You make me smile

It has been quite awhile since I last blogged but here I am! I am still alive and very much kicking. Midterms at school are now over but now papers are going to be due soon than I want to admit! 


As I am starting to become more and more stressed out, I decided to start thinking about things that make me happy. There are so many things in a very ordinary day that can make your day extraordinary if you let them. As I found on Friday I came across many things that could have made me cranky but as I was focusing on finding things that make me smile, I changed my perspective on things. For example, it was freezing Friday morning! I am talking -4 Celsius freezing! But instead of complaining about how cold I was going to be I decided to smile about the fact that I am going to be wearing my winter coat for the first time this year! And seeing my breath the first time this year was smile-worthy because I chose to make it smile-worthy.  


I had a great day on Friday. The little things didn't make an enormous difference in my day; I wasn't walking with a bounce and I certainly wasn't whistling (mostly because I don't know how to whistle). But I was walking around with a smile on my face for the majority of the day and I felt happier. 


Here is my list of things that made me smile:

• The light changed green right as I walked up
• I could see my breath for the first time this year
• Being able to wear my wonderful winter coat again
• Receiving an average mark on a midterm but being so nervous about my mark that the average mark was turned into a wonderful mark
• Coming home
• Having 4 cats coming running up to me as I come in the door
• Getting mail {yes, it was only a bank statement but who doesn't love getting mail!?}
• Seeing Kirk walk up the drive way with a smile on his face
• Laughing so hard with my mom over some pictures even though Dad was asleep in bed

As you can see these are just ordinary things that happen in most people's lives, everyday. They certainly happen to me often but this was really the first time I took the time to realize how these things make me smile. And this very simple decision turned my day from ordinary to extraordinarily ordinary. 


Trying this out for one day was a success and now my goal is to go an entire week, making a list of all the little things that make me smile during a day. If a day made a difference in my mood, I think this upcoming week is going to be a great one! 


I created a sheet that I will use to write down anything that makes me smile. 

I would love to hear your own Day of Smiles! Print off the sheet or use your own and write down anything and everything that makes you smile! Let me know how your Day of Smiles went and I hope your day is filled with smiles! 

"Just because there is an Italian guy on it doesn't mean it is pizza dough"

I have not had much luck with trying recipes recently. I am a very picky eater and I really do not enjoy trying new recipes. So I was extremely proud of myself when I found a recipe to try on Pinterest. 


Cheesy Chicken Lasagna, doesn't that sounds good!? 

I really wanted to try this recipe out so Paige and I bought the ingredients the next time we went grocery shopping. Or at least we thought we bought the ingredients. In case anyone is not aware of this, evaporated milk is NOT the same thing as condensed milk! Please don't ever make this mistake, because the results are nasty!!!! 


As I was making the lasagna, we were both blissfully unaware of our mistake. That is until something started to happen with the chicken and the sauce. The chicken started to harden, there was a nasty smell coming from the pot and it was started to get lumpy. It was at this point that we realized our mistake. There was a moment where we decided we were just going to try a piece of the chicken, maybe it won't be that bad. As neither of us were willing to even try it, we threw it all away and had tacos instead. 


Fast forward one week and I am once again trying this recipe. This time my mom got me the correct ingredients and I was determined to make the most delicious cheesy chicken lasagna EVER! Everything was going wonderfully, until it was time to actually eat the meal. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't fantastic and not worth the effort and hype. Maybe it was just my cooking so if anyone makes this please let me know how it turns out!!


That was meal making disaster #1. Meal making disaster #2 happened last night when Kirk tried to make me supper. We have recently been going to Pizza Hut and having their wonderful calzones and Kirk decided that he will try and make one for me for supper. Once again we went shopping and once again the wrong ingredients were bought. This time instead of pizza dough, we actually bought pie crust. We didn't realize our mistake until we were cooking it. It was getting kind of flaky, like a pie crust. It wasn't really cooking and staying soft, like a pie crust. It took over twice as long to cook, which really should have been our first indicator that something was wrong. But we carried on. Lesson #2, do not try and make a calzone with pie crust. It doesn't very good at all, not matter how much ranch dressing you put on it. So we went to Wendy's instead. 

We have our calzone without pepperoni - photo credit Pizza Hut

Oh bother! Two meal making disasters, two gross results and two funny stories. Hopefully these will be the only two meal making disasters that I have but I have a feeling there will be more. 


The two life lessons learned today are:

 1 - condensed milk is not the same thing as evaporated milk. Just because condensed milk has evaporated milk in it does not mean you should use it for a recipe that calls for evaporated milk.

2 - just because a ball of dough has a cartoon of an Italian chef on it does not mean that the dough is pizza dough. 

Anyone have any cooking disasters that they lived to tell about? What has been the worst meal you have ever tried to make?