Lost in the Shuffle

Somehow, this photo didn't make it into my recent iPhone weekend montage. I ran it through Lumie and liked the effect. I thought it would be a nice thing to post on a Wednesday, since we are as close to a new weekend as we are to the previous one.

Side note: I can't wait for Friday! This will be my first day off in weeks where I actually feel healthy!! Woot woot

I Made Buffalo Chicken Dip for Forty People, What of It?

 

It's going to be a busy week.  Frankenstorm is reaching its way into the midwest, and my commute home tonight was pretty silly.  I know we have nothing to complain about compared to people on the east coast, but still, listening to this wind outside is pretty disturbing.

In addition to dodging monsoons and hurricane-force winds this week, on Halloween, we're doing a dip potluck at work.  I've made Buffalo Chicken Dip on several occasions previously so I volunteered myself to make it.  I got a head start on making it tonight because I'm terrified the power will go out tomorrow.  Making Buffalo Dip by candlelight isn't exactly my idea of maintaining standards of normality during times of crisis.  So I made it tonight, will bake the two trays tomorrow, and then take them to work on Wednesday.

I need to stop here and let you know how much I love this dip.  Mr. My Blog for Bonnie and I have been known to make it and eat it for dinner on occasion. (we don't have kids so we're allowed to put absurd things into our bodies and call it a meal....right?)  It's great for a party and everyone who has ever tasted it has loved it!

This recipe comes from my mama, who, incidentally, was born and raised in Buffalo!  The measurements aren't exact, which is great, because you can adjust certain things as needed.  For instance, I kept the 2 trays of dip pretty mild since they'll be feeding a crowd, but for just my husband and I, or at a gathering of my immediate family, I would certainly crank up the Buffalo sauce and increase the heat!

Here's the recipe:

Buffalo Dip

1 rotisserie chicken, shredded

2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese (if you do mild cheddar cheese, I don't want to hear about it!  Blah...does mild cheddar cheese even have a taste??)

Half of a bottle of ranch dressing (we typically use fat free or light)

2, 8-ounce blocks of cream cheese (again, I routinely use the Light version)

Frank's Red Hot Sauce....(start with a few glugs, mix it up and taste it.  If you need more, add it.  I guess to be more precise, start out using about 1/4 a cup and increase to 1/2 cup if needed)

Mix all ingredients together in the pan of your choosing.  Bake at 325 for 20 or so minutes, or until the dip is bubbling.

Here's to making it through a stormy week....and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

iPhone Weekend

I'm starting this post earlier than planned, because initially we were going to head over to my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's house for a birthday celebration, where I was clearly going to snap more photos to possibly put on here.

Sadly, the Sickest Month Ever continues in the My Blog for Bonnie household, with my husband becoming victim of this mutant virus on Friday.  He typically has an immune system of steel and never gets sick.  When he does, he bounces back quickly.  And I can tell he's doing much better with this bug than I was, but still, I'm so bummed for him!  And I hate that we have to miss a family birthday.

This morning, when he woke up, Mr. My Blog for Bonnie told me he had one of the worst headaches he's ever experienced.  

My response:  "Do you want to go to the hospital?" (*obviously displaying my deep-seated hypochondria*)

Him, after a long pause in which he undoubtedly questioned whether or not he married a crazy person:  ".........No."

So I trekked out to CVS and a few other stores to get him some cold medicine and decongestants, having depleted the supply myself for the past several weeks.  Ironically, today was the first day for me in about two and a half weeks where I woke up and felt pretty darn close to normal.  Typical.

Anyway, I do have some photos I took yesterday and Friday.  I played around with several more apps on my phone.  Here they are!

 

I took this photo in PicFrame, and was eager to make my first photo collage.  I didn't edit any of the 4 photos ahead of time and just slapped this together.  I do love all of the different collage frames you can use in this app, and I need to play around more to discover the different effects you can then apply to the frames.

This is my lovely, wonderful friend.  We were at a Sweet 16 Birthday party last night for the daughter of one of our friends.  I ran this photo through Vintique, which is becoming one of my favorite apps.  It's very similar to Instagram but there are more filters and you can add lots of fun frames. 

I took this one using Lumie, which is a lot of fun.  You can add hearts, glitter and all sorts of other effects on top of your photos!

Instagram!

This one was edited in Camera+  and by the way, I'm sipping on a cup of this heavenly Pumpkin Spice Chai right now!

I was so excited about Over that I just had to try it out on any old photo!  I took a blurry one of my cat Seamus (am I really an 85 year old woman who takes photos of her cats to test out different photo apps?  Apparently!)  This app seems like it will be so awesome...you can add text in different fonts and sizes so quickly.  I always see inspirational quotes on landscape photos in Pinterest and I guess people have probably been using this app to create them all along.  Love it!

My Weekend According to iPhone

I have discovered all of the glorious apps that make photo editing a blast. Correction: I've only discovered a few, but they were enough to occupy alllll my time this weekend.

It's Difficult to Make Meatloaf Look Attractive...But Nevertheless I Tried

 

Here:  I made meatloaf.  I totally get that meatloaf is one of those things that usually gets a bad reputation...it definitely isn't seen as gourmet, although there's no denying that it is absolute comfort food.

This recipe has been our go-to meatloaf dish for probably over 5 years now.  Like all good things, it starts with Paula Deen.  But, like with most recipes, it's evolved to become truly our own, especially over the last few years.

I will post the recipe with my alterations and also provide the link to Paula's Original Barbeque Meatloaf here.  There are just about 2 or 3 small ingredient shifts with mine, involving the onion and the vinegar.  Mr. My Blog for Bonnie and I always loved the onion in the meatloaf (the original recipe calls for a full diced onion) but there's no denying that it made the meatloaf pretty crunchy.  The onion wasn't sauteed ahead of time to soften it, and baking it didn't fully do the job.  If you want to continue using an actual onion, I would suggest sauteeing it for about 5 to 7 minutes until it softens and becomes translucent, then adding it to the mixture.  However, one crazy night, I was left with only my wits to help me improvise this ingredient:  I set out everything and discovered that we had forgotten to buy an onion for this.  In a pinch...and I'm slightly embarrassed to admit it....I used Onion Powder.  I realized I had to make up for an entire onion, so I used about 3 tablespoons.  I also threw some garlic powder in for good measure.  It was one of those happy accidents: the meatloaf was the best it had ever been and we've used onion powder ever since!  It took away the crunching texture and made it taste very uniform and smooth, almost like a giant meatball.  Seriously guys, so good.  Oh, and the original recipe also calls for fresh breadcrumbs, but really, have you ever met anyone in life who has time for that?  I use Italian-seasoned bread crumbs, which are way easier and also add more flavor to the meatloaf.

Another alteration involves using Balsamic Vinegar instead of white vinegar.  Again, I was in a pinch and realized I was out of white vinegar so I substituted balsamic, which worked great.  It made the barbeque sauce have a real depth of flavor that it didn't have previously.  

Make this meatloaf.  It is so easy, and it lasts for 2 nights in our house.  It is superb as a sandwich with a slice of sharp cheddar cheese on it.  Better yet, you can prepare it the day before, as I did.  I assembled the entire thing, topped it with the homemade barbeque sauce, then stuck toothpicks in it before covering it with foil and refrigerating (so the foil wouldn't stick to the sauce and make an unholy mess.)  Then Mr. My Blog for Bonnie just baked the entire thing when he got home from work. Couldn't be easier!

BBQ Meatloaf, My Blog For Bonnie Style 

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 pounds ground turkey (we rarely use beef)
• 1 cup Italian-seasoned bread crumbs
• 3 or 4 tablespoons of onion powder
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 (8-ounce) cans tomato sauce
• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix together the turkey, bread crumbs, onion and garlic powders, egg, salt, pepper, and 1/2 cup of the tomato sauce. Form this mixture into a loaf and place it in a shallow pan. Stir together the remaining tomato sauce, balsamic vinegar, sugar, mustard, and Worcestershire. Pour this sauce over the meatloaf. Bake for 1 hour, basting every 15 minutes with the pan juices. 

Evolution of a Photo (or, How I Waste My Time)

Why didn't anyone tell me the iPhone is so addicting?  I'm not a technology person AT ALL and yet I'm having an absolute blast taking photos and discovering new apps.  This series of photos is what I spent doing last night while watching football with my husband.

The original:  I took this photo on my iPhone and it's unedited beyond that.

Then, I ran it through Color Splash, which is one of my favorite photo editing apps.  It converts your photo to black and white and you can add color back into any component.  I think this app will be awesome during the holidays and winter in general:  how cool will it be to have a completely black and white photograph but the only color is from the beautifully lit Christmas tree in the room? 

After running it through Color Splash, I saved the new photo to Instagram.  I opened it in Instagram and ran a filter on top of it, giving me this final photo below: 

I liked it so much that I made it the wallpaper on my phone!  The purple leaves perfectly match the purple-pink of my Otter Box case.  I love fortuitious moments like that! :)

My Own Backyard

I am not an outdoorsy person at all.  You won't catch me camping, not ever.  I never go hiking outside and I even dislike eating outside.  Too many bugs, the breeze blows things over, it's basically just one nightmare after another.  The one exception I make is going to the beach:  if I take a trip to the ocean, I am outside all day, everyday.  The rest of the time, I'm an indoor person.  I come by it honestly:  my dad is a lifelong business traveler and, when talking about camping, his go-to line is always "My idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service."  I inherited that love of creature comforts from my father for sure!!

However, this weekend I continued to be on the mend and decided to go for a walk in my own backyard.  I admit, this was due in large part to my desire to try out my new photo editing apps and kill more time using them!  But when I went outside to snap some photos, I felt so genuinely good about everything. 

For one, it was a beautiful fall afternoon.  Just a little chilly.  For two, even though my husband and I have lived in this neighborhood for nine years, I started seeing things in ways I'd never seen them before.  Usually I'm so busy driving to and from work or some errand that I only notice things peripherally.  Or, I run around my neighborhood while listening to my iPod and dying to hear the woman on my Nike + app say "Congratulations!  You have reached your goal of 2 Miles!" (or 5 K, or 5miles, whatever.)  Just to stroll outside and notice nature slowly, it was lovely.

So I made my way on foot with my iPhone yesterday, crunching through leaves and occasionally letting loose with a dry, racking cough. (hot, I know.)  It was so nice to be in my own backyard looking at the fall. 

It also made me excited about where we live.  My husband and I bought our condo years ago, maybe about 7 months after we were engaged.  It was weeks after I graduated college and I remember having to wait for my second paystub at my new job before we could apply for a mortgage jointly!  Truthfully, we never intended to stay in our "starter place" for so long.  But we really love the area, and I was attached to it sentimentally.  This is was our first home:  where we came home to from our wedding reception, where we changed jobs and careers, where we began the plans for many adventures.  And now, with the housing market being as horrible as it is, we've decided to remain a few years longer before selling.  Sometimes I'm bummed about that because I'm ready for the next big adventure.  But we have all the space we need, we live in a quiet community with great schools and a visible police presence, a cute little downtown and a new library going up.  Plus, out my back door I see things like this:  it's almost like living in a park.

I took this last photo of the moon as a tribute to my kids at school.  I can't tell you how often we're on the playground and they'll point up at the sky and say "Look, Miss Sondra...the moon!" and I always look up and am utterly amazed that they found it; that their little eyes seek out something that's always there but yet is somehow shocking to behold right there in the middle of the day.  It's a good reminder for me to continually be on the lookout for the extraordinary in regular, everyday life.

I think we all need to remember to look for the moon in the middle of a gorgeous, sunny day.

No One Wants to Hear About My Cold

I absolutely love Mindy Kaling.  Her book, "Is Everyone Hanging Out With Me?"  is a great read, completely hilarious but also rife with positive messages.  In one essay, she talks about being sick and how no one wants to hear the story of your cold.  To paraphrase, it's always the same story:  you woke up feeling fine, took a turn for the worst after lunch, and eventually made a rapid recovery.

She's right, hearing about getting people's illness is so boring.  That being said, I have been fighting one of the weirdest viruses of my 31 years for the past 10 days or so, and I am only now starting to come out of it.

I read a quotation once about how we should all be able to feel the way we do about life after we come out of a period of sickness.  In some ways, just feeling like a functioning human being again is its own bliss.  Today, after being absolutely miserable for the past 3 days, just being able to get changed out of my pajamas and go out for breakfast was a monumental victory.  And I'm still not feeling fantastic by any means, I'm just feeling functional.

Finally starting to feel better from this virus, though, has also coincided with me starting to feel better about things in general.  The past few months have been kind of crappy, and today it really hit me that the reason I probably got SO sick (like 7 days or so of feeling kind of bad, followed by a solid 3 or 4 days of feeling and looking like death warmed over) is because I've been allowing stress to creep into every corner of my life.

Let me back up.  I am a naturally anxious and nervous person, and I come by it honestly.  The women in my life are ALL worriers and in love of control. I can't stand situations that I can't exert control over, but a lot of curveballs have come my way and I simply don't have any proverbial horses in the race...I just have to wait and see how everything all plays out.  After about a solid month of random things happening to stress me out, and feeling like I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, it's no wonder I got so ridiculously sick.

What was I stressed about?  Well, over the course of just a month, I discovered that I'll eventually be losing my job.  I'm so blessed and lucky that I have until the end of next summer to truly worry about it, but previous to getting all the final details, we were all on pins and needles wondering just when our jobs would end.  Would it be in a month? 2 weeks? At the end of the year?  The sense of not knowing killed almost all of us (and I can speak for nearly everyone at work since this was such a hot topic of discussion!) And once we found out we have over 9 months, we were relieved, but still, only to a point.  Thinking about going through the job process again, interviewing, starting all over....that just sucks.  It's been in the back of my mind for awhile now, how life next year will be totally different, at least in the employment area.

I mentioned in the previous post that I had a lot of health tests done recently.  Luckily, my bills came nowhere near the $21,000 or so I dreamed I owed, but dealing with what I owe versus when I hit my deductible and how much co-insurance I need to pay has been annoying me on a pretty consistent basis all the same.  Again, I am SO blessed in the scheme of things that I have insurance and I don't owe exactly what the claims would be if I just strolled in off the streets and ordered all this blood work for myself, just for fun.  But I have to admit, going from doctor to doctor and getting test and after test (especially when some of the tests are kind of invasive and embarrassing) takes it out of you.

There have been other little things too, all adding up to make me much less of a happy person than I typically am.  I won't say I've been hugely grumpy, just more bummed lately.  We all go through our personal series of peaks and valleys, and this was definitely a valley.  I see now that the constant stream of worry and upset from mid-September onward contributed to this knock-down-drag-out cold virus.  

And so today, by feeling better from the virus, I resolved to feel better from the worry too.  And I know that sounds as cheesy as can be.  But I just feel so happy not to be confined to the bed, going through boxes of kleenex in a matter of hours and trying to stay awake to watch The Big Bang Theory on TV, that I'm running with this feeling and don't want to put a damper on it by starting to lapse back into worry and stress.

A few other things are making me exquisitely happy too:

~I got the iPhone 5!!!  Woot woot.  It came yesterday, about an hour after I was sent home from my boss, who took one look at me and said "What are you doing here?"  It's embarrassing to admit that this is my first ever smart phone.  My friend Nicole got one a few weeks ago and she warned me that it would change my life and I'd wonder what I ever did without one.  Well, it's been just a little bit over a day and I'm already loving it!  

~Because of the new iPhone, I've already taken wayyyy more photos over the course of a day than I have almost all year.  Previously, I was confined to taking my bulky camera around everywhere when I wanted to take photos, so those occasions were reduced to big parties and events.  Now, I'm taking a constant stream of photos and posting them to Instagram, which I am officially obsessed with!  The iphone camera is super high quality and has photo editing programs right there on the phone, so it's so easy for me to take photos whenever I want.  I'm looking forward to having a camera to chronicle a lot more of everyday life, which is what Instagram seems to be all about.  Yay for the random moments!

~I am in love with the new show Nashville.  I am a HUGE Connie Britton fan, but not much of a country music fan at all.  However, this show is so amazing that I might actually be starting to enjoy country music!  I love, love, love it and I miiiiiight have re-watched the pilot episode about 3 times.  What of it?

~I found out that one of my bestest friends in the whole world is coming home!  My lovely friend Meredith and her family are moving home from Texas in a few months.  Cue your favorite Motown tune and start dancing around your house!  (or am I the only one who spontaneously cuts a rug to oldies?)  I am so thrilled to go back to having Meredith in my own back yard again, as opposed to miles away in Texas.  Bonus: she asked me to fly down there with her in a few months to help pack up a few things, then drive with her and her son from Texas to Ohio!  This will easily be one of the best road trips ever (and most hilarious.)  

~Lastly, we are moving into the holiday season.  I feel like I really need this.  Since summer, 2012 has been kind of a bummer year for my family.  Lots of sad situations happening, random trips to the hospital being taken, and just generally more bad news than good news.  I want to festoon my house in Christmas Glitz, blast "A Motown Christmas" (only the best Christmas album ever...download it, and promptly.) make lots of Christmas treats and send this year merrily on its way out. 

But "Merrily" is key.  I'm shedding the extra stress (or at least trying to!) and aiming to make the next 10 or so weeks of 2012 much happier ones than the past several months have been.  Also, I hereby resolve to make my future blog posts way shorter than this one!!!

 

Assorted Thoughts on an October Monday

This has been an odd and unusual couple of months.  I'm realizing that this blog will definitely be a touch-and-go enterprise, at least for now.  Though I haven't posted in awhile, here are some random thoughts I'm grappling with on this Columbus Day:

~I had a horrible dream last night, one that, in retrospect was really lame and silly but that kept me tossing and turning.  Last week I had some tests done with my doctor (no big deal at all) and I'm curious/freaking out about what my insurance will cover since I've been on a new plan all year.  This year I switched to the low-maintenance plan because previously I really only went to the doctor about once a year for my physical.  So, naturally, as soon as the ink dried on the paperwork for the new plan, I started having bizarre ailments.  Double pinkeye, two bouts of Bronchitis, a diagnosis of asthma after several rounds of pulmonary function tests, and now some tests last week for some unrelated things.  I'm rapidly close to reaching my deductible, when last year I spent probably $25 out of pocket for my yearly physical co-pay.  Bah.  Anyway, I had a dream that I opened the mail and all my tests last week came to $58,000 and I was responsible for paying $22,000 of it.  No idea where that math comes from, and no idea where those figures come from.  Clearly the tests won't have cost THAT much....(right?...) but all the same, I woke up from the dream and was all hot and bothered about it.  I kept freaking out and really didn't sleep well.  Sigh.

~I'm in Christmas mode.  It's been chilly around here lately, and this morning, according to my car when I was on my way to an oil change & servicing, said it was only 40 degrees.  I decided to swing by Jo-Ann's for their Columbus Day sale and randomly bought stuff to make two fabric-wrapped wreaths for the holidays.  We'll see how this goes.

~What's the deal with the show Will & Grace?  Although I'm totally into TV now, back about 10 years ago, I really wasn't.  I was in busy in college and working multiple part-time jobs, and this was before the advent of Tivo and Hulu and shows online in general.  So if you couldn't be right in front of the TV when a show started, you really couldn't watch it.  So I didn't see a lot of shows.  I've since caught some Will & Grace re-runs and really like it so far.  I might have to get hooked and watch the whole series...

~I made chili last night and it was so good!  Tonight, with leftovers, I'm making Frito Pie.  Today I'm also prepping a tray of Jalapeno Popper Macaroni & Cheese.  I found the recipe on Pinterest.  We'll bake it on Tuesday or Wednesday and I'll post the recipe if it's good.  But really, how could it not be?

~I'm off today and then again on Thursday, and Friday I'm leaving work at 3:45 to go to the wedding of a co-worker.  All things considered, this week should basically kick ass.  (furiously knocking on wood to counteract the hex I probably just placed on myself.)