How to Make Easy Dog Treats

Okay, I promised you a dog treat recipe so here it is. And did I mention that it is super simple dog treat recipe? Even if you aren't Betty Crocker or Martha Stewart I have complete faith that anyone can make these.

There is a grand total of 3 ingredients! I would also say there is a pretty good chance you have these ingredients on hand. Are  your ready??

Here it is:

Ingredients:

1 cup milk

1 cup peanut butter

2 cups flour

(Now the hard part, but not really.)

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients together.
Roll dough out on a floured counter top (so it doesn't stick).

Cut dough into dog treat shapes, or if you're like me, little flowers and hearts because you don't have a dog bone cookie cutter. (Trust me, your dog won't care what they look like.)

Place on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 8 minutes or so, depending on the size of your treats.

I just baked them until they were a little more well done than a human cookie. Basically, not rock hard but not fall apart chewy. (It's an exact science obviously).

Take out of the oven and let cool before serving to your dog. He will love you forever.

I use these a lot as training treats since they are little and I don't feel bad giving Gunnar a handful of them. He doesn't mind either. Let me know if you have questions and enjoy!

First Time at the Farmers Market

With my new job comes this lovely little perk called "summer hours". Basically, Monday through Thursday you work an extra hour each day and then you get every other Friday off. For a grand total of 5 Friday's off throughout summer. It's fantastic! 

I enjoyed my first Friday off this past Friday. I spent the day catching up on cleaning. Boring I know, but I did have family coming over on Saturday for a Fathers Day cookout so I figured I better make the main floor presentable. 

Besides wasting my whole day doing laundry and cleaning, I decided to do some baking to take to the local Farmer's Market. Since I have a fairly large garden and I'm hoping to take some extra produce to the Farmers Market later this summer I wanted to check it out before hand. 

I baked up some super simple peanut butter dog treats as well as some super delicious human treats that I like to call chocolate chip cookies. (P.S. I'm a CCC addict. The first step is admitting the problem right?!) 

Guess which is which!

I decided to give my  Grandma, who is a notorious bread maker in my home town, a call and see if she wanted to bake a few loaves I could sell for her. She contributed 8 still warm from the oven loaves of bread. My mom also added in some of her beautifully iced sugar cookies and I threw in a couple jars of my homemade apple butter. I was all set and ready for the sale. 

Since you only have to pay 5 bucks for a space I figured the worst case scenario was I lost 5 dollars and gained a few extra pounds eating the cookies. Luckily the FM had a decent crowd during the 5-7 time period and I sold 6 loaves of Grandma's bread and several packages of both kinds of cookies and dog treats plus almost all the apple butter.

The next day my parents were having a garage sale so my mom sold almost all the rest of my homemade goodies. Now don't get me wrong, I still ate my fair share of cookies but I'm okay with that:)

I spent the rest of the long weekend hanging out at home cleaning up the house and having a cookout. My mom and I did manage a mini movie marathon and watched The Fault in Our Stars and Maleficent on Sunday. I haven't read The Fault in Our Stars yet which I hate because I always prefer reading the book first but I thought the movie was excellent and I'm pretty sure there wasn't a dry eye by the end of it. Maleficent was also good but not quite what I was expecting. Overall I would recommend TFIOS if you can only pick one. 

Hope you all had a good weekend! Maybe I'll share my dog treat recipe soon. 

Super Simple (Healthy) Salsa

Since summer is winding down (I realize it's fall but I don't want to let go of summer quite yet) I decided to share one of my super simple recipes for salsa (or pico de gallo, whatever you want to call it). Bonus, it's healthy!

We've still got a few tomatoes so I made up a batch last weekend and I'm hoping to make more this weekend. Crossing my fingers for more tomatoes.

Anyhow....gather your ingredients. 

Ingredients

Tomatoes (duh)

Cilantro

Lemon (lemon juice works fine too)

Onion

Garlic Powder

Sea salt (prefer the sea but regular works)

Pepper

(If you want to get crazy you can add a jalapeno, but I'm not a fan so I leave it out.)

Hello gorgeous.

Dice your onion. I use about a quarter of a medium sized onion.

Dice your tomato. Two big or 3-4 small-ish ones.

Throw your tomato and onion into a bowl. 

Dice up your cilantro. About a tablespoon.

Add to tomatos and onions.

Squeeze lemon juice onto the mixture.
(Add jalapeno hear if you want.)

Add about a tsp of garlic powder.
I use powder instead of salt so we don't get too much sodium.

Generously add pepper if your husband is a pepper lover like mine.
Plus a pinch of salt or so (you can always add more later). 

Mix it up.

Admire how beautiful and summery it looks.

Next, put it in the fridge for about an hour so the flavors can mingle. 

Most important step right here....taste it! Does it need anything else?
Add it in and stir it up. 

Eat with chips or on a taco salad or off the spoon.
There's really no wrong way to eat this stuff.
(We like to call nachos a taco salad in our house. Sounds healthier!)

That's all there is to it! See, told ya it was easy. 

Now hurry and make some before all the tomatoes are gone. 

Linking up at Tell it Tuesday with One Fine Wire. 

I Gained 5 Pounds

I'm BAAACK!! 

In case you didn't notice I've been MIA the past week, I would like to point it out now (P.S. thanks to Kala for providing the one and only post while I was gone). Seth and I got home from our cruise Saturday, which also happened to be my 27th Birthday. Dang, I'm old. 

I'm pretty sure I'm still recovering from a fantastic trip and a long fun-filled 3 day weekend though, so I don't have a whole lot to ramble about right now. 

Here's a few highlights from the vacay.

• I gained 5 pounds because I ate approximately 7 meals a day (minimum). 
  
  
  
• I was a terrible blogger and only managed to take photos of a couple meals. I was too busy eating them. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The long island ice teas they serve on the Beach in St. Thomas are straight alcohol. Nothing else. This girl was duuunnnne.
  
  
  
• The free donut shop on the ship could have caused a lot more damage if they had been Krispy Kremes.
  
  
  
• Our ship made other ships look like toys when we were parked next to them at port.

  

  This photo doesn't even do it justice.

• We were offered illegal drugs no less than 3 times while visiting St. Maarten.
• I ran 2.4 laps around the running track on the ship exactly one time which equals 1 mile. Then I ate more food.
  
• I somehow managed to spend $0 on souvenirs but dropped way to much change on a couples massage. 
• No matter where we were going we managed to end up on the wrong side of the ship 9 times out of 10. It was huge. That's what she said.
• I thought about work 0 total times until we got back to KS and I realized no tornadoes had passed through the area to destroy it. 
• We saw lots of itsy-bitsey-teeny-weeny-bikinis on not so itsy-bitsey-teeny-weeny people. And WAY too many Speedos. Unless your an Olympic swimmer, the answer is NO to the Speedo.

And finally...

• Two different people asked Seth and I if we were brother and sister. No, and WTF?

I hope to write more about the trip later in the week. I'm sure it will be all the extra stuff you find incredibly boring, but I want to remember it when I'm old. So, feel free to read and roll your eyes or skip it and come back later:)

One very important final note:

MY HUSBAND FINALLY LIVES IN THE SAME HOUSE AS ME!!!! 

7 Quick Takes {13}

1. My husband saved a life yesterday. I thought it deserved its own post so you get two today. Yay!

2. Leaving work early for a wedding today. Yay again!!

3. We leave for vacation next Friday. Yay Yay Yay!

4. Okay, done with the yay's now...I think. Is it normal that I eat more than my husband? I picked up some BBQ for dinner last night and downed my sandwich and all the fries before Seth had finished his sandwich and half his fries. Then he never even ate the second half of the fries. I was mighty tempted to finish them for him (which would have been way too easy) but instead I fed them to Gunnar since I have to wear a swimsuit in a week. Will power at it's finest. 

5. It's back to school week near my neck of the woods. Basically that means my facebook feed is slammed with photo after photo of my "friends" kids on their first day back to school. Since I'm sad I don't get to go back to school and I have yet to produce offspring...here's a nice little throwback for you of my back to school days. Be jealous of that school uniform! Did I ever mention I spent my elementary years at a school in my grandma's basement?? Story for another day. 

Pippi Longstocking would be proud of those braids. Mmhmm.

6. This morning when I went outside to leave for work it felt almost like fall. What the bejeezus? I feel like it hasn't even been summer yet. Especially after that nightmare of a snowstorm winter we had. Good think I will be soaking up some sun in a tropical paradise soon. Then I can come home to fall and apple cider donuts and pumpkin spice candles. Oh yum. Maybe fall isn't too bad....

7. Never really knew what Vine was...still don't really know what Vine is. You should probably watch this video though that is a compilation of the best Vine videos of 2013 so far. It's 11 minutes but I swear it doesn't seem that long at all. Happy Friday. ENJOY!

Linking up at Conversion Diary.

Have I put on weight??

I'd say I had a semi-average weekend. What else is new?

After work Friday I stopped by to check out the progress on my parents new house and got suckered into helping carry tile. Ugh, that stuff is heavy. I managed to leave in time to stop at the local farmers market to check out the goods people had on display. Since I can't carry cash with me, or I spend it, I only had a measly dollar in my pocket which I used to splurge on some homemade dog treats for Gunnar. Spoiled much? 

Since I have my very own jungle garden I just went home and picked my own produce. Good thing or I'd be in the poor house. I've got my own tomatoes that cost way less than $2.50 a lb. Is that really the going rate?? If so, I easily picked 25 bucks of tomatoes from my garden Friday night. 

Obviously I sliced those puppies (tomatoes, not real puppies) up and fried some bacon to make myself a lovely bacon tomato sandwich (or 2). Best summer meal ever. I know most people add lettuce to make this a bLt but who are we kidding people? Do you really think that one measly slice of lettuce is making this meal healthy? I assure you it's not. Just replace the lettuce with another slice of bacon and be thankful that you are enjoying those savory bites of fried pork before your heart explodes. 

Summer on a plate my friend.

Then I sorted my coupons and made my shopping list for my price match extravaganza the next day. Maybe watched a little DVR because I'm cool and can do that now.

Saturday I spent an unnecessary amount of time price matching groceries at Wal-Mart. Apparently every effin person in the little ole town of Lawrence, KS (aka Jayhawk territory) was back to school shopping. A living nightmare. Literally. I managed to grab the items on my list and make it out in right under two hours. Not sure if I would consider that a win or a lose. Fortunately Target housed a little more sanity as I swung in to pick up a few un-neccessary (shirts) items.

I ventured back to my parents house in the afternoon to play with a cute baby, my parents watch, when his parents are on call. My mom and I went to church and then I gotta to spend more time playing with the other baby, that my mom nanny's for. The little girl is just precious and she let me hold her so I was pretty excited. Baby fever? Maybe. 

Apparently someone else must think I have baby fever too, or possibly just thinks I've put on a few lbs, cause these dang magazines all showed up to my house last week....

#notpregnant #toomanyblts

Sunday was pretty lackadaisical with another meal of blts while meeting with my church's other youth group leaders. Followed by lots of couch lounging and maybe a nap. I finished off the evening by doing a photoshoot for a high school senior and catching up on my favorite mind numbing (dumbing??) shows.

Oh, and I found $20 in a parking lot so that pretty much makes the whole weekend a win right?

Hell-o Mr. Jackson!

4th of July Crafting

It's FRIDAY!! Okay, so it's not really Friday but it's my last work day of the week which essentially means, it's Friday. If it's not your Friday, please excuse my exuberance in this post.

I'm ready for 4 beautiful days of nothing but fun times on fun times on fun times. Hubs will be on his way home from Texas in a few short hours and then we are heading over to a 3rd of July party to get the weekend started right.

We've got a great weekend planned in Kansas City, Kansas City here we come (feel free to sing along.) Look forward to that update next week. 

Well, on to business. 

As I think I have already explained. I love the 4th. A lot. So, I've been doing a few crafts to help me celebrate. 

A lovely little banner wreath on our front door. 

Then I painted a few colorful blocks. 

Mod Podged and freehanded a couple letters...

And BOOM! A patriotic bathroom. (nevermind the fuzzy-ness)
Find the patriotic printable here. 

Looking forward to an amazing weekend. Remember, don't shoot your eye out!

4th of July Preview

I recently decided that July is probably one of my favorite months. I don't think I could pick just one month to be a favorite so I will stick with one of my favorites. 

What's not to love about July? (Besides, the sunburns, sweltering heat, and someone stealing the last pool chair, obviously.)

It's the middle of the summer and the livings easy. The days just seem to slide on by without a care in the world. 

The month starts out with a bang (literally) when the Fourth of July arrives. The 4th makes me happier than an ADD kid with a paper bag full of explosives and a fistful of matches. In case you're wondering, that's pretty damn excited. 

Around these parts we have a huge family reunion with my grandpa's family (on my mom's side). My grandpa is one of 10 kids and each of those kids now has kids, grandkids and great grandkids and they all show up. Just my Grandpa alone has 7 kids (6 are married), with 34 grandkids (lots are married now) and probably a dozen or so great grandkids. And I'm sure you're confused so, let's just say, there's a lot of people. 

The tables in the garage are piled high with KFC chicken, pasta salads, baked beans, fruit and veggie trays, and more desserts than the home page of Pinterest. Before eating we all gather underneath my Grandma's flag pole and say the Pledge of Allegiance and sometimes break into a hearty rendition of America the Beautiful (Oh beautiful for spacious skies...) because we're patriotic like that. 

After the fingers have been licked and the beers have been cracked, we recline in our lawn chairs to catch up on the good ole' days and make fun of each other. Once we can discretely re-button our top button, half the group heads across the street to the local ball fields to start up a friendly game of softball. The in-laws vs. the out-laws. The other half squeezes our fat butts slips gracefully into swimsuits to go relax in the local pool where the softball half later joins us. 

The evening arrives before we know it and we are back at the food table devouring munching the leftovers and bringing out more food for the people who decided to stay for the fireworks. Our chairs are packed onto the bug-free driveway and the little kids are shoved onto flammable blankets, with sparklers in hand. We all break our necks staring into the sky as we ooh and aah at the city fireworks display as well as the competing neighbors dynamite sticks.  It's a literal surround sound of explosions and terror and utter delight as we soak in the glorious days of summer. 

If that didn't get you all nostalgic for the most patriotic day of days, check out these 15 people who probably love America a little more than you do. 

I dare you to argue this guy doesn't love Americuh!

I'll tell my (Army Sergeant) brother you said "thanks" for fighting for your freedom to enjoy this great country we proudly call America!

He's single ladies:) (and back in the states)

Growing a Garden

Remember when my garden looked like this? All sweet and innocent in nice pretty rows?

Barely sprouting out of the ground?

Well, it's been a month and we have had lots of rain. Which means, my garden grows right along with the weeds. So, it turned into a jungle. 

Literally, a jungle. 

Monday, I busted out the tiller, my garden gloves and an empty wheelbarrow and went to work. After about two hours I had a pile of weeds, muddy knees and some satisfaction.

This picture doesn't even do the amount of weeds justice. It was A LOT.

My jungle is starting to resemble a garden again.

Thank goodness. I was about to spray it all with roundup and say, "let's try again next year."

So far, I have been able to pick, and eat, some lettuce, spinach, onions and my husband had a few Serrano peppers. It's coming along slowly but surely. Not that slow really but it sure seems like it.

We have lots of tomatoes that are waiting to turn red and I'm pretty sure I planted too many green beans. Oh well, I guess I will have some to share since Seth doesn't seem too excited about them. 

Fresh food from your own garden is by far the best. I guarantee it!