Merry Christmas 2013

Merry Christmas 2013 from the Sass Family!

We had a wonderful day filled with food, family, fun, and games. I am so blessed to have such a great family and two wonderful sisters! 

 Decorating Cookies, family tradition

 The night before Christmas...

 Rocky loves his new Animal Planet Blanket and bone...

Merry Christmas from the Sass Family!

Isaiah 9:6 - "For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

Water

Random thought of the week: am I drinking enough water?

During the summer months, it is easier to consume and drink water...it is hot outside, you sweat, and your body tells you it needs water... but when late fall and winter rolls around, the cues that remind you to drink water in the summer are no longer there.

I was on a run a few days ago, and the temperature is definitely getting colder...for example, it was just a mere 17 degrees on Monday but "felt like only 3!"  When I got back from my run, I did my usual stretching and took a shower, only to realize afterwards that I still hadn't had anything to drink.... I compared that to in the summer when I would run, and when I would get back I'd immediately go for a tall glass of h2o and even after that, it wouldn't take long for me to refill it.

I am a person who loves to drink water. When I used to be in school, I would always have to have a water bottle sitting at my table with me to help me focus and stay energized. Drinking water is important for so many reasons:

1. Drinking water is GREAT for your skin: Not drinking enough can lead to dry skin, so make sure you drink water to keep your skin moisturized and reduce that chance of wrinkles!

2.  Drinking water helps you lose weight: It suppresses your appetite, making you eat less. Water also prevents fluid retention and helps your body burned stored fat. Your organs including your liver and kidney will work more efficiently, flushing toxins from your body.

3. Drinking water makes you stronger: Water carries oxygen to your muscles so when you are working out, you can work longer before you feel tired.

4. Drinking water makes you smarter: Water also carries oxygen to your brain. Drinking plenty of water enables your brain to get more oxygen!

5. Drinking water helps your joints: it keeps them strong, and the moisture helps them stay flexible.
(Information retrieved from fitday.com)

These are just 5 of the amazing reasons it is important to be drinking water in your daily life. How do you make sure you drink enough water? Do you feel like it makes a difference when you drink a lot one day compared to a day where you don't get enough aqua in your body?

"We never know the worth of water, until the well is dry." -Thomas Fuller

Road Trip

The last week of October, I took a road trip out East with my parents. We made a stop in Chicago, then went to DC for a long weekend filled with football, tourist events, and fun! It was my dad's 30th class reunion, and it was so fun to see where my parents attended college, Gallaudet University- the only deaf university in the United States.

Chicago was amazing

 At the Football Game the Bisons are undefeated! 

Note my dad sporting his class of '83 jersey :)

Some fun times with my parents old friends

 Exploring DC and H street, playing mini golf

Starting the trek back home, it was a trip to remember :)

Have you ever been to DC? What was your favorite memory about the trip?

"Wherever you go, go with all your heart." -Confucius 

Happy Homecoming

This past weekend, I took a trip down to Winona to celebrate my first homecoming as an alumni. It was a great weekend filled with fun friends, laughter, and drinks. 

                       All smiles 

              My "vest" buddy :)

      Reunited with my best friends <3 

And although I've never made it to the actual homecoming game.. Winona won against Wayne State, with a final score of 45-41. Go warriors!!

Hope you all had a fantastic weekend! I'll leave you with one of the best quotes of the weekend...

"You wanna do a keg stand??! We don't have any keg left, but we have apple pie!" -Hermes

 

We Day

I had the opportunity to volunteer at an event last Tuesday at the Excel Energy Center called We Day. It was a huge event inviting school-aged children who have contributed to making a difference to celebrate their achievements in making local and global efforts to improve the world.

We Day MN 2013

We Day is an event where a student must get invited to attend, there is no way to buy a ticket, as it had to be earned. The event was made possible by two organizations "Me to We" and "Free the Children."  We Day Minnesota was a successful event with over 18,000 students involved to celebrate creating positive change in local communities. They could be agents of change from raising money for water for people in Africa, to stopping people from getting bullied at their own schools.

18,000 students from all over Minnesota

There were so many famous people that spoke or did a performance for this great event- including Martin Luther King the 3rd, Mark Dayton, The Jonas Brothers, Carly Rae Jepsen, Barbara Bush, Demi Lovato (over skype), Jack Jablonski, the Vikings, and many more!

Jonas Brothers Live

To read more about this amazing event, and what their goals are, visit their site:

http://www.weday.com/

http://www.freethechildren.com/

If you want to see a change, be the change you want to see. 

#WeDay #FreeThePeople

Pumpkin Cookies

For years, my wonderful friend Alyssa has a tradition where she makes pumpkin cookies in October...I have had the benefits of eating those delicious cookies throughout my last few years in Winona. However, now that we do not live in Winona anymore, I made those cookies on my own this year to bring in October and the fall season.

For my birthday last year, Alyssa made me an awesome recipe box with some recipe cards inside. This was one that she was nice enough to share with me so I could continue this yummy cookie making on my own!

I posted some pictures on instagram, and several people have asked me for the recipe. So, here it is, enjoy! It is a two part process with making the frosting separate. 

Pumpkin Cookies

2/3 c sugar

2/3 c brown sugar

3/4 c butter or margarine, softened

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 c pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

2 eggs

2 1/4 c all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. In large bowl, beat granulated sugar, brown sugar, butter, and vanilla extract with electric mixer on medium speed, until well blended. Beat in pumpkin and eggs until well mixed. On low speed, beat in flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. 

2. On un-greased cookie sheets, drop dough by heaping teaspoonfuls.

3. Bake 10-12 minutes or until almost no indentation remains when touched in center.

4. Immediately remove cookies from cookie sheets to cooking rack. Cool completely, about 45 minutes before frosting.

Browned Butter Frosting

3 c powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

3-4 tbsp milk

1/3 c butter (not margarine)

1. In medium bowl, place powdered sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, and 3 tbsp of milk.

2. in 1 qt saucepan, heat 1/3 cup butter over medium heat, stirring constantly, until just light brown.

3. Pour browned butter over powered sugar mixture. Beat on low speed about 1 minute or until smooth. Gradually add just enough of the remaining 1 tbsp of milk to make frosting creamy and spreadable.

4. Generously frost cooled cookies. 

Some things I did/suggest:
-For the cookies, I used tablespoon size heaps of dough for a more larger cookie :) Also, because of this, my cookies needed to be in the oven for longer- I would say an addition 3 or 4 minutes so about 16 minutes total per cookie sheet.
-For the frosting, I did not end up needing to use an additional 1 tbsp of milk, as the frosting was already creamy for me!

Final product

Please make these at home :) I highly recommend! They are an absolute favorite, and I will continue this tradition year after year.  What is your favorite thing to do or make in the fall?? 

“Autumn...the year's last, loveliest smile.”- William Cullen Bryant

Hello October.

Happy October! I'm back in business :)

I've been wanting to work on my blog and never found the time...but I'm excited and committed and cannot wait to start blogging again! I love reading blogs and I make time for that, so there will be time for me to write blog posts too.

I took this photo in my neighborhood, today is October and with the temps in the high 70s you can't beat that. I love living in Minnesota :)

Now I am planning on revamping my blog....meaning I need to create a blog name and that has been so difficult for me to try to think of something creative that fits with me. So if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to help me out.

 Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, etc…

Last week of college?

Hello everyone :) Hope you have had a great week and weekend.

This past Wednesday I presented a semester long nursing project with my clinical group. It was a fun (but long) morning of lots of presentations as our whole nursing class presented their projects that they have worked on throughout the semester.

Here we are :)

We have had quite the temperature change. Thursday I woke up in Winona to SNOW and lots of it! It was the weirdest thing to see snow in May.... so naturally I had to use our snowmen mugs for coffee, and turn on our holiday lights.

Our holiday festivities at 619 Grand St....in May!

Fast forward a bit to only to Saturday, three days later, and the snow is completely gone already. So many people said they woke up to the sound of rain, only to figure out it was actually the sun melting all the snow off the roofs. Too funny. I ran today in shorts and I was hot. Such a temperature difference, its bizarre. Lets hope there is not snow on the ground later this week for my pinning ceremony and graduation (doesn't look like it, thankfully).

This weekend I had a great time with some great friends that I will truly miss down here in Winona. 

 Having fun at Gabby's :)

 One of our nursing songs came on. So sentimental.

Don't Stop Believin' By Journey 

Great times. Good laughs, and good memories.

This past weekend was just what I needed...great times with good friends. I cannot believe how fast life is flying by! I am excited for graduation, and the next chapter of my life, but I am going to miss my friends here so much. Its coming up fast. 

In my previous post, I explained how I only have one more day at the daycare that I work at. I decided to make a craft for the wonderful head teacher who I work for in the baby room. I am going to miss her and all of our good times. She is such a great teacher and has taught me so much in the three years I have worked there. 

My Teacher Craft!

I got this idea off of Pinterest. I saw this cute idea of having flowers and a note that says:

If Teachers Were Flowers, I'd Pick You!

I thought this would be a great idea to give to her in honor of her being the head teacher for the room we work in. I went to the dollar store and spent a grand total of $3.21 (tax included) on this project. I used index cards and some nice markers to write the message and found a stick outside to glue the message on to to put inside with my vase of flowers. The vase, rocks, and flowers cost $1 each, making this craft such an affordable, thoughtful gift. I am so excited to give it to her this Tuesday when I work. It was an easy project and did not take much time to make at all. 

"Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it." -George Halas

Terrific Tuesday

Today was such a beautiful day! Temperature was hot, the sun was out and I was ready to spend as much time outside as I could.

I started off the day by doing about a two mile run. I use nike+ to track my workouts and I love it! Here is what it does:

This is an amazing way to know how far and where I ran, and also the speed of my run throughout the entire thing, I love using it and then I automatically import it into MapMyRun where I currently log all my workouts and can view it on a monthly view.

Then I went to the daycare where I work to spend time with the babies :) I only work Tuesday's this semester, so next week Tuesday is my very last day there and I cannot believe it.  I have been there for over 3 years and it will be so hard to say bye :( We spent time today on a walk and the babies loved the warm weather and loved saying "puppy" every time there was a dog walking by.

I returned home shortly to then go hike up sugar loaf in Winona with some great friends. It was too warm of a day to spend time inside, plus, this was one of the things on my 'bucket list' for Winona!

 The view!

 Just enjoying life :)

The girls

I am so glad that we were able to spend time doing this today, it was perfect. I did not make it to the top of sugar loaf, but we hiked to the base and that was enough for me ;) Heights are not my specialty...

Tonight for dinner, we had a celebratory dinner at Lakeview Drive Inn for Winona's American Sign Language Club to end the school year meetings, started off sunny sitting outside and less than 10 minutes in it started to pour & we quickly had to go inside.

The group [inside due to the rain] enjoying some dinner and ice cream

What have you been doing during this warm weather we have been having? Ps lets all hope it doesn't snow this week...

"Sometimes you don't know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory." -Dr. Seuss

I'm Back

Hello blogger friends :)

Not sure who all is here..but after my successful two posts months and months ago, I'm going to take a spin at this again. I am an avid blog reader and seriously follow so many great blogs and now it's my turn to take a try at this for the second time!

So here I am...about one week away from graduating with my degree of a bachelors of science in nursing to become an RN. I had my last test today of my undergrad college life and it was a weird feeling. I finished my test and came and sat on my couch and just realized that after I study and take my boards for nursing (the NCLEX test)...I will have nothing more to study for or homework to do...and that is a very strange feeling for me after being in school for mostly my whole life.

These past few weeks and upcoming weeks are being spent with my best friends in Winona doing things that we love doing and also things that are on my 'bucket list' of things that I want to do:

1. Enjoy the beautiful lakes

Dani and I enjoying a walk around the lake on this fantastic day we had.

2. Go to Penguin Zesto for ice cream :) 

Alyssa is like me & never turns down ice cream, so we jumped at this idea last Saturday night and enjoyed some hot fudge sundaes at one of the local ice cream shops in Winona.

Those are the two completed items on my Winona Bucket List and things that are left to do include:
3. Run around the big lake (in preparation for the 10k I plan to run in July!)
4. Climb Sugar Loaf
5. Kayak on the Winona Lakes
6. Take a long bike ride around the town

I was able to spend a great weekend in Winona

My old 619 roomies for life, Tsana and Jen! 

Fun times at the bars with great friends

Mangos for drinks with my favorite ladies

This is kind of a long blog post for my first time back...but it is just a small glimpse of my week and there will be more blog posts to come...stay tuned for a layout and title change..I need to personalize this thing and make it unique for me! 

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." -Neale Donald Walsch

(Thanks to Tsana for this quote-directed to what I am going through now with graduation and new things to come for me)