Homemade Thin Mints!

I saw this on a blog like... two years ago so if this is your recipe, THANKS :) haha

I decided to make some thin mints Sunday since we missed the girl scout sales this year {I know so many little girls and yet, somehow no one came over to sell them to us!} These are super easy, you wouldn't even believe how simple they are!

All you need is about 4-5 squares of almond bark {I still don't know why they call it almond bark...it's not almond flavored and it's not bark from a tree...haha} anyways.


Melt it in the microwave in 30 second intervals while stirring in between each microwaving.

Then add 1/2 tsp- 1 tsp to taste of peppermint extract {I just dump some in and call it good}

Usually when I do it, it always looks like too much once I start to stir it in the chocolate, but really, you need more than you think. A good guesstimate is to taste it and see if it's minty enough for you!


Stir it all in.


Then comes the "secret ingredient"! Dun dun dun... ritz crackers! You'd think they would taste salty but seriously, it's hard to tell the difference between these and the girl scout ones!

So, dip your crackers in the chocolate and lightly scrape off any excess chocolate on the front and back of each cracker with your spoon. Leave a light layer of chocolate to completely cover each cracker. With about 4-5 squares of almond bark, I use about 1 1/2 sleeves of ritz crackers. depending on how chocolate-y you like them.


This is another semi-tricky part. Or at least to my un-polished cooking brain. DO NOT, stick these on a cookie sheet. They will become welded to the sheet and will never come off unless you scrape them into little crumbs and melt the chocolate off with hot water. Not like I've done that ever... twice... Anyways, if you have wax paper, put them on wax paper! Otherwise, be like me and put them on your cutting board inserts :) I like to freeze mine but you can also refrigerate them.


And voila! You have some awesome delicious cookies :)





I'm linking!

New Job

It's a bittersweet end. I've been working with my niece for the past three years and its finally come to the point where I needed a new job. I'm really going to miss being over with my sister and her family all of the time.






These girls are basically the little sisters that I never had:




Note the special crystal heart necklace in this one:


I start my new job tomorrow at {CAAFA} so who knows if I will be able to blog between a full time work week {40 hours} and full time school {21 hours- which is actually more than full time}. Let's hope I can make it through these next 3 weeks to graduation and be done!! I am so ready to be finished with my degree.
Wish me luck :)

Utah!

Last weekend, El Guapo and I were driving and decided it was time to do a random trip and Utah sounded like the perfect destination since my sister lives there. We grabbed Sadie, packed our bags and took off... and then called my sister to make sure we could come and stay with them, and bring the dog! haha Luckily, it was the perfect weekend to visit, and we had a great time!

The highlight of the trip was our visit to Chuck-E-Cheese and I just can't help myself...

Dwight Schrute:	Where are we going?
Jim Halpert:	Get inside.
Dwight Schrute:	Where are we going?
Jim Halpert:	We're going to Chuck E. Cheese.
Michael Scott:	Chuck E. Cheese? Oh, I'm so sick of Chuck E. Cheese.
Jim Halpert:	We're going to the hospital, Michael.
Michael Scott:	I know, just saying.

Ah, when the Office was still funny....

Anyways, here is Kendall kicking those gophers' butts!


And here is Brayden in the middle of the crowd of birthday kids and chuckie cheese himself. Brayden loves chuckie and ran right into this big party for like 3 kids just to dance and play. He's the one behind the chair in the blue with the blonde hair.


Cort and Kyler were racing!



And Keaton was throwing his honeycomb all over the place! He's so cute.

Later we had a Barbique and the kids ran around to play outside... Unfortunately, my sister's kids all have issues with keeping their pants on their little skinny bums! hahaha

It was a really fun trip and I've been lucky to get to see my sister so much this year! Annndd I'm really pasty and need some healthy sunlight! haha


The kids loved Sadie! And Sadie loved them... and the awesome grass :)

Awwww :)

Kendall and Sadie snuggling:


And considering how blonde I am, this could be a family picture if I wanted to steal my sisters' kids:


It was a good trip :)

New bookmarks!

I made a few new bookmarks... and learned some things.

1. Do not try and sew words with the sewing machine...it just sucks and is too hard.
2. Glue is not your friend in this situation.
3. Flatness is key to success.
4. Hand stitching may take a while, but looks preeeettty.

Needless to say it was eventful making these two pretties.

I already had everything at home. The plain fabric was 2$ at Walmart (the cheap cheap fabric that is perfect for bookmarks!) and the fancy fabric was like 3$ At Joanns. The fancy sparkly button was off of a cardigan that was given to me and I loved it, but my dryer ate it... Soooo, I cut off the buttons for crafting! The other buttons and beads were from a jumbo pack I bought for like 3$ at Walmart too.

The lace was from my grandma's old craft supply {can you believe she used to run a craft shop?} I have a lot of treasures left over from her shop. It is so neat to be able to use her things.

All in all probably cost like .50 cents considering the amount of each thing I used :)
It's a shame it took like 2 hours haha.

This one is Tres bon!



With a cute little tassel:


And I'd like to call this one the "Sophisticated Owl"


I don't know about you but I find it hilarious to see an owl say "whom"...


I have a bunch of funny ideas for a few more... if I ever get the time to!

Special thanks to {Fallen}, for the modeling of your mysterious pages.




I'm linking up!

Followers

HEY-OO. So, I want to do a giveaway of some sort at some point. But I have no followers to give things away to. So, I figure if I reach 100 followers, I'll do a giveaway! Woot.

Much to talk about since the weekend {like my random trip to Utah!} I will have to update in a few posts. I made two cute new bookmarks that I will have to share tomorrow! :)

Weeds- Middle pictures

Our yard is no longer a jungle! It's far from being done but it is now officially a pile of dirt! Look!


We only got rid of two gross/half dead trees:


Our growing pile:


It's nice having a hubby who has access to equipment and can run it all himself:




I weeded around the perimeter while he dug everything else out because we are still keeping gravel around everything.


And believe it or not, there are still a few weeds to get rid of.

So this isn't really an "after" group of pictures. It's more like a "middle because it will cost us about $500 just to get rid of all of the dirt that we piled up and then we have to put sprinklers in and curbing and sod" group of pictures.

Still! Improvement!

Jewelery box re-do

A few months ago, my mother decided that she didn't need her jewelery box anymore and passed it along to moi.
{On a side note, let me tell you it is awesome being the youngest in both sides of the family because we always get the stuff that people don't want anymore, hence 3/4 of the furniture and decor in my home, thankyouverymuch}
So I stared and stared at the lovely but wrong color of wood. The main dilemma in painting this baby was that the hardware couldn't be removed without taking apart the inside lining and wood of every part of the jewelery box! I'm not one to be ambitious...I'm a very VERY lazy painter. So I'd have to tape it off and paint them by hand... not to mention that just about every handle is loose. very difficult to paint while it keeps rolling around in place.
Well anyways, I kicked my own butt yesterday and finally did it.

Here is the before:



And here she is after:


I love these bottom doors :) don't you?




She already has a mirror built in on top, and I have to lift it to get into the top drawer so I need to hang something lovely above the whole thing instead of placing something on top of it.


White is my new favorite color... the whole neutrals color palette is becoming my newest obsession.





Anyways, it's nice to have a spot to put everything now! :) Thanks for reading!




I'm linking up with these parties:













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