Laundry....an epic tale

I move...a lot and I have a lot of stuff. Aaron and I are getting ready for yet another move in a couple weeks. I tend to put packing off until the last minute and have become very experienced with just shoving my clothes, blankets, towels etc in laundry baskets and trash bags to move them from one apartment into the next. In our last apartment, the crack den, I didn't even bother unpacking a lot of my things because the apartment was such a disaster- I knew we wouldn't be staying there long.
I have started packing this week. We are moving in 2 weeks and Aaron is in Burlington working, so I will be packing a lot of stuff on my own. I decided to brave the disaster that is our bedroom yesterday. I realized that the bags of stuff that I had brought from the crack den really needed to be washed and that our 'normal' laundry pile had grown out of control.
We have no washer/dryer in the apartment we are in now. Aarons parentsare awesome and  have let me use theirs a few times, but I normally take our laundry down to the laundry mat. A wash is, give or take, $3.50 at the laundry mat. I am currently super poor and have a lot of laundry to do. So, if you do that math that would explain why our 'normal' laundry pile managed to grow so far out of control.
I had today off from work and decided to take this opportunity to use and abuse my parents washer and dryer.....I mean visit my family. I figured that I would be spending less in gas to drive the hour south then I would be spending at the laundry mat (and probably get fed at the same time).
Aaron came home from work last night, so he had to get up super early to drive back up (its like an hour and 45 minute drive from where our apartment is to where he works). I figured that seeing that I was up really early, I would get an early start. I crammed 5 laundry bags stuffed as full as I could get them in my little car and headed south. 
In route, I called my mom to give her some warning. When I got there only my dad was home. I decided to only drag in one laundry bag due to his watchful eye. He lectured me on hanging clothes on the line instead of using the dryer and that I better not be doing Aarons laundry. I quickly threw a load of laundry in and headed out to the hospital to see my Nana while my first load washed.
It was a long, long, long day of laundry. Those 5 laundry bags turned into 15 loads of laundry and of those 15 loads, I only used the dryer for 3 of them. The rest went out on the line.
I learned some important points today while doing laundry:
1) 5 laundry bags does not mean 5 loads of laundry. A laundry bag holds about 3 loads.
2) Sort your clothes. Although I love pink, I am not digging my newly dyed socks.
3)Vinegar takes out the smell of B.O. from shirts.
4) Vinegar takes out the smell of kitty pee.
5) Vinegar is amazing.
6)When doing your laundry at your parents house, if they see you laundry...they will judge your choice in under garments.
7) Nanas washer is quicker then moms, but moms gets your clothes cleaner (or so she says).

I had a pretty successful day. Its awesome to have clean clothes again (and clean sheets and blankets), but I think it was almost if not more awesome to spend the day with my family.

After todays epic laundry chore, I am SO glad that the apartment we are moving to has on site washer and dryer. I hope not to relive this anytime soon :-)

Its been a while.

Apparently, blogging is not my thing. I have been grossly neglecting this blog. I realized that I didn't update during this past semester. Classes are over and we are once again looking for a new place and getting ready to move. Aaron got a awesome job with the railroad and left school. He is working full time and has great benefits. I am super proud of him for getting a real job. It beats working at K-Mart.
I will be taking a few classes this summer. By the time school starts again in the fall, I will have 5 graduate credits and be 6 credits away from student teaching. I can smell graduation already. Its been a long, long road with many falls and many errors, but I will have my degree in the end.
Aaron got me a kitty! He was a stray and we adopted him. We are calling him Cruzan (like the rum). He is all black. I think he is the most laid back kitty I have ever met.
Aaron has been working in Burlington for the last few months.  He comes home on Saturday evenings and leaves really early Monday mornings.  We have developed a great routine for his lunches. We go shopping every Sunday for his lunch things. When Monday morning comes around we both wake up super early. He packs his things and gets his stuff together for the week and I start my womanly tasks. Most Monday mornings I make him an omelet (that I finally perfected) and put together his lunches. I know that he can (and should) makes his own lunches, but I like doing it. I make 6 sandwiches (he works Mon-Sat) and put together stuff for 6 lunches in store bags. All he has to do is grab a bag and a sandwich and throw it in his lunch box before he goes to work in the mornings.
We have decided that we are going to start coupon.  After a little research I found out that Price Chopper will take a store coupon and a manufacturers coupon for the same item and will double any coupon up to a dollar. We are going to print coupons and make a list of sale stuff for next weeks grocery trip. I wonder if we can get our groceries for pennies like the ladies do on TLC.

In the time it took me to write this post, Aaron began preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse.

oooh.....and most excitingly....Aaron bought me a PINK Ruger 10/22 for my 25th birthday!

its been a couple weeks....

I know, I haven't been the most reliable in updating this. I have been pretty busy with...well, life in the last couple weeks. I have found some new recipes, learned some important things about laundry.....and the semester has started too since the last time I blogged.
I went to an awesome New Years eve party with Aaron in Springfield on New Years Eve. I dececided to try my hand baking a cake. Aaron wanted a Black Forrest Cake, so I made him one:-) I will post the recipe at some point, just not tonight. The cake came out better then I had thought it would. I made it from scratch. German chocolate cake with frosting made with confectionery sugar, butter and cherries for the layers, buttercream frosting for the frosting and a whip cream frosting on top. It was really good and everyone seemed to like it!
I have been making dinner most nights in the last couple weeks and have come up with some epic dinners. Meat and potatoes seem to be a favorite around here. I have tried a couple different things with cooking steak. First, I have decided that I LOVE grilling steak on my electric grill I got last Christmas. It is awesome! Aaron had made the suggestion to marinade steak in beer....and it is wonderful!
We bought like 10 pounds of pork steaks 2 weeks ago at Hannaford and got really bored really quick. I found that breading the pork in bread crumbs works really well and its really easy to do. First, crack an egg and add a little milk and mix it up, then you coat the pork in the mixture. After the pork is gooy....you coat it in bread crumbs (we like the Italian ones). Bake in an oven at 350 until done! Aaron likes them for left overs the next day and took them to lunch for like a week.
I found a recipe to make cake in a cup and Aaron and I have made it a couple times. It is really easy and actually, isn't to bad. The texture of the 'cake' is a little weird, but will cure and craving for sweets that you have with little effort.

Chocolate Cake in a Cup

4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
1 Mug


Microwave for 3 and a half minutes and you have cake!


Well, I will try to post more often!

I feel accomplished!

Aaron woke me up this morning and politely ask me to make him an omelet. I have been struggling to make an omelet right since I started trying to make them. I got a lot of advice from my Uncle Allen and some other people and felt prepared to make one right this time! I heated up the frying pan, melted some butter, cracked 3 eggs in a bowl, whipped the eggs, and poured the eggs in the frying pan. I let the eggs cook in the pan until they looked cooked and not runny and cut up some ham and pepper jack cheese and put that stuff on half of the eggs.  I folded the eggs in half and flipped them. Aaron walked into the kitchen and told me that THAT LOOKS LIKE AN OMELET!

Christmas is over...now back to real life

As you know, Christmas was a couple days ago. I had a great day! Started at Aarons sisters house with his family and then I spent the afternoon with my family. I got a lot of awesome things. Aaron gave me a Wii, his Mom gave me a coat and I got a bunch of stuff from my family.
I think the bread I made went over well. There are a couple things I would do differently next time. The recipe for each type of bread was suppose to make 1 loaf.  I multiplied the ingredients by four so that I could make 4 loafs of each. The cranberry bread could have made 5 loafs with the ingredients for 4. I will take that into account next time I make it!
This morning, I tried once again to make an omelet for Aaron. My Nana sent me back with a lot of holiday left overs and in that was some pepper jack cheese. I used that in Aarons omelet. Aarons brother in law had told us about boy scout omelets that were made by putting the omelet stuff in a freezer back and then putting the bag in a pot of boiling water. I tried this method and failed miserably. Aaron is currently eating a pile of cooked eggs and mushy cheese once again, but no complaining. I gotta figure out how to make an omelet.

Merry Christmas Eve! (don't read yet if you are going to see me tommorow)

I am listening to Christmas music on Air1 (www.air1.com) and baking some bread! I have decided that I am super poor this year and am giving everyone some home made baked goods. I decided on cranberry orange bread and banana walnut bread. I will be able to make 4 loafs of each and all of the ingredients only costs me 20 bucks! I can't think of a better way to make giving 8 people Christmas presents more inexpensive :-) I am using a couple recipes I found online for the breads. I am adding walnuts to the banana bread :-)

Cranberry Orange Bread

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups fresh cranberries
• 1/4 cup margarine, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup orange juice

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x5 inch loaf pan. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir in cranberries. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream together margarine, sugar, and egg until smooth. Stir in orange juice. Beat in flour mixture until just moistened. Pour into prepared pan.
3. Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until the bread springs back when lightly touched. Let stand 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Wrap in plastic when completely cool.
   
   
   

   Banana Bread Recipe

   Ingredients

   • 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
   • 1/3 cup melted butter
   • 1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
   • 1 egg, beaten
   • 1 teaspoon vanilla
   • 1 teaspoon baking soda
   • Pinch of salt
   • 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

   Method

   
   

   No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.
    
   
   

   Here is a picture of the Cranberry Orange Bread in the over 

   
   
   
   
   

    
   
   you can turn a bowl of bananas.....

   
   

   

   
   into yummy banana bread :-)
   

   

   
   

   and in case your wondering, yes...the oven in my apartment is green :-)

   

this cooking thing isn't to hard!

The crock pot chicken thing I did the other day didn't turn out to bad. I don't think I will use that recipe again though. I don't think Aaron liked it very much, but once again he ate it anyways.
Today I made mashed potatoes from scratch and had steak too! I found a couple elaborate mashed potato recipes, but they all seemed really involved. I just cup up four potatoes, cup them into cubes, boiled them, drained them, mashed them, added half a stick of butter and some onion powder and had some great potatoes. We found some super cheap steaks when we went shopping the other day and through them in the freezer when we got home. I didn't think about dinner ahead of time and found my self with a bunch of frozen steaks when it came to bed dinner time. We don't have a microwave yet, so I could thaw them that way. I stuck them under some hot water and hoped for the best. When they seemed squishy, I cooked them in a frying pan with some butter.
We decided to be festive this evening and both Aaron and I are enjoying a cup of hot coco (mine has the addition of some Baily's). I made it from scratch!
Awesome Hot Coco
1/3 cup Water
1/2 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Hershey's Coco Powder
4 cups Milk

Combine the water, sugar and coco powder in a sauce pan and place over high heat. Boil the mixture while stirring it. Add the milk and lower the heat. Cook until the hot coco is hot :-)

Aaron drinking some delicious hot coco :-)

Aaron has been really excited about Christmas for the last couple of days. He has been really persistent to give me one of my gifts early. I wanted to wait until Christmas, but I gave in today. We each exchanged one of the gifts we got each other. I gave Aaron a fleece pull over. I am super glad he likes it. He gave me a BEAUTIFUL necklace! I am so excited!

My pretty new necklace from Aaron!

Happy Holidays!