Caramel Peanut Butter & Nutella Popcorn

I've had an incurable sweet craving all day.  Usually when this happens it'll go away if I have some water, fruit, or a stick of gum, but nothing would satisfy it today.  And, it wasn't even like I wanted just anything sweet--I wanted chocolate.  I craved chocolate with an extreme intensity, like no matter what I could possibly do, there was no way it would go away without chocolate.  Have you ever had this happen?

I started thinking about what I could make to fix this craving, but I wanted to try something new.  I quickly skimmed over our pantry and freezer noticing cereal, Carnation Instant Breakfast, Nutella, and Red Hot candies, but nothing came to mind.  Thoughts of possible snack ideas crawled through my mind until I remembered how my college roommate loved to eat popcorn.  An idea immediately snapped into my mind: chocolate popcorn.

This doesn't sound incredibly appealing at first thought, but when I consider the AMAZING flavored popcorn some friends sent us from Garrett's Popcorn in Chicago for Christmas, chocolate popcorn doesn't seem so far fetched.  I searched through some recipes online to get some ideas of exactly how I would do what I was hoping to create, pulled some jars out of our pantry, and got to work.

I ended up creating a surprisingly, amazingly, chocolatey dessert popcorn that will be making a return appearance in our house in the not so distant future.  The recipe I created is below:

Chocolatey Caramel Peanut Butter Popcorn
Ingredients:
1/2 cup unpopped popcorn
1/2 cup peanuts, unsalted
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup Nutella
1 tsp vanilla








Directions:
1. Pop the popcorn into a large bowl.

This is the air popper from my childhood! Lots of popcorn has been made in this over the last 20 years!

2. In a small saucepan, mix sugar, honey, and corn syrup over medium heat.  Bring to a boil, and continue cooking for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly. (Don't overcook!)

3. Immediately stir peanut butter, Nutella, and vanilla into saucepan until well blended.
4. Immediately pour over popcorn, add peanuts, and stir to coat.

5. Enjoy! :)

Do you have any good popcorn recipes?  Feel free to share below!

A semi-blurry visitor we had earlier

Taking a Personal Day

One of the things I've learned about myself over the past few years is that I generally don't get stressed out easily.  When thinking about the times that I should have been stressed, like during finals and wedding planning, I can remember feeling a little bit of pressure but nothing extreme.  I typically have a "why worry because it's all going to work out", carefree attitude toward what could be stressful situations.  And, even though I guess I could be considered a procrastinator, I honestly feel like I do my best work when there's a time crunch and I know I have to have something done in the immediate future.

Even though I don't typically get stressed out, I have been feeling SUPER stressed out the last several days.  Part of it is from various things happening at school that's completely out of my control, and I guess part of it is from personal things going on in my family.  This stress has caused my sleep to become restless, dreams become really strange, and my body to get physically ill.  I know I can't do anything to fix these problems except wait, but for some reason my body is responding to these things differently than normal.

Anyway, because I felt like an anxiety attack was well on its way, I decided to take a personal day off from work.  I had wanted to save my personal days, mostly because I feel selfish for taking a day off of work for myself, but decided that we're given them for a reason.  I told myself that I would only do what I wanted to do and forget about everything that I had been worrying about.

It was a gorgeous 70 degrees, blue skies, and sunny throughout most of the day.  After watching the news with a nice cup of coffee, I decided I needed to fill up the bird feeder in the yard.  We surprisingly get several types of birds at the house even though we're so close to the road, but they've been rather scarce lately.  Our small wooden bird feeder hangs from the side of a tree that can't be more than 5 feet from the main road in town.  I'd been wanting to do something with it for a while so I decided that today was the day.  I dug out some old turquoise paint and had at it.  This small project led to several other small projects, and I successfully crafted and cleaned my stress away.

We bought this watering can from Target last year mistakenly thinking it would actually work as a watering can.  It leaked most of the water out before we even got to the plants, and the pretty baby blue checked pattern faded within about two months.  So, I changed it.

I painted it yellow and this year I plan on planting flowers in it for a decorative accessory on our front porch.

Rearranged sitting area.  Please excuse the pretty gross cement.  I cleaned it today, but we rent our house so we unfortunately can't paint/stain the porch

Both kitties enjoyed the open windows and the breeze today.

Hopefully we'll have some good onions in a few months.

I know it's not super clear (it's our neighbor's tree), but the blooms are beautiful.  This was as good as I could get from our house.

A very relaxing evening after a very relaxing day on a clean front porch with "Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife".

Sunday Funday and Playing in the Garden

This morning arrived bright with sunshine and happily singing birds.  I love the peacefulness of Sunday mornings, of doing a few simple things around a quiet house before sitting with a cup of steaming coffee and a good book.  Derek and I come from different denominational backgrounds, so we try to switch off our churches every other weekend, although it doesn't always happen like that.  Since Derek was off of call from work this weekend, it was our turn to make the trip to my hometown.  Halfway up the road, my sister called to announce a change in plans for the day.  The clear skies and 70 degree weather was perfect for working in the garden.  With the help of my mom, sister, brother-in-law, niece, and husband, we tilled, plowed, and planted part of Grandpa's garden, gathered up broken sticks and limbs, trimmed bushes, and ate an excellent dinner.  Here's a few images I gathered throughout the day (with my brand new "birthday" camera!).

 Before we left this morning, I saw some visitors in front of our house.  LOVE this zoom on this camera!!

 

Many, many days were spent at my grandparents' house. Love this place.

Proof that Grandma is still with us.  She always had the most beautiful flowers.

Lots of memories riding with Grandpa down the road in here

The old smoke house

After many years of putting in all the hard work, he gets to just sit back and watch.

Hog enjoyed a day on the farm.

Planting potatoes

Hog likes the new camera, too.

Sewing Project: Apron

Katie and I joke that we were born in the wrong decade--a few decades too late.  We love just about everything when it comes to a 1950s/60s housewife lifestyle and could pretty easily slip into that type of role.  Cooking, cleaning, and sewing are all part of what we enjoy doing.  Don't get me wrong, I love my job!  It's an incredibly rewarding feeling when I know that a student finally "gets it" after explaining something three times in three different ways.  But, I also don't know if I'd even give up my job if an opportunity arose and we could live on one income.  I guess this is where the name for this blog came from--a "wannabe housewife".

Anyway, I learned to sew when I was in high school.  My home-ec teacher (who I love dearly & was partial inspiration for me wanting to become a teacher) taught us how to sew pillows, pants, and purses.  I haven't sewn much since then and actually didn't even own a sewing machine until last year when we decided to make curtains for both my and my sister's weddings, but I really enjoy it!  Making something useful out of a single, flat piece of fabric is amazing!  So for my birthday, I decided I was going to buy some fabric.  I slowly scanned all of the bolts of fabric at the store until I finally decided on two: a pinkish-coral floral design and a marigold yellow.  I immediately decided to turn this fabric into an apron.

Here's a recap in pictures of my process.

This large rectangle will become the skirt of the apron.

A smaller piece will become the bib of the apron.

I sewed two pieces together to form a thicker apron--to create a liner.

The smaller rectangle was cut to create a curved top.  I later have to make the dip in the center a little more accentuated.

I sewed the edges over to get rid of the unfinished edges (on two pieces: the outer piece and the liner).

The finished top with both top pieces sewn together.

I cut two strips the length of 2 yards and sewed them to create a finished look.

One strip gets sewn to the skirt to make the bottom of the apron.

The other strip is cut in half and sewn to each side of the top.

Finished product!

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out!  I didn't use a pattern, I but tried it on a few times to create any adjustments needed.  My sewing machine cooperated throughout the entire project until I got to the pocket.  It seems so simple, but my bobbin just would not cooperate.  After about 45 minutes, I finally got the pocket sewn on, but it was definitely a fight.  I plan on trying another, but I want to make ruffles on the bottom of the next one.  I'll post pictures if/when it happens.

Happy Monday!

Spring Break

It really bewilders me that it's already the end of our spring break! While it seems like this week has absolutely flown by, last Sunday feels like it was at least two weeks ago.  I'm not ready to go back to work on Monday, especially considering that we have no breaks or special days in the month of April (insert "spoiled teacher" comment here).  So even though it has felt like a pretty short week, it's been very pleasant and fairly relaxing!  Here's a recap of what happened.

Sunday & Monday: We went to see Luke Bryan which was awesome, in case you missed the last post.  Megan and I stayed in Morgantown Sunday night and enjoyed a girls' weekend that was much needed! Monday was spent shopping, visiting with Whitney and the baby, and best of all--eating.

Tuesday: I had gotten behind on our housework, so I pretty much spent that day working on getting caught up.  We have a schedule we follow every week with certain chores to be completed each day so that we don't get really far behind and find ourselves overwhelmed with the amount of housework that needs to be done.  I'll post it later.

Wednesday: Back to Morgantown! Mom had a doctor's appointment AND it was Katie's birthday!
After the eye doctor, we had the chance to eat lunch with Katie, do a little shopping, and visit Whitney and Gage again.  Although I love that I've graduated from college and moved back home, I really miss Morgantown and my friends!

Thursday: We live in a two-bedroom house with essentially nonexistent storage space.  We have two closets in the house that can hold about half of our clothes and a quarter of the other things we have minus our Christmas decorations.  The spare bedroom has been a gathering place of everything we want to put into storage/give to Goodwill/keep for scrapbooking or other crafts/etc. In the midst of all of these things, I also use this room to store my clothes.  I could only get about half of my clothes in my closet, and the rest of them laid in piles on the bed.  Annoying.  So, I found a hanging shelf organizer at Walmart on Wednesday and spent Thursday reorganizng the spare bedroom.  With the help of these shelves, I was able to fit the clothes that had been strewn around the room into the closet AND fit my summer clothes in there too!  Everything has a place and it actually looks like a bedroom now!  Amazing!  The shelves I used can be found here.

Friday: Happy Birthday to me! Twenty-four is a strange age.  It feels like I should be an adult and responsible and mature, but at the same time, I'm still in my early twenties.  Shouldn't I be hanging out with my friends every evening and making some questionable decisions?  Look at the cast of Friends or How I Met Your Mother.  I understand that these are TV shows and essentially no one actually lives this type of lifestyle every day, but it feels like we should.  Anyway, I woke up by being served breakfast in bed (the first time that has ever happened!) and then spent the day with my family by coloring Easter eggs and cooking.  I didn't realize how many people stop coloring Easter eggs once their children have grown up; it's very bizarre.  We have always colored eggs--and that "we" includes everyone in my family sitting down together once a year, including my 91-year-old grandfather.  It's so fun! Why would you not want to do it?

For dinner, we ate Italian dressing marinated grilled chicken, corn, scalloped potatoes, green beans, and buttermilk biscuits.  Yum! And, we had a Funfetti/pudding/strawberry/cool whip trifle for dessert.  It was quite a wonderful birthday. :)

Funfetti Cake = <3

Baxter celebrating with me

Have a happy week!