Food

Twice Baked Cheesy Sweet Potatoes

I keep forgetting to post the recipe for these cheesy sweet potatoes, which is crazy, because it was soooo good and super easy to make!

We were making food for the SuperBowl and I wanted to make something healthy considering we had the deep fryer out and Andy was putting just about anything he could find in it. So I grabbed our leftover sweet potatoes and thought I’d bake them. Well, I baked them. Then I baked them again and added cheese. So they were kind of healthy. I mean, they were baked after all. Right??

They even were good the next day. All I did was pop them in the oven for a bit to reheat them and they were good to go. If you want them even more creamy, you can add a bit of butter when making the stuffing.

Twice Baked Cheesy Sweet Potatoes

Gather
4 Large Sweet Potatoes
1/4 Cup of Milk
1 Cup of Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Salt
Pepper
Cayenne Pepper
Garlic Powder

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Pierce each sweet potato with a knife, then line on a baking sheet and cook for 45 minutes. Allow potatoes to cool so you can scoop out the insides.

Carefully slice potatoes in half lengthwise. Then, using a spoon, carefully scoop out the insides of the sweet potatoes without breaking the skins and place insides in a bowl. Place skins back on baking sheet.

In bowl, add milk, 1/2 teaspoon of each pepper, salt, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder. (You may adjust seasoning to your liking.) Stir to combine. Add half of the cheese and stir once more to combine.

Scoop mixture back into potato skins, then top with remaining cheese. Place back into oven for 15-20 minutes or until cheese is melted and browned.

Remove from cooking sheet and serve.

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February 17, 2016 by
Beauty, Fitness

Best Deal: Hum Nutrition Supplements and Savings

I have horrible nails and thin hair, and it’s not uncommon for me to be taking biotin to help strengthen my hair and nails. But lately I’ve felt like I can’t find anything that works really as strongly as I’d like. Letting myself go lately has certainly added to that. So while I was on a mission to get myself back on track, I stumbled upon a company called Hum Nutrition Supplements.

I instantly fell in love. It’s probably from all the colorful labels, maybe from the fact that it was interactive to start with, or perhaps just the fact that their mission statement spoke to me:

“Hum’s mission is simple: to become the best beauty nutrition business in the world. We achieve this by connecting you with a free personal nutritionist, who will review your information to create your free personal profile and products that are rooted in science. Depending on your needs, our nutritionists suggest micro nutrients that help you support your health & beauty goals. All this happens online and to make your life easier, we ship personalized vitamins, minerals and botanicals right to your doorstep.  “

They’re high quality supplement, yes. Free shipping over $50, ummm, yup. Personalized order. Thank you! Gluten Free and GMO Free, great! But the BEST part, was saving money. I got $30 worth of supplements for just $8 AND that included my shipping. So I’m really not complaining when I say I now have 3 months of high quality supplements for less than 1 bottle!

HOW TO SAVE ON HUM NUTRITION SUPPLEMENTS:

  • Take the Quiz: Click “Get Started.” You’ll get a code (HUM10) to save $10 on your order after finishing the quiz AND get a personalized suggestion list emailed to you the next day.
  • Use my code FDDB5 to save another $10 on your order.
  • THEN, make sure you have three items in your cart and you’ll save 25% on your whole order!
  • If you spend over $50, you’ll also get free shipping.

So for me, I purchased three of Hum’s Killer Nails biotin supplements ($10 each). Three meant 25% off, so $30 went to 22.50. Then I used code HUM10 for an additional $10 off (we’re down to $12.50), and then another code (use code FDDB5) for an additional $10 off ($2.50!!!). Adding shipping in because I wasn’t over $50, brought my total to $8.45.

I can’t even get one bottle at Walgreens for that price. Each bottle has 30 capsules (a 1 month supply), so I got THREE months for $8.45.

Feel free to share the savings, try them out, and let me know what you think!

 

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February 15, 2016 by
Beauty

Obsessed About: Balm Stain | Review

It’s kind of out of character for me to write a beauty review lately, being that I’ve basically let myself go. In the last six months, I have barely put on makeup. I throw my hair into a pony tail. And I throw on leggings or jeans at any opportunity instead of dresses and skirts.

It’s kind of depressing. It was even more evident how sad I’ve started looking when I was flipping through old pictures on my phone and TimeHop. What happened? I used to get up and do my hair every day. I would do my makeup. I would put on cute clothes that were slightly uncomfortable because I looked adorable in them.

So the other morning I dusted my dreary self off and dove head first into my makeup bag and came up looking half decent. I even did the unthinkable, I put on lip color.

Now to a normal person, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I’ve thrived on the fact that people have seen me with nothing on my lips and told me they “love that color.” Yes, I’m not kidding you. So when I do buy lip color, I always go for something crazy, and I NEVER wear it. Which is how I found a stick of Revlon ColorBurst  Balm Stain in my bag.

It’s called Cherish Devotion, is hot pink, and I’m in LOVE. Seriously, no joke. I always have trouble with lip sticks looking funny on me and getting clumpy or making me look super fake. Sure, I’m probably just too hard on myself, but after putting on this balm stain (which comes in a solid stick), I’ve become obsessed. I want to wear it all the time. And I’m for sure going to be getting it in other colors.

It lasts all day, too. I’m not one to touch up all day long, so come 4 p.m. when I finally looked myself in the mirror, I was so surprised that the color was still there. I had snacked all day, drank out of my water bottle and it was still there. Yes, some had come off onto my straw, but I still looked just as good as when I put it on that morning. So win for me: one-of-the-worlds-laziest-makeup-ladies.

 

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January 30, 2016 by
Life In General

Why I Write

Rifle Paper Peony Card

When I was a little girl, my grandmother would sit me down at the kitchen table with a pen and a sheet of paper. She’d give me a person – my mom, my dad, my aunt, a cousin – and tell me to write them a letter. She’d task me with telling them what I was up to, what new adventures I had gone on, and to recount all of the places we had gone in the last week.

I was maybe 7 or 8, and as I got older, I continued to write letters. Mostly, it was because grandma had taught me that’s how you show someone that you really care about what is going on in their lives. It shows you took the time to sit down, organize your thoughts, and then carefully place them on the page.

It was a time before computers consumed our lives. Before we used auto correct for everything. When I could type out a letter on the typewriter or in an ancient version of Microsoft Word, but chose not to. Why? Because it meant more.

When I was in college, my grandmother would write me letters occasionally and I’d try to set aside the time to respond. When I studied abroad in France for a semester, I returned those letters more frequently. But as I got older, left college, took on the real world, I forgot about handwriting letters.

I forgot to take the time to show people I cared.

Why not send them an email? Because it’s impersonal. It would take me 2 minutes to write an email. It might get lost in their Junk Mail. It might never be opened.

However, when someone opens their mailbox and they get a letter, they know the person took the time. They took the time to pick out the card or paper to write the letter on. The time to write an address on the envelope. The time to get a stamp. The time to physically drop the letter at a mail box.

So that’s why I’m writing. I’ve hand written eight letters in 2016 so far. Some thank you cards, some just because, and a few just to tell a few people that I miss having them in my life.

We can change how people communicate. We can put down the phones, stop texting so much, and get out from behind the computer screens. Get a piece of paper and an envelope and tell someone you care. Try it, at least once.

And if you need some inspiration, there’s plenty of pretty cards out there to choose from:

 

Need address labels, save at Tiny Prints with this link: Click Here. Some of their designs are SUPER cute, start at $8, and they almost always have coupon codes!

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January 23, 2016 by