Cranberry and Orange Rind Muffins

What You Will Need:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup of milk
• 3 tablespoons of fresh squeeze orange juice
• 1 tablespoon of baking powder
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon of salt
• 6 tbsp sunflower oil or canola oil or cooled melted butter
• Grated rind of one small orange
• 1 1/2 cups dried cranberries

What to Do:

1. Soak cranberries in fresh squeeze orange juice and allow it to sit for one hour.
2. Sift flour and baking powder in a large bowl, add salt and sugar. Mix them up and make a well in the center.
3. Lightly beat egg in another bowl, add milk, oil, and orange rind.
4. Add liquid ingredient into the well of dried ingredient
5. Gently fold in the cranberries mixture
6. Spoon your muffin batter into greased muffin pan.

Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degree F/ or 200 degree C. Allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Participating in Foodie Friday, Food on Fridays, and Food Trip Friday!

Thursday Two Questions #33-Watching the Royal Wedding

This week is the count down for the Royal Wedding, and media of all types focus their attention on this event. All I can say is yikes...and I feel bad for the couple! Everything about the Royal Wedding is either on videos or in articles form. I mean really, how much is enough?

The history of the monarchy is fascinating to learn, and we seemed to be quite wrapped up with celebrities/royal people. According to Yahoo news, US still has a higher percentage of people following this event than the UK though.

So my questions for this week are:

1) Are you going to set the alarm to wake up at 4:00 in the morning to watch the wedding?

2) Is Princess Diana's engagement ring represented a taboo of a bad marriage as everyone speculated?

Join others at Thursday Two Questions!

Get Your Discount Online

In this day and age, who wouldn't love a chance to save? After all, we look for ways to cut back, using coupons, buying things at Thrift Stores, and finding codes online for discount to purchase what we need.

Savings.com is the website to check out and take advantage of. You can find them all on this site, from online coupon, deals, promote codes, coupon codes to discount items. Before you make a purchase, make sure you come to this site first!

You will find popular stores such as Saks, Barn and Noble, JC Penny, Eddie Bauer, and many more. Savings.com has a variety of categories to check out, including hotels, travel deals, cruises, airlines, and car rental. Amazing isn't it? You can find everything under the rainbow on one site!

Out of curiosity, I click on the dating services, and if you can name any, it is there with an offer from $5 dollars off to 15% off. In some cases, you could also get your membership back. Imagine that!

You can search for local deals by enter your zip code, or by your favorite store name. Mother's Day is coming up in two weeks, and you can get a head start by browsing for what you want to buy now.

Invest In Your Future

Financially, this is the best time in our economy to invest, and if you are stable with your income, or thinking further down the road, there are plenty of options to consider.

You could either invest in land, housing, bonds, or oil and gas stocks. I know very little about stock market, but gas and oil stocks seem like a great thing to endow on, since they can only go up higher. Finding a financial adviser is the first step in discussing what is best for you. There are cash programs, retirement account, pension fund, or other type of investments available.

Andrew Johns is based in Canada, but is licensed to work in the US as well if you're looking for a firm to handle your financial needs. Their services include portfolio management, equity trading, and alternative investment strategies. You can click on the link in this post to find out more, or to become a client.

I admit, financially I'm nowhere near where I should be, but I'm thinking about my retirement years often. You could do better than me, and start looking for ways to invest in your future. Take advantage of this economy, and make a jump forward!

Sweet Easter

Have a great Easter, everyone!

Joining Pink Saturday!

New Outdoor Items at Pier 1

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Pier 1 for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Slowly but surely spring has arrived in my part of the world, and one of the things I need for outdoor this year is an umbrella to shelter the children from the harsh sun ray. This will be a quick fix, and I know exactly where to go for my umbrella.

Pier 1 always carries many beautiful and unique types of merchandises that I've come to expect. My daughter and I love to go to the actual store for the fantastic aroma, the colors, and the texture in there. We picked out cushion, and toss pillows for our glider on the patio updates the look.

You can find many seasonal items on clearance or special savings at Pier 1 just to freshen up your area, inside and outside. They don't have to be expensive big pieces, but a few simple deco objects can shift the look quite wonderfully. The best part for me was to look for things that I can use both indoor and outdoor.

While at the store, we saw the swingasan chair, which would be perfect for us to hang on the tree where our new umbrella will be installed, but that will have to wait for now.

If you like this store as much as I do, check out Pier 1 Tweetups, this campaign is coming to a city near you, so for those lucky people, make a reservation early to the events.

Build Your Dream House

My blogging friend, Betchai, is the only one I know that lives in San Diego, and through her blog I've gotten to see the many beautiful parts of this city. I often dream of moving to a warmer area, and California is my first choice always.

I would love to have a small house or cottage build by the San Diego Custom Home Builders group, since they are known for their expertise, cost effective, and best material used in their services.

This company, San Diego Design-Build, offers a complete service from designing the home, to construction, and remodeling. Instead of hiring separate contractors, you can have all your needs met with just one office, saving you plenty of headaches of waiting around for different contractors to do their jobs, or arguments between sub-contractors. I experienced this on a personal level while going through a remodeling with my house about 10 years ago.

The exciting part about building a new home or renovate an old home nowadays is the choice to be more earth-friendly. Green Home Construction, will help you with this wish to be more eco- friendly, and also cut down on energy costs.

If you are considered building a new home or remodeling your current home, go take a look at this website. The advantage of having your home make-over is the tax benefits that are available now.

Thursday Two Questions #32-Food and Holiday

Holiday is fun for getting together with family and friends, but it is also stressful for the host. I like the idea of every family bringing a dish to share. Economically, it is much better on everyone's pocket, and suitably if you don't like one thing on the table, there are other choices.

I'm going to my little sister's for the feast, and will be bringing a dish to share!  We don't have to travel far, and my son will do the driving anyway. Yay...it will be fun! I just hope the weather warming a bit around here already.

Ok, since it's Easter weekend, here are my two questions:

1) What do you have to do for Easter feast: cooking, catering, or bringing a dish to share?
    
2) What is your family favorite meat: ham, lamb, turkey, beef or seafood?

Join others at Thursday Two Questions!

Pink Jelly Belly Beans

These are Jelly Belly beans, and the kids had to stop eating so I can collect and arrange the pink ones for pictures. Yup, I'm always thinking in term of blogging :-)

Aren't they delicious looking? I think the pink jelly beans have cotton candy flavor, or strawberries. I can't remember since they went away too fast.

Not only it is fun to take photos of these jelly beans, it is also great to munch and see. Well, have yourself a fantastic weekend with your family!

Joining Pink Saturday, and Mosaic Monday!

Backup Your Business Website

If you have a business online, naturally you're worried about many different aspects of it, from losing your data, to the site being hacked, to malfunction! Online Backup offers the opportunity for you to protect and preserve your business in case of emergency.

 Photo Courtesy of iBackup.com

iBackup is giving you 30GB at $9.95 a month, and you can take advantage of their special promotion for a free trial. Knowing your website is safe and secure would give you the freedom to concentrate on growing your business.

It is a madness to check in and find that your site has been hijacked, or your email address has been hacked into. I knew too many cases like these from my acquaintances, bloggers, and family member. Take the extra precaution to protect your business website, and have it backup!

Thursday Two Questions #31-Blog Cleaning

I noticed this morning that Wandering Thought has over 540 posts! Yikes...that's a lot and where did the time go? With that many posts, I'm in the process of cleaning up my blog. Well, mostly re-arrange the labels or categories so I can prefer to it faster.

I've heard that Blogger allowed a certain number of labels, but I don't know the exact numbers. I'm not nearly done with this chore just yet, but I found so many dead links in my posts. Many of those links are from the blog parties, and some of them are no long in existence.

Here are my questions for the week:

1)  Do you on occasion "blog cleaning" such as delete posts, or re-organize labels or remove dead links?

2)  Is there a limit to how many posts we can have on our blogs?

Join others at Thursday Two Questions!

Fresh and Beautiful

In one of the wings at the Conservatory, these beautiful flowers were lined all around and after a fresh drink of water; the flowers look so fresh!

They were in pots, laying one next to another to form a gorgeous thick group! They have to be some types of daisies, but which one I don't know.

As for the color, they look more on the purple side to me because I like purple, but commonly it is magenta. I'm fussy about the name or the color, are you?


Joining Mosaic Monday!

Splashing Through Summer

Every summer, the children love to jump into the pool and splash around. It is the most fun part of the season, especially in July and August when the weather reaches over 90 degrees. We used to have a small blow-up pool to accompany their desire, but they are now too big for it.

Since our yard was not ready, we went to our neighbor to enjoy their pool last year.  Nowadays, above ground swimming pools come in many different sizes, and shapes and I have been looking into this option for a small round above ground pool to fit it in our small yard.

If you are thinking of a cool summer, PCPools.com carries a great line of pools, covers, chemicals, pool supplies, solar, pool liners, and everything related in this area. Get ready now to enjoy summer time.

Thursday Two Questions #30-Tag On Products

Oh bother! I'm sitting here trying to post and the back of my neck is scratchy! No, no, it's not a mosquito bite, and definitely not bed bug bite either. However, it is REALLY bugging me, and it is terribly uncomfortable.

What in the world is it?  It is the freaking tag on my shirt that gives me the scratchy kind of feeling! Every few seconds, I have to reach back, tug it this way, move it that way, or roll it under a layer of my shirt so my skin won't get so irritated.

I've wore this shirt before, and the tag didn't bother me but today it acted up as a weird phenomenon.  I try not to cut the tag off for fear that I won't be able to remember how to care for it, which brings me to the questions below:

1) Do you remove the tag off your clothing or on any products that you bought?

2) If you have removed the tag, how can you tell what size it was or how to wash it?

Join others at Thursday Two Questions!

Pink Ladies

Updates-This is called double-decker cone flowers. I found an image on Google..

I'm not sure what this flower is, but I have a feeling it is relating to cone flowers since the stem and leaves were very similar.

Not knowing the name of flower is a typical trade of mine! Therefore, coming up with a title is very challenging.

They are beautiful and just amazing, that much I know! There are different shade of pink in each of these flowers, and I like them all.

Joining Pink Saturday, Today's Flowers, and Mosaic Monday!

The Beef stew with some real kick

Guest post written by Lisa Furrow

Most of the time that when I cook, I cook really hot and spicy things. It's not something that's intentional, but I guess that just reflects my spicy taste in foods. Last weekend I wanted to cook something special, but just for myself. My roommates were all gone for the weekend and I wanted to take advantage because the apartment is never empty. So I decided to watch my DVD collection of "Arrested Development" in my pjs all weekend.

I went online with our Wireless Internet to figure out what I could fix for myself and I knew that I wanted something that was spicy of course, but would be perfect for laying around the apartment. That meant I wasn't craving a salad.

I picked out a recipe for spicy beef stew and bought the ingredients on Friday on my home from work. It was so good and I just ate off of the leftovers for the rest of the weekend too. The only thing is that I spilled some on myself when I was laughing at some parts of episodes.