Cookie Monster!!!

I don’t really consider myself a baker—I don’t even do a lot of baking, really. But, being a full-time student with a raging case of senioritis has left me with a little extra time on my hands. I was really wanting some oatmeal raisin cookies for our camping trip we went on this past weekend, and stumbled upon a recipe that looked good. I made some changes, like using whole-wheat flour and adding baking soda, lowing the baking temperature, and they turned out really really yummy!! So I thought I would share this tasty recipe.

Totally awesome Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies:

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 Cups whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 3/4 cups rolled oats

1 cup raisins

Directions:

1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.) Place raisins in warm water to soak while you prepare the rest on the cookie dough—sounded odd to me, but this will give you plump, tasty raisins for your cookies.

3.) In large bowl, cream together butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until fluffy.

4.) Stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Gradually stir into butter mixture. Stir in oats and raisins. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

4.) Bake 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the cookies begin to turn golden brown around the edges. Cool slightly, remove from sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.

This recipe makes about 3 ½ to 4 dozen, chewy oatmeal raisin cookies. Enjoy! 

This recipe was adapted from: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/oatmeal-raisin-cookies-i/

Bad Teacher...

I’m back!! I haven’t blogged in a while, and I wish it were a more positive topic that brought me back, but it’s not. To preface, this will be about a professor of mine that I’m not happy with, you can decide now if you want to keep reading.

So, I’m a psychology major at the University of the Incarnate Word, about to graduate in May. The track that my major is on is called experimental psychology. It’s supposed to get you ready for grad school. I chose this track originally because I was really interested in grad school and I was up for one of the more challenging psychology tracks. Now, this semester I’m taking a class called Advanced Research Methods. It’s actually the follow up course of Research Methods, in which we wrote and presented a research proposal. I really enjoyed Research Methods and learned a lot. So, naturally I was looking forward to Advanced Research Methods.

Well… it’s over half way through the semester. Do you want to know what we have done? We’ve participated in three online forums/discussion boards, taken one online test and gone to the mall twice to “collect data”. The last two classes have been cancelled. This class only meets on Friday and it’s supposed to be held from 1-4… we have never stayed past 2:45. I’m SO frustrated with this professor. I feel like I’m not learning anything in what’s supposed to be one of my most challenging classes. He is lazy and doesn’t seem to care. I’ve had him before, and he does have a propensity of cancelling classes and letting out early.  I just don’t know what to do. Should I report him to the Dean? Or just let it go? It’s almost May… Should I just take the easy A and stop complaining? I feel bad ranting like this, but I really feel strongly that, not only I am I wasting my time in this class, I’m wasting my money! I want to learn and better myself, and prepare for grad school… not go to the Mall and observe PDA (it’s supposed to be naturalistic observation). I’m just so fed-up with this professor!! 

Invitation Faux Pas?

I’m in a quandary about when to send out the rest of the invitations... as it is, I’ve already committed a wedding invitation faux pas, which is don’t send them out in batches! Whoops… Well I sent out the first batch to Brandon’s out of state relatives so they would have enough time to book flights and get hotels and whatnot. But, apparently this is a huge no-no…

Anyway, everyone in my family that I talk to says, yes send them out now. But everything I read online says no—it’s best to send them out 6 to 8 weeks ahead of the RSVP date. Well I decided all those online people don’t know what they’re talking about. For starters… our wedding is around a major holiday. Five days after Christmas and the day before new year’s eve. People need time! Plus, if I send them out later, they might get mixed up with all the holiday cards. So my original plan was to make sure everyone had theirs 12 weeks before the wedding, which means I should send them out by like October, 3. Is that too soon? Am I thinking too much about this?  

Hopefully this is the last time I will be blogging about the invitations. People who read this are probably tired of hearing about them.

Next order of business… cupcakes! Everyone loves a good cupcake right? :) 

P.S. If you're reading this you should check out our website ... Or was that another faux pas??

Krystal & Brandon Get Crafty-- Amendment 1: Wax Seals are for Kids

So… Remember those wax seals I mentioned towards the end of my last post? Yeah… we did them, but now they’re taunting us. When I first went to the post office to have the invitation weighed to see what kind of postage it would need, I didn’t seal it, I just took a test seal that I peeled off an old piece of paper and stuck it in the envelope. I figured that as long as it was just in there, we would still have an accurate measurement of how much it would weigh. The guy told me a 44 cent stamp would be fine and I thought nothing else of it… until I went to the post office today to mail the invitations for those who are coming from out of state. I thought, just to be SURE we have the right postage I would just weigh them again and double check. Well… turns out that putting that wax seal makes it “non machineable”, and that means that the post office can now charge me an extra 20 cent (each) to send them. Plus add an ugly little red stamp that says non machineable on my perfectly addressed envelopes!


So here were my options: I could buy 100 20 cent stamps to add to the 44 cents that is already on ALL of them—did I mention we’ve already stamped and addressed ALL the invitations?? Yeah, I thought we were getting ahead of the game, turns out we got so ahead we went in a circle. Anyway, this 20 cent stamp is ugly. For one, it’s much smaller than the stamps we have on there now, and second, the ONLY one they have is a picture of George Washington. Sorry George, you’re not invited to the wedding. So option one was out. My second was to just buy 100 64 cent stamps and take off all the 44 cent ones that were on there.

So I just finished peeling off and saving 100 44 cent stamps. And you can bet that I’m going to find some way to use those suckers, I don’t care if I have to glue them on the thank you notes—no way I’m wasting $44 in postage. I just hope they don’t raise the cost again before we send them out. Stinking post office. 

Krystal & Brandon Get Crafty

104!! That’s how many days are left until Brandon and I get married. 104?? 104!! This is simultaneously the MOST exciting and terrifying thought. 104 days! And I no longer find myself the laid back person I was six months ago, saying, don’t worry, it’ll get done (Imagine that!). Now it HAS to get done. Luckily we have most things taken care of.

We just finished making all the invitations. What a fun/painstakingly tedious and stressful task! They turned out really nice though! I can’t wait for everyone to see them. But, seriously… This little project gave me a new respect for crafts. So much so, that I went and found the invitation to the wedding of one of Brandon’s cousins, and set it aside on a shelf so it won’t get thrown away! After having spent so much time on ours, I feel guilty for every invitation I have ever thrown away, lol.

Ok so anyway, back to the making of the invitations… A few weeks ago Brandon and I were shopping at Michael’s. And to my surprise I stumbled upon this invitation kit on clearance. It was originally 40 bucks but had been knocked down to $15. $15 for 40 invitations… So we bought 3 boxes! You can’t beat $45 for 120 invitations (we only need about 100). Granted, these were nothing special, they were rather plain—all white with a white ribbon on top. Simple. So I told Brandon we could just decorate them to make them personal, it would be great! I was super excited (I’m still excited, or excited again, after seeing the finished product). I didn’t realize what an undertaking we were getting into. After many, many trial runs, hours of brain storming about just HOW to decorate these silly things, and many proto-types later, we finally settled on something that we both liked.

During the trial/brainstorming process I bought a rubber stamp that had a really nice, kind of vintage looking design. We both liked how it looked on the invitation and decided to go with it. But, before we could decide where to put it, we had to decide on design and wording. Brandon spent many frustrating hours at the computer trying to get a printed boarder on perfectly, he finally succeed. It fit perfectly around the un-textured edge the invitations had. Now that we had the boarder we could work on the wording, which was easy. Once we had the wording, we knew where to put the stamp. SOOO… we now had the task of hand stamping 100 invitations. But, Brandon, being the thinking man that he is, made a little wooden thing to place on the paper so we knew exactly where to stamp, which made it surprisingly easy-- love my fiancé!

To add a little something extra to the invitations I decided it would be neat to put two tinny tiny rhinestones on each invitation, one at the top of the stamp and one on the bottom. The look turned out nice, but the job took forever. The adhesive that originally came on the stones didn’t want to come off their plastic backing! So we ended up super gluing every single one… FUN! That’s 200 hand glued rhinestone, folks. Yep, we’re awesome, that’s right. Or crazy. Whichever.

The final touch was the ribbon. The invitations came with a white ribbon tied in a simple loop on top. Well, we replaced the white ribbon with a royal blue ribbon to match our colors. But we couldn’t figure out a way to tie the stinking ribbon so it didn’t get messed up when we put them in the envelopes to send them. Finally we found something that looked really neat, it required more ribbon than I we thought it would (longer piece) but thankfully, despite having cut a whole bunch of three inch ones for the way we THOUGHT we would tie them first, we still had enough left to cut 100 pieces of the now 15 inch pieces we would need. We ended up with EXACTLY what we needed (5 fish= 5,000, anyone thinking what I’m thinking?).

Now, I’ve been pretty good about not having any Bridezilla moments so far. And that’s good—we’re almost three months away! But, when it came time to printing the return address for the response cards I nearly lost it. We printed them from Brandon’s computer, but something about the placement, I’m not sure, it kept printing NOT in the center. A couple would come out good and the others would be too close to the top or too close to the bottom. Some looked AWFUL and some were just unusable, I’m not going to lie. The problem with this is: the invitations, response cards, the envelopes and the envelopes the response cards go in, all had a matching design texture, and we bought them on clearance! So it’s not like we could go buy more if we messed them up. You see my dilemma now? Ok, I digress-- back to the story at hand… Luckily, we had enough extra to not use the REALLY bad ones. They were getting so bad at one point I had to tell Brandon to stop printing. Brandon handled my mini-bridezilla moment well and we were both able to see the humor in the way I was behaving.

Everything turned out great and the finished product is beautiful! I can’t wait for you guys to see. We are doing a wax seal on the back, and that takes a while, so we still have that to do, but that’s the last thing. I had no idea that deciding to make our own invitations would be one of the longest tasks of the wedding so far! But, it was fun, I loved creating something special with Brandon that was one of a kind. 

This whole invitation making business has also taught me how anal I can be about some things. This was actually a shock for me, because I’m typically, like text-book type B personality. However, my thought was… it’s our wedding, if ANYTHING should be perfect it should be the invitations. But, really during this whole craft business, I actually RETURNED two silver pens because I didn't like the way they wrote! Seriously? Seriously.

Something else this whole process has made me realize is… how truly blessed I am to have Brandon. During the whole frustrating ordeal, never once did he loose his tempter with me, as I continually changed my mind about what I wanted and how the wording should be and if we should have a reception cards and whether it was ok to put the wedding website on the response card and on and on and on (pretty much being every kind of neurotic there is)... I realize that Brandon loves me a lot like God loves His children; mercifully and unconditionally. Brandon is so quick to forgive me when I know I have done something wrong or not treated him fairly. And never once in all the time we’ve been together has he ever held a mistake I’ve made against me. God truly knew what he was doing when he put us together. I thank Him for sending me someone to show me how to love like He loves! 

Vases and Candles and Ribbon… OH MY!

So, one of the perks I’ve discovered about being a bride-to-be is that, I get free wedding magazines at almost every appointment I go to. They are pretty great actually, I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas looking at them, and Brandon and I actually found an affordable DJ in one. They are also good for laughs too. For example, the newest issue of San Antonio Weddings features an article written by a bride. That’s not the part I found humorous—what I found funny was how the editors chose to describe it on the cover. It reads, “Wedding Diary>> One Brides Journey: 18 Months of Planning Bliss”. I’m sorry, planning WHAT?

Maybe I’m the one in the wrong here. Because everyone I talk to is so excited to hear about the wedding plans. Even myself-- when we first got engaged, I was so excited to plan! Now with four and a half months to go, I find myself stressed. It could be because we have packed four months of planning into about two weeks. We decided to try and get as much done as possible before I head back to school and CAN’T do anything. At this point I just want to enjoy my wedding and stop planning!

Don’t get me wrong—I am loving this time that Brandon and I are getting to spend together, planning our special day, I’m just excited for the planning part to be over. It’s the decisions that need to be made that REALLY stress me out. I’m so indecisive that it makes me anxious to have to decide on something. But, it’s my wedding, right!? Exactly, now you see my dilemma: My indecisiveness is at war with the fact that this is our wedding and I NEED to make decisions. How should we decorate the church? Do we need to get extra linens for the table the unity candle will be on? Do we even want a unity candle? Do we want car service? If we get a car service should we get it for just ourselves or the whole wedding party? But, we’re already over budget… Annnnd the list goes on. I got to a point today where I just had to tell Brandon I was DONE for the day.

But, at least all the big things are done. And, these last couple of weeks have been really beneficial. We’ve gotten a DJ booked and bought most of the décor for the wedding (along with a lot of other things I’m probably leaving out). Speaking of wedding decorations, they have taken over Brandon’s guest bedroom... Whoops! Pretty much the only thing left at this point is the cake. But, we are going to do cupcakes, we just have to decide where we want to get them.

So, while it has been a little stressful, we have been able to get A LOT done. I think what I’m feeling right now is just planning burnout. Hopefully, we will be able to cool it now, and just work out the last few details we have and enjoy our special day! 

Blog Fever?

It seems like blogs are making a come back... or did they ever leave? I'm not really sure, but I've been noticing them more. Maybe that's because I keep thinking... "I should make a blog!" So here we have it! Not really sure why I felt the burning desire to have one, I've never blogged before, and I don't have anything terribly important to say-- I'm not cooking my way through a cook book or traveling the world and I don't have kids to talk about, so that's out... But, I do enjoy writing, so my trivial thoughts about life, love, God, etc. will have to be enough for this first-time-blogger.

Also, my fiance and I are in the mist of planning our wedding. Annnndd... I think people are tired of me always posting on my facebook status about the wedding-- it's exciting to me, yes! But, I had to ask myself recently, "Do people REALLY want to know that?" The answer for most is probably no. But, for those that do, you can read allll about those crazy wedding planning antics I am going through, right here-- in detail! :)

That's all for now!