew he wanted to get away. Since it was only a couple months of planning we wanted to go somewhere cheap, but warm.
I did so so SO SO much research for resorts, so much that I thought my eyeballs would melt out of my head. We used bookit.com and I highly recommend it, it was our first trip where something didn't go wrong and ran so smoothly.

We stayed at the Fiesta Americana Condesa Cancun and it was wonderful. We were upgraded from a lagoon view to an ocean view room for no extra price and the room was very clean and updated.

The view of our resort from the beach.

This is the view lagoon side of the lobby of the resort, it's all open and beautiful!  You can have that kind of stuff when it's never below 80 degrees year round. 

The whole resort is open, so you're inside and outside at the same time...make sense? This is what we saw when we opened our door to our room. The gardens were beautiful.

This is the ocean view from our patio.

This trip was planned for more of a relaxing getaway, so we didn't want to spend much time away from the resort. 

Monday the 12th we arrived and were done with check-in around 5 PM. We ate some dinner and waited for the evening show to start, a recreation of Micheal Jackson. 

Tuesday we spent the whole day on the beach. My idea of a perfect vacation.

 John's the one in the middle fighting the waves. 

Wednesday we went para-sailing, something neither of us had done before. It was very fun, but really windy.

Like I said, it was WAY windy!

Looking down at the boat!

Then it was back to the beach to soak up more sun!

Thursday, our anniversary, was our busiest day. We took a submarine ride to see the fish in the morning, it was very nice even though half the boat got sick. We got a lot of pictures, but the fish are hard to see so I won't post any.
After the sub ride, we walked down to some ruins on the hotel zone strip. It was a 45 minute walk, so we took the bus back to the resort.
The ruins were really cool, but my favorite part was all the iguanas roaming the grounds. John is scared of them and I wanted to take one home!

When we got back from the ruins, we got ready for our splurge of the trip. We set up a couple's massage and dinner on the beach. This was my favorite part of the trip and oh, so relaxing!

This is where we had our massages, but it was in the evening.

After the massage, we had our dinner. It was magical! This isn't us eating since I forgot my camera, but this is exactly what it looked like. We watched cruise ships sail by and enjoyed the sea breeze.

Coming back to our room greeted us with a nice surprise. Happy anniversary to us!

Friday was our shopping day. Just a little note, stay away from Lapis Jewelry if you don't want to be suffocated. We got complimentary shuttle into the shopping district from them so it's not like we could just leave and we did spend some money there.

Saturday we got up early to get to the airport and traveled home. Our house sitters and good friends, Jonessa and Derek, picked us up from the airport and took us home.
When Jonessa let the dogs out to see us they were more happy to see Derek and her. :) looks like Makoa added two more people to his little circle.
Winston was picked up from the boarding kennel later that evening.

It was such a nice, relaxing trip and John and I want to go back so badly!

New furniture

Santa made an unexpected stop at our house on the 22nd and brought us new furniture.
Furniture Warehouse is going out of business and since I HATED our table (more like patio furniture) and was having a hard time finding a table I liked for a price I liked we decided to see what they had.

We came out with a new table. I love the fact that it's not round and that the seats don't have cushions so Sophi hair doesn't get stuck on them. We have more room now and the table could be more centered in the room, but John wants it against the wall.

We also bought a new rug, I had huge buyers remorse on the way home. I was worried that it wouldn't match our chairs and since they're going out of business I couldn't return it if I decided I didn't like it. Once John rolled it out I was in love.

John finished the coffee table and put the glass in, I won't mention that he broke the glass and I was furious...

I promise Cancun is coming, all the pictures are at home and these pictures were on my phone so I could type the post while at work.

Our bedroom has gone to the dogs

Winston seems to have caught a cold from boarding, so last night when he looked so peaceful in the dog bed I decided to let him stay the night instead of having to sleep in his crate.

Enna, of course, was pissed that her bed was taken by the big lug and was NOT going to share. She kept trying to curl up on our bed, so I brought up the small bed from downstairs. She laid on it, but was giving me the death stare.

Makoa loves to cuddle with whoever will have him so he tried next to Winston at first.

After he kept getting kicked he decided that he'd rather sleep next to the much smaller Enna and that's where everyone stayed the rest of the night.

So it looks like my "big bed for all three dogs" isn't panning out they way I'd like it to, mostly because Winston doesn't curl up like the other two. Oh well.
It took two years for me to feel comfortable letting Enna and Makoa sleep unconfined, but with how clam and well behaved Winston is I wasn't worried. He was a champ and didn't move all night. I thought that he'd for sure follow John out in the morning, but he stayed put with the other dogs. Even when I got up he stayed in bed for another 10 minutes. This all could be because he's not feeling well though....

I promise that Cancun pictures and post are coming, I've just been pretty busy getting ready for Christmas.

New desk

John was a busy boy last weekend and finished the computer desk and our coffee table. I'm waiting to post pictures of the coffee table until we get the glass top in, that should hopefully be this week.

The desk is pretty big, even bigger looking since my lap top will not be on it 90% of the time since I use it down in the family room. Maybe one day I'll get a desk top computer and it'll fill up some space. I lost some of my storage since it has no shelving under it. I'll be heading to Ikea to remedy that.

Here are my adorable "Wookie The Chew" from James Hance art. I've had it for almost a year and framed for about 6 months, but they just barely went up in the office last weekend. John is very particular about how pictures are hung espesically if they're in sets so I had to wait for him to pull out his levels and tape measures. That little, messy desk in the corner is my old computer desk that has been with me since the college days. I'll be selling in on KSL when we get back from Cancun.
 Oh did I tell you? We'll be in Cancun next week and out of this darn cold! My good friends Jonessa & Derek will be house/dog sitting for us while we're gone.