Blueberry Streusel Muffins

My grocery store has had great prices on produce lately, and I've been trying to buy and use things that I normally don't because of the price. We love having freshly baked blueberry muffins for breakfast and snacks, but usually I just make them from a box mix (yeah, I know I'm lazy, don't judge)! Since blueberries have been super cheap, I decided to make some from scratch and seeing as how I rarely make these from scratch, I wanted a recipe that was a little more decadent than my normal muffin. I found the perfect one on Tammy's Recipes! I would post the recipe here, but I'm lazy, remember?

Here's a picture of the ones I made:

Not quite as pretty as Tammy's, but for my first try, not too bad. The streusel topping is fabulous. Eric asked me if he could eat all the tops off...you can guess what my answer was!
And, here's my breakfast this morning:

Hey, the topping has oats in it...totally a breakfast food, right ;)!

Hope you enjoy them as much as we do! Happy cooking!

Margaret Mitchell Museum Pics

Here are the pictures from the Margaret Mitchell Museum (some of the very few pictures I took while in Atlanta). I'm really bad about not wanting to take my camera with me because it's too big to put in my pocket/clutch, and Eric will never agree to carry it. I guess I'm going to have to get a smaller camera or bigger pockets :)!

In front of the house:


MM's desk and a replica of her typewriter from the Atlanta Journal newspaper where she worked:

In front the the actual apartment where she lived and affectionately referred to as "the dump":

The window seat where she sat and wrote GWTW:

A replica of her typewriter. When she had visitors, she always covered her work with a towel so no one could read it.

I look very grumpy in the pics I'm in, but I swear I was in a great mood! I think it was just very bright outside and I was too lazy to fish out my sunglasses since we were going back inside.

I was a little disappointed because all of the furnishings were replicas. The house had suffered a few fires over the years and even had a period where it was inhabited by vagrants so none of the original furnishings remained. It was still a very interesting tour, and I enjoyed seeing the actual apartment where one of my favorite books was written. There were several photos of Margaret in her younger days, and it was very interesting to see some of the real life people which were the inspiration for some of her characters. They are remodeling a lot of the museum, and it is supposed to be done by July 4, 2009. I can't wait to go back the next time I'm in Atlanta to see the rest of the museum :)!

Cotton Lollipops

MoMo loves q-tips more than anything in the world. Every morning he begs for them, and if he hears the drawer opening where we keep them, he comes running. Usually he just likes to carry them around with him or bat them around on the floor, but every once in a while we will catch him eating the cotton off of them. He will lay down and hold the q-tip between his two front paws and lick the q-tip like a lollipop. It is so funny! I caught him doing it a few days ago so I took some pictures to share with you. Sorry for the crappy quality. I had to use my phone because I knew he would be done by the time I found the real camera. The first picture portrays his true self...evil laser cat!

Atlanta Weekend

I'm a little behind...we were in Atlanta the weekend before last for a work thing, and I'm just now blogging about it! I had never been to Atlanta before (just driven through it) so I was very excited that my conference was being held there this year. While we were there, we had some wonderful dinners and I saw some of the most beautiful houses I have ever seen in my life! Our hotel was in the Vinings area so we spent most of our time there and Buckhead. We did manage to drive downtown one afternoon so that Eric could see the Centennial Olympic Park (we didn't stop like we wanted to because there was a concert that night and it was packed) and I wanted to visit the Margaret Mitchell museum (I know....such a nerd!). The museum was under construction so we were only able to see about half of the exhibits, but I did get to see the apartment where MM lived and where she wrote Gone with the Wind. It was a very interesting tour, and I have pictures to share, but of course I left my camera at home today. I'll post them soon, pinky swear :)!

Before I went to Atlanta, ThePreppyPeshke sent me a TON of restaurant recs that made me wish we were staying there for a lot longer than 2 days :)! We ended up going to the Buckhead Diner for dinner the first night (not one of her recs, but my boss suggested it and she was the one paying for the dinner!). It was very good food, but it was a weird atmosphere. Here's a picture of how Eric felt about the place:

He is such a goofball! My favorite parts of the dinner were the homemade potato chips with blue cheese dressing and the James Beard Award Winning White Chocolate Banana Cream Pie (with a name like that how could you choose anything else)...YUM!

The next night, we decided to go somewhere nice and have an early anniversary dinner. We went to one of the places that ThePreppyPeshke's suggested, Antica Posta. It was exactly what we were looking for to celebrate our anniversary :)! The atmosphere was very romantic and the service was outstanding. I had the Gnocchi alla Pomarola for my entree, and it was some of the best gnocchi I have ever tasted! The entire meal was wonderful. Thanks so much for your help PreppyPeshke. I only wish we had been able to stay longer and go to some more of the places you suggested!

Other Atlanta observations:

One of the worst parts of the trip was the traffic! I have driven in NYC, and it wasn't as bad as driving in Atlanta. I don't know how people that live there deal with that every day!

People in Atlanta must love valet parking....we saw it almost every where we went, even the mall. Eric hates valet parking....even if it is complimentary. I had to make him use the free valet at the restaurant because we were going to have to walk several blocks if we didn't!

Despite the traffic, we had a wonderful weekend in Atlanta and I look forward to going back soon so that I can see more of the city! I'll post my Margaret Mitchell museum pics soon!

Craziness

This has been the week from hell! My work husband (that's what I call the other manager in my department) has been on vacation this week so I've had to run around trying to keep all of our workers occupied. We have way too many people working for us this summer, and I spend more time looking for something for them to do than actually getting any work done myself! I just hate having 4 people sitting around doing nothing when I know there has to be something for them to do. It makes me very irritable!

On top of that, I had another encounter with my insane co-worker (who I now refer to as Crazy Town)....remember this story. This time, he found out that I was sending gift cards to people via first class mail rather than priority mail if they were for under $100. Since these people don't pay for shipping, and our gift cards can easily be voided and reissued if they do get lost, this shouldn't be a problem. Actually, none of it is his problem since it is my department and my decision...which I pointed out several times! He claimed that I was sending them this way because it was easier to send fraudulent (he used the word fraudulent many times) cards and that this "worked to my advantage." I'm still not sure if he was accusing me of trying to steal gift cards to my own store or if he thought I was sending people "fraudulent" gift cards. None of it makes sense (unless you are a permanent resident of crazy town). He then went on to say he was going to tell our company accountant about this (not my boss...our accountant???), and we "would see what would happen." He also said my boss "knows all about me" and she knows "how I am." So...I guess he was saying my boss thinks I'm dishonest?? It was a very loud and unpleasant confrontation which ended with me in tears (when I get really mad, I cry...which makes me even more mad)! My boss is out of the country right now so I can't do anything about it. He has probably already written her a 10 page letter about how I want to steal his job again. I am so tired of working with this guy. He accuses someone (luckily it is not always me) about once a week of stealing something from him, trying to take his job, or thinks they are just out to get him. He is a complete psycho, and I really do worry about my safety. One of my co-workers told me that Crazy Town was thinking about buying a gun...it scares the crap out of me that this might happen. I think I'm going to have to sit down with my boss when she gets back and ask her to do something about it. I don't think it is fair for anyone to have to fear that their co-worker could snap and possibly shoot them at any minute!

After my confrontation with CT, I was hoping that the rest of my day would be drama free. Instead, I had one of the scariest experiences of my life! That night, I was woken up at 2:30 am by the worst screaming noises I have ever heard. Zoey (one of the kitties) had her foot caught in the shelf of Eric's closet, and she was hanging upside down flailing around. It was one of the scariest moments of my life! Before we could get to her, MoMo jumped up and they started fighting. When Eric grabbed him, both cats bit him (one on the leg and one on the hand). I knew that Zoey was going to bite me too, but I didn't have any choice...I had to get her down (looking back, I should have wrapped my hand in a t-shirt but I wasn't thinking too clearly at 2:30 am!). Of course, since I didn't let go when she bit me, it went in very deep and the wound was infected by the next morning. I had to go to Urgent Treatment (again) to get antibiotics and the swelling is just now starting to go down. More importantly, my little monkey kitty Zoey turned out to be okay. She was limping a little, but by the next morning she was running around harassing the other cats so I think she's going to be okay. I still shudder when I think about how hurt she could have been! Fortunately, every thing worked out okay and the closet has now become off limits as a sleeping place :)!

I'm really ready to have some more of those boring days that I was complaining about not too long ago! Hope everyone else has had and pleasant and not to eventful week!

No Vacancy

Apparently, there is a sign up on my house that says please bring your unwanted cats here, or maybe word has just gotten around to all the stray cats in the area that I'm an easy target! When we left for our Orlando/Disney vacation, we had four cats (I know, it's insane). When we returned, there were FIVE! I'm still not convinced that our house sitter (Hello Millie!) didn't bring an extra cat over just in case she lost one :)!

As I was stumbling through the semi-dark house the morning after we returned, I saw the outline of a cat sitting in our front window. It looked like Zoey sitting on the inside of the window sill, but after I saw her in another room, I went back to inspect and it was a very similar size cat sitting on the outside of the window. I had never seen this cat before so I went out to see if he was okay, and he tried to run in my front door! Since then, I have been trying to find him a home (I can NOT have another cat...even I have some limits), but it looks like I'm going to have to take him to the humane society :(. He actually disappeared for about 5 days so I was hoping that someone had decided to keep him, but he turned up on my front porch begging for food again this morning. It makes me so sad that someone would just drop off such a sweet cat. He's about 6 months old (my best guess) and very, very friendly. Even though he's small, he has pretty big paws. I started calling him "thunder paws" which led to the name Thunder. He's really skinny even though we've been feeding him so I'm going to give him a worm pill and flea treatment before I turn him over to the shelter. I'm hoping if he's really healthy, they will take him straight in to the adoption area and he can skip over the "stray room." I've been in the stray room once during my volunteering at the humane society, and I left it in tears. There are so many animals that have been mistreated and neglected (leading to disease in some cases), and they have to be quarantined from the healthy adoptable population for a few days. It's really sad :(!
Here are some pictures of our temporary visitor (Seriously, I'm not keeping him. I know it sounds like I love him already, but I can't have another cat!):

If you are in the KY area and know someone that would like a very sweet cat, please send me an e-mail! I'm going to give it another week to try to find this guy a home before I take him to the humane society.

I read too much!

I had a goal this year to read 50 books. It is mid-June, and I'm on book 53 (and this doesn't even count some of the ones I've reread this year)! This is ridonkulous...I think I need to get some new hobbies! I've never actually counted how many books I've read over a certain time period so I'm going to keep up with it and see how many I actually read in a one year span. I'll keep the numbers updated on my side bar. As for the reading part of the 500/50 challenge...done!