chocolate mint brownies [recipe]

oh yes. these were delicious. I'd say they were more cake-like in texture than brownies, probably because they had to cool first before adding the mint layer.

to be fair, I should mention that Sean made these from beginning to end... I had nothing to do with it at all... I was too busy cleaning to even pay attention. but I did help eat them, so that gives me rights to post the recipe! HA!

Chocolate Mint Brownies

[Facts]:

prep time: 15 minutes

cook time: 30 minutes

ready to eat: 2 hours 5 minutes

[Ingredients]:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate syrup
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 tablespoons creme de menthe liqueur
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

[Directions]:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
2. In a large bowl, cream together 1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup of softened butter until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in the chocolate syrup. Stir in the flour until just blended. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until top springs back when lightly touched. Cool completely in the pan.
4. In a small bowl, beat the confectioners' sugar, 1/2 cup butter or margarine and creme de menthe until smooth. Spread evenly over the cooled brownies, then chill until set.
5. In a small bowl over simmering water, or in the microwave, melt the remaining 6 tablespoons of butter and the chocolate chips, stirring occasionally until smooth. Allow to cool slightly, then spread over the top of the mint layer. Cover, and chill for at least 1 hour before cutting into squares. 

Happy Thursday!

tidbits & some Friday photos

sheesh. I have been horrible about blogging this week. I feel like all my posts lately have been fluff, so I apologize. I need to get back into the swings of things. my spring semester class starts tonight, but it's a 13 week class, so I won't be as stressed out as I was over the winter semester with that damn sociology class.

I'm going to make an effort to take better photos, and in doing so, I'm going to try my hand at participating in as many photo challenges as I can. I hope they encourage me to work harder at taking nice photos and being satisfied with them enough to publish them here on the blog.

there's a lot going on at the FoFinn household lately. we've recently reaaaaally started to budget ourselves and cut back on frivolous spending. I'm proud to say that I have not bought lunch at work one time this week, and it feels great. we're allowing ourselves a certain amount of cash to spend every week, and we can do what we please with it. I decided that instead of buying lunch everyday, I'm going to save my money and buy myself a Vera Bradley agenda calendar, haha.

this is a lot of text, so I'm going to break it up with some photos. I took my camera out the other evening and got some good shots of the meows, so I thought I'd share them for my fellow crazy cat ladies, along with a few shots from a Mardi Gras themed party I attended over the weekend.

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the prompt for today's Foto Friday challenge is Reflections. I took this at a friend's house over the weekend. a good friend of mine turned 30 on Saturday, and visited us from Louisiana, so we threw her a Mardi Gras themed bonfire party. it was the coldest day we had in a long time, so I made sure to bundle up!

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this week's challenge at Living Every Moment is "anything." any time there isn't a specific task or item to photograph, the kitties get the spotlight. this is Bear's ALERT!!! face.

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the awesome ladies who hosted the Mardi Gras party on Saturday night did an amazing job with the favors and little trinkets. there were beads, masks, and the birthday girl even got a boa to wear all evening. I took this shot using my 50mm lens, and I was really impressed with how it turned out, so I decided to use it for this week's Give Me Your Best Shot challenge. 

(for some reason, the button for GMYBS is not working, but the link is!)

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and since GMYBS and Photo Story Friday are linked together, I'll go ahead and post that one as well. this is Lily's spot on the couch. she will fight for this cushion, and the other meowers know not to even think about parking their asses here.

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli
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last weekend, I decided to implement a weekly meal plan for dinners in our house and I really think it's helped us to stay on track. we were spending SO much money at the grocery store on a weekly basis on a bunch of crap that we didn't need. having a specific plan for meals has forced us to only get what we'll need for that week and is therefore saving us money each week. now... this only started last week, so I'm not an expert at this or anything, but it's working well damnit. 

as you can probably tell from my sidebar, I've been doing a lot of reading as of late. I made myself a rather ambitious goal to read at least 50 books this year, and I've already finished 3 books this year, and we're not even out of the first month yet. I completed The Help yesterday afternoon (three cheers for a snow day!), and it was such a good read. I'll be writing a lengthy review over the weekend, so stay tuned! I picked up 19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult last night and I'm hooked already.

I'll be back later today with a Fill in the Blank Friday post!

Happy Friday, ya'll!

Delta Burke?

what's that corny quote that people were throwing around years ago? everyone and their mother had it plastered all over their MySpace profiles. something to do with how if a guy can't make you laugh, he sucks? or maybe something more uplifting than that? oh, here it is. 

"if you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything." 

- Marilyn Monroe

I'd say I got pretty lucky with this gem. this is a conversation between Sean and I on gchat (which, pardon my language, fucking sucks big donkey balls lately) this afternoon. typical day in my life, I'm telling you. this guy knows the way to my heart. 

Sean: http://www.buy.com/prod/designing-women-season-1/q/loc/322/listingID/120671093/210851906.html

Happy Birthday!!

me: HAHAHAAHAHA

Sean: Sorry to spoil my surprise but......SURPRISE!!!

 Sent at 12:02 PM on Tuesday

me: aaahahaah

omg i'm blogging about this right now

Sean: what Designing Women?

That show was the bomb

lol

me: noooo this convo

Sean: oh ok

me: cause it's hilarious

and i like to make people think you're a lot funnier on the internet than you are in real life

Sean: Delta Burke and Annie Potts used to heat that show up!

me: dude i do not remember that show

i thought it was a joke

Sean: may have been before your time a little

Delta Burke was married to Major Dad in real life

me: -_-

that's my face right now

blank

Sean: I remember all the early 90's situation comedies

me: i was only 4 in 1990

Sean: haha...sorry sometimes

Publish Post

I forget

me: no you don't, you love it

Sean: I was literally watching that shit when you were in diapers

me: i was definitely NOT in diapers when i was 4

maybe YOU were

Sean: whatever....i know you were a late bloomer

me: but my little ass was potty trained at like 18 months

i was ahead of the curve when it came to pissing on the pot

Sean: sometimes accidents when you are 4 or 5 are ok

me: ... or 10

... or 25

HAHA

Sean: yea sometimes even 25

me: just so you know, i am posting this entire convo to the blog

Sean: it happens...sometimes I make an ooppsie

me: aaahaahahhaa

yeah like last week

Sean: Or even when I try to push a fart and a turd comes out

I have to wrangle it out of my undies

lol

Can't help mistakes only learn from them.

me: omg
you are ridiculous

the whole "when you were in diapers" thing is a running

joke between the two of us. 

Sean is almost four years older than I am 

and so he often points out that while I was in diapers, 

he was mowing the lawn and driving cars. 

obviously an extreme exaggeration. 

and in case you are curious of the marvelous 

birthday gift he is referring to in the conversation, 

it is this... season 1 of Designing Women. 

and it's even on sale for the amazing price of $18.99. 

get em while you can, folks!

 ...

....

.....

....

... 

and yes, I do call my husband "dude."

Happy Tuesday!  

happy xmas & my husband is awesome

I'm feeling quite lucky as I lay here in bed with my husband, who is feeling extremely sickly after coughing up his lungs all day. my little brother got the poor guy sick and he's been fighting a cold ALL week. not to mention, his TMJ is acting horrible lately and he'll officially be on a week long soft food diet starting tomorrow. somehow, he's remained cheerful today. I know I'd be a grumpy ass bitch if I were sick and my jaw was in pain!

frankly, we made out like bandits with gifts this year. I don't know what we did to deserve all the wonderful family we have, but I am very thankful. we got all kinds of cool shit this year, and my dad even surprised with a VERY nice addition to our dining room furniture (or lack there of).

I'll be recapping our gifts soon, which includes a new, awesome, amazing, bad ass camera lens for this girl. I took TONS of pictures while opening gifts at my dad's house with the new baby, so I'll be showing them off, for sure. 

for now, here's a little treat that my wonderful husband bought for me. be jealous. 

I hope you're all having a very merry Christmas, and are fortunate enough to be spending it with those you love. take the time to thank them for their presence in your life!

the best kind of flowers...

are the ones you receive for no reason. 

card reads: "sent these just because. you will always be the love of my life. love, sean"

happy thursday to me! 

♥

cuddles

go ahead and try to tell me these aren't the cutest pictures ever. I dare you. obviously, Bear had a hard day at home... between sleeping, eating, playing, and pooping... he was wiped out. if you can't tell, Sean and Bear are cuddle buddies. as soon as Sean sits on the couch, Bear is ALL over him wanting lovins. it's pretty rare that he sleeps like this though, so I had to snap a few pictures. love my boys. <3

giving thanks | day four

because I'm feeling mushy, today... I'm thankful for my husband, Sean. he is the most amazing man I've ever met and I honestly couldn't imagine my life without him. in fact, it's hard to look back and remember what my life was like before him, even though it wasn't that long ago.

Sean is my best friend, my wannabe handy man, my soul mate, my hard to reach pimple popper, my lover, my foot rubber, and my partner in crime. I don't like to say that I believe in fate, but I honestly think that Sean and I were destined to be together. his love and respect and kindness make my soul so happy, and I am so incredibly grateful to have him.

some days, I wonder how he puts up with me... with my complaints of every day life, to my obsession with cats and shoes, to my graphic descriptions of my uterus pains, all the way down to the way I walk around our house in my not-so-sexy underwear. I know that I annoy him to no end sometimes, and yet, he's still there every morning when I wake up. and not only is he there, but he's there with a smile on his face, ready to kiss me in all my morning breath glory. confession: my morning breath is the WORST.

also, he is really handsome.

he really is my better half - he knows me better than I know myself, and he's quick to call me on my bullshit when I'm in the wrong. I love that he doesn't just agree with me to keep me quiet and happy. we'll debate for hours on something that doesn't even matter, just to prove to one another that the other is wrong. unfortunately, Sean is super duper smart (win!), and knows a lot of weird ass facts, so if he brings something up and I tell him he's wrong, I get a long list of reasons why he's right, and they're all FACTUAL reasons (fail). seriously though, he is really intelligent, and I've learned so much (even if it is useless trivia) from him.

oh, AND... he's cute as a button.

Sean has got to be the funniest and silliest person I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. tickle fights, dead baby jokes, and songs about our cats are regular performances here in our house. he talks to the kitties like they're actual people, just like I do. it's the most adorable thing ever. he is the worst liar, and when he's trying to tell a fib, he gets this half smirk on his face, and it's hilarious. don't worry, he never tries to lie about anything serious... more like, "hey did you forget to flush to toilet?" type thing that he tries to deny. and yes, he often forgets to flush the toilet when he's half asleep in the morning.

on a more serious note, Sean truly is my soul mate. he is the peas to my carrots, and I couldn't have designed a better husband for myself. he's hard working, caring, and SO thoughtful. sometimes he picks little things up for me just because he knows it'll make me smile, like pistachios or Skinny Cow ice cream bars. he lets me pick the movie sometimes, and he doesn't mind that I don't come to bed right away because he knows I'm an insomniac. in fact, he's been pushing me to make a doctor's appointment with a sleep specialist. I should probably get on that.

did I mention that he is also really, really, ridiculously attractive?

he is extremely supportive of me, and does a good job at pushing me passed my own personal limits. when our training sessions ran out at the gym, he told me to keep going, because he knew I wouldn't start going to gym on my own without a trainer. when I quit smoking, he made a special trip to the grocery store to get me nicotine patches. he believes in me and he respects me like no other, and he really knows how to make me feel good about myself. 

he is the absolute love of my life, and he makes me feel like the luckiest woman in the world. for that, I'm thankful. 

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oh, and just because I'm looking through old pictures of us and getting all reminiscent up in this bitch...  here you go. just so you know, these are all from the first year that we were together. I know this because they're in a folder called "S&M - first year." I can also tell it's our first year because of how skinny we both were. oh, 2007.

you're welcome.

H-A-double L-O-W-double E-N spells...

HALLOWEEN!

I love Halloween. it definitely makes the top 5 list of my favorite holidays. I always, always, ALWAYS dress up, and since Sean and I have been together, we've done some sort of funny couple costumes. let's look back, shall we?

the first year we were together (2007), we dressed up in this:

I was a brick house, and Sean was a brick layer. get it? 

our second year together, we were this classic couple:

Pebbles & Bam Bam! I loved this costume. it was super comfy! 

unfortunately, Sean didn't agree, so within a couple hours, he went from this...

to this (see him in the background?)...

last year, we decided to go the funny route again, and dressed up with laughs in mind:

we were a Shotgun Wedding, complete with pregnant belly, pigtails, & wedding dress for me and blacked out teeth & top hat for him. it was a huge hit at the party we went to! I made sure to drink plenty of beer and smoke lots of cigarettes, since I heard it was good for babies growth. 

_____________________________________

instead of dressing up as a couple this year, we took a different approach. Sean already had a costume in mind, and he wasn't backing down. he's being Jesus, which is pretty fitting, if you know us. 

I thought about being Mary, but the costume was pretty boring, and I didn't want to invest in a baby doll that I'd have to carry around all night. so instead, I decided on a different historical costume. I wanted something that wasn't super slutty (that's totally not my thang), and still comfortable with fun accessories. so I decided to dress up as Cleopatra:

I'm pretty excited about Halloween this year, since we'll be spending it with a lot of our close friends. we booked a hotel room down the street from the party, and will be getting a taxi back to the hotel at the end of the night/beginning of the morning. it should be an awesome time, and I'll be sure to take lots of pictures to blog about next week!

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are you dressing up for Halloween this year? what/who are you being? do you support adult celebration of Halloween, or do you think it's just for kids?

secret's out!

it's not my secret to share, but I feel compelled to do so anyway.

I'm not letting my own cat out of the bag... this one belongs to my lovely husband. the greatest man I've ever known (besides my papa, of course), my best friend, my semi-handyman, the father of my cats, and the best back-scratcher in the world. 

he is deathly afraid of spiders. I'm talking... won't-even-kill-it-because-he's-too-busy-screaming AFRAID. 

and I must be a horrible wife, because I find it absolutely hysterical that a grown man of 27 years old is SO afraid of little 8-legged creatures.

the other evening, I was taking out the trash, and with the removal of a trash bag, we discovered a pretty big spider. his body was about an inch and a half long, and his leg span easily cleared 3 inches from leg to leg. Sean saw it before I did and flippedthefuckout. I'm not afraid of spiders, as long as they're not touching me. so to give my dear husband a little scare, I touched the spider and made him crawl along the wall. I've never heard a grown man scream so loud in my life. 

I couldn't help but double over in laughter, before crushing the poor thing with my flip flop to relieve Sean of fear and dispose of it's body in the trash bag I was taking to the curb.

am I the only one who takes complete advantage of their loved one's phobias and fears? I would bet not, but I'd love to hear what you think. tell me a story of a time when you scared a man in your life - it could be your husband, brother, dad, boyfriend, etc.

I think I need more cowbell.

the fever. I have it.

baby fever, that is.

I don't know what the hell happened. when we got married, we said we'd wait 3-5 years before we even started thinking about having a baby. even after we got married, I was pretty hellbent on waiting a while... we had a house to get in order and some traveling we wanted to do, and kids were just not in the forefront of my mind at ALL. I've never been the kind of person who wanted to be a mom... ever. I honestly didn't even want children until I met Mr. FoFandee.

it's not that I don't LIKE kids, but I'm not a very patient person, and let's face it - you gotta have a lot of that to have children. my patience level has gotten better through the years, but I still get annoyed by kids pretty easily.

so anyway. yeah, I don't know where it came from. maybe my clock is ticking? I'm only twenty-four, and I thought that shit didn't really kick in until you're much older. over the last couple months, I've just been wanting a baby... and BAD. I can't explain the feeling. a lot of my friends are having children, and it doesn't help that I have an adorable 2 year old brother (even if he IS an asshole sometimes). I just swoon when I see babies... and I know that Sean and I would be awesome parents, and I'm thinking it'll probably happen sooner rather than later. it also doesn't help that Sean is almost 4 years older than I am, and he's ready for children whenever I say GO.

obviously, I'm not gunna just go and get knocked up right away because my ovaries are telling me to. we want to take one big trip together before we decide to start a family, so I think the plan is to take a cruise to the Caribbean in the winter, and then go from there. I think I'll probably get off the birth control in the fall/winter/whenever my Nuva Ring runs out. I've been on birth control for about 8 years, so I'm sure it'll take a while for my body to get back to normal, but just in case it happens right away, I'm going to wait until we're absolutely ready.

we're in a good position financially, and I know we'll never truly be "ready" to have a kid (cause that's what everyone says), but I know we can make it work and still live comfortably. we've even tossed around the idea that I may be able to stay home with the baby for a while. we have a lot of money in savings, and Sean makes enough money to cover our mortgage, bills, and then some. I don't make a lot of money, and with the cost of daycare for newborns being so high, it wouldn't really make a lot of sense for me to work JUST to afford daycare.

and of course, I'm as terrified as I am excited. there are tons of things about pregnancy that scare the crap out of me. I have an extremely bad anxiety disorder, which I take a daily medication to control, so my biggest worry is that I won't be able to switch to a baby-safe anti anxiety medicine and it'll just come back full force. I'm sure there's something out there though. and obviously, regular pregnancy things scare me too - like stretch marks, and my belly button popping out, and breast feeding, and ruining my perfect boobs, and labor, and birth defects, and teaching my kids the right morals, and POOP and VOMIT and everything else.

:: instrumental picture break from all this seriousness ::

just in case you don't believe me when I say my little brother is adorable, check out some of these pictures.

getting ready for bed with "stawn" (Sean).

hangin' out on his SpiderMan couch. he LOVES that thing.

this was when he was going through his "mine" phase. everything was "mine" and you could NOT tell him any different.

loves giving his sissy kissies.

watching the cooks grill steak through the window at Original Steakhouse.

pumpkin pie. nom nom noms.

his cheese face. :D

pretty excited about the rake I got him for Christmas. he loves helping my dad out in the yard!

HAHA. he was "making fwogs" in his pants... meaning he was farting. and he was happy about it.

helping me celebrate my birthday at Cheesecake Factory. little ham!


so... that's where I'm at right now. it's been on my mind for a while, and we've discussed our options and our future plans, and having kids sooner rather than later is something we both want. like I said, I'm not going to be reckless and go out and get pregnant rightfuckingnow... we're going to take that cruise and see where we're at from there in the baby making thought process.

andplusalso, it's a bad idea to be following YHL, Enjoying The Small Things, withTWOcats, All Things G&D, and a bunch of other bloggers who have recently had babies. BAD IDEA. my ovaries are squealing with every picture.



PS - please tell me I'm not crazy in thinking that my little brother looks like the male version of Kelle Hampton's daughter, Lainey? am I nuts? am I weird for noticing things like that from other blogs? I guess my future kids are gunna have a whack ass mom.




PPS - if you know me in real life, or at least on Facebook, please don't mention this whole baby fever thing on there, k? it's not something I'm announcing to the world... well, I guess I am, but still. I don't want it to be a big deal and people asking me questions and shit. that's why I have this blog.

thankyouandgoodday.