Monday, January 28, 2013

Will you accept this rose?

Ahhhh Monday.  Not typically my most favored day of the week, but today is Bachelor day...so I'm excited!  Yes, I'm addicted to the Bachelor.  I don't necessarily agree with the morals usually involved in the show...nor do I think it is in ANY way a good method for creating relationships....but I'm addicted nonetheless.  I just love the drama...and I love getting attached to a particular contestant and following them all the way until they fail to receive a rose (or otherwise get sucked into a forced, likely doomed engagement).  Patrick and I are part of a young married's small group that meets every other Monday night...and luckily, we are not the only couple drawn to this terribly cheesy show...so on the Mondays that we don't meet for small group, the eight of us that like the show get together and watch it.  This season, we're betting on the top 6 contestants (just to make it more interesting).  Here's the Bachelor Board that Patrick and I made this weekend (waaaaay too much time on our hands).







Friday, January 25, 2013

Happy Friday!

Fridays rock.  I tend to be pretty busy at work on Fridays, but today is uncharacteristically relaxed.  My fellow employees and I just emptied our 5th pot of coffee for the morning (usually we down about 2), so I guess that's the sign of a hard-worked week.  With little to do around the office, I've been texting the hubby back and forth about weekend plans...we've come up with a few fun things to keep us happily occupied, making the most of our time off.  I can't wait to clock out. :)

Last night I made my Brown Sugar Basalmic Glazed Pork Loin with Oven Roasted Broccoli.  It....was...awesome!  My house still smells fantastic after slow-cooking that tenderloin for 9 hours yesterday...I'm so glad I have leftovers for lunch today!  *stomach grumbles*





Brown Sugar Basalmic Glazed Pork Loin


Ingredients:
2 lb boneless pork tenderloin
1 tsp ground sage
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground pepper
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 cup water








Combine salt, pepper, sage and garlic and rub over pork.  Place in a crockpot with 1/2 cup water and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours (I did 9-10 because I was at work forever....no worries)











Glaze Ingredients 
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup basalmic vinegar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons soy sauce




During last hour of cooking, combine ingredients for glaze and heat in small saucepan until thickened. Brush over pork 3 or 4 times during the last hour and serve with remaining glaze on the side.











Um.....yum!













I also made this Oven Roasted Broccoli to go with it.  I have NEVER had such scrumptious broccoli in my life!  What a fantastic recipe...I want all my veggies like this!

                                                                      Oven Roasted Broccoli




Ingredients:
1 lb broccoli (cut, washed and dried THOROUGHLY)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp garlic paste
1/2 tsp ginger paste
salt to taste



Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.  Mix all spices together with olive oil in large bowl then toss broccoli florets in the mixture until coated evenly.  Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray and spread broccoli out in a single layer over the sheet.  Roast for 10 minutes, stir, then stick it back in for another 10 minutes (or until broccoli is slightly crispy and browning on the edges)



















And for dessert....check out my new favorite brownies.  Double chocolate cheesecake brownies.  Fantastic. (be jealous)


Bowl-Licking Goodness!












Wednesday, January 23, 2013

I'm in love with Pinterest

Pinterest is amazing. If any of you have not yet discovered this fantastic gift to mankind, please stop reading this now, go get yourself a Pinterest account and start living like you've never lived before!   **HERE'S THE LINK!!!  CLICK IT NOW....DO IT!!!...see, I just did the hard work for you...now you have NO excuses**    I used to thumb through magazine after magazine if I ever needed a cute decorating idea or wanted to bake a neat recipe for a potluck...but now I have dear,sweet Pinterest so I'll never have to touch a magazine again! When I was planning my wedding, I chopped up dozens of bridal books trying to save clipping of ideas...I just BARELY missed out on the Pinterest wedding phenomenon. Dang it. Ah well, now I'll just use it to feed my hubby and find cute crochet patterns for baby clothes to give other people's future children.

Like this monkey hat and matching booties!  So proud...
I've been trying to be a better wifey lately by actually cooking my husband a variety of home cooked meals rather than just serving up the same ol' Hamburger Helper or baked chicken and green beans (not that I get any complaints...that just means poor Patrick has come to expect the mediocre out of me :P). Usually, I'd blame my lack of culinary oomph on the fact that I'm too pooped after work to serve up anything that requires effort for dinner...but really that's not it....it's really not that hard to stir up some stuff and stick it in the oven. It's more the fact that preparing a meal requires too much premeditation and planning...and to be honest, I just forget most of the time. We grocery shop every Sunday, and it's a RARE occasion that I've actually thought about a meal before we step foot in the store. Usually I just scramble to come up with any of the super easy recipes I know by heart (aka: tacos, spaghetti, jambalaya) and I grab those ingredients and split. Pinterest has changed this aspect of my life. Throughout the week, I'm constantly pinning random recipes I'd like to try...so when I get to the grocery store and draw a blank on what to make, I just pull up my food board and choose a new recipe to try! I've already filtered out the yucky recipes, so I know I'm up for anything on this board. Piece of cake!  The past couple weeks all my dinners have been Pinterest recipes. Here are some of the ones I've taken a stab at...

Lemon Garlic Chicken



Orange Chicken with Asparagus
 


CrockPot Mexican Chicken
(this one was AMAZING)


Stove Top "Roasted" Red Potatoes
(also AMAZING)

I truly intended to take my own pictures of each of these dishes....but I completely fail at multitasking (can't stir the pot and snap a picture all at the same time :P).  I promise I'll try and do better in the future.  Here's my one attempt at a snapshot of the orange chicken with asparagus and it turned out looking rather nasty (it was delish, I promise!!)



On the menu for tomorrow (since I completely failed at remembering to stick it in the crock pot today) is a delicious Brown Sugar Basalmic Glaze Pork Tenderloin with Oven Roasted Broccoli.....yummmmmm.  I promise I'll try harder to actually snap some pics!

Monday, January 21, 2013

Weekend Happenings

What a weekend! I'm sitting at work at the start of my shift already contemplating closing my eyes for a 5 minute power nap, but I know that wouldn't be nearly enough for my greedy little sleep mechanism and would only cause me great amounts of grief for the rest of my workday. *sigh*....where do the weekends go?

Actually, my weekend was a pretty stinking good one as far as weekends go...I was just running around nonstop, so I didn't have much time to sit and recoup from last week's crazy schedule. It started off with taking my sweet puppy to her dog training classes...yay for a warehouse full of adorable fluffy canine cuteness! Now, before I go further, you must know that one of the most wonderful things in my life right now is my 2 year old Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Wicket. Patrick and I "rescued" her from the pet store five months after we got married. Now, neither Patrick nor I had EVER been dog people. I spent my high school summers dog/house sitting and my best friend growing up had several sweet dogs we were constantly around, but to be honest, I didn't really like them at all...I actually found them quite hairy and smelly and annoying....but MAN did my mind change! We bought our baby on a whim with absolutely ZERO knowledge of dog care or what we had just gotten ourselves into...but I can confidently say that was the BEST spontaneous decision of my life! I love this sweet girl with everything I've got...two years into this she's still quite a handful, but Patrick and I absolutely adore her and she has kept us busy and entertained in the best way. We enrolled her in doggie classes (finally) and she's well on her way to being a little lady.

                                      This is our baby the week we brought her home <3

I spent the majority of my afternoon Friday crocheting Wicket a doggie sweater for valentine's day (crochet...another of my newfound passions), and she looks pretty darn schnazzy in it if I do say so myself.

 
Saturday morning, my mom picked my sister and me up (easy peasy since my sis and I recently bought houses only a mile apart) and we took a road trip up to Boulder to visit my cousin Jennifer who is in town for a dog training seminar (again with the dog training). We toured the Celestial Seasonings tea factory...a fantastic (and free!) tour for any of you that haven't visited. Apparently it's the only remaining tour that actually allows its guests out on the factory floor...up close and personal with all the machinery! You get to walk through the rows and rows of spices and herbs and tea leaves and let the aromas permeate your whole body. They invite you into their "Peppermint Room" to experience the almost painful, definitely intense fragrance of the peppermint, spearmint and catnip (yep catnip) in a super-concentrated setting. If you aren't much of a tea drinker before experiencing the tour, you almost certainly will be by the time you finish! After the tour, you can relax in the tea tasting room and enjoy literally every tea they produce...all for free! And for my fellow girls who enjoy a regular dose of "cute"...the gift shop is overflowing with adorable items for the home, tea-related or not! It's a good thing we were pressed for time, else I would have spent way more cash in there than my husband would like to hear about ;).

                              These are the only pictures they'd let us take...after the info
                  video and before walking out on the factory floor in our beaYOOtiful hairnets

                                             Jennifer (left) My sister Kayla (right)
 
Me (left)  Mom (right)


Once we were filled to the brim with hot herbal goodness, we set off into boulder to find some delicious local foodage. We ended up at a place called The Sink (on the recommendation of a local), which is a little hole-in-the-wall place that was actually featured on Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives a while back. It was SO GOOD. Well, I suppose I was pretty insanely hungry by the time we ate, so a piece of cheese scraped off the sidewalk probably would've tasted awesome to me at that moment, but I ordered a turkey burger topped with green apple slices and warm, gooey Brie on top and I loved it! The rest of my fam really enjoyed everything they ordered as well, so we HIGHLY recommend if you ever find yourself wandering around the town of Boulder, CO with an empty stomach, check this place out!

When I finally returned Saturday night after a long drive home and dinner with a small group from church, I was surprised with my mom's piano waiting for me in my living room! My sweet hubby and my dad and my brother-in-law and his fam all moved it over to surprise me after my day out. I felt so special :). I've played the piano since I was 5 years old, so this particular piano has seen me through countless lessons and recitals and band practices and 'jam sessions' as my dad would like to call them....so when I got married and moved out, this piano was sorely missed. It'll be so nice to be able to play music in my home again :).


Yesterday after church, my buddy at work's sweet fiancée invited me to go wedding dress shopping with her and the girls. We spent hours and hours waiting to give our opinions (don't worry, she wanted them) on pretty much every dress in that boutique. I love doing stuff like this! I just love the atmosphere of all things wedding! I so appreciate her including me in her day :)...and I'm so glad she found the dress!!! Way to go, Sabrina.

So....after dress shopping and dinner and shopping for groceries and catching up on the Bachelor (our small group is doing a bachelor pool this season so patrick and i have to have our top 6 submitted tonight!), we crashed into bed WAY past our bedtime and barely woke up in time for work today! Well...Patrick doesn't work today (yay minor holidays!) so he'll be meeting me for lunch at MY work today! What a sweet hubby I have <3

                                                            Yay for sleepy puppies!

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

I wanna be a blogger

I love blogs.  I love reading about other peoples' day-to-day lives, learning from their experiences, and seeing the world through their eyes via photo albums and story-like posts.  Following along while another human being recounts their tale with passion and purpose, regardless of whether or not the world would deem it "interesting" or "exciting", inspires me to join in and record my own experiences.  Blogging seems to me like a way to celebrate life - a medium with which to express appreciation and contentment with the place God has for you right now.  It enables you to stop and dwell on the little things in life that you may otherwise pass over as you rush through this crazy world.

I'm ashamed to say, this is my third time attempting to start a blog...(third time's the charm, right?)...so I'm really hoping this one will stick.  I think the biggest reason for my blogging failure in the past was my embarrassment to share my life online.  It's not like I had anything specific going on that I was embarrassed to talk about....it was more like I was embarrassed of the fact that I had absolutely nothing TO talk about.  Who wants to read bi-weekly updates on a life like mine?  And how much more embarrassed will I be when absolutely NO ONE follows me?  I just have to get over that and say WHO CARES?  I don't read the blogs that I read because the people writing them have these incredible, extraordinary lives that could be written into next summer's big blockbuster....I read them because of the enthusiasm behind each and every post, each and every picture, each and every recipe shared or craft taught.  I read them because the authors convey this supernatural peace and contentment with the life which they were given, and they find joy in even the tiniest, most "normal" moments in their everyday world.  I want a perspective like that.  I'm only in my early twenties, but I'm already terrified that my life is going to fly by without me.  I want to learn to appreciate and savor every moment of my life...and not only that, but I want to begin making a conscious effort to open my sleepy eyes and seek out the experiences available for the taking.  I know that God has a plan for my life, but that doesn't mean I should just sit around on my sofa waiting for some celestial itinerary to fall in my lap.  I believe that God places opportunities in our paths and passions in our hearts, but we have to actually get up and take some action in order to take part in His plan.  Now I know my life still may never be some super thrilling mega-adventure....but like I said, it's all perspective.  I choose to seek out the treasures and truly enjoy my life.

Whew...I really didn't mean to rant so much.  Guess I never know how strongly I feel about a subject until I let it all out on a keyboard.  Anyway, I don't mean for this blog to be super serious....or long-winded...so maybe I'll close here and leave the rest of my thoughts for tomorrow.