First Reactions

And when your done you'll groan in pain.  We have been working hard on the house and its been working on us.  We have gotten all the of the flooring ripped up.  And these are my tools of the day                                                    Knee Pads and needle nose pilers.  You say "Bethany? What are you doing?" This! BLOODY! HORRIBLE STAPLES !  I pulled hundreds! HUNDREDS! Of staples! And this was just the stair case. Every. single. carpeted. room. was like this.  So while I did this method on the stair case, we used a side walk edger (which back in the day in my great-grandma's barn we used one as a manure scraper.) It knocked the staples out pretty well, even though we will still have to go through the house and pull the stragglers. And the discovery of the day while Dean was rolling up  the carpet padding in the living room, we found this under this padding.... Who Carpets over a brick hearth?  We love this find an

And we've been working hard..... Our "new to us" house is FINALLY empty! And we have been working hard for the past few days on getting it kinda cleaned up. We've have taken a big job under our belts and we're just grabbing roots and growling all the way.                                                                              This is littlest bedroom in the house, its going to be our guest room.  To get it up to snuff its going to need wall, door repairs, new carpet, paint and windows.   This is the upstairs bathroom. Don't you just love our harvest gold bathtub? In order to hide the hideous, I'm going to paint the walls a golden yellow.  To get it looking better it needs, new flooring, vanity, mirror, and paint.    This is going to be our room.  It needs paint, carpet, a closet door, and new windows.    Behind the door with the fan is going to be Baby Girl's room. Even though its one foot bigger than room that chose

While on my daily looky-lou on on Pinterest I stumbled on an awesome recipe that I just had to share with you!  Homemade Baked Empanadas  I was simply impressed with the dough. I still can't get over it. It was flakey, tender and easily bakes to perfection.  The recipe makes the suggestion of filling the empanadas with a spiced ground beef mixture. Which is what I did but next time around I would like to do a few things different. Filling change up ideas ; Ham,Cheese with a squirt of Mustard Pepperoni, mozzarella cheese and a touch of pizza sauce. The possibilities are endless with this dough. Seriously I'm even thinking about making larger version  of this and making homemade sopallia. Here is the blog I found it at : http://healthyrecipesblogs.com/2012/01/05/baked-empanadas/

Dean Has started a new better paying job in the past two months. It was a God send for our little family. But the downside is that its quite a ways from home so in order to save money on gas Dean has been staying with his grandparents through out the week and coming home on the weekends. It has been tough only seeing each other on the weekends. If it weren't for Skype and unlimited calling we would be completely lost! I'm very Thankful for Dean's wonderful, loving grandparents they have been with us at every bump in the frustrating road of our semi- long distance marriage.  And in the midst of all this the house next door to Gram and Gramps has come up for rent! We are so excited to be able to say that it will be our first home! Yes, you heard me correctly. Our FIRST home!  No, we wont own it but we will be able to make kinda ours by putting our touches on it. The previous tenants that have lived there in the past 10 years have slowly wrecked it. So we have an agreement

Update on 2012  We celebrated baby girl's FIRST birthday!  Our second wedding anniversary! Dean's 22nd birthday and Bethany's ~cough~ 2? th birthday. In the midst of all that we were blessed with a vacation to the Bahamas via cruise ship!  We have ate out alot since our post to Buffalo Wild Wings last year.  Catch you up with a few pictures. Enjoy! Baby Girl's FIRST Birthday! .  Our Second Anniversary                                    This was the first sunrise view from our cabin window We just want to say Thank You to all our friends and family who made last year special and wonderful. If it weren't for all of you we couldn't have made it through.  We are truly blessed.  Thank you! 

even when it's a box mix! This morning I decided to make pancakes. But I always put my own little twist on them. It's sooo easy!  Go ahead and decided how many pancakes you want. For baby girl and I, I decided a  cup of mix and a scant less than 3/4 cup of water would do. Then I added what makes it special; about an 1/8 tsp or less of cinnamon  1tsp of good vanilla  And  3 diced strawberries!  Mix everything together EXCEPT the strawberries. Once it's mixed well toss in the strawberries and  give a good stir. I used a 1/4 measuring cup to scoop out the batter. It makes a nice sized pancakes.  It has taken me forever to figure out how to cook the perfect pancake.  1. Lightly, lightly spray your skillet with your favorite non stick cooking spray.  2. If using butter don't use more than a tablespoon of it.           3. Get your skillet HOT,HOT, HOT!  4. When putting the batter in your skillet ( I used a 12" cast iron skillet