Washing the washing machine

A recent pin via Pinterest was a tutorial on how to clean your HE washing machine.  I’ve owned my HE washer for over 8 years and I never thought of cleaning it.  So, after putting Jake to bed last night I washed the washer.  Here’s the general idea:

With the machine empty, run a hot cycle with 2 cups vinegar.  Next run a hot cycle with 2 cups bleach.  And finish with another hot cycle without anything. 

Click here for the original post. 

In the end the washer looks sparkling clean!  Maybe my clean washer will make my whites whiter and my colors brighter!

Valentine’s Treats

For Valentine’s Day I decided to make two treats that I found via Pinterest.  First up were Chocolate Covered Pretzels, which I’ve actually done before, but this time with a twist.  These are for Jake’s daycare.

I used the mini twist pretzels and covered the top half with white chocolate.  Once that solidified I used candy colors to dye the white chocolate pink and purple.  I used a piping bag to make lines and dots.  It was fairly easy to do and looks super cute!

Next up were Homemade Snicker Bars.  Those that know me best know that I LOVE snicker bars!  And some of you may not realize that Jamie loves them more than me, so I thought I would whip him up a batch.  But a batch is a 9x13” pan, so I am sharing them with my co-workers too.

These look daunting and the recipe even seems hard, but I would say this was actually easier than the chocolate covered pretzels.  Go here for the recipe.  I cheated though and used the freezer to cool each layer, that way I could start the next layer immediately.  I also took her advice and bought an aluminum pan which made it so easy to pop out and cut.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Fun foods

My brother invited us to a Super Bowl party this past Sunday.  And the only reason to watch the Super Bowl when your favorite team isn’t playing is for the commercials and for the food.  Being back on Weight Watchers meant I would have to make sure there would be some healthy food too. 

The first thing I thought to make were fruit kabobs.  I love fruit and that I can eat lots of it while on WW.  I wanted to make them look like the rainbow, so I picked fruit from every color.

I bought strawberries, clementines, pineapple, green grapes, blueberries and red grapes which were more on the purple side.  Some pieces of fruit were larger than others so I just arranged as needed.  The pineapple was hard to keep on the skewers, but I made it work.

I made 30 of these and they were gone fast!  The kids really liked them although the parents were a little nervous of the pointy sword-like skewers that were left, but at least they ate something healthy!

 

I also wanted to make a dessert, so I made football Rice Krispie treats.  I used Cocoa Krispies to make them more realistic and also used melted white chocolate to make the laces.  While they aren’t the healthiest dessert, they were fun and tasty!

I hope you enjoyed the food and commercials too!

Winter Mittens

For Christmas this year I made some winter mittens for my girlfriends using old wool sweaters.  My friend, Juli, made them and sent me the link on how to make them.

http://studio5.ksl.com/?nid=61&sid=4456414

The woman in the tutorial claims you can make a pair in 30 minutes.  Well, I must be really slow, because it took me 3 hours to make each pair.

First I had to find some old wool sweaters, so I hit up Goodwill during my lunch break and found some goodies!  It said to make sure the wool is at least 60% cotton, although I think two of these were only 50%.

You need to felt the sweaters by washing them in hot water which makes the wool shrink and helps keep the mittens warm. 

Next up was cutting out the patterns which can be found on the link above.  The pattern is pretty simple, but watch the video to figure out how to sew them together.

I was going to do a step-by-step on the process, but I forgot to take pictures and the video is really good.  So here’s the finished mittens.  Becky got the blue ones, Jenny the pink strips and Chris got the grey ones.

Eggies

Have you ever bought any As Seen On TV products?  I admit that I have a Snuggie, although I have no idea where it is anymore.  Well, at one of the Christmas parties there was a gift exchange.  Sometimes the gifts are really nice and sometimes they are less nice.  At first I was in possession of a Snuggie, but since I already own one, I swapped it out with Aunt Trish for her Eggies. 

Have you seen the commercial for them? They actually look pretty cool.  You hard boil the eggs without the shell, therefore you don’t need to peel them, which is half the battle anyways.  A few weeks ago I tried them out and this is how it went:

First, I read the instructions.

Then I got my eggs and Eggies ready by coating them with olive oil and cracking the eggs into the assembled units.

Then put them in a pot of water.

Boil for 15 minutes.

Squeeze them out.

And voila! 

Umm… Well, that’s not what I was expecting!

I used large eggs but they didn’t fill up the Eggies quite like I had hoped they would.  I was planning on using them to make some egg salad sandwiches, but they just don’t keep well when they aren’t in the shell.  I forgot about them for about a week and they became so rubbery the garbage disposal had a hard time chewing them up! 

Sorry Eggies, I give you a C.  Maybe I can sell them at a rummage sale?!?

LASIK Surgery

When I first heard of LASIK surgery I wanted nothing to do with it.  The last thing I wanted was to shoot a laser in my eye.  Over the years I had some friends go through it and they all had different experiences, but in the end no one lost their eye sight or had a major complication and didn’t recommend it.

The first person I knew that had LASIK was a co-worker that had it done back in the 90’s at the Hale Laser Vision Center.  Two more co-workers recently had it done at Hale as well and highly recommended it.  My eye doctor also only recommends Dr. Hale, so there was no question where I would go.

The day of surgery I was told to eat a light lunch because they give you valium and you don’t want a full stomach.  Honestly, I really wasn’t that hungry anyways, just nervous, so I didn’t eat much at all.  Mom was my driver and we arrived at Hale at 2:00pm.  Shortly after I started getting a headache (probably from not eating enough) and they took me away to another room where I was given the valium and antibiotic eye drops. 

While waiting for the valium to kick in another patient was brought in from finishing her surgery.  They closed a curtain so I couldn’t really see her, but I heard her say how cool the surgery was.  I was pretty nervous still, but I figured I came this far I really couldn’t back out anymore.

Next it was my turn… Oh crap! 

So they take me into the room with the lasers (one for making the flap and one for the correction).  I laid down and they gave me a small teddy bear to hold.  I said that the bear might be missing it’s head by the end of the surgery from me squeezing it!  They gave me some numbing eye drops and then put me in position.

WARNING!!! The next two paragraphs may make you squeamish.

First up is making the flaps.  They covered my left eye and put in a holder to keep my right eyelids open.  Then they put a suction ring on my eye to firm it up, which doesn’t hurt, but you can feel the pressure.  To make they flap you look at a red light and they use the laser to make about 200,000 small bubbles in a circular pattern (kind of like perforated paper).  It doesn’t hurt and it isn’t burning my eye, but it makes a smell that your brain perceives is burning, so that is really weird. The flap is still intact at this point, but everything looks very hazy.  They take out the eyelid holder and switch everything around for the next eye.

Now it’s time for the laser that does the correction.  Before the surgery I went in and had multiple maps of my eyes taken so the laser knows what to do.  They put the eyelid holder back in and make you look at the red light again.  Dr. Hale used some tool to open the flap which makes the red light about ten times larger and more hazy.  During the correction they tell you how many seconds you have left.  If you would take your eye off the red light the laser immediately turns off.  The right eye took 16 seconds and the left took 15 seconds.  After that they put the flap back and he used a small sponge to make sure it isn’t wrinkled. 

Then I was taken out of the room and given a pain pill and more eye drops.  They sent me home with more eye drops and a schedule of when to use them, sunglasses for the ride, more pain pills if I would need them, eye shields to wear while sleeping so I wouldn’t rub my eyes in my sleep and 2 sleeping pills.  The ride home was horrible.  My headache was still there, everything was hazy and my stomach was doing flips the whole way (I think it was motion sickness). 

As soon as I got home I took the sleeping pill and put on the eye shields.  I got in bed and was sleeping on and off for a while and then checked the clock.  It had been 45 minutes and they said to take the other sleeping pill if I wasn’t sleeping in 30 minutes, so I did.  I then slept until my alarm went off the next morning.  I had a 8:45am eye appointment to see how I was doing.  Mom gave me a ride to that which I was grateful for since the sleeping pills were still in my head.  At my appointment the doctor checked my vision and it was 20/20!  

For the next week I had to continue wearing the eye shields at night and use all the eye drops they gave me.  Every hour I wasn’t using the eye drops I had to put in artificial tears.  It has now been 3 weeks and I am happy to say that it truly is the best thing.  I even went today and got my new drivers license so it doesn’t say I need corrective lenses anymore.  My biggest problem with the whole thing is that I still think I need to take out my contacts every night!

On Hold

As you’ve noticed, I’ve been MIA this past month with my blogging.  I’m not sure why, but I’m just not feeling up to it these days.  Maybe it’s the winter blues, or maybe I don’t know what to talk about on here anymore, but I’ve decided to take a hiatus for a little while.  However, I will give you all some updates on what has been going on here these past few weeks…

Jamie, Jake & I took a road trip to Destin, FL two weeks before Christmas.  It was our first long trip in a car and really our first vacation together as a family, just us.  It was great, even the drive, Jake was a champ in the car!

Christmas was very nice and mostly relaxing, at least until the day after when I got a terrible cold that lasted about a little under a week (I think the probiotics really do help shorten these colds).  We have one Christmas left to celebrate with Jamie’s Dad.  It’s late and we vow to have it much closer to Christmas next year.

Jamie and I took a short overnight trip to St. Louis for New Year’s while Grandma & Grandpa Z. watched Jake for us.  I had gotten Jamie tickets to the Rams/49ers game on Jan 1 so we spent New Year’s Eve at Morgan Street Brewery for dinner, then we went to the Lumiere casino where I played my $100 for a good 2 hours at the blackjack table before leaving with $65.  Jamie on the other hand lost about $170 during this time.  Oh well!  We rang in the New Year in the hotel lobby bar where we were playing Rummy 500.  The football game was the quietest sporting event I’ve ever been to!  The stadium was about 1/2 filled and about a quarter of the fans were rooting for the 49ers.  We could actually hear the pom poms from the cheerleaders!  In the end the 49ers won, so Jamie was happy and we headed back home.

Jake has had some issues at daycare and was actually suspended for 1 day.  We are now considering our options, but it looks like we are going to have to take him somewhere else.  This has been very humiliating for us, he isn’t even 3 yet and we can’t believe this is the course of action they are taking. I want to thank my Mom and Dad for stepping in last minute so we could both get to work.

I am having LASIK eye surgery on Friday.  I’m very nervous, but I’m well informed and I am looking forward it. 

That’s about all for now.  I’ll try and post more often, but just be patient with me for now.