:::blushing:::

I didn't sleep very well last night and woke up with a sore back and cold feet. But this morning when I grabbed my laptop (still in bed, of course) I refreshed my Google Dashboard and saw my smiling face up there.

I'm featured on The Hand Me Down House today! Amanda is one of the sweetest bloggers I've met and she is so creative when it comes to ideas for her house. Her unique projects always amaze me and I wonder how she even has time to sleep with everything she's accomplished!

Then I went to eat breakfast and came back to find another feature of me on Amaretto Vineyard! Jessica is a new blogger who started a blog just as she began the journey moving to a new house (like me) and to share her creativity and bargains with others (also like me). So I look forward to seeing her new home and future projects!

I'm truly honored to be chosen twice in one day! Thanks so much to both of you and all of my other blogging friends who keep me inspired on a daily basis!

Fluffy Ricotta Pancakes

It looks like it's going to be a week full of recipe posts because I have a ton of them to share while I was on a cooking kick recently. But I'm working on a lot of new crafts for my craft room and will soon have those to share as well.

Anyway, last weekend I woke up on Sunday morning and had a vision that came to me in a dream: ricotta pancakes! We had some leftover ricotta from another recipe so this was the perfect excuse to use it up and make a yummy surprise Sunday breakfast.

Makes 8 pancakes.

Ingredients:
• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 t baking powder
• 1 1/2 T sugar
• 2 T lemon zest
• pinch of salt
• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 T honey
• 1/2 t vanilla
• non-stick cooking spray
• powdered sugar (optional)
• syrup (optional)

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, lemon zest, and salt.

Mix ricotta, milk, egg, honey, and vanilla in a large bowl. Beat until stiff. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and stir until combined.

Heat a pan over medium-high heat, and spray the surface with non-stick cooking spray. Use a ladle or measuring cup to pour batter onto the griddle. Cook pancakes for about 3 or 4 minutes and then flip them. Cook until both sides of the pancake are golden brown.

Top with powdered sugar and syrup.

Mmmm! Perfect breakfast!


In other foodie news, I won the BSI Blogger Secret Ingredient Challenge! See the turkey & spinach meatloaf that won the award! If you're into ground turkey, check out some of the other yummy recipes that were submitted. I'll definitely be trying some of these!

Linking up to:
What's on the Menu Wednesday

Life, Liberty, Ups & Downs

Happy Memorial Day! I was so excited to put this up because it was the first thing I bought for our new house last summer while we waited to close on it.

The horror! I finally convinced Hubby that we needed a screw in the door to hang all my signs. He was absolutely against this, but gave in when he saw how much it was going to scratch the door! I put felt stickers on the back to avoid some of the scratching.

While we were hanging the sign, we decided to change out the hardware on our front door. It was brass so we ordered new brushed nickel hardware from the manufacturer.

Here's where the whole night goes bad...I tripped over the drill with a sharp drill bit in it. NO! Horrible pain! I looked down and there was blood everywhere!

I cut my two toes on my left foot so bad that it took 2 hours to stop the bleeding! In the morning I went to change the band-aid and it started up again! So I was sitting at work all day like an idiot with 2 band-aids on top of each other and my toe wrapped up in a bloody kleenex.

The weird part is that my mom dropped a gardening shears on her toe on Tuesday and my grandma broke her toe this week too. My family is cursed with toe injuries!

And on a good note, another blog award!

This one is from Jill over at Westbrooke Drive. Thank you, Jill!

I'm supposed to share 7 things about myself.

1. I'm a girly girl, but I love watching cop shows like Cops, Law & Order, Jail, 48 Hours Mystery, Lockup, etc.

2. I was a gymnast and dancer growing up and would argue with anyone who challenged me that these were not considered sports. They ARE!

3. I have a work fish named Mr. Bubbles. Yes, a work fish which means he lives at work. Coworkers come to visit him and say hi during the day.

4. I wear a size 8.5 shoe now, but when I was a kid, my feet were huge. I started wearing women's size shoes in 3rd grade. So glad they finally stopped growing!

5. I eat a bowl of cereal every single day.

6. I've never been to Las Vegas and I feel like the last person on Earth that's never been there.

7. Hubby taught me to cook. I refused to do it until a couple years ago!

I want to pass this one on to three sweet bloggers who have left me such nice comments lately.

Debbie at Where's My Rolling Pin?
Cheryl at Sew Can Do
Malia at Yesterday on Tuesday

Have a great holiday everyone! Share your ups and downs from the weekend!

How do happy people get so happy?

"Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect.

It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections."

The name of this blog is The Pursuit of Happiness because I wanted to find ways to make myself a happier person through creative outlets. During stressful times in my life, I have a really hard time finding the happiness in my life and I can only focus on the negatives. I'm trying to make an effort to be more positive and happy because I think it can only make my life better. The people around me deserve to be around a happy, pleasant person instead of a grouch.Do you have certain things that you do for yourself to stay positive? How do happy people stay so darn happy? Were they just born that way? Are they just optimistic people? I need some feedback...

And on the theme of being happy, my friend Christina over at Finally Mom happened to give me this Happy 101 award and I'm very honored!

Rules of the award:

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.

2. List who gave the award to you and list a link to her blog (or hyperlink).

3. List 10 things that make you happy.

4. Pass the award on to other bloggers and visit their blog to let them know about the award

10 Things That Make Me Happy
• a good bargain
• a day off of work
• the feeling after an awesome workout
• snuggling with Hubby and Kitty in our comfy bed
• cupcakes, donuts, cake, cookies...ok, any sweet treats will work!• finishing a craft
• driving with the windows down
• when someone goes out of their way to do something nice for me
• the sound of the ice cream truck driving down the street
• sweet comments on my blog (hint, hint!)

And now I'm passing this on to a few of my friends…I always have such a hard time with this because I know some of you think these are silly and there's just too many great blogs to pick from!
The Adventures of Goober Grape & Monkey Man
Magically Ordinary

And one MORE reason to be happy is this Sweet Blog award from Liz at Frugal Science! Liz always posts awesome coupons and deals she found and you know how I love a bargain!

I'd like to pass the Sweet Blog award along to 2 blogs that I enjoy...
Adventures of Faith
Misadventures of a Healthy Life

And don't forget to leave me your opinions on how to be a happy person. How do you do it?

My first blog award!

Thanks to Cara from Cara's Cravings who presented me with my first blog award!

So, here's how it works. I'm supposed to leave 7 creative tidbits about myself, but only 1 is true. So that means 6 of them will be lies. You'll try to figure out which is one true and let me know what you think. I will also pass this award on to 6 other awesome bloggers.

My Creative Tidbits :

1. I enjoy watching The Weather Channel.
2. My husband and I met at a fraternity party.
3. My cat lived on a farm before we adopted him.
4. I love going to see movies.
5. My favorite food is ice cream.
6. I played soccer as a child.
7. I wear glasses when I read.

So play along in my game and leave me a good guess as to which one is TRUE!

Now, I get to pass this award along to some of my favorite blogs.

There are so many to pick from, so here's just a few of my faves that you might not know about.

1. Adventures in Home Cooking
2. Outnumbered
3. Little Big Nest
4. Southern Hospitality
5. The Happiness Project
6. Confessions of a Food Whore

Question: So which of the above statements is my TRUTH?