A Week of L-O-V-E

Family. Home.

We decided to do something a bit different this year for Valentine’s Day.  Instead of making it just one day we decided to do something for an entire week.  We like to call it , “Our week of LOVE!”  I know it sounds cheesy but it’s a nice build up to the big day and it’s a playful little treat.  We will start the week out on Sunday prior to the day. To make it fair,  I have chosen the even days and Jeff will be the odds, then we both do somthing bigger on the actual day.  I know I’m excited to get this little adventure started, I just hope Jeff is too!

I promised that I would share some of my ideas for this year when I shared my Christmas present for Jeff as a V-Day present.  There seems to be such an influx of ideas this year that it is making hard to decide what to do.  No matter the idea, choose what you want and make it your own. I won’t divulge exactly what I am planning on doing for my handsome husband, but I know I will be borrowing some ideas.  Jeff edits all my posts so maybe he might get an idea as well. Wink, wink!

Cards Ideas

• Here are a bunch of DIY card ideas.  I personally like the one with the matches the best.

• I’ve loved you for ____ days!  This is a free printable card for your  love.

• DIY Scratch–Off Card

• Unconventional DIY Cards

Easy and Inexpensive DIY Ideas

• Make a manly bouquet

• Last minute printables

• 52 Reasons I Love You

• 25 DIY ideas here.  I love the succulent and the puzzle (above).

• 14 Days of Love

• Fruit with a loving message

• Cute ways to say “I Love You”

• Show your love with a Sticky Note (or a lot of sticky notes)

• Decorate for V-Day

• DIY Heart Garland

Make a Sweet Treat

• Red Velvet Brownie Hearts- my mouth is salivating just looking at that picture!

• Mini-Heart Cookies

• Red Velvet Heart Cake

A Few Ideas for the Kids or Your Adult Kid

• I totally want to do the nerf gun thing.

• Cute food treats or little surprise ideas for the kids or you kid at heart

• Make some heart mini-pizzas

Like I said, so many ideas and these are only a few of my favorites that I found and pinned.   No matter what you do, just do it to show how much you appreciate the one(s) you love.   Make it fun and make it your own.

xoxo

<3 mk

Planning for V-Day

Home. Family.

A year of dates

It’s only few weeks away and I am planning for that commercial holiday we call Valentine’s Day.  Personally, one should always let that special someone know how wonderful you think they are year round, but Valentine’s Day can push one to go above and beyond.

I'll let you in on what Jeff and I are doing this year for V-Day another time, but first I wanted to share what I had done this Christmas for Jeff, in hopes you can get your stuff together and possibly do it for your guy or gal for this February 14th. 

This Christmas we expected to be all about our new daughter Cora, but our plans didn't turn out that way.  Jeff and I had always talked about making sure that as parents we wanted our relationship to be strong because that's the cornerstone of a family.  I actually had planned to do this gift earlier this summer so even though our original plan A (Cora) didn't happen as expected, it didn’t mean we couldn't include it in the plan B.  Being a strong couple is just as important even if Cora is not physically here with us.

A year of dates isn't my original thought and I'm not going to claim it as my own.  I've seen this idea quite a few times with different interpretations.  I did however make it my own with dates that fit our lifestyle.

To start, you need to draft your list of dates the recipient would actually want to go on; dates at home, dates in town, and dates that require a day out of town.  I also didn't want to force us into having to do these dates on specific months so I left the timing totally up to us or the expiration date on the gift card.

Below are some examples of dates that were included:

• Blind wine tasting at home - No need for a designated driver.  We have a wine tasting kit we used, but brown paper bags with numbers work just as well.  I have been on a Zinfandel kick so we tried a few bottles.  Jeff always likes the most expensive, but I actually chose similar to him this time. 
•  Mad Libs in Love - This was a fun little game to play as well.  I remember doing this when I was younger and putting in all sorts of dirty words.  Now as an adult, it wasn't as taboo. 
• Spa massages - Massage Envy allows you to print right from their website.
• Massages at home - Massage oils and massage bars from Lush
• Dinner out at a nice restaurant - I used Groupon and got a great deal for a local restaurant we like.
• Husband and Wife Quizzes - I know what you are thinking…quizzes?  Honestly Jeff and I laughed doing these quizzes on New Year’s eve.  These are low stress and a good way to remember stories from when you first were together.
• Gift card to the local beer store - We frequent there for tastings and grab a beer after a long week. 
• Personalized boxers - I made a pair a long time ago using iron on letters and realized that pair was not doing so well.  A replacement was needed and no I will not tell you what they say.
• Scratch off World Globe - If you're world travelers, this is a really cool gift to get. 
• Movie date gift card with a box of his favorite candy -  We don't often go to see movies so I figured this would motivate us to see something on a larger screen.

A Year of Dates wrapped up in a bow

All the gifts were numbered in separate envelopes designating the order of opening. I wrote a personal message in each about the date and why it was chosen.  The first envelope (#0) explained how this gift worked.  If any of the envelopes had corresponding presents, they were also marked with a little number to match the envelope. 

Gift #5 that went along with envelope #5.

I decided to do brown butcher paper to wrap all the gifts and found envelopes with matching cards at Hobby Lobby.  I learned to make gift bags for each oddly shaped present here. It is super easy!

Overall, this gift took time and some imagination, but Jeff loved opening up each envelope and gift.   Showing him that I put in effort and thought is what he likes the most.  He told me that the anticipation and mystery was the most exciting.

So what are you doing for your special someone this year?  Maybe a year of dates might remind your special someone how much they mean to you.

<3 mk

Seafood Chowder

Food.

Since the new year, I have been doing my best to down size.  We honestly live in a very minimalist household, but I tend to stock up a lot on food, including frozen food.  I have this irrational fear of being hungry and having nothing in the house to cook. 

OK, back to the point of this post, recently I have been making meals using what I have in my freezer and ran across frozen seafood mixture from Trader Joe's that I had bought the last time we went on a major food trip there.  The bag contains a mixture of small shrimp, calamari rings and bay scallops. I am sure at the time I had a major plan for it, but it had escaped my mind. The recent gloomy weather requires something warm eaten with a spoon, so I went to searching recipes that I could use with this seafood mixture.

Pasta with a seafood (like this) always is my usual choice, but my husband is not much of a pasta fan and I would ultimately be the one finishing it off.  So, I and my thighs, decided against it and started searching for seafood chowder recipes, not that a cream chowder is any better, but you understand?

There are a lot to choose from, but I ultimately decided on this one because  I had all the ingredients I needed already.  Remember that irrational fear of being hungry?  It's actually helpful.

Picture courtesy of Movita.
 I'm a bad blogger and took no pictures. Hunger was in charge.

I actually followed the recipe as precisely as I could except for a few adaptations.

1-  I used the thawed seafood mix (shrimp, scallops, calamari) instead of the fish and the lobster.  Next time I will add the lobster because you know it will take this recipe to another level.  

2- I added some sliced crisp bacon pieces that were left over from that morning and crumbled them on top. 

Follow the directions! Simmering at low is helpful to keep the seafood from getting chewy.  The next day the chowder was really better, but we had so little left it was hard to share.  I had made the chowder before noon and we actually ate around seven PM.  It had plenty time to sit and get all those flavors to develop.

If you are planning on making this for a group, double the recipe.  What I made was barely enough for just the two of us.  

Enjoy!

<3 mk

A New Year

Have you ever tracked yourself while running and it shows your pace in a graph at the end?  If you are runner, you totally understand the screenshot below.  Well,  I realized after I was running yesterday, that my pace was similar to my 2014 year.    The line (my life) gradually got better and better and then towards the end there was a really big dip.  It's crazy how one can make analogies with anything.

What can I say about 2014…it was mostly good?  The year started off with us finding out we were pregnant with our Cora in January.  Gradually increasing in excitement with all the hopes and dreams getting more realistic as her due date in early October got closer.  She grew and so did I.    Then suddenly without warning, there was a huge dip (the runners cool down) and she was gone on September 23^rd.

The only thing that I can think about making life better is to keep on that treadmill called life.  I need to keep moving and growing because yes, there will be dips, little ones, big ones, and very unexpected ones.  I keep on having to realize that there will be bad days, but try to remember that the good always outweighs the bad.  So this year I'm not setting a resolution; I'm not going to set something that may or may not be done.  I am going to try to make my day better because feeling bad just isn't something that I want to feel. Cora would not want her mother feeling sad all the time.  

I know my friends from work will laugh at me for this, but the phrase that keeps going through my head is what I hear every morning at school, “Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours.”  It's funny that I have heard it every morning for over a year and half, but never realize how true it was until I really listened to it.

So, let's make the 2015 year a great one because it really is up to you!

<3 mk

Home Made Bold and Spicy "Cereal" Mix

Food.

For many years now my husband goes away for what I call a “geek fest” conference in Vegas.  His biggest complaint is that the snack food is totally expensive in the hotel, but he always ends up buying it because he's hungry.  So the logical thing to do would be to just buy the snacks and bring them with him to have on hand when the munchies do set in. No, I decided to make the said snack of choice as it would be “special”.  Plus, I'll make it without the worm-like crackers which he calls filler.

Bold and Spicy chex mix is awesome!  Salty and crunchy with a little kick, a perfect snack food.  Trying to remake this  snack was easy, but it took some tweaking to get it to the right level of bold and spicy.  If you want more bold and less spicy, feel freed to modify as you please.

3 cups corn cereal

3 cups rice cereal

2 cups bite size bagel chips (use any flavor you choose)

1 cup oyster crackers

1 cup pretzels

6 T melted butter or butter substitute

4 T Worchester sauce

1.5 t garlic salt

2 t cayenne

1.5 t onion powder

1/2 t MSG powder (optional)

Preheat the oven to 250.  Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine the corn cereal, rice cereal, bagel chips, crackers and pretzels in a large bowl.  In a separate dish, mix together the melted butter, Worcestershire sauce, and all the spices.  Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and mix.  It is helpful to use a bowl that has a lid and shake it until the entire piece combine.  Spread onto the parchment lined baking sheet.

Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.  Let cool before storing in an airtight container.

As stated earlier. Feel free to modify as you please with the spices or even the crunchy ingredients.  I tried to stick with the original ingredients, but you can add in nuts or rice crackers, etc.  Enjoy!

<3 mk

Easy and Quick Rack of Lamb

Food.

Source

In an effort to clean out the freezer, I made this rack of lamb last night.  Organizing and cleaning has been my thing lately.  Maybe its the summer break, but I am also equating it to nesting (25 weeks today).  Jeff loves lamb and we bought a bunch from a local farmer - one of the perks of living near farms.  I forgot that we had this beautiful piece of meat in the freezer until I cleaned it out.

The name of the recipe truly explains it all, The Laziest, Most Delicious Rack of Lamb.   It really is super delicious and very easy / "lazy" to prepare.  Jeff was not a big fan of the paprika / pimentón as much as I was so next time I will substitute it with fresh rosemary.  Seriously...what goes better with lamb than rosemary?  I served roasted rosemary potatoes along side with a nice red wine, so I heard.

A few hints...

- Use a good meat thermometer.  Jeff received the Thermapen instant read thermometer for Christmas last year and it rocks. Its a bit pricey, but totally worth it.  What else received 700 5 star reviews on amazon?

- After cutting the potatoes for roasting, put them in the microwave for about 8-10 minutes.  It will partially cook them and lessen the roasting time in the oven.

I needed to share this recipe as it was that good, but it was gobbled up before taking any pictures.  It did look just like the pictures right from the source.

Enjoy!

<3 mk

Simple DIY Pipe Shelf

Home. 

Simple DIY Pipe Shelf

Industrial pipe shelves seem to be popping up everywhere. They are on sale in stores for big bucks and there are tons of DIY ideas to make your own.  When Jeff and I were finishing our basement, we were going for the industrial feel so what better of a project than a shelf made from pipes.

Many of the ideas have numerous levels and can get a bit intricate and time consuming.  We didn't have the space or need for a large unit yet, so a single shelf was made. 

Supplies list:

• Iron pipes
• Pipe flanges
• Pipe caps
• Pipe brackets (they hold the shelf to the pipe)
• Metallic spray paint
• Lag screws or serious drywall anchors (not recommended)
• Pine panel - ours was 16" x 8' ($23) but they cut it to size 
• Polyurethane

Pipe, flange and end cap for simple pipe shelf

When purchasing the piping, we needed the shelf to be 18" in width, as an audio receiver is going to sit on it. The pine was 16", but we planned on keeping it a few inches away from the wall so wires could go behind it. The hardware store sold the pipes pre-threaded, but it was much more expensive than buying the pipe by the foot and then having an employee use the pipe cutter and threading machine. The employee may try to sell you on the pre-cut and threaded pipes because it's time consuming for them to cut and thread the pipes.You'll save quite a bit more this way though.

Test fitting pipe flanges for shelf

Test fitting board on pipe shelf

Prior to painting, we used a mixture of rubbing alcohol and water plus steel wool to remove as much grease and grime as possible from the pipes, of which there was a ton.  You'll need to do this so the paint adheres properly.

We also applied a coating of polyurethane to the pine, but it doesn't show very well in the pictures.

Putting the shelf together is very straight forward, especially our single level design.  Make sure to attach the flanges to the studs in the wall, or your drywall may be coming down with the shelf!

Simple industrial DIY pipe shelf

We got the look we were aiming for and the shelf is not only serving its purpose, but it is also appealing to the eyes.  No matter the type of wood and number of shelves, this project is a sure winner for any DIYer.

P.S. - More on that gym later!

<3 mk