I love picking up stuff for our apartment to decorate. I visited Pier 1 Imports this past Friday. I saw this Elephant Teapot on their website before and it was 20% off in the store. It was just $12. I'm using it more for decor than for drinking tea though, hehe. It's currently sitting on one of my living room tables. I love it!


I also got some new dishes from... Dollar Tree! I saw these on their website, (but not wanting to buy in bulk- 24 bowls would be a bit excessive...) My husband checked a few of the Dollar Trees around us and was able to find the plates & bowls. Can't seem to find the matching mugs at any of the stores near us, but oh well. They are really pretty dishes and only $1 each!


Another Pier 1 Imports find. They had these large turquoise plastic tumblers (23 oz.) for $6 each. I thought the color would go well with the above dishes. They are made with a heavy durable plastic.



Other things on my to do list:

• Find a cute kitchen mat for in front of the sink. 
• Find dining chair covers or cushions (white, black or aqua).  
• Keep bidding on vintage/antique salt & pepper shakers on ebay until I win a set, lol.

 

I LOVE my Kindle Fire. I use it every day. I use it on the train to read or listen to music or browse the web. (I use my T-Mobile Sidekick 4G as a router). I use it on the train platform waiting for my train because there's free wi-fi at 30th Street Station. At work on breaks I might read a book or look at a magazine. At home sometimes instead of my laptop I'll browse the internet and read books before bed. Sometimes I watch Netflix on it too.

I've had my Kindle Fire since the day it was released. (About 5 months). When I would play a game and then exit the game, sometimes there would be this burned image of the game on my screen sort of invisible. I thought it was a just a glitch, so I'd restart my Kindle and it would be fine.

But then it started doing it with other things. Sometimes the search bar would burn into the screen & the navigation bar, so that when I rotated my Kindle I would have 2 dark stripes running alone the screen and if you looked closer you could see the ghosted icons. That wasn't going away even when I would restart. I would sometimes get the keyboard burned into the screen, or the icons on your home screen. It was getting really irritating. I tried to doing a factory reset which wipes out everything from your Kindle Fire, but that did not help. The ghosting was still happening.

I searched for the issue on the Amazon website, on their Kindle Fire Help Forum. There was topic about the ghosting and burned images. It seems a lot of people are having this issue. It's some sort of defect with some of the Kindle Fires.

I contacted Amazon by using their 'Contact Us' button. They must be there 24 hours because I called on a Saturday night at 9:30pm. The customer service rep asked if I had done a reset (holding the button down for 20 seconds). I told him I had done a factory reset and that hadn't resolved the ghosting on the screen.

He told me Amazon would send me a replacement. I just had to send the damaged one back in the box of the replacement with the prepaid UPS label they would email me. They ask for the last 4 digits of one of the credit cards on your Amazon.com account. If they don't receive the damaged device back within 30 days they will charge your account the full price for the Kindle Fire plus shipping.

My replacement Kindle Fire arrived in 2 days! (So I didn't have to go through Kindle withdraw too long, hehe!). Then I packed up my old Kindle and we dropped it off at a UPS store to be mailed. Amazon got my old device back within 2 days also.

Soooo... just beware my Kindle Fire fans. This is an issue with some of the devices. If your Kindle is under warranty Amazon will replace it. My 2nd Kindle Fire is working perfectly and I hope it does so after 5 months of use. Hopefully there will be no need for anymore replacements!



 

I'm a bit addicted to International Delight's new Iced Coffee's! (Not creamer, actual iced coffee in a quart! It's not super sweet, so I always add a packet of sweetener to my cup, but I love it!)

Vanilla, Mocha & Original

I've pinned a lot of different recipes on my Pinterest page. I haven't gotten around to most of them. But there have been a few that I've tried and really really LOVE. Things that I've made more than once. I wanted to share my favorite Pinterest recipes! Dinners & Desserts!

1. Cinnamon Roll Cake









This is AMAZING. I've made it twice. Once for my husband & I. And a 2nd time to take over to my parents house. It is sooo good. And so much easier than trying to make actual cinnamon rolls (I suck at cutting my rolls even sizes). Plus this recipe is super simple to put together. Definitely put the sugar glaze on while it's still warm, because it seeps into the cake and when you let it sit for 1 whole day before eating- wow. All that sugar and cinnamon crystallizes into something out of this world! Which is why I'm sharing this recipe as #1!

2. Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies







I love this recipe! I've made it 3x's since I found it. It's super simple with only 5 ingredients and no flour! These are definitely my new favorite peanut butter cookie. :)

3. Coffee mug cake








I've made chocolate mug cake before but this coffee mug cake it even better. With butter, cinnamon & sugar. Love it! Plus it only takes about 1 minute in the microwave!

4. Sweet & Spicy Bacon Chicken











This is sooo good! You dip the chicken in spices, wrap a slice of bacon around it, roll it around in brown sugar & bake it. Making these again this week! (Bacon is always good! lol!) It tasted like something I'd order from a restaurant.

















Tip: This how I make my bacon wrapped chicken. I line a deep casserole dish with foil. Mix my brown sugar & spices together in a bowl. (I use McCormick Montreal Chicken Seasoning), roll each chicken slice in the mixture (I cut my chicken breasts in slices of 2 or 3); then wrap a bacon slice around each chicken slice. Cook for 40 minutes at 400 degrees. When it's done, use tongs and place each chicken slice on a plate with paper towels to drain the grease before serving. The paper towel step is a MUST, or else it will be too greasy. LOVE this recipe! 

5. Breakfast Egg Rolls








I didn't follow this recipe exactly. I took the idea and ran with it. You can find egg roll wrappers in the grocery, they are usually in the veggie section near the cabbage. They give you a lot of wrappers in one package, so I've put just about anything you can think into an egg roll wrapper, lol. Our favorite combo was cooked bacon, scrambled eggs & cheese. Then I fried the egg rolls with Smart Balance oil until they turned golden.

6. Bacon Wrapped Cheese Burgers.










(This is my own photo.) I saw a lot of these burgers on Pinterest, but they had way too many slices of bacon on them & were usually grilled. I put together some homemade ground beef patties (salt, pepper, splash of worcestershire sauce & 2 tablespoons of ketchup for about 1 pound of beef). Then I wrapped 2 slices of thick cut bacon around the patties, smashed them flat, lined them on foil on my deep rimmed cookie sheet & baked them for 30 minutes at 375. Top with velveeta cheese on a sesame bun. Yum! 

7. THE best homemade brownies EVER!


















These are THE BEST homemade brownies I've ever had. It's my go-to recipe. They are chewy, they are dense, and best of all easy to make, you only need some Cocoa powder and few other ingredients. 

None of these recipes are exactly healthy, but they sure are good! ;-)

My camera came back from Sony today. I had it sent off to be repaired because the flash stopped working. :-( It was only 8 months old. Luckily they repaired it for free because it was still under warranty.

It's been awhile since I posted picture of some of my gang. So here are some new photos now that my flash works again! :-)

Buttercup says, "I want out!"

Lily! She will be 2 years old around June. She's my little old lady.

Templeton. :) He loves to give kisses.

Snugglies! Templeton & Teddy

Templeton says, "I want to get in the photo too!"

F.B. & I got to see an NBA game on Saturday here in Philadelphia. We got to go watch the 76ers play against Orlando Magic. I got the tickets for F.B. as his Valentines Day gift. He loves basketball, but he's never gotten to see an NBA game live, until now. We did get to watch a Philippine basketball game together in 2008.



I've never been to an NBA game either. It was super crowded and our seats were really high up, but you could still see the game pretty well. We did decide to leave at halftime though since the game started at 8pm. We wanted to beat the traffic. (Good thing we left early anyhow, the Sixers lost! They had been in the lead before halftime). We went to IHOP around 10pm and had a late dinner. (Yum pancakes!)

We had a quiet Easter dinner at home this evening. I cooked a roast beef in the crock pot and we had it along with onions and mushrooms. We also had baked potatoes & green bean casserole. Yum!

Happy Easter Everyone!

I've started purchasing books for my Kindle Fire, (there's a lot of free books in the Amazon Kindle store & I also check out e-books from my local library). I wanted to share what I've been reading lately. 

1. Girl in Translation



2. The Story Sisters



3. Heaven Is Here



4. Prairie Tale



5. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch



6. Prison Nation



(And if you don't have a Kindle, these books are also available in paper).

Any good books you've been reading lately, that you'd like to share?

(I do use Amazon Associates, but not because I've made any money- because I haven't! lol! But I like that I can show a picture/link with a product when I'm blogging. Plus I do recommend Amazon.com for their low prices. That or Ebay!)  

Awhile back in early 2011, my office wanted to interview people that had bizarre or unusual pets for an article in our campuses monthly newsletter. I contacted them, but the idea got put on hold because our campus relocated to Center City Philadelphia.

So, in February I was contacted again by one of the reporters that work's on the newsletter. He really wanted to do the story, but use my pet rats (I had 12 when the article was written, I now own 10 rats) as the feature story. What really intrigued them, was that I had adopted 7 rats from Star's Rat Rescue in South Dakota and that the rats had traveled 1,500 miles.

I was interviewed about my own pet rats and about rat rescues in general. 5,000 employees at our Philadelphia Campus will be able to read the article. It just came out in our April newsletter & I scanned in a copy to share with you all. I was super happy to get Star's Rat Rescue & our local rat rescue in Philadelphia, (Rat Chick Rescue) mentioned in the article! This was a great opportunity to share about pet rats & pet rat adoption in a positive light!