What we got cookin?

Here are a few things we've made over the past few months.  I can't say enough, it's just FUN to cook and try new things (as long as it's not too complicated or too time consuming).  We do well in the kitchen together.  Even when it is so small.  (This past weekend I was able to spend some time in a modern kitchen, with even a dishwasher!!!, and I just can't wait to have one of those to cook/bake together in one day)  Below are some shots we took, and hopefully I can remember what each one was.  If you want the recipe, most likely it's on my pinterest page, oh how I love you pinterest!
1) Okay this one below isn't a new dinner, haha, it was just a fun meal outside at a park.  BLT and relaxing on a Sunday afternoon, yay!

 2) Lemon Garlic Spaghetti (minus the pine nuts, we didn't have any that day, but does include our home-grown basil, and below are our recently picked basil branches that we leave like that to keep it fresh longer... basil yum!  Good easy meal.

 3) Coconut Lime Chicken - has some curry flavor too, we'd definitely eat again.

 4) Coconut Chicken Curry - I've been in a real curry mood, so this was our next attempt at curry.  A lot more like curry than #3.  It was delicious!  Potatoes included.  Definitely smelled the house up for a week though.

 5) Spicy Chicken Ravioli & salad - YUM!  We've had this twice already.  The sauce is marinara and alfredo mixed with a little kick of red pepper, chicken, peas, add whatever else...  It's great when you have a little left over pre-made sauce to mix together!

 6) Stuffed Peppers (with sausage) - Also YUM!  This was so good and we had 2 meals all made.  The sausage probably sold it fully, but we'll definitely be making again when we have extra peppers on hand.

 7) Corned beef & Potatoes - This was a first for us!  We cooked it in the crockpot and it turned out great after about 8-11 hours on low.  I just love corned beef (not just St. Patrick's day) and on sandwiches too so we needed to try it since we had the beef on sale after the holiday.

 8) Okay here's some veggies from our pot garden.  Missing the basil (above) and cilantro (died early).  We've been adding these to salads, homemade salsa, etc.  We've actually made home-made salsa 2x - the best!

 9) Chicken Ticka Masala - I may have made that name up.... oops!  My friend Megan gave me this recipe and we just LOVED it.  It really didn't take long, and didn't smell the house up for a week.  But it does us a TON of spices, so we'll run out soon enough if we keep making this!  Broiling the chicken that has marinated and then making the sauce.  Next time we'd throw in some potatoes/veggies and thin down the sauce a bit.  (not on pinterest)  But it was great even w/out the fixes.

10) Honey Mustard Baked Chicken - I so wanted to take a picture of this, but we had to eat it as soon as it was done (we were running to church meetings) - and it was DELICIOUS.  One of our new favorites!  Check pinterest, the picture shows it all.  Basically chicken dipped in honey mustard dressing and then breaded in corn flakes and baked.  Yum!

Okay that's it for now!  Any good recipes?  Send them our way!!

Bedroom & Office Updates

Just have to say, I'm getting a few of my 2012 "to do list" or goals done.  Yay!  We found some furniture for our bedroom, agreed on it, and purchased over the last month or two.  David even negotiated the price down on our dresser since we had a budget to stay within.  We didn't buy the bed or the dresser at the same time, but we lucked out because they are pretty much exactly the same color of dark wood.

I'm learning a lot about interior decorating and colors and how NEXT time I'll start our bedroom update.  We found a picture for our bedroom first and that's what I've been basing a theme or color off of, but then we weren't lucky at finding a duvet in blue like we wanted.... and of course if you've decorated a room I'm sure you know how the issues tend to come up.  Or maybe its just me and how I stress about wanting everything to look good etc.  And on a budget, I'm just not as good at pairing different clearance items up and making it all "work".  We went basic this time.  Finally it dawned on me, we just need a duvet cover so we can use the comforter we got - and we need furniture so we can stop living out of plastic tub drawers...  We hadn't planned on living where we are for as long as we have, so living w/out most bedroom furniture was working for us.  But since our timing changed, we have the opportunity to get some furniture.  And someday I'll be able to add more and change the duvet and drapes and start over on a new look and feel.  And so I'm not as stressed because before the pressure was on to find the perfect bedroom stuff so that we could have it forever.  The silly stress that I add to my life and make such a huge problem.

And one other thing I can't take for granted - David is so supportive even with my silly stresses.  When I go and take 100 pictures of duvet's, curtains, sheets, decor - he looks at them all with me.  And when he finally heard that I could live with the cranberry/wine colored duvet - we drove straight to the store to get it that night (even during finals week! so if he failed, it was my fault i guess).  And then he's also learned of my buyers remorse and can help me get through and it and eventually like the things we bought.
Here's the room so far....  We still have curtains to get, nightstands, and some cute pillows to bring it all together, but for now I'm happy.  And I'd like to paint the room, but maybe we'll save the painting for the next home whenever that comes.

And then we also updated our office, thanks to Ikea!  We checked out a ton of bookcases and eventually went with the one below.  Practical and we have a little room to grow, yay!  David put it all together one night and we had it all filled within 20 min.  I guess we have a lot of books :)  We're still organizing it, but so far, we're happy.

4th of July

For the Forth of July, we packed our Wednesday full!  It was actually very refreshing to have one day off of work mid-week.  Most everyone at my work took the days before or after the holiday off, so I had extra time to catch up from all the busyness.  It finally started to slow down at this point.

We followed our tradition for this day, mostly, as below...
1) Murray Parade - this was great!  It was extra hot this year, but we enjoyed Jeff announcing and hanging with the Evans and kiddos.  I was able to hold Izzy for awhile :).  And we invited our favorite Clark crew, Jon & Annie + kiddos.  So I got lots of Sophie and Sam time too!  It was fun watching the kids watch the parade.  But really I forget each year how the parade is mostly about the free candy that comes flying into the crowds.  And if you're lucky, you just might get nailed.  (Poor Sophie did and I tried to save her even!) My favorite are the jeeps that drive on top of each other.  My least favorite was some random entry, a spook house, where all the half-dead bloody crew came walking (very slowly and spread out) down the  parade.  And they were in costumes such as the statue of liberty, with blood, or some of our founding fathers, with blood, gore, etc.  Random!  And really odd with all the kiddos wanting candy and then they see (or get distracted so they don't see) this!  Anyway, here's the crew below:

2) Next up, we ran home and had 2 hours to chill before a few BBQ's (Evans & Clark)  While David chilled, I really wanted to get this Fourth of July craft done!  I started like Monday, and had 1/4 left and finished it in the two hours.  And proudly hung it outside right then and kept it up all of July.  I'm pretty proud, and think it looks awesome for my first yarn wreath!  The hardest parts are not being o.c.d. about the lines and also just wrapping the yarn around and around with the yarn ball going each time too.  Didn't think that one through totally.

3 & 4) BBQ with Evans and BBQ with the Clarks - one right after another!  David was volunteered to cook the beef so, as he was wearing khaki pants, they got totally covered in meat grease!  (Luckily I used dish soap, then baking powder, and more dish soap after dried, and its not visible, yay!)  We ate what we could and then headed to my in-laws to repeat the BBQ.  David kept eating, while I just snacked a little.  We brought our suits and swam with the kids in the "pop-up pool" as I call it.  (Its the 5 foot on top of the ground framed pool).  It was interesting, but after awhile I didn't think about it being dirty and just had fun playing with the kids.  There were too many of us in there but we got a good whirlpool going so that was fun.  Didn't get pictures of these...
5) Lastly we came home, watched a movie, and instead of watching the Murray fireworks as usual, we just stayed home, did a few sparklers, and watched the fireworks from the street.  We were so exhausted from swimming and the sun all day, we just needed a rest....  Below is my cute Davie.  The first was an attempt at a smile, but our camera is a little slow.  The next I really love, showing his silly side as always :)

Happy Fourth of July everyone!!!  (even if I'm a month late... ;))

Grad dinner date

Graduation dinner date - a little late :)

Mid June I took David out to dinner for our own family celebration of his great accomplishments!  Yay David!!  Here we are at Rodizio Grill - yum!!

It was fun getting out together!  Also I gave David a few things for Graduation, mostly food or future eating out as he wished to get Sushi :)  And then David was sweet and got me a little present too, it's below.  He said we both were graduating.  What a sweetie.

Lagoon with work

Continuing the blog posts somewhat in order...

Before the work craziness hit hard, June 13 we went to Lagoon with my work!  Actually the work was just at the beginning of busy, so it was nice to have a break from all our worries.  And Lagoon, for all the non-Utahans, is just a local amusement park.  As I walked through the park I couldn't help compare to the infamous Disneyland or Six Flags and continued to ponder why Lagoon couldn't step it up a little bit?!  But we decided to enjoy what we had and flocked with all the pre-teens at the park that day (or Moms and kids would be more appropriate if we had hung out in the kiddo section).  I don't remember myself being one of those teens to just be at a park with friends causing havoc, loudness and annoyance... but I'm pretty sure I have lost those memories, so who knows!

The one thing I was excited for at Lagoon was the "Rocket" that shoots you up or drops you down depending on your preference.  We did both, several times :-)  We also did a few roller coasters and walked off feeling dizzy and light headed.  Am I really getting that old?!?!?  I will say no and stand by my thought that Lagoon rides just aren't up to par with the bigger theme parks that we all love.  I think I'll just have to go try those "real" parks sooner than later huh? wink wink...

Above is a far off picture of the rocket (in white) and us taking a picture from the air chairs.  I think some people consider those air chairs as rides, especially the teens in front of us who were trying to bounce all through the ride and cause us to bounce too, so not cool.

Here's the awesome picture that one of my co-workers emailed to me the day after.  We didn't know anyone was below snapping a picture as we were flying up and down, but I am VERY excited to have it!  Those of you in a small 1-2 person family would understand how hard it is to get pictures of the both of you, besides the ones you take with the arm showing in the bottom corner...  I always want better pictures.  Thanks random co-worker for finding us on that ride - how it could have been construed a little odd/creepy, I'm not going to think about that.  Yay look at us!!

And another of our favorite rides below... the swings!!  Cute David...

After a quick dinner with the work at a pavilion, we headed back out for a few more rounds of the rocket, spook houses (and I was totally jumpy) and then to the old country town area.  We found the log ride (smaller version of Splash Mountain) and had fun going down that in a log all to ourselves...  And didn't really get too wet!

While in the old town, look what David found?  It's a huge tooth outside of the old Dental office in the "country" of Lagoon!  A definite sign for him/us, right?!?!?!

Oh Lagoon, even though I'm not as fond of you and made fun of you a bunch - I shall visit you again someday.  You're all we have close by.  Just remind me early on not to venture on the roller coasters as much for my little queasy stomach may not handle it.  Next time, just the rocket over and over. :)

Gardening & Weeding

Months ago, early Spring, we did some gardening.  And we hired David's little sister Brooke to help do the weeding with us.  Well, she brought 2 younger siblings so we had a whole crew helping us get our yard back in order.  It was great to have their help, and also fun to have them over just to hang out.

Since May, we had some sort of fertilizer all over (thanks Grandpa!) but we did get a lot of weeds right back!?!  But the flowers/plants are still going strong, except for the Cilantro which only lasted 6 weeks if that much!  But we still have chili peppers, basil, cherry tomatoes.  And then for the plants we have a few flowers and then hostas that we planted in the other bed a few weeks after this one event.

Below is the during and after pictures...  Don't worry the siblings wanted to be tossed in the trash.  We were running out of room and they got it back down. :)

The crew attacking the trees after the weeding was done!

David teasing his siblings, me just planting...

Finished results - flower bed, 2 spice pots, and no more weeds/trimmed trees