Happy New Year!!! 2016 is here!!

Heeeeey everyone!!! It’s now 2016.

What is there to say? Hmmn. 2015 passed, and it passed seemingly quite quick. I swear it wasn’t long ago that I was helping get things prepared to help alleviate the heat of summer (roof vents; awesome things they are), or just getting my hair colored for Halloween. Time seems to fly, doesn’t it?

Regardless, I’m excited for what’ll happen this year when time’s whizzing by.  I have a great feeling for this year, and I know that this year is going to be the year (how many times can I say year?!) that I let go of most of my procrastinating side, and finally get to things I’ve set aside for work, relaxing, reading and plain ole goofing off. I mean it, I’ve made it one of my resolutions. To finally, FINALLY, get back on track with Bloggaries, to finally get files from little thumb drives moved to a larger storage, to finally get my YouTube videos uploaded and caught up to every vlog I’ve taken in the past few years and to always keep myself on track of projects that need doing. I also resolve for myself to be positive, no negativity! It’s a poison on the mind and soul. And to be a bit more healthy; less soda, more tea!!! I resolve to make sure I’m always thankful for all I’ve got and to give my big Finn all the attention he begs for, even when I just sat down.

I hope all of you had a fantastical and amazing new year’s eve and new year’s day. I hope that this year brings for all of you what you’ve not gotten from others. Love y’all!!

Snack time

Eve snack!

Black eyed peas are a must, they help make the year great! As well as a delicious completely homemade egg salad sandwich!! Now for dessert!

Here’s to 2016!!! May it be blessed and kind! 🎆🎊🎉

Christmas Goodies, Nomnoms!

Hey everyone! Heh, finally managed to remind myself to take pictures that I needed to of certain things and with that, I shall introduce you all to the Christmas goodies!

First off comes Christmas dinner! We ate at home this year, and let me tell you, it felt very nice to not rush, to not force ourselves to pack everything up and be ready by 10am or Noon. This was probably one of the most relaxed Christmases I’ve had in a long while!

The Christmas dinner consisted of chicken; which we covered in bacon and smoked for about 4-5 hours the few days before Christmas, pinto beans; not canned, but home cooked, homemade rolls, German potato salad; done up in a Texan way using cilantro and Texas beef sausage in the mix, cranberry sauce, and of course a holiday meal would never be complete without a grand serving of gravy, which was homemade with chicken stock, fats, as well as oils from the sausage when it was cooked! The meal was very filling (seriously, that’s without eating anything but candy the beginning of the day) and it was extremely delicious!

The next goodies? Desserts! Homemade candies in the flavors of:

Cherry, lemon, mint, peppermint, maple, and caramel! I had a blast making the candies, and although I may have lost some feeling in my fingertips from when I made the lemon drop candies, it’s something I’d happily do for years to come. The mints, both flavors, are made with a sugar paste which is basic fondant, and it hardens to a melt in your mouth quickly kind of strongly flavored candy.

The next big thing I spent an entire night+ working on, were my pumpkin spice flavored,Christmas tree cupcakes!

I immensely enjoyed the process that went into this. The gift boxes and the ornaments are made of the same fondant as the mints, and were formed and dried before being painted with food coloring, decorated with a fondant bow for the boxes, and stuck on the trees and painted for the ornaments. The more I look at the above pic, I see a cute little tree in its stand, waiting for some giant to come by and pluck up one of the gift boxes!

I hope everyone of you had a very wonderful holidays and Christmas, and I hope you all have an amazing new year. I’m blessed to have been able to make all these items, share them with not only family, but share the images and my thoughts of the experiences with all of you. I’m extremely thankful for all of you. I know I haven’t published any of my Bloggaries, but don’t you worry. Come the new year’s celebrations passing, I’ll be pumping out the Bloggaries (finally!)!

Thanks for reading everyone. Much love to all of you! ❤

Ssssssss….BOOM! Ahhh, pretty!

Hello, sorry for my absence. I sometimes get days where I just want to sit around and play games/sleep all day. LOL

 

FIREWORKS!!

I don’t know how ya’ll do this in other States, or cities for that matter, but here in rural South Austin, Texas you can find at least four firework stands without traveling even a mile.

The fact that you’re not allowed to shoot off fireworks in the city doesn’t stop hundreds of people from buying bags of fireworks at the stands near me, nearly causing accidents as people rush in when it is close to the holidays.

 

Over the past few years, after getting our dog Finnegan, the whole fireworks thing started to get a wee bit annoying. Finnegan is very irritated by the sounds of fireworks when they shoot out of the tubes, or particularly when they make whistling noises. This causes him to get riled up: barking, running from one door to another, and basically becoming extremely agitated. The lot across the road from us has always been a pain, shining their huge lights towards our house, and letting their generators run into the night.  My dad has had to go there several times in the past ten years to ask them to point their lights at the ground(because why do you not want to light up your lot?), and request they don’t shoot fireworks in our direction. 

 

Usually, on the day after July 4th, we have to go around our yard to pick up bottle rocket shells(tubes?) and the casings that come off of saturns(whistley awesomeness).  Some of these people selling and buying the fireworks are so ignorant, that even when Fire Marshalls say no aerial fireworks due to drought, they still shoot em off!  Because the droughts can get so bad here, aerial fireworks could cause out-of-control grass fires. And trust me, there is plenty of grass around us that could catch fire in a dry summer.

 

Enough about droughts, it’s kinda depressing.  As I was saying, these firework stands can get super irritating.  So much so, that about 9-ish?(what is time?!?) years ago, we started driving down to Buda, Tx, to a place that during the off season sells trailers.  It’s a huge metal building with walls and walls of fireworks safe from the rain.  The most irritating thing that we always had to deal with, was the 80% chance that you would get a quarter bag of fireworks that were complete duds.  The fireworks stands would always leave their hinged windows open, even during a downpour.  This results in soggy, nasty, absolutely useless waste of money fireworks.

 

This past year, I’ve found myself wishing that the stupid people shooting fireworks off 50 feet (or less) from the stands would make the mistake that we made once, and that would be unstably stacking several already used fireworks.  This would result in the fireworks tipping over, shooting towards the stands, and ending with a HUGE fireworks show.  I know, I know, it sounds super evil, but I swear I don’t want anyone hurt, just the stands destroyed in a beautiful ball of pretty fire.   I’ve had much fun while I was sick envisioning the fireworks going off towards the stands, people running away, then as the stands explode in pops and whistles, a stray firework flies to the metal container that has extra fireworks in it, resulting in much more CHAOS!  -cough-  Well, that got out of hand quickly, lets just scratch over that…There! 

 

Okay, well thanks for reading! Tomorrow I shall rant some more!!

 

Byee…And yeah, I really do want to destroy the firework stands..