Pinterest Cooking

Raise your hand if you have tried a recipe from Pinterest?

I have pinned so many recipes that I am 

now having to go back and recategorize them into 

different boards for crackpots, casseroles, etc.

2 weeks ago I tried 2 receipes in 1 week.

The first was  Slow Cooker Cheesy Chicken and Rice.

This was VERY easy to make.

The taste was alright.

It was missing something, but since I'm not a cook 

I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

 My next recipe was Southwestern Chopped Chicken Salad.

This was a pain to make but it was tasty.

(I say pain, because it required a lot more than I am used to doing in the kitchen!)

Next time, if there is a next time, I would leave out the cilantro though.

 

 

What are some recipes you've tried & loved?

What Makes You Beautiful?

What's your daily beauty regimen?

Are you one of those lucky ladies who is naturally beautiful

and doesn't need a single product?

I loathe envy women like that.

I am not that fortunate.

So here are my daily products.

I use Mary Kay's skin care system.

Estee Lauder's double wear foundation (applied with a bush)

Estee Lauder's double wear powder (applied with a brush)

Urban Decay Eyeshadow

Clinique's Liquid Eye Liner

Clinique's Mascara
MAC brow stick

Any brand blush 

Any brand lipstick or gloss

It makes a HUGE difference if you use a brush to 

apply your foundation.

It's very awkward if you're used to using your hand or a sponge,

but after some practice you won't be able to turn back.

(I was not asked or paid to write this post!)

Been around the world and i, i, i...

Y'all remember that song right?

Lately we've been trying to figure out where we want

to travel to this year.

Our top 5 picks are:

I have a friend that lives in Germany who has graciously 

invited us to come stay with her while we travel.

She is 2 hours from Paris & 4 hours from Amsterdam.

Hubby's 1st choice is Amsterdam.

My 1st choice is Paris with Greece as a close second.

But I can compromise since Paris & Amsterdam are so

close to each other.

New York City is a definite destination in 2013.

We're just trying to decide when is the best time to go.

We also recently discovered Curacao after watching

House Hunters International!

Did anyone catch that episode?

Curacao is off the coast of Venezuela
and looks absolutely amazing!

We are definitely adding Curacao to our vacation list.

Where are you going this year?

Happy Birthday My Love!

 

My hubby is 33 today!

I love this man with all my heart.

He is my rock & best friend and I am 

beyond thankful that God put us in each others life.

 

We will be spending the weekend in Gatlinburg, TN with friends!

Catch Me If You Can

Monday night the hubby surprised me with tickets to see

"Catch Me If You Can" the musical.

We thought the musical was excellent!

The singing, dancing, & acting were perfect.

And we actually had some Pan Am flight attendants at the show.

Some of the ladies wore their Pan Am uniforms, some wore

just the hats and gloves.

If this show is coming to your area,

I definitely recommend go seeing it.

Even if you don't care for musicals, this one

is very much worth seeing.

The Phone Debacle of 2012

Before the holidays I dropped my phone in a big cup of water.

I thought I could save it, but it was dead.

So I went to T-mobile hoping to get a good deal on the 

Samsung Galaxy III.

You'd think by me being a customer for over 10 years

I'd get a good rate.

Nope, even though it was time for me & hubby to upgrade,

they were going to charge us $350 per phone!

I hate cell phone companies.

They remind me of pimps.

They tell us what we're gonna pay, and we have

no choice but to pay it.

Well not that day.

I refused to pay $700 for 2 cell phones.

So I was phoneless until Black Friday.

Wal-mart had a special on phones that started at 5am.

SGIII's for $130 plus a $100 Wal-mart gift card.

$260 for 2 phones? Yes please!

So we get to Wal-mart and do all the paper work, activate the phones,

and just as they go to print the contract the printer jams.

An hour later, they realize they can't fix the printer and I will have to go to another 

Wal-mart to start over. The manager had to call T-mobile to 

deactivate the new phones and cancel the upgrade but she clearly

told them, they are going to another store and will be doing this again in 20 minutes.

For our troubles, she gave us each a $50 gift card.

We get to the other Wal-mart, do all the paper work, but T-mobile couldn't get 

us activated. They said we had just renewed and we had to wait, then she got hung up on, then

we had someone from T-mobile physically come to Wal-mart.

It was a nightmare!

We waited 4 DAMN HOURS until they could get this resolved.

Once she got the phones activated, she realized she put in one of the phones as a 

different type which made the price of one phone as $80 instead of $130.

She said she was going to start all over.

I lost it yall.

Not rudely, but I told her politely,

"We have been at Walt-mart since 4:30am and it was now

10:30am. We have missed all the other black Friday sales because of this situation.

Walt-mart is going to have to eat this mistake and pay for the difference

because I refuse to wait any more. I am walking out with these phones now and if you have to call

a manager over here, then do it."

She agreed, so we got 2 phones for $210.

PLUS, we were able to use the two $50 Wal-mart gift cards that we got

from store 1 to go towards the cost

of the phones, so that brought it down to $110.

Plus, the account rep from T-mobile had the "activation fees' waived from each phone. 

(Which I don't know why the hell we should have to pay activation fees anyways).

Plus, we got the advertised $100 gift card for each phone.

So although this was the absolute worst experience EVER

with T-mobile, we actually got lucky because of Wal-mart.

 We paid $110 for the phones and got $200 in gift cards, so we actually made $90 

off of this upgrade. :)

Hawaii Summary

So this is my final review on our Hawaiian Vacation.

Hopefully it will help someone out who is 

planning a trip to Hawaii!

First, I am so glad we chose to do a cruise vs

just flying to one island.

I know cruises aren't for everyone, but if you

have ever priced a trip to Hawaii, then you know

how expensive it can be.

Cruising was much more affordable, and it allowed us 

to visit multiple islands vs just staying on 1.

Plus with cruises, you can make payments over time.

So book early so you have  longer to pay on it.

And since food is included in the price, we saved big time

in not having to pay for 3 meals a day x 4 people!

(A whopper meal at a local Burger King was $9!)

 The downside to a cruise is you don't really get enough time to 

fully explore an entire island.

But, you can still get a lot in if you plan right.

Here was the schedule I had written out for us.

I took this notebook along with all my print outs for

receipts for rental cars, passes, groupons, etc.

This kept us very organized because each night the guys

would ask, so what's next on the agenda. 

Initially they said I had too much planned but we actually ended up with a 

lot of down time to relax.

One major way we saved money was that my brother applied for one of 

those credit cards that give you travel rewards.

So we gave him the cash for the plane tickets and he purchased them on his card.

This racked up lots of points, plus he was able to

pay the card off right away.

We used those points for rental cars in Honolulu, Maui, & Hilo.

We also used the points for our "day hotel" in Honolulu from when we returned from the cruise.

My next very important piece of advice is to use the 

hell out of Google for good deals and research everything.

A lot of people feel safer booking their excursions right through the

cruise line. And I totally understand that logic if we were cruising to 

Mexico maybe, but Hawaii is in the good ol USA so I took my

chances and it paid off wonderfully!

For us, we created a MUST DO list for Hawaii.

We all agreed you can't go to Hawaii without:

Seeing Pearl Harbor

 $39 vs $59+ per person

Going to a Luau

 This was $100 either way but based on 

online reviews, we decided not to book with the cruise bc we

read it would be overcrowded.

Seeing a Volcano 

$10 total vs $100 per person
Rode in our own vehicle and stopped when we wanted

Road to Hana

Free rental car vs $139 per person
Rode in our own car vs being crowded 
in a van with 12 other people for 8+ hours

Going to the Beach

Once we had our list, we compared the prices on the cruise website

to all the various links on the Internet.

For me, 9 times out of 10 we found it was much cheaper 

to book things ourselves.

 Definitely check Groupon.

I can't tell you how many times this website

has saved us money! 

I found great deals for dinner, sails, spa, etc.

For plane tickets, it's really hit or miss.

Flying from the east coast to Hawaii is going to be expensive. Period.

But we downloaded this app called Sky Scanner and we just randomly checked the 

prices every week.

We got our tickets for $550 per person which is still high,

but to us it was low because every other time we checked, the flights were about $900. 

So we were extremely happy to get them for $550.

 If you have any questions let me know!

I'm no expert but I will definitely help if I can.