Plans have been Spoiled

Well Pooh!!!  I was going to be so diligent and get my menu planning done Monday evening & post it here yesterday.  Can you believe I didn't???  ha-ha  This week has turned into a rather busy week(unexpectedly).  Sooooo, here's just a glimpse:

Monday - Salisbury Steak & Potatoes (Worked late taking care of a crisis.  I ran to Bible Study pretty quickly after I got home)

Tuesday - Pizza Buffet at our local Pizza place  (Worked late AGAIN - Crisis mode.  Haircut for hubby and hair thinning & trim for daughter)

Wednesday - Y.O.Y.O. (You're on your own!!  Church night)

Thursday - Special treat - taking kids to restaurant of their choice

Friday - Caleb and I will eat out somewhere CHEAP!!

Saturday - Leftovers

Sunday - Eat Out!!

There!!  Still working on getting my entire month planned out.  It's halfway done, just need to finalize it with the family!

Menu Plan Monday

I am putting this up just to let you know I haven't forgotten about it being Menu Plan Monday.  I don't have "restful" Sundays so, I didn't get our family together to make our menu up.  I will be back tomorrow to post my weekly menu.  Sorry!!  I guess I'll just have to be a day late!

Halloween

Well, we all survived the end of October/Halloween/Weekend!!!  Yay us!!  Thought I would share with you all the pictures from the fun time I had with my kids trick or treating!

Lovely Daughter wanted to be SuperGirl this Halloween.

Lovely son wanted to be....well....I really can't tell ya what he is.  He thought this costume was cool because it had glowing glasses under the hood that makes his eyes light up red.  It was kinda cool!!

Starting our Main Street trick or treating.

Supergirl taking down "the ghoul"!!

Still so light out but you can BARELY see his red eyes.

We had such a wonderful time on Saturday!  We started it out by eating at Sonic & taking advantage of the 50 cent corn dogs.  Can't beat a sonic corn dog!!  We left there and began our annual trek up and down main street.  After they got tired of that & the churches that have trunk or treat, we went up to the high school for the NHA Spook House!!  Whoooooo!  What a great night we had!  Hope everyone else did as well!

Friday Fun Facts

Fact #1 - Tamara LOVES blogging and reading other blogs.

Fact #2 - Tamara is a MAJOR copycat when it comes to great ideas or recipes from the blogs she follows.

Fact #3 - I have shared with you several recipes this week & part of last week.

Fact #4 - I must share another one from my friend over at XOXO Trina.  Check it out here.

Look at this DELICIOUS  array of gobbeldy gooeyness...!  WOAH!  This recipe was phenomenal!  My kids even devoured it.  You've got to try this recipe, especially if you like pumpkin.  What a great fall dessert!!  Thanks Trina!

Fact #5 - My youngest son and I made cute little goodie bags for his class last night.  I have to give kudos to Jill Scott at Controlling My Chaos blog.  You can read about her great ideas here.   Here is what we got from her blog.

Fact #6 - I guess I started Halloween a day early.  Being it's Friday and I'm at work, I went ahead and pulled out this:  ha-ha-ha

Corny!!!  I know!  My kids wanted me to do SOMETHING this year for Halloween so, they picked this out for me!  ha-ha!  Just another day at work!!

Fact #6 - I am now going to sign off and go enjoy my upside down pumpkin cake that I brought to work!

Halloween Week Celebration - Day #1

Well, we have officially started our Halloween activities for the week!!  YEEHAW!!  The kids and I went to the Pumpkin Patch last night to pick out some pumpkins so we could spend the evening carving pumpkins together.  What fun!!  Here are a TON few of pictures that I thought I would share with you. 

Andrew thought it was REALLY gross digging out the "guts" of the pumpkin.  Truthfully, it wasn't my favorite part either.  The ice cream scoop helped tremendously!!

After we "gutted" the pumpkins, it was time to get creative!!  I gave the kids some sharpies to draw the faces on the pumpkins before we started cutting.  I thought it would be easier for them to have the drawing as a guide than to just start knifing the poor thing all over!

My daughter being silly for the camera!  I did tell her that this picture was going up on my blog.  Her response?  See the picture below this one!!   Mwah-ha-ha-ha!

This was right after I told her it was going on my blog.  She's saying "Nooooo" in a whiney voice.

Next, it was time to get the serious stuff going!  The KNIVES!  Scary moment for me.  Kind of a thoughtful moment for me, too.  I stood there the whole time supervising them and wondering in my mind if this was a good idea.  Was I an OK mom to give my children knives and let them start mutilating their pumpkins??  Oh well!!  I did it and there are no boo-boos, well at least on the humans of the household (poor pumpkins).  The whole time I was watching my children carve their pumpkins I was thinking about having to come on my blog and write about how we are THAT family.  (Reference to a blog I follow - HILAROUS!!  Check it out.  They do the funniest stuff.  Great stories!!)

THE BIG REVEAL!!!:

Andrew's masterpiece.  Don't ask me what the drawing around the eyes are supposed to be...I HAVE NO CLUE!!

Hannah's Masterpiece!  She wanted hers to have a unibrow - see it above the eyes??

I hope you all are having a wonderful Halloween Week just like us!! 

Cool food on its way this week!!  Check back later!

Dessert Auction

Sunday was a wonderful day!  First to start it off was a great day at Sunday School and church.  We had a great service!!  We hurriedly rushed out of service to go grab a bite of lunch at McAlisters (can you say divine sweet tea??) with several of my friends.  After scarffing our food down like ravenous animals, we rushed home so I could start my final baking for the Dessert Auction.

Can you believe we got out of church, went to eat lunch and made it home by 1:15 so I could start baking???  We did!!  I accomplished it, too!  Not to the perfect standard that I wanted but I did it, nonetheless!  I went to change and immediately started baking.  Here's a preview of what I did:

My FAMOUS Peanut Butter Cup Brownie Bites - YUMM-OHHHHHH!

Don't they just look divine??  They even taste divine!!  Heaven is a little closer when you have these!

I mentioned up in the top of this post that I didn't make some things to that perfect standard that I wanted.  These are what I am speaking of.  No Bake Cookies are soooo tempermental at times!  First of all, I knew it was going to be a bad batch when I ran out of Hershey's Cocoa and had to use Nestle's Cocoa.  These cocoas are definitely NOT THE SAME!!!  I am a Hershey's girl all the way!!!  I guess in my flusteredness (a word??) I let the mixture cook a tad too long on the stove.  Not the usual dark, shiny gobble up goodness I usually produce!  I did tell the lucky auction winner that I was going to make them another batch.

Can you tell what my favorite dessert is???

Oh YES!  Had to have a few for taste testing!  Plus a few came out of the pan a little mangled!  BUMMER!

All in all, our Dessert Auction was a HUGE success!!  The most we have raised EVER!  We had over $8,000.00 raised by auctioning off several desserts.  It was sooo much fun!  I must say that these lovely brownies of mine went for $200.00!!!  WOAH!  Can you believe?  We even had a dessert go for $500.00.  Somebody wanted a certain dessert REALLY BAD!!  What a great time was had by all!  If you would like to know more about where our funds go, you can read about Speed The Light here.

God bless all out there!  Have a great last week of October!!

Menu Plan Monday

MONDAY - Pizza

TUESDAY - Pork Tenderloin with Mashed potatoes and Peas

WEDNESDAY - YOYO (You're on your own!)

THURSDAY - Beef Stroganoff

FRIDAY - Leftovers

SATURDAY - Hot Dogs (it's halloween!!)

SUNDAY - EAT OUT!!

That about wraps it up here.  For more menu planning ideas please see The OrgJunkie.  Have a blessed day!

Birthday Blitz

We have had a very busy day today in the Conner-Mock blend!!  My younger two kids are at their dad's this weekend and I have my oldest son with me.  It is his birthday next week so we spent the entire day celebrating HIS DAY.

First celebration of the day was that we got to sleep in.  YAY!!  Who doesn't count that as a celebration?  We slowly got around and about 2 o'clock this afternoon we went out to eat where Caleb wanted.  He chose Logan's....YAY BOY!!  I must admit that I played the "oh I don't feel like eating CiCi's Pizza" card.  He initially wanted that...bad mother I am!

After lunch/supper (lupper??) we went shopping.  He had money from his Mamaw and it's just easier for me to take him shopping and let him pick out what he wants.  He's so quiet and never really asks for much so I never know what to get him.  15 is a strange age!  He wanted a new XBox game and the XBox live card for a few months.  Soooo, we went to Game Stop and were successful!  How lucky could we be to get the gifts he wanted at the first place we went?

He then had asked for a big cookie as his birthday cake.  After going to Game Stop we walked on over to Wal-Mart (have I mentioned I hate that place??).  As usual, it was a mad house and I was only going in to get about 3 items.  It took forever!!  YUCK!

We made it home a few hours after going to a few more stores.  When we got home, we immediately started with the cake!!  I had to pull out the camera and take a few pics.  He didn't care for me doing that but oh well!  He doesn't have any friends or family here where we live so, it becomes a little bit of a small birthday celebration.  I apologize for the PG-13 rated pics.  I couldn't get him to put on a shirt!  What a boy!!

All in all we had a great day.  I worried that because we didn't have a great big celebration that he would be a little disappointed.  I think he prefers this to a lot of chaos!  Can't believe my baby is 15 & will be driving in 6 months!!  WOAH!

Hope everyone had a blessed day and even more blessed Sunday!  Till another time!

Fun Friday!

How about a freebie on Friday??  Barnes and Noble is offering a free (kids size) hot cocoa and a small cookie for free on Saturday (tomorrow) October 24.  All you have to do is go here and print out the coupon for the free items.  How fun!! 

What's better than a cup of cocoa, a cookie and a book?  Probably a lot of things BUT it's FREE!!!!

The Best Chocolate Cake Ever!!!

I LOVE TO BAKE!!!  Do you like to bake, also??  I recently stumbled onto a fabulous blog - Kevin and Amanda .  I have been very impressed with her recipes and her photography talents!  Not to mention she gives you some cool fonts and scrapbook things.  I'm all about that!

I want to share with my friends this unbelievable chocolate cake recipe that she has posted.  I'm going to post the recipe here but PLEASE go to her link here to see her directions.

Here it is:

THE BEST Chocolate Cake EVER

1 box devil’s food cake mix
1 package Jello instant chocolate pudding mix
1 cup sour cream
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups mini semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a VERY large bowl (4 qt), mix together everything except chocolate chips. Batter will be thick. Stir in the chocolate chips. Pour batter into cake pan of choice (I normally use two 9-inch pie pans). For cooking time, I use the cooking times on the back of the devil’s food cake box as a guide and usually add 10 mins to whatever it says. Then I do the toothpick check, and if it’s not done, I check on it every 5 mins after that. :) It usually takes around 45 mins for two, 9-inch pie pans.
 
LET ME TELL YOU HONEY!!!!!  This is by far one of THE best chocolate cakes I have ever made!!  I did try her icing also that she has listed.  I will probably tweek it just a little next time I make it.  It was good (don't get me wrong) it just seemed a little too thick for me.  I'll have to remember to thin it a little bit next time!
 
How can you go wrong with a big piece of chocolate cake to complement your lunch, end your day OR begin your day (BAD I KNOW!!).  I hope all enjoys this!  I dare you to try it! ;-)