Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Good in The Kitchen

The Hubbs got me an early birthday present and I am totally in LOVE with it.


If you've been following me on Pinterest you would know that I've been pinning these industrial shelves like crazy.


To be more realistic I've been drooling over them.
Obviously it's lacking some styling. 
I'm thinking of hanging a green chalkboard over the shelf. 


I want the shelf to have a farmers market feel.




 These baskets will be great to display all of our fruit and berries and make them more accessible for eating.  

Monday, January 28, 2013

Playing Dress-Up in the Kitchen


The kitchen in our rental home was one of the most enticing attributes when we were looking at the house. Everything about the kitchen was pretty fabulous. I loved that everything was white and clean looking. I especially loved the large windows!
But OH, the mini-blinds. I don't love mini-blinds. However the rental market is severely lacking listings boasting of plantation blinds ;) 
And I'm very capable of making the most of it. 


I recently added
faux roman shades, curtains and a folding table with a faux linen skirt. The counter/folding table between the refrigerator and dryer was not present when we moved in. So, to remedy our little awkward space we added the extra countertop and it gives our kitchen so much more OOMMF.


What do I mean by faux roman shades? I mean they don't work, they are not functional. I just wanted them to appear to be roman shades. They hide our drawn up mini-blinds which, I love. I also added hand painted curtains to either side of the window, however I think they are just there for the mean time. I really want to use teal as the accent color in the kitchen and these are a little TOO green for me.


As for the folding table skirt, by faux linen I mean $10 drop cloth from Lowes. I used the same one to make the roman shade.
(Did I mention I was cheap??)


         Eventually I want to add some little square white pots for my herbs, right now their black plastic containers aren't cutting it. My Mom "says" she got her cute ceramic square pots at Walmart, however I can't find them anywhere. Not even online. I've google "square white flower pots" in many different orders and can't anything even remotely similar.... needless to say I'm not sure I believe her :) So, If you see any...tell me where they are so I can buy like 20 of them!

A Little Bit About Life.


It finally happened.
I finally reached the day where there were no clean cloth diapers.
So, this morning as I gathered up my child and went to Bible study I neglected to hang any cloth diapers out to dry..... you know where this is going don't you...


Well, lucky lucky me, my boy had a poop-splosion on our way home. As I ran around frantically gathering up any cloth diaper parts I could I thought to myself that this was a very dumb situation to find myself in. However, I found two diaper inserts so really how bad could it be.


Most well-meaning people who read this would probably try to give me some sweet advice like "you should keep disposables around for emergencies" to which I would scoff and think "If I wanted to buy disposables I wouldn't be using cloth diapers"....
But people the kid is 7 months old in two days and this has only happened once, so I'll take my chances.


By now you're probably wondering what I did....well I'll tell you.
I went through my drawers to find some panties with the most coverage, stuck the diaper inserts in them and knotted the panties on each side to hold them on. 
This is Life. 







Friday, January 25, 2013

Skinny Chinese Take-out, Say What?!


One of the things I really miss about the east coast is that there seems to be a sketchy dilapidated building on every corner serving delicious chinese take-out. one of the best things about these gourmet dining facilities  is that they all have the EXACT SAME MENU.
Seriously. No matter if you are in Petersburg, Richmond, D.C. or even the good ol' NYC they all have the same take-out menu and they pretty much taste the same....I said "pretty much". Well here in good ol' Kansas this is not the case, there is no chinese take-out. The closest one is like 30min away, and guess what? They will not deliver to my house, surprise, surprise.
As a lover of asian food this is especially hard, so we make it a point to drive the 30 miles to the nearest hibachi place every few weeks. However our sweet little town is going to be home to a Panda Garden in March. Can I get a WOOT WOOT?! As you may have guessed, I am going to be all up in that! ( Also I saw the menu and to my delight.....it was the same as the chinese place down the street from my parents house, in Va. So maybe it will taste the same, Fingers crossed.)
So anyway, back to what this post is actually supposed to be about....
Not only do I like to eat asian food. I like to cook asian food as well. When I was a senior in high school I went on this crazy asian food cooking kick. I came home from school and I would cook eggrolls, and fried rice and general tso's. It was delish and thank goodness for a fast metabolism, just sayin'.
I still cook a ton of asian food, which isn't surprising since I am part asian....I had a Korean roommate in college, so that counts right?
No? ok.
Well, the other night I had a serious hankering for some General Tso's, however the Hubs and I do like to eat healthy and light especially on work nights since he has to be up at zero dark thirty doing jumping jacks. I had it..... Skinny General Tso's Chicken and Fried Rice Quinoa. BTW it was thebomb.com.
So here it is people!



P.s. This is a picture of some of the specific items that I mention in the recipes.
Also, the asian seasoning is REALLY good for stir fry and any chinese food, I got mine at TJ MAXX (LOL) but here is a link for where I know you can find it . 



Skinny General Tso's Chicken
2 chicken breasts
1 TBS asian seasoning
Ty Ling Naturals or some other General Tso's sauce
olive oil/non-stick spray

Preheat oven to 375*, and cube your chicken. Spray non-stick spray in your baking dish, add chicken, toss with asian seasoning cover with foil and bake until juices run clear. Half-way through baking ( just eyeball it) uncover your chicken for the second half of baking to let all your juices evaporate. When the chicken is done remove it from the oven and coat with some of the general tso's sauce. Set your oven to broil. Cover a baking sheet with foil and broil until your individual pieces of chicken get little crunchy edges. Remove from oven and coat with as much sauce as you want.
*Notes*
I used the Ty Ling's sauce because it is lower in sugar and carbs than homemade sauce or other store brands. also, broiling is super important, since you are not breading and frying your chicken, broiling provides the slight necessary crunch.

Fried Rice Quinoa
1 package of quinoa or about 2 1/2 cups cooked quinoa
2 eggs
1 cup chopped onion
2 cups chopped nappa cabbage
1/2 cup choped carrot
1 TBS minced garlic
Salt 
Pepper
1TBS soy sauce
2 TBS Kikkomon Stir fry Sauce
2 Tsp Asian seasoning
non-stick spray 
1 TBS butter

Cook your quinoa according to the package directions. Let it cool to room temp. Heat a skillet and add non-stick spray, add onion and carrot, cook until tender. Add garlic, mix well. Add nappa cabbage and cook  until cabbage has wilted down. Pour quinoa into skillet and mix well. Add salt, pepper, asian seasoning, stir fry sauce and soy sauce. Mix well. Push the mixture to one side of the skillet. Melt the butter and scramble two eggs in the open side of the skillet. After you have scrambled the egg mix well into the quinoa and serve.
*Notes*
Quinoa is a great source of protein. With the recent studies about rice being naturally high in arsenic and the FDA encouraging people not to eat it as much, we have switched to quinoa. Also the butter is entirely optional, if you want to get really skinny with it.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Grayson's Favorite Things!

Grayson has a few new favorite things...
1. Growling
2. Being Growled at.
3. High pitched fake laughs....



Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Something New at T&F


In the past few weeks I've decided to add a new facet to my Etsy store....all things G-man!
Right now there are two items, just things I've made for him and got a lot of great feedback on from the general public. And of course I am using the boy as advertising... Who could resist that face?!







Anyway I just wanted to update and encourage everyone to drop by the store.
Alright, I'm off to make skinny gener Tso's chicken and fried rice quinoa.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

A Glimpse of Christmas...

It is the middle of January and I have yet to post anything regarding our christmas holiday in the east. This is mostly because ever since the day we returned we've just GOING non-stop!
We have tons of pictures and memories to share from our travels but I just wanted to share a few pictures today of our trek in D.C.












I have to be honest, walking around this city did not feel the same as it once did. It once held such a sense of importance for me. I felt as if it was a place that safe guarded my rights as an American citizen, and since I was so close to D.C. and tried to frequent it as much as I could in the last few years I lived in D.C., I felt that somehow made me important too. Now looking at these beautiful, regal buildings all I could think about are those freedoms and the individuals doing everything they can to tear our constitution apart. Although my heart was saddened by these thoughts, I did what I could to block out those feelings and absorbed all the Christmas decorations with my boys :)



Saturday, January 5, 2013

You Got Paint on the Rug.

You may remember a dining room design board I blogged about a few months ago that included a certain Trina Turk rug....
This rug was soooo unattainable for sooooo long!
One of the main problems with her rug is that it is only available in 3x5 and that is too small for my dining room and even at 3x5 it's $160.00.....so I don't even want to imagine how much the size I needed would be, nor do I even want to imagine spending that much on ONE rug.
But around the same time I found that oh-so-perfect rug I also found a couple of blog-ladies who were talking about painting their rugs. So, like all good lemmings I got the things I needed and decided I would make my own. 
I chose this lovely like white cotton flat-woven rug from Ikea.
it's called ERSLEV.

The first thing I had to do was measure and tape off all the areas that needed to be left white and seriously this was the worst part of the whole process. It would have been slightly easier if I had made a mock up in blue a white, instead of trying to process it all as I went along.




The next part was the easiest. I picked my paint color.. Valspar's Pink Burst and mixed it with textile medium I bought at Hobby Lobby and went to town rolling the paint on my rug.


I was so excited to finally put my rug down after it dried.



And I am really excited about the way it turned out! It looks great in ur dining room and totally adds the pop of pink that we needed!




Come Join The Party!







House of Rose