Stuffed Bell Peppers

Today I made up this recipe and I have to say it's one of my new favorite recipes. I'm quite pleased with them. I've made stuffed peppers before but these are by far the best! I'll have to try them on some anaheim or jalapeno peppers next! They were a hit with everyone, all the kids thought they were the best I've ever made too. Let's just say we all "stuffed" ourselves! Haha! I know, so funny! ;)

Guess what I even tried out my Tupperware rice maker. I've used it at parties before but I honestly don't make rice very often so haven't used it at home. I used it at a party the other day and decided I should be using it at home. Loved it! Here it is in the microwave.

 The lid on top prevents the water from boiling over into your microwave by catching it and it builds up into the lid or falls back down the holes.

 Nice fluffy white rice.

Uncooked peppers.

 

 Cooked and looking delicious!
 

 

Recipe:

Stuffed Bell Peppers
by Kristi Black

6-8 Bell Peppers
1 lb. Ground beef
1 lb. Pork sausage
1 sm Onion, chopped
1 Tbsp. Garlic, minced
2 tsp. Oregano
3 c. Rice, cooked
2- 8 oz. cans Tomato sauce
1/4 c. Ketchup
Mozzarella cheese

Start cooking your rice, about 1 1/2 c. uncooked. Preheat oven to 375º. Brown meat with onion, garlic and oregano. Add and mix together rice, tomato sauce and ketchup. Cut the tops off of the bell peppers and remove the insides. Put the peppers in a baking dish and stuff the peppers a little bit higher than the top of the pepper. Sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. Bake at 375º for 25-35 minutes. We like ours just barely crunchy so I cooked them for 25 minutes. If cooking longer than that you may want to add the cheese later, like the last 5 minutes of cooking. Enjoy! I did not cover the peppers with foil but you can if you want.

7 Ate 9

I tried out another new game with Kerby and Nancy and I liked it a lot. It was really challenging for me to do, you have to think a lot and I like that! It's from the company Out of the Box just like this other fun game Run Wild. I love how Out of the Box has nice plastic or metal boxes for their games, paper boxes do not last well in my house so I really like their boxes! In this game 7 Ate 9 you don't take turns just like in Run Wild and you have to constantly be thinking, don't worry though the game goes fast. That's what Kerby likes about these games. In this one you have to add and subtract numbers that are on certain cards. It's fast paced, short and exciting! It's a lot of fun, I even got the hang of it and won a few times. It makes me realize how much I need to touch up on my math skills. Actually I probably should go to school again and retake math. Haha! NO WAY! Well, if anyone wants to have a game night I'm soooo in. I LOVE games!

 

Hair Cut

YAY! I finally went through with it and got my hair cut today! So worth the drive to Lehi to have my awesome friend Caryl cut it again. She does a fantastic job!
Thank you Caryl Ward!

Lots of people (especially Kerby) ask me why I always get so much cut off so I'm going to show you why. Oh and hey at least it's not cut to or above my chin this time, I haven't done that for 3 or 4 years.

 

See those hairs? Well there 6 or 7 strands there and they ALL have 2 to 3 splits in them. My worst habit is to peel my split ends. When I'm bored, nervous and so many other emotions I pick up a chunk of hair and search for split ends to peel apart. I love it! It's soooo bad for my hair yet I continue to do it. The only time I don't do it is when I get my hair cut, then I don't do it for about 5 or 6 months. Well, at this stage my hair was really bad and I could easily pick up a chunk of hair and find several strands with 2 or 3 splits in them! My favorite! What makes it even better is when my hair is wet and I find some, when it's wet you can pull it in half all the way to the root, so much fun! Pretty sad huh? I'm totally ruining my hair by doing it, that's why I have to cut so much off because the damage is so far up. :( No worries though it grows pretty fast, in fact I'm glad I'm blogging about this because I can see just how fast it does grow.

Oooh that just looks so fun! I actually made sure I had lots of fun today before they were gone. I even recorded a short little video for you all to see how well I've mastered the art of peeling my split ends but unfortunately I still can't get videos to load. So, you'll just have to imagine (actually if you've been around me very much you don't have to imagine very hard).

 There's all my hair. Not enough to donate this time but I have donated 3 different times and I believe each time was about 12 inches. This time it was REALLY unhealthy though, as you can see by the split ends.

 Here I am getting some highlights.

 Here are before and after pictures from today. :) It feels really good to have all that hair gone. 

So refreshing, light and healthy.

Caryl, you really are the best!

 Here is the other reason my hair had so many split ends (besides from me picking them). Last April the day before Hawaii! I decided to highlight my own hair! Huge mistake!!!! Never again will I highlight my own hair, or let a non-professional highlight it! This sort of thing should be left to the pros. I followed the instructions perfectly and got these terrible results. Of course I immediately fell apart and started bawling. I called up my sister Kylee who knew more about hair than I did and we had come up with 3 solutions! 1. Die it all black. (I didn't want black hair with my super pale face for my dream Hawaii vacation the next day). Of course that made me cry even harder. 2. Bleach it ALL the yellow/white color it made. Yes, that made me cry even harder. DEVASTATING! Can you imagine? I could and it was NOT pretty! 3. Wear a wig of beautiful long blonde (real) hair of Kylee's and just hope and pray that it would stay on my head at all times, including while swimming in the water!!! Yep, you guessed it, I cried some more.

Well, after thinking for a while I decided to call my friend Caryl and see if she knew how to fix it. I know it's hard to tell in the picture below on the left but she was able to fix it! She did an excellent job! I cried again, only that time it was tears of joy. Caryl, you're wonderful! The picture below is the next day in Hawaii at the Dole factory enjoying one of my favorite things about the vacation, some Dole Whipped Pineapple. YUM! I'll have to post some pics of Hawaii on here some time soon.

Here I found a picture from 3 months later where you can see my hair really good.

Caryl, thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking me in at a late hour and on the spot. This was one of the most devastating moments of my life, I had no idea hair could recover so well after that. Thanks for your expertise, my hair was hideous. No more do it your self highlights for me! In fact this may be the last time I get it highlighted, I really like how it looks but I may stop.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

We finally watched this movie and it is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I found it enjoyably exciting to watch. The effects were very inventive and spectacular to watch. The apes looked very real to me. Kerby really liked it too. If you haven't seen any of the other Planet of the Apes movies you're still ok to watch this, this is a great story of how it all began. I was extremely disappointed when they never continued on from the 2001 movie because it was very well done too. I really liked how they had most of the story be how they got to the point where they already start in the other movies. I have very high hopes that they will make another movie. Please, please, please!!! Oh and can we please stop doing testing on apes? I'm a little scared now!!! ;)

If you haven't watched the movie yet I highly recommend you do, it's very good. I liked it so much I think I'll buy it, I don't buy movies very often anymore.

Monkey Paw

Kadin had his first readers theater today at school. I got to go an see it. The mini play was called Monkey's Paw. I took video of it but it didn't turn out that great. First of all you can't hear some of it and my camera kept making a weird noise, I think it was making it every time it tried to focus because I had it set to automatically focus the whole time, so every time I moved the camera it re-focused and made that annoying noise (I didn't realize that would pick up on the video) now I know and will turn that off in the future. Kadin and all the kids did a great job. I had practiced a little with Kadin this morning and he actually had all his lines memorized but still used the book, his nerves must have really gotten to him. :) That doesn't matter though, I think he did awesome! Dang noise!

Well, it appears I can't upload the video, I've done all the suggestions I've read about including changing the video to a movie .wmv format but it still won't upload. I don't know maybe blogger is having problems. I will try again tomorrow and see if I can get it on here. :(

3 Buns

I tried a new hair-do on Skylar again, it turned out pretty cute, it will be much cuter when her hair is thicker. Also I think I need to take a bobby-pin class because I am not good with them and I can't ever get them to stay in very good. After a couple hours her hair was falling out. 

Oh ya and no Skylar isn't sulking in the corner. I don't remember what I said to her about taking a picture but she thought I said hide and seek, so she was getting ready to count. :)

 Start with 3 pony tails.

 Twist the hair into a bun.

 Hold together with a bobby-pin.

 

 And you're done. Put some ribbon or flowers or whatever in it or just leave it, it's pretty either way.

I really want to try this on my hair but I think it might be too thick. Plus I'm getting it cut soon, maybe I'll try it before, we'll see. Of course you'll find out if I do.

Colorblind?

See below for actual free test. This single picture is not the test.
Is your child colorblind? Have you ever checked? Did you know that if a man is colorblind then his daughters sons are more likely to be colorblind? I don't know the statistics or genetics, I am not an expert or anything, just have an interest. My dad is color blind and two of my sons, Levi and Fisher are color blind, luckily Kadin and Skylar are not. Color blindness is not a bad thing (I don't think) they may end up struggling in school a little but so far my two sons are doing great and it doesn't seem to affect them (that I know of).

If you don't know whether your child is color blind or not click below for a free online test to check and see. The picture above is what EVERYONE should see, so don't go by that. The test says it's for ages 3 and up but Skylar knows what a circle and square are so she was able to do it, and you could do take it yourself too.

***Pediatric Colorblind Test***