iPhoto = my new love

Have I ever told you that we're a mac family? I've used mac computers since I first had enough motor skills to grasp a mouse. I grew up playing battleship on my dad's trusty mac, learned typing with Mavis Beacon and Mario, and penned my first great novels with the program Imagination Express. 

This morning I looked over and saw my macbook, Jake's macbook pro, and his iphone sitting side by side and knew we were committed fully to macs. As if there was ever any doubt...

One program that comes with your mac is iphoto. I've used it for years but with this blogging stuff, have taken the photos to a whole new level. All these fancy bloggers I read talk about using photoshop and I got a little jealous. I'm not about to shell out the big beans for that though. Then I remembered something about little ole iphoto - the "adjust" button. After playing with a few things, here's a before and after:

 

This is a picture I took of All Saints Chapel on Sewanee's campus during Camp 2 of camp this summer. All Saints is a special place for many people. For me, it is where our camp evening prayer service is held and always is a great night to worship.

Update on pizza rolls

I blogged a few days ago about my pizza rolls. Since then, Jake and I went back and tried the recipe again since we didn't get many at the party and had extra makings. 

This time, we added slices of pepperchinis to the filling and red pepper flakes to the top. I recommend the upgrade. 

 

Project Kitchen: Idea board

I spent my snow day and sick day obsessing over our future kitchen - it is a new hobby of mine. I just love a good project! I gathered these pictures to try to express my vision for the kitchen. After meeting with the architect and getting firm plans in hand, I cant wait to move forward with this project. Here's what I've got:

Starting in the bottom left corner and going clockwise:
1) black matte counters (maybe granite, maybe not)
2) cream cabinets
3) black matte finish pulls for said cabinets
4) square oak wood table for the corner banquette
5) lighting for above the banquette - with black mini drum shades
6) stainless appliances with black accents
7) mini pendant light with mini black drum shade for above the sink
8) ikea fabric in my four kitchen colors for the banquette - cushion and pillows (I'll make)
9) spode baking days dinner ware (I've got the red serving pieces) as accent 
10) my kitchen colors, based on the curtains from the den: blue, green, red, and yellow
11) two toned cork flooring in a diagonal pattern
12) ikea floor rug for kitchen
13) track lighting through the kitchen

The kitchen will be painted the same koi pond color by sherwin williams as the den but we may end up choosing a slightly lighter cousin of koi pond - same idea, just lighter. 

The banquette will be painted a dusty cornflower blue. 

**Most of my pictures came from Home Depot's website or IKEA's website.**

Make this: Prosciutto Wrapped Pickles

How could these ingredients above change your life? Well, if you're a pickle lover like me, you use them to make prosciutto wrapped pickles. I made these for our super bowl party as well. The recipe comes from Jake's neighbor who made them for our engagement party. I was definitely the guest of honor hovering over the food table eating pickles during my party. Wait, that was me at our reception too, except with fried pickles that time. My receiving line? The buffet. 

So these pickles - no action shots due to the fact that Jake took off with his phone (how dare him!) and I've been using that lately as my camera. Here's the final product:

A little messy, but it was my first time making them. I'll perfect the art of making them next time. In the mean time, they sure tasted good (even if it is tacky to say so about your own food). Here's the basic instructions:

Ingredients:
Whole Pickles ( I used Claussen dills)
Cream cheese
Worcestershire sauce
Garlic Salt (I didn't have that and used onion salt and garlic powder)
Prosciutto slices

1) Make your cream cheese mixture - do it to taste. I did a small tub of cheese, a few squirts of sauce, and a few shakes of garlic/onion. Nothing exact...
2) Let the cream cheese mixture sit for a bit until it is room temp (easier to go on the pickles)
3) take your whole pickles, make sure they are dry (easier for the cream cheese to stick), and put the cream cheese on the pickles (a layer over the whole pickle)
4) Wrap the prosciutto over the pickle
5) Slice the pickle

We served on a football place since it was the super bowl. We got a lot of awesome presents from our wedding and one of our many favorites is our football serveware!!!

An early morning gift!

Jake and I woke up at the same time this morning (which is rare since he is on school schedule of staying up late and waking up for class) because he was scheduled to have a med school interview this morning. While I was getting ready in the bathroom, drudging my way sleepily through my routine, Jake was getting up and making coffee. All of I sudden, I heard his voice: "um.... are you sure you're going to school this morning?". I had thought vaguely last night about the possibility of snow, a gut feeling, and had looked at weather.com only to be disappointed. Isn't it funny how it works out?

After finding out that my school was closed and Jake's interview was off, we hung around the house for a bit and then decided to go savor the snow. The guys were a bit thrown off, because Memphis rarely gets any snow, much less about 4 inches. In some places they couldn't even walk!

We had a nice walk around the neighborhood. I took some pictures along the way...

Now I'm spending my "found time" playing with ideas for the new kitchen. Let's just say I'm pretty excited. And should be spending my time in more productive ways!

 

Make this: Pizza Bites

Ever since Annie of Annie's Eats  posted these pizza bites, I've been wanting to make them. I had a similar idea in my head for the New Year's Eve party we hosted but we had so much other food that they got cut from the list. When Annie posted these, I knew I needed to make them. 

Here's the original recipe if you'd like specific instructions. I'm a sort of fly-by-my-pant's-seat (or however you say that phrase) type of gal when it comes to cooking so I have approximations and generalizations for this recipe.

Ingredients:
Pizza dough of your choice
cheese cubed of your choice
pepperonis
olive oil (EVOO)
italian seasonings
parm grated

1) Take the pizza dough of your choice (we used pillsbury's canned as seen above but if you were really excited you could make your own) and lay it flat. cut squares that are about the size of bathroom tiles (3 by 3). 
2) stick a pepperoni, cheese cube (we used colby jack), and pepperoni on the square (stacked in that order). 
3) fold the pizza dough over the stack
4) stick pizza balls in a cake pan/pie pan seam side down
5) brush with EVOO, sprinkle seasonings and parm
6) cook at 400 for 20 minutes **ours cooked faster than that so watch until they are golden brown on top

Here they are in the oven - we had a little extra dough so Jake made a giant pizza bite for himself:)

These were a HUGE hit at the super bowl party we went to - they were gone pretty quickly and we should have made more. 

Exterior.

Currently, here's the front of our house....

My inspiration for changes to our house comes from a blog called Urban Nest. Our house sits in a neighborhood of bungalows and I'd like to let our little ranch fit in a little better. Obviously we can't change the structure, but if we could change the overall look a bit, it would be great. Here's my inspiration:

 What I'd like to do is listed on this idea board below:

 I'd like to:
1) Get a new front door and security door. The security door will be glass paneled and the front door wooden. Paint them both the same color (like the inspiration picture), preferably that Kiwi color. 


2) Replace our wrought iron columns with white wooden ones, with or without the handrail. I do like that the inspiration house's handrail stayed wrought iron. We could use that...

3) Put shutters on our window to the left - black shutters. 


4) Take out the boxwoods, which are too tall for our house and make it look shorter, and put in some small shrubbery

5) Tear down the vinyl siding on the porch. There is wood siding underneath. Paint it beige. 


6) Lounge in rocking chairs or something similar. Relax.

I'm a GLEEk.

Friend and blogger extraordinare Mollie Morgan posted in her gossip blog (which I prefer to TMZ now as my go-to gossip blog - TMZ focuses too much on d-list celebrities) about GLEE open auditions.  Ever since Mollie mentioned that she was putting together an audition video (btw, Mollie - I think you should totally market yourself as the hippie nerdy chick, they don't have one on the show yet), I've been thinking about it. I am seriously obsessed with GLEE. I love the vibe of the show, it is set in a high school (um, my life...), and is all about singing. HELLO, totally me. 


I've been thinking about what my character on GLEE would be if I had one. I decided today in the car that I should submit an audition video and market myself as the student-teacher that comes in and ends up falling in love with Puck or Finn (I can't decide which... too many good lookin' options). Can't you just see me doing a duet cover of the Colbie Caillat and Jason Mraz song "lucky" with Puck? I've had the serious itch to sing lately. 

This is the outfit I wore to school today - a student told me I had "swag." Could I be a member of the cast of Glee?

Make this: Pizza Sauce

Jake and I love pizza. We eat it entirely too often. Sometimes we get it from our favorite local pizza joints (Garabaldi's, Little Italy, Memphis Pizza Cafe), sometimes from a delivery place (Pizza Hut thin crust or Papa John's regular), but sometimes we make our own pizza. 


We try to switch things up when we make our own pizza. A few pizzas ago, we made one with a pesto sauce. Last time, we made a Chicken Ranch pizza with a (you guessed it) ranch sauce. Tonight, we went for the straight and narrow and made a pepperoni pizza with a traditional sauce. We used to buy jarred pizza sauce but had been opting to make our own lately. We had been using a combination of diced tomatoes, olive oil, minced garlic, and italian seasonings and that was working quite well. 


For kicks, we tried a new sauce. This one is out of Cook's Country, a cooking magazine my parents got me for Christmas. It turned out to be quite good and really didn't require much. Additionally, I wanted to review a new product I bought. So here it goes:

I know this picture is slightly revolting but that is why I wanted to post it. The excrement looking goop is the product I reviewed below. 


Pizza Sauce:


1 8oz can of tomato sauce
3 tblsp of tomato paste
2 tblsp of fresh basil*
2 tsp of dried oregano
1 tblsp of sugar


Mix it all together. Preferably in a bowl. Put on pizza crust of your choice. Top with some pizza toppings. 


And now for the product review, my * from the recipe: 
*I wanted to use fresh basil but had two issues. First, the freeze killed my dad's basil plant. Secondly, I don't like chopping basil and this was a weeknight meal. So I tried out this tube of basil from the grocery store, which cost about the same as buying the nice pre-packaged basil leaves from the same section (about 2.50$)

You use the same amount as you would of the fresh stuff and while it looks like goo, it tastes excellent. And you just squeeze. No chopping necessary. It keeps in the fridge up for a while, I think up to 6 weeks?

For those who are curious, here's our final product. We shredded our own cheese for this one, using a Monterey Jack and White Cheddar combination. Oh and tip for you all - if you're buying pepperonis for your pizza making adventures, the ones in the pack are expensive and we don't use them all before they go bad. We started getting a container from the salad bar and putting enough pepperonis for our pizza in it. They weigh by the pound and I think these pepperonis cost us like .13 cents or something. I'm just sayin'. 

By the way, for those who have been keeping track of me on facebook, yes I'm still spinning. Keeping it up! I went straight from spinning to cooking dinner tonight and took my shoes off in the kitchen. Tyson clearly was offended. Either that or interested in what deliciousness was growing in my sweaty shoes. Yum!

Make this: Basic Brownies

I received a copy of an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from Jake's mom. I was perusing through it the other day and found a recipe for fudge brownies. I realized I had everything on hand and was snowed in, so I thought "what the heck!". 


Here's the recipe, in its original fabulous form:

I say basic in the title because they are truly that - your basic brownie. Don't expect flashy toffee chips here, no this is the real thing. The result is simplistic fabulousness.