Steak and My Garden

I love warm weather.  I have been looking forward to grilling season since it ended last October.  My new home has been much better than my last place for staying warm indoors, but the weather outside has just started to cooperate.  I'm sure it'll snow on us one more time once we're comfortable, but for now I'm going to enjoy as much outside warmth as I possibly can. 

Today I enjoyed the weather by grilling some steaks.  I love meat.  know it's considered a manly thing, but I can't help it.  I love meat.  Today Tom marinated the steak for a while before we grilled it.  It was heavenly.  Here are some pictures.

Look closely, you can see the smoke.  Mmmmm... grill smoke.

You may be thinking, "Hey! this looks like what a first grader would do if you told them to do something cool."  Well... that's why we work with first graders.  We get it.

In other news, it's time for all the gardening posts.  If you've been following my blog or my life at all, I am sure this comes as no surprise.  Obviously, we can't garden the same way we did last year.  We don't have a backyard.  We had to leave behind our square-foot gardens and our trellis, but that does not mean I am not growing things.  I am.  They make me so happy.  When they grow, that is.  When they droop it makes me droop, too.  I'm still a little worried about our tomato.  Compared to our tomatoes from last year he looks a little gloomy.  Our peas look great.  I'm not sure about the asparagus, I've never grown it before.  I'm already using the dill, cilantro, and basil in things.  Mmmm.

Strawberry, beans, asparagus, tomato, peas, and kale.

Cilantro, Basil, and Dill

Movin' Along

You can always tell when it's my week to write in the blog.  "How is that?" you ask?  Well, my week usually turns into 3-4 weeks.  We've got some pretty stalwart rules for writing in our blog.  When it's one person's turn to write, the other person is not to write a blog post instead should they miss a week.  What this does is create a hanging sense of guilt for not having written for weeks that eventually turns into the blog post you're reading now.  Lovetta's not nearly as wracked with guilt as I am.  She's usually much quicker about taking her turn to write.  Regardless, it is my turn, and my turn I shall take.

About two weeks ago, we had a wonderfully stressful time moving our whole department for the second time in a semester.  The first time, we were moved out on to the textbook floor while they were remodeling our area.  The second time, obviously, was the move back after all was said and done.  I have to say that it looks great!  I have a whole series of transition shots from start to finish, but I'll just try to show you a good before-and-after idea.

So, while this is what it looks like after we stripped everything out, you can still get an idea of what it used to be.

Here is roughly the same view (from a little farther back) once everything got put back in.

Before

After

Before

After (again, from a little farther back)

Before.  See the slightly curved, white wall with windows?

After.  It becomes this cabinet and the wall was straightened out.

There are a lot of other things I'm leaving out, but this gives you the gist of what's been going on at work.  We've pretty much been planning this moment since before I got hired back and we're now starting to enjoy its completion.  It looks great and is pulling a lot more customers in.  We're happy with all of the changes.

On Lovetta's side of things, she's started her own blog without me.  It's probably cause she's tired of waiting for me to post. OR, it's based on her artwork.  One of those two things... Anyway, you can click this link to get there.  It has most of her pieces of art on it (including her new Altered Book), and gets more regularly updated than this blog does.  You should check it out! :)

Art and Stuff

I have been doing some art lately, I just haven't been posting it because it's been gifts for people.  Now that I have given some of these gifts away, I can post them here.  Here is my wedding gift to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.  (It's an oil painting)

Here is a picture I drew for one of my friends.  (Prismacolor)

I think the color turned out much better in real life, but you get the idea.  I have also been working on an oil painting to donate to the Festival of Trees.  Last year, Tom and I went and saw paintings there, that's what gave us the idea, but I can't find anywhere online that mentions paintings.  They have regulations and rules for what you can donate, so now I'm not sure.  I've been emailing the people on the website about if a painting can count as a "centerpiece or collectible", but no one has replied.  I hope I do get to donate.  I love Primary Children's Hospital, and I think donating this painting could be therapeutic for me.  Even if I can't donate it, I think it will still be good for me.  But, I don't think I'll post any pictures of it yet.  It's not finished. 

I've been feeling a little under the weather lately.  I hope I don't have to take work off.  I hope I can sleep and wake up in the morning feeling perfectly healthy.  I will say, though, times of sickness make you appreciate times of health much more.  When you notice every uncomfortable swallow, you can't wait for the swallows you don't have to think about.

We <3 Cooking and Food

So, before I really go anywhere with the actual topic of this post, I have to make the following common-knowledge statement.  Any time you go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, it is mandatory that you sit in the back massage chairs.  That is all.

Alright.  Lovetta and I really enjoy going on cooking and restaurant adventures.  Our latest restaurant adventure took us just down the street to a place right next to WinCo. Foods called Asian Panda.  Their home page honestly describes them best: "Comparable to PF Chang’s but with a sushi bar, better prices, and NO WAITING."  The place is so new that when we showed up, we were the only people there.  It was a real shame, honestly.  The food was really, really tasty!  Imagine PF Chang's quality, definitely enough portion for leftovers the next day, but only $10 a plate.  No more feeling like you overpaid for food.  The sushi was $5-10 a roll and I suppose not half bad.  We're not really sushi people, but we ate one and found it intriguing.  Sushi-loving people would probably like it :D If you like Chinese you should go check it out now while they're running their Grand Opening specials.  Buy 1 get 1 50% off!  Our total bill came to $15 before tip.

For cooking adventures, we went on a shopping trip desperately searching for a dough hook for our Kitchenaid mixer.  Most mixers will come with these, but ours was a special Black Friday version that didn't get one.  This adventure took us all over town (including a trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond).  Ultimately, we ended up at Macy's where they told us that the only place you can order replacement dough hooks, wire whisks, etc. is directly through Kitchenaid.  Boo.  At least we got a soft pretzel out of the adventure.

The reason we wanted a dough hook so badly (for which we are now waiting on delivery) is because we wanted to try our hand at making some Focaccia bread.  As you saw, we went to California about 2 months ago and tried out a slew of fun restaurants with Lovetta's sister.  There was this one super-delicious Italian restaurant called Mama D's.  Holy moley that food was good, but what made it awesome was the little free bread appetizer they give you.  It was this amazing focaccia bread that they served with olive oil and some herb combination on the side.  We must have eaten like 3 or 4 servings of the bread alone it was so delicious.  Ever since that moment, we'd decided that we're going to learn how to make that bread.  Yesterday was that day.  We found a good recipe in our America's Test Kitchen cookbook.  We overbaked it just a tad (still getting used to our oven in the condo), but it was goooood.  Traditionally, we've had some spectacular failures regarding getting dough to rise, but actually were quite successful with this bread.  We'll try it again and next time take some pictures of it for y'all to see.

Happy Valentine's Day!

How Entertaining

My birthday this year was one of the best birthdays I can remember!  My mom and dad hosted which was awesome because my mom is a great cook and I didn't have to do dishes after the party.  My mom made a very artistic cake and a lot of my friends came.  Pictures don't really capture how much fun it was for me, but here are some anyway.

In other news, Tom and I purchased an entertainment center with some tall bookshelves.  I love bookshelves.  They make me happy.  I'm not really sure why.  You can see on our TV one of my favorite video games of all time.  Perhaps because it's so ridiculous. Plants vs. Zombies!  If you haven't heard the song, you really should.  "I know your type: tall, dark, and dead.  You want to bite the petals of of my head, then eat the brains of the one who planted me here..."  It will give you something to sing in the shower or when your baking or in the middle of class (although I wouldn't recommend that last one, your students won't know what's going on.)

Slowly we are making our new home feel more like home.  Next, we'll hang our paintings and picture frames.

School is going well.  We are participating in a month-long read-a-thon.  I volunteered to help at our kick-off activity.  I was in charge of a crossword puzzle station.  It took a lot of time because the point of the activity was to read, so I typed up text to go with the crossword puzzles.  The idea was to read the text then do the puzzle.  It was effective most of the time.  It was interesting to see how some parents basically did the puzzle for their child, but some parents wanted their child to do the work.  I think teaching has made me more inclined to encourage the child to do as much as he/she possibly can.

I'm enjoying teaching science these days.  We're doing a unit on the 5 senses.  I think it will always be fun to guess what's inside a bag just by feeling it.  I made a PowerPoint jeopardy "guess that sound" game. That will also be fun once I finally have time to do it.  Science is not the most essential thing to do in a day, and I always plan more than I actually do.  I'm sure I'll do this one soon, however, because I'm excited for it.  That always helps.

If you know anyone in our area looking for a TV or entertainment center let me know.  We are looking to get rid of our old ones.

Sweet Glorious Vacation

So, Lovetta and I just got back from a California Christmas vacation with our friends Rob and Lisa. We spent the first part of the trip at Lovetta's sister's place in southern California. It was nice because we got to spend some time on the beach and Lovetta got to have her art all-nighter.

The downside to the beginning of the trip was that we came in right after a gigantic storm, probably the biggest the state has seen in some time. What did that mean for us? We didn't get away from the cold very well :( For the entire week and a half we were in California, we only had maybe 2 warm days. So very sad. The beach also had ridiculous amounts of seaweed and dead sea creatures sprawled everywhere from the extra high tides.

The remainder of the time after Christmas was spent in northern California for my brother's wedding.  We spent a lot of our time prepping up to the reception.  We set up this beautiful tent kind of thing in the gym at the local church.  I wish we had pictures of it (I'm sure some will show up sometime in the near future from someone).  They also had this neat photo booth and props set up for guests to take their pictures.  Here's a few that we took.

All in all it was a great trip.  However, after so much time spent driving in a car (at least 30 hours), we're glad to be home now :D