Merry Christmas!!!

A very Merry snowy Christmas to you!!!

Love our gingerbread house lit up - even better with the snow this year!

Pumpkins!

It's official: pumpkin fever has struck the W Family. In a serious way. Yup. It sort of started with the pumpkin-shaped cornbreads, but then it grew. I guess I could say I was inspired by my SMU roomie, Kat, who's become Baltimore's domestic dive - an entire week of pumpkin recipes (among many other delicious looking creations!)! So, today, I made roasted pumpkin and butternut squash soup and roasted pumpkin seeds.

*it's so hard to get soups and things to photo well!*

*mmmmm! toasty!*

The soup recipe is from Good Things Catered, another blog - all of her recipes that I've tried have been fab! And not crazy hard. And is so good! It's almost hard to describe the flavor - so just swing by for some instead! :-)

For the record though, as much as I love all things pumpkin, I DO NOT have a future as a pumpkin cleaner-outer. Nope. But I only cut my finger today, nothing too crazy like my usual klutzy self!

And we just keep getting more random...

I totally never meant to take a month and change off from this - but between school and everything else, it sort of happened! Whoops. I'll do better this subterm (which starts next week!), I promise! Anyway... Onward to more W Family randomness.

So, the other day at school we had a foodie-type discussion and the topic of things people will not eat came up. And, of course, I got the looks when I said I don't eat red meat. I mean, we are in Texas after all, no? And I don't eat the national food. Oh well.

Then today, I stumble across this post at slashfood. Foods celebrity chefs won't touch. Which is rounded out by this, from the author:

"As for this writer? Red meat is just not for me; the taste, the texture -- it's all unappealing to me. I didn't like it even as a kid, and stopped eating it altogether when I was 12. Strangely, I don't mind cooking it for others, but other than bacon, which is closer to potato chips than meat in my mind, red meat is off the list."

I think I have a way to describe why I let eveyone else have my share of cows! :-) So awesome.

You didn't think I wasn't going to post our funny furbaby, did you? Of course not!


This was the best I could snap... Princess Gizmo was way more interested in shaking her baby to death than sitting still for a picture! ;-)

Oh, yum!

Best thing about Fall? Besides football, turkey chili, of course! Since the weather has been somewhat gloomy and chilly, I decided it was time to embrace it and make a huge pot of chili. Doesn't hurt that HH went out of town the morning after I made it - so now I don't have to cook while he's gone! ;-)

Anyway...



And, because, well, dur, you can't have chili without cornbread...


I used my mini pumpkin pan for the muffins and they came out sort of pumpkin-y on top!

Delish!

Happy Birthday Mom!!!

It's my mom's birthday today! And not just any birthday... she's turning one half of a century old!!! Crazy - she totally doesn't act 50! See???



Dude. I told you so. And yes, that's also my Grams in the pic too... and this was taken at 10 am one morning. No. I won't explain further. :-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Half Birthday, Gizmo!!!

Crazy - we've had Giz for a little over 2 years now. I can't imagine her not being a part of our little family, she's fit in so well! So, since we had to sort of estimate her birthday as March 1, that means today is Gizmo's half birthday - woohoo!!!


Yes. Gizmo gets to celebrate her half birthday too (well, we do, so why shouldn't she, right?!). Maybe a puppy cupcake in the works for this girl!


She even decided to beat up her favorite Uncle Joey to celebrate!

Husband Hijack #8: Cowboys and Stitches

Hey there! HH back in action!

First up, we have a trip to the new Cowboys Stadium for the first Cowboys game to be held there (vs. the Tennessee Titans).

The approach...

The famed "Arches"

We've got seat licenses for two seats in the club level area. Our seats are Section 132, Row 8, Seats 1 and 2. The seat license is good for the next 30 years, so lots of Cowboys to come. Yay!! So anyway, the 'Boys look pretty good so far, a little rough on the edges though, and I'm not too sure about our depth at this time, but it's preseason so I'm not going to get very in depth right now, but you just wait!!!

Of course, what would a Wuistinger outing be without a little drama? So, I had brought my dad's Nikon D40 to the game with us. I was all excited to get some good action photo's with this sweet new DSLR. So we get up to the gate, and we're told we can't bring it in. I fussed a little, but ended up having to walk all the way back to the car, drop it in, then head back in to the stadium. After we got to our seats, we talked to our section attendant (All Club level seats have their own section assigned ... uh... person for security and other things.) Her name was Diane and she was awesome, by the way. She informed us that our camera should have been a llowed in no problem. I went through a large spattering of WTF's with Jamie about it, but we ended up just saying, "forget it", and leaving the camera outside.

On our way out of the stadium, we caught an upper level security manager, told him the deal, and he had already written down the problem with cameras. Apparently, we weren't the first to complain. What had happened was the rules stated that no telescopic zoom lens (the big *ahem* and long lenses you see the professionals carrying around) were allowed. The people out front had misinterpreted this and thought that not even DSLR cameras and their smaller lenses weren't allowed either. Only cell phone cameras and point'n'shoots were allowed in. This will be ratified and not be a problem in the future. What this means though is I don't have any good pictures from inside the stadium. The place was spectacular and I can't rea lly show any of it right now. So you'll have to wait till next time for some really good pics. But I did get a few with my cell phone, so I'll post them below.

The view directly in front of our seats

See in the picture above, the stairwell splits in a U around a portal that goes down to the field level suites (people who spend a lot of money to stare at the backs of media people I guess). So directly in fron of us there really isn't anybody. and because there's so few seats down here, people traffic was not a problem at all (I was hoping this was the case)! And next is a view across the field. The place is enormous!!!

That screen goes from the 20 to the 20, huge!

Like I said, I'll have much better pictures after the next game.

Now I'll tell you about the "stitches" part of this post. Jamie and I were out with Bob and Cindy Everson yesterday (Sunday), for some wakeboarding/wakesurfing fun! We had a blast! I'm waiting on most of the pics right now, but I'll show you the yummy parts that I DO have! But first, the story:

So I had gotten up on the surfboard and had begin reeling myself in closer to the boat. However, instead of rolling up the rope to throw it in, I had just let it and the handle dangle while I pulled myself in. This proved to be a bad decision. As I had just gotten up to a good spot to throw the rope in (my first time to try it), a nice little wake came in (the water was a little choppy that day) and the front of my board nosedived, and so I was going to fall. OK, no biggy, been falling all day. Unfortunately, the handle at the end of the rope had other ideas. It decided to fly up (still trying to figure this out) and nail me just between my eye and eyebrow. I felt a nice *crack* as it nailed me, and when I came up from the water, floating there, my left eye was seeing straight and my right was spinning all over the place. Everytime I blinked, the eye would just spin. When I got back to the boat, Bob was saying "Oh man, your bleeding!" Sure enough, I had a nice little gash on my eyelid. Long story short, ended up going to a CareNow center after we got the boat put away, and I ended up getting 3 stitches. So, if you look down, I've posted two pictures of my eye. The first is from yesterday after getting back home, and the second is from today. Enjoy!

Sunday

Monday, pretty!

See you next time on Husband Hijack!

Lightened Sweet Potato Casserole

Ok, just a disclaimer... I'm so not a chef or anything! This is a variation of Cooking Light's Traditional Sweet Potato Casserole, which looks brilliant! After looking at the already lightened version and reading the comments, I decided to lower the amount of brown sugar and omit the marshmallows. It shaves about 50 calories, for a serving that's a little bigger too! So, here it is!

• 2 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Brummel and Brown Buttery Yogurt Spread
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans, divided

Preheat oven to 375°.

Place the sweet potatoes in a Dutch oven, and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 15 minutes or until very tender. Drain; cool slightly.

Place potatoes in a large bowl. Add sugar and next 3 ingredients (through vanilla). Mash sweet potato mixture. Fold in 1/4 cup pecans. Scrape into an even layer in an 11 x 7-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup pecans. Bake at 375° for 25 minutes or until golden.

Serves 12 (Or not. Maybe less if you have very hungry people. Or if you have a HH around to test for poison, correct spicing, to make sure the nuts are properly chopped and mixed in, etc.)

Classic Southern Dinner*

Fried chicken in the W house?! Ha, fat chance! Nope, just a fabulously Southern feeling dinner for (faux) fried chicken, (extra lightened) sweet potato casserole, and garlic green beans! Delish!

Fooled you for a sec, huh?


In the tradition of health-i-fying foods in our house, we made oven 'fried' chicken with ground up Fiber One cereal. Apparently I'm the last person in the world to learn about F1 cereal and using for everything except just eating it. (Because, really, who just eats cereal with milk anymore? Oh, wait, I do.) But anyway, so you grind up the cereal, add your spices and whatnot, dip the chicken in egg substitute, and coat in that, then bake! Genius. And crunchy outside, good texture! I think this one will be a keeper after some more spice experimentation with it. It actually turned out so well that we're eating the leftovers tonight, rather than it meeting the fate of some of my other culinary experiments... aka ending up binned.

Nope, not even any for the Gizmo - no matter how pretty she sits!


The sweet potato casserole was good enough to go on my holiday menu (yes, I'm already planning and experimenting to surpass last year's feast) and I might even throw the recipe up here tomorrow!

Water fun

Something a little less, um, deep after the last post...

HH showing off the new skills

Can you tell I was petrified about trying this?!

Two handsome dudes - my favorite knuckleheads!

crash.

And the lake isn't that deep! :-)

The In-Between

I think we all have times in our lives of in-betweens. I think everyone must have these times. Maybe many of these times. And sometimes they're exactly what we need. I'm very much in an in-between transtition - yeah, riddle that one out - right now.

Many changes are coming in the W Fam, and good ones, I think! No, no sprogs, so don't let your mind wander there! Still working on a sister for Gizmo before those happen!

So, when all of the upheaval in April happened, HH asked me what I wanted to do with my life. "I mean, really" he said, "what do you want to do? What makes you happy?" Hard but good questions when you're emotionally spent. After taking a couple of weeks to attempting to just be, I thought back to athletic training and all of that... which led to PA school? Maybe. Or not. Or maybe chiropratic? Or maybe Gizmo needs a stay-at-home mom? Or maybe HH needs dinner on the table every night at 6:30? (For the record, he does not. Another one of HH's astoundingly cool attributes is an ability to go with the strange flow my cooking takes. And he makes mean pancakes.) What did I want to do???

Next step was information gathering, big surprise there, and throwing myself into working out with the best girls in the world with vigor. And attempting to just be. Which is hard to do - just being. I'm even reading a book right now about just being. (Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - I'm only 1/3 of the way through it and am LOVING it.) From information gathering, I went to community college for a summer class. Talk about fun. Seriously! I heart school. I just do. But I got even more answers there.

As I continue taking this meandering path to wherever it is I'll end up, I'm doing my best to enjoy the journey. There are times, such as earlier this week, where I feel lost - but as another great friend told me recently: Everything turns out ok in the end. If it's not ok, it's not the end. (Have I mentioned that I have some genius friends out there?! It's true, I do - and I'm so blessed to have them!) I'm also finding out that it's ok to be a little lost - so long as I don't just give in. Lost is part of the journey, right? Yes. And what was it that Mr. Datsun said? Lfe is a journey. Enjoy the ride. Remeber him? The nice man in sunnies sitting on the billboard with the white dog. :-)

This section of the in-between is slated to change to the something part in September when I start at Parker, where I'll spend this fall term working on my remaining pre-reqs for chiropractic school. Yay! I'm super stoked, but am also trying to enjoy the in-between that is the next 3ish weeks. I'm also really realizing that I don't do "not much" too well!

But it also means I can have random afternoon swim parties! Any takers?!

A movie review.

My wonderful HH, in another fit of sensing that I'm in the middle of a transitional funk (more on that in a minute), sprung a movie on me last night. We went to see Julie & Julia - which was fantastic !!! Seriously - awesome.

Ok, quick synopsis... Based on Julia Child's life in France (among other places), her story gets mixed into blogger Julie Powell's story of cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. Wow. It goes between the two stories and intertwines them perfectly! Meryl Streep as Julia is genius. Without giving anything major away, Julie flips her stuff on the path to self discovery (which is pretty cool in itself anyway!), and you learn a little more about how Julia became JULIA. Very good. Go see it.

Or, pick up the book, which is HI-larious!

Husband Hijack 7: House Projects!

I'm baaaaaaaack! I've been busy doing some projects around the house the last couple weekends. So here's the rundown:

Project #1: New Storm Door
I have a love/hate relationship with this thing. I'm not going to get into the details on this one or it will make this post 10 pages long, so lets just say that not a single piece out of the box fit our door jam, so I ended up basically custom fitting/cutting every piece all the way to the finish. A door that should have taken maybe an hour or two ended up taking around 3-4 hours to get in. In the end though, it looks great, fits great, and works!

The view from the lawn

Project #2: New Wet Bar Sink
OK, this one was easy. This sink had been leaking a while back and was shut off. Finally got around to changing it out. Simple swap out of the flex connections from the wall and a swap of the fixture and it was done! Ended up looking pretty good!

See? Looks good!

Project #3: Entryway bathroom sink
This sink was a royal pain in my butt. This sink was also leaking like the wet bar one, so it had been shut off. Changing this one was not so much fun... The biggest pain was the p-trap. First, it wasn't the right size, then the fittings leaked, then I realized I needed an extension of the drain pipe to make it work, then the fittings still leaked, the the trap wouldn't seal around the drain pipe included in the fixture. So after hours of toying with it, I finally got the drain piping sealed and working.
Next was the plunger. Did this work? Heck no! The bottom portion of the part that joins the plunger to the handle under the sink was hitting the drain piping. Ugh. But I said, "you know what? screw it!" So I just moved it off to the side and it works just fine, albeit at an angle.
After that was the water piping. Was this smooth sailing? Psshh, yeah right! The piping that was installed before, when the house was built, was a little leaky now. Also, the pipe that went from the shut off valve to the piping at the fixture was an old accordian-type metal flex tubing. Well, it didn't work with the new fixture, and because it was built into the valve body, I had to swap out the valves as well. Basically, I had to end up replacing everything from the copper tubing at the wall and on. After some good practice with choice words from the english language, the whole thing was done. Eventually, we will replace this sink (and flooring) with a new vanity, but this was a good change so that we can at least use the sink now.

New valve, supply pipes, and drain pipes

New sink in place

Project #4: Front door lighting and painting
Jamie finished painting the front door trim white. I think it looks great! I ended up changing out the light fixture around the door. I'm very happy with the way everything turned out. The lights had very few hitches on there install. Really the only thing was that the mouting bracket for the fixture did not line up at all with the J-box in the wall. So I improvised and used some wood screws to mount the bracket to the exterior wall and get the fixture screws out of the way of the J-box so that they sat were able to be screwed down properly.

Not bad huh?

Project ?: Failed computer
My old computer in the music room failed this last weekend (and with it. When I say failed, it was catastrophic. Motherboard overheated and I lost some caps (still trying to figure this one out) and hard drive total failure (the needle is grinding the platters if you turn it on). So an upcoming project for me will be to build a new music room computer that I plan to make look both sleek and have some sweet case lighting/windows/mods, as well as have some speed to last a good while. You might see this build start in the coming weeks.

Finally, I've got some more projects on the way including changing the entryway chandelier, swapping more wall plates and switches, and changing the necessary electrical parts to get our light post in the front lawn working again. Be back soon!

Yum.

Another date night... Have I told you I heart date nights? Have I explained that our date nights are rarely nights that we actually go out? In a night that started with an early dinner with the Running Girls at Bavarian Grill, we ended up not setting our backyard on fire in attempt to make s'mores. Yum. Since I'm sure that HH will detail the gastronomic delights of Bavarian Grill soon, I'll just skip to the part shown above!

What's not to love about s'mores? I mean really??? They're delish and so summery. (FYI - I still smell slightly campfire-y) We started by not setting anything on fire accidentally... always a positive start!


Then it was all about the burnt marshmallows! Oh, yeah, and graham crackers and chocolate too, of course, but isn't the flaming ball of whipped sugar the best part?!


Even Gizmo got in on the marshmallow action... Not while flaming, of course! I think she pretty much dug the small bits she got, she certainly dig border on begging for more!


Yum...

What a great weekend

I heart 3 day weekends. Seriously. And boy, did we have a fab one this last weekend! HH was off Friday, so we pottered around the house for a bit that morning, met Chris and Heidi for a 'workout' (Velocity was actually closed for the holiday) and goofed around the rest of the day! I did say 'workout' because it was filled with breaks for watching Fredi and Cooper do freakishly strong things (well, Coop at least, Fredi can hang from the bar for a good long time!), getting slobbered on by Becks (the dog!), and laughter between all of us.

Saturday was meant for diving and fireworks - yay! Two of my favorite activites in one day! Wahoo! Ok, so the diving wasn't fantastic - lots of brown and green! We went out to Clear Springs, in eastish Texas for the morning to dive and hang out.

Let the journey begin....

Random factoid... My college roomie, Kat, is from Terrell - which is near Clear Springs!

Ok, back to our dive adventures... So, not so great diving, but any time you get to get wet and blow bubbles is pretty awesome. We got to try out our new gear, which was mucho fun! Can't wait for some blue water bubbles though! (FYI... approximately 226 days until we leave for Palau... nope, I'm not counting or excited at all)

HH, you can't descend on land, silly!

Ugh, I can't believe I'm posting this one, but I'm so super stoked about finally getting to use my new bonnet! It was a birthday present from Gizmo... my very own SMU clown fish! Lovelovelove it - keeps the post-dive Medusa hair at bay!

Our lovely morning of diving ended with a picnic lunch - which was delish... as you can see...

Really?! A picture now?!?!?

Then it was off to see fireworks at my smom's office - they blocked the parking lot off for tenants only! We had prime seats and no crowds - talk about awesome! So planning on that one next year!

Sunday was fairly quiet - HH did a few projects 'round here... which would have been quick, but, like all things in our house, required some "customization" that ended up taking a bit longer!

Now it's back to the usual stuff I guess... Happy late 4th of July!

Husband Hijack #6: A Pictorial Journey through Late June

What happened in late June, you might be wondering... I am too after the very sparse last couple posts. Might have to ramp up the hijacking!

I'll keep the text short in this one, but I'll have some good pictures. bout two weeks ago we had dinner at the Wilsons. Loads of fun and some very yummy food!

Mmmmmm... protein....

Rachel says, "talk to the hand, Mike!"

I also played some Rock Band 2 with the Wilson's kids while Jamie and Rachel cheered and sang. (Mike got in on it to, played some mad drums!). I have to say though, going from a real guitar (I play guitar if you didn't know) to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band guitar where it limits you to 5 buttons isn't easy. I kept finding my hands moving to where they were supposed to go instead of just sticking to my 5 buttons, hahaha. But it was fun! I think that would be a great party game (with not boring people, aka gamers)

Rawk!

Another fun event, Jamie and I had breakfast for dinner. IHOP, eat your heart out!
Simple meal, eggs with fresh grated cheddar cheese and some PROTEIN!! pancakes. The little ones on the right are gizmo's "puppy pancakes".. aka smaller versions of what we ate :)

Nom, Nom, Nom....

Jamie and I used Advocare vanilla Muscle Gain in our pancakes. Shameless plug incoming: Check our website (we're distributors) if you're interested in any Advocare products! Just click here. Feel free to give us a call or send us an email.

And for my last act, I hung a new chandelier in the kitchen breakfast nook. It looks great!

Checking for proper sizing of the glass shades...

And the final!

Tune in later for pics from our July 4 diving excursion and maybe some more house work! See you next time on Husband Hijack! Oh yeah, Transformers 2 is awesome. And Harry Potter comes out soon *geek*!

July?! Now?!

Holy wow, Batman, how is July already?! Ach. I guess I've been so distracted with stuff *, I totally missed June! July = happy month though... for many reasons, but it's also National Ice Cream month! It's true. If you don't believe me, go here.

See? I told you so. And if that wasn't enough proof...





Even HH endorses ice cream! And he's the healthiest person I know!!!

If you're really lucky, you might even be able to find this flavor... Gotta love Texas just for Bluebell sometimes.




* stuff...you know, swimming, playing with Gizmo, entertaining HH, class, cooking healthy yummy stuff, picking up around the house