Windy with Bugs!

Ok, so I was mowing the lawn the other night, Thursday I think, and it was really windy. Christian came to the backyard to ask me something about the weedeater. I stopped the lawn mower so I could hear what he was saying. As soon as I did, it felt like something was crawling/flying around inside my shirt. It was the front top part of my shirt if you get my drift. I proceeded to look down my shirt to find a moth stuck between...well, you get the idea. I then proceeded to do a little dance as I tried to get this moth out of my shirt. He got out safely, I think...but this story reminded me of some pictures my dad took at the Washington D.C. Temple after our marriage. It also involved wind and bugs.

It was insanely windy, as you can tell by the first picture:


Here my mom is trying to fix the train...obviously still windy!

Now my mom is laughing at me, because, sure enough, the wind blew a bug right down the front of my dress. Of course, my dad really starts clicking the camera now!

Yes, that's exactly what you think is going on!

Laughing at the incident.

The final picture, after wind and bugs!

Thought you'd enjoy the story! Has anyone else had this happen to them? This is at least 2 times for me now! (And did I mention that my Dad takes really good photos?)

Christian's SMU Interview

Don't mean to brag but...Christian had his interview yesterday and everything went well. The guy interviewing him said that Christian should know within a week about his acceptance and scholarship! He even told Christian that based on everything he had seen so far, he was a good candidate for a full scholarship. (He's really smart!) So we'll see soon!

What a Saturday!

Ok so I'm trying to sew a new skirt. I have it in the machine ready to sew, turn around to grab something, and when I turn back around this is what I see:

I guess Sneak just wanted to help me sew...
Our neighborhood had what I would call the first official social activity. It was a little event with bounce houses, easter egg hunts, and extra delicious hot dogs! Christian is the VP of the HOA so we figured we'd better go. He got to help "hide" the eggs for the hunt. While the kids were hunting, he took advantage of the almost empty extra large blow up slide hence the pictures below:
Checking to see if the coast is clear...
Sliding down the slide. That kid is probably very confused about now...
Looks like it was an enjoyable ride Christian! Head first, belly down!
Oops, you forgot that your glasses were in your front pocket! They kinda broke... So we left the gathering early and went to get him a new pair of glasses. Cost of new frames: $64. However, we went to pay and the optometrist at WalMart was so nice, even though the warranty on the frames for his glasses expired about 6 months ago, he replaced them for FREE! Yippee!

Oh, and don't ask about the skirt....I ended up going shopping for a new one.

Orange Rolls: Take 2

Ok, so this time I didn't kill the yeast. But don't let the picture fool you. Although they looked better this time around, it didn't happen easily!

The dough was not very stiff and didn't really hold it's shape. I ended up putting "blobs" of it into muffin tins and they still blew up all over the oven, resulting in a small fire. When they were done, they tasted good, but the "dough" had the consistancy of cake. Very interesting. All in all here are my suggestions:

Use a different recipe for the dough. Any sweet roll recipe should work. Then instead of doing butter, cinnamon and sugar, mix the following:

6 Tbsp. melted butter

Orange zest from one large orange

1/2 cup sugar

Put this mixture on the dough and then roll up and slice like you would cinnamon rolls. For the icing, make a simple mixture with powdered sugar, orange juice, and a little bit of vanilla. (Sorry, I just kind of mixed that without actually measuring it.)

They did taste good, probably because I noticed the fire right away and took them out until the blobs quit smoking and flaming.

Congrats Christian!

So Christian decided he wants to go back to school for his MBA and has applied to a few schools, some in the area, and some not. Some didn't work out as he'd hoped.... But, He turned in an application to SMU here in Dallas just a mere 10 days ago and got an invitation for an interview today! I'm so excited for him. We should know in about 6 weeks whether he gets accepted or not, and how much of a scholarship they want to give him. (Hopefully it's a whole bunch!) Yippee for him!

Baking Disaster to the 10th degree!!

Ok, so this picture is really not what you think it is.

Christian says it's brain poo. It was supposed to be this recipe: Carolyn's Orange Rolls. I absolutely love the Pillsbury orange rolls so I thought I'd give this recipe a try. I diligently read a few of the comments and then embarked on my experience. The general consensus from the comments was that the dough was extra sticky, so make sure that you put lots and lots and lots of flour down when you roll it out.

Here's how things transpired:
1st: I added all ingredients to my bread machine. (I usually do this for the initial kneading and rising because I'm not a big fan of the kneading.) I put the yeast in warm water and then a few minutes later added it to the mixture and started the machine. (Ok it was HOT, which I now know killed my yeast!)
2nd: 7 hours later the bread machine has been done for a while but it looked like the dough might have risen and it was super sticky just like the comments said. (I really should have just stopped at this point, but I REALLY wanted orange rolls!)
3rd: I rolled the dough out with tons of flour. In my excitement to finally roll out the rolls, I didn't put nearly enough dough on the underside, causing the entire rectangle of dough to stick really, really well to my counter. Still I didn't give up. I zested the orange and added the butter and sugar to the rectangle in preparation for rolling them up. By this time I'm really excited because it's really smelling like orange rolls.
4th: Doesn't really come off of the counter...it gets really stuck. I decided that it was too sticky to even cut into little rolls so I just tried to roll it up and make a orange loaf. (I can always cut it after it bakes) Once again, I should have stopped at this point.
5th: I put it on a cookie sheet for it to rise a little more. It didn't rise, just mushed into a puddle. (Still I try...) When I realize it's not rising I just decide to stick it into the oven anyway. (Don't ask me why, just really stubborn I suppose.)
6th: After being in the oven for 10 minutes it smells so so good! I peek in on it and see little globs of it falling off the sheet, all over my oven. At this point I decide that I'm done with it. This is when the picture was taken. All I could do was laugh. I let the puddle slime it's way into the trash can and I can't help but think....It sure smells good still!

Lesson Learned: Even though it smells good, doesn't mean it LOOKS or IS good!

This picture was taken of the mess after I took it out of the oven:
Don't worry, I'll try again soon, and will try really hard not to kill the yeast!

On another more positive note:

Christian made these delicious Jalapeno Cheddar WonTons! He put diced cheese and jalapenos inside the wrapper and fried them up. They were wonderfully crunchy and cheesy and spicy. YUM!

Wireless Internet, Friend or Foe?

So a few nights ago my internet slowed down tremendously and then a little box popped up on my screen and asked me if I wanted to install the XBOX 360 that was attached to my computer. Hmm...we don't have an XBOX so what in the world was going on? Apparently someone tapped into my wireless network connection in order to play online with their XBOX. Good thing we have a home teacher that knows about computers :) (Thanks Celia for letting us borrow Matt for a little bit!) We had to reset the wireless password and that seemed to fix the problem. Hopefullyl that's all for now. It was a little scary because I didn't know what they had access to. I guess they only had access to the internet connection and any shared folders, which were none, so no harm this time but it sure scared me!

Ok so first unscripted post....

whoo hoo! This blog is now started as a place for our little family to post stuff. Whatever floats our boat at the time. And our family stuff. (Yep I did say "our" because Christian says he wants to post too. So watch who's posting.) From now on, this will be our personal family blog, and the schlosserdesigns.blogspot.com blog will be for Erin's craft projects and new stamp line! Hopefully it will be linked soon to my business website. (I'll give you the link later for that. I'm still working on it and don't want too many people to see it while it's still under construction.)

Anyways, it's late Monday night and it's snowing! In Texas that's pretty unusual. It's our first snow of the season....and probably the last. I just measured it and it's 4.25" and still snowing rather strong. How exciting. If there were actually hills here, and if they actually sold sleds here, we might actually be able to go sledding. Oh well, at least there's the snow! It's the nice sticky kind so everything, yep EVERYTHING, is covered in it. I'm going to take some pictures tomorrow morning and hopefully post them.