California BLT's

I saw this recipe several weeks ago while watching Barefoot Contessa at my parents' house. It's a simple recipe and now that my tastes are expanding as I'm getting older, it's a sandwich I'll finally enjoy.

I've always liked bacon, but only in the last few years have I liked mayo or Miracle Whip, tomatoes or lettuce on sandwiches. Yes my sammies were pretty boring, especially before I liked cheese or even Italian dressing. Bread. Meat. That was it.

This is so much better.

Look how cute this Boston lettuce is!! I bought them because they were adorable. And perfectly sized. I hate throwing out bad lettuce. Well, I hate throwing out any bad food.

Thick, white, country bread toasted (Texas Toast in our case), smear of Miracle Whip on each side, three slices of bacon each, a few pieces of lettuce, some beautiful tomatoes, salt & pepper and a few slices of avocado on top. Yum. Yum. Yum.

We wrapped these sandwiches in foil and packed them for our trip a few weekends ago. They are a great sandwich to take for picnics! We ate these again several times after our trip. And of course you can always use turkey bacon if you prefer it that way.

mid-week update

Some things I've been thinking about this week:

• Tonight I babysat my sweet niece Chloe and got to spend some time chatting with my brother-in-law, Brian. It was nice catching up with him and it's so awesome to be able to get along with my sister and her hubby so well and to call them friends - not just family.
• I'm still definitely interested in doing some sort of Bloggers-Bible something. I'm really hoping to focus this for women - specifically young/young-married and currently without children. I'm not trying to squeeze people out, but I'd like to do internet-Bible-study-type thing with like-minded females who are in the same situations as I am. I have three ladies interested so far, so if you are also interested let me know! I've been tossing ideas around in my head on how we can do this. My thoughts are to have passages to read weekly and to encourage one post a week - about the passages, what you learned, what you question, etc. Anyway - more on this when I get my head wrapped around it.
• My husband is great. He works hard to provide for us and keeps us in check. He doesn't have the benefit of two days a week off, so spending three days with him this past weekend was just so wonderful. 
• I've been really feeling like I need to get my eating and health under control recently. I have a hate-hate relationship with exercise and a love-love-love relationship with food, so it's quite a struggle. I wish I could get motivated about exercise and eating healthy, but what excites me is napping and chocolate.
• This weekend I have a baby shower for a friend of mine that I worked closely with for 2 1/2 years. I also have plans this weekend to see a friend of mine (and her new baby) that I was close with years, but probably haven't seen in almost 2 years!

So. That's what's been going on in my head this week. What's been going on with you?

Cinnamon Roll Cake w/ Cream Cheese Frosting

As I mentioned quickly in my last weekend update post, and made - and ruined - a lot of frosting that weekend. I suppose it wasn't actually ruined, but I made a batch of cream cheese frosting that was runny and seemed unusable for a cake. I threw it in the freezer, knowing I would need to figure out some way to use it so it wouldn't get wasted.

The frosting was a brick (8 oz) of cream cheese, 1/4 c of butter, powdered sugar and a few spoonfuls of the other ruined frosting I made (but you could just use milk to loosen it up). The other frosting that got ruined was Whipped Cream Cheese frosting from Joy of Baking. I suggest you attempt making it, but don't add too much powdered sugar...or overwhip...it will just get more runny. I know I had it at the perfect stage and it tasted amazing, but I kept adding and whipping, hoping it would get just a little thicker, but somehow it kept getting RUNNIER. I have no idea what happened and it really hurt my self-esteem! I felt pretty useless in the kitchen after that. Anyway, the addition of that frosting helped smooth out my cream cheese frosting while giving it a nice flavor because of the addition of the marscapone cheese.

Anyway - the cinnamon cake recipe was from ptitchef.com (I did only two layers) and brown-sugar and cinnamon swirled in before baking like the cinnamon roll cake from my baking addiction. I really think the brown sugar-cinnamon swirl gave it an even more cinnamon-roll-esque flavor.

Sorry - didn't get many pictures until I had already half-eaten the cake...but everyone loved it,  including me! My dad begged me to whip up another one the other day! I suppose the frosting was still a little runny - but it was perfect for this cake.

weekend update: September 2-5, 2011

Yeah, I'm lumping Monday in as part of the weekend for this post because we had a nice relaxing day off, so I think it counts!

Friday was girls night - Katie was up from Pittsburgh, so Stace, Kristen and I all met up to hang out. Since I was going to the east side, I stopped and visited my parents, then walked over to Katie's parents (they are neighbors) for dinner and some chill out time. We went back to Kristen's to get ready then hit downtown!

Katie, Kristen and Staci lookin cute!

We slept over at Kristen's and I shared the air mattress with sweet Daisy.

Saturday Josh and I bummed around most of the day and had band practice for Sunday.

Sunday was filled with lots of fun with Josh's family. His dad, aunt and gram surprised us by coming to our church. Later that day we were invited over to his great aunt's house for a family picnic. We had margaritas and lots of yummy food thanks to Josh's mom!

Josh, his dad and his younger sister Alyssa

His great aunt lives right by Lake Erie, so some of us took a walk down the path to check it out!

It was a hot, humid, rainy and gloomy day in Erie on Sunday...

Alyssa and her fiancé Dolan!

Josh's dad practices his balance.

Josh's brother Dan with Alyssa

My in-laws!

My handsome hubby!!

I love him :)

Practicing with Rach's camera.

Goofy :)

After all that fun, we went back over to his aunt's house later that evening to hang out some more!

Monday was another day of relaxation for the most part. Sleeping in, pancakes, then I did some cleaning, laundry and started rearranging a few things at our townhouse. I took away one of the smaller bookcases in the living room and replaced it with a bigger one that was previously in my closet. After that I pulled out, tossed out and reorganized my closet! Pictures to come from that when it's all done.

Before...

After!

So - it doesn't look that much different - and I didn't clean anything up before taking the after picture. Also, you can see Josh's head in the bottom right corner haha. I would like to replace the lamp shade over in the corner still, but for now - I'm happy! I like having my cookbooks more organized and I have a nice pull out canvas box to hold all my (Rachel's) camera equipment.

Oh - and Monday also included homemade pizza (dough and sauce) and breadsticks for dinner!

It was a great weekend. Relaxing, got some stuff done, spent some quality time with my SKAK's (the N was still out of town - boo) and my hubby and his family. Hope you all had a relaxing and fun weekend too!! Anyone else attend any last-summer picnics?

fabric friday: 09-02-11: Giveaway Winner!

I'm pleased to announce the winner for the KnollTextiles nail polish giveaway!

And the winner is......

Emily! Who had a pretty funny story to tell...

There were 11 entries and I used random.org to generate the winner.

Thanks for all who entered! Congrats, Emily!