Totally Obsessed Tuesday

Holy crap.  It's Tuesday again.  I don't know how that happened.  My biggest news is...

I'M BACK AT WORK TODAY!!!!

Insert disco-type happy dance here.  I love lounging around and having some time off... But there IS such a thing as too much of a good thing.  The days just kind of all blur and mush together when you have nothing on your schedule except cleaning and watching Desperate Housewives (which I finished, and can I just say, they need to make a damn movie). 

As promised, I also have some pictures of Gavin in his first day outfit and his class of 2027 (!!!) tee-shirt.

Okay, so he's only looking at the camera in ONE picture, and making a crazy demon-baby face, but I think he looks pretty freaking adorable anyways.  Also, for the record, Courtney and I did NOT cry.  But probably only because we had no time.  Gavin was being a tad... difficult this morning, and we were running late.

Okay, enough bragging about the adorable tiny human.  It's Totally Obsessed Tuesday again!  I promise at some point in the future, I'm going to format this blog with tabs and pictures and all sorts of neat stuff.  And when I say "I'm going to format this blog," what I actually mean is "Courtney is going to be awesome and format this blog for me" because I'm useless at technology and she's the best friendboss ever.  But for now, you'll just have to search through all my posts. :)

Enough idle chitchat.  Down to business.  This week, I'm featuring Iron Bank Coffee, an app called Snapseed, and crockpot cooking. 

Iron Bank Coffee Co.

For those of you not in the Columbus/Fort Benning area, your life sucks, because you will never know how amazing Iron Bank is. They have, hands down, the best coffee in the area.  Forget Starbucks or Caribou, Iron Bank is where it's at.  They have delicious coffee drinks that you don't have to order in a foreign language, and their names aren't almost a sentence long. (Grande chai tea frappuccino double blended no whip, anyone?) They have amazing, unique food, including some paleo and vegan options, as well as your more typical morning pastries if you're not feeling super adventurous. 

The shop itself is adorable.  There is no other word. It's actually located in what used to be a bank.  The vaults are intact, and there are tables set up inside them.  The whole place is so adorable and eclectically decorated. Also, did I mention the food?  

 A cute little mini cupcake.

Their delicious (and artful!) hummus platter.  I order this basically every time I go in.  I could probably do a whole ToT section on this plate alone. Also, that bit sticking up that isn't carrots?  That's grilled parmesan cheese.  Basically the most delicious thing known to man.

If you live in or near Columbus, or ever get to visit, you have to go there.  Even if you only get as close as Atlanta, it's worth going the hour and a half out of your way for the coffee.  I swear. Also, their regular drip coffee is $1.50.  Seriously.  Where else can you get a great cup of coffee for under two dollars?

Snapseed

For the record, I actually own a great camera. But to edit the photos I take with it, I have to upload them to my computer (which takes forever), import them into Photoshop or something similar, and then edit the photos in a very user-unfriendly program.  Not to mention the fact that I have to lug the camera around with me all the time, which is almost always a hassle.

Or.

I snap a picture with my phone (which is always in my hand, pocket or purse).  I open it in Snapseed.

 

 Then, with a few flicks of my finger, I take a photo from this:

To this:

Once I like the way it looks, I save it to my camera roll, and BAM.  Done.  Or, if I want, I can upload it right to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, a text or an email, or even Google +. The best part about this app?  It's free. If you take as many photos I do, you should totally check it out.  It's SO user friendly and easy to understand, and your pictures come out great.  It has a lot of artsy filters and frames like Instagram does, but you can do SO much more than just that to your pictures.  Also, if you have the Walgreen's app, you can order prints from your phone... Just some food for thought!

Crockpot Cooking

So this is the part where I admit that I may have overbooked myself just a TINY little bit.  Now that Gavin is in school during the day, I'm only working in the afternoons.  So, once I discovered I had a little free time on my hands, I immediately had to go fill it up.

I've joined the FRG for my husband's unit.  For those of you who don't speak military, it's the Family Readiness Group. Basically, the FRG is a support system for soldiers and their families, made up of those soldiers and their families.  I can see that your eyes are glazing over and you're losing interest.  It really is a lot more interesting than it sounds.  I'm a "Key Caller," which is a volunteer position that basically means I'm going to be heavily involved in fundraising, keeping families informed of what's going on with the guys at work, and making sure that all the families are doing well.  So I'll be kept pretty busy with that.

In addition to that, our neighborhood has been having some pretty major problems with our housing office--maintenance issues not being dealt with, landscapers running over our internet cables, trash not being picked up, etc.  Some of the families decided to start a homeowner's association, of sorts.  They'll have neighborhood meetings about things that need to be addressed with the office, and, and then a committee of volunteers will collectively descend on the office to address the problems, the theory being that they can't ignore us as a group they way they ignore our individual complaints. Somehow, in a moment of weakness and caffeine deprivation, I accidentally volunteered myself to be a part of this committee.  So now I'm a member of the informal Neighborhood Association, I guess you could call it.  So there will be meetings with the committee, "town" meetings with everyone from the neighborhood, and then meetings with housing to take care of the problems.

As if all THAT weren't enough, I also decided to go to EMT school this semester. So every Monday-Thursday from September-December, I'll be taking evening classes here on post. I know, right?  I'm crazy.  I get that.

This is my super boring long winded way of saying--I'm not going to have time to cook, y'all. I will literally be on the go ALL. THE. TIME.  Enter my new best friend the crock pot.


I've been doing dinner in the crock pot every Saturday for a while now.  I've made crock pot bourbon chicken, slow cooker pork chops, mac and cheese, baked potatoes, some soups... (I will eventually post some of those recipes, I swear.) But it is now time to step up my game.  Basically, my crock pot is going to carry the brunt of the load four days a week from now until December if I survive that long when my schedule will ease up a bit.   So, I turned to Pinterest, as usual.  And I now have some lovely links to share with you all. 

This woman is basically my hero.  She used her crock pot EVERY DAY for a YEAR and she never repeated a recipe.  Then, the angel went and posted ALL of her recipes online!  Some of them are dips and desserts and such, but there are some great dinners on there too.

Here on Craft-O-Maniac, I found the "Top Ten Fall and Winter Soups" you can make in your crock pot.  I LOVE soup. So this one for me was a no-brainer.

This blog gives you five crock pot meals you can make on Sunday, throw in the freezer, and then just dump them in the crock pot for the next five nights.  It even includes a SHOPPING LIST. And there are FIVE PARTS.  That's 25 recipes!  That's over a month of weeknight meals!!!!! Yes, I know I'm more excited about that than I should me.  No, I don't care.

Finally, I decided to include some Martha Stewart in this post, even though I don't particularly like her.  I have to admit that I did make her slow-cooker beef and tomato stew that can be found in that link, and it was pretty freaking delish.  So there.  Now no one can ever say that I didn't give Martha an appropriate compliment.

So I've worn myself out with this long post, so you guys must be worn out too!  Next Tuesday I'll try not to ramble so much!  What are you guys totally obsessed with this week?  Leave me some love in the comments!