dots and details : May 2018

Hi Everyone! It has a been a week or so and I wanted to stop in and say hello! I thought it would be fun to share a new recipe I found online from a baker/blogger that I follow and have really enjoyed her baked good/ recipes. I have made 3 other recipes of hers and they all turn out great! I made these last week and Reed really liked them. These are gooey like a gooey bar but with chocolate chips like a chocolate chip cookie, I mean you really can't go wrong with that can't you :) I thought I would share the blogger's recipe with you. I hope you all have a great week and enjoy this new recipe :)

This recipe is from Elisabeth Epperson Farris from the blog www.elisabethandbutter.com

ingredients:

- 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

-1 teaspoon of baking powder

-1/4 teaspoon of salt

-1 1/2 cups of light brown sugar

-12 tablespoons of salted butter, melted, browned, and then cooled

-2 large eggs

-1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

-1 1/2 cups of semi sweet chocolate chips

details:

-preheat oven to 350 and line a 9x13 baking dish with parchment paper all the way up the sides

-place your butter in a saucepan and melt until golden brown over medium heat for about 10 min (be careful not to burn the butter) then let this cool at room temp

-in a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt together

-in a mixing bowl combine the melted butter, brown sugar, and then add in the eggs and vanilla

-gently fold in the flour mixture and fold in the chocolate chip cookies

-spread the batter into the lined baking dish and smooth the top as it will be thick

-bake this for 20-25 min or until golden brown

-let cool completely before cutting into squares

-serve with a smile :)

Hey everyone! Happy Tuesday! I hope you all had a great weekend! We enjoyed the weekend with family and getting back in our routine with Paw since we got back from our vacation :) We were happy to see the little guy. My parents were in town as well and that was so much fun. I hope you all had a great weekend as well.

As you know, from last week I shared the first part of our 3rd Anniversary trip out west. Well, I wanted to go ahead and share the next part of our trip to Arizona. We were able to knock out a lot of major landmarks and things we wanted to do and places we wanted to see. We were so glad to know that once we drove about 6 hours from Santa Fe, NM to Page, AZ we were able to do and see so much in that area. We drove to Page, AZ and enjoyed the scenic drive through the desert and mountains. Once we got to Page, during our first day we visited Antelope Canyon which was a one hour guided tour through a sandstone canyon. It was literally one of the most incredible places we have seen. It was so unique and very hard to believe the sandstone was formed by water over time. We really enjoyed this tour! After the Lower Antelope Canyon, we drove about 20 minutes to Horseshoe Bend which was also breathtaking. It was a short 15-20 minute hike to get to the actual view of the horseshoe shaped river. We went at a great time as it was starting to get cooler towards the end of the night.

Then, we traveled the next day to Utah which was about a 3 hour drive to visit Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park. We started very early and was able to knock both of these two off our list in one day. The views and the parks were incredible as you can see below in my pictures. I have each park labeled so you can see which one is which. We had a great day and got back to Page that night late to stay all night. We decided to stay in Page one more night because it was a good middle point between the parks and the grand canyon.

The next day, we woke up early again and drove about 2 hours out of our way to see the sights of Monument Valley. We are so glad we ended up doing this as the drive and the Navajo park was beautiful. See our pictures below on this as well. This was a self guided tour/drive through the park. We enjoyed this as well. Next, we drove back in the direction towards Page and headed south to visit the Grand Canyon. Wow, it was beautiful as well! We were able to go through the entire park and walk around and took a lot of pictures here as well (gee what a shocker) haha! As you can see, I love pictures!! I love photography and landscape photos as well. I always have! I took well over 1500 pictures on this trip, and they all turned out great.

After, a very long day at the Grand Canyon. That night we decided to drive towards Las Vegas to find a hotel. The next part of our trip is coming next week on the blog and this entails; Las Vegas, The Hoover Dam, and several places in southern California. I can't wait to share that part of our trip as well. I hope you have enjoyed our travel series and hope you enjoy the pictures below. Thanks so much for stopping by :) xo Tesla