Long Winded & Proud

I heart Pintrest.

Everyone told me that I would, so I'm not quite sure why it surprised me as much as it did, but I really, really love Pintrest!

So! Much! Cool! Stuff!

The other day, I found this super easy way to make cinnamon rolls with crescent roll dough, and the following Saturday I made them!

First, you take half of the dough and roll it out, pinching the parts where it's serrated so that it's one piece of dough.


Then, you roll it out with a rolling pin just a little bit so that it's a little bigger. Then it's the fun part - adding your filling. For these, I used a little cinnamon and brown sugar, but you could use pretty much anything - jelly, honey, whatever you want!

Once you've added the filling, you roll up the whole thing.

And then slice pieces and put them into a mini muffin pan!

I put them in the oven, following the temp and time on the package, then got started on the icing. The original recipe created a maple icing, which I will definitely have to try sometime, but I just did a quick cinnamon one.

It wasn't very pretty, but there it is.

Once the rolls were done, I took them out of the pan and put them on a plate (I hate having icing in my pans, I know, it's weird.)

And drizzled the icing over the rolls!

They were so tasty! I didn't use quite enough brown sugar and cinnamon on the first batch - when I make them again, I'm totally going to use more, and do the maple icing!

Thanks, Pintrest! I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

Hi,

My name is Adriana, and I'm a Redfin addict.

I spend hours upon hours searching and filtering through properties for sale! It's getting rather ridiculous - obviously we need to go see some more places!

Who knew looking for a house would be so addictive!

Since we've been on a pretty strict budget lately, I've been exploring some new, cheap recipes. Fortunately, Trader Joe's makes that super easy with their "tasting booths" in their stores! I have done two SUPER easy (I mean ridiculously easy) recipes lately - one to just have on hand because it was tasty, and one to bring to a potluck at a friend's house.

Up first - Turkey chili cornbread!

When I say it's easy to make, I'm not kidding! All you do is prepare the cornbread as you normally would, then before you pop it in the oven, you just dump in a can of turkey chili. I also added in a couple handfuls of mixed shredded cheese (also from Trader Joe's). The batter gets a bit thick, but it's soo yummy looking. Then you put it in a pan, throw a bit more cheese on top, and bake it according to the package.


Next time, I probably will put more cheese in the mix and less on top, because it got a little tough to cut with the cheese on top. It doesn't come out like a regular cornbread - it's almost more like a cornbread casserole, but it's SO delicious!

Next up - broccoli slaw with peanuts and a spicy peanut vinaigrette!

This was also so easy to make it! It was literally throwing two bags of the broccoli slaw into a bowl, adding the peanuts, then mixing in the vinaigrette! I started slowly with the vinaigrette because I don't like when salads are over saturated with dressing - I first added about 1/2 the bottle, but it wasn't quite enough. I ended up using about 2/3 of the bottle, and with about 3/4 of the peanuts. I think it was a decent ratio.




This salad was so easy, pretty healthy, and it was a big hit at the potluck we brought it to! (And by big hit, I mean that it didn't make it to the second wave of people that showed up!)

Both these recipes enforce my love for Trader Joe's - I definitely recommend both! (They were also pretty fun to throw together!)

Back in November, I wrote a post about upcoming movies I was excited for. And I was super excited for One For The Money, because I'm a fan of the Stephanie Plum books, but bummed I'd have to wait ALL the way to the end of January to see it... well, I can't believe how the time has flown, because we did a girls night to see it a few weekends ago!

Dani grabbed the tickets (reserved seating, thank you very much), Shosh provided the Tasty Cakes (I love Philly's Best!), and after some cocktails to distract us from what we were sure was going to be the worst movie ever, we were ready!

Yes, we went into the theater with super low expectations. In fact, we pretty much expected it to be terrible - Katherine Heigl's accent from the trailer was not promising, and she wasn't exactly my first pick for Stephanie.

Anyway. Right below the trailer is my run down of the book vs. the movie. There WILL be spoilers, so if you don't want to know, go away now!


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Caution: Spoilers ahead!

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The movie opens with some really cheesy titles, and has stupid graphics that try to set up the story - she's looking for a job, she's broke, she's overdue on all her bills. They try to do this "spy in high heels" and "lipstick with bullets" kind of theme, which doesn't really match the rest of the movie. (I'm actually not sure where they got the idea to do that - it's not like Stephanie is ever overly concerned with lipstick.)

Then it basically follows the plot of the book - Stephanie needs job, Stephanie becomes bounty hunter, Stephanie goes after Morelli, etc etc. They didn't completely cut out how creepy and disturbing Ramirez is, and he does stalk her and go after Lula, but not nearly to the extent of the book. And the plot is rearranged a bit - things happening in slightly different order, etc.

Key differences:

- You meet Jimmy Alpha much sooner than in the book.
- Stephanie has much less interaction with Ranger. (I'm actually ok with this, I'm a "Morelli" girl!)
- Instead of brutalizing Lula and leaving her on Stephanie's fire escape, Ramirez beats her up and dumps her out of his truck in front of Stephanie's building. (I get this - they wanted the PG-13 rating after all)
- They don't really build the relationship between Stephanie and Lula. She feels responsible for Lula being beaten, but she and Lula only have a couple of interactions before that happens.
- Ramirez and Jimmy Alpha don't go to Stephanie's apartment for the climactic ending - instead, Ramirez attacks Stephanie and Morelli when they find the butcher's truck with Carmen's body in it. They manage to knock him out after Stephanie sprays him with pepper spray, then Jimmy Alpha shows up and makes Morelli handcuff himself inside the truck. Stephanie fakes being sick, then fights with and ultimately shoots Jimmy Alpha.
- At the end of the movie, Morelli shows up at Stephanie's apartment with a cupcake instead of a Pino's pizza.

The movie was entertaining, and didn't stray from the book so much that you got annoyed. It was far better than I was anticipating, and we actually all really enjoyed it. Katherine Heigl didn't completely embody Stephanie Plum, and her accent was pretty bad, but overall she didn't ruin the character for me, either. She and Jason O'Mara (Morelli) had some really decent chemistry, and Sherri Shepherd was really funny as Lula.

Overall, I left the theater feeling satisfied, and even almost hoping that the movie will do well enough for them to make another one from the series... maybe they'll skip ahead to #4, so we can actually see some Plum/Morelli action!