Happy Birthday to Me!!

Well, I am officially 23!! I don’t really feel any different though. I just can’t believe that January is almost over! Where does the time go? Soon there will only be 3 months until my wedding!! When my fiance got home from work, he got a quick shower and then we went out to dinner where I got a free meal for my birthday! Then we came home and he passed out right away. He said he was going to take a nap, but that was 6:30 and now it is about 9:30, so he’s out for the night. I’m kinda sad that he went to bed so early because the next 3 nights I have to work till either 9 or 10, so I won’t get to see him that much. I really can’t wait till I get a full-time teaching job so that we will both be working during the day and then can spend our nights together. Oh well, right now I just need to work when I can. We have the rest of our lives to spend together so for now we just have to deal with not seeing each other a few nights a week.

Overall my birthday was pretty good. I stayed in my PJ’s until 3:30, did some wash, and watched some shows on my DVR. I also picked up 3 new subbing jobs today so I’m really excited about that! It is nice to have at least one day off during the school week so that I can pick up more subbing jobs. I find that most of the jobs get posted during the school day. I have 11 subbing jobs scheduled so far and my farthest one out is on May 3rd!! I also have one each in March and April! Let’s hope I can keep getting this many subbing jobs!

Well, that’s about all for now. Have a great rest of your Monday night everyone!!

Another thing I’m loving….

So since I wrote my What I'm Loving Wednesday post this morning, I didn’t get to add another thing I love since I hadn’t gone outside yet.

I am LOVING how nice it is outside!!!! It definitely feels like Spring outside right now! One of my friends (and previous co-worker) is coming over soon to check out my new house and catch up for a bit. Then after that I’m going to make dinner and I think me and my fiancé are going to eat outside tonight!! After that, hopefully it’s still nice out, I would love to take a walk to the park which is pretty much in our backyard!!! I’ll be sure to take pictures if we end up doing that. If you live somewhere where the weather is really nice outside, then get outside and enjoy it!!

Applesauce carrot cake and a trip to the pool

I was reading some blog posts last night and there was one from Sarah at First Comes Love where she shared a recipe from an app she has on her iPhone. I was curious as to what app that was so I commented asking her and she replied and told me it is called “Spark Recipes”. It is an app with easy and healthy recipes. So I downloaded it and I was browsing through the drinks to see if I could find any new smoothies to make. Well, one of them had applesauce in it so I decided to browse for recipes with applesauce in them because I know we have 2 jars of applesauce, both unopened. One of the very first recipes I found was applesauce carrot cake. I looked at the ingredients and I had everything you need for it! I just bought 3 lbs of carrots (3 1 lb bags) last night so I thought this would be a good way to use up some of them. They have a feature on the app where you can view the recipe online and read what other people think about that recipe. I was seeing some of them that said they increased the amount of applesauce to a full cup so I decided to do that. Others also added 1/4 cup of milk because it was too dry. I definitely needed to add the milk because it was way too dry without it. Another big thing was the baking time. The recipe says to bake it at 350 degrees for about 1 hour and 10 minutes. I thought this was too long and apparently so did other people. They suggest 45-50 minutes for a 9’’ x 13’’ pan. I put mine in and set the timer for 40 minutes but when I checked it with 10 minutes left it looked done. So the bake time was 30 minutes.

I had two containers of icing but they go with the 2 boxes of cake mix I have. I decided to make some icing with a recipe from Spark Recipes. I typed in icing and I found one called “Tasty Carrot Cake Icing”. It is meant to go with the recipe for “Tasty Carrot Cake”, but I figured it would taste just as good with the recipe I made my carrot cake with. The icing only calls for 3 ingredients,  only 2 of which I had to go buy, so it couldn’t get any easier than that.

So I made the cake and then around 5:30 me and one of my bridesmaids went to the pool!!! We were going to go earlier but she had to work until 4 instead of 2. But going later worked out because instead of the regular price of $8, after 5:30 it only cost $4 to get into the pool!! Before we went to the pool, we stopped at K-mart because I wanted to use the coupon for buy one get one free suntan lotion that came in the Sunday paper. It was about $10 and I had about $10 worth of K-mart rewards points so I just paid less than $1 for 2 bottles of suntan lotion!!!

We had a great time at the pool!! I really hope I got some sun because I am so white!!! I think I may have gotten some sun. It was nice to get to hangout with my bridesmaid because even though we work together, we hardly ever hangout outside of work. We definitely have to do that again sometime soon!!!

We stayed till about 7 and then I came home and made dinner. Nothing too fancy, just a hamburger helper and a rice side. Then my fiancé and I tried a piece of my carrot cake and we both love it!!!

So now I am just going to relax the rest of the night, maybe catch up on reading some blogs. I’ve been pretty good recently on not having a ton of posts to read. I just noticed the other day that I have 248 followers now, so thank you to the new followers!!! My next goal is 300, so when I reach that goal I will do another giveaway!! Have a great night everyone!!!

My weekend wrap up

I feel like I haven’t had the time recently to blog as much as I used to. And that’s weird cause I’m done with classes. Well, I did just work a 6 day week, so that’s probably why I’ve been so busy and away from my laptop. Remember my latest organization project, my closet and tons of clothes? Well, I did weed through my clothes and get rid of some. I can actually fit all of my shirts in my closet now. Before I get rid of them, I’d like to look through them and try to upcycle them like Jill over at Creating My Way to Success. I’ve been seeing her recent posts of how she’s been taking her children’s clothes that don’t fit anymore and making them into new clothes that will fit. She probably used a sewing machine, so if that’s the case, I won’t be able to upcycle my clothes like she did. Take a look at her blog though, she has made some great things!!!

I finally finished the book I started reading at the end of March. It was House Rules by Jodi Picoult. I definitely recommend this book!!! It was really good! I never wanted to put it down to, but as you can tell, I started it in March and it is now May, so I was forced to put it down a lot because I didn’t have much time to read. I posted a few months ago saying that I was making a goal for myself: to ready 20 books between then and the end of the year. Well, 1 down only 19 more to go!!! The next book I just started today is called Damaged and is written by Cathy Glass. It was a suggestion by my step-mom and she said it was really good. I’ll let you all know how it is then. Hopefully it won’t take me over a month to finish this one!!

My fiancé and I went to Walmart Friday night cause we needed a few things. We were over at the deli getting lunchmeat and I noticed these tiny bananas in the produce section. I had never seen them before so I had to get them!!! They are so tiny and cute!!

One last thing…I just wanted to share with you what I’m going to be making for dinner. I’m going to take ground beef and brown it. Then I’ll drain it and add a can of Bush’s Maple Cured Bacon Baked Beans (this was my fiancé's suggestion) , some cheese, and some spices. Then I’m going to put that in a pan and cover it with biscuits and bake it. I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out! Have a great Sunday evening everyone!!

Oh wait…there is one more thing and it’s exciting!! I’m going to start doing reviews and giveaways soon and I have 3 coming up in the near future! So be sure to keep your eye out for that!!