Baked Macaroni and Cheese

I got this macaroni and cheese recipe from a friend a while back and love it. I made it again this weekend and thought I would share. I like to prepare it ahead of time and then just bake it a little bit longer.

What You Need:
1 pound macaroni noodles
16 oz cottage cheese
16 oz sour cream
3 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
2 Tbs. butter or margarine
Salt and pepper to taste

What You Do:Cook noodles about 1 min less than directions on the box
Mix noodles with all other ingredients (save 1 cup of cheese for topping).

Pour into large baking dish.  Top with extra cup of cheese.

Bake at 350 about 45 min (until golden and bubbly)*If you make it ahead of time and want to just bake it right before you go
that is fine, but it will need to cook longer since it has been in the fridge... I normally do it closer to an hour.

Smores Cookies

Another yummy pinterest find: Smore's Cookies!

This was really easy to make!
Lay down graham crackers in the bottom of a 13x9 baking dish, only stacked 2 high.
On parchment paper, flatten out your cookie dough to the size of the bottom of the pan.
Lay it over top of the graham crackers:

Cook at the temperature on the cookie directions for about 8 minutes or until cooked almost all the way through.
Break up a couple of hershey's bars and place on top of the warm cookie:

Top with marshmallows:

Bake until marshmallows are brown and puffy:

Serve warm with ice cream!

VICTORY over FSU!

Last weekend was a GREAT football game. We beat #3 ranked, FSU in the last seconds of the game. AND Allison was in town for the game :)

 We had a lot of fun tailgating, so here's the photobomb of all my pictures:

We lost flip cup like 4 times in a row :( So Brenna was sad...

My short hair! 

It got REALLY loud when we beat FSU, all the RVs were blowing their horns and people were going nuts... Tyson didn't enjoy the noise all that much...

My boys asleep finally, at almost 2am... Trey had to get up for work at 5:30 :(

The next morning we woke up and it was COLD out... so we enjoyed our fireplace in the RV!

Somebody was exhausted from all the tailgate fun and didn't want to get up....

Sneaky Girl

A few weeks ago, Trey aerated and seeded our yard, and we have kept the dogs off the backyard ever since to let the grass grow and get strong roots before we let them run like wild animals out there. We have had trouble keeping grass back there because they run a path between 2 corners of our yard checking for squirrels :) We thought maybe if we keep them off of it long enough (probably a couple of months) it will get decent roots and won't be totally torn up.... we can dream, right?!

GRASS!

Even growing grass in what was previously a pine straw corner



There never used to be grass here!


So since Tyson is still a wild boy at times when they are home alone, and he doesn't have the back yard to run around in and get his energy out, we crate him most of the time when we are gone. Last week, their Aunt B came over at lunch and let them out to play (out front) and then I said she could just shut the baby gate to the kitchen and leave the door open to let them onto the screened in porch. So they had the kitchen & screened in porch to hang out in, but the door on the screened in porch to the back yard was closed. I came home a few hours later to find Tyson greeting me at the gate (as usual) and Vegas wasn't with him. I figured maybe she was still on the porch enjoying herself. I walked out there and didn't see her! I started to wonder if she was in the house upstairs or something when I heard her little jingle come trotting over to the porch door... from the backyard! Somehow the porch door was closed and Vegas was on the other side of it!

After some searching I discovered how she made her way out:

Through a weak spot in the screen. When Trey powerwashed the deck a while back some of the screen spots came loose but were still somewhat in tact. Well we can only assume that Vegas was in her normal position (behind the chairs in the corner, stalking squirrels) and some squirrel was just taunting her too much, so she had to get to him! This is the dog that will not jump over a 2 foot baby gate... and yep she jumped out the screen!! Clearly, she's comfortable with it:

And to think, the "mischievous" boy was following the rules the whole time :)

She just loves being outside... this was a little bit later when I let them out front to go potty and hang out. She refuses to come in some sunny afternoons.

August Date Night (a little delayed!)

Okay so it may have been October 1st before we actually went on this date, but it was still a wonderful night and it forced us to get out and enjoy each other's company! We got a little busy between my knee putting me back in August, then school starting and football season starting up!

We went to dinner at the Melting Pot and used a coupon that I got on restaurant.com. I paid like $2 for a $25 gift certificate to go towards our dinner! We had to use it on the "Big Night Out" meal that was a cheese fondue, salad, entree and chocolate fondue. They have a set menu for it but all except for the entrees are changable.

We had a neat, intimate L-shaped two-seater booth to enjoy our date night :)

We stuck with the set menu, except for the chocolate. We started with Boston Lager Cheddar Cheese Fondue:

Our next course was a Wisconsin Wedge Salad. Neither of us had eaten a wedge salad before so we thought we'd give it a try. It was pretty yummy:

For dinner we had the fondue feast, which was Angus Sirloin, Old Bay seasoned shrimp, buffalo chicken, Memphis Style Barbeque pork tenderloin, wild mushroom sacchetti along with broccoli, mushrooms and potatoes.



Our meat selection



We threw the broccoli, mushrooms and potatoes in to cook!

Along with our entrees we ordered a couple of beers, I got a Lonerider Sweet Josie & Trey got a Duck Rabbit Stout. Yum!

Luckily the whole process takes a while so even though we were getting full, our food settled enough to give us room for the best part: chocolate! We ordered "off the menu" and got a snickers dip it was chocolate, caramel and chunky peanut butter with a touch of Bailey's.

It was a great date night. It's so nice to go out and enjoy each other's company doing something out of the usual. And even nicer to not have to do dishes afterwards :)