Kale-laluia

Okay.

I love kale.

I should say that I've had kale before. Mostly kale chips, or a few handfuls of kale in a smoothie. Never have I had fresh kale before, until today.

We slept in a little this morning. Bed just felt REALLY good. Once we got up, we were pretty hungry. Kevin wanted bacon and coffee for breakfast - such a manly meal! I decided on something a little more....clean.

This is usually what my kitchen looks like when I'm cooking. Laptop on counter, ingredients scattered all over the place. This morning's recipe was adapted from one Tracey put together over at Shutterbean. 

It's pretty simple. I just took half a bunch of kale, removed the hard parts of the stems, and tore up the leafy bits and washed them. 

Then for the dressing: 

- 1 clove of garlic, minced (okay...maybe a little more than a clove....I like garlic)

- 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil

- 1/8 teaspoon of pepper flakes

- pinch of salt and pepper 

I finished up by adding the juice from half a lemon, and about 1/4 cup of pecorino romano cheese. Once I mixed the dressing in with the kale, I let it sit for about 5 minutes. I took it as an opportunity to make a little fresh juice by just throwing two carrots, two peeled grapefruits, and a peeled orange into the juicer with a little knob of fresh ginger. 

Let's just say this recipe is a winner! It's sort of like a caesar salad, but more savory. The kale is so delicious and hearty, and I could just about eat the dressing by itself. Try it, I know you'll love it!

Brand New Year

I can't believe it's 2013. I was making some delicious carrot-grapefruit-ginger juice this morning using my fancy new Breville juicer (a lovely Christmas present from my sweet in-laws) when it really hit me that the new year is here. It was a good Christmas; cozy, warm, and full of time with family. I go back to work on Monday, which has given me lots of post-Christmas time to do some shopping, do some organization projects around the house, plan for our new kitchen (hooray!), and pretty up my desk a little bit.

I'll be the first to say I hate the idea of new year's resolutions. I don't know why it rubs me the wrong way. I say if you want to resolve to do something, just DO it. Don't wait until January 1st. That being said, though, I always like the idea of a fresh start...365 days where anything can happen.

So despite the fact that I don't like calling them new year's resolutions, here's a little list of things that I'm going to try to do over the course of the next year!

Be More Thankful

I love a good Thank You note. I feel like we're such a society of texting and super-quick phone calls that I always feel so special whenever anyone takes a minute to hand-write a sweet thank you note. So yesterday while I was out running some errands, I stopped by the cute stationery section at Target and picked up some cute (and discounted!) thank you notes and blank notecards.  I can't wait to sit down at my nice clean desk a couple times a week to pen a little "thanks", or just a note to say hello. I also stocked up on a few of my Papermate Flair markers (I'm so picky about what I write with!)

Another thing I'm going to try to do is keep a little journal. Not the kind of journal or diary where every aspect of every day is recorded. Just a line or two a day about what I'm thankful for on that day. I've done it every day so far, and I think it'll be fun to look back at the end of the year and see how blessed we are.

Read More

I've been off the wagon with my reading. I'm a pretty fast reader, and I always love a good book when I make time to sit down and enjoy one instead of watching tv. So I've decided on at least 1 book per month (actual books, not the ones on my Kindle), and I even stacked them up on my desk and numbered them.

A few are titles I've read before, but love dearly. A few are books that have been on my mental checklist of books to read for a while: Grapes of Wrath, Anna Karenina, Jane Eyre. I'm excited to get into them! As soon as I finish reading the David McCollough bio of Theodore Roosevelt, I'll start on my first book on the list (Anna Karenina)

Stay Organized

I've done a lot of organizing projects over the holidays - I want the clean and tidy-ness to last as long as possible!

Take care of myself

Take my vitamins, drink more water. Be more careful about what I eat, and get the sleep I need.

Take time to enjoy little things....

Sip a cup of chai, enjoy a glass of fresh-made juice, cook an especially nice meal for dinner, give myself a facial, walk the dog at sunrise/sunset. There are so many things that I just miss out on because of how busy and hectic things get. The week flies by, and weekends go by so quickly. Time to slow down a little and enjoy the small stuff.

So what are your new year's resolutions? Anything special?

Adios Microwave!

Let me start off by saying I love being in my kitchen, cooking and baking. I will love it even more once we start re-doing our kitchen, which is a little lopsided. The cabinet doors are all a little crooked. Some of the drawers require a little encouragement to open and close without sliding off their tracks. The genius who put the kitchen together in the first place opted for white counter tops, which show absolutely everything. Every speck of dust, every drip. Everything. I can't wait for those to go.

We just recently (a few days before Thanksgiving week) got some lovely new appliances, which I have been loving! A new French Door refrigerator (it has a water dispenser in the door! I love it!), new stove (that has a window on the door, AND an oven light! My old stove was really not fancy), and a new dishwasher that is SO quiet that I sometimes wonder if I remembered to turn it on. 

But the one appliance we didn't get? A new microwave. As a matter of fact, we ended up donating our microwave to Goodwill. I never used the darn thing except to make the occasional batch of popcorn or to melt some butter, and you know what? I don't miss it! It freed up a huge amount of counter space, and it prompted me to look up a YouTube video on how to make popcorn on the stove top. 

Let me say, it's totally delicious! I just grab a little saucepan and melt a little butter while the popcorn is popping. You can even get fancy if you want and add some taco seasoning to your popcorn for a little extra flavor. Powdered Ranch dressing mix is pretty tasty, too.

All this to say: I don't miss our microwave at all!

Have you ever considered getting rid of yours? Tell me about it!

Pretty Cheap...

I'm just going to go ahead and tell you the title is totally a pun. This is a post about cheap makeup that's also awesome. Get it? Pretty Cheap. Pretty. Cheap. My co-worker Paul would be laughing right now if he were reading this. He loves a good pun as much as I do.

If you know me, you know I LOVE Target. I think it's great. Maybe it's the fact that I grew up in Canada, where the shopping options are kind of limited, especially if you didn't want to pay a fortune. I love the fact that Target has cute clothes that last a long time, fun home decor stuff, and that their store brand products are pretty darn great.

I had never tried their E.L.F. brand beauty products (eyes, lips, face) until a couple of weeks back when Kevin and I were in Target and this caught my eye:

I love Essie nail polish - they have such cute colors - but at $7 a pop, it's a little pricey. So when I saw this cute little set of 14 nail polishes for $10, I grabbed one. At about 70 cents a bottle, the polish is really nice, the variety of colors is great, and they even have a few glitter polishes in there. 

Anyhow, I was in Target last night picking up a couple things, and popped by the beauty area. I love a nice bright red lipstick, but haven't really been able to find a nice shade that doesn't come off whenever I sip my tea, or eat something, or have it end up on my teeth when I talk (very attractive...). Anyhow, I picked up the E.L.F. Matte Lip Color in Rich Red (below, far right) for $1, and it is fantastic. It goes on smoothly, you don't need a lot, and after a few minutes, it's set! I applied it this morning at around 7:00 and after kissing Kevin on my way out the door, a cup of coffee, two clementines, a few ginger cookies, a bowl of soup, a ginger ale, and a whole lot of talking, it was still in place. The color is awfully pretty, too - just a nice red, not too blue, not too orange. I did apply a few dabs of Smith's Strawberry lip balm mid-morning and mid-afternoon, but it's pretty dry in my office, so you probably won't have that problem. 

So if you're out shopping for Christmas and find yourself at Target, grab a couple of these! So pretty, and so worth the $1 price tag!

Struggling...

Some days you get up and basically cruise through the day like an 80's rock star wearing a leather jacket with a popped collar. Other days you just sort of make it through. 

Today was not an 80's rock star kind of day. I was struggling today in a BIG way.

Kevin and I got back Saturday from being on a fantastic week-long cruise. We had so much fun, and really got a chance to relax (the couples massage really helped....warm vanilla oil, hot stones....what's not to love?). Since we got back though, I've been in a funk. Maybe it's the fact that we were gone for a whole week. Or maybe it's the fact that it was relatively fall-like when we left, but came back to decidedly winter-y temperatures. Maybe it's because it felt like summer everywhere we went, and all of a sudden we were home putting up the Christmas tree. What?

Maybe it's the fact that the minute we got Ruby home from Kevin's parents house, she turned into a total basket case. She was trembling, and when we put her inside to unload the luggage from our car, she bolted and made a very impressive attempt at running away. Picture me sprinting down the street in our neighborhood yelling after her, totally panicked that a car would hit her when she got to the main road. I did catch her, and hauled her unwillingly into the car that Kevin had come after us in. I spent the rest of the evening worrying about her, and trying to coax her to eat french fries from our drive-through Wendy's dinner. Yes, trying to feed them to her. It took a good half hour before she'd even look at the people-food I was begging her to eat. 

All day today I just felt like I was suffering from a huge case of post-vacation depression. What do you mean I have to get up before 6am? Why is there not a fluffy stack of pancakes sitting at the breakfast table waiting for me? 32 degrees outside? Surely you must be joking. Why is our delightful waiter not anticipating my arrival to the dinner table with my preferred wine, and several plates of fresh steamed lobster? I'll have the chocolate melting cake for dessert. What? Make it myself? What is going on? WHERE IS MY PINA COLADA?

On the bright side, I'm starting to get excited about Christmas. Our tree is up and looking lovely (note to self: water Christmas tree so it doesn't look like Charlie Brown's by December 25th), and we had our first glass of eggnog last night (added a little splash of bourbon, and a little sprinkling of nutmeg and cinnamon). Kevin wasn't a huge fan, which just means one thing: more for me. 

Now time to buckle down and get our shopping done!

My Husband

I hope I never lose this feeling of wonder that Kevin is my husband, and that he loves me so much. It's amazing to think how much has happened since we got married, and this coming Tuesday marks our second wedding anniversary. I still remember everything so clearly, from the way he looked when I met him, to how he looked when I married him. I remember the little butterflies I felt when I was getting ready for our first date, and I remember how quickly I felt at ease as we wandered around the Marietta square, eating ice cream (chocolate for me, rainbow sherbet for him) and talking about Quentin Tarantino movies. I remember how quickly I fell in love with him, and how in awe I was of God for being so faithful to me, for hearing my prayers, and for everything that happened in His perfect plan so that Kevin and I found each other.

I'm so grateful for his love for me, and for how strong and kind he is. He challenges me, makes me want to be better, and makes me want to be the best wife I can. He protects me and fights for me. He comforts and encourages me. He makes me laugh every single day, sometimes to the point that I'm afraid I might pee a little from laughing so much.

My husband is the best.

Happy almost-Anniversary Kev!

Big Girl Problems

Do you ever find yourself going about your day, performing some perfectly normal task, when all of a sudden, you realize you're [insert your age here]?

I had that moment the other day. I was in the kitchen in the evening, and I was cleaning up and thinking about a nice dark smoky blue color for our kitchen when we re-do it soon. All of a sudden, I realized "I have a kitchen", which was quickly followed up with the thought "I have a house". I have a house. Kevin and I have a house that we own, and we live in it, and it's ours. Whaaaaat?

I have a house. And I'm married to an awesome guy. He's literally the smartest person I know, besides Sheldon Cooper (and let's face it, Sheldon is fictional, and also irritating). We have a dog who is really adorable, and has mostly stopped chewing stuff up. How did all this happen? Also I can drive. I vividly remember being so young, and thinking that driving seemed like this awesome responsibility, and it just seemed so complicated and stressful. I drive now, and there are days when I drive the whole way home on mental-autopilot, as if it's a habit like brushing my hair or folding laundry - something that you do out of muscle memory. I can drive. When did this happen?

I have a 401K. I always wrinkle my nose a little when I say that. Weird. Having a 401K feels decidedly grown-up, but not in a fun way.

There are perks to being grown up, though. I can rock glitter nail polish with grown-up outfits. Pretty high heels are super fun. Being at the grocery store and just having the realization that you could just fill your cart with Pilsbury Cinnamon Buns, SmartFood popcorn, and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese if you wanted to. You don't, but the knowledge that you could is pretty fun if you think about it. Realizing that people telling you what to do has been replaced with people giving you advice, which you can decide whether or not to take. Bourbon is a fun grown-up thing, too, especially if it's splashed into ginger ale. Did you run out of ginger ale to go with your bourbon? That's a big girl problem.

I think all of this getting older just blows my mind because in a lot of ways, I still feel like the 9-year-old version of myself. Still 9, still really into Barbie dolls and Disney movies, dreaming of someday owning a horse, and reading Anne of Green Gables and Little Women over and over and over again.

Some things don't change. I still love feeling cozy, and hanging around the house with pajamas and fluffy socks on. I still love a good cup of tea with honey in it. I still daydream sometimes that I'll have a horse someday (or at least ride a horse someday, preferably one that isn't super-pregnant and trying to bite me while I ride it). I still read Anne of Green Gables and Little Women at least once a year. I think I might like Disney movies more now than when I was 9.

Still, though, it's a good life, it just goes by so dang quickly! I really really need to slow down a little and enjoy it more, because before we know it, we'll be older, and maybe have a little one, and life will go by faster and faster and then I'll be 60. I'm sure more things will happen between the age of 27 and 60, but given how fast life has been flying by lately, I wouldn't be surprised if it just feels like I blink, and I'm there, scooting along in a walker and grumbling about those kids on my lawn with their new-fangled contraptions and how everything was simpler back in my day when we had Hulu and Steve Jobs was still alive.

Here's to slowing down a little (or a lot) and enjoying the things in life that really matter.