Happy Halloween!!!

Here's wishing you a very happy and safe halloween!  Saturday night my friends and I dressed up and went out.  I had this great idea to be a mime.  Yep, except I forgot that mime's don't talk.  That lasted for a maybe 5 minutes.  Throughout the night I had various people reminding me that I wasn't suppose to talk.  Overall I had a great night!!!

Kitchen Makeover

Okay folks - It's been a busy couple of weeks, but I am going to try to start making this blog a priority and getting a few things accomplished before winter that I want to get done - and telling you all about it of course!

I was home last weekend (sorry I didn't make it over to see you Jeanie!  I promise I'll come see you over Thanksgiving!) and Mom was planning to start painting the house and we looked through lots of paint samples.  It got me in the mood to add some color to my house, other than beige.  Seriously, besides my bathroom (which use to be Peptobismal pink - seriously) the entire house is beige.  So I decided to start with the kitchen.  I knew I wanted a bright color in there, and I finally found the color I wanted - Granny Smith Green!

Here's a pic of my kitchen before I started (well actually I had already started prepping before I remembered I needed a before pic.)

I taped everything off, took off some cabinet doors that I wouldn't be able to paint around, pulled my stove out and moved it to the dining room, moved everything off the countertops and the refrigerator. 

Here's the crazy mess I lived in during the weekend.

So I finished prepping everything Friday afternoon, then I went to my kickboxing class.  I came home and primed the entire room.  Then Saturday morning I went to my upper body workout - both Saturday morning and Friday night we had the hardest coach leading classes - needless to say - I died each class!  Anyway, when I went to paint Saturday afternoon, my arms were SO TIRED!!  I could only paint for about 15-20 minutes at a time before I'd have to rest my arms and shoulders.  I painted the ceiling white first, then all the green and finally did the trim in a bright white.  I finished everything up Sunday afternoon and put everything back together!  Check out my new kitchen, which I absolutely LURVE (this means that I more than love it!)!!

I think the cabinets really pop with the color on the walls and I love the crisp white trim.  Next in my mini-kitchen makeover is to find some nice white curtains and paint the door to match my cabinets - I'll make sure to keep you all in the loop!

Jeepers Creepers!

E gats friends!  I came on today and realized I didn't post at all last week.  Unacceptable!  Actually a LOT of things happened in my life last night and I feel like I need to catch you up on everything!  Unfortunately, there probably won't be any pictures in this post since I'm not sure what they would be...we'll see as I write this...

1. Mice Infestation...
   
Weekend before last, I went downstairs to do some laundry and what do I find, but lots of little mice droppings covering the floor around my washer and dryer and even on my dryer.  Let me tell you now, I HATE MICE!!!  I'm afraid of mice, and I'm not afraid to say it.  So what did I do?  Well when I was getting groceries that day I took a turn down the home section and picked up 2 packages of 2 mice traps apiece.  Each package was $1, so $.50 a trap. 

Sunday or Monday night I set all four traps and caught three mice that night.  Mom can vouch for me, at this point I was on the phone with her asking her how the heck I was going to get rid of these mice, because there was NO WAY I was getting close enough to those mice in order to get rid of them.  Well, after a lot of screaming and whining (I was off the phone by this time) I sucked it up and used my BBQ tongs to pick up the trap and toss it.  No, I did not reuse these trap.  Yes, I could have.  But that would have required actually figuring out a way to unsnap the traps and get rid of the actual mouse.  At this point that was not happening.

So, at this point I was down to one trap.  I moved it to a different area and headed back to work.  No mouse until I came home for lunch on Wednesday.  The trap was gone.  I mean literally, the entire trap.  Now, all I could imagine was that I had a mouse that was barely trapped, like maybe only with one leg, dragging this trap around my basement.  I search and couldn't find it anywhere.  So off to work I went and discussed it with coworkers and we figured it must be under my washer or dryer.  So I sucked it up and was as far as possible as my long stick would allow me to be.  The mouse ended up being dead and under my dryer and was found. 

Next I went and bought 6 more traps and set them around and caught one more mouse.  Then the mysterious happened.  My traps were set with peanut butter like usual, but when I came down to check the traps, the peanut butter was gone, but the traps weren't set off.  I re baited them about 3 times, but never caught a mouse. 

So Plan B began.  I went and got sticky traps and set them up yesterday.  Nothing until I came home for lunch today and on the traps I found 4 mice on 3 traps!  I surprised even myself and picked up the traps while the mice were still alive!  Anyway, I put them in a trash bag and smucked them with a log so they wouldn't just starve to death in my garbage can outside.  I figured that was the more humane thing to do anyway.  So, so far I've killed 9 mice and think I finally have them all.  I guess we'll see in the next couple days.  I'll keep you all updated.

2. 5 Week Results

On Saturday we had our mid way testing for Farrells and here are my results.  I lost around 5 pounds, but overall I lost 14 inches!  Super exciting!!!!!  Not only that, but I increased the number of pushups I can do in a minute from 28 to 47.  My situps in a minute increased from 6 (I know, super sad, but I HATE situps) to 12.  And finally my mile run went from 13 minutes to 12 minutes.  I'm excited to see what happens in the second half of the program becuase they say that most women actually see more results in the second half than in the first half of the program!

3. Neko's injury

Last winter Neko slipped on the ice and partially tore a ligament in her knee.  She recovered and we doing amazing and wasn't having any issues.  Until last Wednesday.  Wednesday after work Neko wanted to go outside, so out she went.  I got ready for my kickboxing class and when I let her back in before I left, she wasn't stepping on her back leg again.  So she's been layed up for the last fews days, locked out of the bedrooms during the days so she doesn't jump on the beds.  And it's working and she's almost back to normal now!  She's getting short runs outside and seems to be doing fine with them so soon she'll get longer outside, which will be great for her and me since she's driving me nuts being stuck inside!

4. New Job

Probably most exciting of the week is the fact that I am getting a new job!  I know, I just was promoted - but some things just end up happening!  I'm still going to be a financial analyst at Sanford, but now I'm going to be working solely with the World Clinics.  I'll be working with lots of different foreign currencies when setting up new clinics in different countries.  I'm transitioning over to my new department around the first of the new year and will be in a different building and everything.  I'm so excited for this new move!

Okay, super long post - but as you can see it was a super busy week.  I'll try to be better in the future! :)

Fall is in the Air!

Fall is in the air!  (or maybe not in this last week's case since temps have been in the 80's all week)

So it was high time that Fall decorations came out around my place!  These were the first decorations I bought for my house after I moved in.  I love them, but think I might need to pick some more up soon.

There's two that are my favorites...

First would be the swag that lies along the top of my mantle.

Here's a close up pic...

The other would be a cornucopia that I got and filled it with fall flowers and it sits on my dining room table.

Other decorations are placed around my house...

These go well with all the leaves in my backyard that need raked...anybody volunteering??

Dump Cake

Okay folks, last week was a little crazy.  I was in my friend Amanda's wedding in Crofton, NE Friday through Sunday and the week was crazy getting ready for the weekend.  So sorry for the fact that there weren't any blogs last week!  I did think of several ideas for my next few blogs - so be prepared!

Every year for my birthday, my mom would make my FAVORITE cake - dump cake!!  It doesn't sound appetizing, but let me tell you - it's absolutely delish!  So when it was my turn to bring treats for my coworkers birthday and since she LOVES chocolate as much as I do, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to make dump cake.

Here's how to make my best ever birthday cake. :)

First, bake two 8" or 9" chocolate cakes.  Cut each cake in half so that you have 4 layers of cake.

Next, put one layer on a plate and put a layer of cherry pie filling (I use light) on the first layer of cake.  Now, I usually use an entire can of pie filling for each cherry layer, but you can use less - Mom usually uses 1/2 a can for each layer.  If you're going to use an entire can for each layer, try to get as little juice as possible - otherwise it will just ooze out and mix with frosting.

Here's my picture of my cake at this point...

Now place another layer of cake on the cherry filling...

Now comes the first layer of frosting!  I use cream cheese frosting because it's my favorite.  If you're good at frosting you can probably get by with one can of frosting.  I haven't frosted a cake for quite a while, so it took me about 1 1/2 cans of frosting.  I also find that it's easier to frost the sides at this point instead of waiting until the end too.

Another layer of cake goes down next...

Another layer of cherries...

Place the final layer of cake on top and frost the whole shebang one last time!  Here's what you end up with.

Even though mine didn't turn out the looking the best I promise it tastes AMAZING!!  Just put sprinkles on it and enjoy! :)