Fruit, Cool Whip and Sugar Cookies Make a Fabulous Dessert!

For Father’s Day, my father-in-law wanted us to hang out at the house, watch some baseball, and eat some good food. We were definitely up for that! My mother-in-law took care of most of the shopping but I offered to make the dessert. I always find a reason to make this cookie pizza each summer and I love it. My MIL thought it sounded like a good idea, so that’s what I made. And oh how I LOVE having extras of this dessert to take home!

Crust

• 1 (18 ounce) package refrigerated sugar cookie dough

Topping

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
• Sliced fresh strawberries
• Blueberries
• Raspberries

Glaze

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon orange zest

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Slice cookie dough and arrange on greased pizza pan, overlapping edges. Press dough flat into pan. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Allow to cool.
2. In a large bowl, soften cream cheese, then fold in the whipped topping. Spread over cooled crust. You can chill for a while at this point, or continue by arranging the fruit.
3. Lay the fruit out in a circular pattern, or however else you want! Then make a sauce to spoon over fruit.
4. In a saucepan, combine sugar, salt, corn starch, orange juice, lemon juice and water. Cook and stir over medium heat. Bring to a boil, and cook for 1 or 2 minutes, until thickened. Remove from heat, and add grated orange rind. Allow to cool, but not set up. Spoon over fruit. Chill for two hours, then cut into wedges and serve.

I found the original recipe here, but for ease of use I’ve copied it here again. Lord knows I need to post about something in order to remember it later!

I Think There’s Something in the Water

You know the expression, when it rains, it pours?

I feel like this it totally the case the past few weeks. Two girls at the office, two family members and countless blog friends. All have announced that they are expecting a precious addition to their families sometime later this year or next.

Everyone says that there is no “right” or “good” time to have a child. I’ve been told you are never “ready” – you never have saved up enough money, or have a big enough house, or done enough adventuring before a baby comes.

I know that we are still a one-income family with a full-time law student. I know that I do not want to be pregnant when Husband is studying hard core for the bar exam (and possibly taking it twice, depending on the job offers!). I absolutely know that we need to have more savings before bringing another human being into this world. I hear they like to eat, and I’d like to be able to provide enough of that for him or her!

But every time a blog friends posts their sonogram, or every time the cousin emails me the update from the doctor, or I see the gal at work waddling down the hallway with her adorable baby bump peeking out from her dress, I think… why do we have to wait again?

Someday, that’ll be me. Someday.

My Fall Wreath

I am so very proud of myself – I put forward a goal and met it in less than a month!

Now, granted the goal was to make a wreath via inspiration on Pinterest, but it’s the little things in life, right?

Yesterday after work, I got the urge to craft. I saw Katie’s cute yarn wreath at Loves of Life and it pushed me to get off my butt and head to the craft store after I finished for the day. The Joanne’s Fabric store that used to be right near our house had recently moved and I hadn’t had the change to check it out yet! So this was the perfect opportunity.

I started with a grapevine base (rather than a foam core as in the inspiration tutorial), a few bunches of fall flowers,  another few sets of foliage decoration, brown wire to tie pieces together and a glue gun.

Here’s what we started out with:

• One grapevine wreath (preferably purchased with a 40% off coupon!)
• Many bundles of fall foliage, all 40% off
• Other fall accessories, at 40% off – those are the spiky things with the white nubs on them. More on that to come
• Wire strands to help affix the leaves to the wreath
• Glue gun and glue gun refills, just in case the wire strands don’t hold things on

So after preparing my supplies, and my glass of wine, and setting Netflix to play the next episode of Friday Night Lights (yes, I’m addicted), I got down to business.

I removed all the leaves from the stems that connected them together in a bundle. I ended up using three of them in total. There were lots of leaves everywhere on the coffee table!

Once I had all the leaves separated, I began to arrange them on the grapevine wreath. No rhyme or reason, just started adding the leaves willy nilly.

I kept going around and around, adding leaves in places that seemed empty.

When all the leaves seemed to be happy where they were, I went over each of them and bent back their stem around the grapevine, to make sure they would be held in place. Then, I picked it up and gave it a little shake, to be sure everything was still ok.

The last touch was thanks to my husband. Remember those little white nubs? I grabbed four bunches and arranged them at the bottom to look like a finishing bow! I stuck those into the grapevine just like the leaves.

The finished product…

My brand new wreath on my six panel door! I was excited when the property manager replaced our falling apart door with a fancy one like this – not everyone in the place gets one! But you can see why I needed a wreath. It needs some color on that door! What you don’t see, because I didn’t want it in my pictures, is the drain spout that is immediately to the right of the door. It’s ugly and I dislike it. So there.

Here are some more details…

The white nub things at the bottom really set it off, I think!

I am so happy with the way this turned out. Coming home from work tonight and having this greet me before I come inside made me grin from ear to ear. I love having some color on my door!

Now I’m determined to have a wreath on the front door for every season – I think I already have my inspiration picture for a Christmas one!

I love new furniture

A few weeks ago, Husband and I were helping friends set up for their garage sale. They were moving soon and trying to get rid of a bunch of stuff.

Of course, Hubs found a bunch of books he wanted – something about languages, I think. In any case, I found a gorgeous papasan chair in the basement.  It had a sign for $15 on it and I told E that I.must.have.it!!! It was a lighter wicker than one we have, with a white cushion that would match the cushions in the craft room! Plus, this one wasn’t falling apart like the one we currently have.

To refresh your memory, here’s what it looked like before…

And here’s what it looks like now…

Doesn’t it look so much better!  Now if I could just repaint that coffee table white to match everything else in the room…

Remembering the milk isn’t always easy

I’m a ridiculously forgetful person. I mean, I would forget my own head if it weren’t attached to my shoulders.

At least four mornings out of five during the work week, I make it all the way to my car in the parking lot before remembering something in the townhouse that I needed for the day.

So I have to turn around and walk back to the door, get my keys out again and get back in the house for whatever piece of mail, bag, or lunch item I forgot.

Remember the Milk doesn’t help me with those items, but it could if I wrote them down and checked them in the morning before leaving the house! But I never can quite seem to do that.

But RTM does other things that help – like remembering when to clean the kitchen floor or when the trash and recycling needs to be put out for pick up.

 

It’s got a great interface for the iPhone (a requisite for me) and a nice online interface as well. The only drawback? It’s $25 per year.

But I figure that’s a small price to pay for my sanity, I think. :) It’s really helped me keep the house in better shape and reminds me to do things on a timely basis.

And that works for me!

 

*I was not compensated in anyway for this review. I just like to showcase websites and products that I use, in case other people are interested in the same things.*

10 unfinished projects hanging over my head

1. Refinishing the red coffee table in the craft room. It’s red and needs to be white.
2. Complete my honeymoon scrapbook. We just completed our third year of marriage… four months ago.
3. Organize the basement storage room. Seriously, I can’t find anything! We need to get some kind of organizing system going on.
4. Clear my closet of items I haven’t worn in over one year, per my 101 list.
5. Sell the old Saturn coupe and get it out of our parking lot.
6. Create the “hit by a bus” folder so Husband would know how to run the household, just in case something happened to me. Depressing, yes, but still, something that needs to be done!
7. Re-title the new Saturn Ion in our names. Waiting on the probate court to do whatever they need to do. Silly courts.
8. Mending. Patch a hole, fix the hem, sew on a button. Stuff like that.
9. Scan all our printed photos from our collection and the in-laws to the external hard drive as a back up.
10. Finish my 101 in 1001 days list.

My Bathtub Needs Help!

So I need some help. Or at least, my bathtub does. Here it is:

 

Do you see the problem?

 

There is this big stain right where water hits the bathtub from the shower. I’m wondering if it’s a drainage problem. When I got on my hands on knees to clean it the other day, the water pooled in that area, even when I turned the faucet off.

In any case, I put about a ton [that’s an exact measurement ;)] of Scrubbing Bubbles on the stain and let it steep for a bit. Then I scrubbed and scrubbed some more. It wasn’t coming off, so I added more of the foamy stuff and scrubbed again.

It’s not really budging. Any ideas?

Housewife FAIL

All I wanted to do today was to spend the afternoon vegging in front of the TV doing some DVR maintenance (basically, watching all my shows I’ve recorded so I can then delete them and record more!).

But in order to make myself feel better about taking the time to do that, I figured I should do some laundry – you know, the chore that basically does itself while I’m doing something else.

So for the past few weeks, I’ve been meaning to wash the comforter. We bought a new one when we moved in to the townhouse and I’m embarrassed to say it hasn’t been washed. YIKES. But it’s silk and a queen-sized, and honestly, I had no idea how to take care of it. We don’t slip under it, there’s a sheet next to our bodies, so it’s not WAY dirty, but STILL. I needed to wash it.

Husband said I should put it on the coldest, gentlest setting and that jived with what I had read on the internet when I googled “how to wash a comforter.” Because, seriously, I don’t do anything without asking Google how to do it first.

I was able to get the comforter in our washing machine and went upstairs to work on that DVR stuff. :)

Then Husband comes quietly upstairs and just gives me “a look”. You know the one – something’s happened and he doesn’t want to tell me. At first, I thought he was going to tell me that the USA Soccer team just lost against England. That wasn’t it.

He said the comforter wasn’t so much in one piece anymore.

A corner of the comforter had been caught in something in the washer and ripped open – apparently making a big noise, which got Husband’s attention and made him get up from the soccer game [impressive in and of itself, actually!] and check it out.

So it’s halfway clean and partially open with the padding falling out and now completely soaked and I suck. It’s currently in the dryer and then Husband will actually sew it up because I can’t sew.

Housewife FAIL.

Mt Laundry has been conquered!

Mt. Laundry – but NOT mine, I promise!

This is my one day off this week, away from the theatre.

So this afternoon, I wrote down a big long list of “to do’s” – sort of a honey-do list for myself. There are SO many thing that need to get done, and tonight was the night. If it didn’t get done tonight, it wasn’t happening until Saturday. We’re going into technical rehearsals which means we get to the theatre before 7 pm and stay until we’ve run the show in its entirety. The show is running around three hours so yeah, it’ll be a late night every night.

On the way home, I called Husband as I always do, to see what’s up and what we’ll make for dinner. He told me that we should go to the gym. After some protesting, I figured we should – I haven’t been in MONTHS and if he wanted to go, then I would love the company!

So that pushed back the “to do’s” about 45 minutes.

But still… Mt. Laundry has been tackled. The last load is in the dryer now and what’s better? The other clean loads have been folded and put away! All that’s left is the last load to fold and put away and convince Husband to do the same with his set of clothes before going to bed.

Oh yeah – the rest of that “honey do” list?

It so ain’t happening. I’ve got to give my DVR some quality time.