Spring Cleaning Comes Early

I have some news to share!  2012 is a big year for us, indeed.  Dane and I are moving to Washington DC!  After Dane finishes school at the end of March, he will be starting a job in Virginia and we are very excited for the new adventures that this move will bring!  After I finished my degree (Masters in Business) last August, I applied to several jobs in the area here in Dayton, Ohio without much luck.  That was really what spurred me on to get this little blog going in the first place.  So, although the last six months of blogging and working on my photography business has been awesome, I also hope to find a real legitimate job that actually provides some cash flow to our little family.  Turns out blogging isn’t exactly paying the bills right now and with a wedding to pay for and Roman’s mouth to feed (and, boy, does he eat a lot), money would be a good thing. 😉

{image from here.}

We actually went house hunting last weekend and think we found a place that we are really going to love renting!  We thought about buying a home, but after much deliberation, we decided that renting was the best choice for us at this point in our lives.  In general, I don’t like change.  The move from California to Ohio was a pretty tough transition for me, but I’m trying to keep a good attitude and finding an awesome home definitely helps with that!  Virginia is so different from Ohio.  There are waaay more people, lots of diversity, and lots of other things that living near a big city brings (good and bad).  I’m no stranger to that growing up very close to Los Angeles, but it’s amazing how I have adapted in the last year an a half to the slower pace of living in the Midwest.  But, as I said, Dane and I are up for the adventure, so bring it on East Coast!

The history nerd inside of me is also really excited to live near a city with so many museums that are F-R-E-E to go to!  That area of the country has so many cool sights to see and we’ll only be a train ride away from cool cities like NYC and Philly.  And I can’t wait to see the cherry blossoms bloom!

{image from here.}

With all of this talk of moving to new places comes packing up our home.  Which leads me to the title of this post.  Spring Cleaning is coming a little early here at house of DK in preparation for the move.  The first thing that I’ve been working on to move towards this is cleaning out the kitchen.  In an attempt to not be wasteful, I’m getting creative and using up all kinds of things that we have in our freezer and pantry.  So far, I’ve managed to use all of our meat stock that we had in the freezer, several cans of beans and soups, and a variety of pastas among other things.

So, as I was perusing the pantry the other day, I came across a half empty box of Crispy Rice cereal and half a bag of marshmallows left over from our last s’mores making night.  Ding!  Ding!  The light bulb went off and I knew what I had to make.  That night, I literally had a dream about eating Rice Crispy Treats.    The next day I went at it.

First, I measured out the cereal and realized that I only had enough for a half batch (3 cups).  Which ended up working out just fine on the marshmallow end because I only had half a bag there as well.

First, I put two tablespoons of butter and the marshmallows into a sauce pan over low heat.  I probably had about 20 marshmallows.

Stir constantly until the marshmallows are all melted.

Turn off the heat and pour in the crispy rice.

Stir it all up until there’s marshmallow-y goodness on every piece of cereal.

Then transfer it to a baking pan sprayed with non-stick spray.  Here’s my tip for the day: spray some non-stick spray on the back of a spoon to smooth everything out nice and flat.

I searched my pantry for some fun rainbow sprinkles, but didn’t have any.  Feel free to spice up your treats with sprinkles or chocolate chips or even some food coloring (everyone loves green colored desserts for St. Patty’s, right?).

Rice Crispy Treats are such a fun, easy, and yummy…well…treat.   Dane was one happy boy when he came home from school to these.

Have you started any spring cleaning?  Made any interesting meals trying to clean out your pantry and freezer?  Any tips for moving to our nation’s capital?  I’m all ears.