Taking the day off

From blogging.

You thought I was going to take off of work?! Nope! I like my money too much.

But today is an extra day. It doesn't matter. Also, did you know that February 29th is the only day of the year that it is acceptable for a female to ask a male to marry them. I guess that means I should get to looking and asking... I probably need a ring though too. I'll get one on my lunch break at Charming Charlie :)

Super Productive

So I have this full time job in a call center. I work nine hour shifts with an hour long lunch break and am tied to my phone the other eight hours of the shift. I never really understood the worth of an hour until I started here and that was pretty much my only time during the day to GTD! (that's GET THINGS DONE!, not gym, tan, dance...?).

Today I was quite pleased with my use of my hour lunch break. I made up a list of supplies I needed to make some more of those crispie rice treats for my Mother's LEAP DAY PARTY! tomorrow. This time I am making them bite sized and using bright colored nonpareils (fancy word for sprinkles). I may take pics, or may not... depending on how creative I feel.

Ok.. back to super productive lunch break. I went to the grocery store to get a lean cuisine for lunch and various and sundry things from my shopping list. I ended up leaving the store with at least a week's worth of lean cuisines (they were 5 for $10!), and my other crap, and only took about 15 minutes! Then I went to the redbox to pick up the movie I reserved there... Hugo. Then I went home, gave my cat food, washed his water bowl and gave him water (I'm sure you wanted to know about the inane details of my life, so here ya go!). Then we put my lunch in the microwave. Today I had one of those Green Giant Steamers, it was broccoli, rice, and cheese and it was quite delicious. While my food was cooking, I put clothes in the laundry, checked the mail... hopeful that my Nordstrom package was in (but it wasn't... it is out for delivery though, my UPS man just doesn't like to come until sundown, but I am always hopeful). THEN, I ate my food because it was ready. And then, I contemplated running to Dollar General to get a few things, but decided I didn't have time because I still had to make my crispie rice treats.

So recap:

• Grocery shopping
• Lunch
• Pet Care
• Making Crispie Rice treats
• + random other tasks

I think I did a good job jamming a lot of tasks into an hour and I am super proud of myself.

Love,

FranklyBecca

p.s. sorry no pics today!

CCC: In Training

Every year the Saturday before Easter the city of New Orleans hosts the Crescent City Classic. It is a 10k road race. For the past 3 or so years I have wanted to participate but either forgot to register, didn't train in time, etc. This year, my Mother has been big into walking/jogging/biking/working out. She had a severe knee injury about 6 months ago that required a meniscus repair among other repairs. She also has a chronic ACL tear that the doc didn't "fix". Since the surgery she has been in a brace. She wanted to do Crescent City Classic no matter what. In one of her first visits with her ortho doc she told him this was her goal, and he seemed apprehensive, but didn't put it out of the realm of possibility.

Fast forward and we have her on fire, working out, doing aquatics to strengthen her muscles to compensate for the bad knee. For Christmas my Santa Claus told my family that he/she would register us all for CCC, and he/she did.

My life schedule has kept me busy lately and I hate to admit that I haven't started training for this event yet, when it is actually in a matter of about 4 weeks. And as much as I would love to run/jog it, I just don't see that happening, but I need to practice walking. Tonight we begin the official training. We will be walking around the campus once tonight, it is about 2 miles. Before the end of the week we hope to be up to two times around, which is totally do-able. I know it's a fast transition but we are speed training here! Making up for lost time.

Hopefully I don't pass out tonight or anytime this week. I am pumped!!!

Love,

FranklyBecca

I'd like to thank the Academy

For boring helping me sift through good, bad, great, and awful movies over the years. Now you may not know this about me, but I am a big movie snob. I don't like watching movies unless it's a movie i really, really, really want to see. For instance right now I am dying for The Lorax (March 2nd) and The Hunger Games (March 23rd) to come out. Bee tee dubs... remind me in the future to blog about how much I love The Lorax.

Tonight, is the Oscars aka Academy Awards... I'm pretty sure it took me a good twelve years of my life to understand they were the same thing. But anyway, I digress. My family has always been big fans of award shows, my mother also enjoys the occasional pageant, just none of this Toddlers and Tiaras nonsense. The Oscars typically fall around the beginning of March, as does my Father's birthday (March 5th), that will be pertinent information in just a minute. We always like to have little award show parties whenever one comes on. One year my Father's birthday happened to fall on the night of the Oscars, so while he was taking his Sunday afternoon nap (everyone has those, right?), my Mother and myself got to decorating. We put down a strip of red felt from the room to the kitchen for the red carpet. We made up swag bags full of goodies for all of us, and the pièce de résistance was the Ken doll that I spray painted gold.


This year is no different. We will be having our annual Oscar party. I think for the treats this year we are having some burger sliders, boneless hot wings, and my white chocolate covered crispie rice treats. Should be quite delicious.

There is one difference this year, however. I have actually been attempting to watch some of the movies that were nominated that I wouldn't have wanted to see being the movie snob that I am. Last night we watched Midnight in Paris. Before starting the movie my Father had me play the preview for the movie so he would know what he was getting himself into and pretty much as soon as the preview said it was a Woody Allen movie he cast judgement. In the end he was pleasantly surprised I think. It was a bit of a bizarre movie though, but I also thought it was cool. I would definitely recommend it. I don't think it will be taking home best picture though, especially since it is up against The Help and The Artist. Speaking of The Artist, I would give my arms to see that movie. It looks so good, and I have heard great things about it.

 I hope that the awards will be good this year! Can't wait to see my favorite stars all dressed up in their fabulous evening wear!

Love,

FranklyBecca

no facebook + day off =

Me, Becca, making sweet treats all day.

Well, not all day, but most of it. I got a full weekend off this weekend so how did I spend my morning? Sleeping in of course! My internal clock tried to tell it me was ready to get up at 7:22 am, I said no. I slept until 9-ish. Then I laid around deciding when I should take a shower. I knew I was meeting my friend for lunch at 11. Snitch the cat came in (oh he has a facebook page.. not sure of the link, and I'm not getting on facebook so I can't share it with you. Sorry! but it's Snitch the Ferocious Cat if you want to go on there and become a fan of his). Anyway, he cried while I took a shower. Then followed me to my room afterward and he took a nap.

Me and Ang went to lunch at Lee's the adorable 50's diner in town. They have the best spaghetti if you can believe it. That's what I had for lunch.

After lunch I went to Target to get the baking supplies I was lacking. I knew I was going to make mini cupcakes and crispie rice treats (no copyright infringements). So I got the stuff I needed for my treats and headed home. As soon as I got home I got to baking. I thought I only had one mini cupcake pan and was going to bake 3 batches back to back, until my father came home and told me that he had 2 others on top of the one that was my pan. So I ended up still kind of doing 3 back to back batches but the last batch cooked some with the second. Anywho... While batch 2 was baking I got to making my crispie rice treats. Father swooped in and started to take over that task until it was time to smoosh them in the pan. This was our dialogue:

Father: You need to spray your hands or cover them in butter to smoosh this down flat so the crispies don't stick to you.
Me: I was just going to use plastic wrap
Father: Oh, that works too.

Now for some gratuitous un-photoshop edited photos

Forgive me for forgetting a pic of iced cupcakes... they looked average. probably a bit like this:

only no sprinkles. and light yellow icing. just envision it.

Now for the crispie rice treats!

The we did something special... (that is vanilla flavored Candy-Quick that I bought at Target)

PLUS SPRINKLES!

I'm obsessed with these sprinkles... I got them at Target in their easter section. They always have the best holiday sprinkles. I pretty much normally hoard them.

And because I am always being asked how I make my butter cream icing this is what goes in it. (the butter is softened by the way.)

Don't ask for a recipe, I don't have one. I just mix it up to consistency. However for the batch I made today I used that whole bag of sugar, the whole stick of butter, maybe half of that water and a capful of the almond extract.

Hope you enjoyed! and that my pics don't send you in to a sugar coma :)

Love,
FranklyBecca