Last Week

I was working on a post last Sunday, but got a little distracted when this happened:

 

Just a small oven fire. No big deal, right? I was in the midst of baking 8 pans (yes, I said pans) of sweet rolls (find the recipe here). I started out with cinnamon, then got bored with them and made some caramel rolls. Apparently someone neglected to tell me that if the caramel gets hot enough and if the pan is too shallow, caramel will spill over into the bottom of your oven and burn. And burn it did. Luckily, the rolls were salvaged (and real tasty!), so as soon as I took them out of the oven, I locked the door and hit "self clean". Poor life decision, let me tell you. The caramel in the bottom went up in flames in a matter of minutes. Luckily I caught it early. I turned off the self clean option and watched the flames wither away. The bottom of our oven is now black... but it still works! Now we just have to figure out how to clean it without using the self-clean-burn-it-up technique.

{warning these rolls are jam-packed with calories and not for the faint of heart. they are deadly.}

A couple days after our near-death experience, I came home for lunch to find this guy hanging out on our driveway:

Did someone forget to tell me I actually live in Florida - not the chilly state of Minnesota? I immediately called Jordan and told him to rush home. I was worried this critter would find a way into our house and I just couldn't deal with the thought of that. He arrived 5 minutes later and chased the little guy around until he picked him up and plopped him into one of our unused flower pots. (Yes, he touched him. Yes, I gagged.)

We did some quick googling and discovered he was a tiger salamander, not completely uncommon in Minnesota. I snapped a few pictures of Jordan and his buddy, then we set him free in the marsh that is the end of our street.

I guess you could say I've had a productive, strange, entertaining week. Did I tell you the same day that I found the salamander, there was also a HUGE turtle stranded in the road at the intersection by our house? At first I thought I was seeing things, but then a man turned on his hazard lights and hopped out to take a good look at the turtle. It was real. Weird, I tell you, weird.