A Cold Winter Day

I don't remember the last time it was this cold outside for this long period of time. I've been waking up to wind chills in the single digits! Brrr! School was even cancelled on Friday because of the cold weather!

I really don't like winter. I don't like being cold. My lips are always chapped, and my hands are always dry. I can't have enough lotion around. However, this past weekend was quite enjoyable.

Nick came home on Friday night (from Gainsville), and we sat by the fire eating our favorite pizza from Tomatino's (a Montgomery place) while watching movies.

After our routine coffee drinking on Saturday morning we began to observe what we wanted to change about our bedroom and bathroom. We have been wanting to paint these rooms for a while, and we thought this would be a good time to do it. We also wanted to change our faucets in the tub. So we headed off to Lowe's with a full desire to get things done.

We got a few paint samples of the colors we thought we liked, and we looked at bath faucets for a while. Now I wish I could show you some before and after pictures as if we actually accomplished all these things. However, none of these projects were completed. We painted parts of our walls to see if we liked the colors we had chosen. Some of them worked, some didn't. I will be heading back to Lowe's this week to try a few more. And it turns out we can't replace our faucet like we want without tearing out a part of a wall and welding some things together.

Even though we did not accomplish these home projects, I still think we had a pretty successful day. We did decide on paint colors, and it is always fun to make plans for what you want to do to your house. One thing that did get done, was installing a fan in our front living room. This room is just about complete!

On the left is before (big hole in the ceiling), and on the right is after (with the fan)

After watching a few SEC basketball games, I made what I call my Sandra Lee Semi-homemade Meatloaf. Sandra Lee is a chef on the food network, and everything she makes is semi-homemade. I normally do not like to cook this way, but this meat loaf is really good. This is not her recipe, I just call it this because it seems like something she would do. The recipe comes from the back of the Lipton Onion Soup Mix box (pictured below).

Semi-homemade Meatloaf

1 envelope Lipton Onion Soup Mix

2 lbs groud beef

3/4 cup plain dry bread crumbs ( I normally crush Ritz crackers as my bread crumbs. It is pictured below)

2 eggs

3/4 cup water

1/3 cup ketchup (sometimes I add a little more)

Crushed Ritz Crackers for bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients in a bowl.
2. The directions say to put this in a 13 X 9 baking or roasting pan and shape into a loaf. I just put mine in this 9 x 9 pan and don't worry about the loaf shape.
3. Bake 1 hour or until done. Let stand 10 minutes before serving. I also put more ketchup on top before serving, but this all depends on your ketchup needs.

The ketchup demand is high in our house. We even have separate ketchups.
Nick likes his ketchup cold. I like mine room temp. You can't compromise on everything!
I served this with a salad, and we eat our meatloaf with Ritz. We also enjoy eating it the next day. Nick prefers to eat his cold, and I must agree with him on this one. The cold meatloaf is tasty.

We enjoyed our meal by a roaring fire and watching more movies. I hope you are staying warm! Have a good Monday!