What does a blogger do when an amazing friend surprises you with a box full of British chocolates? You collect up a kid and do a taste testing for "review" purposes! In this case, Ben was more than willing to help me delve deep into the box and choose two candies to try out. I know that it's a real struggle and trial for him, but he seems to be pretty good natured about it.

Today's choices are the Cadbury's Double Decker bar and the Cadbury's Daim Eggs. Since he's being so good natured about this, I let him choose and I'll reveal his opinions first.

Cadbury Daim Egg (Solid Milk Chocolate Eggs with Caramel Almond Pieces) : 

Ben - This doesn't taste like Hersheys but it's good. I could taste a lot of caramel and the nuts. The chocolate was sweeter than what we usually eat. It might be too sweet for me.

Mom - I agree with Ben. It is certainly more sweet and I was immediately hit with the caramel flavor. However, I never got the almond pieces. Perhaps I was expecting something a bit chunkier when it came to the nuts, though. Overall, it's honestly a piece of candy that I could have one of, enjoy and be good for the rest of the day. It might be great for those trying to cut back on candy consumption!

Cadbury Double Decker Bar (Layers of crispy cereal and nougatine wrapped in delicious Cadbury milk chocolate. )

Ben - I enjoyed this one better than the other one. I liked the crunchiness of the cookie portion. It wasn't as sweet, either. I could eat this for breakfast every day, even if it's not healthy.

Mom - I agree with Ben, again! (Wow, agreeing with a teenager twice in a row has to be a new record of some sort!) This one certainly wasn't anywhere near as sweet as the Daim. Thank goodness! When I tried the nougatine (that so sounds like nicotine in my head), I got a very strong flavor of coffee and even after eating it together, I was left with a coffee aftertaste in my mouth. Oddly enough, while the individual components had good flavor, when combined, it mellowed out into something that wouldn't stick out in my mind.

All in all, British chocolate is in a class all its own and we're looking forward to trying out all of the other flavors in this box!



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Woops! It looks like I missed a couple of weeks there. Life got crazy with the start of football practices and all of the work that we've been doing around the house and I totally forgot to sit down and get the weekly post done! I did have menu plans though and I have to say that it's been wonderful knowing just what's for dinner each night and yet still being flexible enough to move things around when we need to. Of course, Ben doesn't agree to the moving things around. He loves routines, schedules and knowing exactly what's going on. Hopefully, he likes this week's menu!

Monday - Pizza
Tuesday - Chili
Wednesday - Cheeseburgers
Thursday - Chicken and Dumplings
Friday - Shepherd's Pie
Saturday - Out
Sunday - Lasagna



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More eating from the cupboard this week as we work our way through some financially tight times. It may not be the healthiest but we all have full bellies and we're making room for better things.

Saturday - French Toast
Sunday - Chicken Bites
Monday - Tacos
Tuesday - Fish Filets
Wednesday - Pasta
Thursday - Burgers
Friday - Mac 'n Cheese w/ Tuna






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Look what we got! Yep, that's a Chex Mix Muddy Buddy package! I've never seen the boys so excited about a product review in my life. When I opened the box and they saw what was inside, they insisted I open the bag then and there. Luckily for them, I'm a nice mom so I opened the bag and poured it into the lidded container. Then, I handed over the container and sat back. The boys loved it! I have to say that when I snagged the container back, I thought it was pretty tasty myself. What I loved most was that it was one of those snacks that I could have a small handful and it totally satisfied my sweet tooth as well as that desire to have something crunchy. I'll confess that the kids loved it more than me, but I'm getting old, you know. I just don't love sweet as much as I did when I was their ages.

Want to know the best part of this? Chex Mix has provided me with a 2nd gift pack to send out to one of you! It will look just like what's in the picture and if you're like me, you're going to love the air tight storage container. I'm in love with it! Want to know how to enter? Well, let me tell you!

Required Entry:
 -- Leave a comment telling me your favorite type of Chex Mix and what you're most excited about in this giveaway.(1 entry)

Bonus Entries:
-- Tweet about this giveaway. Make sure that you include @craftsbykatie in the message. Then come back here and link to your tweet. (Maximum 5 entries)
-- Blog about this giveaway. Come back here and link to your post. (3 entries)
-- Follow Life With Katie using Google Friend Connect or Networked Blogs (must be a public follower). (1 entry)

Giveaway will end June 26th at 11:59pm EST. All entries after that time will not be accepted. Maximum 10 entries per person.

I received the gift pack shown from Chex Mix via MyBlogSpark for the purpose of this review & giveaway. All comments, thoughts and views are 100% mine because we all know I hate to be told what to say. ;) 



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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hormel Foods. All opinions are 100% mine.

Thank goodness it's nearly dinner time. This post is making me super hungry and I'm just starting to write it! Are you guys familiar with hormel foods? I admit that I am, but I haven't bought any of their chili in ages. That might change since I just saw their Chili Master line. It looks scrumptious! I'm thinking I need to pick up a can of their White Chicken Chili with beans. I'm thinking it sounds delicious and then I can make a nice yummy salad and some breadsticks to go alongside it.

Ok, now that I've made myself even hungrier, I do want to share a delicious looking hormel recipe with all of you. It's a tough one so you might want to go to the website and print this one out.

Coney Island Dogs-
8 hotdog buns
1 can Hormel® Chili No Beans
8 hotdogs

Directions:

1. Grill hot dogs.
2. Heat chili according to package directions.
3. Place hot dogs in buns. Top each with chili and favorite toppings such as mustard, pickle relish, chopped sweet onion, shredded Cheddar cheese and chili sauce.

Totally hard, right? Nope and totally delicious! I've been wanting chili dogs so bad lately and I think I'm going to give into my craving and pick up some deliciousness when I go into town on Tuesday. Now, I just hope that I still recognize the packaging. Over the years, the packaging has changed and since it's been a while, I'm not sure what it looks like anymore! I know! I'll just look for the classic Hormel foods logo!

Happy Monday, all! Yes, it's Monday and I am officially back from my self imposed internet sabbatical. It was a well needed break but I am very glad to be back. I missed my blog world and popping into some of your blogs to see how y'all are doing. How are all of you doing? Are those of you who were doing the 28 day challenge still making good progress? I bet some of you are done. I'm going to take some time tonight to do some popping around. I can't wait to see what's happening with folks.

As for me, well not much is happening. The Dell representative still hasn't gotten back to me as to how they're going to handle one of their other reps admitting they goofed up. Keep you fingers crossed folks. I really need them to take responsibility and fix my laptop. While I love this one, it's just not capable of doing some of what I need a computer to do. Thank goodness Jim gave her to me though. She's been a real trooper while I've needed to use her.

Let's see, what else? The van now has a shiney new tie rod. I can't get the alignment done until a week from Friday but that's going to get scheduled and done. Then, as my mechanic said, we wait for the next thing to break and we see about handling that. I have no doubt that something will need replacing. In fact, I'm fairly certain that the brakes need to be done soon. Oh, and it needs an oil change. Don't forget folks, the van fund is always accepting donations. *grins*

I guess that's about all the excitement in my life. I've been working on "The Wall" and have pictures for you. It is Monday, after all and y'all are my accountability force. I'll be posting them in a separate post right after this one so you can see my progress. I still don't know if it will be done in time to submit for the prizes, but it sure is a heck of a lot better!

Now, for this week's menu...I've been in a bit of a cooking funk lately. I just don't feel like doing it. So, keeping in that mode, this week is going for quick and simple and mostly brainless. So, here we go:

Monday- Mac n Cheese
Tuesday- Chicken and Rice
Wednesday- Spaghetti w/ hamburger
Thursday- Sizzle steak sandwiches
Friday- Pizza
Saturday- Chili
Sunday- Leftovers

One menu! Tada! Hopefully next week I'll be back in cooking mode and have made a trip to Family Fare for some real amounts/qualities of groceries. I think that's part of the problem. IGA is convenient but unless you want Kraut juice or Sauerkraut, the selection just isn't there. I bought 3 boxes of mac n cheese from them the other day and that was their entire stock of that sort. Anywhos, I'm off to post my photos. Your daily challenge will be cleverly (or not so cleverly) added to that post!

Whew! And we made it! It's Wednesday...for real! Today has been another stressful day, but slowly things are coming together, I hope. I've been taking small breaks to do some reading, which is helping me keep it together. Thank goodness I know that the world really isn't out to get me or I'd hide under these blankets and never come out!

Now, with all of that babbling out of the way, I want to share pictures! I accidently left my camera at my parent's house on Christmas day so I didn't take a ton of pictures, but I do have some to share. Over at Sunday Shutterbugs, they finally have a new theme up and I'm excited to say that it's Holiday! Perfect for this time of year. So, without further yammering on my part, here are some holiday photos from the Roets family.


We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I'm still planning on writing my Christmas Angels post, but I think I'm going to make that my Finish It Friday post when I wrap up all of the things from 2009 and figure out more of the things for 2010!

Hormone-Free: Commercial farmers administer hormones to increase the size of beef cattle and the production of milk in dairy cattle. Fewer hormones in the bodies of the animals mean we eat fewer hormones in our bodies, andless of a chance of disrupting our own endocrine systems. Go for meats and dairy labeled "hormone-free" if all possible.

I told Abby that I would post some pics and a run down of my weekend, so here goes:

I picked Jim up at the airport and we were both hungry so we decided to stop and get some lunch. Pengu was riding along in my bag (which reminds me, I still need to get pics of it!) so he joined us.


From there, we stopped and got the oil changed on the van and then we went thrifting!



On Thursday, we had to go out for our "annual newspaper stealing" and we stopped at K-mart to do a bit of shopping before heading back for Thanksgiving dinner.



We were supposed to go out Black Friday shopping at the crack of dawn, but that just didn't happen. We did end up going out around 10am though and though the day wasn't great, we did get some great deals.