Do You Know The Muffin Man?

After spending a little time on Pintrest the other night, I found this delicious looking recipe for French Breakfast Muffins (or as I like to call them Cinnamon Toast Muffins)! The last recipe that I got off of Pintrest was less than delicious and did not turn out well at all even though I followed the instructions to a T. Therefore, I was very nervous about this. But I had all the ingredients already in the pantry, which means I didn't have to make my millionth trip to the grocery store this week, and the recipe seemed to be pretty easy. I mean, what recipe that's mainly sugar and cinnamon can be bad, right? So, my sweet husband indulged my need to bake something new last night and we headed into the kitchen after dinner to try out this recipe! Let me just say this, they came out amazing!! Even if you're not a baker by nature, these are so easy and are beyond delicious.

Photo credit goes to the lovely Blog
I found this recipe through!

Here's the oh so yummy recipe:

1/3 c. butter, melted
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg (preferably room temperature)
1 1/2 c. AP flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 c. milk

Topping
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter, melted
1 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a medium-large bowl, sift together all dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients and stir until combined, but still a bit lumpy. Don't overmix. Scoop batter into muffin tins that have sprayed with cooking spray. Using a large ice cream scoop, I got 8 medium-large muffins out of this batter; I think you could get 10-12 muffins by distributing the batter a little less generously. Bake for 20-25 muffins, or until they just start to turn a bit golden at the edges.


For the topping, mix sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Place melted butter in another small bowl. Dip the warm muffins in melted butter, then in cinnamon sugar.


Here are some photos the hubs and I took while making them! I'm a visual learner and love picture tutorials so hopefully this will help those of you that venture to make them...

Mix dry and wet ingredients first

YAY for getting to use my lovely
Kitchen Aid yet again ;)

Fill muffin tins 2/3 full!

Place in oven!

I baked mine about 17-18 minutes and they
came out perfectly! But our oven cooks
more quickly than most.

After rolling top and side of muffin
in butter, roll in cinnamon
sugar mixture!

Here's a photo of before and after
the muffins were rolled in the
cinnamon mixture! Don't they
look so much more yummy after?!

And finally ENJOY!!

If you love muffins, sugar, and cinnamon these are the breakfast desert for you! Side notes about the recipe, firstly I didn't have to cook mine in the oven as long as the recipe suggested. We kept ours in for only about 17-18 minutes. As soon as they start browning around the edges on top they are done. Also, I got about 10 muffins out of my mixture but the topping mix called for far more than I actually needed. You could almost half it and still have plenty cinnamon and butter mixtures left so as to not waste any yummy spices and butter ;) I hope everyone who makes them enjoys them just as much as Mitchell and I did! And finally, they are best served pipping hot (naturally) but are still pretty good the next morning!

And for those of you that are shaking your finger at me for making these since they are SO far from healthy....I only kept 2 and sent the rest in with Mitchell to work this morning...so there!

Good "Ole" Mississippi

This past weekend we ventured to Louisiana to see family and then we headed up to Oxford, Mississippi for the Ole Miss vs. UGA game! After two very short flights (each under an hour) we ended up in Monroe, Louisiana where my mom's side of the family lives and we got to meet up with my dad and nephew Dawson who drove out for the game. To say it was wonderful to see everyone would be an understatement :) The "Louisiana Crowd" as they are kindly referred to are always so kind and hospitable and just down right wonderful people. It always makes me happy to see them, and reminds me of happy memories my mom and I made with them over the past few years as we made our ventures to and from Colorado. All in all, we had a great weekend and here are some photos we took along the way....

Naturally we had to get Chick-fil-a before heading
to the airport in San Antonio.

Poor Texas, we desperately need some rain.

My reading material for the trip! I actually
finished it in one day it was so good!

Mitchell's reading material, boldface and ops limits...
aka pilot stuff. Looks like fun huh?

Their stadium was quaint compared to
Sanford Stadium, but still really nice!

My cousins Emily and Josh! Josh had a football game
the night we got in and we were so excited we
finally got to go to one!

We even snuck in a visit to the always
amazing Zaxby's!

Mariachi Bands, Chick-fil-A, and A Best Friend

If that title didn't get your attention I don't know what will! This past weekend I headed up to the oh so glorious San Antonio to see one of my best friends since middle school. She is out here visiting and working for her family for a few weeks, and I'm so so grateful that I got to see her while she was out this way. As a native Texan she took me to one of the best restaurants in the area called Mi Tierra. To say it was beyond delicious would be an understatement! The food was amazing and some of the best Mexican cuisine I've had to date. Here are some photos from inside the restaurant. They are not only a 24 hour food mecca but they also have a gigantic bakery in the front of the store...

Keeping in line with my diet I was very good
and didnt' snag a delicious pastry. However,
they looked heavenly!

They had some gorgeous Pinatas hanging from the ceiling!

In the dining area everything was Christmas themed. Why
you ask? I have no clue, but it was beautiful! And
who doesn't like christmas lights year round?

After stuffing ourselves to the brim with delicious mexican food we headed to the Market. It's just about .5 miles down the road from the River Walk and such a great experience! The whole thing is indoors (thank goodness) so you can stroll leisurely through the little souvenir shops and browse at your own pace without dying of heat stroke. After stopping in a few stores we realized that there is a great interest in wrestling masks?! For some reason they are all the rage and everyone was selling them...

Bad quality, I know...stupid i-Phone.

We also found this little gem...oh Texas.

After buying some goodies and checking out the local Goodwill, which I was super excited about since we don't have one here in Del Rio, it started pouring down rain. We sadly took this as our que to head home. It was such a wonderful trip and again, I'm so happy I got to see such a dear friend without having to head all the way back home to Georgia :)

Mitchell and I are heading out tomorrow morning to fly to Louisiana and Mississippi for the weekend to see my mom's side of the family and hit up the UGA game in Oxford. It will certainly be nice to get out of Del Rio for a weekend and see some family, but I think I might actually miss this place a bit!

Winston will also be having a fun filled weekend! One of my sweet friends here kindly volunteered to watch him for us this weekend, so he will be living it up with her adorable puppy Daisy while we are galavanting across the south. I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe weekend! Thanks for tuning in!

The beautiful sky on the way home :)

Naturally I had a request from my husband to stop
and get a large supply of Chick-fil-A
before heading home ;) I munched on fries all
the way home...

Happy Early Birthday

Tomorrow would have been my sweet mamma's 61st birthday. This week has been a little harder on me than the past few, knowing that it would have been her birthday this weekend. But I'm trying my hardest to stay busy and positive! My usual routine of heading to the store to pick out a special card, ordering flowers to be delivered, and selecting the perfect gift to make her day all that more special is something I didn't get to do for the first time in years this week. Still, I've had the urge to send her something in the mail every morning this past week when I get up remembering that it's her birthday on Saturday, then it hits me how little sense that makes.

Funny enough she had already told me exactly what she wanted this year for her birthday a few months ago! She mentioned that she wanted some pretty blue hydrangeas for her yard :) If you knew my mother at all she LOVED gardening, even though her and I both certainly didn't have green thumbs by any means.  My mother was the most selfless person I have ever known and never ever asked for anything from anyone and certainly wasn't about to ask for some extravagant gift.  I'm hoping to get some hydrangeas next spring and plant them in remembrance of her last birthday wish!

I thought that I would remember her birthday on here as I started this whole blogging experience in remembrance of her. As I can't share Mitchell's and I's life experience with her via the phone, email, or in person anymore I felt that this would help substitute the loss a little and help me feel as if I was relaying our life events to her in some way :) Anyways, I'm wishing my mom a super happy early birthday and hope she's partying it up up there where she is! I miss and love you so much mamma.

A photo of mom and I when we were
driving back to CO a year ago from
last month!

Making Our House Our Home

As promised, here are some photos of the house now that we have finished a few (and I mean minimal) renovations! We painted the kitchen the Martha Stewart Aegean Blue, which wasn't a surprise at all to my husband and anyone else who rummaged through our registry. I will admit I have an obsession with anything Martha Stewart brand, so naturally I went with a color from her line available at Home Depot. It turned out perfect and it really really helped open the room up! The neutral beige, or Macadamia as the management here calls it, was killing me and really making it rather depressing to spend any amount of time in the kitchen. Here's a good photo of it, even though it's really hard to tell the difference with the bad lighting situation in there...

Before....

After! It's really hard to tell the difference with how horrible
the lighting is. But, in person it's SO much brighter!

I also ordered some pillows from a lovely shop on Etsy called "The Lacey Placey," which I was happy to see is based out of Atlanta :) I had been admiring her pillows for a few weeks and finally took the plunge and ordered the blue/ivory pillow cover in a chevron print. I'd seen this print literally everywhere and had fallen in love with it and was so happy to find someone who could make me something with a similar design without a hefty price tag! The shipping was super fast and I could not be happier with them! Here are some pictures of them....

I'm in love with anything in the Chevron print!

I paired them with some lovely yellow pillows
from Target that my friend Elyssa got Mitchell and me as
a wedding and shower gift ;)

Winston wanted to pose with the pillows!

We also finally got a new rug (WOOOOO!!!)  and I'm in love with it as well! After searching forever we finally found a great rug and could not be more happy with it! Mitchell is so happy to finally have a soft surface to pad around on in the living area and Winston sure loves it too! 

Our new rug! It's a dark grey/blue with floral print!
Yet again Winston wanted to pose for the camera.

         

Winston's New Adventure

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for not blogging nearly as much as I did when I first started this new adventure! However, I think that it mostly has to do with the fact that our lives really aren't that eventful here in good ole Del Rio now that we are settled in. We pretty much do the same things day after day, which I'm totally ok with, so I apologize for not wanting to bore you all with mundane daily updates ;)

Anyways, this past week was wonderful as I got out of the house a good bit and explored some new places off base! I went and had lunch with a new friend I've made here (yes you read that correct, I actually met another great spouse after weeks of worrying I never would) at a local place downtown called "The Brown Bag." It's no Montague's, my favorite tea shop in Colorado Springs, but it was quaint and the food was delicious! Not to mention the company was just as wonderful as we got to chat about being military spouses and how its all so new to us both! She also has a sweet puppy that I met and we are setting up a play-date for her and Winston sometime soon hopefully. Other than that I FINALLY got the pillows I ordered from Etsy for the couch and the rug that we ordered with a lovely gift card from my Aunt Kay and Uncle Jack. I'll post pictures of those tomorrow, promise!

Yesterday we went out on the lake (again, this is one of those weekly activities I hope I'm not boring everyone to death with). We had a great time tubing and just hanging out while enjoying the nice weather now that the awful 100 degree heat wave has finally broken. On an exciting note, Winston went tubing yesterday, yes tubing! Harrison took him out behind the boat and he actually loved it! Naturally I was very hesitant but once the boat got moving he seemed to really enjoy the wind in his fur and just chilling out on the water! Heres a photo I took of them from the boat...

He's a pro now!

Here are some more photos I took yesterday as well...

He's finally learned to like his life jacket.

Me and Winston sunbathing on the tube!

This week I'm going to play a pick up game with the wife of one of the Majors Mitchell works for. I'm super nervous as I haven't played in years, but I'm hoping it will be nice to get back to playing, get out of the house on a weekly basis, and meet someone new! I'm also planning on going to see my wonderful friend Elyssa who just moved out to Texas for a month or so to spend time with her family. We are meeting in San Antonio this weekend and I could not be more excited! Hope everyone had a lovely weekend :)

Glory Glory to Ole Georgia

Football season has officially begun! GO DAWGS!!!!

Winston is more than ready for the
first UGA game of the season!!

Last game I went to with mom, UGA vs. CU. I know
 she will be cheering us on in spirit :)

                                     Now let's kick some Boise State butt!!