Saturday Sales

Today was a fabulous Saturday! It was my day off and it was a beautiful day out. It was the first day that it felt like summer is on its way. I even wore shorts! I got up early to go watch my friend's son's first soccer practice. It's so funny watching little kids play sports, cause they're so cute!

After that I went to the nearest Zehrs to pick a few things and noticed they had a large selection of Joe Fresh jewellery on for half price. I ended up picking up a few things:

Earrings $3.50

Bracelet $5

$3.50 

Chain link necklace with ribbon $7

There was a lot of other nice things and I really had to stop myself from buying more!

Today I also tried this new recipe for healthy pancakes from Blogilates! I wasn't too sure about it from looking at the recipe but they turned out to be so delicious!! It makes about 4-5 pancakes and they entire recipe is only 222 calories!! She has a few more recipes that I also plan to try out and I hope they will be just as good. 

Baking day!

Today was my day off, and I decided to do some baking! Mainly because I am going to a little Christmas dinner with co-workers tomorrow, so I wanted to bring some treats. I made two kinds of cookies and some chocolate/skor square things.

First I made some candy cane cookies from a recipe I found on Rina's blog. They seemed simple but different so I wanted to try them. Here is what mine looked like:

Verdict: good but nothing spectacular. But I probably didn't make them as good as she did. They actually reminded me of those Pillsbury cookies you buy in the store that are already made and you just stick them in the oven.

I also made Monster Cookies from Frugal Dreamer's recipe. I forgot to take a picture after they were done but here is what they looked like before I put them in the oven:

Verdict: also not as good as I hoped. Maybe I am just having a picky day, because my mom thought they were pretty good. I think they needed more chocolate chips. And they were definately MONSTER cookies because mine turned out huge!

Finally I made a recipe I have made a few times now, got it off my mom. I'm not sure what they are officially called but they are these delicious little squares with chocolate chips and skor bits.

Verdict: Amazing as usual!! I don't even want to guess how many calories are in these suckers.

Off topic: Today I won 10 SWAG BUCKS!! 10!! I've never won more than 5 at a time before. It was pretty sweet.

Getting Christmas Ideas

This weekend I went to Michaels with my 50% off coupon from this weeks flyer. I was hoping to get some jewelry making items, but wasn't really feeling any of it. But looking at the Christmas items gave me an idea.

Each year everyone in my department at work gets little presents for each other. I have started to think about what I want to do. Since I have been learning how to make jewelery, I was thinking about possibly making something simple for each person (its all women) like a cell phone charm/keychain type thing. But I am not sure if everyone would be really into that. I am the youngest person, and the other women are all older, mostly married with kids. I am the only one in my twenties, everyone else is like 30+.

Today while browsing around Michaels I got the idea that maybe I could do some baking and make a little gift basket of goodies for everyone.

I could get little boxes like these and fill them with goodies. Or another option was to get these little Christmas themed clay dish things that I saw there and put stuff in them and wrap them with cellophane like a gift basket. I searched the Michaels website and could not find a picture of these little dishes I saw, and couldn't really find anything similar either, so "Christmas clay dish"is the best description I've got!



There was also this mini cake pan that I saw. This is not the one I want, again, I couldn't find a picture of the one on the Michales site, but it was kind of like this, only I think there was only 4 shapes so they were a little bigger. I think there was like a santa, a snowman, a tree etc. It was really cute! It was about $17. I am seriously considering going back there this week and using my 50% off coupon to buy it.

I am going to start looking online for recipes of stuff to make. I am hoping to find simple recipes, hopefully ones where I have most of the stuff already or won't have to buy too much more. I'm thinking brownies, cookies, any other kind of "bars" etc.

If anyone has any other ideas I would love to hear them! And let me know if you have any easy yummy recipes.

I've been baking!

So I finally tried that Banana Muffin recipe that I was talking about...and my god they were absolutely delicious!!!!!

They were just perfect! It was the perfect banana taste with a little bit of chocolate. If you're not huge on chocolate, just leave that out. You could even use a bread pan instead and make bread.
I'm definately making these again. Next time I want to make double, but I need to get a bigger muffin pan because the one we have only does 6 at a time. It would take hours to make a double batch!!

I was thinking next time I will try whole wheat flour instead of white. I'm hoping you experienced bakers can tell if it's a good idea. Will it make a big difference? I didn't think so...but please tell me if I'm mistaken.