Snickerdoodles and Anniversaries.

Every day is a perfect day to bake in my house but this was an extra special occasion, which for me, equals more baking! My hubby and I celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary this week. I honestly can't believe it has been 8 years! Time really flies when your having fun! 

 Baking is something I love to do, especially when I can bake something yummy for my hubby be it a special occasion or not. So I am always searching Pinterest for the best new recipes but sometimes I love to stick with the classics. 

This weekend's baking consisted of Snickerdoodles (a classic) and Banana Bread Brownies (Pinterest newbie) and both turned out delicious! 

 I can honestly say the snickerdoodles were the favorite to my hubby, he already requested another batch because they are almost gone. (I shared these with our parents too :-) Although, we could have eaten them all ourselves.) He isn't a big fan of anything with banana or walnuts but he thought the banana bread brownies were good too! I love them, so moist! 

So I guess I know what I will be baking next. 

Before the icing. 

Please excuse the terrible photo. They were delicious! 

The recipes. 

 Click here for the Banana Bread Brownies. 

 Click here for the Snickerdoodles. 

 Have you made either of these lately? 

Did You Get 10 Free Cards From Cardstore.Com?

UPS brought me a nice little box full of bright colored packing and 10 FREE holiday cards I ordered with FREE shipping! How perfect is that? 

Did you get yours? 

My other freebies this week! 

Organization Day 2.

I have been trying to work on getting myself and my house a little more organized. I have found that with the help of Money Saving Mom's recent organization series and IHeart Organizing's everything haha, I am trying each week to find new things to organize and complete. 

 My projects from yesterday were my recipe binder and my coupon binder. Today I finished organizing the pile of paperwork/mail on the counter. You know the one that for some reason seems to appear every day and multiply within the hour? Ya, that pile. Well, this past week I reorganized my awesome Thirty One Organizing Utility Tote that sits on the end of the counter or under the counter in the cupboard, so today I sorted all the papers ect... and filed them accordingly. It feels great to have another thing checked off my list and everything a little neater. I found this great idea from IHeart Organizing a while ago and I love it. I love that I can just carry my bag of bills/papers/calculator ect... to my office or wherever I need it and it looks super cute on the counter or wherever. I would love to create our corner kitchen command center in the empty spot in our diningroom (open to our kitchen) sometime soon, now I have to decide how exactly I want it and find the right furniture/pieces for the spot! I would love to find a great thrift store piece and DIY something great. We will see. For now, it's just the end of counter clutter. 

 Do you have a similar system for the daily mail clutter or something different? Feel free to share.  

A Little Organization

It was a busy day in our house today. After reading Money Saving Mom's latest posts about organization and getting things done, I figured I would tackle an organization project that has been bugging me. Well, two of them actually. So today after Ginger and I got back from today's morning walk (lots of frost on the ground this morning) I started sorting/clipping/organizing my coupon inserts and swapped the small folders I had them in. I have a coupon binder that I love, but I needed to change up the small one to a medium one that I carry with me at the store. I have great friends and family that share their coupons with me but I end up with a big pile of them. So recently I have tried sorting them weekly into a folder/binder that keeps them in order before I clip them. Then I clip/sort them and put them into the medium folder that I can shop with. I just can't get the hang of taking the big binder shopping. 

 YAY! I feel like I am all organized after that haha. 

 

On to the next project, my recipe binder. 

 I love my recipe binder! I found many different ideas on Pinterest a while ago and I put together a recipe binder that I use daily. I am still tweaking a few things, I need to redo my categories and I would like to put a section for daily easy/quick meals in my normal rotation for our meal plan. But those are a work in progress. Today's job was sorting and filing the new recipes I have printed or pulled out of magazines in the last few months. This recipe binder has made it so much easier for me to plan meals for our weekly meal plan and find/try new recipes. 

 

Yay! Another thing off my list. 

If you would like to see more about my recipe binder you can check out my post here. 

What is your most recent organization project? Have you just finished it or is it one lingering over you that needs completed? Feel free to share. 

 

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Roast Chicken.

Another perfect fall day and delicious fall cooking.

 We are fortunate enough to have a local turkey farm that sells farm fresh whole chickens as well as turkeys and everything you can think of made from turkey. Turkey "ham" salad, turkey bacon, turkey pepperoni and turkey sausage and more. Pounds Turkey Farm has a wide variety of Turkey items as well as other local farm raised beef and more. 

 On the menu today is roast chicken. I have found so many different recipes on Pinterest and other foodie blogs that I follow but today I was just looking for a plain old roast chicken. This recipe fit that description, not to say that it was plain just that it was nice and simple and I had all the ingredients on hand. 

 I am loving sweet potatoes lately so along with the side of potatoes, carrots, celery and onions, I cut up a couple sweet potatoes too. Yum. 

 A little time consuming but all of this was super easy and delicious. While I was chopping up all the sweet potatoes and veggies, I decided to chop up the acorn squash my sister had given me from her local CSA farm share and make soup. No recipe here just a throw together soup. It was perfect for the chilly fall day. 

What's cookin' at your house tonight? 

Wednesday.

What is Wednesday like for you? 

 In our little town in Western Pa, the past week has been cloudy and raining. Finally after basically a week of rain, Tuesday brought a little sunshine! A better way to start the day. Sunshine definitely brings a smile to my face. Today, Wednesday, the sun is out there but not quite as prominent as yesterday. 

 Enough about sunshine, although, I could talk about it all day. I was thrilled to find all my new followers on my blog page and my Facebook page. 

Thank you all so much and welcome to my little blog! 

 I have been sharing the latest deals and coupons via my Facebook page recently because I can share them sooner. I tried another new recipe yesterday! I found it on Pinterest of course. 

 You can find the original recipe here. 

 I never have all the ingredients I need on hand even though I always keep fresh fruits and veggies and tried to have a fully stocked pantry, always something I forgot. 

 Ingredients: 

4 sausages (beef or pork)  I used Turkey. 

1 pound potatoes

1/2 pound carrots

1/2 bell pepper

1 large onion

1 fennel bulb I didn't have this so I just skipped it. 

2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp oil

freshly cracked black pepper

1 1/2 tsp Italian herbs

1/2 cup chicken broth 

4 tbsp balsamic vinegar 

For the rest of the directions, check out the original recipe. The step by step colorful pictures are great! Basically you bake all the potatoes/veggies and brown the sausages then add them all together for a bit and bake. 

 My meat and potato loving hubby, loved it! Super easy, basically two pan meal and the best part about it is that once you prepare it, you can clean up the kitchen while it's baking. My favorite type of recipe! 

Sunday Family Dinner & Apple Pies

Sunday Family Dinner & Apple Pie.

I wrote a little last week about how our family loves Sunday family dinner, well, I can't speak for the rest of the family but I love it. With 9 of us 'kids' all together plus spouses and my Gram on Mom's side & Gram & Pap on Dad's side, it is always a full house. Although we aren't all usually home at the same time anymore, there is usually a minimum of 15 of us at the 3 tables in Mom's diningroom. The summer sometimes tends to get a little busy and we don't get together as often as we would like to, but especially fall and winter. Spagetti is on the menu at Mom's house tonight so we will have all the usual salad, bread ect... 

 Since I was off the hook for making supper, I decided it is a great day to make pies! Let me remind you, I have only ever made maybe 3 pies in my lifetime so... I am always reading and researching before I start. Yes, I said researching how to make apple pie. It may sound funny to some but I like to know what I am doing before I start. The last two pies I made were a little different, I made The Pioneer Woman's Flat Apple Pie because I figured it would be perfect for my hubby to take in his lunch! 

 Today I tried a different approach & decided to go for a more traditional pie. I love The Pioneer Woman's Perfect Pie Crust. Now, again, I can't really say it's the best recipe ever when that is pretty much the only recipe I have ever used. As for now, I haven't used a bought pie crust, because I am a big believer of trying to make everything from scratch first and then if I need to save time later, then buy the pre-made stuff. Like I said, I am trying! 

I picked up the apples at a local apple farm. They sell other products as well but they grow all their own apples! I love having an apple farm so close to home. If you are local and haven't heard of Kistaco's, you can check out their website here. I also picked up some of their own Apple Cider for my sister this weekend. So, after 'researching' recipes ect... I decided on a recipe. Well, for me, I can't come up with a recipe on my own but I usually end up looking at two or three recipes and kind of mix and match a little from each. So, I used this and this. 

 I even tried to do a little lattice type crust on top. Again, be easy on me, I have never done this before. Now my new challenge is to make the filling a little thicker.

Feel free to share any tips. Do you have a favorite pie recipe? Feel free to share. If it's not a secret family recipe. 

So yummy.

My almost perfect pie. 

My pie making buddy. She lays on her bed and waits for crumbs. 

Purex Plus Oxi Review & Giveaway **Winners Announced.

Purex Plus Oxi Review & Giveaway.

***The winners are...

Julie & Tiffany Christie 

Congratulations! Please contact me within 48 hours to receive your prize. Thank you for entering. 

Introducing Purex Plus Oxi, a new stain-fighting liquid detergent from Purex. 

I was recently offered a chance to try this new detergent as a Purex Insider. I love to try anything with an extra boost of stain remover & freshness. My favorite thing to wash with a new detergent is towels! I think you can really tell if it adds freshness when you try it on your towels. I tried Purex plus Oxi this past week on a load of towels/washrags ect... and I was impressed! The towels came out soft and smelling fresh. Another success for Purex. 

Purex has kicked off the release of the new plus Oxi with a sweepstakes! Enter to win $1000.00 here. 

 If you would like a chance to try Purex Plus Oxi for yourself, you can enter my giveaway. 

 To enter :

Mandatory entry: 

Like My Adventures In Treasure Hunting on Facebook and comment below to let me know you do. If you already 'like' my page just let me know. 

Extra entries. 

Follow this link to the Purex sweepstakes and then come back here and let me know you entered! 

Follow my blog on GFC and leave a comment letting me know. 

Share this giveaway with your friends & let me know you did.

***Purex provided me with a sample of Purex plus Oxi so I could review them. However, all of the opinions expressed here are my own. 

Capturing Memories.

I wouldn't say I am a photographer but I can honestly say photography is a hobby of mine. I am always trying to capture the memory and also the perfect photo. Needless to say, my laptop is full of photos from day to day activities and of course Ginger. Ginger is a chocolate lab mix, she was rescue from a local shelter. She is just like our own child, our four legged child. 

I have a lot of what we call 'playdates' with my niece & nephew and Ginger loves it. She loves to get right in wherever they are and get extra close to whatever they have. The kiddos love her and are always following her around. 

 Last week we decided to carve our pumpkin with the help of our niece M, and Ginger, as usual, wanted to join in too. 

A few other fall memories I have tried to capture.