Life Lately

Today while talking to my friend Sara she let me know that I hadn't posted on my blog for a while and she was having a hard time keeping up with my life. I guess I'm not in the habit of blogging, so sometimes I just forget. For Sara's sake here are somethings I've been up to lately...

1. Registered for Spring Semester
2. Got my hair cut
3. Made some really delicious chocolate rolo cookies
4. Watched the election and nearly cried
5. Came in second place in a really close game of five crowns
6. Procrastinated my 12 page paper that is due next week
7. Enjoyed a day off with my hubby
8. Went mini golfing
9. Ate Fajitas (which happens to be my favorite dinner right now)
10. Went to my sweet cousin Rachelle's baby shower
11. Hung out with my cute Grandma Sue
12. Watched the entire series of "Once Upon A Time"
13. Celebrated my first Halloween as an old married woman
14. Took on the challenge of making plans for holidays 
15. Walked around Hobby Lobby and became giddy over all of the Christmas decorations
16. Smiled as my facebook new feed was blown up yesterday by so many of my lovely friends announcing the locations of where they will be serving their LDS Missions
17. Beat up a Pinata (who says that is just for kids) 
18. Put a new wreath on my front door
19. Ordered Christmas cards 
20. Celebrated our eight month anniversary, and I finally made the the trip to the Social Security Office to officially change my name 
21. And made my pinterest board "Pinned it, tried it, loved it" it makes life so much easier when I can quickly jump back to my favorite recipes I've found online. If you would like to check out my growing collection click here.

So there you have it, that is my life lately

P.S. I know it's late but here are a couple of the pictures we took on Halloween :)

 

Baked French Toast...Mmmm Good!

Earlier this month was Devin's birthday! Growing up my family always did breakfast in bed on the morning of your birthday and I wanted to carry out that tradition. Devin's favorite breakfast food is french toast...but I knew I couldn't make him regular french toast. After all, it is was his special day. I stalked my pinterest breakfast board and finally I found the one. You can find the original post here.

Ingredient Checklist

*1/2 cup melted butter (1 stick)

*1 cup brown sugar

1 loaf Texas toast
4 eggs

1 1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Powdered sugar for sprinkling

Directions

1. Melt butter in microwave & add brown sugar....stir till mixed.
2. Pour butter/sugar mix into bottom of 9 x 13 pan....spread around
3. Beat eggs, milk, & vanilla
4. Lay single layer of Texas Toast in pan
5. Spoon 1/2 of egg mixture on bread layer
6. Add 2nd layer of Texas Toast
7. Spoon on remaining egg mixture
8. Cover & chill in fridge overnight
9. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes (covered for the first 30 minutes)
10. Sprinkle with powdered sugar

*My tips: I felt like the sugar/butter mix was a bit too much for me. I would recommend halving this portion. Second I added a cream cheese mix in the middle of  the two layers of bread. For this I used and 8 oz. package of cream cheese, and then powdered sugar and vanilla extract to taste. Make sure that the spread is softened before you try to put it on the bread, I promise it will make it MUCH easier.  

To go on top I made a caramel syrup and seriously it was amazing. (I also used it as an ice cream topping a few days later :)) Look for that recipe in my next post!! 

Do you have any birthday traditions or breakfast foods you love? If so please enlighten me. I love traditions! 

xoxo Kinzie

Crepes for Conference

When Devin and I got married back in March i knew that I wanted to come up with some traditions of our own. When we were dating we went to a bridal show and they served crepes and I knew my life was changed. I registered for a crepe makers that night and at one of my showers a few weeks later I got it!! We moved into our house right before April's General Conference, and it hit me that we could have crepes for conference. This weekend we continued the tradition and stuffed our faces with way too many crepes. If you would like to be a crepe connoisseur here is the recipe...

4 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt

Mix the ingredients and then get cooking! I used my crepe maker which was super convenient, but if you do not have one you can make them in a pan. They will come out tasting just as yummy!

I like my breakfast on the sweet side, so we loaded ours up with vanilla pudding, strawberries, homemade hot fudge, caramel syrup, and whipped cream. Truthfully it was more like a dessert, but conference is only twice a year so it can't be that bad!

 

What are some of your traditions?

Easy Peasy Pizza

This week I've had a meal planned every night. This quite accomplishment for the girl that used to solely live off oreo cookies and chips and salsa. On Tuesday Devin and I made French Bread Pizza. Holy tolito it was freaking delicious. Not to mention super easy and dirt cheap. That's my kind of meal!
Here is the grocery list
1 Loaf of French Bread = $1.59
2 Bags of Shredded Mozzarella =4.28
1 Bottle of Spaghetti Sauce = 1.49
1 Package of Pepperoni = 2.84
Total = 10.20
 But wait there's more. We obviously didn't use all of it the first night. We cut the loaf in four pieces (it was a REALLY big loaf) and used two the first night and two the second. We used about 2/3 of the bag of cheese on day one, a tiny bit of sauce, and like 20 pepperoni's making it about $1.50 a serving. This amount more than filled us up, but if you have a heftier appetite, add a salad and you're golden.

The recipe if you can even call it that is plain and simple. Put on the sauce, cheese, and toppings and bake for about 12 minutes or until the cheese is golden at 350 degrees. Let it cool off for about one minute and devour!

 

P.S. Since you have half a loaf of bread and almost a full bottle of sauce, I recommend making spaghetti with garlic bread the next night to use up some of your ingredients!

XOXO Kinzie

Sweet and Easy Caramel Popcorn

Lately I have become a huge fan of the blog Pretty Providence . So when I was looking for a caramel popcorn recipe and stumbled upon there's which you can find here. I was completely over joyed. The hubs and I have become big movie watchers and I wanted to change it up with our usually butter and salt snack. For this movie night it was going to be sweet...

To make the caramel all you need is

• 1 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1 Cube of Butter
• 1 Cup Light Karo Syrup
• 1 Can Sweetened Condensed Milk.

Yep that's it. Melt these four ingredients on medium-high and once it's boiling stir consistently for two minutes and you're done. It's that simple.

For the popcorn aspect Devin and I used our Whirley Pop (which I highly recommend if you love popcorn) We used about  1/2 cup of kernels, popped it and then mixed in the gooey goodness. We had left over caramel so I saved it and we've been eating apples with it for a semi-healthy snack.

 

Doesn't it look so yummy? It was! So go make some! 

XOXO

Cinnamon Monkey Bread

Remember this post? Oh yeah you do because I just posted it like two days ago. Basically ever since last weekend I have been craving that monkey bread like crazy. It was just so dang good. We seriously devoured the entire thing in one morning, so if you are on a diet this may not be the recipe for you. Maybe try a green smoothie or something. Those are mega tasty....anyways back on track. If you want to impress someone, make them this. It looks like you didn't try too hard, but will still blow their mind. My mom found this recipe on the Taste of Home, it is super easy and yummy! Enjoy :)

Ingredients

• 4 tubes (7-1/2 ounces each) refrigerated buttermilk biscuits
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar

Directions

• Cut each biscuit into four pieces; shape into balls. In a small bowl, combine sugar and cinnamon. Roll each ball in cinnamon-sugar. Arrange evenly in a greased 10-in. fluted tube pan(If you aren't a chef, a fluted tube is basically a bunt pan.) Sprinkle with remaining cinnamon-sugar.
• Combine butter and brown sugar; pour over the top. Bake at 350° for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes before inverting bread onto a serving platter.

For a little more flavor add some nutmeg to the cinnamon/sugar mix. Try not to eat the whole thing in a day. I dare you.

Xoxo Kinzie

Rolo Cookies

Last night Devin and I were in charge of bringing a dessert to family dinner. So what is the first things I did? Hopped on to my pinterest treats board of course. I found this super easy mucho delicious cookie recipe and got into a baking mood. When I say these are super easy I mean it. Only 4 INGREDIENTS!! The ingredients are as follows...

1 Box of Devils food cake mix

2 Eggs

1/3 Cup of Oil

And a bag of rolos

Pretty simple right?

Mix the first three, the batter/dough will get pretty tough to stir. One it is sufficiently mixed get enough dough just to cover the Rolo and place them on a cookie sheet. Bake for 7 to 8 minutes at 350 and Voila you have delicious easy cookies!

Devin had the job of unwrapping the Rolo's which in effect made us consume even more of these chocolately carmely yummies. 

No we did not yell ROLO/YOLO...come on, that would just be silly ;)

Another priceless face of Devin as he "sneaks" a Rolo.

Can you tell which ones I rolled?? In the end it really doesn't matter just FYI.

Let them sit for a couple minutes. I know it is tough but worth it. When you bite in the caramel is so warm and gooey! Yum!!

In the end it made about three dozen cookies. We ended up having a game night at our house last night too. So it fed 8 at the dinner and 6 at game night and we still had a few left over. I might go eat one for breakfast...Don't tell!

xoxo Kinzie

 P.S. this is the original recipe I used. They have a super cute blog so check them out Six Sisters' Stuff.