El Blogo!

Noooooooooooo!

I almost forgot about my blog. This is the very thing I feared would happen. It's what happens every single time I try and start up a blog. Or anything for that matter. My plan WAS to post every day but...I guess that idea has already been flushed down el toileto (I made a c in Spanish). I promise to be better about posting every day. And when I promise this, I'm really promising myself because I know no one reads these...well...Angela might because she's my one and only follower. But anyway, this is my new years resolution that I made...in July. So I have to follow through.

My classes have started! And I couldn't be more excited to get to work. I'm so glad I decided to go ahead and finish my associates degree. I WAS going to just put off school until Dillon and I got settled into our home in Kansas (or wherever we end up going), but I decided since I was so freaking bored I might as well be doing something productive...so school it is! Anyway, the classes are going well so far and I'm really liking them. Tomorrow I'm going to get my books and start on the hardcore projects n' stuff. (I refuse to procrastinate this semester...remind me that I said that in a few weeks when I'm crying because I haven't started a project until 5 minutes before it's due, and trust me, that'll happen.)

I got one of my birthday presents from Dillon yesterday! :D He sent me two t-shirts. One of them was a Zelda shirt and the other was Lord of the Rings. They are insanely cute. I'll post a pic at the bottom of this blog. I'm so lucky to have a significant other that can appreciate my nerdy side. (It's actually one of the things we have most in common, teehee) But I'm gonna wear the crap outta those shirts.

I've decided what I want to do with my life, fyi. (I've been saying English major and teacher, but....no) I've decided I want to go to school to become a Veterinary Technician! The idea of this excites me super bad so let's hope my mind doesn't change. So far I've had like...4 majors? Yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick with this one though. I've always liked the idea of being a nurse, I just never really thought that I had what it took to be one. When I met Dillon's mom (she's a nurse) I was so inspired by all her stories and satisfaction that came with being a nurse. It just sounded like a good idea to me. I didn't know, though, because I've never been a very nurturing person. (not with humans anyway) In fact, I'm not really a very big human fan. So I thought...why not be a nurse...but for animals? And then a light bulb went off in my head (DING DING) and I realized that was exactly what I wanted to do with my life. So...there's that. And we'll see how it goes!

I could talk for hours and hours more about that ^, but I won't bore you. Plus my fingers are kinda getting tired. I hope all of you are having a wonderful day/night, and I'll talk to you soon! :D Chicken recipe coming up this week btw! Be looking!

xoxoxoxo

btw, here's the totally awesome shirts! He got them from some t-shirt website that he really loves (they have awesome shirts). I forgot the website though. I'll ask him and post it in the next blog! ^.^

STRESS CITY

I think I'm going to die.


I just went and signed up for 4 online courses. SCIENCE courses. Why, God, why?! What made me think that would be a good idea? The thing I've been focusing on for the past 3 months is getting some sort of wedding planned and providing support to Dillon to get through his tech school while dealing with a long distance relationship and trying to find a job in a town where it's absolutely impossible to find one. I guess I thought that wasn't stressful enough and decided piling on a bunch of college science courses would be necessary at this time.

Anyway, I've already dropped the bomb on the parent folk that I needed 800 dollars for tuition (which was the part I was worried about), so now I've just got to drop the money off and get my books. Which is also gonna be extremely expensive. Why does college have to be so expensive, anyway? They should pay US to go to school. I think there would be a lot more successful people in the world if that was the case. Haha.

Point of this blog is: be prepared because I might use this blog as an outlet and there may be a large amount of curse words coming in the future.

STRESS CITY. STAY TUNED.

Smiling All Day Long

Hello loves!

I had the best birthday ever today! It's days like today that remind me how blessed and lucky I am to have such fantastic people in my life. :) Received so many phone calls, posts, texts and snapchats telling me happy birthday! Made me feel so great! SO many good vibes all over the place today. Don't you love those days where you're just smiling all day long? Those days where nothing at all goes wrong and every single second just feels incredible. There has to be days like that to make up for the crappy stuff life throws your way sometimes. :)

Anyway, I went out to lunch with my mom and cousin today, went home and laid in bed in my birthday suit and played Skyrim until about 4. Then I went to my parents house and saw my puppies and went out to eat in Franklin with the folks. We went to a place called Caffe Rel. It's SO amazingly good. At first, if you've never been there, it doesn't look like it'd be anything great considering it's attached to a gas station. Haha. Dillon says "it looks like hepatitis waiting to happen" hahaha. But it's seriously some of the best food you'll ever taste. The mac n cheese gives me a complete mouthgasm. I had that for an appetizer, veal, beef and turkey meatball linguini (with the best marinara sauce you've ever tasted) and some free chocolate cake for dessert since it was my birthday. ^.^

Doesn't sound like much, but I feel like I ate enough for an army. Bloat city. But SOOOO DELICIOUS.


I hope everyone else out there had an amazing day as well.  <3 <3

What day is it?

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!

15 Cooking Tips!

Hey hey hey!

Sorry I've not written in a few days, been busy with birthday stuff! My lovely little parents threw me a surprise birthday party yesterday with a few of my family members, and my fiance's family surprised me with a cake and present tonight! Everyone in my life is so sweet. I'm extremely blessed. The only thing missing this birthday is my fiance himself. :/ Oh well, I'll see him soon enough...only about 2 more months of separation!

Anyway, I'm thinking about (in the next couple days) making two more recipes from FoodWishes.com. Million dollar chicken, and green beans! The reason I chose this recipe to make next is because I went out to eat lunch with my mom and couple of her coworkers today and one them has a bunch of beans (real ones, not the can) that she was gonna give mom. So I was like...hey...I could try that green bean recipe that I saw on FoodWishes.com! And nothing goes better with green beans than chicken. Yum! I'm getting hungry just talking about it.

Anyway, I was stumbling on stumbleupon.com (a really awesome site that you should totally check out right now if you haven't already) and came across a website with a bunch of cooking tips that I'd like to share with you all! Since I'm very inexperienced, but wanna learn the ways of the cooking world fairly quickly, tips like this are actually a lot of help. I got these from fullpunch.com.

Okay, here they are:

1. Steaks continue to cook even off the grill.
2. ALWAYS taste your food while cooking. This allows you to accurately adjust seasoning, flavors and cooking time.
3. Garlic makes everything better. (I dunno if I agree with this one because I'm not really a garlic fan)
4. When making pork chops, cut the ribbon of fat so that it is in pieces instead of one long piece. It prevents the chop from curling in the pan and cooking unevenly. (This will come in handy for my upcoming recipe involving pork chops. ;D)
5. Stop lifting the lid off of a pot of rice. The steam cooks the rice and by taking the lid off you RUIN EVERYTHING FOREVER.
6. Use weight not volume for measuring ingredients for baking.
7. Dull knives are more dangerous than sharp knives.
8. The perfect omelette is made with 2 eggs, not 3. Some people add milk, but that's a mistake.
9. When cooking pancakes, heat the pan until it's hot enough where if you add a drop of water it immediately boils. Roughly 350 F. (This is true, because I used to be terrible at cooking pancakes until I learned this.)
10. Cold oil, hot pan: Foods wont stick.
11. Peanut butter can really round out the flavor in sauces and stew-like dishes. (Mmmmm...peanut butter)
12. Sprinkling pepper onto strawberries makes them taste like strawberry flavored candy. (Uhhh...why would I want strawberry flavored candy when I could just have the actual strawberry? Stupid tip.)
13. Salt the water when making pasta. (I already knew this one!)
14. When baking, applesauce can be substituted for oil. (And it makes cakes taste 10x better in my opinion)
15. Cut onions under water to avoid tearing up. (best tip because that's seriously the worst feeling in the world.)

Hope you enjoyed!

Chau!...or however you spell it.

I Miss Being A Kid

Happy Friday,

I'll have you know that as I write this I'm using my bloated stomach as a table for my laptop. I just finished eating 3 pieces of pizza, 2 pieces of chicken, mac n cheese, coleslaw, and mashed potatoes. That was just dinner. That doesn't include the piece of pizza, 2 cheesesticks, and bowl of cereal I had earlier. I'm literally about to puke up 5 tons of cheese. I love food entirely too much. I've gained so much weight ever since I started dating Dillon. I swear every time I go down to see him we eat out at the most unhealthy places. We don't believe in eating light. At all.

Anyway, today I went to pick up Dillon's cousins, Avery and Meagan. They're absolutely adorable, and Avery is such a little game nerd. He and I were arguing about weapons in Skyrim earlier...I won. They're both very sweet and talented in their own ways. Meagan spent 30 minutes trying to teach me the cup song from Pitch Perfect. (I haven't seen the movie, but the song is pretty cool) But, needless to say I totally failed at flippin' that cup around attempting to make a song out of it.

I love kids. Why is it that when we're kids we seem to have everything figured out, but the older we get the more confused we are? Maybe the saying is true and ignorance is bliss. Maybe being naive isn't such a bad thing. There are some days that I wish I didn't know all the things I did know. I miss being a kid a lot. I remember when I was young, all I cared about was spending time with my parents and brother and playing with my toys. That's it. I didn't think about boys, or grades, or people's opinions of me. I didn't think about people judging me. I was just always exactly what I wanted to be. Kids are who they are, and they have imaginations and they have fun. Perhaps what's wrong with the world is that people have forgotten what it's like to be a kid.

Before The World Intruded

Return me to those infant years,
before I woke from sleep,
when ideas were oceans crashing,
my dreams blank shores of sand.
Transport me fast to who I was
when breath was fresh as sight,
my new parts — unfragmented —
shielded faith from unkind light.
Draw for me a figure whole, so different
from who I am. Show me now
this picture: who I was
when I began.

by: Michele Rosenthal




Saw this beautiful poem and just thought I'd share it with you all. I think many of us can relate to it. 

Video Game Nerd

Hey-yo!

For whatever reason, I love Thursdays. They're always the best days for me, and I feel motivated to do things. Except for this Thursday, I just want to sit around and play video games. Which is gonna be the topic of this blog since that's what I'm thinking about.

When I was growing up I played all sorts of video games. My favorite game when I was tiny was probably Sonic or Star Fox. I also played the crap out of some Perfect Dark and Goldeneye. Donkey Kong was another one that took up a lot of my time. And Mario of course. Nintendo, Sega, Nintendo 64. Ahhh, the good old days. When I was a little bit older, and when I say older I mean 8, I discovered The Legend of Zelda. I automatically fell in love with that game, and that game and I, we've been bffs since the first day I played it. I do not think I've ever been more obsessed with anything in my life.

Basically Zelda (if you've not played) has the same idea as Mario. You always play as Link (a young Kokiri boy) and every game's plot somehow has to do with you saving the princess of Hyrule, Zelda. And the bad guy you have to fight's name is Ganondorf. So It's like the whole Mario saving Peach from Bowzer type thing. But, Zelda always has really amazing plots, and all the games connect together somehow. The most recent Zelda, Skyward Sword, was supposed to be like how it all began and whatnot. Pullin' a Star Wars on us I guess. Anyway, Zelda is INCREDIBLE and if you ever need a new game to play, and have not yet played it, I highly suggest it. But I do suggest you play Ocarina of Time first. It's not technically first on the Hyrule history timeline, but it's still the best IMO!

Speaking of Star Wars a second ago, I don't know why everyone is making such a big deal (negative) out of the fact that Disney bought it out. Disney is an amazing company, and they make fantastic movies. And to be honest, the last 3 Star Wars movies kinda sucked anyway. Just sayin'.

But that's off topic. The most recent game that I've gotten into is Skyrim, and I absolutely love it. It's so fun and I can completely relax when I play it. It's got that medieval feel that I love. I'm a complete middle ages nerd to be honest with you. Zelda also kinda has that feel to it as well. I enjoy studying the middle ages, just in my free time. Yep. Nerd. I went to my first renaissance festival a few months ago and it was absolutely incredible! Had the time of my life because I was totally in my element. In fact, there was a booth set up where a guy was selling Ocarinas from Zelda! There was also a booth where a guy was selling his hand painted pictures, and the majority of them was scenes from Lord of the Rings! (my favorite series) I could go on and on about LOTR, but I wont. Anyway, I ended buying two of those.

but yeah, I love video games, and I think they're great and I hate how people say they're unhealthy for you. If I didn't have them to relax, I'd probably be having anxiety attacks every second. Plus, most those people who say they're unhealthy are people who live for reality tv shows, or just tv in general, so suck it tv people!

Imma go play Skyrim now. :D

Anxiety and Depression

Today I want to talk about depression and anxiety. Not because I necessarily enjoy putting my personal life and problems out there for the entire world to see, but because I know there are probably other people who deal with this sort of thing. Sometimes it helps to know you're not the only one going through it. Sometimes the things that make us feel most alone have the most potential to connect us. So here we go:

When I was in middle school, I was probably the most social person in the world. I swear, I had friends galore. It was awesome. I was confident, and happy all the time. ALL the time. Nothing scared me. I loved parties, and any sort of social gathering. Life was absolutely perfect for me!

Then, I hit high school. This, my friends, is where things started changing. I know they say that high school doesn't matter and once you're out of it, it's like it didn't even happen. Well, that's not really true with me. I was fine the first couple years. It was a huge adjustment, though. Huge. I started to realize that not everyone is going to like you and maybe people really aren't as nice as I thought. I still had my close knit group of friends, though, so everything was good. I dated a few guys in high school. None of which ended well at all. One in particular ended horribly, and caused me to lose a bunch of friends, and my dignity along with it. My good reputation was pretty much flushed down the toilet at this point. A lot went down with that, and caused my self esteem to just hit the floor. I was depressed for about a year, not wanting to talk to anyone or go out. It's as if I completely lost who I was. It was terrible. I remember dreading school every single day, not wanting to get out of bed. I made myself physically sick worrying about what people thought about me, or what they were saying behind my back. The constant paranoid feeling I had caused me to act irrationally about a lot of things. It took me a while to realize I was acting that way but when I did, I became a recluse. I didn't talk or anything. I just stayed at home the majority of the time not going anywhere or talking to anyone. I did this for so long that it just became who I was. I preferred to be home, and the idea of socializing made me so nervous. I got to the point where I would have tiny panic attacks if I had to be out in public, like at a party or something. It's like I had forgotten how to communicate entirely. I guess my confidence was so low that I didn't feel like anything I said would come out right, so I would just be quiet.

This went on for about a year after high school, and I ended up gaining some weight, and becoming extremely depressed. There were some days that I didn't get out of bed all day long. I'd just lay there, and stare at the wall. Occasionally I would contact my old friends that I had lost, and try to reconnect with them. We'd talk occasionally, but our friendships were never fully restored. I still had quite a few friends from high school that I would hang out with, and made some more at the community college that I got my Gen Ed at. I was finally getting happy with myself again, but the thought of going out into the world and meeting people really still bothered me. I would rather stay home and play video games or watch movies by myself.

My friends, and everyone else for that matter, started calling me a hermit or a recluse or whatever else. I refused to go out. I hated people, pretty much. Haha.
I then got accepted into the Disney College Program. I figured this would be a new beginning and a great opportunity, so of course, I took it. I ended up making some of the best friends I've ever had there. Friends who love me and appreciate me for who I am regardless of my mistakes. I'll always love them. I was so sad when my program ended, because I had to come back to my hometown, the place with all the bad memories where I felt so alone all the time. I then reconnected with an old acquaintance from high school, Dillon Penland. He was the only person I was willing to go out with. He seemed cool enough. I went to lunch with him at Kostas, and the rest is history as far as that goes. Never been happier in my entire life, and Dillon has shown me what it means to be loved. I'd never felt that before.

But that's not the point. The point I'm really trying to make is that it's okay to feel anxious or depressed every now and then. Things happen in your life that are going to make you feel that way. You can't stop it. What you CAN do, however, is learn from it and grow. Realize the mistakes you made in the past, and don't make them in the future. Mold yourself into the person you want to be. Let people into your life who bring you up, not down.

Just thought I'd share that.

Chicken Parmesan Casserole...SUCCESS!

MY CHICKEN PARMESAN CASSEROLE ACTUALLY TASTED GOOD

I'm overly joyed to be able to announce that my first dish tasted absolutely incredible. In fact, I wanted seconds. I'm beginning to think I'll make a decent housewife after all. ;)

Anyway, I'm just gonna go through the basic steps of how I made it for those of you who are just as inexperienced as I am. This recipe was unbelievably easy. Okay, here we go:

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil

red pepper flakes

6 boneless skinless chicken breasts (I used Tyson) 

2 1/2 cups marinara sauce (I used Emerils, but any is fine)

few sprinkles of basil

8 oz mozzarella cheese, shredded

3 oz Parmesan cheese

1 (5-oz) package garlic croutons (I used the garlic and cheese ones, don't have to have cheese, but I found they're better than just regular garlic) 

Step 1: Season both sides of each of your chicken breasts with salt and pepper (or whatever seasoning you want to use, I used a little bit of Italian seasoning as well as S&P)
Step 2: Sear both sides of each chicken breast on the stove on high heat (with a little bit of olive oil) until both sides are light golden brown but don't cook all the way through! About 2 minutes on each side.
Step 3: spread olive oil  inside a decent sized casserole dish (I used 9 by 13). Also sprinkle some pepper flakes in there, to taste.
Step 4: place the chicken breasts in the casserole dish (however you do it, it doesn't really matter)
Step 5: spread the marinara sauce all over the chicken not leaving any of it uncovered.
Step 6: sprinkle half the mozzerella and half the parmesan all over the chicken.
Step 6: Pour 1 bag of croutons all over, and be sure to take a spatula or something to push the croutons down into the sauce.
Step 7: Pour the rest of the cheese on top of all that ( I found that I used a little bit more than the recipe called for, which is fine! More cheese=more fun!)
Step 8: Put your casserole in the oven preheated to 350 degrees, and bake for about 35-45 minutes.

Take it out, let it cool, then eat!

It seriously gave me a mouthgasm, no kidding. I put salad with fresh tomatos and cucumbers from my garden, and italian dressing and some french bread. It was incredible!

I hope you try this out because it is way too delicious. :)

Again, I got this recipe from FoodWishes.com! Head on over there for some more incredible dishes!

Chicken Parmesan Day!

Happy Hump day!

So I had this grand idea that I would get up at 7am this morning and go on a nice little run around Buchanan Loop. Did that happen? Nope. I ended up waking up around 11:30, watching a little bit of The Office and then suddenly got inspired to cook something today for my folks!

I LOVE italian food. You just can't go wrong with it. My favorite italian dish is chicken parmesan, but since my dad doesn't particularly like noodles, I decided to try out a very enticing dish that I saw on the FoodWishes blog called chicken parmesan casserole. It looked absolutely delicious..well..at least the one that chef John made looked delicious, but we'll see what mine ends up looking like, or more importantly, tasting like. There were actually quite a bit of ingredients involved, and it can get pretty expensive so I've decided to just do a recipe about once a week. So happy chicken parm day!

I'm gonna fix a salad (Olive Garden style) and toasted french bread alongside it, and then I found a recipe, also on FoodWishes.com, for Chocolate Mug Cakes! They look really interesting and, believe it or not, only take 45 seconds to cook...in the MICROWAVE. Sounds like my kind of cake. Anyway, I just got back from getting all the ingredients at Wal-Mart, and just so you know, I HATE Wal-Mart. I always lose my faith in humanity whenever I go in there. Either that, or spend way too much money on stuff I don't need. Wal-Mart does have good prices when it comes to groceries though, so I gotta give it that.

I'll post another blog later on tonight and tell you how it went! Wish me luck!

And So It Begins...

Hello!

Welcome to my first blog post! I guess I'll start this journey off by introducing myself. My name is Sheridan Wilson, soon to be Penland. I'm from a tiny little barely seeable town called Sylva. This tiny little town happens to be located in one of the most beautiful states ever, North Carolina. I've been all over the U.S. and still, NC is where I prefer to be. Perhaps a larger town, though. I'm more of a city gal, I feel. ANYWAY, My fiance, Dillon, is currently enlisted in the United States Air Force. He's located in a slightly larger town called Biloxi. That makes us a grand total of 9 hours apart. Which isn't too bad. Like most military relationships, I spend a lot of time away from my significant other, which gives me a LOT of free time since I have no friends in my hometown. AKA: I'm a loner and refuse to go out anywhere. I do enjoy my alone time. My hobbies mostly consist of browsing the web, making blogs that I most likely will not finish (except for this one because I'm determined), playing tennis (the only sport I've ever been decent at), drawing/painting (which I don't do nearly enough), playing video games (which I do way too much), and eating. A lot.

I'm not too good at introductions so I'm just gonna come on down here and ignore the fact that that one sucked. The point of this blog is to basically document my every day life and share my cooking experiences with you. Not sure exactly who "you" is yet, but hopefully someone will decide that I'm interesting. Now, I've never been a cook. In fact, I'm the only person I know that can actually screw up a Hot Pocket. I fixed Dillon and I a Hot Pocket dinner one night and if that's not bad enough, I actually screwed them up and poor Dillon had to eat a Philly Cheese Steak hot pocket that was pretty much frozen in the center. Like...h-how? How does that happen? It's a MICROWAVE MEAL. And that's only one example out of my book of cooking failures. Anyway, needless to say I'm pretty terrible in the kitchen. So, I hope you enjoy following me as I attempt to create some sort of edible food-like thing most every day. I'll also probably blog a bit about my normal life outside of my failed attempts to cook. So, tune in! Or...read in...or whatever.

Byyye!

P.S- Dillon's nickname for me is Sheri Pie, hence the title of the blog. ;D