Friday – Chris and I stayed in Friday evening. Our friend Adam came over and we had a little Mario Kart tournament in our basement. I won 🙂

Saturday – I had to be an adult and take my car to get my oil changed Saturday. My appointment was for 12:20 pm. They didn’t even take my car back until after 1:00 pm. UGH! The guy there said that they hadn’t been that busy on a Saturday since August. I was like really? He was like well yeah, Alabama is playing a nobody school today and Auburn is off. Ahhh this makes total sense now!

After my car was finished, I headed over to Sephora to pick up a new foundation. I am trying out the Tarte Amazonian Clay 12 hour wear foundation. I will let everyone know how I like it after I have had enough time to make sure I dont have a reaction to it. I used it Saturday afternoon and I really liked the way my skin looked after applying. I think I like it better than Make Up Forever HD, but like I said…only time will tell!

Saturday evening we went out to Little Donkey for our friend Adam’s birthday dinner, then headed to Chris’s parents house for a little while to catch the Mizzou vs Ole Miss game.

Sunday – A day for accomplishments!

I got my first Christmas seasonal drink of the season! Carmel Bruele latte! It was a Christmas party for my mouth. I took the obligatory red cup blogger picture.

Then it was time. Time for the tree to come out!!!!

Step 1: Pull tree out of garage, check for spiders or other critters that may have squatted trying to make it their home.

Step 2: Put tree together, trying your hardest to minimize the cussing as you try to find that dreaded plug for the top row of lights that you cant find EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

Step 3: Give up finding plug, patiently wait until husband is finished with his mission in COD  (Call of Duty) to find it for you!

Step 4: Turn on your favorite Christmas movie. Elf, duh!!

Step 5: Pour yourself some egg nog and grab a cookie.

Step 6: Check on your furballs that you had to kick outside during your decorating process. You know it is for the best, Mac cant control himself around ornaments. He must have all the shiny things in his mouth!

Look at poor Gracie. She is pouting because she knows she can be a good girl and have control. She says, “I ain’t never get to decorate no tree.” (Like Allen regarding keeping the monkey in Hangover. Dont know what I am talking about? Moving right along….)

Step 7: Put up the ornaments while singing Christmas songs!

Step 8: Don’t forget to put up your childhood Disney Princess tree!!! I mean come on! It is pink, sparkly and full of princess stuff!

Now I have these beauties to look at all season!!! I am still working on my fireplace and a few other areas. I also have a Charlie Brown tree that is on the bar between our kitchen and living room areas! I need to get some blue felt for Linus’s blanket to wrap around it first!

Last night I made some baked ziti for dinner and some curried cranberry couscous with a citrus vinaigrette dressing for lunches this week. I will share that recipe with you tomorrow! It is delicious and something completely different!

Three day work week for this girl right here! So basically today is Wednesday! We got this!!!

Ok people….we are one week out from my favorite shopping day of the year!!!! As a seasoned Black Friday shopper, I thought I would share some tips to make your day a success. That is if you think you can hang with the best of the best shoppers, and the crazy lunatics that aren’t fit to be called humans. Hey, everything worth while has a challenge, am I right? I have been Black Friday shopping with my mom every year for the last 20 years. I started as just a young whipper snapper and have learned a few things on the way.

What Best Buy looks like two days before Black Friday. Ha!

1. Have a plan. Plan plan plan people. I can NOT stress this enough. Look through the ads in advance. Figure out what deal is most important to you, and what else that you want from that store. Circle in the ads or fold down pages, make a list…do what you need to do to keep yourself organized. My mom and I carry the ads with us in the car and take each ad into the store so we stay focused. I am a bit ADD in stores and so is my mom. Pretty shiny sparkly things will distract you from your mission.

I want to remind you that we haven’t not yet figured out super powers of how to be at more than once place at a time, so that is why I say pick the one item that will save you serious money, or the store where you can get the most that you need and go there first. Don’t let it be Best Buy. You will never get that 80 inch TV for $100. I promise you. Not unless you plan to camp out 4 days in advance. It just isn’t worth it. Chances are that was a shitty 80 inch anyways with poor quality. I have NEVER stood in line at Target before they opened. We have always gone to Walmart first, got there right before opening, walked in the door and scored every last thing that was on our list, then went to Target afterwards and every year gotten about 70-100% of what we wanted from there.

Also, if you are at Kohl’s, take someone with you. When the line starts to build, one of  you get in line with what you have so far while the other person is the runner and completes the list, bringing things to the person in line as they cant hold anymore. I stack boxed and scoot them with my feet as the moves. You get out a LOT faster. EVERY year the line at Kohl’s wraps the entire way around the store. And every year people are always shocked. Umm….it happens every year people!

2. Think like the retailer. Like I said, I have been doing this for awhile now. Box stores like Target and Walmart map out their “door buster” deals and they are NEVER in the department that they should be in. They usually have the middle aisles cleared out all over the store the day before, and that is where the door busters get dumped. It is not uncommon to find the $2 DVD’s back in front of the baby clothes, the $4 crock pots over near the gardening stuff. Get my point? Never just head to the department where that shit should be. It wont be there. Target is REALLY good at hiding their DVD’s and Blue Rays in where the clothes are in the red cardboard shelve units. So just don’t go in expecting to know where you are going. Be on our toes and keep your eyes peeled! A secret, some of the Walmart employees walk around with maps. Cozy up to one, bat our eye lashes….or if they are female…compliment how amazing they look for it being midnight. They will spill all the secrets.

3. Wear comfy clothes. I am not encouraging you to go out in your pajamas. Lord knows I see enough of that when I am out and about. I am just saying, don’t go all beauty queen. Dress in layers because as cold as it is outside is as HOT as it is in some of these stores. There are thousands  of bodies running around and it gets a little toasty inside. I usually wear a short sleeve shirt and my Northface fleece. And COMFY shoes. You are going to be walking, running, dodging other people. Don’t leave your little piggies exposed in flip flops even if you think the weather is seasonably warm. You might loose your shoe, or a toe in the whole ordeal.

4. Have a sense of humor. You damn well know that these people are going to be crazy. There are going to be angry, ugly people out there acting a fool. There are going to be rude, disgruntled employees pretty quickly when they see heathens tearing the stores apart and bitching because they ran out of the “it” toy or complaining about how long the lines are. It is the busiest shopping day of the year. You are going to have to wait in line. You probably wont get everything you need. If you keep a sense of humor, smile and be friendly with the employees and make friendly chit chat in line, your day will be super fun and much less stressful. My mom and I always make friends every year in line. We are always laughing and cracking jokes, and just having a good old time like we always do. No need to get pissy.

5. Fuel yourself. Starbucks is a must. Several times if you are going to be shopping through the night with no sleep and well into the next afternoon. The mall food courts are always opened, so don’t stick up your nose at having sautéed chicken from the Farmer’s Basket at 4:00 am for your “4th meal.” Ain’t nobody got time for not being properly fueled and energized to keep shopping. My mom and I always have a cooler in the car with water bottles, and some form of snack in there for when we are driving between sites.

Also, as a former retail employee of yesteryear, please please please for the love of God be kind to the people that have to work. They have to put up with a lot of crap and they don’t need your attitude, ok? Also, remember that a lot of stores use this time to take advantage of the shopper. They feed of the fact that other stores are practically giving things away and they know people will be out and about shopping in their store. Not everything is going to be the best deal on Black Friday. Both the retail stores I have worked at when I was younger never really had any deals that were better than what we had any other day. We didn’t need to. People bought that crap up because we had orange stickers on it. Just use your brain when you are purchasing and know your prices.

Remember you are on a shopping mission people!  This is the day to finish your Christmas shopping (or at least start!) Now you go out and conquer and make Nadine proud! Don’t forget to buy something pretty for yourself! You deserve it!

And remember….

Domestically Challenged. It is a magnet that remains on my refrigerator from my earlier, single years.

When I was in college, Jessica Simpson was married to Nick Lachey and didn’t know the difference between tuna fish and chicken. She was pretty and ditzy, and there were pictures of her in her underwear with a Swifter on the cover of Rolling Stones titled “Housewife of the Year.”

Oh, so wait…it is cute that a girl is ditzy and doesn’t know how to do anything for herself and asks dumb things? Is it  hot that she doesn’t know the difference between tuna and chicken? Because I am pretty sure that even I get that. Guys will marry an undomesticated cutie with the cooking abilities of a 5 year old? Maybe we don’t need to learn how to cook, my friends and I thought.

Don’t worry, I did finally realize that any guy worth having wants a girl with an IQ higher than 60 and can at least make some Kraft Mac n Cheese and frozen chicken tenders without burning down the house. So when is it that I became domesticated?

I think it happened in stages. When I was in middle school, my mom had started working full time again since my sister was in school. We were on “double sessions” meaning that elementary school kids went to school at a normal time, high school students went from  6am to around noon and middle school kids went to school in the afternoon, getting out at night. I had to learn to fend for myself. Pack my own dinners for school, and make my own breakfast and lunch at home. I was responsible for waking up on my own, getting ready and getting myself to the bus. I learned how to make mac n cheese, grilled cheese, warm up frozen “tv dinners” as they used to be called, etc.

In college I learned how to do laundry, you know….because my mommy didn’t live with me anymore. I was still “cooking” for myself, I even learned a few new recipes like scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, and how to work a George Foreman grill. I didn’t like to cook, but it was a necessity so I did the bare minimum to get by.

Since moving in with Chris a few years ago, I have actually enjoyed cooking, and baking. I like to take care of the person I love, and have him enjoy the foods that I make for us. I have tried all kinds of new recipes and even dabbled in making things up as I go. Most of the time my food turns out pretty good. There are always a few kitchen fails, but for the most part…I like to think of myself as fully domesticated and a decent cook. I cook, I clean, I do laundry, I clean my car, I iron (that is a miracle in its own), and I love decorating our home and even shopping for kitchen items is exciting now! My heart flutters when I walk into William Sonoma and see all the awesome things that I can never afford! Who would have thought?

Some people might think it is old fashioned that the girl does all the cooking, cleaning, etc. Maybe it is. It is how my family ran, and how my parents families ran. I enjoy taking care of those things, and I wouldn’t do it all if I didn’t want to. I feel sooooo accomplished Saturday morning when I have the whole house clean before lunch. I am not saying that there is something wrong with not being domestic, it is just what works for me. Never thought I would say.

While I leave up my Domestically Challenged magnet because I remember where I came from and I think it is funny, I feel like I finally have figured it all out. When did you realize you became….domestic?

This post was inspired by Allie! I promised I would do a post on some of my past experiences with online dating after I commented on her post about online dating exposed. You know, because everyone can use a laugh! For those of you who might be new around here or maybe forgot our dating/engagement story, you can find it here.

So now that you know that if there was an OK Cupid commercial, Chris and I would be one of the statistics about couples who fell in love and got married. But, before this wonderful love story….there were a few umm…let’s call them bloopers. I am sure many of you are aware that there are toads and trolls live among all the princes on white horses online, just as they do in real life. I got the distinct pleasure of meeting a few of them. How lucky right?

Oh and a little disclaimer. I come up with names for people sometimes. In high school my friend and I would use these names so that we could talk about people and others wouldn’t catch on. She had a crush on a boy whose locker was next to her, she called him Locker Boy.

So we aren’t going to pretend that Chris is the only person I dated. I had a few relationships that made it past the first few dates, as did he. One in particular lasted about 2 years. We shall call him “The Liar.” Anyways to make a long story short, I started to figure out something that he was doing. I had suspicions that one of his “friends” was more than just a friend. He broke up with me shortly after I started to catch on, then when I confronted him about my suspicions he made up a story about how he broke up with me because he found out that he had brain cancer and didn’t want to put me through all that. That he was doing it for me. Um right. I later confirmed and had hard proof of my suspicions. That “friend” ended up knocked up and married to him shortly there after. While I usually wouldn’t wish illness or hardship on anyone, that mofo deserves to get what he claims he had.

After that relationship, I had several winners. My favorite is Rock Boy. My communication with Rock Boy never went past phone conversations. You want to know why? Our last conversation went a little something like this. Rock Boy, “So I watched my friends kids last night so that she could go out on a date. They were wanting to play video games and watch TV the whole time. Crazy right? What a waste of time that is. Well, I happened to be carrying some rocks in my pocket and I had an idea! I shut off the TV and told them no more of that, that we were going to do something fun! We are going to examine these rocks! Look them up, identify what they are and what makes them so special. The kids were really digging my rocks.” WTF. Are you kidding me? What grown man carries around rocks in his pockets? Further more, making a statement like the kids are really digging my rocks leaves me to believe that you are several layers of crazy and I just…cant. I never spoke to him after that.

Then when you think things couldn’t get any weirder. Enter The Crier. The Crier was a special breed of crazy. We went on our first date, and he seemed normal enough. He was sort of sweet, and he really seemed to have his shit together. He had a really nice house, 2 nice cars, a great job, he dressed alright and he had manners. He opened my doors, pulled out my chair and told me I was pretty on our first date. All seemed ok. I decided to go on a few more dates with The Crier. Then one day, after 3 dates with this boy whom I have known for about a month mind you, I am walking around Target and I get a phone call. He says he wants to have  serious conversation with me. He goes on to talk about how he likes to travel a lot. I already know this because he told me about his trip to Japan on our first date. It sounded incredible. Good for him. Well then he says, well I would like for you to travel with me when I visit these places. I said cool, I haven’t been many places before, maybe sometime we could plan a trip. Then he asks me if I would swing by his house. I headed over there after running my errands. He has me sit down and says, “I think you need to go ahead and get rid of Gracie.” I looked at him and said, “Excuse me?” Then he said, “Well you cant travel with me if you have a dog. She is holding you back.” I was like “Um, people that have dogs travel all the time. They get their friends to watch them or there are these places that board dogs.” Then he starts to cry. He can’t believe that I am being ridiculous about a dog. He said that he really liked me and didn’t understand why I wouldn’t get rid of my dog for him. At his point he is weeping like a 5 year old girl.  WTF? I stand up, completely pissed off and sort of scared because this is shade of crazy that I just wasn’t expecting. I told him that I was really sorry but that there is no way in the world that I would give up my dog for him. Especially seeing as how I have known him for less than a month. I went home and had a girl’s night with my dog. We watched TV and laughed at The Crier.

There are a few others, but those are the top 3 contenders on my list of cray. Here is my advice for online daters out there, communicate MANY times before actually meeting someone. I always would email with someone first. Or use the chat through the website. Then, when you feel comfortable enough with that, maybe give them your number for texting and make sure you have a few phone conversations too. A lot of crazy will start to show on the phone. Rock Boy is a good example of that. I am pretty confident that he is creeping in a white van in a neighborhood full of children somewhere in Atlanta. That is where I lived when all this happened, so what out Atlanta….these fine men are cohabiting in your city.

Today I wanted to share with you my recipe for Salsa Chicken and Brown Spanish Rice. This is one of my favorite recipes to make because it is so easy and delicious! Let’s get right to it!

What you need for the salsa chicken:

2-3 chicken breasts

1 jar of salsa (I like On the Border Medium)

1 packet of Taco Seasoning

1 can of Cream Of  Chicken soup (I prefer healthy request or fat free)

1 cup of sour cream

What you need for the rice:

16 ounces of chicken broth (I always use fat free, low sodium)

1 can of Original Rotel

1 cup of brown rice (real rice, not minute rice)

What you do:

1. Put your chicken breasts in the crock pot.

2. Mix in the jar of salsa, taco seasoning and the cream of chicken soup.

3. Cover and cook on low for 8-9 hours

4. about 45 minutes before serving, go ahead and get your rice going. You want to bring to a boil your chicken broth and Rotel.

5. Once boiling, add in 1 cup of rice, cover, lower heat and simmer until most of the liquid has evaporated/rice is cooked. This takes anywhere from 30-45 minutes.

5. After you add the rice, go ahead over to your crockpot and add 1 cup of sour cream to the mix and stir.

6. Once the rice is cooked, you are good to go! Enjoy! I like to pour a little of the sauce over my rice. Yum yum yum!

Another serving idea is to shred the chicken and serve it over the rice, or in a flour shell almost like an enchilada.

On the menu this week is:

Chili (two times)

Kang Pao Chicken and Stir Fry Veggies

Chicken Burrito Bowl(new recipe, I am going to sort of make it up as I go!) and Cilantro Lime Rice

For lunches I am having Udon Noodle Soup and edamame most days this week.

Linking up with Ashley and Jessica for Taste of Tuesday!