Camping fun

When we get too hot in the summertime, we take off to Cedar Mountain.

Our home away from home.

Lots of 4-wheeling

Lots of views

Cool flowers

Lots of relaxing

Chilling by the fire

Eating S'mores

Our favorite thing to make when we go camping is dutch oven peach cobbler.  I never seem to get a picture of it because we are always eating it at 10 p.m.

For some reason, we always eat super late on the mountain. I guess we get too busy playing.

Here is the super easy Peach Cobbler recipe:

Lazy Cobbler

Use a 12" dutch oven

2 cans slice peaches with syrup (29-30 oz cans)

1 package white or yellow cake mix

Ground cinnamon to taste

1/3 stick butter or margarine

Place dutch oven over 15 hot charcoal briquettes. Pour peaches in dutch oven. Sprinkle dry cake mix evenly over the peaches. Sprinkle cinnamon around on top to taste. Cut butter in pieces and spread evenly on top. Put the lid on the dutch oven and place 10 hot briquettes on top. Bake for 45 minutes or until done. Serve with whip cream on top or with ice cream. Yum! Sometimes I even eat the leftovers for breakfast!

One thing has put a little damper on camping this summer:

Yes, it says Bear Country and it is posted right below our camp. When we were up in June, we saw a lovely big brown bear right across from our camp. It's a little freaky to walk back in the trees or sit out by the fire at night. Casey just brings his 45 and keeps it by his side and I keep him by my side.

Camping season on Cedar Mountain is about over - hopefully we won't see the bear again!

Birthday Fun

My birthday fun started out on Thursday.  First of all, it was Cupcake Day!  I would love for that holiday to fall on my birthday but near it will have to do.  So, of course I made a trip over to my favorite cupcake place - The Sweet Tooth Fairy and got my two favorite flavors:

Strawberry Shortcake and Rootbeer Float and a free cookie too!

Then, Casey came home with these:

Then we headed out to Texas Roadhouse for dinner - we had to celebrate early because Casey was leaving the next day to Cedar Mountain for the Bow Hunt.

That just meant that I got to open my presents early - what a shame :) Casey even got me a card from Jesse.  He did good:

My KitchenAid!  Can't wait to try this out!

Can't wait to try some gourmet cake bites in my new apron using my new KitchenAid!

I loved this and had to buy it for all my jewelry.  I found it at Krumpet's of course. I usually end up buying myself a gift on my birthday and at Christmas - Is that weird?

Then on Friday night I headed out to Tuacahn to meet up with my family to watch The Little Mermaid.  It was  awesome!

Here's me and my sister Lisa who got us these awesome seats! Don't mind the shiny faces - it was hot!

Then I headed back out to Tuacahn on Saturday for Grease - at least there was a cooler breeze that night.

The one thing I didn't enjoy about my birthday weekend was the cold that I got but everything else was great!

Butter Pecan cake bites

I was reading someone's blog and they were really talking up the butter pecan with cream cheese cakebites so I decided to try them myself

After you bake the cake as directed on the package, let it cool completely.  Then crumble it up in small pieces in a large bowl.  If you make a light colored cake mix and want it all one color then you need to cut off the edges before crumbling in bowl.  Start out adding 3/4 can of frosting and check the texture - if it is too dry you can add some more frosting to the crumbled cake mixture.

Then take a cookie dough scoop and roll in to balls.  Lay them out on a pan and put in the freezer.  If you do not want to dip all of the cake balls at once then put the extra frozen cake bites in a ziploc bag for later - they freeze really well  -I dipped half of these last week and finished them up tonight.

Melt a bag of chocolate or vanilla candy melts and you are ready to start dipping.  This is my least favorite part - probably because I'm a perfectionist and it's hard to get them perfect.  If you are going to sprinkle a topping on, you must do it fast because the coating dries very quickly so have it ready.

Here is the final product:

The recipe makes between 50-60 cake bites and it's a good thing because they will go fast!

For all things cake bites, go to bakerella.com

My office

I finally decorated my office at work.

I had my wall painted purple clear back in December and since then I have been trying to decide how to decorate it.

Well, it's finally done.

It might have taken a couple of extra nail holes before I got this even - I should have used our maintenance guys or at least a level.  I painted the picture frames black - they had gold on the inner square.  I also painted the outside of the bulletin board black - are you seeing a theme here?  This is going to be my inspiration board for when I want to think about something other than work.

I already had this wreath and just added the black ribbon.

I just found this lamp at Target and it matches perfectly and it was even on sale!  The magnet board is from IKEA and most of the magnets are ones I made.

This wall is still a work in progress.  My plan is to hang some pictures of my dog in black frames of course.  I haven't done it yet because I want to turn the pics into black and white before I print them.  One day.....

And I had to have some sunshine yellow flowers and greenery in there too!