Thanksgiving Feast

I know I haven't posted in a super long time...  But I thought I'd post about everything I cooked yesterday for Thanksgiving.  So here is what we had at our dinner table yesterday:

Deviled Eggs

Loaded Mashed Potatoes

(Yes, bacon makes everything taste better.)

Sweet Potato Casserole

I halved this recipe and realized that it's difficult to use half an egg.  Anyways, it turned out to be quite tasty.  Much better than what I had originally expected.  We let Jared be the guinea pig and take the first bite with this dish.

Baked Mac and Cheese

(My comfort food.)

Fried Corn Fritters

Probably my favorite surprise dish this year.

Rolls

I mixed the old rolls with the new; you can hardly tell the difference (okay so you really can tell the difference).

Dressing.  Stuffing.  Whatever...

Turkey

Yes, I buy the breast that's ready to go in the oven.  No messy turkey cooking for me.

It was Jared, Jared's cousin, and me at the dinner table.  As expected, we have a lot of leftovers.  Although I'm pretty sure all of the mac and cheese is gone now.  Oh, and our cousin supplied the pumpkin pie.  Yes, I also ate a third of the pie tonight.  And it's all gone as well...

Until next year...

House

The whole home buying process has been extremely painful.  There's been a lot of ups and downs.  Initially, the first home we placed a bid on was accepted.  They took our offer, and we turned in our grace money.  But they backed out of the offer.  And I guess it's completely legal because they claim no documents were signed.  So whatever...  We were bummed.

And then we found another house.  The inspection was on Friday.  We're working on some minor kinks, and our mortgage loan is currently being processed.  So I'm 95% sure we're getting a house now.

We'll be moving in the middle to the end of August.  Isn't this exciting?  I'll show pictures when I'm 99.9% sure we're moving.

And by the way, Wisconsin has reached some record temperatures this past week.  My thermometer has been reading over 100 every day last week.  On Thursday, we officially set a record at 103 (although my thermometer said 105).  So I'm really sick of the heat right now...

Busy

This past week, I've gone from work to looking at houses.  And let me tell you, it was a very tiring week. Not to mention, I don't even think I read a hundred pages in the whole week (I usually read that much in a day).  I'm so glad it's over.

We've gone to a couple of banks to get mortgage preapproval letters.  And we found out very quickly that not all banks are created equally.  Some are very prejudiced against first time homebuyers.  From what I've learned this week, my advice would be to stick with the banks you bank with and local banks.  The chain banks were the ones that gave us problems.  In a nutshell, they basically told us we needed a 20% downpayment and should never have gone to college if we were planning to buy a house so early.  They also recommended we keep renting and save like crazy.  While I can see some good in that advice, I can't understand why anyone who has 'owning a home' in their life plan would want to keep renting when rent prices are the same price as owning a house right now...

I have been cooking up a storm lately.  Which also gives me more opportunity to damage my hands.  Last Sunday, I didn't open the oven door enough and my knuckle hit the inside.  A big, ugly blister resulted from that.  And then yesterday, my infamous fingers without feelings did another stupid thing.  I had the hot pad in my hands while pulling the food out of the oven.  But I didn't realize that the hot pad was not centered, and my finger was very much not protected.  Needless to say, I had the pan halfway out of the oven before I realized my finger was touching the pan.  A nice dull tingle resulted.  And it's turned into a lovely blister as well.  Good news is I only feel it every once in a while.  Bad news is I'm not used to feeling anything in my finger.  Ugh, the issues I face while cooking.

Did I mention my car broke down last week?  We had just barely begun our search for a new home and had spent a couple of hours looking around our area for other apartments.  At that point, moving to another apartment was an option for us.  We decided to end our search, grab something to eat from Hardees and go home to relax for the night.  While in the drive-thru, my car started smoking.  We thought the radiator fluid had leaked out.  But that wasn't the problem.  We had to tow it to our mechanic and wait for the news.  Turns out, our water pump failed.  Wasn't cheap to fix...

So why the big interest in moving?  Or buying a house?  Well, our lease goes up in a couple of months, and the complex wants 60 day notice as to whether you'll stay or go.  Problem is, they don't have to give you any notice that your rent's going up.  We only had two weeks notice before we have to give them our decision.  While we love where we live, we've watched the rent go up every year.  And it just doesn't make sense to us to stay if there are other options out there.  Especially with our plan of buying a house and the fact that we have a down payment ready and we now have stable jobs.  So, our living situation is kind of up in the air right now.

Update

So, I meant to post something regarding how my birthday went.  But that never happened.  And then a month turned into two months.  Wow, I've really neglected this blog.  Granted, I don't think there's a lot of people out there reading about my every day life.

So...  Here's an update on everything:

• Jared is a permanent employee at an internet and phone service company doing tech support.
• I will be a permanent employee at a laboratory playing with chemicals and testing foods.
• We have decided to wait another year before continuing our search for a house.  The reasoning behind this, is we want to live in a good neighborhood and therefore probably need a higher down payment.  For the price range we want, we have a little over 5% of our down payment in savings.  And considering we spent a year saving up, I'm fairly certain we can get it to 10 by this time next year.  Besides, we're happy with where we're currently living.
• We are almost done paying off our credit card debt.  You know, the debt we took on while in college over two years ago?  Yeah, it amounted to $6000 if I remember correctly.  And no, I've never revealed that amount until now.  We are currently under a grand (and no, I won't tell you how much we have left).  With our current financial plans, we will probably have it paid off in the next two months.  And then we're just left with our student loans (amazing how money can make you go crazy).
• My obsession with books has grown to a tipping point.  With my book blog, I thought I'd be encouraged to read the books sitting on my shelves.  Instead, that amount doubled.  But I've met some pretty awesome people through blogging: authors and fellow bloggers.
• Gizmo is still the same-old-same-old dog.  He's super clingy with me.  Hopefully, he'll adjust better when my work schedule changes to 4-10s.
• I bought an awesome looking dress yesterday.  Sorry, no pictures.  Maybe when I'm feeling like a less lazy person...

And that's about it in a nutshell.  We are planning a trip to Utah in October for my brother's wedding.  Other than that, I'm not sure what our plans are for the rest of the year.  I know I'll still be reading!  (And hopefully still giddy with life!)

Eight-Layer Dip

Since I've been doing a lot of cooking lately, and the Superbowl was a long time ago, I thought I'd post my eight-layer dip recipe.  I meant to post it the weekend of the superbowl when I made it, but time ran away from me.  Also, this blog has kind of landed on the back burner after my reading and book blogging.  But life is still good.  The food's great!  Anyways, here's the recipe now.

Ingredients:

• 2-3 cups shredded lettuce (I typically just grab one bag of shredded lettuce from the store)
• 1 9-oz can bean dip (in the chip aisle)
• 1/4 cup picante or taco sauce (I get this ingredient in a weird and obscure way explained later)
• 1 6-oz avocado dip (or if you're me, fresh guacamole from the store works)
• 1 8-oz sour cream
• 1 cup shredded cheddar or taco cheese (just pick your favorite cheese and use it)
• 1/4 cup sliced green onions
• 2 tbsp sliced pitted ripe olives (or a whole small can if you like olives - I do!)
• 2/3 cup chopped, seeded tomato (basically a medium tomato because the more the merrier, right?)
• chips (well duh!)

Preparation:

1. Arrange lettuce on a serving platter.  My serving platter looks like a 2.2 qt pyrex dish (because I'm hip like that).  If you'd rather use a 3 qt dish, double the recipe.  
2. Combine bean dip and picante sauce.  Now personally, I don't use picante sauce (because Jared dislikes picante sauce).  So how do I come up with a 1/4 cup of taco sauce when I've never seen taco sauce at stores?  I buy the tack seasoning packets and mix in the amount of water on the package directions.  Then I use 1/4 cup of that mixture for my taco sauce.  And guess what?  It works!  (Note: if you use too much water in your weird taco sauce mixture, the bottom of your serving platter can get a little moist.)  Now back to the preparation spread bean dip/picante sauce over lettuce.
3. Layer the avocado dip on top of the bean/picante dip.
4. Layer the sour cream on top of the avocado dip.
5. Top with cheese, green onions, and olives.  If you're me, then the sour cream is hidden after all the cheese, onions, and olives that get dumped on the dip.
6. Cover and chill for 4-24 hours.  Why?  Because I said so.
7. Before serving, chop the tomato and sprinkle it on top of the dip (now everything's hidden by tomatoes - if you prepare this dip like me).
8. Eat with chips.  Try to eat more than your husband who maybe likes the dip a little more than you'd like (because it's gone before you know it).

Ready

I think I'm ready for life to happen now.  I hate thinking about the major milestones in life, and how I'm still waiting for mine to come.  One day I'll have a house.  And one day I'll have kids.  Et cetera.

But I want a house now...  We went and talked to a mortgage broker on Friday.  Pretty much we have everything in order other than the fact that our employment is still listed as contract positions.  We have the down payment ready, but we have to wait until our employment status goes to permanent.  And thanks to the economy, that could take anywhere from six months to two years.  Ugh, I'm sick of waiting.

Anyways, other than that disappointment in my life, things have been good.  I cut about three to seven inches off two weeks ago (I got it re-layered - because it used to be layered at one point).  I dyed my hair a week ago.  Jared is growing his hair out because I told him to.  We're considering getting another Yorkie.  And my birthday's coming up.  Oh boy, I'm getting old.  I still hold to the fact that you stop aging after 21.  You always think, "I can't wait until I'm 21."  And then it happens, and you just don't care for the fact that your age continues along afterwards...  Oh well.  I'm still excited because it will be the first day in a very long time that Jared and I will have off together.  That's right, I will see Jared's lovely face for about 16 hours give or take a few.

So here's to life happening (and hopefully faster than anticipated because I'm impatient)...

Before dye job.  Hair is a lighter brown.

After dye job.  My hair has a redder tint and is a little darker.  (You really can't tell it's been dyed from the pictures because I tend to pick similar colors.)  Can you also tell that I have no makeup on in this one?

And one of Jared (because I can).  Yes, he might kill me for posting it.  But it's proof that his hair is longer than usual...

Life

So I really have nothing exciting going on right now.  A week and a half ago, I came down with a cold/flu.  I had everything but the fever.  I don't think I've ever ached so much in my life.  It was painful to the point where I couldn't move.  If Gizmo, the four pound dog, tried to walk on me, I'd cry out in pain.  I had to use a heating pad on my back to lessen my back pain, so I could sleep.  I never want to be in that much pain again.

Anyways, moving on.  I've just been working and doing a lot of reading.  I decided on two resolutions for the year:  read the bible every day and floss my teeth more regularly.  The bible reading resolution came from the fact that I was reading the bible on average 2-3 times a week.  I'm trying to become more regular with my reading and switching it to every day.  So far, I'm doing awesome (better than I thought I would).  I know it's only two weeks in, so shh...  And the flossing?  I have two cavities that are slowly coming along, and my dentist told me I could prevent them if I flossed more often.  And considering the fact that my dental insurance stinks and the lack of funds, flossing sounds like the easiest option.  And no more resolutions other than those two.  My goal is to stick with these and not just make some obscure resolutions that are forgotten after a week.

It decided to finally snow this week.  We haven't had snow all winter yet (minus the two days it snowed for a couple of hours however no snow stayed on the ground).  It's the middle of January, and we were having fifty degree weather two weeks ago.  Unheard of for Wisconsin.  But the snow finally came, and I have a feeling it's just going to get colder.