Keeping in Teutsch

I've had this pail-like container sitting on my kitchen counter for years that I stuff recipes in. For the longest, I've had intentions to type them all out in a cute font, print them, and then glue them on cute scrapbooking paper backed with cardstock and put them on a ring with cute ribbon tied on it. The thing is, though, recipes take FOREVER to type out and when I would start typing them, I would lose interest pretty quickly. So, year after year, they've just been sitting there and every time I would need to find a recipe or want to look through the recipes I had saved, but hadn't tried yet, I had to go through every one of them. This was happening almost weekly and it was getting really old. I knew I could just buy a picture album and stick them in there by category (or even some specialty recipe book), but I wanted something a little more creative. So when I ran across a picture of a recipe smash book on the blog Joy's Hope that linked to this recipe smash book, I knew I had found the perfect solution for all my loose recipes.

All you need is a smash book (that's what it's called literally as you can see) by K & Company (scrapbooking company), some tabs (that are sold in the same section--I found my smash book and supplies on an end cap at Michaels), some pockets to glue in to your smash book, and the best part--the really fun looking tape! (If you decide to make one, the smash book with the pink spine has pictures of food in it if you want to keep with your "theme." Also, the supplies aren't that expensive.)

-- I made Bacon Cheeseburger Roll-up recently. I loved it! Matt said it needed some Tony’s (he says that about everything!) and Juliette, in true fashion, barely touched it. Since I’m the one that cooks, I’ve deemed this recipe a keeper!

-- The Tuesday night before last we went to Buck & Johnny’s for kids’ night (and to use our daily deal voucher). Juliette got to make her own pizza. They brought her the dough, marinara sauce, cheese, and pepperonis to decorate it. They had some kids playing violins and guitar and singing Zydeco music. Juliette was not impressed with them. She took one look and then said, “I can do that. I know how to play violin.” (She thinks this because she has been in the “strings” class at school for these first three weeks.)

-- We finally finished the first book in the Boxcar Children series. Am I the only one that didn’t remember that ending? I seriously thought all this time that they lived in the boxcar forever and ever. We just started the second book last night and the kids are going to spend the summer living in a barn, sleeping on hay, for the summer! Craziness!

-- The Wednesday night before last we had to pick-up our packets and order our shoes for dance. When we got to the studio, a little girl from Juliette’s kindergarten class was walking out. Juliette was so excited to find out that the little girl is going to be in the same dance class as her!

-- Matt finally fixed his shark the Thursday night before last. I was so glad I was going to Bible study that night (my leader cooks for us)! The apartment, though, STILL smelled like fish four days later. Not cool!

-- The housing department put fliers on our doors the Friday of Labor Day weekend about the “tropical activity,” as in Tropical Storm Lee. Their advice: move stuff away from the windows and pick stuff off the floor. Both of which were incredibly unnecessary. Of course, we didn’t do that, but it made me wonder if anyone actually did what they said.

-- Over Labor Day weekend, Juliette and I went to my parents. Matt and I have a “garden party” reception to go to soon for a friend who is getting married in Florida, so Mom, Juliette, and I went dress shopping. I ended up trying on around 15 dresses and getting two that scream “garden party” for $10 each on clearance. I told my mom that I felt like a little girl on Easter Sunday putting them on. (They are white and have flowers on them; I’ve settled on the more floral one now because I couldn’t find shoes to match the other one.) Do you know how hard it is to find summer dresses right now?

-- While trying on dresses, Juliette picked one out for me to try on that she “loved.” It was green and ugly…really ugly. I tried it on just to pacify her and it made me look pregnant. (You know...the type of dress that only pregnant women or super skinny women can wear!) Juliette almost started crying when I put it back…she was not happy that I didn’t like her choice!

-- We have celebrated Juliette’s birthday about four times now. It’s bordering on ridiculous. I sent cupcakes to school on her birthday. That night we took her to Chuck-E-Cheese’s (which is now an annual tradition) and had cookie cake. Over the Labor Day weekend, my sister brought an ice cream cake to my parents for Juliette, and then Saturday we finally had her birthday party. At this point, it felt like it had been ages since her birthday!

-- Matt is studying for his comps (big, big tests) that start two weeks from today. He'll take one a week for four weeks and they are basically comprehensive, meaning he has to know pretty much everything about the areas he is testing in, which are Renaissance Literature, Rhetoric, Early American Literature, and African American Literature. He has not been in a good mood because he is so stressed. (He HAS to pass these tests or he can't proceed any further.) Anyway, yesterday he was in a bad mood and Juliette was jumping around (you know, being a 5-year-old) and he was trying to do something on the computer and he told her to stop and she came over to me and said in a low voice, with her hand over her mouth (almost like she was afraid to say it), "Tell Daddy to chill out!" My thoughts exactly! :)

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First off, I wanted to share this recipe with you that I got from a little cookbook I have called "101 Things to Do with a Cake Mix." I've had this cookbook since before Juliette was born, yet I've only ever made one recipe out of it. Not sure why, as they all sound good!

We've had a busy weekend. My in-laws were in town and we took them to Washington, La., yesterday to eat at the Steamboat Warehouse for their birthdays. (Their birthdays are 5 days apart.) Washington is about 30 minutes north of Lafayette and is the 3rd oldest settlement in Louisiana (behind Natchitoches and New Orleans). Unlike Natchitoches and New Orleans, though, there isn't really a restored downtown area. There are some homes from the 1700s and 1800s, but other than a handful of antique stores and that one restaurant, there wasn't really much to see. We did go to the Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall, where Matt and I drooled over quite a bit of the furniture (some of which was very reasonably priced, but you know, we kinda have a space issue right now!). The food was good, though, and we enjoyed ourselves.

After going to the early service this morning, we went to the Sunday brunch at Blue Dog Cafe. It's a buffet with traditional breakfast items, like an omelet station and waffles and bacon and sausage, but they also have a lot of the cajun food too, like corn and crab bisque, crawfish etouffee, catfish, dirty rice, etc. It was pretty good, but I'm not sure it was worth the expensive price. Juliette ate for free, though, and ended up eating almost as much as us adults, so I suppose we got our money's worth!

Things are going to start getting busy around here this week, and we are ready for "fall" to start: school, football, and cooler weather! Juliette has her kindergarten testing in the morning and her orientation later this week. Matt has meetings this week, and then both Matt and Juliette will start back to school next Monday (the 22nd). Juliette is incredibly excited about starting kindergarten, and we're just as excited as her. And, let's not forget that she has her 5th birthday coming up in about a week and a half as well, so there will be lots to blog about in the next few weeks!

The grandparents are anxious to see Juliette in her school uniform, so Mammaw, Pappaw, Nana and Poppie (and anyone else who wants!) check back later this week for Juliette's School Uniform Fashion Show!

Today is the final link-up for recipes over at Kelly's Korner Blog. Whenever I'm asked to bring something to a party, I almost always bring an appetizer. Here are my favorites:

It's time to link-up again to Kelly's Korner Blog's Show Us Your Life. This week is about dessert recipes. It was REALLY hard to choose just a handful to post!

Since the link-up at Kelly's Korner Blog is only for main dishes, desserts (this Friday), and appetizers (next Friday), I thought I'd share my favorite side dishes today.

This recipe is probably familiar to most people, but I made this for a Shrimp Boil we went to last night and thought that there possibly might be some people who had never had this or made it. Before you completely disregard the recipe because of the words "strawberry" or "jello," let me just say that I'm not crazy about strawberries, so if you dislike strawberries, but like strawberry flavoring, then you can pick the strawberries off the top and still eat the cake (and it will still be really good!). Secondly, calling this a jello cake doesn't mean it's the consistency of jello. If you aren't familiar with cakes that use dissolved jello mix in them, then you would never be able to tell what makes this cake so wonderful, so give it a try. It's an awesome dessert for this time of year and super easy to make!

I know I've been gone for way too long...and there's a good explanation! Back at the beginning of the summer, I took a little part-time job with an old publishing contact doing some data entry for their publicity company at night. It's only around 6-10 hours a week and I only work Monday thru Thursday nights (typically after Juliette is in bed), so it's very manageable, but it has made me not have time to be on the computer much for personal stuff, so I just haven't been blogging. I really do like blogging, though, so I'm going to try to keep up a little better.

Since I've been gone, there have only been a few things to blog about, but I'm having trouble loading all the pictures to the blog, so I'm just going to give a little recap and skip the pictures:

Our mini-vacation to Houston
Back at the beginning of August, we went to Houston for a little mini-vacation. We saw the Braves play the Astros, visited the aquarium, zoo, children's museum, health museum, and toured NASA. We had a fun, busy time and wished we could have stayed longer and done more!

Juliette's 4th birthday
Juliette turned 4 at the end of August and we celebrated multiple times. The day before her birthday we took her to Chuck-E-Cheese's (since Matt had a class the night of her birthday) and then on her birthday we took cupcakes to daycare, got McDonald's for dinner and had a little birthday cake when Matt came home from class. Then, we had a birthday party for her Labor Day weekend at my parents' house.

That's about all that has been going on since I last blogged. Juliette started back to preschool and is doing great with her schedule of preschool in the mornings and daycare in the afternoons. She has a new teacher at preschool (Ms. Coghill from last year retired) and although Ms. Coghill was technically Dr. Coghill, she just had them call her Ms. Coghill. Juliette's new teacher, though, is younger and I guess not as humble about her doctorate, as she has the kids call her Dr. Mary.

Juliette also started dance last week and LOVED it. As soon as I picked her up, she wanted to know when she could come back. All the little girls in her class looked so precious in their little leotards and tights!

Before I go, I want to share a recipe with you guys. I made this last night and ate a piece before it cooled and hardened and didn't think it was that great, but then today, I tried it again and it is really good. So, be patient, let it cool and harden in the fridge over night before eating it! :)

Have you ever, in the midst of cooking a new dish, just thought "this is going to be bad, really bad" and "oh man, I'm wasting money and no one is going to eat this and we're going to all be eating cereal for dinner." Well, that was my thoughts tonight as I started cooking dinner. By the time I put it in the oven I was POSITIVE it was going to be a disaster. Thankfully, I can now say, that it wasn't bad, although it wasn't a pretty dish, which is why I didn't take a picture. So, if you are feeling brave and this sounds good to you, give it a try. I promise you won't have to eat cereal for dinner!

It's official! I'm addicted to couponing! I know I may have lost some "cool points" in saying that--and if not, I'm definitely going to lose them by posting these pics--but I can't help myself. I'm super excited about saving money!

It kinda all began when I started doing most of my grocery shopping at Albertsons not too long ago. Albertsons has some awesome sales...better than I ever saw at Brookshires or Super One when we lived in West Monroe and every week my mom can attest to the fact that I call her to tell her how much I saved at Albertsons. Usually, it's at least $25. I think the highest it has been is $40. In the back of my head, I always kept thinking to myself that I probably would still spend the same amount of money on the same items if I went to Wal-mart, so one day recently I did my grocery shopping at Wal-mart (just like I used to do back in West Monroe) and actually went to the trouble of writing down prices to see how they compared to the sale prices at Albertsons. Guess what? Albertsons is better! So, after that little revelation, it dawned on me that if I were to use coupons on the items that are on sale at Albertsons, than I could get some stuff for super cheap, which is really just the basic rule behind couponing and getting the most out of them...I'd just never paid much attention!

So, just like my personality, I started doing some "research" and started reading some blogs that pertained to couponing. And, then I got hooked on trying to find good deals at any store, not just Albertsons. So, if you are looking to maximize your coupons, I recommend you check out the following:

Totally Target -- the go-to place for all deals at Target
Money Saving Mom -- the place to go for finding out the deals at any other store
My Coupon Hunter -- the place to go to buy coupons for mere pennies. I know that sounds silly, but for not much more than the cost of a Sunday paper, you can choose just the coupons you want from the current Sunday's inserts and you can order multiple of each coupon. And, you get them fairly quickly...usually within the week.

Although, I've been raving about Albertson's great sales, ironically, the pics I have below aren't from any trips there. Here's the best deals I've gotten this week:

This is what I purchased at Target for $3.40. If I wouldn't have had coupons, it would have cost $8.15. With the coupons, the Kandoo wipes (for toddlers) were 65 cents, each thing of kids Crest toothpaste was 42 cents, each thing of cream of chicken was 52 cents and the noodles were under a dollar too.
This is what I purchased at Walgreens. I found the Pantene on clearance for $2.54 each and had a coupon for buy 2, get $3 off and the eyeshadow was buy one, get one half off and I was able to use a $1 off coupon on each of them. Without coupons, it would have been $14.70, but I only spent $4.31.
This is what I got at CVS. A lot of people play the "CVS game" and are able to get stuff for free or practically free with CVS Extra Care Bucks. I just got a card today and am going to try it out. The thing is you have to spend a little money to get going, so I bought some body wash for $5.50 today and now have $4.50 in Extra Care Bucks to use next Sunday. (The new sales start each Sunday at the drug stores.) Going forward, I should only have to spend pennies or at the most a couple of dollars to get whatever I want. (Some people are so good at playing the CVS game that they can get $60 worth of stuff for just a few dollars.) If you are interested in learning how to play the "game," check out the Money Saving Mom's blog. She has links to each store and details on how to "play."

So on the above picture, the cereal was on sale for $1.88 and I had a buy 2, get $1 off coupon and the eyeliner was half off and I had $1 Cover Girl coupons, so I spent $7.76. It would have been $22 if I wouldn't have had coupons or wouldn't have found the good sales.

I also tried a new recipe tonight called Wild Rice Soup. It was pretty good! Here's the recipe if you are interested.

A few years ago when I had Juliette, we had the luxury of people bringing us meals for a solid week. (Which followed the luxury of my mom cooking all of my favorite dishes in one week--just thinking about that makes me want to have another baby!) We were introduced to some phenomenal bread from a little meat market/specialty store called River City Market (or something like that) in West Monroe. It was a french bread that had lots of cheese on it with olives and it was awesome! Over the last few years that we were in West Monroe, I would occasionally pop in and buy a loaf to go with dinner (or to just stand over the oven and eat as it was cooling). Shortly before we moved, though, River City Market closed down and I've been craving some of that bread ever since.

Back in November, when I received the copy of the Pioneer Woman's cookbook, I ran across a recipe for Olive Cheese Bread in it that looked similar to the other bread and since then I have been wanting to try it.

This past Monday, while I was off for President's Day, I went to the store and got the ingredients I needed to make it. I was very disappointed...there was major olive overload. It tasted like I was eating a muffaletta without the meat. It wasn't bad, bad...if you like olives and prefer that to be the overriding taste, than you won't need to alter the recipe at all, but I would prefer more bread and cheese and less olives, so next time I'll be using only half of the olives. Click here for the original recipe. Also, just a side note: instead of hand chopping the olives, just stick them in a food processor...it's much easier that way!

Any one care for some Over-the-top Olive Cheese Bread? I've got more than half a loaf in the fridge...

Fridays are the best...and I'm pretty certain that most people love them as well. Aside from the obvious reason for loving Fridays (the start of the weekend!), I love Fridays because I get off at 12:30 pm and because Juliette gets to join me for a few hours at work while Matt teaches two classes. I was a little worried at first of how she would do being in my office, but she has been great so far and has actually helped do a few things.

Today she put address labels on about 40 packages for me. Sometimes, though, she just colors or does puzzles. Here she is below working on a 100 piece puzzle that she actually put together all my herself!
I bought this cookbook (the author/cook is a well-known blogger, which is how I knew about it) back in November as a "congratulations-for-finally-landing-a-job" present to myself. I have had it on the cookbook stand on my kitchen counter since the first week of December and have yet to cook anything out of it. Matt, however, looked through it the other day and has been drooling over these things called "French Breakfast Puffs" for about a week now. Turns out that we had all the ingredients for it, so we had breakfast for dinner and he fixed the french breakfast puffs and I fixed a potato recipe from the book that turned out great. (Pics are below.) We also had bacon and eggs, except Matt decided to go all Julia Child on me and poach the eggs and I refused to eat them because they just didn't look too appetizing. I'm more of a scrambled egg girl (and so is Juliette)!


Click here for the recipe for the French Breakfast Puffs. Matt followed the recipe to a tee, except he left out the nutmeg since we don't like it. Also, we didn't have any shortening, so he just substituted margarine...don't freak out, the Internet told us it was okay! :) These are good, but you shouldn't eat too many because I'm pretty sure The Pioneer Woman is channeling some Paula Deen with this recipe--you drown the baked muffins in butter and then roll them in cinnamin. Good, but I'm pretty sure these aren't healthy! (I just had one!)

Click here for the potato recipe on The Pioneer Woman's web site, although I do need to say that I made these with red potatoes (because that's all I had on hand), I didn't use the bacon fat (because I'd rather not have a sudden heart attack and because I don't fry bacon), I skipped the onions (because I didn't have any, and frankly, I don't care for them in my food unless they are teeny, tiny and undetectable to the human eye) and I used Tonys. Basically, I'm not even sure if that can even be considered her recipe now...oh, well...it's potatoes...hard to mess them up! Just do what you want with them and it's pretty hard to go wrong. The main thing is just to make sure you brown them in a little bit of oil (canola if you are being health conscious!).

We had an enjoyable evening cooking together in the kitchen (while Juliette folded her Valentines and put stickers on them). Hope your Fridays are just as enjoyable!

They say that every 7 years your tastes change. Maybe this is the reason I've suddenly stopped picking tomatoes out of stuff (although I still don't like them all by themselves or in really big chunks), started craving dishes with actual strawberries in them instead of just the flavoring and embraced the idea of eating or going near anything that had basil pesto in it.

This summer we've (or in some cases, just me) have been trying new dishes, so I'd thought I'd share some of my new favorites:
Have I mentioned that my 10-year high school reunion is only about 10 weeks away and I've been working on losing as much weight as I can before then? I'm thinking I should probably find some new favorite things that don't involve eating, huh?

We really haven't done a lot this week other than conduct Potty Training Boot Camp (more on that later), so this is just going to be a blog of random things.
Is this backpack not the absolute cutest thing?? I meant to add this to my blog about Baby Gap and forgot to load the picture on there, but really want to show you how adorable it is. It isn't like Juliette needs any more bags, but it's tempting to buy it because it's just so darn cute!

Look what I've been doing this week and I am SO OVERJOYED that I have gotten these done! Sure this doesn't look like a lot and it's because this isn't all of them. A lady ordered 15 custom made towel wraps as late graduation gifts. Custom made means that not only did I have to monogram them, but I also had to sew ribbon on them, so it took a little time. I thought they turned out really cute, though. (On a side note, who buys graduation gifts for ALL of their daughter's friends? I'm not complaining because it was the biggest order I've ever gotten, but I just think I'd have to draw the line at like only her very best friends or something like that if it was Juliette!)

Wanna know what Juliette has been up to this week other than potty training? Well, she's almost 3, so we thought it was about time she started doing some chores around the house, so we gave her mowing duty. Just kidding! :) This is a bubble mower, that doesn't shoot bubbles like it's suppose to. You can read more on how she got the mower and see a video on Matt's blog.

And now for the BIG news! We "think" Juliette is potty trained!!! (Knock on wood!) Here she is showing off her big girl panties. We started off Monday with just putting her in panties and taking away the Pull-Ups and she has only had two accidents this week and the last two days she's been telling us when she needed to go to the potty. We have been putting her in Pull-Ups still at nap time, night time and when we go out, but she's been doing great at going to the potty in public and not going in her Pull-Up. Now, poopin' in the potty isn't coming as easy and I thought I was about to have a constipated kiddo on my hands until she decided yesterday that her tummy just hurt too much and she broke down and went in the potty, so we are happy about that! I think she's still a little unsure of that part of it, but she definitely got the hang of peein' in the potty. She is almost 3, so it's about time, huh? Of course, I guess we did bribe her quite a bit between an array of Dollar Tree toys and candy that I put in a basket on the back of the potty as a "grab bag" for every time she went, as well as the promise that if she pooped in the potty we'd take her to the movies today to see the guinea pigs (G-FORCE movie), so I guess that might have helped a little!

And, since my other camera still hasn't been fixed, I had to use my video camera to take the above pics and since I'm just down downloading this video, I thought I'd share it with you guys. It's a hoot! It was from this past Christmas (notice how much hair Juliette has grown in just 7 months time) and it is of Matt, Uncle Chad and Juliette playing Rock Band while my niece Madison looks on. Matt is playing drums, Uncle Chad is playing guitar and Juliette, well, she is the singer! I laugh everytime I play this video and this is the way she sings EVERYTIME Matt lets her play Rock Band with him, although recently she's been partial to playing the drums, which is cute, but not nearly as entertaining as her "singing"!