Ruler of the Elves

Miniature style.

Whenever I’m working on a grocery list, I always check with Chris and Pinky and see if they have any meal requests for the week. Almost always, at least one, if not both, of them say that they want mini sausage and egg casseroles. They lovingly refer to them as “meat muffins” and if you hang around for a few, you will see why. These tasty little bundles of yum are great for any meal throughout the day and there are so many different ingredients that can be used to please everyone’s pallets. Ok, maybe not if you are a vegan, but everyone else, you are good to go.

The recipe is simple and only calls for a few main ingredients.

Sausage

Eggs & Cheese

And a pinch of salt & pepper. (I love my chemical compound salt & pepper shakers. Awesome Christmas present!)

Make sure to preheat your oven to 375° and then brown the sausage. (Sausage could be substituted for any other breakfast meat, veggies, tofu, etc. Just put in what you like!)

Now this next step is very important. Make sure that you have an egg cracker available. I didn’t and you can see by this photo that I made quite a mess of myself.

My egg cracker was preoccupied with more exciting tasks, like sailing the 7 seas.

Once you have your egg cracker, crack said eggs into a large bowl.

Add the cheese, salt & pepper. Yum.

Then throw in the sausage, which has cooled a bit by this point, and mix it all up. You could even sing a song while you mix. It will only add to the fun!

Lightly grease a muffin tin and pour some of the mixture in each little cup, equally divvying it up.

Place your muffin tin in the oven and bake at 375 for 30 minutes. (Times and temperatures may vary.)

When the time is up, be careful and pull out the tin. Remove your mini puffs of perfection and serve. Pinky enjoys hers with some maple syrup, as you can see in the first photo.

These are D E L I C I O U S. I’m sure that these would be great the next day for a quick breakfast treat as you are flying out the door to go wherever you go in the morning, but we never have any of these left over. Here is the recipe if you would like to give it a try!

Mini Sausage & Egg Casseroles

Ingredients:
1 package of Jimmy Dean sausage
6-8 large eggs
1.5 c shredded Cheddar cheese
1/2 t salt
1/4 t pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375°. Brown the sausage. Combine eggs, cheese, salt, pepper and sausage in a large bowl and mix together. Spray a 12 cup muffin tin and pour egg mixture into each muffin cup evenly. Bake for 30 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes and serve.

I’m sure if you been checking out this blog for more than a day, then you might be wondering what happened to Pinky’s Drab to Fab bedroom makeover. We got the painting done and then, well, life happened. You know how it goes. 75 million things on the to do list, but no time to do them. Excuses, excuses. Blah, blah, blah.

The good news is that we some how worked on getting a few of the details hammered out in Pinky’s room. You may remember this adorable little guy from the mood board I did way back when. Pinky fell in love with him when we were browsing Anthropolgie’s website early in the process, so Chris and I surprised her with it after we were all finished painting her room.

I also recently scored these sweet Martha Stewart white water lily stickers from TJ Maxx for super cheap and thought I may be able to use them on the walls in the room, but have yet to figure out where. Any thoughts? I have a few ideas floating around in my head, so stick around to see what happens with them.

We found this lovely Brocade Waste Can at the Container Store and for $19.99, we couldn’t pass it up. Now Pinky can actually put trash in its place, instead of on the floor. 😉

Here is a sneak peek at the mirror we are going to hang up. It came with our last house as sort of a welcoming gift, aka the previous owners did not want it anymore. Originally, the creamy mirror hung in our upstairs landing at the old place, but when we moved, we repainted it ballerina pink with the hopes that we could incorporate it into Pinky’s room somehow. More info on the mirror and it’s new use to come.

Of course, we could not forget about the cute white bear that Pinky’s grandma made for her out of her great grandmother’s bedding.

So, that wraps up this portion of the new room accessories. What do you think? Any ideas for the flower stickers? We have several other projects that we plan to tackle (and share) before the big reveal, so stay tuned!

This past weekend was quite interesting for us. On Saturday evening, we found out that our area had a boil water alert, which basically means that all drinking/cooking water must be boiled first before use because it may be contaminated. Apparently, a 10 ft. water pipe had burst, dumping millions of gallons into the river and water was now being sent to us via reservoirs and lakes. Yum. Did anyone order amoebic dysentery? People around here went a little crazy and of course, bottled water sold out at the local stores in record time. Today, we are still currently under the boil alert, lucky to be ALIVE, but it really hasn’t been that bad. Most of yesterday was spent in our steamy kitchen, with a hot pot on the stove, so we currently have several gallons of the wet stuff ready for safe use.

On Saturday, before we found out about our crazy water issues, we spent some time at the ocean and exploring some of our town. Here is a photo of our house…

Just kidding. This house was close to where we were hanging out. The lucky souls that live there have a fabulous view of the water. I wonder how much that nice view cost them?

Pinky had a great time checking out the snails that were stuck on this rock while the tide was still out. She would search for the ones that were moving and then guess which ones were “going to win the race.”

We also made up a scavenger hunt type game and found several other salt water treasures. The seaweed and barnacles on this rock were pretty cool looking. I kept half expecting the pods on the seaweed to pop open and for some weird little creature to crawl out. That would have been freaky.

Fish bones.

White snail with a crazy headdress.

Huge crab claw piece.

And after all of that, she was certainly happy. So happy that all she could do was smile this dorky smile. Which made me smile an even bigger dorky smile.

After we finished there, we headed to town to walk around and check out some of the local shops. I took a few photos along the way, but was pretty preoccupied with the fact that it was very hot out, especially underneath my fleece shirt.

Last week, we were playing out in our backyard and Pinky asked us what room in our house a certain window lead to. Chris and I both look and wondered. We hadn’t noticed any rooms upstairs with curtains and it appeared that this window certainly had curtains. And fresh flowers to be exact. Weird. After a few moments, we both realized that the curtains and flowers were actually part of a painting in the window and that the window was directly behind where our shower was located. (Upper Window)

I guess it was just easier for someone to put up a painting in the window, instead of taking it out when the shower was installed. Too bad that the glare was so strong. You can almost make out the red and green from the painted flowers.

It’s a good thing that we have a little Inspector Gadget on our hands to keep us in the know. Now we can use the cool secret window to trick our party guests!

This past week we celebrated two birthdays in our house. On Friday, Chris turned 28. Pinky and I, along with some friends, surprised him with a steak dinner and he loved every minute of it. Then, we had some cake.

Piper also had her 7th birthday on Monday. She is definitely starting to look like an aged golden retriever with all of the white hair that is growing on her sweet little puppy face.

LONG RAMBLING, HODGE PODGE POST AHEAD…

Well, let me just start of this long overdue post by saying HAPPY EARTH DAY! What a beautiful day it is! The sun is shining, the temperature is perfect and all of the trees and plants are soaking up the niceness. We plan on hanging outside today in the fresh air and planting some pretty flowers to celebrate. But, enough about that.

Changing gears completely… Do you ever wish there was more time in a day? I do. I would add an extra 6 hours if I could. Yes, 30 hour days would be nice. Maybe then I would have time to get everything done or just most things. For the past 2 weeks, I’ve had an over abundance of fabulous blog posts that I wanted to share. I had great expectations of getting a lot of things accomplished in fact, but the blog fell by the way side, along with homework, housework, and pretty much everything else in our lives. I felt overwhelmed and when I feel overwhelmed, a whole lot of nothing gets accomplished. I mean, who really wants to study the common cold when there are dishes in the sink, dust bunnies on the floor and a clothes pile the size of Mt. Rushmore to wash.

Oh, and then there is that small person I call my child that needs my attention from time to time. So, what do I do when there are 2 millions things on the list? For some reason, I think it’s a good idea to change the look of my blog and go hang out with my friends. There is nothing like pretending that you have all of the time in the world to mess around. Except for when you snap back into reality. That’s when you really kick yourself. And maybe cry. Just a little.

OK. Enough of that rambling. Here is one of the fun little ditties I wanted to share.

A Shout Out to My Peeps

If you have ever run into the problem of having excessive amounts of extra Easter candy, have I got a fix for you! (FYI – we never have this problem, but I thought that maybe someone out there might.) How about mixing things up a little and eating your Peeps a new way? We had so much fun messing around with these that I felt it was too selfish not to share. Here are 4 fun and easy Peeps recipes to give you the perfect sugar high.

1.) Peeping Hot Chocolate – Throw one marshmallow peep on top of your steamy mug of hot chocolate for a delicious treat.

2.) Chocolate Covered Peeps – Use those extra Hershey Kisses you have lying around. Melt them in the microwave and then let your peeps go for a dip in the gooey goodness.

3.) Peeps Smores – Just as easy as it sounds. Substitute your normal marshmallow for a Peep.

4.) Rice Krispie Peeps – Melt 1 tsp. of butter and one Peep in the microwave. Mix well. Pour in ¼ cup of Rice Krispies and stir. It is the perfect amount of sweetness for one.