Small Pleasures

These days my life is all about some of life's small pleasures (my TV shows, recipes, reading for pleasure and so on) but I am thinking about two in particular at the moment - they involve haircuts and yoga pants.

Yesterday afternoon H and I returned to a salon we'd also visited in late November, in order to get our hair cut once more. I really like the girl who does my hair at this place - I went with a shorter do than I'd had before last time, and got it revamped back to that really cute length this time. For the first time in my life I blow dry my hair on a routine basis (used to let it air dry curly) and I feel like I have more style than ever before! Now that I had it redone yesterday, I feel super cute and can't stop admiring my hair in the mirror... makes me feel so vain. :-) The salon is also nice because they have water (with slices of citrus!) and other beverages, plus a ton of magazines, in their little sitting area. H gets color in her hair and I don't, so I usually end up waiting, but it's never an issue at all because it's a nice place to hang out. H and I also finished off our outing with her treating me to frozen yogurt - which we ate *outside*. This northeastern girl cannot get over this February weather (sunny and into the 70s each day this week!).

And secondly... yoga pants. After I read d.a.r.'s blog post about her VS yoga pants a few months back, I bought myself a couple pairs as well, and they live up to the hype. Both my pairs are currently in the wash, and I am eagerly anticipating putting one pair on straight out of the dryer tonight - yes! Fresh out of the dryer or not, they are my favorite pants for lounging and working out these days, so thanks d.a.r.!

Alas, this is a bit of a wandering post, but I can summarize/end with a quick list of things making me happy today: tea, Thai food for lunch, my new haircut, anticipation of warm yoga pants, anticipation of ziti and salad for dinner, knowing American Idol is on tonight, and the fact that I will be in Chicago with KT in just over 48 hours! Anyone else want to share their current favorite life pleasures, big or small?

Getting some food photos off the camera

Well I finally got over my lazy tendencies and downloaded some of my most recent food photos, so I'll just share where appropriate!

First up, my Valentine's Day fudge. The recipe is here and I found that it was really easy and turned out really well. The fudge was sinfully delicious, a rush of sugar and chocolate in every bite. I need to wait a while before making it again, but I will return to it in the future! It was also easy to package up and give as small gifts, which was a plus.

This is my "leftover stir fry" from one night last week. I was able to use many things I had to use up, including broccoli, cabbage, asparagus, and chicken tenders. I threw in other flavors like ginger, garlic, sriracha sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, and fish sauce. The dish turned out really well, but possibly a touch too spicy. Next time I would use either jalapeno or sriracha, but not both - maybe also less sriracha. I felt good about this meal though, between using things up and making something delicious and healthy!

Oh, and on the opposite end of the spectrum from healthy... Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes! I've linked where I got the recipe to its name, so go on if you dare. :-) In this photo you are viewing the cupcake batter before it went into the liners to bake.

A view of the general chaos in the kitchen. Paula Deen is on in the background. It seemed appropriate, based on the quantities of butter involved in this recipe.

Here is the most interesting part - to add the eggless cookie dough filling, you sort of hollow out a cone shaped hole in the cupcakes. I ate way too many of the little leftover pieces, I'll admit it.

Then, you press chunks of the eggless cookie dough into the cupcakes...

And then you frost them and sprinkle mini chips on top. Wow. So good. So sinful. I was a huge fan of the cookie dough chunk in the middle. I find myself trying to eat around it and leave it for the last bite! I will probably make this again too, but also not for a very long time!

 

Last but not least, Baked Ziti (linked to recipe). I made this for the day hubby was home and it's been a great go to lunch ever since, as well! It took a lot of time to put together but it is very tasty. No complaints here! 

So those are some of the latest adventures! Dinner tonight was simple, PW's Pan-Fried Pork Chop(s) with a large side salad with a simple vinaigrette. I'm eating through my fridge before my exciting trip starting Friday!

I'm off to watch Glee and then What Not to Wear. Have a great night, all!

I Love Entertaining!

Well, maybe I should reserve judgment until the successful completion of tonight's gathering, but I am excited nonetheless. I am throwing a little dinner party for a total of 8, including myself, basically for a group of ladies I know from hubby's training. On the menu? Both the appetizer and main entree are things I've made before - Tyler Florence's Caramelized Onion Toasts to start, followed by PW's Chicken Scallopine. In case I haven't raved enough about the scallopine, I love the recipe so so much! It's fancy enough to entertain with, with accessible yet super tasty flavors. It's also not too hard to prepare, especially by doing some prep work in advance. I'll have a simple salad on the side, and for dessert I'm bringing out the leftovers of what I baked last week, both Congo Bar and the cookie dough cupcakes - which I realize I still need to blog about!

After dinner, we'll watch that trashy show we love to watch together, the one that starts with a B and ends with "achelor". It's getting really juicy these days!

I'm feeling good, most of my prep work is done, and pretty soon it will be time to get a head start on the appetizer! Mostly I am glad so many of the girls could make it - I haven't seen all of them at once in quite a while! Some of us (not me though) will probably start moving next month so this is one of our last opportunities. I'm thinking it should be a good time, and I'm sure I'll update more later.

Moving Forward!

I've been a bit MIA this week - honestly it wasn't that eventful until yesterday and today, preparing to see hubby and then spending some time with him today. I do have some reports on the sweet treats I made this week that I will share, but I'm too tired to do the photo uploading and such tonight. I'll work on that over the weekend!

Spent most of yesterday in the kitchen getting food ready, and spent the bulk of today getting ready to see, then seeing hubby, before sending him off to the next part of his training. I honestly expected it to be more of an emotional roller coaster, but I think I am just relieved that he is now as far as he is, and I feel a bit closer to done with the whole shebang. Needless to say though, spending time with him today was blissful! Makes me look forward to when this is all over with and I get to actually see him on a regular basis for some period of time, once more. I'm daydreaming about all the things to do together this spring, like take walks and do other things in this town before we move in the summer.

Going on a girls' outing tomorrow - I think it will be good to get out of the apartment. Okay fine, I'll admit it - going shopping again! But this time, outlet shopping. I'm not sure how much I will purchase but I'm looking forward to hanging out with the girls. And a week from today, I am going to CHICAGO to visit some of my best girlfriends from college, which promises to be an amazing time. I haven't seen two of them since our wedding, so it's definitely been too long! I also have never truly been to Chicago and I always hear how great it is, so I'm pumped just to be there! And yes, I realize it will be cold. No need to remind me. :-)

Alright, off to work on The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest some more before bed. Hoping to finish before I leave on my trip. I also watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind yesterday and definitely enjoyed it!

What Happened to the Meal Planning?

As many of you know, I used to religiously share my meal plan for each week when I came up with it, just to share the recipes I was finding and all that. I've found with this new "single and married" lifestyle that I'm in for a little while, I just don't need to buy as much food or worry about the planning as much. I still think ahead, because I'm working on eating reasonably to work toward a weight loss goal, but everything is on a much smaller scale, I'm constantly going through the express lane, and I constantly have leftovers to eat up! That being said, here is sort of what I'm looking at this week:

Tonight (Sunday): Finish leftovers from the last two nights of eating out
Monday: Having some of the girls over, making Baked Lemon Pasta by PW
Tuesday: Dinner here on my own - will probably throw together a stir fry with leftover veggies and chicken
Wednesday: Dinner at a friend's house
Thursday: Will probably either make myself some pasta or make PW's Pan Fried Pork Chop(s) again (H made them for me once, then I made them last week, but I still have another pork chop in the freezer!)
Friday: I will probably have hubby at home for a short while on Friday (yay!) so I'll just eat some of the large quantity of food I'm making for him

So yes, I guess what I am seeing here is that even if I try to think ahead, I always know I'll have food here I can make, with everything I've got on hand and the things I want to use up. I'm trying to minimize buying more specialty ingredients (where I can), and use what's already in the freezer, at least for my "everyday" meals.

Of course, this week is not going to be an express lane week. I realized suddenly yesterday that I have to plan what to make for hubby on Friday, and shop for that early on this week. I've decided on Baked Ziti from Annie's Eats as the main attraction, some guacamole to snack on with chips, perhaps some biscuits (hubby and I love biscuits!), and all the dessert stuff I'm making. This week I'm going a little crazy with the desserts. Today I'm making fudge, and then later on in the week I will make Congo Bar (since hubby loves it) and I also wanted to try out Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes.* Yeah... you read that correctly. It sounds so sinfully delicious that I really can't resist! I'm going to try to make them and give as many away as I can, so I will have the best of both worlds. Needless to say, there's many ingredients like butter, sugar, and chocolate chips on the shopping list this week!

*I am not sure where this cupcake recipe actually originated. Up in my post I linked to Annie's Eats since the recipe is laid out nicely there, but I originally stumbled across the idea here.

Good Times with the Girls

This weekend is taken up with some fun social outings! Last night a few of us did dinner and a movie (No Strings Attached, in case you are wondering). I hadn't been to a movie in a little while so that was fun! Today, H and I are going to the big city to go look at a big market with exotic food, a mall to take advantage of stores we don't have here (ummm can you say J. Crew and Anthro? So excited!), and then out to get Thai food for dinner. I think it should be a lovely day, though possibly damaging to my credit card. It's all good though - I don't go on shopping sprees very often at all. Spring is coming! My jeans are wearing out! I want a new purse! Oh yes, we'll see how this goes down. :-)

Not much else to share - I'm sure I'll post on what I acquire later on. For now I should probably get myself moving! Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend so far.

A Page Turner

Well, a good portion of my day today was dedicated to this thriller:

 

If you haven't heard of it, it's the second in a three-book series by Stieg Larsson, a now deceased Swedish author. I read the first one (Dragon Tattoo) this past fall, and took a break before reading this one. A friend owns this installment, so I borrowed it from her instead of having to get it at the library (where it's often in high demand). She advised me when giving it to me that I should probably place a request third one (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) at the library, because of the cliffhanger ending of ...Fire. Because of that, I have the third one in the apartment now, but with it being due in just under two weeks and the possibility that I may not be able to renew it, I felt a sense of urgency to get through ...Fire. Plus, the plot really grabbed me and I definitely wanted to know what would happen! Blissfully, today was a day with no major commitments (or really any commitments at all) and after heading to the gym for spin and yoga (good in its own way!) I was able to devote a large portion of my afternoon and evening to finishing the book - breaking essentially only for dinner and American Idol.

So, wow, it's a good read. Violent, there's no denying it, but gripping and thrilling and so very suspenseful. Just thought I'd share since it was a major part of my day today! I know after law school starts I will look back and miss the days when I had this much time to spare...

[Slight] Home Improvements

We take a small break now from our normally scheduled food posts, to spend a little time on home decor! See, my parents' visit pushed inspired me to complete one of my longstanding goals - cleaning and decluttering our two rooms that receive little attention normally, those being our bedroom and the office/second bedroom/formerly junk room. After I did that, I was reminded all over again how blank our white walls were looking, so I took a couple measures to at least partially remedy that issue. I had a ton of 4x6 frames and a bunch of printed wedding photos I'd intended to put up in the office, so I finally DID that! Then I delved into the online inspiration world of DIY home decor, and surprisingly quickly I replicated one of the inspiration projects I found in our bedroom. As hubby always accurately points out, when I am enthusiastic about a project it happens quickly, in contrast to projects I don't really want to do, where I definitely drag my feet. Is that so odd?

Anyway, to celebrate the fact that these rooms in the apartment are now somewhat presentable, I thought I'd share the improvement. Again, the walls are all white, which would not be the case in an ideal world. I'm hoping to have more color in our home at the next post, but for one year here it just wasn't worth it to paint, to us anyhow. Also, when we moved in we were busy learning to be real adults and getting used to being married, and I was "busy" (aka stressed) about changing my name and other paperwork/life transition things.

Without further ado, some photos. In lieu of "Before" pictures please just imagine... lots of clutter. That will give you a good idea of what it was like. :-)

 One view of the office. Those little clusters of photos are what I just added - it's not a ton but at least there is something to look at on the walls! 

 Our room with my little project above the bed

Close-up. I spent such a long time at the fabric store deciding what patterns to choose!

Feeling "crafty" like this is a big deal for me. Having friends like H and Lola who make accent pillows like nobody's business made me kind of excited about fabric, despite my lack of skill (and lack of a sewing machine). This was pretty easy though, it just involved pulling fabric over canvas and using a staple gun to secure it! I was just motivated by wanting to do something to spruce our rooms up a bit, and I am pretty satisfied now. :-)

So there's my post - patting myself on the back for tidying up these rooms and celebrating the little bits of added decor that make them more enjoyable for me in the remaining months here. I will have to keep reading about this decor thing so I am prepared to do some fun little things in our next place!

Weekend Recap

In case you are wondering, yes, I have the Super Bowl on right now, except that I have transferred myself to the office instead of the living room, so I am back and forth. I think I am watching more out of habit than anything - despite not being a staunch football fan, I feel like I usually watch the Super Bowl. The real reason I was excited for tonight though (aside from a new Glee)? Here it is:

NACHOS!

Nachos are definitely one of my weaknesses. This year, the Super Bowl seems to be one big excuse for me to eat nachos - what can I say? Ah well. And yes, they were as good as they look, and not totally guilt-inducing (there are black beans under there, and no meat). 

My parents' visit was very nice! Overall it was pretty relaxed, but I did show them around the area and take them to some of my favorite places to eat. Gotta love being treated to meals out when your parents are around! It was great to spend time together, and the fact that I was hosting them in my apartment was a reminder of my status as full-fledged adult. It was a new experience, hosting my parents instead of them housing me or having me home on visits! 

In other positive news, I have hubby's new snail mail address and I've been sending letters as fast as I can. I am just hoping that this time around they actually get to him somewhat quickly! I'm gonna wrap up now to go watch some more football (and other shows later!). There's also laundry to fold, fun times. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

My Parents Are Coming to Town!

I am hosting some very special guests here this weekend - my mom an dad! Hubby and I have been wondering for a while if either set of parents would visit us down here, and sure enough, my parents wanted to come down while I was on my own, so I'll get some good time to spend with them and show them around. I definitely don't call them often enough (bad habit, and they never make me feel guilty which perpetuates the habit!) so I'm glad I'll get to really spend some good time with them and have them see what life is like down here. Their original flight was cancelled (as you may know they live up in the snowbound North) but they rescheduled last night before they even went to the airport. I hope their rescheduled flight stays on track. If all goes according to plan they will be here tonight!

I don't have many specific plans, mostly showing them around town, around post, trying to mooch a dinner out off of them, and cooking for them the rest of the time. They both are all for eating healthy kind of the same way I am - my mom is actually quite the champion, having lost around 50 lbs in the last two years and getting back to her pre-pregnancy weight (from me!) for the first time since I was born. She's quite the inspiration and I use the same website as her to track my food and workouts. I think my dad has also lost a little weight and managed to stay trim - in part by ceasing his consumption of Doritos and Coca-Cola (both of which I know he enjoyed when I was younger).

Though I generally don't feel homesick for my home state, I obviously love my parents and miss them. I'm an only child so it was just me growing up with them, they gave me so much, and now as an adult I realize they were wonderful examples for being good, responsible people, and their 25-year marriage is also a great example that I hope rubs off on me. I'm grateful they're visiting me down here! It's also inspired me to FINALLY clean out our office/second bedroom and a few other parts of the apartment that have been neglected, so that feels good too!

Anyway, time for me to get some exercise in (yoga and elliptical) and then finish my preparations!

Books I Read in January

A couple of notes first off, then to the main event.

1) The weekend didn't quite turn out to be the best case scenario - long story but I ended up getting 4 hours with hubby on Sunday instead of 12, and even that he almost didn't get. All the time together still was amazing though!

2) This morning I am pretty darn sore from the fitness class I did yesterday. I guess that means it did something!

Alright, so I was thinking I'd copy other bloggers and post a little series of book reviews. I am always looking for new books to read and like to hear what others have enjoyed, so I thought I'd contribute to that exchange. In January, I read 5 books, which is a LOT for me. Consider that in 2010, I think I read about 11 books for pleasure (obviously not including my reading for school in the first half of 2010). I am hoping to keep up the same fast pace in February because there are just so many interesting books out there! Without further ado, the books and a short snippet of what I thought.

1.The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

I wanted to love this book more than I actually did. I hadn't read any of Philippa Gregory's work, and I do tend to enjoy historical fiction, so I thought this was right up my alley. Maybe it was me, maybe it was the particular book, but I at lots of points just felt like it was going on and on, and there'd be conflict, a resolution, and then it would repeat all over again. I think I just found myself thinking there were other books I could be reading, but I had to finish this one first. It just didn't grab me I suppose. I think I may try to read other books by Gregory in the future, but I'm taking a break for now.

2. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

I enjoyed this book and read it very quickly. I loved the blend of economics and sociology and loved thinking about certain things from a new perspective. I know a lot of people would probably quibble with the methodology and the "popular" aspect of it, but I found it to be a good read and I will definitely be looking for Super Freakonomics to read in the future.

3. The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy

I chose this one based on d.a.r.'s recommendation in her blog, and I enjoyed it as well. It was dark at times but it was set in WWII Poland, after all. I'm not sure what else to say, but the book definitely grabbed me and I thought it was well-written.

4. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

I enjoyed this book very much too (and it happened to have some connections to WWII Poland, weird theme developing!). I wanted to keep reading to see how the two strands intertwined with each other, as I knew they would. When it was over, it was over very quickly, and I found myself having to go back and make sure I got all the subtleties and was properly tracking what was going on!

5. How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway

This was probably my favorite book that I read in January. Maybe the connection to life as a military wife was enjoyable for me, or the centrality of another country and culture in the story (Japan), but I started reading and definitely didn't want to stop. I don't want to give too much away, but the story just grabbed me, I cared about the characters, and I definitely wanted to follow the book to its conclusion.

As of now, I am working on Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (I do love the occasional dose of Nicholas Sparks!), and after that I will be reading The Girl Who Played with Fire which should be fun as well. If there's any books you have loved lately, please feel free to comment and share, I am always in the market for new ideas for my to-read list!