I will never leave you or forsake you

Fitting as my first post, to remind me to put God first in everything. The best part is that I get to see this every time I pull into my church parking lot. Such a great, powerful, beautiful reminder that The Lord is for me and not against me!

New Year, New...

I love that it is a new year.  It's a time to reflect on past and dream/plan for the future.  I'm able to look back and see what didn't work well, and think about what I want to change/improve!  I don't like to make resolutions, mainly because I'm not good at keeping them!  I'm more of wanting to set small goals that can be accomplished.  I do know one thing, that as I take on this new year, I want to be the best me, and the best that I can be, but I also want to make sure that my priorities are in line - putting God first in everything.  It's a struggle, but one that I know if I do, the blessings will be many!

One of my goals is to blog more, I have never been a huge writer, but want to chronicle my daily life.  This may be, will be simple.  I'm going to start with a picture of something that happened that day, or that represented my day.  I have seen these 'picture a day' or 'December photo project', they looked interesting to me, but never took the time to do it.  I can also see this as being, hopefully, a stress reliever - not stress inducer!  Because I know me the best, I will probably miss a day here and there, and that's ok, because no one is perfect.  Maybe this will turn into something more, something less...who knows.  I know that with the pictures there will be funny moments, inspiring moments, recipes/food reviews,a few a lot of makeup reviews, and whatever else I want.  After all, it's my place and space to write and talk about what's going on in my life.  I'd love to have input or dialogue with anyone that wants to.  I'd love to have you on this journey with me! 

Happy 2013!

Kitchen Aid Mixer

I'm so excited about this contest! I absolutely want a KA mixer, have wanted one for a long time.  They are expensive and so I have taken to alternative means to get one.  That means entering every contest out there that I can find for one! I picture below is courtesy of momspotted.com and the one on the left is the mixer I could win, it's a beauty.  Be sure to check out www.kitchenaid.com and www.momspotted.com to see lots of fun new things!

STICK BLENDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have wanted one of these since I first saw they were introduced.  I have not gotten around to getting one, and now since I could have a chance at getting on via BzzAgent, I WOULD LOVE IT! I hate hauling out my big ole blender to make one little smoothie for me, where with this I could whip it up in no time with this thing! :) Looking forward to having this arrive in my doorstep!

haven't blogged in a while

I have been away from my blog and it has made me sad.  But I was on BZZAgent this morning, and I wanted to join a campaign and one of the ways to advertise for myself was to do a blog post.  This campaign is for the "Bodum double wall glass"  now this thing looks to be right up my alley.  Whoever invented the coffee mug, odd shaped glasses and anything else that knows designs, barks right up my alley.  I LOVE mugs, cups, glasses.  I could have a collection with the amount I have.  I would love to try this glass out.  It can be used with either hot or cold drinks and looks like the perfect size for that fall hot apple cider! Look how adorbale they are at advertising it.  If you could eat everything out of cups, mugs and glasses, I would totally do it! :) 

il mio fine settimana nella cucina

If you don't speak Italian, (which I don't) the above says "my weekend in the kitchen."  That's exactly what I did.
I had just picked up this issue of FN "The Italian Issue."  anyone ANYONE who knows me, knows that I am completely in love OBSESSED with Italy.  Heck I will say it, I want to read all about it, cook recipes from there, travel there, marry an Italian (lord willing ;)), and maybe even eventually live there!  So why NOT get a head start on a dream, and learn all that there is learn about it, and how to cook some of the wonderful, delicious yummies! :)

I had no intention of spending the whole weekend in the kitchen, but I definitely didn't mind! And must I say that I made some yummy things!

 Saturday started with my hunt for Fresh Mozzarella Curds.  I'm determined to find them to make my own Mozzarella.  Needless to say Muskegon is to too tiny of a city to sell these, and was not able to find them (so if anyone knows where I can get them that would be great :))  


So instead I went home and started to work on this... ---------->
Also known as "Chocolate Hazelnut Tart"  I didn't realize at all how much work went into making a tart...making the dough, chill dough, roll dough, put in pan, chill dough, bake dough, make filling(nutella and heavy cream and a few other things), let tart cool, pour in filling.  It doesn't seem like a lot, but it is! :) In the end this was amazing!!! (Let me know if you want the recipe, make sure you have a good 4-5 hours to dedicate to this! :) )

While ambitiously making the tart, I was also making pizza dough to make two more things, which will be shown later, but I never know that you could freeze pizza dough?!  Did you know this you can make it ahead of time and put it in the freezer in plastic wrap for up to a month!! I froze it overnight so that it would be not overtaking my kitchen, and I took it out and it all cooked up wonderfully! I was so happy and will be utilizing this method for pizza dough again!

I had only planned on being in the kitchen for a little amount of time on Sunday, but that never works how it should.  That's o.k., I made some more yummy things. Like this "Banana-Hazelnut Bruschetta" (click on link for recipe)  I didn't get a picture of with the toppings, but you are supposed to put cool whip and hazelnuts on top!! YUM!











And now here comes the Pizza Dough ambition.  I made Zeppoles (click link for recipe), which is fried Pizza Dough! :)  And really as Buddy Valastro said on Cake Boss, when they were in Italy <3, "fried dough is fried dough in any country." I didn't know for sure how they were going to turn out because pizza dough is not that sweet.  Well I made them and put powdered sugar over them and they were rather surprising AND good!!! :) I was very happy, and they were extremely easy to make!



MY FAVORITE: 

Going into making this I thought for sure that this was not going to be favorite, but turned out I loved it and CAN'T wait to make it again, "Raspberry-Almond Pizza" Not a ton of work or ingredients, but the taste was just awesome! And because of the juice from the raspberries (I used frozen), it turned the pizza this pink and red color (perfect for Valentine's Day) and it was juat all around my favorite! I highly recommend this, especially if you l.o.v.e. raspberries!

How was your weekend spent?  Any fun/interesting things you want to share?  Are you cooking, what is your favorite thing to make.  I have so many different recipes from this magazine to make a few include, Sausage and Rigatoni, Pick your Pasta (where you make your own sauce), Pork Marsala, Chicken, Sausage, and Peppers, and sooooo many more I can't even remember the names of them! :)


Ciao!

C-h-i-c-a-g-o

I'm so glad that my dad is spontaneous like I am.  I had been talking for months about how I wanted to see "Chicago at Christmas time".  Well Friday night dad and I decided that we were going to go, we took ourselves and some clothes in case we stayed, we had no reservations or plan really.  We arrived in Chicago for quite the day, it started with Chipotle for lunch! YUM

And not very far down the road we came across a corner bakery cafe, and I have heard lots of things about this place, and 100 ft of walking is cause for taking a snack break, right?  Well, the good thing is that we didn't do this every 100 ft.  It would be expensive, and a lot of food, although I would love to eat my way through the city!

Christkindlmarket 

After Corner Bakery, where we had a delicious Maple Pecan Bar and Snickerdoodle cookie, was when full tourist mode stepped in! I was snapping pictures like I had never been to the big city before, and I didn't care! I think it's fun to take picture and even more fun when you are in the city that you have wanted to see at Christmas. So dad and I tromped and tromped and tromped through the city, all of Michigan Ave (where I did do some shopping it wasn't all about the tourist attractions! :) ), all of State St., Macy's and to Daley Plaza for the Christkindlmarket that was going on. That was really interesting it was this German outdoor market, where they have everything German. Dad and I walked around and I bought some toasted Almonds! MMMM so good and worth every penny! We were exhausted after Daley, but we walked more to Giordano's for some pizza, where I hate to admit but we killed a pizza, we were starving and hadn't eaten since Corner Bakery. On the way to getting Pizza, I thought we had missed our chance at Garrett's because we didn't get to the one of Michigan Ave., nope we happen to stumble across one on Madison St. I was so excited, because everyone talks about it and I wanted to see what the hype was! So I bought my Chicago Mix, and wasn't in the least disappointed! :) 

You can't come to Chicago and NOT get Pizza!

After dinner we decided that we were too exhausted to drive home, well I was too exhausted since I was driving, and that we would crash with our nephew/cousin Bob. He was so gracious to let us come and stay there and had great accommodations. Dad had a full size bed, and I had a mattress on the floor, it was very comfy and so wonderful of him and his roommate to let us stay!

I told Bobby we need a picture because he was all part of our Journey!

Sunday, I wanted to get home for Bethlehem Blues Cafe, but I also wanted to stop at a few places in Vernon Hills area too, so we did that and I got my Kiehl's that was so excited about, even though dad thinks I should go and buy a bottle of Vaseline and call it good! (Men, what do they know?! :)) BBC started at 6 and we rolled in the parking lot of the church at 5:49 pm. Just on time! We had a great trip and made some good memories. I guess Dad had never been downtown and so he was like a little kid in a candy store, he is still talking about it, and loves to tell people “When we were in Chicago...” I'm hoping I can make this a yearly thing, and hope to bring more of my family members, and if not then that's cool too! It's just so fun and no far away at all, it's the next best thing to NYC, I have been to NYC, but Chicago is so pretty with the lake, and just an all around fun time!!! 


Now I leave you with some of the pictures I took throughout the day! 

At the bean, a tourist must do!

The very first person we see when we exit the parking garage is Rachel Kiely, how crazy!

Inside Macy's, dad and I both went...WOW!

YUM YUM YUM