Shiny things and seafood

My summer vacation is almost over and it makes me super sad.  So I'm trying to squeeze the last little bit of fun out of my break.  Today was a fun failure.  A trip to the doctor, still no answers as to why I break out in hives all the time.  Running errands.  A bottle of sparkly turquoise nail polish.  And I cooked an amazing dinner.

First and possibly most importantly, new sparkly nail polish.  I desperately love gel manicures.  However, I'm cheap and moderately skeeved out by community nail polish and the potential of infections from nail salon tools.  So I can justify buying new nail polish fairly frequently because that's always cheaper than a manicure. Okay, I love love love glitter, much to my husband's dismay.  It's hard to find good glittery polish.  Thankfully Sally Hansen has come out with a good one.  And I'm in love.  I have it in turquoise and in pink.  Fabulous!

It was seafood night at our house.  One of my favorite things to cook.  Crab, shrimp and pasta.

We buy this great package of imitation crab meat that comes more like crab legs.  I saute it with butter, lemon, garlic, and a couple different Cajun seasonings.  So delicious.

That crab then goes into pasta.  Tonight I was lazy and had just bought one of those packets of pasta that comes with the sauce in it and you just add water and milk to cook it.  Last week it was homemade crab alfredo.  Yum.

And tonight we added shrimp.  I boil it with Zatarain's Shrimp, Crab & Crawfish boil.  It tastes delicious but it drives me out of the kitchen.  It's super strong.  But results in amazing shrimp.  So it's really a super easy dinner, but looks fairly impressive.

Before I met my husband I had never cooked any seafood.  In the past 5 years, I think I've gotten pretty good at fish and the like.  

Tomorrow there will be craft projects.  I can't wait!  There will also be more cooking.  Lasagna and chocolate pie.  Yum.  And some reading in the mix.  And I'm still uploading wedding pictures.  This may take a while.

Lake Lake Lake

My husband whisked me off to the lake for a next to last hurrah before I have to go back to work next week. (the real last hurrah happens this weekend when we go to visit some of our favorite friends).  Anyway, tomorrow will be meatier in both blog post and in dinner - it's going to be seafood night at our house.

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I had great plans for my morning.  I was going to run to JoAnn's and grab acrylic paint, puff paint, some 3D flowers, and a couple stencils and then I was going to get to work on remaking my canvases.  Well, I couldn't find everything I needed.  I found all the paint I needed but no luck on flowers or stencils.  The good news is there is hope of a second shopping trip this afternoon with my husband (if I can convince him) or a definite shopping opportunity on Saturday on my way to wedding dress shop with one of my friends.

So instead of crafting, I'm looking through wedding pictures.  All 1,442 of them.  Yes, that's right, 1,442 wedding pictures.  That's a hell of a lot of pictures.  We already had about 500 of them that our photographer had given us originally.  So there's lots of new ones to look through and I'm loving it.  I spent hours yesterday downloading all the CDs of pictures, all 16 of them.  And now it's the fun part, looking through them, falling in love with the new pictures, and remembering how great our wedding was.

One of the new to us pictures.

Walking into our reception.

And I look skinny.  Love!

Mini Vacation

My parents are on vacation so I went down to their house for a few days for some quality sister time.  Movies, eating out, breakfast for dinner, ice cream, a trip to the doctor, and two successful shopping trips.  Fantastic.

So I got shoes.  I love shoes.  I worked at a shoe store all the way through college.  I still buy almost all of my shoes there, even though it's 3 hours away from where we live.  And anytime I try to buy shoes anywhere else, I complain that it's not as good.  So I had a $10 coupon and they were doing buy one get one half -- I spent $30 on two pairs of shoes.  So great!

There was dinner with good friends.  Two of my very favorite former co-workers.  One of them I hadn't seen since I moved (3 1/2 years ago), the other I hadn't seen since our wedding (almost 2 years ago).  It was great to see them.

I went to Dollar General yesterday to buy my sister some 7Up because she was sick.  On my way into the store I spotted a turquoise vase.  It was love at first site.  Yes, love at first site over home accessories at DG.  It's shocking.  But, it was gorgeous.  And cost $3.50.  Yup.  It was meant to be.  I snapped it up without a second thought.  Now it's living on top of our mantle, it may not stay there, but it goes so well in the living room!

Not the best picture ever, but you get the idea.  See why I loved it?  It's so great as an accent piece.  I am going to start working on art tomorrow.  I have some great ideas thanks to pinterest.  I have six canvases laying around the house waiting for new art work.  Right now they're all painted with something, but I'm not in love with any of them.  Updating is in order.  I can't wait!

I have ideas for this.  Or well inspired by this.  Less artistic of course.  When I was figuring out what to do, I hadn't actually clicked on it to see the image larger.  Turns out it is actually a gorgeous textural painting.  Well, I am crafty, not really artistic at all.  But I love the idea of doing a tree with blossoms and using either yo-yo fabric flowers or 3-D scrapbooking flowers.  It's going to go in our hallway to replace a flower I painted that I hate a little more every time I look at it.

Some variation of this is going to go up in our bedroom.  There are a couple of other ideas floating around too, maybe a stencil or something.  But I definitely love the look of tone on tone with the puff paint.  I want it to cover two canvases.  So that takes care of three of the canvases.

I have something kind of graphic with some turquoise in it for the other three canvases to go in the living room.  To hang in a row.  Fingers crossed for extreme craftiness.

In other news, I got the rest of our wedding pictures yesterday.  Yes, I know we got married almost 2 years ago.  And we got half of our pictures back about a month after we got married.  We had been promised all of them so I am ecstatic to have all of them.  I'm getting ready to get busy getting them uploaded.  So that's another project.

Trim it up

I'm temporarily at a stand still on my inside projects.  We went to Home Depot last night and got floor samples for out kitchen floor.  They're just kind of traveling around our kitchen so we can decide what we like.  Apparently we have expensive taste.  And we need to get a corded drill so we can screw deck screws into our kitchen floor to get rid of the squeaks.  Apparently our cordless drill is too wimpy to do the job.  But I will be glad to not have a squeaky kitchen floor anymore.

We're getting ready to start painting the outside of the house.  We're going to add trim around the base of the house where the siding meets the concrete.  We have cedar siding so it runs perpendicular to the ground instead of parallel.  And adding trim will make it look more finished.  We're also going to put trim around our two sliding glass doors because for some reason they never trimmed out the doors.  So last night we estimated and then bought 80 feet of cedar 1x2 boards.  

Trim waiting to be painted.

ignore the trashy rail on the spiral staircase.  It' hopefully getting replaced soon.

2 sides of the trim painted.  A soft dark grey.  Love it.

The other two sides will be white so that where the top edge of the trim meets the siding, it can be caulked and will blend in.  

We're still in the middle of a huge heat wave.  The meteorologists are saying it's one of the hottest summers on record.  That means any outside work that I do has to be done early.  I had a coat of paint on the trim and was back inside by 9.  I'm going on a mini vacay to my sister's next week.  When I get back I'm going to start painting the house in tiny sections early in the morning so I don't die from heat stroke.  I'm excited to get started painting so I can get the trim up, it's going to look so good.

 

Betty Crocker's Got Nothin on Me

I love love love to cook.  And this week the home improvement projects have been taken over by cooking.  Sadly, all of it was not for my husband.  His sister is due to have her second kiddo any day now.  In my family, that calls for cooking.  So, Tuesday night I made her a lasagna.  Yum!  Yesterday morning I got up and made a loaf of zucchini bread and 89 chocolate chip cookies.

Cookies waiting to go into the oven.  Oh yeah, I roll my cookies into balls so they cook up and look prettier.  I also literally buttered my cookie sheet.  I was out of cooking spray.  And butter doesn't leave the nasty gunk on your pans.

Yes, that's right, 89 chocolate chip cookies.  It was a double batch.  So a dozen of the chocolate chip cookies, the zucchini bread, and the lasagna went to the sister in law.  The rest of the cookies are in the kitchen taunting me.  They are hopefully being divvied up between the neighbors.  

Mmmm, they smell so good.  Look at those bad boys.  I really needed a 4th cooling rack though.  I ran out of space.  So glad we got cooling racks for a wedding present.  In our apartment, I would have to lay tea towels on our washer and dryer to cool the cookies on.

Last night I thought I should probably take care of my husband and cook him a really delicious dinner.  So I made one of our favorite make-ahead, easy, yummy dinners.  Slow Cooker Cheesy Tortellini.  Seriously guys, it's so good.

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound ground beef
• 1/2 pound Italian sausage, casings removed
• 16 ounces Classico® Tomato and Basil Sauce
• 1 (4.5 ounce) can sliced mushrooms
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can Italian-style diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 (9 ounce) package refrigerated or fresh cheese tortellini
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions

1. Crumble the ground beef and Italian sausage into a large skillet. Cook over medium-high heat until browned. Drain.
2. Combine the ground meats, pasta sauce, mushrooms, and tomatoes in a slow cooker. Cover, and cook on LOW heat for 7 to 8 hours.
3. Stir in the tortellini, and sprinkle the mozzarella and cheddar cheese over the top. Cover and cook for 15 more minutes on Low, or until the tortellini is tender.

Mary's Version

1 pound ground beef

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1 (14.5 oz.) can Italian-style diced tomatoes, undrained

1 carton Philadelphia Cooking Cream Cheese, Savory Garlic

1 bag frozen cheese tortellini or cheese ravioli

Follow the original directions.  Saute the onion with the ground beef.  OMG, it's so good.  I'm thinking about it right now in fact.

This morning I thought I would go for something healthier.  I'd read about the Green Smoothies the other day.  I'm trying to get more fruits and veggies into my day so I thought I'd give it a try.  

My smoothie, about to get blended.

I wasn't super sure about it.  I mean, come on.  But, I was trusting the internet, that can be kind of scary.  I'm willing to try though.  So I blended.

Okay, it's a terrible picture, but you can tell, it doesn't look super appetizing.

So I drank it.  It was the biggest smoothie in  the world, I swear.  It wasn't terrible though.  Even though it took me almost an hour and 2 glassfuls to drink all of it.  I used Vanilla Soy Milk, spinach, vanilla yogurt, a frozen banana, strawberries, raspberries, and some ice.  It was pretty good.  It's possible I followed it with a chocolate chip cookie though.

I think I've been motivated to spend more time in the kitchen because I hung up new artwork and I'm in love.  It's actually a picture I found on pinterest and just printed.  It's gorgeous.

I'm not done getting the right stuff hung up in there yet, but I think this is a step in the right direction.  I want to get wooden letters to spell out EAT above the cupcake but I think my idea has been voted down.  Anyway, I'm off to pick up the bedroom (our new bed gets delivered tomorrow!) and bake some brownies for a party tonight.

Checking Things Off

Of course our house still has a long long way to come.  But last night my husband and I were talking about our remaining house projects.  I realized I had gotten so much done this summer really.  I actually put up our for real "To Do" List.

So I am notorious for setting myself an impossible timeline with an impossibly large list of things I want to accomplish.  We really like to have people over and I have a habit of deciding I have to get X, Y, and Z done before people come over.  Like two of my friends came to visit at the end of my spring break.  I spent the whole week busting my butt because I had to get my list done.  My list?  So glad you asked.  I painted both of our front doors a pretty glossy red, I painted all the trim and two doors in our front hallway, the barnwood door into our living room, and a couple of other things I don't remember.  I also had intentions of painting the kitchen trim but I totally ran out of time and just gave up.

My habit of overshooting the amount of projects I can accomplish in my timeline should've given me a clue about our deck.  We started staining our deck Saturday morning of Memorial day weekend when we had people coming over on Sunday.  Our deck is pretty big.  And it has two levels and two sets of stairs.  And about a thousand little skinny posts.  I worked super hard for 8 hours.  And it was really hot.  Somewhere between 5 and 6 in the evening, I gave up.  And it wasn't even close to done.  I just explained to all our guests what a flake and overachiever I am.  Well, now it's finally done.  I would say we have easily put in at least 24 hours of work on this stupid deck.  But, the good news is, it's done.  Last night my husband finished it up.  Amazing!

So, what has been on my To Do List this summer?  (I work at a school, so I have summers off, meaning lots of projects!)  Stain deck, organize office, finish painting basement bar, paint kitchen trim, re-tile front hallway, ordered a bed (it's getting delivered Friday!), paint garage door, paint end table, and paint built-ins. So what if the stupid deck took a month and a half.  I think that's a pretty good list to accomplish.

I think I'm going to start working on painting the outside of the house this week, at least the part I can easily reach.  And my parents are coming today.  My dad is bringing me his miter box so I can add some trim around our two sliding glass doors and around the bottom of the siding where it meets the concrete patio outside our basement.