High Five For Friday [Belated]

***Sorry this is late. I had it all typed up and forgot to post it!***

What's up, world?

Not much around this neck of the woods. This week has been quite a stressful one, full of studying and not much else.  I certainly hope your week has been better!

I seriously don't think 5 fun, cool, exciting things happened this week, so let's see if we can come up with something for High Five for Friday...

1.  I made it through my test yesterday, and didn't think it was tooooo bad.  Someone in my class said this week, "every week in optometry school feels like finals week of undergrad - without the relief of it being over."  True that, true that.

2.  I got my copy of this book this week. (When I will have time to read it, I'm not quite sure yet.)  There is more about this book that is important for next week... so stay tuned!

3.  We made another trip to Steel City Pops this week.  Half because they were having customer appreciation day and $1 off pops, and secondly because I needed a treat after making it through my test yesterday. :)   They have a few funky flavors like Strawberry Balsamic which I tried this time and it was delicious!

4.  I picked this up at Target yesterday.  I've been wanting to try an eyelid primer, especially on days that I wear eye shadow to see if it helps keep it in place.  This is also a brightener, which I thought I might could use now that I probably look tired all the time. LOL.  We'll see how I like it.

5.  We are leaving today headed back home for our friends Jarrod and Jennifer's wedding!  We are SO excited that are soon to be man and wife.  They have been together nearly as long as we have (forever!), so we are glad  they are finally getting hitched!

A Few of My Favorite Things - Kitchen Edition

You all know that cooking is something that happens pretty frequently around here.  (Less my doings lately, and more Jesse's.)  To save money and our waistlines we prefer to eat in instead of out most nights. Kitchen gadgets that make life easier (or just more delicious) are such wonderful inventions that I thought they are worthy of a post.  I love to browse through kitchen stores, and if weren't for Jesse's logical thinking I'd probably have so many random kitchen gadgets.  You know, they make something for everything, and often times it's just so darn cute.  When we did our wedding registry at the earthly-heaven-of-all-things-home store (aka-Bed, Bath, and Beyond) we spent (no lie) almost 3 hours just in the kitchen section of the store!  We made sure we were going to get things that we would really use and that would last a long time. (Half of that time was probably spent talking me out of things...) By no means do I think these items are true necessities for the kitchen, but they are ones that make me smile and make cooking a little more fun.

So, here they are in all their culinary glory:

Numero uno has to be our KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer! This has to be the one I'm most thankful for.  Is it normal for a girl to dream of owning a Kitchenaid mixer?  'Cause this one did.  I use this fairly often, and not just for desserts.  Snap on that whisk attachment and you can make the creamiest creamed potatoes ever. Mmm.... And the dough hook is fabulous - it does all the kneading work for you for most breads! (As I linked this item from Amazon I noticed the current price. Do NOT pay this much for a mixer.  They are expensive, but you can frequently find sales.)  Now, if you've already got one of these, then you need to get one of these:

Best attachment ever! (Thanks to Heidi for mine!)  It wipes everything (batter, cookie dough, whatever) down the side of the bowl and you barely have to stop to scrape the sides down. Genius!

If you do anything that requires mixing and pouring, a batter bowl is where it's at!  Plus, they come in all different colors and designs and are super cute.  This is definitely my go-to mixing bowl!  Makes me sing "here is my handle, here is my spout."  Moving on...

An ice cream maker! This is definitely not a "necessity," but it is so fun to use.  We made so much ice cream the summer after we married (and still no extra belt holes for Jesse... if that doesn't work I don't know what will).  We've made several flavors of ice cream - vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter, blackberry- and a couple of sorbets. I'm definitely making myself hungry with this post.  I didn't even know this fancy electric ice cream maker existed.  I thought they all required ice and rock salt.  Not this one - you just freeze the inner bowl and take it out when you're ready to churn!  Again, genius!

This KitchenAid vegetable peeler is awesome!  I grew up with one of these

and let me tell you, compared to it, the Kitchen Aid one works wonders. (It could have been the fact that mom's vegetable peeler was as old as me, and therefore had seen better days.)  It takes off just the right amount of peel - not so much you feel like you're not going to be left with a carrot once you're finished, but enough that you don't have to go over the same place twice.  I even gifted one to my mom to replace the one pictured above. :)  You can usually find these at TJMaxx or Ross for cheap.

A slotted spoon.  After we got all of our wedding gifts we gave away lots of kitchen stuff that we didn't need anymore.  Somehow that involved getting rid of Jesse's old slotted spoon, but we never got another one.  I know that sounds funny, but I remember looking at serving sets in Bed, Bath, and Beyond and other places and thinking they all seemed too fancy or something, so we never bought one.  Every time I would cook peas or beans I would think, "I'm tired of fishing these out of the pot. Why don't I have a slotted spoon?"  So, when I came across a deal on some daily-deal site for the Knork serving set (pictured above) I jumped on it. Not only was it a great price for a good-quality 5-piece set, but they match our silverware almost perfectly!  (You can't tell in the picture, but our silverware spoons are very deep, and they are matte finished instead of shiny... kind of hard to match.)  I really didn't care much about the whole set, although nice to have, I was just excited over the slotted spoon.  And isn't it the cutest slotted spoon you ever did see?!

I told you... I have some weird connection with kitchen gadgets.

These are the ones that came to mind for me.  What are your favorite kitchen tools?

High Five for Friday!

I hope you all have been having a good week!  Nothing too fancy going on around here, but here are the highlights!

1. Top of this week's list is a baby-holding session!  Our friends Mike and Kelsey brought a beautiful baby girl into this world a few weeks ago and we finally got to meet her this week!  I always forget how tiny (and fragile seeming) new babies are.  To hold a new little person in your arms is such a precious, humbling thing.  I know what half of you are thinking about here- "when are you going to have kids?!," to which my reply would be unless you want to come and care for my child while I go to school then it's gonna be a few years. :)  In the meantime I will just enjoy holding every else's babies!

2.  I heard one of my favorite songs on the radio this week.  I know, I know... we live in the land of ipods and MP3s and I could just have it at hand to play over and over and over again, but I still enjoy the thrill of a song you love randomly catching the airwaves.  This plays on the radio by the David Crowder Band, but it was written by a guy named John Mark McMillan, who I got to hear while at Auburn.

3.  Three Optometry school organization meetings this week meant 3 free lunches.  Can't beat that!

4.  I finally got our recycling organized!  We try to recycle as much as possible, but it's just piled up in random boxes lately and was not very easy to take to the recycling center that way.  This week I "installed" some bins on our balcony/porch and added some cute labels. :)  Organizing trash probably shouldn't make a person this happy...

5.  A few things I learned this week (top left, clockwise):  how we see colors, all about the anterior chamber and how aqueous humor exits it, how the cornea is optically clear, the refractive power of the cornea and why you can't see clearly under water!  It's been an interesting week, huh?

We hope you all have a great weekend!  

Thank you, thank you

Wow, you guys!  Thanks to you all, our blog has made it up to 2,000 views in less than a year!  I've been watching the number steadily increase and wanted to thank you at a nice, even, slightly-monumental point, but tonight I logged on and my expectations had been exceeded! Thanks for showing your love and support for us by checking in every now and then! We hope you are enjoying our updates (it sure seems like you are!).

Do any of you have suggestions for posts?  Has there been anything I've mentioned that you would like to hear more of?  A lot of it has been pretty random, I guess. What are some of your favorite posts? It can get difficult to come up with interesting posts (and time to do so... hence all the High Five for Fridays in a row).

Don't forget to let us know that you're looking by becoming an official "follower" by clicking "Join this Site" on the left side of your screen and following the prompt.

Thanks again for keeping up with us!  Stay tuned for more High Fives and another Favorite Things post, coming soon!

Buttermilk Biscuits - Trust Me, I Had a Memaw

One of my most fond memories of my Memaw is helping her make buttermilk biscuits.  I always loved mixing up the dough and patting them out, but I think what made it so awe-inspiring as a kid was that she never measured anything.  I guess she measured long ago, but had made so many batches of biscuits she didn't have to measure anymore.  She made them so often she just kept a sheet of wax paper in the flour container and when it came time to whip up a batch, she'd pull it out, along with her flour sifter and old, misshapen measuring cup (aka the flour scoop).

I had some buttermilk and a craving for biscuits last week, so I woke up early Saturday and decided to try my hand at them.  Just the smell of the buttermilk and flour together (and the sticky-doughed fingers) took me back.  Memaw used to mix them up, then I would pinch them off and rolls the biscuits, because they just weren't a proper southern biscuit if you did them with a biscuit cutter.

I've found out through cooking away from home that my family's secret recipes weren't really a secret at all.  Mom's chocolate chip cookies - off the back of the Hershey's Chocolate Chip bag.  Memaw's Buttermilk Biscuits - off of the back of the White Lily All-Purpose Flour bag.  So, with that said, the requirement for making these biscuits is White Lily Flour.  I did not have White Lily Flour, and I was not going to the store at 7am in my nightgown to get some, so I was a heathen and made it with another all-purpose brand.  I researched into this a little bit though, and found out that White Lily has a lower amount of protein in their flour, which results in lighter biscuits.  So I guess the women in my family were right all those years.  I won't share the heathen recipe, but here is the White Lily Recipe in case this nostalgic post has you craving crumbly, buttery goodness.

High Five For Friday

Oh my goodness, you guys don't know how glad I am that it's FRIDAY!!! (see #4).  Linking up again with Lauren at From My Grey Desk for five highlights of the week. Here we go!

1.  Labor Day weekend in Luverne, AL means boiled peanuts!  I. love. them.  If you live there and don't get them, you should be ashamed of yourself.  I think I would drive all the way home just for peanuts. Thankfully, we also got to visit with our parents and then my side of the family on Monday.

2.  Jesse had two exams this week on electrical and mechanical engineering related stuff through his training at work and aced both of them.  And by aced I mean triple digits, 100!  He's so smart!

(totally horrible picture of me, please do ignore that)

3.  I had lunch with my old friend and study-buddy from Auburn today. (Hey Joe!)  It was great catching up with him.  He's in medical school just two buildings down from mine and we haven't seen each other until today!  He's going to be a great doctor! Like, the best.

4.  This week was my first crazy week of optometry school with 2 exams, 1 quiz, and a lab.  We were all stressing out because we had no idea what to expect out of our teachers on exams, but they both turned out to be much better than expected.  So with that said, I've survived my first exams and am alive to... study another day! Yay!

5. A few more things I've learned through the week: a little bit about rods and cones (they capture light that hits your retina...if only it were that simple); pathways of signal transduction of the nervous system to cells that make your tears; the thickness of your cornea and the collagen structure that it's made up of; and nutrition classes have paid off big time - that last box shows the process of glycolysis (carbohydrate breakdown).  I'm pretty sure we are going to cover a whole year's worth of my nutrition class in a week!

High Five For Friday

It's link up time again with Lauren at From My Grey Desk for High Five For Friday!  School has been keeping me really busy, and I feel like it's all I do, so my High Fives may start getting really creative!  Here's what has been up this week:

1.  We got to visit with our friend, Charlie, from Auburn Sunday.  Charlie used to be on the worship team with Jesse at The City Church, but now he is the worship leader at another church in Auburn.  Turns out they have a branch near Birmingham and he was filling in this week! Thankfully he let us know he was coming and we got to worship with him.  I forgot how much I miss hearing his soulful voice on Sundays!

2.  Jesse learned how to cook Mac-n-cheese this week!  I'm really just poking fun - he can cook quite well once you convince him to get in the kitchen.  He did give us a good laugh with boxed mac-n-cheese this week, though.  From the kitchen I heard, "This cheese sure is clumping."  He had already trashed the box and forgot to add milk. :)  Since I've started school my afternoons have been filled with studying and he has cooked and cleaned the kitchen almost every night for the past two weeks with little complaint.  He's a pretty great husband!

3.  We had our first Physiology of the Eye lab this week, which was also our first hands on experience with each other.  We tested our tear film: how much tears we each produced per minute and how much time it takes for our tear film to break apart before we had to blink.

4.  I found baker's twine today!  I've been wanting to snag some for random crafts but have never found any turquoise expect online, and shipping always costs twice as much as the twine itself.  So, thank you Martha and TJ Maxx for making me happy today.  (This is probably sad that this made my day... oh well.)

5. A few things I've learned this week include:  light refraction through a prism, how your tears drain, all the bones of the orbit, and the vascular system of the eye! It's only the beginning...

I hope you all have a great long weekend!  We'll be seeing some of you on Labor Day!