Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Ok, I know, I know...The title is overdone and cheesy.  But my husband would be proud.  Bowie fans, represent!  Anyhoo...As I'm sure is obvious from just the other day, I'm doing a complete design overhaul on here!  And while it is most definitely a work in progress, I can say with confidence that it is looking worlds better already.  Here is a little taste of what I've done so far, along with links to those who (however unknowingly!) helped me out:

First up, I made a new header up yonder.  More clean and simple, more my style.  I may still play around with the header design a bit in the coming weeks, but for now, it works.  Below that, I added tabs.  These will eventually actually link to what they claim to link to, but unfortunately, I haven't gotten that far!  To anyone who is interested in learning how to do this themselves, I used THIS tutorial.  Super simple and fast.  How did I get the text to turn pink?  Good question...and one I have no answer to.  Blogger just knew I wanted pink, I guess.

Next, I created title buttons for the categories in my sidebar, because the default title bars are just far too plain for my taste (sorry Blogger designers!).  I designed the title bars myself, using good old MS Paint.  I then shrunk them down to equal sizes, and used THIS tutorial to figure out how to add them to the sidebar.  Not as easy as the first tutorial, but still pretty simple.  It just takes a lot of copying and pasting if you have a lot of sidebar items like I do.  Below those, I decided to add a button, so folks can link back to my blog if they want to.  As with the tabs, this is a work in progress.  I can't quite figure out how to get the html correct to link back, but as for now, the button shows up, so that's what counts.  To get the button in my sidebar, I used THIS tutorial.  Just like the others, super-easy-peasy.

So that's the progress for now!  I really managed to get a lot done today, thanks to Google and a few generous Blogger geniuses.  Unfortunately, school starts Monday, so I don't forsee a lot of free time to finish all of my blog re-designing plans.  Maybe I will catch up on it over fall or Christmas break.  Let me know what you think of the changes!



ETA:  It has come to my attention that there is a single, years-old blog post under the same name as this blog, and it comes up when you try to subscribe to my blog through Google.  I'm not sure how to prevent this.  For now, just ignore it.  I'm not sure who this James guy is, but he's cramping my style.

Pizza Pockets

This post is actually a little old, but I've just now gotten around to sharing it.  Please forgive the dark pictures.  I only have my camera phone to use right now.

In the spirit of "back-to-school"  I've been trying to come up with yummy, portable lunch ideas.  Thom and I are both going to be extremely busy this fall/winter with three jobs and school between the two of us, so it will be really important to plan and make all of our lunches ahead of time.  This will (hopefully!) allow us to just "grab and go" on the way out the door.  A few weeks ago, I started experimenting with crescent rolls to see just what I could stuff them with that would work well for freezing.  This will be an ongoing experiment.  Here are some pictures of the first test: Pizza!

First, I assembled all of my ingredients.  These were very minimal, but you could really add whatever "toppings" you wanted to.

Then I laid out my dough:

Then I started with the cheese:

Then the peppers:

I chose to put the sauce in the middle to avoid the crescents getting soggy.

Then the meat (we had pepperoni):

I topped it off with more dough and sealed the edges (I know...it was a hack job.  Next time I will make them prettier!).

I baked them at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes, but times will probably vary depending on the ingredients inside.

Voila!  Golden, flaky, ugly deliciousness!  We ate two for dinner and I froze the other two.  They reheated fine the next day, one in the oven and one in the microwave.  I plan to continue experimenting and I will update with any successes I have.  Lunches are always a struggle for us, and we don't even have kids yet!  For those who do, however, and may find this useful, I'm linking up with A Bowlfull of Lemons Tuesday Link Party!  Just in time for back-to-school.

Free stuff!

So I managed to score a great bunch of free stuff from Kohl's yesterday!

I had received one of those $10 off cards as an offer in the mail, and found out through reading the fine print that it not only applied to everything in the store (including clearance items), but that it could be used on any total from $10 and above.  Well, you can bet that I marched my butt right over to Kohl's yesterday and started shopping!  And what did I find?

Ceramic berry baskets!  How cool are these?  I've been trying to switch everything in my kitchen over to reusable or easier-to-clean materials, and these just fit right in with that goal.  The best part??  They were only $2.60 each!  I picked up two.  When I checked out, the cashier informed me that they were on clearance because no one could figure out what they were so no one wanted to buy them.  I also picked up three little decorative bowls.  I'm not sure what I will use them for yet, but I think they will go well in the kitchen.

These were $1.60 each, which rounded my total to exactly $10.  The cashier said they can't charge me sales tax since I didn't go above the $10 mark, so I walked out with a sack full of five great, FREE items!  What a win!

Same blog, New name...

I've moved the old Tucker Family Blog over to this new name.  It's just a bit more fun, and allows me a little more anonymity.  Not to mention that most of my posts rarely had to do with my actual family, and much more to do with my projects!  I'm slowly going to incorporate the new layout.  This is definitely a work-in-progress!