Fall back into blogging Day 5

Today we are taking a look at a past blog post from the week of September 28th. Easy peasy. I am linking to my first experience at a large college football game. It was a crazy night!! Having gone to small schools for undergrad and grad, I missed out on that Saturday excitement.  I can't wait for the baby to get a bit older and we can dress her up in a cheerleading outfit and meet the mascot, Aubie!

 

First game- War Eagle!

Hope you all are having a great week!

Fall back into blogging Day 4

Fall time means that it's time for apple pies again! Here is an old post of mine, but a wonderful go-to recipe for the holidays. Now believe me when I say that I am a newbie cook, so if I can make this, so can you. Do not be scared off by the lattice crust, it is very easy to assemble- and looks like you spend hours in the kitchen!Pie Crusts (yields the bottom and top crusts for a 9” pie pan)-

12 Tablespoons of unsalted Butter (1 ½ sticks)
3 Cups of all purpose Flour
1 Teaspoon of Sea or Kosher Salt
1 Tablespoon of Sugar
1/3 Cup of very cold Vegetable Shortening
1/2 Cup of ice cold Water


Filling-

½ Cup of unsalted Butter
2 Tablespoons of all purpose Flour
1 Tablespoon of Corn Starch
¼ Cup of Water
¾ Cup of White Sugar
¾ Cup of packed Brown Sugar
1 Teaspoon of Nutmeg
1 Teaspoon of Vanilla
1 Teaspoon of Cinnamon
5 Granny Smith Apples
2 Red Delicious Apples

Place the shortening, butter and water in the freezer about 30 minutes before starting so that it is extra cold. When you are ready to start, dice up the butter and then put it back into the fridge while you are putting the mixture together. Add the flour, salt and sugar into the food processor and pulse a few times. Then add the butter and the shortening and start pulsing the processor. Continue to pulse while slowly adding the water in the feed tube until the dough starts balling up. Dump it out onto the board, roll into a ball, wrap in saran wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Melt the butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Once melted, add the flour, corn starch and stir into the mixture to make a paste. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir, bring to a boil and then lower the heat and let simmer.

Peel, core and cut up the apples and place in a mixture of water and lemon juice to keep the apples from browning. Once the apples are cut, it is about time to pull the dough out and start making the crust. Cut the dough in half one half will be for the crust and the other half will be the lattice crust top. Dust the board and rolling pin with flour so that the dough does not stick. Always roll out from the center of the dough. Before placing the bottom crust in the pan, be sure to spray the pie pan with a nonstick spray (I forgot this one).

Drain the water from the apples. Take ¾ of the syrup and pour over the apples. Fold mixture into the apples to make sure that they are all coated evenly. Fill the pie pan with apples and mound them slightly, they will cook down.
Roll out the other half of the dough. Cut into ½ or ¾ inch strips depending on how thick that you want the strips to be. Start with placing a strip down the center of the pie. Next, place sever strips perpendicular to the center strip alternating on top or on bottom of the center strip. Continue to add strips in the basket weave pattern. Trim extra dough from the edges of the pan and pinch the dough together.
Take the final bit of the syrup and brush it onto the top crust. Then sprinkle the cinnamon all over the pie. Your pie is ready to bake! Make sure your cookie sheet is well cover with foil, this WILL make a mess. Oven should be at 350 degrees and should bake for 50-55 minutes. With 10 minutes remaining, brush a milk wash over the top.

Put the pie in the fridge and let it sit overnight so that the filling will have an opportunity to firm up. Next day cut, heat up and enjoy!!

To link up to my Pinterest, here is the link: http://pinterest.com/thatdesigngal/

Fall back into blogging Day 3

I follow the crowd who love the fall for the crispy mornings, the leaves changing colors, a good pot of chili, and Halloween. I also get to add that my birthday is in the fall as well (next Wednesday to be exact). So I have to say that October is my favorite month.

A very special time for our family was when my husband and I took our daughter to the pumpkin patch last year. Now granted, she was just shy of six months so obviously this was more for me than anything. But that being said, we were able to elicit a few reactions out of the day.

She did giggle at the bunny rabbits, did not care for sitting in the tractor full of cotton, and definitely enjoyed the swing.

A new tradition with our little family has been started, and I am really looking forward to taking her this year. It is amazing how big she has gotten in just a year. It will be a totally new experience for her and us and we will just soak it up. (meaning that I will take hundreds of pictures)

Man, I love the fall!

Fall back into blogging

Here in Alabama, fall really doesn't hit us until the first week in November. So since it is still green as green can be here, here are a few snapshots I took today. 

Our little tree!

We have a family of three hummingbirds have made themselves quite at home!

"I just can't reach the flowers!" (Side note: if you need a plant that will just explode in lots of heat, lantanas makes for great ground cover.)

Even though it may not look like fall, this is quite a frequent sight this time of year! Our little buddies....

And the biggest sign that fall is here in our house, it is college football time. Husband turns giddy, and I become happy again because of the summer's incessant college football countdown has finally ceased. Now I just have to deal with the stressed out pacing on Saturday afternoons.

Happy Fall everyone!

The Start of My New Journey

It's crazy how life leads you down a different path from where you thought that you would be. Just like the saying goes, "If you want to make God laugh, just tell Him about your plans." Well in my life, He allowed for me to entertain my dream of being an architect for just a little while. Several years of focus and dedication, and a couple years of practice. And that is it. Apparently, that is not the journey I was meant to be on.

I have come to accept the writing on the wall. My architectural career is over, and it's time to move on. To say that it is bittersweet, is quite an understatement. On one hand it's sad that a dream of mine has died. I had wanted to be an architect since I was 12 years old. I worked my butt off for it, achieved it, and lost it. And what kills me is that there isn't anything that I can do about it. Thousands and thousands of architects are in the same boat as I am. And it's three years later after the economy crashed. How long are we supposed to wait?

{This is not meant to be a pity party. A vent, yes, absolutely.}

Before you feel too too bad for me, the last three years have been wonderful. I got married, we moved into our first house, and we had our amazingly beautiful daughter. And I have had the awesome fortune of being a stay at home mommy to her for the last fifteen months. 

So what is in the works now?

I have started school again to become a nurse. Yes, you have read that right, 180 degrees different from architecture. Am I crazy? Maybe. But I am excited about this new start and a chance to help people and to be apart of something that is bigger than myself. If you were to ask me right this second what part of nursing I would like to go into (did you all know that there are 80 different types of nurses?!), my dream would be to be a Labor and Delivery night nurse.

As scary as my birth experience was to me, I had the most incredible bunch of nurses that calmed me down so that I could enjoy the first moments of my daughter's life. I would love to be apart of that team now being on the other side and help mothers and mothers-to-be with their birth experience.

As they say, "having a baby changes everything".

Stay tuned for my experiences in college again, it's a lot different now that I am not 18 anymore.