Travel Zoo and Hotel Rooms

Sometimes I hate being subscribed to Travel Zoo's weekly top 20 best deals email. Because there are some great deals sometimes. Today: $1999 -- South Africa: Cape Town & Safari Vacation - 11 days.

Seriously?!? That is so cheap. And it includes airfare (from New York... but still). When we were looking to possibly go there for our honeymoon I couldn't find anything under $3000. Wish I had money I would buy that up.

Also, I have a tendency to read way too much on Trip Advisor. I was on the London message board and someone was looking for a hotel with very large hotel rooms. Because he can't stand hotel rooms that are small. And he heard that in Europe they have hotel rooms much smaller then in the US. All I could think is "Why do you need a huge hotel room? You are going to be travelling and running around the entire time!" I guess for me it doesn't really matter. I don't think I am overly picky. My list of wants for a hotel are: Cheap, Breakfast, Location, Transportation. As long as it isn't ridiculously priced, has breakfast, is in a decent location and has access to transportation then I am a happy camper. Oh, and I would prefer decent water pressure for showers. I know we don't spend a ton of time in the room though. If I am going somewhere it is to see the place I am going, to explore and to have fun. Not to hang out in the hotel room. I would much rather have a nice inexpensive hotel room and spend more money on a nice dinner or a show or something else though.

Anyway there is my rant for the day. I am hoping to get some pictures uploaded over the next few days of some Pinterest projects that Ryan and I made a few weeks ago. Have a great Wednesday!

Travel

Here are some of my favorite pictures of the places we/I have been. My favorite thing to do is plan and go on a trip. I am constantly thinking about our next trip and where we can go. Coleby gets a bit sick of me constantly talking about where I want to go next and I usually have the next year/two planned out.

Downtown/World of Coke

Atlanta, Georgia

Big Ben/Parliament

London, England

Disney World

Orlando, Florida

Disneyland Paris

Paris, France

Eiffel Tower

Paris, France

On top of the Eiffel Tower

Paris, France

Harry Potter Set Tour - Hogwarts Replica (For large scale scenes)

Leavesden, England

Harry Potter World
Orlando, Florida

Ocean at RIU Palace Resort

Playa Del Carmen, Mexico

Magazine Street

New Orleans, Lousiana

 

Bourbon Street

New Orleans, Lousiana

Notre Dam Cathedral

Paris, France

Rosetta Stone - British Musuem

London, England

Stonehenge

Wiltshire, England

 

Windsor Castle

Windsor, England

Dog Treats!

-Originally posted on August 9th on my Facebook Page-

 

After seeing a project on Pinterest I decided to try and make my own. Since I didn't look at or even read the project directions I looked at the pictures at like noon. Went home and realized all of my banana's were pretty much dead and got annoyed with myself for always buying banana's and never eating them all... So in my grumbling to myself I realized that I could make the dog treats I saw on Pinterest! Great but we don't have any yogurt. So I give up. I am not a very motivated person. About 10 minutes later I look in the fridge for a snack and see a whole case of low fat yogurt. Thanks Coleby for being such a yogurt eater! I debate on the healthiness of this yogurt for dogs and decide since it is Low Fat that it can't have too much sugar or bad things.


At this point I decide to throw all of the banana's, a couple things of yogurt and a huge scoop full of peanut butter into a bowl. I think I remembered seeing something about peanut butter and maybe something else? I was feeling experimental. It was great! Then I get my smasher thingy out that I use once every 5 years. I think it is for potatoes? Maybe. And after one smash I realize this is futile. I debate getting the blender out. It was an argument with myself over which would allow me to be lazier. Option one: smashing this bowl until it is in a mushy moldable form. Option 2: cleaning a blender. I decided that physical labor is to exhausting so I went with the blender. I could always leave it in the sink and ask Coleby to clean it out tomorrow while I am at work... haha. I love our blender it is great. I dumped the mushy bowl into the blender and after just a tiny bit of prodding it starts mixing into a wonderfully smooth smoothy looking mix. It seriously looked good, but I knew it was a gross mix and I reminded myself of that. (Maybe I could make human smoothies similar to this!?!?). At this point I have a huge thing full of smoothy dog treat mix. In the picture it shows the people using an Ice Cube tray. And as we somewhat cleaned up last week I found the 3 ice cube trays in a cabinet that we haven't used since we bought our new fridge 2 1/2 years ago. Because I am not one for wasting cabinet space I threw them away. 2 1/2 years of not using them.... and I throw them away and 5 days later I need them. Seriously this is my luck.

So I do the next best thing. I decide to get out my mini muffin pan. But, the only issue is getting them out and having them not stick and go in a million pieces and fall apart when they are frozen. Frustrated I turn to what I usually would... spray Pam. Probably not the healthiest thing for a dog but I did not want to have to dig all these little tiny pieces and have to clean up and make a mess. So i put a supper thin layer of Pam cooking spray on the bottom and went to pouring. I had enough to fill my entire pan and so I threw out some old eggs and lined a cardboard egg box with tin foil (We didn't have saran wrap, only press and seal) and poured the rest of the mix in there.

After about 4 hours of waiting they were frozen enough to give the dogs. They gobbled them up! I put Keegans medicine in about half of them (he has seizures, very sad!) and left the other half just regular. When I first handed them over to the dogs they sniffed them but Toby's was gone in one bite and Keegan went over to the rug to finish his. It was a great way to give Keegan his medicine and make them both happy. We usually give him his medicine with a treat but sometimes he separates them and spits the pill back out. And I really hate giving Keegan something and not giving Toby something. He just looks at you like "What about me?!?". Overall this project turned out great. The dogs love them and now we have treats for the next few weeks.

In the end I used: Two Yoplait cups of Yogurt, Probably about a cup of Peanut Butter and 5 bananas. I think if I were to do it again I would add a little bit of flower to thicken it up a little.

It wasn't anything overly scientific or fancy, just the way I like it. :-) (Oh, and I did clean up my mess and clean out the blender!)

All the ingredients.

 

Before the freezer.

My mess...

In the freezer. You can see the pills I stuck in on Keegans side of the pan. I stuck them in so that I could see them a little bit. I am always worried I might accidentally give Toby the medicine.

 All Done!

 Keegan enjoying his treat!

 Toby says "I am done already, you took too long to take the picture. But I will lick my lips"

 

 

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Update from 09/11/12

I have made two more batches of these awesome dog treats. I am starting to figure out exactly how they should work. One thing I need if I am going to keep doing this is a silicone mini muffin pan. My pan is getting all scratched up from trying to get these treats out. I think the silicone would make it easy because they you could just pop them out. I am not sure if an ice cube tray would be functional. I do need to figure out a way to thicken this up as well. This last batch I made was pretty much the consistency of water by the time my blender was done.

 

Last two times I used:

2 Banana's

Half of a huge tub of plain yogurt

1 1/2 cup Peanut Butter

 

It made two full trays of Mini-Muffin sized dog treats each time. Not a lot of ingredients but a lot of treats. Also I threw one into the neighbors yard for their dog and he loved it. Great way to give the dogs their medicine and to use leftover banana's.

Blogging Mc. Bloggerson

I have been wanting somewhere for a while to post random thoughts, ideas, projects and travel things. And decided that Facebook was just not up to par with my wants/needs for such a space. Okay, really just because I can't link back to facebook from Pinterest. So I decided to create a blog. This will not be updated on a regular basis and it does not have one specific goal in mind. One day I might post about traveling, the next I might be making dog treats from Pinterest and a month later I might post about what is going on in my life. That might make it fun because you might not ever know what you are going to find. :-) I think in reality I am writing this more for my own sake then to entertain or enthrall anyone. But, if you are entertained then that is great. I hope you enjoy what you might find.

-Angela