Easy Corn

I saw this on pintrest and thought I would try it out because I had all of the ingredients and it is super easy and fast.

Ingredients:
Frozen Corn
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

Turn your oven onto broil high.

spread your corn out on a baking sheet (I used a pizza sheet because our cookie ones were too big).

Sprinkle the corn with olive oil and salt and pepper.

Put in the oven for 5 minutes or until slightly brown. I liked it when it was just in for 5 minutes, they came out tasting like corn right off of the cob but Ryan liked them better when they had more of a roasted taste to them and that takes a couple more minutes just until they start to brown a little bit.

Thats it!!

Packing for travel and for moving

Before we moved and went on vacation I saw a couple pieces of advice for packing for both kinds of situations on pintrest and I tried out both of these tips.

The first tip is for packing for a trip. The tip was a tip for packing clothes for babies and children. When looking at the tip I really thought it was a good idea and I was excited that I had seen it before I had left.
The tip is to pack your children's outfits all individually in gallon plastic ziploc bags before you pack them into the suitcase. This was really helpful because instead of it taking me 5-10 minutes to find her outfits every morning all I had to do was reach in our bag and find a plastic bag and I had a full outfit all ready for my baby girl.
The downside of doing this is that it does take up more space, well it did for me because I had a duffle bag and then I switched to a backpack halfway through my vacation to downsize. With this you have to pack all of their clothes in the main part of the bag you are packing in but normally I would pack socks and head bands and jewlery in the side pockets instead.
Although it did take up a little more space I would totally do this again because it was a time saver.

The second tip is a tip for packing clothes for a move. I hate moving because it sucks to have to pack up all your stuff and lug it to where you now need it and then unpack it just knowing that you will probably be packing it back up again in only a year or two so when I saw this next tip I was ready to see if it would really make things easier for me.
This tip is to put a plastic garbage bag over your clothes that are hanging up in the closet so you only have to take the bag off once you get to the new place and then put the already hung up clothes in the closet. This tip looks like this:

The good thing about this is that it does make it so you don't have to unhang and then rehang all of your clothes. The downside is that it takes time to make a hole in the top of the bag and put it over the clothes and with how many clothes my husband and I have we would have used so many bags and when packing this in the car it takes up a lot more space than stuffing all your clothes in a box.
So I would not do this again, I actually ended up only doing this to these clothes and all the rest of my clothes I just took off of the hangers and put in a box and then hung up when we got to the apartment and it took a while but I did not have to waste so many plastic bags.

These are my thoughts for today, let me know what you think about these ideas or if you have any other packing ideas by commenting below.

http://kimmccrary.blogspot.com/2012/05/traveling-with-young-children-tip-1.html#.UX2fWcqJ08p

I'm Back and a mint chocolate parfait!!

Vacation was GREAT!!! I was so happy that Savannah's grandparents could finally meet her and she loved all of her new family that she got to meet!

Here are just a couple of the people that Savannah got to meet and who will be very important people in her life!
Ryan of course enjoyed his time in Washington but on Monday he had to start his truck ride across the country so he could move our stuff from Idaho to Connecticut but he was lucky because his brother Jacob was on spring break and was able to go with him so he didn't have to make the journey by himself. They ran into some snowy weather in Wyoming that set them back a couple of days but they made it out alive and Jacob only had to miss one day of school.

So this is my first blog post in a couple of weeks but I finally figured out how to get my pictures on the computer with my new memory card reader, well actually Ryan figured it out for me, so I decided to combine an update post with a recipe post! This recipe is a dessert and it combines two of my favorite things, chocolate and mint. We went over to another couples house for games and dinner and they had asked us to bring dessert so this is what we made and it seemed to be a hit!

Mint Chocolate Parfait

Ingredients:
-Mint Oreos (Yummy!! It took all my self control to not eat all of these instead of making the parfaits!)
-Chocolate or fudge jello pudding mix (we made these for four people so we used two boxes but if you only need it for one or two people than you only need one unless you want a bigger portion which you probably will because these are delicious!)
-Vanilla jello pudding mix (one or two boxes depending on your needs)
-Cool Whip
-Hershey's Chocolate Bar (We got the huge one because those ones were on sale so you can stick with the regular size or even the minis because you won't need a lot of it)
-Peppermint Extract
-Green Food Coloring
-Also you will need milk (It is not in my picture but I was assuming that most people have milk)

 First put a bunch of oreos into a food processor to mash them up into crumbs. Normally I don't like oreo crumbs on or in my desserts but this was so good because it still had the minty flavor in it.

 After you blend them up they should look like this except for the few chunks, I left those so I could eat them!

 Now make the two puddings in different bowls according to the directions on the boxes or according to the directions that I will give you in the next step.

Add 2 cups of milk for one box of pudding.

 Mix.

 Add 5 drops of green food coloring to the vanilla pudding.

Add 1/4 tsp. of peppermint extract to the white, now green, pudding.

Now put the two pudding in the fridge for 5 minutes to set. While they are setting draw a peace sign in the cool whip so you can have an approximation for three even parts. Also at this time you can shred the chocolate with a grater and put it in the fridge or freezer until you need it next so the shavings don't melt.

Take the puddings out of the fridge. Put half of the chocolate pudding in another bowl and half of the green pudding in another bowl so now you will have two bowls of chocolate pudding and two bowls of green pudding.
Put one of the thirds of cool whip in one of the chocolate pudding bowls.

 Put the second third of the cool whip into one of the green pudding bowls. You will now have a dark chocolate and a light chocolate bowl and a dark green and a light green bowl of puddings.

Take your cups, any kind (I used some plastic ones from my open house) and put a handful or so of oreo crumbs on the bottom and then layer the puddings in any order that you want and then top with another layer of oreo crumbs.

Now use the last third of the cool whip to add a dollop to each of the parfaits. 

Now add the chocolate shavings on top and you now have your delicious Mint Chocolate parfait!!

I hope you enjoy and if you try this out let me know in a comment below!



http://pandorasdeals.com/2013/03/pandoras-plate-st-pattys-day-minty-pudding-parfaits.html

Moving and Friend Update!!!!

Today was such a busy but good day!!! We signed the lease for our apartment and we now have our own place to live in. Tonight we are spending our last night at my parents and then we will be staying at our new place for 5 1/2 days and then we go on vacation. Woohoo!! I can't wait to go and see family and to just relax, well for the most part. We moved some of our stuff over to our new place today but we had to get back to Middlebury so we could make desserts for dinner at a new friend's house! They are a new couple who just moved into the Southbury ward which makes me sad that we just moved out of that ward but we are still going to hang out with them. They have a daughter just 3 days older than Savannah and they are such a fun couple! We went over to their apartment today and had dinner and dessert (Ryan and I made chocolate and mint parfaits which were delicious and I will post the recipe up here sometime next week when we get out new memory card thing, I broke the old one) and we played phase 10! We are also going over for breakfast and to watch conference on Sunday! I am just so excited that we know people who are around our age and who are also going through the same things that we are going through because we knew a lot of people like that in Rexburg but when we moved here there wasn't anyone like that until they moved here so it is fun to know that we know people who know what we are going through.

I am happy for our new friends and our new apartment and I can't wait for conference to hear from our prophet and apostles!! It has and will be a great weekend!

Brownie Cupcakes with Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Icing

No you did not misread the title of this post I really did make these delicious cupcakes! A couple of weeks ago my church had a fundraiser for the youth camps called a scoop dinner and part of that is a dessert auction and so I decided to pull up my Pintrest and make something from my dessert board for the auction and I chose to make these cupcakes.

I am no baker but I do enjoy learning and practicing so I had fun making these. I also enjoyed tasting them when they were done because the brownie cupcakes are now my favorite cupcakes! They have such a good texture and they taste delicious. I did not love the frosting but it did taste good on top of the cupcake, they completed each other. The person I got the recipe from said that she likes to eat the cookie dough plain but I didn't like it plain. 

Ingredients:

Brownie Cupcake

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup butter, melted
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 Tbsp milk 

 Cookie Dough Frosting

• 10 Tbsp salted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp molasses
• 2-3 Tbsp cream or half and half
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl whisk together flour, baking powder and salt, set aside. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together granulated sugar, light-brown sugar and cocoa powder. Pour in melted butter and use a wood spoon to stir until combine. Mix in eggs and vanilla extract. Stir in milk. Add dry ingredients and mix just until combine (batter will be thick).
• Divide batter among 12 paper lined muffin cups filling each about 2/3 full (about 1/4 cup batter in each). Bake in preheated oven 16 - 20 minutes (lesser for gooier brownies). Allow to cool in muffin tin several minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool. Cool completely then frost with Cookie Dough Frosting. Store in an airtight container.
Cookie Dough Frosting
• In a mixing bowl, using an electric hand mixer, whip together butter and light-brown sugar until pale and fluffy, about 3 - 4 minutes. Mix in flour then add powdered sugar, vanilla, molasses and 2 Tbsp cream and blend together until smooth adding an additional 1 Tbsp of cream to thin if desired. Fold in chocolate chips.
• Note that if you want a pipe-able frosting you will have to leave the chocolate chips out then simply add some of them to the top for garnish, otherwise they'll just get clogged in the piping tips. 

One thing I would probably change about this recipe next time is to put less brown sugar in both the cupcakes and the icing because I could taste and feel brown sugar in both of them after I had made them both but maybe I hadn't mixed it in well enough.

If you try this recipe out let me know how it goes! I would love to know what other people think of this recipe!

http://www.cookingclassy.com/2012/11/brownie-cupcakes-with-cookie-dough-frosting/

Update!

Sorry this has taken me forever! When I first made this blog I told myself that I would post something everyday but after I started the blog I realized that 1. it would be too expensive to do all of the activities and meals I want to do once a day and 2. I am a mom and I don't always have time to write a blog because when I do have time usually I would rather just sleep. So since I have not done anything for the blog I decided to just update everyone on what is going on in the Blegen family!

One exciting thing that happened today was that my brother-in-law entered the MTC (for anyone who does not know the MTC is the missionary training center in Provo, Utah for LDS missionaries). Ryan and I are so proud of this decision he has made and we know he will learn so much and have such a great time!

Something not so exciting is that Savannah has not slept through the night for the past 4 or 5 days! I have been so tired because if she wakes up in the middle of the night it is most likely because she is hungry and since I am her food source that means I have to wake up and feed her those 3-5 times she wakes up! My hubby did wake up last night and fed her a bottle which I was so grateful for because I had already gotten up twice so I got a little more sleep! I am pretty sure she is going though a growth spurt because she has also been eating every half an hour during the day so hopefully this not sleeping through the night thing will pass soon!

This is Lakeview Apartments in Waterbury,CT. This is where Ryan, Savannah and I are moving to on this Friday!! In 2 days!!!!! I am really excited to get our own place because it is too cramped at my parents house. It was not my first choice though but I know I will love living here for the most part and that I will make it home! Also after we move I will have more motivation to do some decoration crafts to put up in my apartment and to make new meals for my family so I will hopefully have more things to post in the upcoming week even if it is just updates of the move.

One more update in our lives is that we are going on vacation in a week! I am so excited to go and see family and to show off my beautiful girl!