The long lost blog....

No I haven't abandoned my blog....life has just seemed a little overwhelming the past few months. I FINALLY finished my CPA exams. YEY! So now its official after some paperwork and lots of $$ then I will join the others in that exclusive club. So now its time to build up my business...well almost... I love referrals and would love to pick up some new clients.

What type of clients I am NOT looking for:

Bargain shopping 1040-EZ clients
Dishonest clients
Basically my job is to help people save on taxes and give them advice. Also to help them with business related tax questions. I love working with small businesses and watching them succeed. Did you know that taxes are usually your 1st or 2nd biggest expense? So don't you think it is worth spending some money on having a CPA that is experienced and cares? It baffles me when a business goes to some chop shop tax prep place because they are trying to save a buck. If you find someone with experience and education most likely they will save that money for you in other ways! So pretty soon I am going to try to get a website up and move forward on my newest adventure.

Its about time I made some CUPCAKES!!!

My daughter wanted to come home from school and bake something so I got all excited, found a recipe to try and got all the ingredients. Of course, by the time school was out she had other plans to go swimming with friends. But despite that I recruited my good friend, Diane, to help me out.

I found this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vanilla-Bean-Coconut-Cupcakes-with-Coconut-Frosting-352095

but of course wanted to make a few additions. My friend, Joy, brought over a bag of key limes so we figured we should incorporate that into them. So I started out by making some key lime curd
http://coconutlime.blogspot.com/2006/08/key-lime-curd.html from this awesome blog! That turned out amazing! You wouldn't believe how long it takes to squeeze 2/3 cup of juice from key limes! I still have some curd leftover and am so tempted to just got eat the entire bowl of it!
I made the recipe per directions but then for 1/2 the cupcakes I added some key lime zest. Honestly, the recipe is not my favorite and I probably won't use it again. It took a really long time but was just meh. I don't feel like it brought anything special to the table and it is really fattening. For the frosting we modified by adding some of the yummy curd which gave it a LOT of flavor and great consistency. I topped them off with some toasted coconut. We even filled a few of them with some of the curd and those ended up being the best ones!

Everyone who tried them really enjoyed the lime flavor. I think if we had not modified the recipe it would have been extremely bland.

My washington girls..

My awesome besties up in Washington.... Katie, Monica & Aubree. Seriously I think they saved my life many times or at least saved me from my self. I am SO excited because they are flying down in April for the weekend. What fun we will have.
Honestly everytime I see them I realize how lucky I am to have such awesome friends. You know the saying about some friends are for life and some you grow out of. These are my FOR life friends. I will never grow out of them and I hope they know they are stuck with me forever. Even though we only see each other randomly a few times a year they are always with me.
Thank you girls for being such GREAT friends!
I love you much!!!
The Boat shed where we recently had Happy Hour!

Cat Cay Island, Bahamas

Colleen, Skyler, Chloe, Me and our friend Leroy

Our trip to Cat Cay Island Dec 15 -23, 2008



We were SO lucky that my sister and her husband invited Chloe and I to join them on Cat Cay island this year. It is a tiny private island in the Bahamas where Colleen and Chris got to work as the island doctors for one week. It was an amazing experience! The people there are SO friendly and fun to hang out with. The houses are truly amazing. I have never gone on such a peaceful restful vacation before. I might not ever get to return so I am grateful for the opportunity. We got to spend our days golfing, swimming, beach combing and snorkeling. Each night we ate in the amazing restaurant. Some nights we would go hang at the employee bar "Hagels" and play dominos with the Bahamians. It was great!

Thanksgiving in Ashland and some other stuff..

We made the mistake of thinking traffic would not be so bad leaving Wednesday at 10am before Thanksgiving. HAH It took us 6 hours to get to the grapevine, normally a 3 hour trip. We almost turned around but decided to go forward. The weekend was well worth it. Ashland, Oregon is one of my favorite places to visit. The cold (BRRR) crisp fall air, colorful leaves and small town feel are just some of the many delights of Ashland.

We spent Thanksgiving at our friend Patti's house. Then we made an outdoor fire and sat around enjoying ourselves until it was too cold to stand.

On Saturday my sister and the others trekked up to Pilot rock. I love this photo of Chloe on Pilot rock. I wish I could have made it there!

Now after fighting for many weeks my body finally gave in and I am sick with whatever virus has been passing around to all my friends and family. My hope is to fight it off with massive amounts of sleep and be well by tomorrow.

On another exciting note, I passed the FAR section of the CPA exam. One down three more to go. I am sitting here impatiently waiting for my new REG book to arrive so I can dive in and be ahead of the game.

Only 9 more days until we go to the Bahamas! YEY!

Dinner Tonight

I decided to try out making some black bean burgers for the first time! I got the recipe from http://blog.vegcooking.com/2008/10/black_bean_veggie_burgers.php

They are really easy but I realized after cooking them it would have been nice to have some good salsa around and guacamole but the other veg will have to suffice. Also made some brussel sprouts which I will add lemon tarragon dressing from www.inyourkitchen.com
to so that they don't have that bittery taste.

Sorry I am not so good at the photos or blogging yet but will improve with time!

Good night!