Cooper the great dane

I thought I would focus, for once, on my big "not so smart" dog. So here he is, ready for his closeup...


I love how he looks running. He reminds me of a cross of a jack rabbit and a greyhound here.
And his sweet eyes...not always the smartest dog but definitely one of the sweetest.

Happy Birthday to my sweet boy!

I did it!

I finally got my closet clean and organized. YAY!!!! I found so many things that I forgot I had. That is a nice feeling.

Ella decided to go through some bags of old clothes today. She decided she needs 3 shirts on with some jewelry.

I mean every little girl wants to wear a football jersey over her pink t shirt and her sweet little summer top on backwards over the jersey, right? And lets not forget to accessorize! And make sure that we have a paci that color coordinates. (we have them weaned down to just paci's at bed time, but if they find them anywhere else they pop them in faster than you can blink!)
And my clean closet!

Halloween!

Halloween Brownie Pops

Since I was already cruising the Bakerella site, I decided to do something fun with the kids with the Halloween theme. Mine of course are not as cute as hers but they aren't too bad! ;)

Here are our One Eyed Purple people eaters. We added some hair and unibrows as well.

and I just played with the saturation to make them a little spookier!

Our little group of ghosts

And my skulls (probably my least fave of the group)

Yes I am a cannibal. I had to take a bite out of crime. And boy did it taste good!

These were super easy to make.

I just baked up some brownies and let them cool.

Cut the edges out of the pan.

Rolled the brownies into little balls (helps to do it while they are still a bit warm). And then shaped them into the shapes I wanted to create.

Stick the rolled shapes into the fridge for about 30 mintues.

Melt some chocolate melts of your wanted color or flavor. If it isn't thin enough for smooth coating you can add some shortening to help thin it out more.

Dip brownie bites into chocolate. (I put them on lollipop sticks. If you do this dip the end of the stick into the melted chocolate and then insert into brownie bite. It helps hold the stick in a little better.) Shake off excess chocolate and then put it aside to dry and harden. (See Bakeralla site for more details on how to do this well.)

Then decorate. I couldn't find a black food safe pen(I searched everywhere, may need to order online) so I used black gel icing and some "easy squeeze" icing by Betty Crocker. The gel icing takes a long time to set but looks pretty good. The easy squeeze was not easy whatsoever. I may have gotten a bad tube but it was so hard to squeeze that I didn't really get any out. I even microwaved it for a few seconds (after kneading as directed for over 10 min) to warm it up but it didn't help.

The kids had a blast doing it. The brownie bites were much easier to put together than the cake pops. Less steps and they set up better. And they tasted SO GOOD!

Brownie Peanut Butter Cup Bites (avioding the closet)

My absolute favorite dessert blogger Bakerella had these up on her site. So I thought I would give them a try.

Hannah and I gathered the ingredients and gave it a whirl.

Now on her original recipe she added more water than my box brownie mix said to add, so I just stuck with what the box said. I know a lot of the different box mixes are different so I thought I would stick with what I knew.

So we started by mixing the brownies up as directed by the box:

Unwrapped a whole bunch of miniature Reese's peanut butter cups:
You use miniature FOIL cupcake cups. If you use the foil you do not have to put them in a cupcake pan. And you can fit more on a cookie sheet. My first batch I made I put the cups right next to each other and didn't think about the batter rising. So slightly space your cups out.
Put 2 tablespoons of brownie batter in each cup. I used a 2 tablespoon cookie dough scoop. Push the PB cup into the batter until the top is even with the the top of the batter.
Bake @ 350 for 10 minutes (below is the batch I put too close together, but they still tasted good!)
Let cool and presto blamo yummy little desserts.

YUM! Happy Halloween!!!

Nope, haven't done it yet

I did hang some clothes up but no major reorganization happened today. Tomorrow, tomorrow, theres's always tomorrow... At least I don't have to work tomorrow.

But last night I did clean the rest of the house. I even scrubbed all the grimy little toddler hand prints off the wall. See how good I am at focusing on everything else when I need to accomplish something else?

Total side note: Did you know that if the power company threatens to turn your power off, when you are just 10 days late and have never been late before, it really sucks?

It really really sucks when that said payment has actually been sent through your bill pay, and you have delivery noted on your bill pay website.

So when you hurry to put a stop payment on said payment and then give power company a credit card to make sure your power to your 4 children does not get cut off it can be very stressful.

Especially when you know that if the previous payment and new payment still go through, even though you have put a stop payment, will cause your account to go into the negative. And then the next day when this does happen, you really start to stress.

Your husband then calls the power company guy to ask why the check, he stated they had not received, just cleared our bank in less than 2 hours since we first talked to them and were threatened with cutoff. The stop payment takes 24-48 hours to go through, so since the check was already deposited into the power company's account, it did not reach the check in time to stop it.

Long story short...sort of...after 5 overdraft fees(which are a whole nother story- BofA sucks with inconsistent stories and crazy ways to charge overdraft fees!!) Hubby calls back the power company guy, gets turned down for refund on double payment, gets told that he has no rights, emails corporate power company to file complaint and emails the Public Utility Commission to file complaint. He hears back from the corporate office in 5 minutes and they beg him to let them make it right. They refund us our overpayment plus all overdraft fees and overnight the check to us. Tell us that the bad employee has been reprimanded. And beg us to retract our statement to the PUC, which we gladly do because all we wanted was a refund. So we are happy.

Hubby gets to work and talks to an old regular and tells him the story. (total run on sentence) We find out that, if a consumer (in Texas) who had never been delinquent on a bill and has minor children in their house, has their power turned off with no chance to make payments or deferments, and they complain to the PUC, the PUC will fine the power company $25,000 per day the power is off.

All I have to say, is VERY INTERESTING. No wonder the corporate woman was trying so hard to make it right. (She was very very nice by the way and we will be writing corporate to commend her on a job well done. We believe in giving credit when credit is due.) Paying our paltry OD fees and refunding us our credit that was due is really no big deal compared to $25,000 and an official complaint.

Lesson Learned- Making complaints to the proper authorities actually can accomplish something. And of course if you are going to be late on a utility bill, even if it is just 10 days late, pay them directly online on their website and don't do it through bill pay.

So much for a short story....off to visit my closet.