Turning leaves

                                        
      
It's been a little bit since i've written, but there's been some good changes going on.  As the seasons are changing, i'm trying to change a little as well for the better.  I cleaned our bedroom and started throwing away clutter and just overall try to simplify things.  Check with me next season to see how long this actually lasts. :)

I've started to try new things and actually completing them instead of getting bored half way through.  My first task has been a Julie/Julia-esque project but with cupcakes.  A while ago I bought this cupcake book and it has all kinds of tips for baking and for beginning bakers (like moi) and I have a couple people that I go to that would help me bake but I can never seem to get to see them, so i'm taking it upon myself to learn how to be a better baker so I can bake for the ones I love!

So for my first challenge, I began like everyone else does, on chapter 1: The Basics.  It seemed like a simple recipe, or so I thought.  It involved using just an egg yolk without the whites, sifting flour and sour cream as well as other tasks, so it seemed like many other recipies i've seen. TOTAL FAIL!!! I made the batter, filled the cups, and put into the oven The cupcakes barely rose at all, and they tasted like powder. No bueno.  I should note that I was also making these as I was trying to make dinner all by myself as well (if you know me well you should know that is a big feat in itself)  so I had a lot going on along with me being hungry cranky and a hungry husband upstairs.  I didn't even get to the frosting to attempt that.  I was defeated and tired and instead had ice cream for dessert that night.  I have yet brought up the courage to try it again but I think this weekend I will look that recipe in the eye and say "I can take you!!" and whip that recipes ass! Take that Julia Child!


The other growth i'm trying to take is figuring out better ways to save money for me and my husband.  We have the opportunity right now to create a nice little cushion for ourselves financially and I want to take full advantage of that while it's here.  So i've turned to couponing.  I saw it on tv about someone who was saving all kinds of money by just getting coupons out of the paper. I've done some research, watched videos, and have started my collection of coupons.  Hopefully within a month or so i'll be a money saving machine!! i'll keep ya posted :)

What is Love?

"baby don't hurt me....don't hurt me...no more" *insert Night at the Roxbury head bop here*  Ever since Brock and I got married, apparently i'm the expert married person to most of my friends and I always get asked "how did you know you were going to get married?" Or "What do you think about true love now that you're married" Like I have ANY clue at all. I used to love to look at these little pictures in the sunday paper and some of them were true about Brock and I , and some were just cute. Check them out for yourself and maybe you can figure out what love is all about . :)

What's Goin On

Whew!! It's been a while since i've posted, and its due to the fact the i've been soooooo busy on the homefront. Our little "spruce up" project in the bathroom has now become more of a full renovationt than we originally imagined.  You know how it goes.  "Well if we're going to paint that, then we need to fix this too" or "well if we're going to upgrade that we need to change out these to match" so it took a total of 3 weekends (including one 3 day weekend) to finish our tiny bathroom plus the entire month before that to re-vamp the lighting but it's finally time to paint cans away and pull off all the tape! Ahhhhhhh...such a good feeling.  We still have some other sprucing up we want to do but I feel like taking a little break in between is just what the doctor ordered.  Brock's been putting in soooo many extra hours at work and all my free time is either spent at the gym or doing laundry/other home chores.  We need som R&R and a little pasta in our lives :)  I don't have any pictures of our bathroom, but this one is kind of close and it has the same colors that we just painted.  We're going for the beige-y walls with white trim look.  Very simple, clean, and calming...yes!!


Another part of our "bedroom rehab" home game we've been playing has to do with our bed.  As most young couples i'm sure have the same scenario, your first bed usually isn't just your bed.  It belonged to your siblings before you or a family member, or your roommate left it behind and it's bigger than your bed so you snagged it type situation.  Well our bed was Brock's bed is no different and we aren't the first owner. When we moved out on our own, I had a full sized bed at my parents house, and he had a queen sized bed at his house, so obviously we chose the bigger mattress to bring with us to our apartment.  Well now it's pretty much as dead as it could be and it's been giving both of us back problems for a while.  So recently we did a little online research, did a little in-store shopping, and found ourselves a super comfy KING size bed that's brand new and all ours! YAY! we're growing up :) It got delivered last week and it's super comfy.

We also just found our bedding set for our new bed which was harder to pick than I thought.  We both have similar styles but different opinions on what looks good.  Even though none of my picks had flowers or were hot pink, Brock still didn't appreciate my "girly" picks.  What else am I supposed to pick??? The dirt colored one that has a picture of a deer on it?? Ugh...watever.. but we found one that we like AND we found it on Ebay for WAYYYY cheaper!! It reatiled for $450 and we got it for around $150 :)  Here's what it looks like:


It's a 24 piece set and even includes window treatments. SCORE!! Operation: Growing Up/Nesting is finally coming along....and it feels great!! Hopefully everything looks as good put together as it does in my head (and in this picture) How sweet it is!   The only problem so far is that we have our mattress that has a pillowtop on it, plus we have a mattress protector that also has a little padding on top so our deep pocket sheets don't totally fit over all the extra padding.  I'm trying to find some sheet straps to help out but no luck so far on ones that I like.  Looks like im going to have to get crafty on this one....oh yea!!!

Happy hump day! Share the love ;-)

-Heather

Brock's 26th Birthday Extravaganza!!!

Recently i've been a little busy with the planning bug for my dear hubby Brock. January 21st was hi 26th birthday so I was busy preparing all the secret surprises I had in store for him WHILE keeping up with my diet and gym regime.  Even though I had a lot of events planned for him, I still wanted to actually give him a gift for his birthday. So on the morning of his birthday before we both left for work, I gave him a bottle of L'Homme cologne from YSL.  It smelled really nice on him and I think it made him feel like a "grown up" :). Even though he doesn't wear cologne a lot, I know he likes to wear it for special occasions so it would be put to good use.  The whole day went just like normal, traffic, work, traffic, home.  He was having a rough day at work, and being a Friday, everything had to be done before he could go home.  I told him I had a surprise dinner set for him at 8pm so he rushed out of the office to come pick me up and off we went.  We made it home just in time for him to run in the house and change his shirt and head out. He had no idea where we were going and I loved watching him try to figure it out but never actually get it.  He's difficult to surprise, so I felt good about this one :)  We pull up to the restaurant which was really close to our house, and he gets out to see it's a place he had been trying to go to for a few months now, BENIHANA'S!!!!  I had never been before but knew Brock liked it, so I decided to give it a try and see what all the hype was about.  We walked in, and it was packed! good thing I made reservations 2 weeks earlier!  We sat at the bar, ordered a couple drinks, then we were at our table.  The chef was cool and did all kinds of tricks for us but there was sooooo much food, that I was full with the appetizers before I even got my main meal. I felt so bad, I didn't eat A BITE of my main entree food. It looked yummy too.  But I took it home and ate it the next day and it was still super yummy!

The next big part was the birthday party I had been planning for him.  I hit up all of his and my friends and invited everyone over to celebrate Brock's over-the-hill-ness :)  It turned out great and we had a lot of fun! Here are some pics from the shin-dig

So then after that I spent a lot of time on Sunday taking care of Brock who wasn't feeling too well after he had played a few too many games of beer pong...

The next weekend I took Brock on a surprise weekend trip to the Hyatt hotel in Huntington Beach.  We had driven past in hundreds of times and I originally wanted to have our wedding there, but it's super pricy.  So I got a good deal online and we stayed there for a night and each got an hour massage! We had a gorgeous view of the courtyard and we were on the top floor so we could see right over everything and straight to the ocean. It was awesome! And..they had robes in the hotel room!! I've always wanted to stay in a room with robes, it makes me feel fancy :)  Last time we were at a nice hotel they only had 1 robe in the closet....good thing for me Brock doesn't have an obsession like I do for robes :)  We hung out with his Aunt's and Uncle's that live down there and went out for a fancy dinner. Everything went great until we got drenched by a random rain storm while walking down the pier to Ruby's! Then we came out after eating and it was all bright and sunny again! Watever.... Here are some pictures from our weekend!



So that's what's been going on so far in our lives.  Our next project is trying to slowly take my grandma's house that I live in out of the 60's and into the current time frame.  We already finished re-doing the lighting and fixtures in the bathroom and next we're going to paint and spruce some things up.  Nothing major, just updating a little here and there.  Wish us luck! :) 

-Heather



{insert funny title here}

Wow! Forgot I wrote this... this was actually last week (1/18/11) but I guess I just saved and didn't post it...hm! well.... here it is anyways :)

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This weekend was a much needed and used for resting and cleaning.  Our house is a disaster and both me and the hubby are sick :(  I started cleaning and then started feeling really bad so then I took a shot of DayQuil, and took a nap.  Afterwards I felt refreshed and ready for more cleaning.  I have this weird quirk that I acutally love to clean, but I have to get into my mode, and once i'm in it...WATCH OUT!! I'm a cleaning machine. It was also my first weekend at home with this new lifestyle diet plan thing.  It was tough, and I didn't do that great, but better than I normally do. My hubby wasn't feeling up to cooking anything fancy like he normally does on the weekends so we decided to go out to dinner. He suggested Olive Garden (which I LOVE but he doesn't so much) so that was a treat in itself, but then we got there and they had a wait of...get this....1 hr and 20 minutes!!!! You don't keep a hungry girl from her pasta for that long and not lose a limb for it, so we decided to try Outback steakhouse instead. We walked right in and grabbed a seat.  I looked at their menu options with the idea in mind that I wanted to eat "better" and they had a "make it light" option on the menu.  I wanted the filet with wild mushroom which sounded sooo yummy! It came with mashed potatoes and fresh veggies but it said it could be "made light" but I curious to see exactly what that meant. Smaller portions? no sauce? so I asked the waitress and she said the make it light option isn't worth it because they take everything off and it's just the filet and veggies....hmmmm...not so good.  so Brock said "why don't you just get the meal the way it is, but only eat half of it and then save the rest for tomorrow" DING DING DING!!! that sounded like a good plan.  So I ate my filet with mushroom sauce and it was DELICIOUS!!! I skipped dessert but I did have a Mai Tai (woooo...CrAzY! :) )and it was a perfectly satisfying meal.  Now I need to just re-adjust my thinking as to maybe not taking stuff out of my diet, but just more smaller amounts of it.  My first step is cutting down the amount of carbs I eat and adding more veggies and fruits.  I see a bright future ahead :)  Peace out!

Diet is a four letter word

So as part of my resolution to lose weight, I am really taking this seriously. I'm trying to learn new ways of eating that are both healthy, inexpensive, easy to make, and most of all tatstes good. I have a friend in the office that recently revamped her eating habits for healthier ones and she's lost a lot of weight and looks really really great! I picked her brain a little bit on what she eats and decided to try some for myself.

She said she loves black beans and tomatoes as snacks and then tries to add some protein and veggie to all of her meals. I used to not like beans at all (texture thing) but now i've been able to eat them and tolerate the texture a lot more so I was looking forward to trying these black beans. She brought in a sample and it tasted really good!! That night, after my workout, I went to the grocery store on my way home to grab some black beans, tomatoes, and any other vegetables I knew I liked to see what all I could make. She also told me how she makes omelettes in the mornings with lots of veggies inside so I wanted to try that too.

I got home, and my husband Brock was very confused as to why I all of a sudden had a craving for black beans, or even any kind of bean at all! I told him what happened that day and he got a little excited to see what we could come up with. We had some Mahi Mahi in the freezer from Costco, and so we decided to cook that, and put it on a bed of sauteed spinach, black beans, and tomatoes. It took a little longer that I thought, but it came out REALLY yummy! Who would have thought that I, little miss pasta and bread, would like a true vegetarian meal with no bread, sauces, or BUTTER! haha. We topped it off with a glass of milk (not part of the diet I was given, but it fit just right and brought out even more flavors!) and it was a truly satisfying meal.

Brock also showed me how to make an omelette and we put it in the fridge for me to eat the next morning. That will also be something i'll probably start making more. I just need to figure out how to make it exactly how I like it. The one we made was a little oily, so I think I just need to either not put so much "stuff" inside of it or maybe only use 1 whole egg and 2 egg whites to balance it out.  Either way, I was soooo full that I had leftovers to bring to work the next day for lunch!

That night for dinner we had some stew that we love to make that had chicken broth, diced tomatoes, artichokes, chicken, mushrooms, and some pepper which we usually serve over cous-cous. Since i'm trying to cut back on breads, I didn't eat the cous-cous and just had the stew.  It didn't tase as good (obviously!) but, I knew it's what I wanted to do.  It was really hard though to watch Brock savour the flavor when I knew how it was SUPPOSED to taste...ugh! I'll appreciate it though this summer for sure! :) 

So my next step is to take a page out of the book from my friend Muffy, who is all about slow-cooker recipies.  I'm going to look for some veggie stews or concoctions that I can make the night before and have ready for me the next morning.  With all the driving, gym-ing, and errand running I do, it'd be nice to just walk in the house and eat. *sigh* anywhoo....until next time my friends :)

My TV stole my wallet...

It's come to my attention that I have an infatuation with infomercials. EVERYTHING looks great and I can't imagine we've all survived without our snuggie's or Magic Bullet's! Here are some of the things that are on my I "Can't live without" right now list:

Magic Bullet:

It slices, it dices, it even makes cocktails! With this handy chopper and recipe book I can be the best quick chef ever and make multiple meals with a snap! At least according to the magical tv :) I think anyone who has a busy schedule should get this or if you want to eat healthier by adding more fruit/veggies into your diet without the tastes you may not like. Only thing holding me back is that it's a little expensive. but I think i'll be investing soon :)

The InStyler

It makes you look like you've walked out a salon EVERYDAY!! lol....okay so that might be a little over the top but it still seems pretty convincing. After asking the almighty Facebook panel about it a lot of my friends said they either have it themselves or know someone who has it and they raved about it. It's supposed to polish you're hair using a rotating iron and a bristle brush Kind of like when you go to the salon and they blow dry your hair while using a bristle brush (which apparently is physically impossible for me to do on my own) this styler has the same idea but with a straightener. It's $100 but some people said it only lasts a couple months and then breaks. I guess it all depends on how you use it and if you try to slam it down or something, but I have some coupons that might make this purchase a little less painful :)

and then of course.....

The snuggie!!! If they had a pink leopard one i'd be ALL OVER that!!!! It really looks comfy especially when i'm watching all my shows in the other room that my hubby can't stand (i.e. anything on the Style network or HGTV) I know there are some patterns online that allow you to use whatever fabric you want to make your own...if I find one, you know what everyone will get for christmas next year!!! :)

Those are just a few of the things on my list for now.... other ones include more home improvment type things and of course beauty products. We'll see which ones I actually end up buying. :)