Pumpkin Spice and everything nice

It’s November already! It’s amazing how time flies…  Last night, the dogs were barking like crazy the trick-or-treaters came by; so, naturally, we had some friends over, hung out in the driveway, the guys were drinking beer and the country music was blaring. It was pretty much a typical night at our house! With the exception of all of the princesses, scream masks and Harry Potters that were gallivanting in our streets… Oh and my dad, Frankenstein haha

I decided to add to our sugar induced outlandish state by making some pumpkin spice cupcakes! Pumpkin is such a versatile ingredient in the kitchen and since it's fall, I fully intend on using it as much as possible! 

One of my favorite qualities of pumpkin is that you don’t have to use too many ingredients along with the puree to get great results. I showed you before that pumpkin dip uses only three ingredients, now I’m about to show you a recipe that only uses two! Pumpkin spice cupcakes, yummm J

To make these treats, you literally only use a can of pumpkin and a box cake mix. Usually I use a yellow cake mix, but I decided to spice it up a bit with some spice cake mix. The cool thing about this recipe is that you can make different things with it; cupcakes, cakes, or bread! It just depends on what dish you bake it in and what you top it with. I decided to top mine with cream cheese icing. ***Side note: Pillsbury cream cheese icing is not all that great, definitely stick with Betty Crocker or make your own!

As for the directions, you literally just mix the two ingredients together! After trying to mix it with a spoon, I remembered that Sean’s grandmother got me a hand mixer for by bridal shower, so I busted it out and used it! Little did I know she got me the hand mixer on steroids and “Speed 1” is like warp speed; so needless to say, I splattered pumpkin and cake mix everywhere!!! Such a mess… But, back to the task at hand; after you mix everything thoroughly, plop a dollop of the mixture in the cupcake liners and throw them in a 325* oven for about 25 minutes. Because the mixture is so thick, whatever it looks like when you put it in the cupcake liner is what it’s going to look like after its baked:

So, if you want a smooth top, take a knife or spatula and spread it out on top. Boom. Done. As you can see from the picture above, I didn’t care what it looked like haha, it all tastes the same in the end!

After letting it cool for about 5-10 minutes, I iced them with some whipped cream cheese icing, and just like that, they were done!

I took the extras that didn’t get eaten to work for the guys. This recipe will make 12 pretty large cupcakes; I’ve also made it in bread form which makes a pretty decent sized loaf. Hope you enjoy!

No booze or Strippers... But still a lil crazy!

As promised, here is the video!!! My great friend Sarah created it from all of the pictures and videos taken from the trip; thanks girly!!!

I told you before that my bachelorette party was full of craziness and fun. Here’s a little insight as to what is going on in the video; hopefully it will make a little more sense after this haha!

To start out, the pictures on the couch (with the lamp) were taken out of sheer excitement of being in Cocoa Beach, and just because we wanted to take pictures and thought we needed better lighting hahaha; they pretty much just ended up being wacky photos…We then headed down to the beach where we searched for hatching sea turtles, but found none (sad face!), so, we did the next best thing... took more pictures!  The crazy pics at Ron Jon (and in the bathroom) were taken because we all competed in a scavenger hunt (Bri and I won!!!), and last, but not least, the awesome interpretive dancing (creatively done by Kelly and Megan) to the Lion King song, was done because they tied in the game “Who Knows the Bride the Best”! Kelly, in the end, was deemed the winner J A fun time was had by all, and we were all completely sober the whole entire time! When was the last time you heard of a completely sober Bachelorette Party?!? This goes to show you that tons of fun can be had, even when alcohol (and strippers) are not involved! Enjoy my friends!

  

24 more days till wedding bells!!!

Nood Chicks

Caught your attention with that title, didn’t I? While you all should know by now that my spelling isn’t that bad, you should also know that there aren’t any “nude chicks” in this post, just some chicken… and some noodles. Sowwy! Get ready for a long post folks, annnnd go!

While driving to my parent’s house for breakfast on Sunday, we ran across this gem sitting on the side of the road just begging to be taken. So, we did just that.

We cooked a boat load of food on it that afternoon. We tried to smoke everything, but ended up charring most of it hahaha; this is what we ended up with! Under all of the burnt looking stuff was some really good meat, the chicken being my favorite!

Since we had some chicken left over, I decided to make some chicken and noodles! I started with the rest of the chicken that I stuffed with a purple onion for some extra flavor; it smelled so good while cooking!

To make the broth, I put the chicken in a pot full of water (enough to almost cover it) and seasoned the snot out of it since I didn’t have any bouillon cubes. Next step, boil! I rotated the chicken in the water every-now-and-then just to get it all flavored and moist.

 Check out that backsplash! Whoooo it looks good!

After about an hour later, I took the chicken out and busted out my homemade noodles from this post!

I had to untangle this brain looking glob of noodles, which was equivalent to untangling your hair after driving with your windows down going 80mph on the highway. I know some of you girls can relate.  After that was all done, I plopped the noodles in the stock that I made to let them get a head start on cooking. There was still some flour stuck to the noodles which tends to thickens the stock; depending on your preference, you can add more broth if you’d like it to be more soupy, otherwise it will thicken into a gravy.

While that was cooking away, it was chicken pickin’ time! I tried to pick all that I could off of the carcass. We even broke the wishbone, and I totally lost… Dangit!

After picking all of the meat off, I threw it in with the noodles. I let that cook on a medium high heat to let the broth thicken a little more and get all of the flavors to blend. After about 10 minutes of that, I served it up!

It was the perfect meal for a fall night! Bonus: Sean loved it! Whoop whoop! I’m loving this fall weather; I’m thinking chili might be in our near future, yum J Oh and the best part? It made enough to have left overs!

Yay!

From this.... to that.

This weekend was full of transformations! Some great, some good and some nasty… There won’t be much commentary with this post, just some tid-bits here and there to explain the pictures. So, let’s begin; shall we?

We went from having a mess of a kitchen, where the cabinets became randomly placed “islands”, as Sean called them, and some ungrouted tile with a touch of protruding switches:

To having a put together kitchen! But just on one side… we still have the backsplash to complete on the other side, but none-the-less, part one of duex is done! Yippee!

Next up is my dad…. He went from standing upright and cooking some grub:

To hanging upside-down like a bat to straighten out his back hahaha

We went from just being Mike, Cali and Sean (with creepy looking eyes):

To Olive Oyl, Popeye and Brutus!

We also went from having a really cool tribal looking fish for a pumpkin:

To having a pile of moldy melted mush that we had to throw in the yard? Apparently Sean didn’t quite make it to the garbage can…

We went from having voluptuous ghosts:

To having some flatsy patsies whirling around...

And last, but not least, went from hanging out on the beach in our bathing suits (and Sarah doing a sweet headstand):

To freezing our butts off with the windows open!

It’s freakin’ fall y’all! You know its cold outside when Sean leaves the house with a sweatshirt on, and that’s exactly what he had on this morning! And I couldn’t be more excited about the cooler temps J  not only does it mean snuggle weather, but it means that the wedding is getting closer! 26 more days, eeek! I love this time of year!

Whack-O-Jack-O-Lantern

Halloween is officially one week away! So, the other night, Sean and I decided to put our pumpkin carving skills to good use. As you all know, the first step in creating a whack-o-jack-o-lantern is to go to the pumpkin patch and pick out the best looking gourd! Megan and I decided to make that trip together and we took her lil pup Brody (who makes my heart melt), and since he’s so darn cute, we decided to take some pumpkin patch pictures with the little man. Our photo opportunity pretty much consisted of me throwing him into a batch of pumpkins, him being scared, and then him glaring at me but looking innocent at the same time… sorta like this:

Uhhhh-dorable. Love that lil guy.

Anyhoo, Sean and I always like to do different designs than your typical triangle face jack-o-lantern. I found a cool image of a tribal looking fish and we decided that it was perfect for our pumpkin. As he was drawing out the pattern, I scooped the goo. Here’s what we were going for:

After I scooped out all of the slimy goodness, he got drawing the pattern on the pumpkin and I separated the seeds to bake! Yummm J  I put them in a strainer and rinsed them off with the sink sprayer and then tried to dry them as much as possible. After they were somewhat dry, I spread them on to a foil lined baking sheet and sprinkled the snot out of them with some seasoned salt and garlic. After shaking them a bit and sprinkling some more seasoning on them, I threw them into a 375* oven for about 25 minutes. I took them out and saw that the seasoning wasn’t sticking to well so I sprayed some olive oil spray over the seeds and shook them up again. The seasonings stuck so I put them in the oven to roast for just 5 more minutes. After the dinger went off, they came out looking perfect!

Meanwhile, outside, Sean was carving away…

After he was done with his strategic cuts, we plopped two tea lights in it and turned the lights off, it came out pretty cool! It’s sorta hard to tell exactly what it is (don’t tell Sean that, he’s very proud), but the fins and tail help to distinguish the design. So for the rest of the night, we hung out, ate some seeds and stared at our pretty cool looking punkin’! Happy Halloween peeps!

Cocoa or bust!

What an amazing weekend! Wonderful times were had, awesome gifts were given, dormant muscles were used (I’m so sore) and many laughs were expressed. I would show you a bunch of photos, but I don’t have any! L Sarah has them all and is compiling all of the hilarity into a video which should be a funny recap of our trip. I’m hoping I’ll be able to upload it to the blog so I could show you what an amazing time we had.

We started out Friday at my house where we exchanged some cute gifts. I gave the girls monogrammed towels (in hopes of showing my appreciation for them coming on the trip, I seriously valued everyone that went and those that had planned to go) and they had some super cute pink jackets made for all of us to wear, which definitely came in handy since it got so cool this weekend!

After packing the cars, we were off on our adventure. The first stop was about 10 minutes away when we stopped for dinner at Chic-Fil-A; what a good start, right?!? After dinner, we were back in the car with some old school tunes on, TLC, Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and so many more.

Having no idea where we were going on the trip, I was soon wondering where the destination was after we zipped right through Orlando; Daytona or Cocoa… Hmm… the answer soon became clear when we took the exit for Port Canaveral that we were headed to the one and only Cocoa Beach!!! I haven’t been there since I was in high school, I was so excited!

We got into our rooms at the Wakulla Suites and decided to take a walk on the beach to look for hatching sea turtles. After finding that there weren’t any nests nearby, we took some silly pictures and went back into the rooms to hit the sack since we had an early morning activity J  The next morning we lazily dragged our tired butts out of bed, shoved some Pop Tarts in our mouth, and we were off walking to our activity. One of my favorite parts of the whole trip was the fact that we walked everywhere we went. The weather was amazing so walking was actually really enjoyable! After getting a tad bit lost, we ended up at the Ron Jon Surf School!!! We went over all of the techniques on the beach with our awesome instructors Patrick and Larry, and before we knew it, it was time to catch some waves! We all caught at least one wave, had some major crashes, ingested and inhaled a lot of salt water, and got giddy whenever Patrick (Patty Cakes) helped us out haha, what a cutie patootie!

We then ate some lunch at Tropical Smoothie, where we ran into Patrick. Coincidence? Nope! We totally stalked his cute self (plus I really love Tropical Smoothie).  We got talking about things to do locally and even got his phone number! Which pretty much turned into us texting/flirting with him for the rest of the day and night, ha! And we found him on Facebook... We're such creepers...

After chowing down on some lunch (and chatting it up with Mr. Super-Hot-Surf Instructor) we headed to the beach to burn tan and relax. Side note: never trust Sarah to put on your sunscreen, you’ll find out why in the video… Anyhoo, after that, Megan, Sarah and I snuck off to the pool with the GoPro and took some videos of… nothing really, just us being goof balls. Then, it was off to the showers to get ready for dinner and shopping. We went to Cocoa Beach Surf Company and found a restaurant inside and decided to eat there. The Shark Pit was really good! We had some tasty food and some not so tasty shots haha, they were supposed to taste like candy corn, but I don’t think any of us tasted the slightest bit of our favorite Halloween treat…  but thanks anyway Brittany! We all appreciated the slight buzz from the sugary booze J

We then decided to bring out our competitive side and take part in the scavenger hunt that Jes created. I’m a big lover of scavenger hunts so I was very excited to see that there was one planned! We were all teamed up (I was with Briana J) and the game was on. We actually completed most of the tasks at Ron Jon since the store was so huge, and being girls, we definitely shopped in between!

Later we went back to the hotel, after our jaunt around town, to see who won. It was judged based on creativeness and humorousness, both of which were very apparent in the pictures and purchases.  I am proud to say that Briana and I won! I think it was our trip into the men’s bathroom to take a picture next to a urinal that truly showed our dedication and devoted desire to win. Once we were declared the winners we began to play another game, Who Knows the Bride the Best. We actually had a tie! It was between Kelly and Megan (Megan had some really good and hilarious answers) so in order to break the tie and come out with a winner, we had an impromptu interpretive dance off… to the Circle of Life song from the Lion King!

It was amazeballs. I would tell you that the dance will be on the video, but some tops came off…. Hahaha extra points for tatas! Kelly ended up winning due to her awesome jumps that reminded me of Stewart off of Mad TV. 

After laughing until we cried, we just hung out in the room, took some more silly pictures and called it a night. We were whooped from our excursions throughout the day and needed some rest. We got up the next day and hit the nearest McDonalds for some healthy breakfast and we were back on the road.

I had such an amazing time with my favorite girls. Big thanks to Jes for planning such an awesome trip, and a huge thanks to all the girls that went, and an even bigger sad face for all the girls that planned to go but couldn’t make it L  you were missed! An awesome trip was had by all; I totally would not be opposed to making this a yearly expedition, and I think all the girls would agree J

Oh, and I got this text on Saturday…

What a cute little lover boy I have, he even threw up the T. Swift heart with his hands. Atta boy  J

Big things are happening!

Today is a big day in our Dockerty household! To start off, both Sean and I leave on our Bachelor and Bachelorette party trips! Yippee! We’re both so excited to spend time with our favorite dudes and dudettes, all while celebrating our last few outings as single folks. I’ll dish about the trip after we get back J

Next on the list of things to do today involves signing some papers… to get our marriage license!!! The time has finally come and I literally have to keep pinching myself. Everyone keeps asking us if we’re nervous, to which we reply, not at all.

We love each other more than anything and are so excited to be sharing this journey with each other. And besides, if we’ve made it this far, we should be good until the end of time. We’ve been together for almost five years (we’re getting married on our 5^th anniversary!), we’ve got an awesome (almost completely remodeled) house, we manage and run two successful businesses, we’ve raised two super cute fur-kids and we’re some of the happiest and luckiest people alive. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Next step, we're off to the chapel venue haha!