Make My Heart Sing Monday

Hi friends!  Well I've taken a little hiatus from blogging lately...and by a little I mean 4 months.  Lots of changes going on in my life the last couple months.  But more on that later...Anyway I figure whats a better way to get back into it then a make my heart sing monday??  So heres a few things that are making my heart sing lately...

Snow

I LOVE snow.  Upstate eastern New York gets quite a bit of it too. I'm not talking Buffalo status but we have our fair share.  I start praying for snow in about late September and this year we had our first real snow fall on Thanksgiving and it was so pretty. It was the kind of snow that you get when its not too cold out. Perfect snowman making snow.  It sticks to all of the trees and just looks gorgeous. My family spends our Thanksgiving at a hunting camp in the woods and this year all of my younger cousins were able to go sledding because of all of the snow.  It was a perfect day.  Anyway back to the snow.  I just love it.  Its just peaceful and beautiful.  This year I'm the new proud owner of my own set of skis too so I'm sure I'll be posting some skiing adventures

My family

Speaking of the perfect day on Thanksgiving it was mostly just because I have the greatest family.  They have been super supportive and just basically awesome these past couple months and I cant imagine my life without them. 

Whats making your hearts sing this week friends?

                                     

Buck mountain

So last week I convinced 3 of my lovely coworkers/ friends to go hiking with me. We decided to start with a smaller mountain and did Buck Mountain in Lake George. Ends up being about 6 miles round trip and has really pretty views at the top.

At the beginning...pre sweaty mess

Seriously the Adirondacks are amazing. If you haven't explored them then I highly highly recommend it!  Anyway we ended up having basically the perfect day weather wise for our hike. There was us four girls, three dogs, and two of the cutest identical twin 7 year old boys. 

Pups and kids

The two dogs on the right are my Glavine and Nellie and then on the left is Emma who belongs to my dad but was visiting us for a few days.  My two dogs are hiking pros but Emma was a first timer. She hiked like a champ though, despite the fact that she decided to roll in poo about five minutes into the trip. 

View from the top

No matter how hard the hike is...the view at the top always makes it worth it. Buck mountain looks down over Lake George and on this day you could see for miles in each direction. Beautiful. 

At the top

Also...I just want to take a minute to say how lucky I am to have such amazing coworkers. I've been at the hospital for two years now and not only are these ladies amazing nurses but they are amazing friends. With everything that's been going on in my life lately I'm so thankful to have these girls in my life. 

Can't go wrong with ice cream!

We finished the day with some super yummy ice cream! I've decided I should fill my life with lots more adventures :)

Truth

You guys taking any adventures lately?

Make My Heart Sing Monday!

Just a quick post this week! Things making m heart sing recently

- a good book

The kind of book you lose yourself in. One you can't put down and stay up late into the night trying to finish. Then when you do finish it you're sad that it's over and you have to pull yourself back to reality.

- tea

I have a huge collection of tea and I often forget about it. Then I'll make a cup and think huh why don't I drink tea more often?

Make my heart sing Monday!

Well... I accidentally deleted my new post...new to blogging remember? So I'm redoing make my heart sing Monday on a Tuesday...oh well!

Things making my heart sing this week!

completing a project

Since we've moved into out new house I've redone two bedrooms I patched holes, caulked, sanded and painted. My biggest accomplishment was to teach myself how to change out outlets (thank you YouTube!) Seriously how much better does a fresh white outlet look compared to an almond outlet with a white cover which is what we had. Also I love any opportunity to try out power tools.

early mornings

I love to wake up early and sit in my living room drinking my coffee with all the windows open. I can hear all of the birds singing and I usually have one of my pups curled up beside me. Everything is so calm and peaceful...makes getting up at 4:30 in the morning before work totally worth it!

What's making your heart sing this week?

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Runner Girl

I'm trying to make running a habit. I've been running on and off for years now.  I have periods where I'll run pretty often and then I won't run for months. I've done tons of 5Ks. I've done 2 (slow!) half marathons.  I posted a few weeks ago about running in Ragnar. But I still feel like a fraud to call myself a runner. I'm not a die hard. I get lazy and take months off. I don't like to run when it's super hot.  I'm mentally weak. I don't want to be like that though. I want to be a runner. Does that make sense? I know I'm rambling...
My husband is a runner. He coaches varsity cross country and varsity track. He runs daily. He has to buy new running shoes every few months because he puts too many miles on them. My dad is also a runner. He's in his 50s and has run a few marathons.  I love to do races with them. I love to do races in general. The running community is awesome and fun.
So I'm going to be a real runner. I've told myself this a thousand times but I always quit so maybe if I post it on here I'll stick to it. I love to run. I love how it makes me feel. I get such a sense of accomplishment from finishing. Running makes me strong both physically and mentally. Plus in this house we eat, sleep, and breathe running. Between my husband's job, my dad, and my little brother who also runs...I know he names of most of the good runners in the area. I spent my Saturdays at cross country meets in the fall. We have a running closet. A whole closet dedicated to running clothes and shoes!
So no more excuses.  If you need me....I'm out for a run.

Deep cleaning

So I just recently switched to working 12 hour shifts which means that now instead of 5 days a week I'm working 3 so I've got 4 days off every week now! I'm not sure what to do with all this free time! My trusty fall back is to go shopping but I'm trying to be better about blowing money on stuff I don't need. Seriously I need less in my life. So shopping is out. So today I decided to tackle some of the projects I've been putting off since we moved in a little over a month ago. I wanted to clean my washing machine and dish washer. 

I started with the dish washer. I looked up how go clean your dish washer on Pinterest and most of the links were the same basic directions. So I filled a measuring cup up with vinegar and put it on the top shelf and ran a cycle with no soap. Then when that was done I sprinkled baking soda all over the bottom of the dish washer and ran another cycle. That's all! So easy and my dish washer came out super shiney on the inside! 

Next up was the washing machine. This was seriously gross. It has been since we moved in and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I've been using it anyway....

Gross right? There's a freaking dirt ring! Ick!

So anyway all of the directions I found online said to use baking soda and either bleach or vinegar. I try to not use bleach on stuff because I try to limit the chemicals I use plus it never fails I always always always get bleach on my clothes so I went with the vinegar. I let the washer fill with hot water and poured in some vinegar and let it agitate a few minutes then I just dumped in some baking soda and let it agitate again to mix it all up. The I let it sit. 

The tools I used. I'm real high tech. While the hot water/baking soda/vinegar mix was sitting I used the same water to scrub down the lid and corners and the dirt ring off the inside of the basket. It took some serious elbow grease but I finally got it all clean. Then I just closed the lid and let the cycle finish.

See? Sparkly clean washing machine! 

The same day I also pulled out the stove and cleaned all the grim from the sides and back. I'll spare you the pictures but trust me it was gross.  And there was this...

Yup that's a phone cord from a land line phone. It was wedged between the counter and the stove. Apparently instead of pulling the stove out someone decided it would be easier to just cut the cord? But this makes me think it's been a few years since the sides and back of the oven were cleaned. Gross. 

So that's what I've been working on lately. Exciting I know.

Running Cape Cod...

Literally. We ran Cape Cod. The entire thing. This past weekend I ran in the Cape Cod Ragnar race with my dad and 10 other people. It's a relay race that starts in Hull, Massachusettes and goes 192 miles to Provincetown, Massachusettes. Each person runs 3 separate legs. I wish I had taken more pictures! 

That was the view at exchange 6 which was where my van started our first legs. If I had been smarter I would have turned around and gone over the sand dune to take a picture of the Atlantic but instead I took a picture of this lovely marsh. Anyway the race started Friday morning and we finished late morning saturday. So we ran all night and there was some car sleeping involved. All in all a good time, we got these lovely metals, and got to meet some cool new people!

 

 

Our team at the finish! 

Gettin crafty

I've been really into wreath making lately. First I thought I'd try my hand at deco mesh wreath making. So of course first I watched about 10 different you tube videos on how to make them. Then I went to our local craft store to scope out the supplies. Turns out they have a wreath "designer" who will give you a demonstration on how to make a deco mesh wreath. Well. She was just a bowl of fun. Not. When I asked her about using 2 different colors in a wreath she looked at me like I had 4 heads and said she didn't think that was possible. Ha designer my foot. Anyway since I was going for summer I got red and blue mesh ribbon with some silver stars and went on my way. 

All of the tutorials I watched said to use pipe cleaners to attach it so I put the pipe cleaners on first. In the end I used only red pipe cleaners and I put them on the inside and outside loops. I redid it about 3 times before I figured out what I liked and I forgot to take pictures so this is my end result. 

Pretty cute right? Problem was it was so poofy that when I hung it on my door the screen door wouldn't close. Back to the drawing board.  This time I decided to try a burlap wreath. Again I watched some YouTube videos. Then I just decided to wing it. 

I looked for rolls of burlap but I could only find wired ribbon. At home I already had a big 2 yard piece of burlap so I decided to just cut that into strips.  I used another metal wreath form. I think it was 14 inches. For the first piece of burlap I attached it with pipe cleaner... But after that I got lazy and didn't even attach the pieces 

So basically I just looped burlap through each of the three sections of the wreath frame working my way back and forth across the frame and in between each loop I twisted the piece before looping it through the next section.

Once I had the whole wreath form filled with burlap I just went through and fluffed up my loops. I added some fun pieces... Since it's for summer I went with red white and blue for Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day!  This is my finished project! 

By the way this past week I also painted our front door. When we moved in it was a lovely shade of... Grape... Which is not quite our style and currently the house is white with black shutters so I decided to go with a bright green. In my husband'a words "umm it's lime." But I love it and it's grown on him. So we are no longer the house with the purple door but the house with the line green door. I'm okay with that!

Baking adventures!

One of Lance's co-teachers wants to open a bakery so she bakes on a regular basis and Lance is one of the lucky testers of her treats. Recently she organized a class at a local bakery and I jumped at the opportunity to go...I love to bake and it fit perfectly with my goal of trying new things. Taking a class with people I didn't know at a place I'd never been puts me slightly out of my comfort zone but I need more of that in my life so Monday night I headed off to the Bread Basket Bakery.

There was 6 of us in the class and they were all super nice. The Bread Basket is a family business that  was started by one woman in the basement of the family's home...how cool is that? Now it's pretty much run by her two sons. Our teacher was Chad who does the baking end.

You guys we made SO MUCH FOOD. It was amazing. The bakery has the biggest mixers I've ever seen.

The one on the left was a 40 gallon mixer! Huge. And I thought my kitchen aid mixer was cool. Anyway we learned how to make 3 different types of dough. One that was the base for all different kinds of pastries, one that made baguettes and ciabatta bread and the third was for cinnamon rolls or sticky buns. 

The first is the pastry dough. Once it's mixed you have to let it rest. We did make this dough but Chad had actually premade a batch the night before for us to use. The dough we made went into the fridge so it could rest over night to be used today and we worked with the dough he made. The pastery dough goes through this huge rolling machine

It was really cool. This place deals with such large amounts and pastery dough has to be turned 4 times so this prevents them from having to roll it all by hand. Once all this dough was turned we had to let it rest again. There's a lot of resting in dough making. That was something Chad stressed...you can't rush dough or it won't come out correctly. There was a lot of jumping back and forth between projects so that all of our dough could rest. 

We made a ton of different things. We made bear claws

Our dough was so soft...not enough resting...and we made them so big that they fell over but they still looked yummy! We also made fruit filled pastries

We made cinnamon rolls which look pretty similar to the bear claws but with no nuts, maple twists, and sticky buns

 Finally we made ciabatta bread and baguettes. 

Everything got baked and frosted 

And we ended up with a huge tray of pastries! 

At the end we each got to take a box home!

It was so fun and I learned a lot of good tips. I actually have not tried any of the pastries, but Lance ate some and I took a bunch to work and they were gobbled up. I have eaten two huge pieces of ciabatta bread and it was so yummy!  Now there's talk of another class soon...fingers crossed!

Baking adventures!

Its becoming a tradition around here for me to make my little sister's birthday cakes. For her 9th birthday I tried my hand at marbling/ tie dye

For birthday number 10 I went for ombré 

Both cakes were big hits but the tie dye more so than the ombré. So her 11th birthday was this past week and I was trying to come up with something new to do. So of course - I searched Pinterest! I began pondering the idea of fondant but let's be honest any fondant I've tried has been pretty nasty. Well I searched homemade fondant and it turns out that homemade fondant is supposed to taste better. I mean it's made with marshmallows and powdered sugar...how could you go wrong?

First things first I decided to go with just a boxed cake mix. It's cheap and easy and usually has pretty good results. I did doctor it a bit though using the instructions I found Here. 

Then I started working on the fondant. I'm new to blogging so sorry about the lack of and poor quality of the pictures!  I followed These directions for making the fondant. First step is to melt the marshmallows and let me tell you they were not joking about greasing everything! Melted marshmallows are about the stickiest things I've ever encountered. For my first batch I added the orange food coloring right to my melted marshmallows. I dumped it all in the mixer and started adding my powdered sugar

Also I forgot to add water when I melted the marshmallows so my fodant wasn't sticking so well... I just threw some into the mixer... Problem solved. It takes quite a long time to add all of the sugar and get it all mixed in

But eventually it starts to have a frosting/fondant consistency. Once it no longer sticks to your hands in the mixer you can take it out and hand knead it some more. Make sure you grease your hands and the surface! Finally I just rolled it up into a ball and wrapped it in plastic wrap 

I made two batches. The orange for my base color on the cake and I made a white batch to use for the design that I just planned on mixing the colors in later. I wrapped them both in plastic and let them sit a few days...

When it was time to put my cake together I had two hard balls of fondant. I put them in the microwave in 15 second intervals and added some crisco and it softened right up. Then I rolled it out... Again make sure you grease EVERYTHING. Once it was big enough I wrapped it around my rolling pin loosely, moved it to the top of my cake and smoothed it all out

I should add that before I added the fondant I frosted the cakes with a homemade buttercream frosting to make sure the fondant stuck... I used  this recipe for the buttercream. 

Once I had both cakes covered in orange I stacked them. I had bought the smallest wooden dowel I could find and just cut a bunch of pieces the same height as my bottom cake. I stuck them all right into the bottom cake with another dollop of frosting and I added the second layer. The dowels helped to support to weight of the second cake. 

Now it was time to add my decorations. I split my white dough into three sections and added a blob of frosting dye then kneaded it to make sure it all got mixed it then I just rolled it out the same way and cut out my circles with a cookie cutter

To make my circles stick I just added a tiny bit of water to the back of each one and kind I pasted them on. Here's my finished product! 

Things I learned along the way...

- your cakes need to be flat or they won't stack well... I had a big gap in between mine 

- a well placed ribbon can hide any gaps!

- the color shows up much better and is more vibrant when you knead it in instead of mixing it into your marshmallows

- don't believe your Grama when she says you better make a big cake because there will be a lot of people - you end up with a whole cake left over and then you and your husband are forced to eat the whole thing

- finally your little sister will love it even if it does sort of resemble a hamburger instead of the cute polka dots you were going for 

Happy Birthday Ruby!