Thursday, February 28, 2013

Bear With Me

As you've probably noticed there have been some major design updates.  Please bear with me as I continue to tweek them and attempt to remember the little bit of html that I learned in the eighth grade!

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Lent Week 2

We made it through a weekend away from home.  Which was huge. Huge in a hung out with my dad, went to a baby shower (with Mimosas) and stuck to our sacrifices, huge. My mom made us homemade Mac&Cheese (thanks mom!) that we didn't eat Saturday night so we took it home and ate it Sunday and Tuesday.  Totally against the be vegetarian and not eat all carbs rule, BUT, so good. Please exscuse the lack of photos for this post I have some completed project posts that I'm working on that will be a bit photo heavy!

What We Ate:
Wednesday: Stuffed Tomatoes
Thursday: Spicy Salad with Buttermilk Dressing
Friday: Pizza (homemade)
Saturday: Pizza/Eggplant Parm Sub (take-out with dad)
Sunday: Mac&Cheese
Monday: 3 Bean Chili
Tuesday: Mac&Cheese

Monday, February 25, 2013

Seriously.

I'm not pregnant. I feel like I should put that out there.  We are making a Lenten Sacrifice to not drink or eat meat, no babies. Not yet, things to do first.

Actually this post is about butter.  

I made popcorn from scratch, aka on the stovetop, which with a Le Crusette is what I imaging what using a shake weight must feel like. After all that effort I found that we had no butter to melt onto my hard earned Oscar watching snack. 
Wopwopwop. 

I ate it anyways, with the dregs from the butter dish and lots of salt.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Totally Obsessed

Best. Chapstick. Ever. 
Buy a handfull of them and keep them everywhere.
Refer to as The Egg

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Lent Week 1

Woof.  What a struggle. We are doing some serious detoxing and trying not to get bored.  Friday night we went to the gym and I may or may not have went to bed before ten to "read".  I pinned many many vegetarian recipes then spent entirely too much money at the food store. We have drunk a lot of water and had a few nice fires and I used one of them to do my photography homework.  It is very rewarding to learn how to use my camera out of automatic mode.
What We Ate
Wednesday: Stuffed Peppers
Thursday: Heart-shaped Pizza
Friday: Grilled Cheese & Tomato dipped in Tomato Soup
Saturday: Southwest Mac & Cheese
Sunday: Lentil Shepherd's Pie
Monday: 3 Bean Chili
Tueday: 3 Bean Chili (leftovers by request)

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

How To:

do Valentine's Day without alcohol or meat.  WopWop. Who's idea was this!?! Oh right, ours, together. But that is the true meaning of Valentine's Day right? So we cuddled up in front of a fire and ate a homemade heart shaped pizza.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Sacrifice.

Lent started this Wednesday; Monday I was trying to come up with something to "give up for Lent".  I have never been good about this, ever.  I was trying to think of something that would mesh with our New Years goals, being better organized (already doing that), go to the gym more (straight up New Years goal), give up meat? totally give up alcohol? Yup. Those were the two I landed on, so I floated the idea to Bruce "I was thinking to either give up meat or alcohol for Lent" the response I got was Let's do both, I mean if we're going to do it, let's really do it.  I struggled for about an hour. Then I said ok.

So we're doing it.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Blizzard 2013

Friday we both left work at lunch, considering it had been snowing since we left at 8AM. When I got home at 1:30 there was a few inches. I played with the dog then we hunkered down.  We played some video games, started fire and filled up the bathtub (just incase we lost power), we got quite a surprise when we took Kenny out around 10.  It was coming down fast, hard and drifting!  Our first mistake was to go to bed early, really we should have done the driveway before bed. Oops, I realized this when I woke up at 1am to see how high the snow was.  We were shocked Saturday morning to three feet of snow.  It got worse when we realized that it was higher than the snow blower and that we would have so shovel that top foot and a half before we could even snowblow.  Kenny loves it though!

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Not Quite A Mudroom

Our breezeway isn't heated, which is sad because it would make for a Pinterest~able mudroom.  Our coat closet is in the front hallway, by the front door, which we never use; this makes the closet good for storage but not our everyday coats.  For awhile now we have had two command hooks on the side of the fridge to catch our coats as we come in the door and the kitchen table was a dumping ground for everything else. Apart from what is labeled in the photo below there are hats, gloves, mail, flashlights and random things to be put away elsewhere.
I added two more medium command hooks for jackets and sweatshirts, two small command hooks for lunch boxes, purses or gym bags, a folder (from Martha Stewart's line from Avery at Staples) for menus and such, and replaced the calendar pages (but kept the dry erase board).  I hung two hooks by the door for our keys and moved the hook for Kennay's leash up so that the leash doesn't get stuck in the door or drag on the floor.  Mail is sorted and placed on desks in the office when we bring it in from the mailbox.
 Our lunch boxes now live on top of the fridge (I took this in the morning after I had packed Bruce's lunch which is why it's on the table.) The basket on the table catches hats and gloves, in the summer it will catch garden supplies.  The dishes are waiting to go back to my mom.  I've instituted a two pair rule for under the kitchen table.  Bruce has house shoes, running shoes, work shoes, basement shoes, take the dog out shoes and they all end up under the table because the breezeway is too cold.  Now he gets two pair the rest go in the closet where they belong.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

It's Just Nice

One day last week it was flurrying but bright out.  The amount of natural light in our bathroom in the morning makes me happy.
This photo just screams winter to me for some reason.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Goals Update:

Purge and Tame: Two bags of trash and a bag of donations taken out of the office.  That doesn't even count the cedar closet. We also had a blitz cleaning session Thursday and Friday to prep for an appraisal Saturday morning.
Blogging:  I took plenty of photos, but other than last week's update nothing made it to publish, I hope to do better this week.  This month I'm taking an online course to better understand my new DSLR, looking forward to taking better photos.
Health and Wellness: Saturday we went out but other than that we've done very well with our healthy living.  We managed to abstain from the beer with dinner Monday thru Thursday, big deal.  Bruce went to the gym a few days.  I went to the gym Monday and made a valiant attempt Wednesday, to no avail. I left work with plenty of time to get to one of my favorite classes, horrible traffic and I missed the class.  I changed, figuring I could run anyways, no dice or more like no running shoes.  It was sad and it made me grumpy.  Better luck this week!