Menu Plan 1/17 - 1/23

Ahhh....I had a pretty relaxing weekend.  We didn't do too much, however, we got too see some friends and played some games on Saturday night, which was really fun.  I felt a little down this weekend.  Maybe I watched too much coverage on Haiti? I wanted to write in my blog a couple times, but never really did it. I think I was feeling like with everything going on there, should I be writing about me? It seems so mundane. But, I know the world must go on. So here is my plan:

Sunday:  Shrimp Etouffee **Look for recipe on Tuesday**

Monday: Dinner out with a friend

Tuesday: Mama Bird's Chicken Spaghetti and a salad

Wednesday: LO Shrimp Etouffee

Thursday:  Salmon, rice, and green beans

Friday:  LO Chicken Spaghetti

Saturday:  Dinner Out

To see more plans please check out Organizing Junkie's blog here :)

Have a great week!!

What's in a name?

Hello, I'm Ashley. I don't really have much of an opinion about my name.  I don't love it, but I don't hate it either.  I've never really felt much like an Ashley though.  I've always wanted to be named something fun like Lucy, Sophia, or Vivi.  I particularly like the name Dottie.  I guess I like names from the 50's. Aside from Dottie, because I think she'd kill me, I think I'd name my girls those names if I ever have them.

 

Anyway, I found out yesterday while on Facebook that my name was the 2nd most popular name the year I was born, in between Jessica and Jennifer. I think my mom lied to me when she said she named me that because no one else named their kids Ashley.  Clearly they did.  Kind of odd considering it means "ash meadow".  I was hoping for something like lovely, spirited, most beautiful on Earth.  But no...ash meadow.  Oh well.

 

Mama Kat said in her instructions to explain why I was named my name. Well...there is a very nice reason and evidently the real reason which is really...charming.  My family owned a German restaurant in Ann Arbor for years.  It was on Ashley Street.  When my mom decided that's what she wanted to name me she told my dad that it was to honor the restaurant. However, she tells me that she named me after her:

That's Ashley Abbott from The Young & the Restless.  My mom tells me she loved her in the soap as soon as she saw her and always wanted a daughter named Ashley.  This is my mom:

This is how our conversations went when I was little:

little Ashley:  "Dad, why was I named Ashley?"

Dad:  "Oh, cause Mommy thought it would be nice to name you after the street the restaurant was on."

little Ashley:  "That's nice"

Mom walks in the room and whispers to little Ashley:  "No it's not, I named you after Ashley Abbott, from Y&R.  You're going to love that show when you're older too."

little Ashley:  "I'll stick with Dad's story."

Mom: "Be thankful, he was going to name you Percy if you were a boy."

Oddly enough, I love Y&R and I also have a secret desire to name one of my kids Percy.  I think Percy and Dottie would be cute.  You?

To see more reasons people are named what they are check out Mama Kat's blog!!

Have a great day!!

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

One word: YUM! I made these a over the weekend and they were so delicious!  I modified a recipe from Martha Stewart, which you can find here.   I didn't have cake flour and also didn't need 28. I frosted these cupcakes in cream cheese frosting, because that's my favorite.  Martha did hers in 7-minute frosting.  I would imagine 7-minute frosting would make it taste more like a snickerdoodle, because it's a little bland. However, I kind of hate 7-minute frosting, so I did cream cheese.  So, here's how I did mine:

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

Makes 20 

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp corn starch

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

3/4 cup butter, room temp

1 1/4 cup sugar

3 large eggs, room temp

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

3/4 cup milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line 20 muffin cups with liners.  Sift/whisk together all dry ingredients in large bowl.

Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy and light.  Add in eggs one at a time, beating until just combined. Add in vanilla and almond extract. Alternate beating in dry mixture and milk, ending with dry mixture.  

Fill each liner about 3/4 way full.  Bake cupcakes for 16-20 minutes until tooth pick comes out clean.  

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

1 1/2 sticks butter, room temp

8 oz cream cream cheese, room temp

3 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

milk

Directions:

Beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy.  Add in vanilla.  Gradually beat in sugar, scraping down the bowl in between.  Add milk, 1 tsp at a time, until desired consistency is reached. 

 

Enjoy!!!!!

To see some more delicious recipes check out these fabulous blogs:

Tempt My Tummy Tuesday

Tuesday at the Table

Tasty Tuesday

Have a great day!!

Menu Plan 1/10 - 1/16

I finally had a weekend without too many plans so it was great to just be able to relax and do whatever for a couple of days.  We tried a new restaurant, went shopping, and took a couple naps!  Last night, we had a dinner with our small group at Church.  I hosted last month, but someone else hosted this month so all I had to bring was a  salad.  That was kind of nice!

Here is the plan for the week.  I'm really excited about the Lasagna!!

Sunday:  Church Dinner

Monday:  Baked Potatoes loaded with cheese, chicken, spinach, and green onion.  Broccoli on the side.

Tuesday:  Butternut Squash Lasagna & Salad with homemade Caesar dressing

Wednesday:  LO Lasagna

Thursday:  Volunteering for the food bank @ Church

Friday:  Bowling Night

Saturday:  Night out with friends 

To see more delicious menu plans check out Organizing Junkie's blog here!

Have a great week!!

Cutest Video Ever!

I got an email yesterday with a link for this video.  Seriously, I have watched it 10 times.  I love it! I think it is so cool for a hospital to do this to support breast cancer research. Here it is:

Doesn't the janitor kill you? Oh I just want to hug him!  

Have a great weekend!

Just call me Longfellow

Today I'm doing a writing assignment from Mama Kat. I chose to write a poem about the 7th picture I took last January, because I'm an amazing poet. It just so happens that I made this gorgeous cake for my first Wilton cake decorating class.  I shudder when I see the hideous beauty that is this cake.  Between the cake and my poem, I'm sure to sweep the blog world by storm. Without further ado, here's the masterpiece:

Thugs Like Cakes

This is my cake.

It's so good it looks fake.

It makes boys in the hood shake,

Because it's as beautiful as a lake.

They'd protect the bird with their lives,

to ensure it didn't break.

They'd want to take it to their mother,

Or share it with their brother.

They'd sit and admire it's glory.

It'd go down in family stories.  

It would make gangs dissipate,

and get rid of the hate.

My cake.

Word to your mother.

Projects of 2009 Party

Rhoda over at Southern Hospitality did the most wonderful post about the projects she did around her house in 2009.  She had 10 to post, however, she probably could have done 50.  So ambitious and creative! While I don't have that many, I thought I'd share what we did do.  

1.  Master Bedroom

This is a room that we actually just finished and I haven't done a post about yet.  I think I may do a separate post in a couple days showing more of what we did.  I don't have any before pictures but you can see the color of the walls in this picture from when we were redoing the master bath.

Before Color:

After:

Like I said, check back in a week or so to see more pics of all the projects we did. I'm going to do a bit about repainting laminate furniture. For a little run-down though we painted, made a headboard, added new bedding, bought a new dresser, added a new picture from the Ann Arbor Art Fair, added window treatments, and redid some end tables.

2.  Headboard

Here is a pick of the headboard that we made out of a door for the Master Bedroom.  We didn't have one before.  I really like the headboard because it's attached to the wall and my favorite...it only cost $22!

3.  Guest Bath

You can see the official post that I did about it here, but this will give you an idea of what happened in this room.

Before:

As you can see, there were wood floors in the bathroom....Who knows. 

After:

We replaced the wood floor with a dark slate tile, that you can see in the link above.  We also framed the mirrors out in white, painted the walls grey, and added some accessories.  The candle sticks are gone now and have a new home in our bedroom :)

4.  Powder Room

This is one of the rooms I don't have a before picture for.  It used to be a very deep red.  There was also no mirror on the wall and no blinds.  

After:

Obviously, this still has some left over Christmas decorations :) However, we painted, added a mirror, wood blinds, and did a wall of fabric panels.

5.  Spice/Paper Closets

Oddly enough, this is probably one of my favorite things I did this year. Moving the spices freed up so much much space in my kitchen cabinets. I love the paper door too because now I don't have so much floating around the rest of the house.  I painted each door panel with many coats of magnetic paint and put the spices in magnetic jars.  Voila!

6.  Kitchen Sink

Again...no before picture.  It used to be a stainless sink that was VERY shallow and had a standard faucet.  I'm so glad we replaced this so I don't give myself a shower every time I wash something other than a fork!

7.  China Cabinet

As for the common theme, there is also no before pictures of this.  I would kill for some though, because this was honestly so much work!  It used to be a light (ugly) brown that was really dull and bland.  The panels on the front were more than not fun to paint :)  I also added some new pulls to the doors.  

8.  Master Bath

This is another re-do that some of you may have seen before here.  These are some peeks of what we did:

Before:

The wall color was a burnt orange, there were molding wood floors (gross!), and again just pull-down blinds.

After:

We painted the walls a very light blue, changed to small octagonal tiles, added wood blinds, and accessories.

9.  I'm tired.

10.  I'm going to take a nap.

Now go check out some more projects at Rhoda's blog here!!

Have a great day!!