It’s like the best of both worlds with this recipe.  Pumpkin !!!  Slow Cooker !!!

How could it go wrong?

Slow Cooker Pumpkin-Apple Dessert

Ingredients:
1 can (21 ounces) apple pie filling
2 cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)
3/4 cup fat-free cholesterol-free egg product
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Ice cream, if desired (and who doesn’t desire that shit?)

Directions:
1. Spray 3 1/2- to 6-quart slow cooker with cooking spray. Spoon pie filling into cooker; spread evenly.
2. Beat remaining ingredients except ice cream with electric mixer on low speed 1 minute, scraping bowl constantly. Beat on medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour batter over pie filling.
3. Cover and cook on High heat setting 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Serve with ice cream.

Note: This recipe was tested in slow cookers with heating elements in the side and bottom of the cooker, not in cookers that stand only on a heated base. For slow cookers with just a heated base, follow the manufacturer’s directions for layering ingredients and choosing a temperature.

Courtesy of Betty

not just for men

The First Wedding Annivesary is paper.  PAPER! 

I already looked into tickets to a sports event or concert, but nothing that would work with our schedules.

A picture?  A framed print? It all seems so not for my guy.  I wouldn’t mind getting that but I can’t see Sean really liking a framed print or photo.

I could write him a love letter.  Wouldn’t that be special?  And I don’t mean special, like unique, mmkay?

What’s left?  Rolling papers?  Not likely to happen.  I mean, I can just see it:

15 years from now:

“Mommy, what did you give Daddy for your 1st anniversary?”

“Well, you see, the first anniversary is paper.  And I thought really long and hard about what to get Daddy and after much consideration, I decided to get him a pack of rolling papers, BUT NOT JUST ANY KIND OF PAPERS.  Oh HELLS NO.  I mean, those were special bacon flavored papers.  Ya know, for when you want bacon with your tabacco.”

Okay, so not that.

How about paper roses*?

Life insurance?

Favorite book?

Oh no, I got it…manly stationery!  That’s the ticket

I’ve got two mom’s to buy gifts for this Mother’s Day and I am totally stumped!  Sean is no help since in years past all he’s done is send a card and call.  Sometimes he went in on flowers with his brothers.  Last year money was just really tight around the wedding, and I don’t think we got either one of them anything.  I might have gone to breakfast with my mom, but that won’t be happening since she’s now in South Carolina.

So, what to get?

I was looking into godiva for my mother-in-law.  She rarely indulges and quite a few years back I had given her a box of Godiva at christimas time, when we went to visit and she really enjoyed it.  Something she wouldn’t get herself, yet she loves good chocolate.  So I thought this would be a nice little surprise.  I’ve got it all carted up and ready to go, once Sean gives me the green light.

My mom is harder to buy for.  She doesn’t want “more stuff”, she’s watching her weight so godiva won’t do, she’s got jewelry and enough knick-knacks to fill an entire 10X10 storage room.  Maybe I’ll look for a spa near her area where she can go pamper herself.  hrmmmm…I’ve never been good at buying gifts for people.  I get the things I would like, but not knowing whether the person I’m getting it for will really like it.  Money is so much easier

Well then, apparently I inspired:

http://pixel-inc.net/goguetoons/index.php

(I’m not directly linking to the site on purpose because I’ll be damned if they take it down before I can take some action)

I ended up filing our taxes this year really late.  Late being April 14th.  Normally I have them out within the first or second week of February, but when I did a preliminary run, it became clear that we would owe this year.  Knowing that, I put it off and put it off, until there was no more putting it off.

I use Turbotax for both federal and state and it has always done me right.  Every year we both have gotten money back, though a year here or a year there, I’d have to pay state taxes. Small amounts, maybe thirty or eighty bucks.  But federal was always a good chunk of change.  Not this year, I say.

This year, being the first year we are filing under “married”, we both had to pay.  I originally calculated our return under “Married filing jointly” but that ended up being way more than “Married filing separately”.  My accountant (who does my business returns, not my personal) told me that it’s odd that happened because normally it would be better to file jointly.  But since I have more deductions, somehow, it worked out better for us to file separately.

Honestly, I don’t care which way we file, as long as I don’t have to pay money.  I thought the “Marriage Penalty” was gone or didn’t effect people in our tax bracket.  Clearly, I was wrong.  And even more clear is the fact that our “house fund” dwindled considerably due to the money we owed.  And it’s going to go down even more for the new vehicle we’ll be purchasing in the next month.

We’ll make more money of course, and we’ll replenish our “house fund” accordingly, but it just chaps me to have to use that money for something other than a house.

If you haven’t noticed, this design is not meant for those with a resolution of 800x600 and that was done on purpose.  This is my personal website.  Note the keyword in personal.  Not one of my computers (and I have five) have a resolution lower than 1024 and most of them are above that.  That’s why I choose a larger design.  For me!  My site, my perogative.

After being up and running for one full day, and having over 600 unique visitors and over 1,500 page views, I see that less than 1% of my visitors have a resolution of 800x600.  Most of you have 1280x1024, with 1024x768 coming in second.  Then comes 1600x1200 (mainly me I think), followed by a few 1152x864. 

I definitely think that 800x600 has it’s place and I do design most of my sites with that in mind. I’m still toying with the idea of offering an alternative style-sheet here, which would be dependent on screen resolution, so the few of you out there still sporting the 800x600 aren’t completely left out.  But then I have to weigh if the 1% is worth it.  Because I’m utilizing floats, the far right sidebar will simply flow to the bottom of the page for those of you with the smaller resolution.  Is that the end of the world? For 1% of you, I don’t really think so. 

I thought it would really bug me not having something within the 800x600, but honestly, it feels good.  It’s comfortable and dammit, I like it!

Update: Adam from cssreboot just emailed me and it appears everything is good to go now.  I was able to add my site in and well, now all is right with my world.  Thank you Adam!

So, as you can see from yesterday’s post I was having a lot of technical difficulties, which basically effected the time I was going to upload my little screenshot of my little corner of the web to the cssreboot, only…when I went to do that last night, I was not able to.  It seems that when I added this site, it didn’t save into my account.  Or it was deleted, or there was some glitch and it’s simply not there any longer.  I emailed the guy who runs the site last night.  We’ll see what happens.

I was actually so excited about getting my screenshot uploaded that when I couldn’t I broke down in tears.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I was truly disappointed.  And so, that’s why you won’t see this site up at cssreboot.  I tried though man, I really tried.

In better news, my host finally fixed up the PHP errors that I was experiencing here yesterday and I’ll be adding in my “gamer” section, as well as updating my amazon items.  I love it when things actually work!