Monthly Archives: January 2012

Roasted Baby Carrots

I have been fiending roasted carrots. Don’t ask me why. I can’t remember ever having them before but I have really, really wanted them.

On my first shopping trip in Little Rock, I found 1 lb baby carrot bags on sale four for $5.00. I bought them and tried to figure out how to roast them.

I found a recipe which I modified for size and the fact that I forgot to buy garlic powder (we use tons of garlic powder, not sure how I did that, just know that shopping here is traumatic).

So, anyway, we finally had roasted baby carrots for dinner tonight and they were delicious! Raul joined us for dinner and said that he’s not usually big on carrots but that he loved these. 🙂

Roasted Baby Carrots

1 lb bag baby carrots

1 tbs olive oil

1 tsp thyme

1/4 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp ground pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Spray glass casserole with cooking spray.

Mix olive oil and spices together in a bowl until combined. Then toss the baby carrots in the mixture until they are coated. Place is prepared casserole. Bake for 35-40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the carrots are tender.

Chow down. These are awesome! In my photo, the carrots are a little over done, crispy, because I forgot the stirring part but it didn’t affect the tasty outcome.  I hope you’ll love these like we did. 🙂

Judging a book by its cover

Under the category of you learn something new every day, did you know that books have different covers in different countries?

I didn’t know this!

My friend, Beth Hoffman, who wrote my very favorite book Saving Cee Cee Honeycut has just had her book published in the United Kingdom.  I’m excited because now everyone in the UK gets the opportunity to read this awesome book.

As I congratulated Beth, she commented that the thing that has been so fun is seeing the covers that each new country chooses for her book. I asked her if she had a link to the covers produced so far and she showed me:

They are all very different and, yet, you can see how each cover relates to the story inside. Beth says she’s very curious to see what the books from Israel, Indonesia and Korea will look like. Me, too!

I thought this fact about the different book covers was interesting. I figured if I didn’t know they did this, other people might not know either. Also, it gives me a chance to share, once again, this awesome book. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it!

I’m a bubblehead, it’s true.

Yesterday was a day filled with shopping. And not for shoes. Even moving into a corporate apartment, that is furnished, we still needed a lot of things.

I arranged my trip so I could leave right from breakfast, drive up to where we had been staying in the hotel and the Whole Foods was located, make a big circle and get home as soon as possible.

I wanted to shop at the Kroger closer to our new place but, because I had time to kill before a  9 a.m. opening, I went to the Kroger by Whole Foods – 20 minutes away from where we are living.

I bought a ton of stuff, you know how it is when you’re first moving in. I was happily waiting in line for the one cashier when a very friendly lady suggested that I come down and do the self check-out and she would help me.

I told her I was new in town and that this was my first visit to Kroger. She was right there with me, showing me how to do the check-out.

Eventually, I had too many things and started taking them out of the bagging area and putting them into the cart. This made the self check-out hooker freak out. “Please place the items back in the bagging area”.

Ummm. No. There isn’t any room.

“Well,” the nice self-help lady said, “you need to put them up on top.” Where there was clearly not enough room for the quantity of groceries I had. Oy.

I got everything scanned, bagged, and then I paid and went home.

When I got ready to make salad for dinner last night, I noticed that I had no salad dressing when I had purchased two. I also couldn’t find the olive oil. I had opted for a bigger, more expensive bottle. Ack!

I called the store. They hadn’t found these items in the self check-out but told me I could come and they would replace them. I did that this morning. It wasn’t on my way, it was 20 minutes from home.

When I got home, I started thinking about dinner. I thought I would put one of the English roasts I had purchased into the new crock pot I bought. I looked in the freezer.

No roasts.

I looked in the fridge.

No roasts.

Dang it.

I called the store and explained my situation. She said I could come and get my money back. I told her never mind. I was willing to let it go but please don’t ask me to use the self check-out ever again.

Until I decided the pork loin would be a nice thing to have for dinner.

I looked in the freezer.

It wasn’t there.

I looked in the fridge.

Not there either. Oy.

I called the store back. She told me I could come and replace the meat.

So off I went, 20 minutes one way, to get to the Kroger in another part of town.

When I got there, the girl at the Customer Service desk told me to go grab the meat to replace the ones I didn’t get home yesterday which I did.

After she was done, I told her that I really appreciated them doing this but that when someone has as many things as I did, they really shouldn’t try the self check-out. I explained to her briefly how I thought I had left them and she said, yes, the nice self-help lady had found the meat and put it back on the shelf.

Okay, well that made me feel marginally better that I wasn’t taking all that stuff twice and paying for it once.

I felt like a complete bubblehead for not being able to manage the self check-out.

In the future, I’m going to leave grocery check-out to the professionals.

Now, I’m going to have a glass of wine.

PS – I still need wine glasses.

Bling my Chucks

I’m not sure whether it took knowing that I was going to be a grandma to a little girl or having a couple of successful Pinterest projects under my belt to find out I kinda like this craft thing. The two things happened about the same time.

I couldn’t be happier with the way this latest project turned out.

I was cruising Pinterest, and I stopped at Nikki’s board for Aniston Lee. I saw some embellished Chuck Taylor shoes for a little girl. I thought, “I can do that!”

I was wandering through Gordman’s trying to kill time and I found a pair of pink Chuck Taylor crib shoes.

I bought them. Then I got the rest of the pieces I needed to complete the project.

I started out by applying 5mm AB crystals to the toes.

And to the middle of the star on the side of the shoes.

Then I replaced the laces with ribbon.

I measured the ribbon against the lace but it turned out not to be long enough.

So I cut the ribbon the length of the lace and then half again. This gave me enough room to trim off the edges and make a nice big bow. I finished off by coating the ends of the ribbon with clear nail polish so they won’t fray.

Are these not the CUTEST shoes ever! I can’t wait to see Aniston wear them and to make another pair. 🙂

The hooker

Before the 2010 pageant season began, David encouraged me to get in my car and drive. Go around the state, meet people and tell them about what I was doing. To help me with this, he bought me a Tom Tom GPS for my car.

He had a nice voice, Tom Tom, and he got me where I needed to go.

One day, David borrowed my car and when I drove it next, Tom Tom’s voice had changed. He was a woman!

And Tam Tam was born.

Tam Tam had a definite personality. And a speech impediment.

She was obstinate and it was either her way or the highway. Her inability to pronounce words she didn’t know cracked me up, though, and kept me from throwing her out the window.

I was in Chicago with Mrs. Oklahoma International 2007, Brooke Good, the summer of 2010. She noticed Tam Tam’s personality and stated, “what a hooker”.  This gave us something else to laugh at. Every time Tam Tam did something rude or obnoxious, we called her a hooker. And laughed.

One day I was trying to to get to the River Spirit Casino in Tulsa for a networking event. I knew that I needed to turn left at Riverside Drive and, yet, Tam Tam told me I needed to turn right. Then her screen was nothing but blue lines. She had clearly melted down.

The hooker.

I went to Best Buy and purchased Tam Tam II.

She came with the same voice, the same personality, the same speech impediment. This Tam Tam became much bolder, though, as she began not telling us which way we needed to go until we had either missed the turn off or, if we knew where we were going, told us after we were already on our way. She’d say turn left while pointing right.

Last Friday, I was packing up the car to head to Oklahoma City to have my hair done.  As I put water bottles on the front seat, I noticed that all of the receipts that had been in my console were on the seat. I looked to the right and Tam Tam was gone!

Someone had stolen the hooker.

I managed to get to Oklahoma City without getting lost. I promptly stopped at Best Buy and bought Tam Tam III.

I thought I was getting the same model as before but when I opened the box, I saw that it was very different. I couldn’t even figure out how to turn it on.

I finally got her turned on and was happy to have the familiar Tam Tam voice in my ears. But, wait! This Tam Tam was not the same Tam Tam. This Tam Tam was precise and had perfect diction. Wow!

She knew how to say International when directing me to Tulsa International Airport. I could hear sharp Ts at the ends of words.

I felt like I needed to say, “Ma’am, yes, ma’am!”

I call her Sergeant Tam Tam.

I will miss Tam Tam the hooker. I will miss her directing me to Ahkla City (Oklahoma City) and Weaverside Drive (Riverside Drive). But I like the new Tam Tam. I think she’ll do a great job. 🙂

Emboldened by Pinterest

I just got finished making the cutest candy skewers for Aniston’s baby shower.

When I posted a photo on facebook, my friend Paula asked if I had gotten the idea on Pinterest. Seemed a good conclusion since I’ve been going craft crazy since I joined Pinterest but I didn’t find this idea there.

Actually, I had been searching the internet for ideas for the baby shower. I knew the colors and theme and I knew I would bring sweet treats. It was then that I stumbled upon the candy skewer photo. How cute! But when I clicked on the link to see how I could purchase some, the link didn’t work.

Hmmmm. That stopped me for a minute. I searched a little further to no avail. I looked at the photo some more and, emboldened by Pinterest, I thought, “I could make those myself!”

And I did. 🙂

They weren’t that difficult and once I decided how I wanted them to stack up, it probably took me only 2 hours to make 50 of them.

Basically, you need some gummy candies, sucker sticks,

plastic bags to wrap them with and a little ribbon to tie them off. Cute!

You’re limited only by your imagination and the candy available and I think you end up with a pretty impressive little treat. 🙂

Best mom

My life is weird. Well, maybe weird isn’t the right word but it’s definitely not normal. I am sure I’d get no arguments on that.

But last year? Last year was weird.

Last year turned my life around and dumped me on my head.  And that’s not a bad thing, it’s just that everything that had been put into place is no longer in that place and everything is different.

Two of the awesome things that happened last year were the weddings of our two boys.

Related: one of the weird things that happened last year is that I was the best man at one of those weddings. Best mom?

We were all preparing to move to Saudi Arabia for the new opportunity that the guys were embarking on. Geoff and Nikki wanted to be married but in order for Nikki to be able to go to Saudi, they were going to have to be married pretty quickly which didn’t allow much time for planning.

So they decided to get married, in her church, with her pastor and just one person to witness the wedding for each of them. Then they would have a “real” wedding that they began to plan for December 2nd.

I did not want to be left out. It’s my son’s wedding even if it’s not a big production. Since Geoff had recently been working in Canada and was in Florida before that, most of his friends were elsewhere so he said I could stand up for him.

Nikki’s sister, Sarah, was going to stand up for her. And so it was set.

I felt weird that Nikki’s parents wouldn’t be there and I guess she did too, because at the last minute, she called them and invited them to be there. Her mom, Debbie, and her stepmom, Gina, were able to be there but her dad couldn’t get off work at the last minute. David was in Saudi so that was our happy little wedding party.

It was great. I cried just like I did at Brandon’s wedding even though it was a small production. This was my youngest child promising his heart to the girl he loved, forever.

After the wedding, we went to lunch and that was it.

Plans continued for the big wedding on December 2nd and we all prepared to go to Saudi.

At the wedding in December, Geoff would have all of his best friends standing up for him. Five groomsmen. A dress was purchased, venues arranged.

And then, a couple of months later,  Nikki found out she was pregnant. She called me crying.

Oh.

Half of me was doing the Glammie Happy Dance, while the other half of me was telling her Geoff won’t be mad, don’t cry, babies are a blessing.

And so plans for the wedding were undone and plans for little Aniston Lee began.

It wasn’t meant for me to be the best man but, in the end, that’s the way it turned out. And I’m honored to have been able to do such a weird thing for my son. LOL!

They say that being normal is overrated and I’m going to guess that’s true since I can’t speak from experience. 🙂

Everything’s better in chocolate

I’ve been making chocolate popcorn for a lot of years. I usually make it at Christmastime and give it as gifts but it gets made here and there through the year for special occasions, too.

It’s delicious and it’s easy to make!

We’re getting ready for the baby shower for our first granddaughter, Aniston. The theme is light pink and leopard so I’ve been making pink and brown goodies to serve.

Today, I made pink popcorn that Nikki found on Pinterest.

It’s not light pink by any stretch of the imagination.  I used fruit punch flavored Kool-Aid because I thought that Pink Lemonade (my only other pink choice) might be an odd flavor for popcorn.

I just finished up the chocolate popcorn that I will serve with the pink popcorn. I’m planning to serve them together in a big glass canister unless I come up with a better serving idea.

Here’s the recipe for you:

Chocolate Popcorn

12 cups popped popcorn

1/4 cup butter or margarine

2 cups (11-1/2 oz bag) semi-sweet chocolate

1 cup corn syrup

Place popcorn in a large roasting pan. In a separate large heavy saucepan, combine chocolate chips, corn syrup and butter. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils, stirring constantly. Pour over popcorn, toss well to coat.

Bake in a preheated 300 degree oven for 45 minutes stirring frequently.

Cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to two weeks.

That’s it! I hope you enjoy it. 🙂