Meet Pumpkin!

Meet Pumpkin! We brought her home June 29th, 2012. She is a beige berkshire. She fits right in my hand at the moment, she's so tiny. She's extremely brave and playful for a baby rat. She met some of her sisters on the bed, (they are all 3x's her size at the moment, lol) and she was chasing them all around the bed. :-)

 

Hot in Philly!

We had an awful heat wave for a few days this week. The temps were in the upper 90's but it felt even hotter than that (104, 110!) Not fun.

I haven't been up to much besides working, etc. Tomorrow we are taking my Dad out for a belated Father's Day Lunch to Longhorn Steak House.

I'm still using Sally Hansen Salon Effects. I love them. They always last about 2 weeks with a clear coat on top of them. They start to grow out and chip by the 3rd week. There were a few from the new Avril Lavigne collection I really wanted, but had a hard time tracking down. I ended up getting them on eBay.

My favorites from that collection: 'You're A Star',

And 'Crowd Surfer', which is what I have on my nails right now!

Easy Summer Pasta Salad

My Mom makes a version of this with broccoli, carrots and sometimes cheese tortellini. You can pretty much add whatever ingredients you want. It's a great dish for a hot summer day. It tastes even better once it sits overnight.

Easy Summer Pasta:

• 1 box Tri-color pasta, cooked and drained.
• 1 small package of inexpensive ham lunch meat, sliced into cubes. 
• 1-2 cups cubed cheese. I used colby & extra sharp white. (I bought the bricks & cubed the cheese myself).
• 1 container of baby tomatoes. (I always halve my baby tomatoes).
• 1 small onion, diced.
• 1 can of mushrooms, drained.
• 1 small bottle of Italian Dressing.
• Parmesan cheese in a jar. 
• Salt & Pepper to taste.

Directions:

After combining all of your ingredients in a large bowl, coat pasta salad with a small bottle of Italian dressing. (As much or as little as you like. If it sits in the fridge overnight the pasta absorbs the dressing, so you may need more dressing before serving). Shake a good amount of Parmesan cheese on top of the salad and a few dashes of salt & pepper. Stir until everything is coated. Serve cold. Makes enough for leftovers.

I've gone to the Croc's side and I like it!

I hate the original Croc's. I think they are so ugly! My Dad bought a pair of knock off Croc's and he wears them in public, lol. In the Philippines when my husband and I would walk past the Croc's store I would cringe.

But.... lately, I've been having some foot issues. My left heel has been bothering me for awhile. I have really high arches and I think it may be plantar fasciitis. I also get a lot of charley horse cramps in my calves. I do a lot of walking with commuting to work and this year with these new aches & pains my Havaiana's flip flops just aren't doing it. And I cannot wear sneakers or shoes in warm weather, I just can't!

So I looked online and did a little research and discovered... Croc's has some really cute style's now. They even sell high heels! All of the reviews say their shoes are really comfortable. So I gave in and went to the Croc's side. I ordered the Adrina Flip Flop. In Aqua/Celery. I got them on Zappos.com.

I've been wearing them for almost a month and they are so comfortable. Plus I love the tread on the bottom of them, it's more like sneaker tread. I've noticed the pain in my left heel has decreased significantly even though it hasn't disappeared.

I just ordered another pair of the Adrina Flip flops on Amazon.com today. I got the Magenta/Purple ones. Can't wait to get them, I really do love them!

(I do use Amazon Associates, but not because I've made any money- because I haven't! lol! But I like that I can show a picture/link with a product when I'm blogging. Plus I do recommend Amazon.com for their low prices. That or Ebay!)  


 

Philippine Food Review Videos!

My brother has reviewed a few Philippine food products I've given him on YouTube! :-)

Chocnut:


Salted Duck Eggs:

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Goodies from Phil-Am again!

Yay! More Phil-Am goodies!

Phil-Am Foods

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Foreign Food Cravings

Taste Testing (Asian Aisle)

 

Finally mastered baking bread, lol!

I thought I would attempt to make this Rosemary & Olive oil bread recipe I found on Pinterest, since I've mastered making homemade pizza crust. Bread & I didn't used to get along, I was always too impatient for it to rise, lol. This is a more hearty dinner bread, it would be great with spaghetti! The recipe calls for bread flour, but I made mine with self rising white & wheat flour and it turned out fine.

I whipped up some garlic butter to put on top of the fresh sliced bread.  I mashed up half a stick of butter with some fresh chopped garlic- (I buy the kind in a jar), and a little salt all mixed together.

(I turned the flash off for these pictures).

We had my parents over for dinner last night for a belated Mother's Day dinner. I cooked bacon wrapped chicken, sliced yellow squash & mushrooms and  Stouffer's macaroni and cheese.

Here's the table all set! :-)

Goodie's from Phil-Am again!

We had a little extra money this past paycheck. So I got to order some Scentsy stuff from my cousin Chrissy. And we ordered some more Philippine goodies from Phil-Am Food again. Yay!

This time I ordered some frozen items to try. It's $8.99 extra for them to ship frozen food to you, but it comes in a Styrofoam cooler with ice packs shipped in a regular box. And everything was still frozen when it arrived. (It only took about 1 day to be delivered to us from New Jersey to Philadelphia, even with regular shipping).

(Click on photos to view full size).

Our loot: Snack foods, soups, canned quail eggs, sauce & seasoning mixes, pancit noodles, etc, etc, etc!!!

Vaseline shampoo is the best! I also love this purple Palm Olive shampoo. It has coconut oil in it. It leaves my hair really soft & shiny.

The Vaseline soap I wanted to try. Icy Cool sounded neat- but it was disappointing. It just smells like... soap, lol. Like Ivory soap or something. Nothing special. I thought maybe it would have eucalyptus or menthol or mint in it...

The frozen goodies! Pork siopao, Pork Tocino & Lumpia! (Lumpia is like a skinny spring roll/egg roll). 

For dinner on Tuesday we had Knorr corn & bacon soup. (We usually get corn & crab- I ordered some of those too, hehe!) And we tried the frozen siopao. They were amazing! You steam them wrapped in a damp paper towel in the microwave for about 2 minutes each. They were pretty large. The bun had a really nice sweet taste and the meat inside had actual pork chunks & the sauce was savory. We definitely would order the siopao again!

We had the pork tocino tonight for dinner. We had a 'Pinoy' breakfast, as my husband said. I cooked up the pork tocino, and we had it with fried eggs & rice. The pork tocino was really good.

And because I always like trying new stuff. I ordered these seaweed chips. They are made in Thailand.They were more poofy than crispy. But still really good. The flavor is salty & a bit fishy, it reminds me of sushi in that way. The seaweed itself reminds me of spinach.

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Wordless Wednesday: Yummy Frapp!

This past Saturday my husband & I had half price Starbucks Frappucino's, for their special happy hour which ended on 5/13.

Teddy and Templeton trying to attack my whipped cream!

 Zoomed in version- check out Teddy's tongue, lol!!!