A Simple Yummy Recipe

If you want a really good recipe you can prepare in about 15 minutes, then this recipe is for you. I have our family friend, Laura, to thank for this one. It's so easy that even a not so savvy cook could make it. :)

1 lb ground beef
1/4 tsp salt
10 oz frozen mixed vegetables
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
16 oz. frozen tater tots (I usually just buy a big bag, use what I need and save the rest for the next recipe)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Brown beef in a skillet with salt. Spoon into a lightly greased 2.5 quart casserole dish. Layer frozen vegetables, soup, and cheese on top of ground beef. Top with tater tots and bake uncovered for 30-45 minutes or until tater tots are done.

Photo courtesy of delicious-cooks.com

--T

Impressive!

I love my job, and I like the school I work at, but I am always keeping an eye out for any job opportunities that seem interesting. Recently I saw a Groupon for a resumé writing company that will revamp your current resumé and cover letter. I bought it, knowing full well that my current resumé was pretty crappy. I've been at the same school for six years and haven't really needed to update or improve the way my resume looked. I bought the Groupon for $85.00. The service is normally $260. This seems like a lot of money, but I just received my resumé and cover letter back, and I cannot express how amazing they both are! I am actually embarrassed at what I turned in to them as my original resumé! :)

In addition to attaching my current resumé and cover letter, I also had to fill out a questionnaire. It took the company only a couple of days to get back to me with the finished product. They really highlighted my strengths as an educator and my professional accomplishments and qualifications.

If your resumé needs a face lift I would highly recommend JC Resumes. Honestly, I am so happy with their service, I do think that the $260 fee is worth it, and felt the Groupon deal was a steal at $85, especially if someone is actively job hunting and wants their resumé to stand out.

To show you the difference in my "before and after" resumés, I have attached a picture of both. I did black out my personal information (address, phone number, etc.) so obviously the actual documents don't have the big black rectangles on them. :) The company website for JC Resumes is found here. 

Before

After

The Ultimate Planner

One of my friends (Thanks Andrea Meyer!) posted this website on facebook: ErinCondren.com and within 10 minutes of looking at it I had already placed an order!

She sells everything from iphone and ipad cases, to recipe cards, to lesson plan books for teachers, to life planners.

I decided to buy one of the life planners. I love organization when it comes to calendars/schedules/etc. You get to choose your cover design and personalize it how you want. You can also upload a picture and make that your cover. You can choose a 12 month or 16 month planner. Each life planner includes the following:

--A birthday and anniversary calendar
--A weekly scheduler with two month spreads
--Goals and to-do lists
--Laminated monthly tabs
--Laminated bookmark/ruler
--Lined pages
--Blank pages
--Important numbers page
--Addresses page
--Colorful stickers for highlighting important events
--Sturdy aluminum coil
--A plastic pouch
--A "Keep it together" folder
--Inspiration quotes throughout

The life planners are $50.00 and the other items on her website range in price. Anything on her website would make a great gift, especially because you can personalize it with the person's or family's name.

This is the design I chose and my first and last name will be on the bottom of the cover. If you order one, let me know what design you decided on!

--T

Some Spring Cleaning...in August??

So a few days ago I got on this cleaning kick. Mark and I are fortunate enough to have a cleaning lady who comes once a month, so I have to admit, I hardly ever have to do your typical cleaning chores - vacuuming, dusting, etc. However, recently I was thinking about those things in your house that don't typically get cleaned - like the dishwasher, the washing machine, and so on and I decided to do a little spring cleaning, only in August.

My first job was to clean the dishwasher. I read online about a simple way to clean the dishwasher. Take the bottom rack out of the dishwasher and make sure there is no gunk, crumbs, etc. blocking anything. You fill a dishwasher safe cup with white vinegar and put it on the top rack. Run it through the hottest cycle you can with nothing in the dishwasher except the cup of vinegar. After the cycle is complete, take the vinegar out and sprinkle the bottom of the dishwasher with baking soda. Run it through another complete, hot cycle with nothing in the dishwasher. Once that cycle is complete, wipe away any residue. To show you that this did work, here is a before and after picture of our dishwasher. Look closely at the before picture (especially on the left side of the dishwasher) and you can see it was actually quite dirty!

                            Before                                                                             After

  

I also decided to clean my washing machine. I took out the top of the middle piece in the washing machine and was horrified by all the gunk build up in there. I did not take a picture, but I wish I had so you could see it. I rinsed the parts I could get out of the washing machine in hot water and cleared away as much buildup as I could. Then I followed the directions on this website. First, you fill the washer with hot water and pour in two cups of white vinegar. Let it sit for an hour, then run it through a cycle. Then, fill the machine up again with hot water and pour in 1-2 cups of bleach. Let it sit for an hour, then run it through a cycle. At no point do you add any soap or detergent. When my 2 cycles were complete the washer did look very shiny and the inside of it looked like new. Success!

Next, it was time to clean our towels. This website gives a way to get the mildew, musty smell out of towels. All you do is wash your towels in hot water with a cup of white vinegar, and then run them through another cycle with half a cup of baking soda. Really easy and my towels did seem to be fresher after I did this. 

Finally, I decided to organize all my makeup. I had a lot of makeup that I don't use and the makeup I do use was just thrown in a cosmetic bag. Since I use this stuff every day, I wanted something more organized and more accessible. I went to The Container Store and bought this perfect makeup organizer. I also got rid of anything I don't use on a daily basis. 

As I was putting everything in its proper place, it occurred to me that I never (and unfortunately, I mean NEVER) clean my makeup brushes. I found this easy and natural way to do it: Mix equal parts olive oil and dish soap on a plate, swirl the brush in the mixture and wipe off on a paper towel. Keep doing this until you aren't getting any makeup on the paper towel anymore, and then run it under warm water and let dry. It's important not to get water in the silver part of the brush, so you don't want to submerge your brushes, just rinse the bristles under warm water. 

Now, this is really gross, and actually quite embarrassing, but just to show you how badly my brushes needed to be cleaned, here is a picture of the paper towel I used to wipe my brushes. The towel on the left is from my blush brush and the one on the right (not as bad) is my eyeshadow brush. 

So, there you have it. I felt pretty accomplished, because these are things that I know never get done (at least not in our house!)

--T

Discounted Chicago Parking

Parking in Chicago = one of the most frustrating things ever! There are a few reasons for this: a) It's expensive and b) sometimes you have to walk really far because the only garage or spot available was not anywhere near your final destination.

Mark and I recently went downtown for about 3.5 hours and it cost us $35 to park. Isn't that ridiculous! Sure, you can try to find street parking, rather than parking in a garage, but usually everyone has the same idea, so you end up circling and circling the streets with no luck.

I have a website that might help you. It's called Spothero.com. Mark heard about this website on the news, and we used it yesterday for the first time. It worked great!

Here's how it works:
You go to spothero.com or you download their free app for your cell phone. We did it via the website. All you do is type in the address of where you are going (we were going to lunch at Pizano's so we typed in their address) and it will give you a list of garages and the price. We found a garage that was 1.3 blocks away for only $9.00 - and we parked there for 3 hours! Can you believe it?? What a great deal! The nice thing about it is your spot is reserved so not only are you getting discounted parking, but you don't have to worry about finding a garage or a spot. The garage we chose was next to a hotel so the garage actually said it was "Full," but our instructions told us if the garage says "Full" then to push the call button upon entering and tell the attendant you are a SpotHero customer and they will let you in. We followed those instructions and were let in without a problem.

Just make sure you either print out your confirmation email or you are able to pull it up on your phone, because they will need to see this to give you the special rate.

This website is something you can use at the last minute as well - we didn't think of it until we were about 20 minutes from our destination. Everything was processed within a matter of minutes and we were good to go!

I'm glad we tried this and intend to use this website whenever we need to go to the city!

--T

Operation Get Healthy!

I've been trying to lose weight recently. Well, I take that back...up until this past June I was trying to lose weight. Once summer came, and I went on summer break from teaching, I kind of fell off the wagon. Originally, I had lost 10 pounds! Yay! From June - August I have put back on 5. Boo! The fact that I went on 3 vacations did not help, nor did the fact that I stopped exercising. It's funny, I thought once I was done with work for the summer I would work out MORE, but in fact, not having a schedule and routine made me work out far less. As of this week I started getting serious about getting fit and healthy again.

Here are the first steps on my weight loss adventure. My goal is to lose 20 pounds total, which means I have 15 more to go. For anyone who is trying to lose weight, I invite you to try some of these and post on your progress. We can do it together! :)

1) I started juicing. We have a nice juicer that has not been put to good use until now. I found a recipe online here for a juice that supposedly boosts weight loss. The recipe is 3 nectarines, a bunch (about 5 stalks) of kale, 1 lemon, 1 apple, and 2 cucumbers. Cucumbers and Kale are vegetables I would not eat regularly, so already I know I am getting more nutrients than I would if I wasn't juicing. I doubled this recipe and filled a pitcher so I have it for a few days. For breakfast I have been drinking one glass and eating some fruit. Another drink I've been sipping on is this recipe. It's not really a "recipe" per say - you slice up half an apple really thin, put this in a pitcher of water with a cinnamon stick and let it refrigerate so the flavors mix together. It tastes like those "spa waters" they give you when you go to a spa - just a hint of flavor. When the water is half gone, fill it up again. You can refill 5 times, then replace the apples and cinnamon stick. It's supposed to boost metabolism.

2) I started taking a daily multi-vitamin for women.

3) I started working out again. I purchased a $5.99 program from this website called "Total Body Transformation Program." I just completed day 4 and in addition to this I have been going to the gym for 35 minutes 4-5x week.

and finally....the hardest part....

4) I started eating healthy again. Ok people - I love food. Seriously, I do. And I love food that is bad for you - french fries, chocolate, candy, etc. I'm surprised I don't weigh more than I do. But I've realized...and I realized this in the past which is what helped me lose 10 pounds to begin with...but food is more important than exercise. Online resources say that weight loss is 30% exercise and 70% what you eat. So...I need to start eating healthy again. The juicing was step one. I also started using our dehydrator and I made homemade fruit roll ups in it the other night. The only ingredients were strawberries and cinnamon so it makes for a great snack! I have also decided I need to stop snacking between meals (or if I do snack I'm trying to stick with fruits, veggies, or anything else that might be considered healthy or less than 150 calories).

Now...here's the kicker....in 4 days I've lost 2 pounds!! Now, I'm sure that's just excess water, bloat, whatever, and I KNOW that I will not drop 15 pounds in 2 weeks, but it's a start and it's encouraging.

In honor of my new weight loss adventure I wanted to post some more healthy recipes. I made a Weight Watchers Broccoli and Cheese Quiche and Cauliflower Mashed "Potatoes" for dinner tonight. They were both very good. The Mashed Cauliflower does not pass for potatoes in my opinion, but it was delicious in its own way. The links to the recipes are below the picture.

Weight Watcher Broccoli and Cheese Quiche - (I'm not doing weight watchers, but for those of you who are, it is 6 points per slice).

Mashed Cauliflower

--T

Chicago Pizza Tours

If you are looking for something unique and fun to do in the city of Chicago, I would highly recommend Chicago Pizza Tours. My friend, Rachel, and I did our first pizza tour last summer thanks to a youswoop discount we had. We thought it would be something different to do - and we loved it!

A man named Jon started this business a few years ago, and it is a bus tour of 4 different pizzerias in the city. Every tour starts at Pizano's and from there the locations change depending on the tour (so chances are, if you do the tour more than once, you will visit different locations). At each stop Jon talks about the pizzeria, how they cook their pizzas, and you get to try their most popular pizzas at each location. Actually, "try" is not really the best word - have a meal is more like it. You can expect to eat about 7 pieces of pizza on a tour, and some of them are deep dish! You definitely need to go when you are hungry!

The tour Rachel and I did included stops to Pizano's, Coalfire, Red Flame, and Gino's East.

Because I enjoyed the tour so much, and I knew Mark would love it as well, I decided to take Mark on one this summer. A few weeks ago we did our Chicago Pizza Tour, and it was just as much fun as when I did it the first time. This time our pizzerias included Pizano's, Spacca Napoli (they get all their ingredients from Italy), Coalfire, and Pequod's.

This is another great gift idea for those people in your life who are difficult to buy for. I also think it would be a great activity to do if you have people coming in from out of state or out of the country, who might want something different to do. Out of towners always hear about Chicago's great pizza and what better way to give them a sampling of what our city has to offer than on a Chicago Pizza Tour?

The great thing about Jon, the tour guide, is that while you are on the bus going from location to location, he talks about the history of Chicago and points out famous landmarks and monuments. It's like two tours in one.

Recently Jon hired a few workers to help him with his tours, so if you decide to book one, I would call or email before picking your date and find out when John will be giving tours. I'm sure the other guys are good tour guides as well, but I've had a great time on the tours led by Jon. After all - he is the founder and creator of Chicago Pizza Tours!

The Original Pizza Tour option is $60/person. He also has a tour that is Pizza and Cocktails for $80.00/person, but he said this tour is less of him talking and more just people drinking and eating pizza. If you want to learn about the history of Chicago, pizza, and the pizzerias, I would suggest the Original Pizza Tour.

If anyone decides to do this, let me know how you like it! To view the website and buy tickets you can click here.

--T

A Great Gift Idea

As mentioned in my previous post, my husband is difficult to buy gifts for. He never expresses that he wants anything, or if he does he tends to buy it himself. I always have to be somewhat creative when it comes to getting him gifts. For his 30th birthday, part of his birthday gift was an Amazing Clubs subscription. If you have never heard of Amazing Clubs, they are...well...pretty amazing!

Basically you are signing up to have gift baskets sent to the recipient. You can choose what kind of gift baskets (things like cheesecake, flowers, beer, beef jerky, fruit, peanut butter, the list goes on and on and on) and you also choose how often you want them to arrive. You can do a one month subscription (which would be like sending a gift basket in the mail) or you can go all the way up to a full year subscription and the person would receive a basket every month. Now, if you don't want to send the same type of item every month, you can mix it up. To give you a better example, let me tell you how I set it up for Mark.

I decided to do six months, sent every other month, and because I wanted him to have variety I chose a different gift basket for every month. So I picked the items based on things I know he likes.

March - Beer
May - Salsa
July - Fruit
September - Beef Jerky
November - Cheese
January - Fruit (different season, different fruit)

He has already received the beer, salsa, and first fruit shipments. For the beer they sent a six pack of all different specialty beers. The Salsa was two different kinds of salsa, and the fruit was a box of two different types of plums.

Here is a picture of what a shipment tends to look like. This was July's fruit basket. The plums were perfect and delicious! Better than what we buy in the store.

This is not the most budget friendly gift, but if there is a special occasion and you want to do something different, this is a great idea! It's good for birthdays, but especially for men, who tend to be harder to shop for. Also, this would make a nice wedding gift or bridal shower gift. Ideas for a wedding subscription could be the wine club, dinner and a movie club, dinner club, breakfast club, or any of the other options that newlyweds would appreciate and would both benefit from. A monthly club subscription might also be nice for a new mom - something she could receive every month (or every other month) just for herself now that most of her time will be spent on the new baby (maybe the candle club, chocolate club, or ice cream club).

To view their website, click here.

--T

Our First Geocaching Adventure

A while back I had heard about geocaching and always kept it in the back of my mind. For our first anniversary, instead of buying Mark gifts (he is literally the hardest person to buy for. He either wants nothing or if he does want something, he buys it for himself before I can get to it!) I decided to plan a few dates for us. The first was a Chicago Pizza Tour (I will post about this at a later date), and the second, the one we did today, was to go geocaching and out for lunch. When I told Mark this morning "We are going geocaching!!" he looked at me with a "I have no idea what that is" type of look. I actually didn't know what it was either when I first heard about it. I had to look it up on the internet. Here it is in a nutshell.

Geocaching is basically a world-wide scavenger hunt that anyone can take part in. It's nothing that is organized or costs money or anything like that. If you have some time to kill or are bored one day you can say "let's go geocaching" and just go out on your own terms. Basically people all over the world hide what they call "caches." These are usually small containers hidden in trees, forests, in logs, pipes, etc. They sometimes contain trinkets and you can take one if you leave something in its place, or they will just contain a log which you date and sign to prove you found the cache.

There is a website called geocaching.com where you sign up for free and get information on where caches in your town or near you are located. I typed in our zip code and there were pages of listings for caches in Bolingbrook alone. When you click on one, it gives you the latitude and longitude coordinates for where that person hid it. You then put it into a GPS and go find the cache (hopefully!)

We had 6 caches on our list and I am sad to say we only found two of them! It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. The first cache we found was hanging from a tree in a park near our house. Here is a picture of Mark grabbing the cache so we can sign the log. It was a medicine bottle with camouflage duct tape around it. It was very tricky to find.

The second one we found was actually quite simple. On the geocaching.com website the person who listed this cache explained pretty much exactly where it was - under a lamppost in front of his house (the coordinates led us to the guy's block). Did you know those bottom "skirts" on lampposts lift up? Here's a picture of me finding our second cache. This one was also a medicine bottle camouflaged, but given the location, was much easier to see :)

Part of the problem was many of the coordinates I had written down led us to trees near someone's yard or in a very public parking lot - and since there are many people out there who don't know what geocaching is, we didn't think they would understand why we were snooping around near their property. There was on cache hidden at the entrance of our subdivision and I am POSITIVE we had practically the exact location and were somewhere right near it but we just couldn't find it! Mark even crawled INTO huge bushes to see if it was hidden there - still couldn't find it! Eventually we gave up.

It was fun when we found them, and frustrating when we didn't. Haha. If you like a challenge and like the outdoors, this is an activity for you. There are even apps for geocaching you can add to your phone. I would like to give this another go, maybe when it's fall or early winter and there aren't so many leaves on the trees. I feel like then it might be easier to see some of the smaller caches. If anyone decides to try this, or if you have done this before, let me know if you were successful and if you have any tips!

P.S. Remember the Vegan cafe I posted about in the past? I finally went to eat a real meal there and took Mark there after our geocaching adventure. It was so delicious and I think the fact that it was healthy made it even tastier! :) I ordered "taco" bagels. It wasn't really taco meat - I'm pretty sure it was ground up vegetables and nuts, and maybe beans, with taco like spices added to it. That was put onto a bagel and topped with guacamole and "sour cream." It came with two side salads. The apple one was amazing - I think I gobbled it down in record time. Mark ordered lettuce wraps. He got to pick 4 veggies to put in them and there was also pumpkin seed cheese in the wrap.We also split a piece of apple pie. The food isn't the cheapest (it was $41 for our lunch), but 100% of the proceeds go to charity (see previous post on the Vegan Cafe).

--T

My New Favorite Product

I've recently gotten hooked on the TV shows "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette." This year's Bachelorette is Emily Maynard who was actually chosen and proposed to on "The Bachelor" two seasons ago by Brad Womack. She said yes, however, their engagement and relationship did not work out after the show ended (not really a surprise). Emily is probably one of the sweetest, most genuine people I have seen on all of these Bachelor/Bachelorette shows combined, AND she has a great sense of fashion! She always looks put together, wears really cute clothes, and always does her makeup. I became a fan of her facebook page recently and while going through her pictures stumbled across one of a lip gloss called O-Plump by Smashbox. Her caption mentioned that it goes on clear, but turns the perfect shade of pink for you. I was immediately intrigued, especially because I LOVE lip gloss. The only problem is, I can never find a lip gloss that is perfect enough to be my permanent brand/color. Until now!

So I decided to try it. I bought it online and when I searched Smashbox O-Plump I realized they had another type of lip gloss that does the same thing only it's called O-Gloss. The only difference is, the O-Plump makes your lips fuller, where the O-Gloss does not. I don't need fuller lips, so I bought the O-Gloss. When I first tried it, I had that "Whoa - that's bright" reaction when I first looked in the mirror after putting it on.But then, the more I looked at myself in the mirror, the more I realized I loved the color and it looked great on me! No more guessing at what color lip gloss to buy and no more trying different brands. I love it! I would recommend it to those of you who like to wear lip gloss.

--T