Calendar

I love cruising Etsy, however, I've never bought anything off of there. Have you? Tonight I think I found my first purchase. Around here, we live by our white board calendar, but it's just a cheap-o one I bought from Wal-Mart. Isn't this one cute? I love that it's personalized and it's made of glass with vinyl lettering so it is almost more of a cute wall-hanging rather than just a boring calendar. It doesn't come with a frame, however, so I need to be on the hunt for a cool frame. Good thing I'm hitting up thrift stores tomorrow! Hope I can find something good.

I found it HERE.

Still here.

I've been here, but haven't had a darn thing to blog about! I've had to get creative with our time at home without the car. Which means - baking. A lot of baking. Anyone else bake when they are bored? And some birthday card-making as well. August is FULL of birthdays in my family and Adam's family! (Although, we did have the car twice last week and you know I was stoked. In one day, Rocklin and I managed to squeeze in Ikea, Joann's, Michaels, Target, and Office Max. I figured I had to get it out of my system while I could!).

Oh yeah, and our computer died. Sad day. Dead computer = lots of lost information. The old laptop is at the laptop Dr. as we speak, so maybe some things can be salvaged off the hard drive, but if not, I've already come to terms with losing stuff. Which is another reason I haven't blogged lately. No computer! I do (luckily for my sanity) have a laptop I'm borrowing temporarily until ours either gets fixed or we get a new one. If we do end up getting a new one, I'd really like one of those super cute pink DELL ones. I wonder how Adam would feel as the proud co-owner of a pink laptop?

That's about it, folks. Just some random thoughts (and a couple of pictures below) for this post. Maybe I'll have something exciting to post soon. Maybe (and) hopefully.

Rocklin enjoying being the benefactor of some of my baking boredom creations.

Some YUMMY cupcakes I made for Rocklin's cousin's baptism.

Black Bean Brownies

I know you're probably thoroughly disgusted by the title of this post, but read on...trust me.

First of all, let me say thank you to Adam's cousin's wife for posting this on her blog. I stole the idea because I was curious to see if this actually worked. Good news - it did! (Thanks, Casey!).

It's no secret that I love to bake. It doesn't help that I'm home all day now - I've been fighting the urge to make cakes and cookies and brownies of all sorts for a while now. It's almost the act of baking (and licking the spoon) that I love more than the finished product itself.

I am so my Mother's daughter.

Anyway, I've tried different versions of "low-fat" brownies in the past (you know, adding applesauce instead of oil, etc.), and I never have been happy with A) the texture and B) the overall taste. I was excited to try these simple brownies, even though the idea of adding black beans to my brownie mix kind of grossed me out at first. But I have to report, they turned out delicious and were quite moist and fudgey-like! I dare you to try them...and let me know if you do! Seriously, low in fat, high in fiber and protein and only 2 ingredients...AWESOME!

Here's the recipe:

1 box of brownie mix (family size 13x9)

1 can of black beans

Rinse and drain beans. Place beans back in can and fill with water. Place water/beans in blender until smooth. Add to brownie mix. (You will NOT add the other ingredients - eggs, oil, etc.). Mix together and pour into baking dish. Bake the brownies according to the regular baking directions on back of the box.

Here's a picture of the finished product...just so you can get an idea of the texture.

Now all I need is some low-fat frozen yogurt and I'm set! Enjoy!

Boredom

We are now a one-car family (for the time being). Adam's Mazda finally decided it had had enough a couple weeks back. Sad news for us is, it's going to cost more to fix it then it's even worth. Sooo.....that means we have one car for now. Truthfully, it hasn't been that bad, but I do get bored. I guess I took the freedom of a car at my disposal for granted. Now that Rocklin and I get to hang out all day in the house, I'm having to get creative with ways of keeping both him and I busy! I do still have my job (I'm a Recruiter for GameRecruiter.com and I work from my home) and thankfully that keeps me busy most of the time. But every now and then I need a creative outlet. With all the crazy good going back to school sales recently, I decided to pick up some more blank composition books and make a few more notebooks, like I did a while back. This time, however, I used my Crop-a-dile and punched holes and attached ribbon on the sides of the notebooks to make a ribbon bow closure, and on two of them I attached the cute little mini-sharpies (which I got with a coupon from Office Max for 1 cent each last week!).

Once a week, Adam and I attend Financial Peace University (which I LOVE and recommend to anyone who is interested!!). It's held at a local church, and lucky for us they even offer free baby-sitting. The two girls that watch Rock are sisters, and they are so sweet to volunteer their time to baby-sit. I made these two notebooks for them, each with their respective initial, as a small Thank You! "E" for Emily and "M" for Michelle. (And the picture quality is so poor...I didn't use the flash on most of them because it just left a nasty glare. I need photography lessons!!).

This one with an "R" is a birthday present for our niece Rylee who has a special birthday coming up. She'll be 8 and will be getting baptized in a couple of weeks.

This is just a clipboard I made for myself. I have been looking for something to take to the grocery store with me to keep my list and all my coupons together and I was tired of using boring white envelopes and a scratch pad. I've seen these cute mod-podge clipboards around for a while, and since I already had the mod podge out for the notebooks, I thought I'd give this a try. This one is just a mini clipboard, not the full-sized one. It's perfect for what I need it for. (And not to mention how much I just LOVE the paper I used here. Basic Grey...my all-time favorite line of scrapbook papers. Same paper I used for the notebooks I made above for E & M).

Now if I can just get my sewing machine out of hibernation (the garage) then I can start on that cute ruffle cardigan I wrote about below. Hopefully I'll have pictures of that little project to post soon.

Ruffles

I've been so in love ruffles for a while now. Not sure what it is, but whenever I see a piece of clothing or shoes or whatever with ruffles on it, I'm immediately drawn to it. I came across these two super cute and semi-easy tutorials online with some cute ruffles!! Thought I'd share in case anyone else out there loves ruffles as much as I do.

This was a boring old t-shirt made into a cute little ruffle cardigan! The best part is, it doesn't even really look that hard to make. You can find the tutorial HERE. (Picture was borrowed from the tutorial website www.craftstylish.com ...if I get around to trying this out myself and it turns out cute, then I'll post a picture of my own).

Now this one I just love, and can't wait to try it out. It's a "ruffle butt onsie" for a little baby girl. How cute is that? Looks so easy to make, and what a cute baby shower gift! I'm going to need a baby girl of my own one of these days so I have a little model for all the cutesy girls things I keep finding! I found the tutorial HERE on U Create. (I love that site, btw. Everyday I find something new on there that I want to make myself!!).