What's been happening at 523?

Hi sweet friends!!

Where's my cape? 

I have been really absent from the blog these past couple weeks.  We have had some family things going on that had me all over the place, but then we really started in on the remodel of Caleb's playroom.  We dove in head first with replacing walls, painting walls, replacing electrical outlets and then finally replacing the flooring!!

I am so stinking excited to be replacing this flooring.  We are also going to do the living room and hallway but that will start right after Easter.  But I wanted to show you what fantastic work the hubs did on the flooring.

Caleb couldn't wait to play on it. :)

Didn't he do a stellar job?!  I am so ridiculously proud of how beautiful the floor looks and what a fantastic job Brad did.  I can't wait until it's time for the living room and hallway.  Caleb wants to do a birthday party at our house, so we have until July to get the rest done.  

So, I have a huge light at the end of my tunnel on my floors....a tunnel that has taken 15 years to get through!! 

Since I have been so non-existent on the blog, I wanted to at least pop on here and tell you that all is well....but all is VERY busy.  :) 

We still have Caleb's First Communion to get ready for and of course Easter is always hectic.  I am really swamped with the PTA commitments at Caleb's school, my own school work and Caleb's schedule of stuff that we have to do for Cubscouts and birthday parties......

Whew!! I'm exhausted just thinking about all of the stuff going on here.  But I haven't forgot about my blog...at least not yet anyways.  But unfortunately for now I might have to be absent from it until all gets back in order.  

It's a crazy life, but a blessed life I have right now.  

So that's all I have for today.  Until next time, take care.

-Kim

Family Favorite from Paula Deen - Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding

This weekend we had Caleb's Cubscout Blue and Gold Banquet. 

He had lots of fun playing with his friends, receiving his hard earned awards, learning about lemurs and seeing waayyy too large for my personal comfort...tarantulas. 

We all had to bring a dish to share of food from our culture.  I brought German sausage which is from a German meat market, not too far from our home town.  This sausage is something that is sought after during all the family gatherings at Brad's family. 

Another dish I brought was the Paula Dean's Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding.  This has been my family's and Brad's family favorite for a very long time as well.   I make this multiple times per year and on holidays where my sister's husband and children come, I typically make them a batch to take home with them because they love it so much.

Today I wanted to bring you the recipe and show you just how easy it is to prepare it.  I hope you try it out and enjoy it just as much as our family does.

You can view the recipe on Paula Deen's website here.

I will always give credit where it's due and my gosh does Paula EVER deserve the credit for this dish!!

So here's just what you need:

1 - 12oz tub of Cool Whip (this will be the freezer section, but when you bring it home, put it in the refrigerator)
1 - 14oz can of sweetened condensed milk....make sure you get the "sweetened"
1 - 8oz bar of cream cheese
2 - cups of milk
1 - 5oz box of vanilla INSTANT pudding / pie filling (do NOT get the "cook" kind, make sure it says "instant")
6 - bananas....you can use more or less...I find that 6 works perfectly for us, however I see people use only 4 and some use 8
2 - bags of Chessman cookies....these are made by Pepperidge Farm and are in the stand up bags

Directions:

The first thing I do is I separate out my cookies....there are bound to be some that are broken so I get those out.

Next thing I do...because I have issues....is I get out five of the shapes and make sure to have four cookies of each shape (as you see below) and set these aside,  these will be the topping at the end.

Slice up your bananas.

Lay the other cookies on the bottom of a 13x9 pan and then top cookies with sliced bananas.

In large bowl, combine milk and pudding.

In another bowl combine cream cheese (I like to cut the cream cheese up in little blocks, it makes it easier to mix) and condensed milk, using an electric mixer, beat until smooth

Mix pudding and cream cheese and condensed mixture together.

Next, drop a cookie to Scooby...he wouldn't move out from under my feet until I did.

Fold the Cool Whip into the pudding mixture until well blended.

Pour onto the cookies and bananas and then top with second bag of cookies (the ones we saved earlier), cover and put in refrigerator until time to serve.

This is best when it's had time to set in the refrigerator for a few hours before serving.  It allows the cookies to get slightly soft.

Last, you will want to take the broken cookies and scrape the bowl....because licking the bowl clean wouldn't be polite.

But that's how you make this famous banana pudding.  Ours was eaten completely at the banquet and Brad had to work so he didn't get any of it.

I promised him I'd make him a batch this coming week.  So I'm going to go to the store tonight to get the stuff for it.

I hope you enjoyed today's post...its a little different than normal.  But I like sharing our real life with my followers just as much as I do the makeup stuff, so I hope you don't mind...I might bring a few more posts such as these in the near future.

But for today, that's all I got.  I will see you all again really soon with a makeup post featuring a new Maybelline City Mini pallet....yep I found yet another!! I'm excited because I really like the looks I have made so far with this little gem.

So, until next time, take care.

-Kim

Organizing the lippy drawer

Oh, how long this week has been lasting...I'm exhausted and ready for the weekend already.  Caleb has not gotten any better staying at camp this week.  What a failure I feel like because I have to leave him at camp in tears.  But he won't tell me why or what's upsetting him.  He says he has fun when I pick him up and that his day was great.  But why all of the sudden the tears when I leave now?  At least it's Wednesday and the week is halfway so we are in the home stretch for sure and I promised him he could come with me to work tomorrow.

Anyways, let's get to why you came here today, cause I know it wasn't to hear of my parenting fails....

Like most beauty bloggers/youtubers I have the Ikea Alex 10 drawer (ahem, a couple of them) filled to the brim with makeup.  By far, I have the most lip products out of all the makeup.

But lipsticks can be a very tricky thing to store.  About two years ago, I had found these little plastic dividers from Amazon for about $7.

I can't tell you what a tremendous life saver they have been for me in my makeup room.  Especially in my lip product drawers (yes that's meant to be plural).  They have saved me from buying duplicates as well as being able to find things easily and quickly while getting ready.

While today is about the lip product drawer, I have been also using them to organize my "daily" drawer that I keep things that I'm using everyday such as foundation, lip balms, setting powders, etc.  This way I can pull open that drawer and have exactly what I need to get my makeup started very quickly and easily.

Today I am going to show you how I did my lip product drawer.  I had just been throwing the overflows into this bottom drawer but never taking the time to organize it.

With these little plastic pieces you just break apart how ever long you need for your drawer sizing and slide them together.  I did put a bit of hot glue because I wanted to have it sit in the drawer and not move around.  You can make them to fit the drawer exact, but I like having a bit of room left to slide lip pallets in.  That's also why you will see a gap from the one side of my drawer to the organizer.

But the point is, that this product allows you to really customize your drawer as to what your needs are.

 When I was done, I piled the lippy's in the their little slots and called it a day.

 I love how they stand up all nice and neat.  They hold the longer tubes like my Katy Kat glosses you see in the back, as well as hold the little short glosses like the Nyx in the front.  And if I wanted to make a special slot for they Python lip pallet, I could just snap out one of the little plastic pieces and it would fit perfectly.

All in all, this took me a total of 15 minutes to complete and that was also having Caleb playing air drums with the glosses and me having to search for where he went with them and then Scooby took off with one as well.....I haven't got that one back yet.  I might have to check his dog bed.

So that's all the posting I have for today.  I hope it was useful for you.  The above is NOT an affiliate link.  It's just a direct link to the product if you wanted to check it out.

But that's all I got, so I will be back tomorrow with more.  Until next time, take care.

-Kim