Livin' the Dream in Lima

Well, friends, we made it! To the most Magical Place on Earth! And they even have the inter-webs here... although no wireless, just ethernet cords. And you have to pay $9.95 for 24 hours of access. So I thought that since I have internet for just 24 hours, I should make the most of my time and blog about our adventures thus far. We met Mickey & Minnie! Except the internet is super-slow and it took about 12 minutes to upload this one photo. Not so magical. So I guess this is all you're gonna get.  But, we've been having loads of fun--Tower of Terror, Rockin' Rollercoaster, American Idol (no, we didn't win), dinner in Italy, and French pastries while watching the fireworks. Ya know, just the usual. ;-) And now we're off to the Magic Kingdom! Have a great week everyone!

Okay... so I set out to make these granola bars to take with us on our travels tomorrow. Because our flight leaves at 12:28pm, and I'm pretty sure they don't provide you lunch on a 2-hr trip to Florida. Though, I could be mistaken.  The only thing is... they only kind of turned out as granola bars. More like granola chunks.  Cutting them into perfect squares proved to be quite impossible. We'll just call them rustic? But, the wonderful combination of peanut butter and dark chocolate can't be beat. I found these new dark chocolate morsels a few weeks ago, and re-discovered them in my baking cabinet today. Think itty bitty Dove dark chocolates, in chocolate chip form. So so good. I combined these with some oats, honey, chopped peanuts, and peanut butter. Keepin' it simple. With real  ingredients! A quick bake in the oven, and you have granola bars chunks! Delicious with a glass of milk or crumbled over some yogurt. Or ice cream. (Shhh..

I did this once back in February , so here goes! Reasons Why I'm Happy Today 1. The wonderful invention of skype . I got to talk with one of my BFF's who currently lives in South Korea (go read about her life here ) this morning! For a glorious 52 minutes and we even got to see each other. It was practically like sitting in the same room. I even gave her a tour of our new house. 2. My mom gave me her Kindle . Okay, she didn't give  it to me. She's letting me borrow it for our trip to Disney. (We leave Saturday!) It will be so nice to read on the plane without lugging around actual books. Let's just see if I can figure out how to work it before then. I wonder how many books I could charge to her amazon.com  account without her realizing? 3. This week is SUPER DOUBLE COUPONS at my local grocery store. Usually they only double coupons up to $0.50. This week they double coupons up to $1.00! This means I got $58 of groceries for just $34, a 41.3% savings

Last weekend, my Business Man and I hosted a fiesta for some of our friends in the Bean Town. While everyone enjoyed the food, I think dessert was the biggest hit. (Surprise, surprise.) We had brownies (from a box, the horror!) topped with chocolate ganache, and fruit pizza . Fruit pizza is most definitely my "go-to" summer dessert. Since it's the official 1st day of summer, I thought I'd share the recipe! It's delicious without being too heavy or rich. And it's most definitely healthy, because you are eating fruit, right? The recipe I use is my mom's... she's been using it for years. It starts with a basic sugar cookie base, topped with a cream cheese-whipped topping, and then all the fruit your little heart desires! I usually go with strawberries, blueberries, kiwi, pineapple, and mandarin oranges. But raspberries are really good, too. Even better when you pick the fruit yourself! (Picking berries on our honeymoon last July.)

Yesterday was one of my absolute favorite road races of the year... the Steamboat Classic ! Even better, this year some of my BFF's from college (Talen & Jen) came, and we had loads of fun. (By the way, my Business Man & I traveled home this weekend for fun and to visit with family.) We hadn't seen each other in nearly 6 months, so it was great to spend time together doing one of our favorite things: running . The Steamboat Classic (located in Peoria, IL) has two race options--the 4-mile and 15km. It's touted as the "World's Fastest 4-Mile" (aka elites come from many different nations to race it) and "Illinois' Toughest 15km". We decided to do the 15km (9.3 miles) to maximize our running time together. Hehe. I somehow managed to "forget" to tell the girls that there is a huge hill that we would have to climb twice in the 15km. But they didn't seem to mind too much. We had a blast... just running for fun and talk

Like that's not a mouthful, haha. So, a few months ago, I applied to host a " House Party " for Breakstone's Sour Cream. Basically, different brands offer "party packs" to people, who then in turn open their homes to friends & family to try out new brands and products. Well, I got chosen, and we had the party on Sunday night! Breakstone's has come out with several new flavored sour creams and sour cream dips, and we were supposed to try them out. Unfortunately, our local grocery stores only carried two of the seven varieties, so we only got to try two of the new flavors (chipotle and ranch).  We decided to go with a Mexican Fiesta theme, since we were sampling chipotle  sour cream. Yes, it's a bit of a stretch. But everyone loves Mexican food! Chips & salsa! We served our favorite cherry salsa from Door County. Here's what was on the menu: Chips & Salsa Roasted Corn Dip  (<-- this is delicious!) Chicken & S

Yesterday's Surprise: So, as you know, yesterday was my Business Man's birthday. He turned a whopping 24 years old! I mentioned that I had a few surprises up my sleeve, and one of them was that I co-conspired with his team members at the office to throw him a potluck lunch. I brought our favorite chicken salad (with Hawaiian buns, of course!) and s'mores cookies. The lovely ladies also brought in goodies to make a complete feast. I was able to sneak in the back door without him even noticing, and set everything up in one of the back rooms. He was actually very surprised! (Especially considering he stopped at home to grab his phone charger when I was making the chicken salad that morning. I just told him I was making ice cream cake. And he believed it, even though I was chopping celery at the time. Celery ice cream cake? Yum?) For dessert, I made S'mores Cookies . (Recipe from Picky Palate .) These were good!! A little tricky to make, but very cute.  It'