I Heart This!

This week I'm going to be a little repetitive, a little informative, and a bit inappropriate. ;)

Teavana.com:

Tea accessories, infusers, and appliances! Oh my! If you like tea, you'll love this website. It has all sorts of delicious looking/sounding teas, swanky sweeteners, and oodles of other fun stuff. It's also overflowing with useful information. Suffering from allergies? Did you know there are teas that can help? You can learn all about them on the website (or perhaps in a store if you're lucky enough to live near one). I am loving this site. A BIG thanks to Megan from File Me Away for telling me about it. <3

P.S. Here's the link for the yellow submarine infuser for anyone who's interested.

Apple Crisp:

Over Easter weekend the hubs and I bought 10 pounds of apples for $5.00 at a local market. Then, because she's a toddler, ELA lost all interest in anything containing our abundant little fruit (even though she'd been inhaling them the week before). With apples up to our eyeballs I went searching for a way to make a decent sized dent in the pile. I don't bake pies, so I adjusted a crisp recipe instead.

Filling:

• 10 cups all-purpose apples, peeled, cored and sliced
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup water

Topping:

• 1 cup quick-cooking oats
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup butter, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degree C).
2. Place the sliced apples in a 9x13 inch pan. Mix the white sugar, 1 tablespoon flour and ground cinnamon together, and sprinkle over apples. Pour water evenly over all.
3. Combine the oats, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and melted butter together. Crumble evenly over the apple mixture.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for about 45 minutes. 

Tweaks I made/recommend:

• Mixing apples with sugar mixture in a bowl before placing in pan.
• Only using about 1/2 - 3/4 recommended sugar mixture and water.
• Doubling topping so that you have plenty of crunchy goodness. You could even spread some along the bottom of the pan first. 

We ate ours with vanilla ice cream and it was super yummy. :P

Baby Trashes Bar in Las Palmas:

I know this is totally wrong, but sometimes things that are inappropriate are also hilarious. Just ask my husband who taught our darling daughter to "walk like a pimp" with the baton I snagged at a garage sale. ;) 

Hope this livens up your Thursday! 

I Heart This!

Often times I find myself trying to explain something I've recently discovered to someone with a kid on Christmas level of excitement. My body starts manufacturing adrenaline as I try to accurately explain the specifics, and those around me dissolve into fits of giggles in order to counteract the information overload. Since that's not exactly the best way to enlighten others I've created the I Heart This! My plan/hope here is to post something every Thursday that I feel the need to rave about or recommend. It could be a gadget, a website, a service, or almost anything, but it will always be something I believe needs a little love.

Cinnamon bears

While we were in Sunriver, soaking up some much needed family time, my brother, sister-in-law, and myself shared a small bag of spontaneously purchased cinnamon bears. Bryan hates cinnamon, so I hadn't had any in quite awhile. They were delightful. In fact, they were so tasty there are currently a few in my pantry.

Cookie scoop

I purchased this a few years ago at a Pampered Chef party. I bought it because I'm the person who always attends those stupid parties and feels guilty if I don't purchase a little something. Fortunately, this was money well spent. I've used it to scoop cookies, muffins, and, earlier this week, cupcakes. It's a handy little sucker.

COUGAR TOWN!!

This show is hilarious. When it first started Bryan would always find something else to do and I'd be sitting on the couch cracking up all by myself. Eventually I convinced him to sit through an episode and I've been gloating ever since. There are a lot of running jokes (or maybe inside jokes), so sometimes things don't immediately make sense, but the hubs is proof that you can catch on quickly. It airs Wednesdays at 9:30 on ABC, and it's definitely worth 30 minutes of your time.

Handmade Monday: cupcakes

Recently, someone very dear to me gave me some blogging advice. Even though I can't remember her verbiage to save my life right now, the main idea was to create a piece, or two, to post on specific days of the week in order to get into the habit. Since she has two famous features of her own (check out Obsessed and Nerd News), I would be a fool not to listen to her. ;) So, without further ado ...

WELCOME to the first edition of Handmade Monday! Here I hope to post some of my creations. The guidelines here are pretty loose. Basically, if I made it myself, it counts. While I intend for the bulk of these to fall under the craft department, they may wander off track just a bit. I'm cheating a little today because I spent the majority of the evening creating banners for my various "pieces" (but since I've yet to tell anyone of this blog's existence I think I'm okay).

These are devils food cupcakes with buttercream frosting. Everything came from a box, but I did mix it by hand. Watch out Betty Crocker! My original plan was for lavender frosting with green sprinkles (Christmas leftovers), but the frosting started to turn grey so I panicked and decided to make it blue. Luckily the red sprinkles (also left over from the holidays) coordinated pretty well. 

I'm not sure if baking is a hobby, or just a result of my sweet tooth, but I do it fairly regularly either way. I've only baked one cake from scratch, and hated all the work, but here is a lady that has some magical cupcake skills if you'd like to feel inspired (or need a visual sugar fix).