7 Quick Takes {18}

1. Chilly morning in the land of oz. Winter better slow it's roll because I need some more fall before the Wicked Witch of the North decides it's time to freeze. Cold+Julie=unhappy eskimo. Ironic since my blog name includes the word freezing? Maybe.

Since it was cold last night as well, I decided to make some soup. I must say it turned out pretty fan-freaking-tastic. Not sure what kind of soup I would call it except maybe a cheesy potato (plus some extra veggies so I wouldn't feel so guilty about eating such an unhealthy soup). Maybe soup making is my real calling in life. Thoughts to ponder. 

That's a big bowl of healthy right there!

2. You know how sometimes when you're texting two people at the same time and you accidentally call your blog friend "lovey" and let her know that you're going to shower... instead of your husband. Yeah, I don't know what that's like either. 

Better than when I called another RA sexy...

3. It's Maple Leaf Festival weekend! Yippee skippy. I'm pretty pumped to get some good food and peruse the hand-crocheted kitchen towels that this fine festival has to offer. Since when did everyone with a Pinterest account think their crafts are sellable? No, I wouldn't like to buy your mason jar modge podged like a pumpkin. I can modge podge one myself, thank you very much (after making homemade modge podge). 

via

4. My parents are FINALLY moving into their house on Sunday. Praise you Jesus! It's taken a long time to build and many a problems along the way, but it's just about there. One more coat of sealer on the floors and they can start moving stuff in. Their marriage survived so I'll chalk that up to a win. 

Loving their tile backsplash!

5. Apparently Gunnar fell of the wagon and felt the need to eat some mail again. Obviously, the neighbors books delivered to their porch seemed like a good idea. Just when we thought he had outgrown it. 

6. Seth got home yesterday so we will get to celebrate our anniversary this weekend. Yay! Probably means dinner at one of our usual places. We are SO exciting! Two years down and zero anniversary days actually spent together. Maybe next year. I wonder if it's still safe to eat our cake topper that's buried in the freezer....

7. I'm on week 3 of only drinking two pops a week. Yes sir-ee. I'm doing pretty freakin darn amazing if I do say so myself. Now if only I can cut back on all the other unhealthy stuff I eat. Refer to numero uno. 

Happy weekend friends. 

Linking up with Jen.

7 Quick Takes {11}

Zippety-do-da it's F-F-F-Friday again!

Which means, you can find me linking up over at Jens. 

1. I always get so ridiculously excited for Friday's and I don't even care. It's also August which just happens to mean it's my Birthday month!! Hopefully I don't get too annoying because my Birthday isn't until the 31st so I get to drag it out for the whole month. Seth just loves it when I do that:)

2.You know what else this lovely little month happens to bring? A vacation! And boy do I need it. Seriously, it has been way too long. I'm considering trying to talk Seth into moving to Europe so we can get 6 weeks of vacay like they do over there. Somehow I don't think this will be quite as easy as the DVR was. Anyway, one week in the beautiful Caribbean should tide me over for a couple months. 

3. I'm making pickles this weekend! Canning them that is. I've been stockpiling all of my little pickling cucumbers for the past week and I'm hoping they turn out okay. Canning just makes me feel like a little Betty Crocker. 

4. I have what I like to call a Love-Hate relationship with paying bills. I hate paying bills like water and electric because I know they are never going to go away. Ever. I do love that they are relatively small bills though in the grand scheme of things. I hate paying bills like my car payment, Seth's student loans and the house payment because these are much larger bills to pay. However, I do love knowing that someday these bills will be paid off and we won't have to pay them again. Plus what's not to love about transportation, education and home sweet home? #AmericanDream

5. Every year, since graduating, I can't help but suppress the smothering feeling of wanting to go back to school every time the back to school supplies hits the shelves. I seriously love and always loved school. Those beautifully sharpened pencils, stark white notebook pages and un-chewed pen caps get me Every. Single. Time. Maybe someday I'll go back for a teaching degree so I can stay in school the rest of my life while bringing home a paycheck. Enjoy it while you can kids. Before you know it you will be wishing for nap times and dreaming of the day when your biggest decision was the slide or swing-set. 

Stay in school, you fool.

6. I think I've previously mentioned that my mom is a nanny for a little one year old girl named Charlotte. She is pretty much adorable as can be and my mom texts me a photo just about every day of Charlotte's OOTD. Let's just say this girl has some seriously cute clothes. Since she's not mine I don't want to post photos of her but trust me. Anyways... here's part of the text convo from my mom that makes me smile:)

7. I stopped by my Grandma's yesterday during lunch. Her garden tomatoes haven't turned red yet so I dropped off some of mine for her with some additional produce. Conveniently enough she had just finished baking bread and gave me a loaf. Warm-out-of-the-oven to-die-for homemade bread. I guarantee Grandma has given out thousands of loaves of bread in her life and I have had many of them. However, a lot of them are frozen (cause it freezes beautifully) and I have to wait for them to thaw. I forgot how amazing it is straight out of the oven though. Grandmas are the best!

Some of my haul for the week.

Carb gold!

Blueberry Lemon Cookies

Well as I posted on Friday, I was in the mood to bake something. So that's just what I did. I made it home in time to take a little one hour siesta, because I was draggin', and my husband wouldn't be home for awhile still. 

I woke up with an even stronger urge to bake so my husband walked in the door to Betty Crocker mixing up a batch of Blueberry Lemon Cookies! I'm so domestic. Not. 

In true wife fashion I managed to ask my husband to fix my broken garbage disposal since I was going crazy without it. Apparently I broke it by dropping a pop tab in it? No idea how that happened, but I guess it's good to know that if my hands ever getting mangled I just need to drop a pop tab down the drain to stop it. 

My cookie making was obviously interrupted approximately 5 times while I helped "fix" the disposal. Let me tell you, no matter how clean you think the inside of the disposal is, it's not. It's actually DISGUSTING. So much for that baking soda/vinegar mix from earlier in the week. 

Well, I finally managed to finish the cookies after washing my hands 27,000 times.  I thought they turned out DELISH! 

Here's the recipe that I adapted to these...

Cookies

2 cups blueberries (mine were some I got a few months ago and threw in the freezer, they freeze beautifully)

3/4 cup crisco

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 zested lemon

2 eggs

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt (all I had was sea salt, worked fine)

1/2 cup milk

Preheat your oven to (about) 375°F.

Mix Crisco and white and brown sugars together.

Add zested lemon and eggs to Crisco/sugar mixture and beat well.

Before the beating.

Slowly add in dry ingredients and milk. (I had to add in a little more flour because I thought they were way too runny. I would probably not add the milk the next time.)

Gently fold in the blueberries. 

I added LOTS of blueberries. 

Drop the cookie dough onto cookie sheets by the spoonful. (I swear by airbake pans and would never use anything else for cookies)

Ignore this awful photo. 

Bake for 10 minutes or until they look right. They will not turn brown on the top, mine didn't anyway. 

These have the glaze described below. 

Let cool.

Devour. Or...

Glaze

I added a little drizzled glaze (I'm sure that's the scientific baking term for it anyway) that was super easy.

1. Pour some powdered sugar into a bowl.
2. Add lemon juice squeezed from zested lemon.
3. Stir. 
4. Add more powdered sugar or lemon juice until it's a nice runny consistency that can easily drizzle. You can also use milk if you run out of lemon juice. 

Stuff your face because they are basically healthy with all that fruit;) They taste like summer and have more of a cakey texture than cookie. It's all good!

Realize that your husband doesn't like blueberries so he isn't a fan of cookies with blueberries. News to me unless he thought they were gross, but I assure you they are not. He is just picky. 

Next time I will probably mix half of the batter with blueberries and the other half with raspberries or strawberries so he will eat them since he loves lemon. 

Enjoy! 

Linking up with Give Me the Goods:)