DATE NIGHT!!!

Okay, we have been trying to save money lately, but date night is very important to my husband. I often say things like "let's just stay home" or "We don't have money." I am not saying that you have to spend tons of money or that you can not have date night at home. I am just always trying to be better and cut spending where we can. However, this does not fly with my husband. No matter what we do on date night. So this past Friday, we went on a smart economically date.


We always start our dates night holding hands!

We then went to the dollar movie. It cost $3.50 all together for us to go to the movies. We saw "Race to Witch Mountain." We actually really liked because it was cute and did not have any bad or crude scenes. I like movies like that and I like to support them. It is sad that the cute family wholesome movies kind of get pushed to the side and the ones filled with crude scenes and bad language get academy awards. Sorry folks I forgot to get a picture of this.

Next we went dancing. This was completely free as it was done in our car on the way to one of our favorite hamburger and custard restaurant. Sorry about the pictures being cut off. It is hard to dance and take pictures.
























We then went to one of our new favorite little hamburger joints. As of right now it is one of my favorite hamburger places. Their frozen custard is to die for!!
























I then took pictures of Milton. Milton wanted to take pictures of me. This is the first picture he took of me. HMMMM,wonder where his mind is.

Okay my mom started reading this and freaking out. Let me explain the picture....Milton grabbed the camera and took a picture really quickly. He did not even look at what he was taking. So NOTHING was on his mind and he DID not mean to take the picture like this. I was JUST KIDDING. I did not to be vulgar. I am not Vulgar. I thought it was funny after Milton took the picture and then handed it to me and this is what I saw. As you can see from the next picture, he grabbed the camera and re did the picture. So there MOM!!!!!

So, all together out date cost $11. Not to shabby!! We had dinner and a movie. Then we finsihed the night by being the responsible adults we are and went grocery shopping so we do not starve.

It's The Little Things

I have really been enjoying going around and having fun with Milton. I have been trying to remember to take pictures where ever we go. It has been hard to remember because I have one of those big professionals cameras, but I recently found my old little digital camera. So I stuck it in my purse to capture moments here and there.

On Friday of last week, Milton called on the way home from work and said "I need to tell you something." I was like okay. He then said "No, I want to tell you over dinner." So then I start freaking out thinking what does he need to tell me that he can not tell me now. So I say "NO tell me now." He starts laughing and said "Okay, I really do not have to tell you anything. I just want to take you to dinner." Now why do you ask would he need to make up a story to take me to dinner because every time Milton has said "let's go do....." I always respond "We don't have money." See we are trying to save. So needlless to say I caved. I mean it is pretty sad that my husband has to make up lies to take me dinner. Sorry we don't have one together. Milton did not want to ask anyone to take our photo.

Then one of the things that I love love love about Milton is he always looks at my gas to see how much I have left. He saw that my gas was low, so he immediately goes to get more gas.

Then he always follows it up by this......

While he is pumping my gas, he looks through my car for any trash and throws it away. *Sigh* I love the litte things. I love the little dinners and driving around together and listening to music. I want to cherish the little things. What are some of the little things that your husband does for you?

What to Write?

Hello all!!

I have been struggling with what to write on here. Nothing exciting going on in the Timoteo house. However, that is good news? It is nice to have that down time, to not been running from one place to the next. I guess in a sense " I am stopping to smell the roses."

However, I want to one day take this blog and make it into a book. I want it to serve as a journal in a sense. I think too often that we think the boring and mundane is not an interesting thing to write. However, all the blogs that I am obsess with talk about the day to day details of their life. It is what fascinates me. It helps me feel normal.

Some of the thoughts that have been going through my mind as a young new housewife now is that I need a little structure. This is what I mean by this....To often I wake up in the morning and just kind of lull around the house, playing on the computer, watching TV, and before I know it it is night and I really can not account for my day. Now I have always been a very productive person. I have always liked that about myself. So I was thinking about how could I make it where I get more stuff done in the day but I am not running around like a chicken with its head cut off. What came to mind is to have kind of like a chore chart. Now I don't know if I am actually going to make a chart, but I would like to make some type of outline. I think I would like to do something like....


Monday=Dusting




















Tuesday=Vacuuming




















Wednesday = bathrooms



















Thursday=laundry













Friday=cars



















I just can not take not doing anything all day long. Now I know most of you probably have stones in your hands ready to cast them. I am not wishing that my day was chalk full of chores and errands. I just know if order for me to not become a lazy couch potato I need to have a little structure. Okay I feel much better now after getting that off my chest.

I've Been Thinking

Okay, I am laying in bed here tonight with something on my mind. One of my sisters friends asked or told her..."How does Milton take it when Amanda jokes about hitting on other men?" At first I thought it was funny...Really funny!! But then I started pondering on it. I had just met this particular friend of my sisters and had joked in passing about Hitting on another man. Every laughed (including my husband) and then we moved on. So when my sister told me this, like I said I did not think anything at first, but then it started to bother me. Now the fact that they made this comment did not bother me. I am not made at them in any way. If anything I am grateful because it made me stop and think. No the thing that bothered me was that I could convey something like that even though I was completely joking. I love to laugh. I can laugh at almost anything and I am constantly joking around. But this made me think or realize, that there are somethings you should not joke about especially meeting a new person for the first time. It made me sad that I gave my first impression as someone who is a fluzy or that I smeared the love I have for my husband.

Alot of times, I do not blog about my undying love for my husband. I know some people long for companionship and I do not want to rub it in there face of how wonderfully over the moon in love I am for the man that I share and enjoy my life with. It is kind of like how I long for a baby or child. I am happy for people who can have babies and as a general rule I can talk about pregnancies and babies and so on. However, there are times I just can not read another blog or facebook post or email or message board about someone being pregnant. So I applied this rule to my blog and how over the top I am in love with my husband.

Now if you were to meet my husband and I. We are not one of these couples that make you want to loose your lunch because we can not keep our hands off eachother. We prefer to do that in private. However, you will always find us touching in some way. Milton always make sure he is holding my hand or touching the small of my back. Our conversations are always full with I love you's and I am so grateful we are together. We never take for granted how lucky we are to find such a wonderful eternal companion that we enjoy spending time with. Since quitting my job, we have some much fun everyday together. I enjoy the rymthm of waking up and puttering around the house and talking until Milton has to leave. Sometime through out the day, Milton walks up behind me, puts his arms around me, and thanks me for all I do.

The thing I honestly wished I could convey to this person or give him the slighest preview, is how totally and completely I am dedicated to my husband. I do not even notice other men. If we are some place and he walks in, I completely loose focus and zoom in on him. Every morning I wake up to sun shining on me and all around me. That is the way I feel with Milton. I feel his love all around me and shining on me. I am so grateful for marriage, especially eternal marriage. Tonight we went to bed. We have a routine. We come in the room, shut the door, and lay on the bed. Milton always says "let's do scripture study." Milton will read something or I will and then we will discuss it which usually winds up with us talking. The usual scene is me laying on his stomach or chest and him casually rubbing my back or my arms. Then we will say our family prayers. After that, even though we say we need to go to bed, we always talk way later than we should. Tonight when we came to bed. I apolygized to Milton. I told him that I am so sad that I made someone think for even a second that I would even hit on another man or question my love for him. My husband being like he always is ...Kissed me very gently and said " Who cares what he thinks, I thought your joke was very funny!" Thanks for alway laughing at my jokes, Milton. Thanks for letting me be me!!!

Is That What I Think It Is

Yep..That's right...This is a cake made out of candy bars. I have seen many flower and gift baskets shops make these. I always thought they were so cool, so when my best friend's birthday was coming up I thought I would order one. So then I started pricing them and I was like "Holy Cow!" Those are expensive. The more I looked at them , the more I thought I can make this! So today I am going to show you how to make them. They are super easy and super cute! The materials can be changed to fit whatever type of cake you want. So please read entire demonstration to best decide what you are going to use.

Materials

two round Styrofoam disc
glue gun

glue sticks for glue gun

candy bars and candy of your choice

ribbons

cardboard cut into a circle or a something to represent a plate














Okay now I went to walmart and the only had one size of the Styrofoam disc. The were smaller than what I originally wanted so I changed my candy to the mini candy bars (the ones that are a $1 for like 8). However it turned out for the best. I am sure if you want a bigger cake or multi layers you can look at your local craft store.

So you are going to hot glue the two pieces of Styrofoam together to make it look like two layers of cake.

Next you are going to glue the candy that you picked to go around the cake. The friend that I was doing this for only likes Hershey and M&M's. So I picked the Hershey bars to go on the outside. Now for a word of caution. Make sure you have plenty of candy. I only got two packages of the mini Hershey thinking it was a enough well I had to use and M& M package to finish it.

So once you have glue your candy all away around the "cake" you need to pick what the top frosting is going to look like. Like I said, my friend only likes the two kinds of chocolate. So my "top frosting" was M&M's. I just put a dab of hot glue on each M&M package so that it stuck but could be easily removed. The Hershey bars I put a little more glue to make sure they were sturdy.

There is no need to "frost the bottom" because that is going to be glue to the "plate" Now I actually used a paper plate because mine was a mini cake. However if you did a full size cake with full size candy bars you might have to cut a piece of cardboard to represent your plate

next you put on the ribbon. Now I went and bought pre-curled but you are more than welcome to buy ribbon and curl it yourself.

Place on top of cake

Now all you have to do is add a vase of flowers and a card and TAADAAA, you've got one heck of a present. Disclaimer****The flowers in the vase were actually fixed nice and pretty before they were delivered.

Anyways, I am going to leave a couple other cakes with you that I did not make. These are just so you can see different designs and make one to your liking.

Ain't Nothing but a Sweet Thing

Okay, so the last couple days I have been craving cupcakes. I don't know why. I am usually not a huge cupcake person. If I want something sweet I usally want chocolate and ice cream. I have been trying to ignore my little sweet tooth but on Monday night I could not take it anymore. I knew that I would buy the cupcake batter but I wanted frosting from scratch. So I started looking up cupcake frosting and came across this recipe on a blog called Breakfast Bunch Handmade.

So I first made the cupcakes. I decided to use Funfetti batter. You can buy the box kind or make it from scratch. I was more interested in the frosting, so I bought the box kind.

So this picture is after I actually poured the batter into the cupcake paper cups. So then I bake the cupcakes.

Now it is time for the frosting. Here are the ingredients

Fresh Strawberry Buttercream Frosting Ingredients

2 sticks (1 cup) butter softened

1/2 jar (3-4oz) marshmallow cream (such as Marshmallow Fluff or Creme)

4 cups confectioners' sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

6-7 strawberries, with the stems removed

Directions

Beat butter in a medium bowl with mixer on medium speed until creamy

Beat in marshmallow cream.

When well blended, beat in confectioners' sugar and vanilla.

Blend in sliced strawberries. Okay this is where it got tricky. I actually put a few sliced strawberries in the frosting mix and it would not blend them. So I finally put them in the blender and liquified them Then I added them to the frosting mixture.Add a little more confectioners’ sugar as needed to achieve the texture you'd like. I liked my texture so I did not add any confectioners sugar. It is totally up to you. Increase speed to high and beat 3 to 4 minutes until fluffy.

You can not frost the cupcakes until they are completely cooled, otherwise the frosting with melt.

Then TAAA_DAAAA. It tasted like frest strawberries and cream.

We still have tons of frosting left, so I am going to bake a cake and try to take it to a birthday party we are going to this weekend. We do not need sweets in this house. I took the cupcakes to work and they went quickly. Stay tuned next week when I show you how to make this.....

This is not Oprah's favorite things, This is Amanda's favorite things

Recently I was thinking about some of my favorite products. I was reading a magaizine where they asked celebs what are things that they never leave home without. Then as I was walking around Wal-mart one day I noticed that people would quickly grab a product and go about their business. Obviously they did not even have to think about it. This is a regular for them. So I started thinking about my beauty products and the things that are my favorite.

I have always been jealous of those girls with really thick eyelashes that make their eyes pop when they wear mascara. I could never find one that did it for me until a friend gave me a mascara that she bought and only tried once and hated it. She handed it to me and said "here I think this works better for white people." So I gave it a shot. It is called Loreal Telescopic mascara. I love this stuff. I love the way it makes my eyelashes look. It never clumps and is easy to wash off. I know it is not for everyone but this works for me!

On to my next favorite thing...My hair is so hard to do. It is not curly enough to put some gel in it and run, and it is not straight enough just to blow dry it. No sirree. If I want to look nice I either have to blow dry and straighten my hair and put smoothing cream or it just looks frizzy or blow dry it and hot roll my hair. All of this takes to long, so usually wind up putting it in a messy bun. Until my sister introduceed me to my next two favorite products. It is Aveda confixor and Be curly. I love this stuff. I just put the confixor in my hair followed by the be curly and WHAM!!! everyone is asking me how I get my hair like I do and when I tell them that I just put these two things in it and let it air dry. I have people glower at me. You mean you did not curl it that way. NOPE. I will not leave home without this stuff.

Next up is moisturizer! Living in southern Louisiana humidty, I never really needed moisturizer. You sweat buckets over there! However, living in Texas now where it is more dry, I have needed a good moisturizer. I have found it with Olay moisturizer. I use different ones, but now with the summer coming up I am making sure to use the one with the spf. This product helps my makeup stay on better.

Obviously, I use more products than this but these are the ones that I can not leave home without. Some of my products are still in the test phase. I like them but I am not to the point that I LOVE them, like I do these products.

SO let's hear it....What are your favorite things. What are the products that are tried and tested true for you.?

I tag Misti, Mom, Lynsie, Cami, and any others that are reading this to post a blog about their favorite things!!

****Disclaimer*****Do not blame the products for the way that I look. It is not a personal reflection of their capabilities. You would first need to see the before. So they took me from ugggg, gasp, look away to the current not break a mirror look.