how to grow stuff.

if you are looking for actual helpful information about growing things, you might as well just leave now.

anyone still here?

i guess i should preface this by saying that i am amazingly underqualified to write this post. and yet, that fact is not stopping me. nor is the fact that i am not the one who is in charge of our garden. the fact is, i know pretty close to nothing about what all is going on in the realm of things that may or may not be growing at my house. (except maybe for the mildew in the bathrooms. that one's all on me. why oh why didnt i marry a bathroom-cleaner?)

what i DO know about garden-related growing things that are growing in our house is that they are doing it in my kitchen. because apparently we have a lovely greenhouse-like window right above the sink that is better suited for growing things that it was for being home to my lovely assortment of decorative vases and bottles.

why yes, we did in fact have things planted for our garden while there was still snow on the ground. it was a rare thing around these parts this year, to have snow on the ground. but i guess it kind of helps to explain the lamp. that window is exposed to the elements on five of its six sides, and its not extremely well insulated, which means that when Mother Nature wanted it to, it could get rather chilly up in there. also: winter is cloudy.

so Mark bought the seedlings a special lamp (on a timer!) to keep them warm, well-lit, and happy for the cold, cloudy portion of winter that they were forced to endure. i tried to convince him that I could use a special lamp to keep ME happy in the winter, but those are a lot more pricey.

the eggplant seeds were the first ones to go into the dirt. they were followed a few weeks later by the tomatoes and peppers. (at which point Mark informed me that he had been using my good spoons for digging in the dirt. i gave him a plastic one to use instead and promised to thrift him his very own dirt-digging spoon as long as he stayed far away from my silverware drawer.) the tomatoes and peppers are still just looking like little pots full of dirt at this point, but as of this week we are the proud parents of some cute baby eggplants!!!

i was kind of embarrasingly overexcited when i found these little green shoots, i almost fell off of my precarious perch atop the sink (which is why the picture is slightly blurry) i am kind of in awe at the whole real-live-plants-growing-from-tiny-seeds thing, and also excited at the prospect of actually being able to grow edible things in our own backyard. Mark is excited that i am excited about the garden at all.

i'm starting to feel almost ready for the real-live springtime that i'm hoping is right around the corner. how about you? 

lent list.

so since i'm completely and sometimes overly honest up in here, i have to tell you that for the past few years i have really stunk at lent. in the past, i have tried to take on something new, rather than give something up, usually something along the lines of 'read a chapter of the Bible every day.' but the past couple years, i have failed pretty spectacularly at my goal. i would stay on track for the first week or so, and then just lose steam. either that, or i just pretty much just missed it.

lent is a sneaky little bugger: it starts on a different day every year, and it is especially difficult to keep track of since my denomination doesn't technically observe it. but its a good concept, and so this year we are ready for it. (if you are ok with defining 'ready' as 'we talked about it for like 5 minutes last night)

so here's our plan: for lent this year, we are giving up watching tv.

i know, we didnt do so hot during tv-turn-off-week, but we're willing to give it another shot. lately, we have both been realizing that we spend far too many evenings parked in front of the TV, and at the end of the night we don't really feel very good about that.

of course, we have built ourselves in a few exceptions to our rule:
1. we are each allowed to watch one show per week of our choosing. the show can be no longer than 1 hr long. we are not required to watch an hr each week, but we are allowed.
2. this doesn't really apply at other people's houses. we can't and dont want to force anyone else to join us in our tv-fast.
3. movies are a little different. basically, we're not going to watch them by ourselves at our house as a mindless way to pass an evening. but going out with friends or inviting people over to watch a movie are still fair game.

we're hoping that we will be able to use our used-to-be-tv-time for other things like projects, and reading, and exercising, and coming up with some extra-healthy* meal options to mix into our weekly plan.

what's your lent-plan?

*as a part of this attempt to eat healthier, i am also giving up goldfish for lent. i eat way too many of those cheesy little fishes... cuz they're SO delicious!

spraypaint runs in my blood.

on saturday morning, i woke up with a desire... no, a NEED to spraypaint something. lucky for me, and thanks to a combination of it being a beautiful sunny day and a spur-of-the-moment decision from a few weeks ago, i knew exactly what to paint and i already had the supplies i needed.

the what: our 90's gold hallway light fixture.

the what color: Rustoleum's Oil Rubbed Bronze.

i started by taking off the globe, taking out the lightbulb, and unscrewing the fixture from the ceiling. it wasn't until i had it dangling by its wires that i realized "oh crap! electricity and whatnot! abort! abort! abort!" and i headed to the basement to play with the breaker box. (note: always turn off your breaker BEFORE starting any kind of electrical work)

this blurry picture was my reference as to how to put the light back up later

after i flipped a breaker labeled "lights," i had to try and figure out a way to make sure that it was the correct breaker. i thought about using Mark's live-wire-voltage-tester-thingamajig, but i wasnt exactly sure how it worked, and i didnt want to break it, and he wasnt home at the time. (note: NEVER do electrical work if  you are the only one home) so i called him, and he suggested the genius idea of just putting the lightbulb back in the fixture and flipping the switch. duh.

once that was all taken care of and the fixture was down and i was NOT electrocuted, i prepped the fixture by stuffing part of a paper towel into the socket and taping over all the important stuff with blue painters tape. then after a few coats of paint, (i made sure all the screws still turned between each coat) a slight wind-related mishap, and one last coat of paint for touchups, our crappy fixture was looking brand-new and wonderful!

i taped over the important technical info sticker so we could read it later

once i had almost let the paint dry long enough (read: it was still tacky but i was too excited to wait any longer) i enlisted the hubs' help to reattach the wires to each other and the light to the ceiling. i tried to do it myself, but i required either more hands or more skills than i possessed. and while mark has the same number of hands as me, his skills are definitely more impressive than mine.

i'm in love. its such a little thing, but sometimes the little things can bring a big amount of joy, right? or is that just me that gets giddy-excited over stuff like this? either way, this light fixture is awesome and i am officially a fan of the ORB spraypaint.

so now the only thing that our hallway needs to be "finished" is something for the big blank wall. what do you suggest?

big art? stencil? frame gallery? should the frames be black or white? should the pictures in the frames be in color or black and white? how do you feel about colored mats? too much for a little hallway? i am open to suggestions, so hit me with 'em!

meal plan monday: feb 20.

i have so many things i want to share with you. but since none of them would give me a clear segue into my meals that i have planned for this week, i guess i'll just wait until tomorrow to start my  share-fest of all the things i did over the weekend. (which is NOT a long weekend for me, because my job hates the presidents. i stayed in bed an extra 45 minutes this morning in protest. and then i got up and rushed around like crazy so i could still make it to work on time.)

so here you have it: our segue-less plan for the week:

To Eat:
Monday: shrimp scampi with rice and a veggie. (we didnt eat it last week)
Tuesday: pasta with jar sauce and a side salad. (also  from last week)
Wednesday: chicken. with rice and a veggie?
Thursday: quesadillas and salsa.
Friday: fish. more rice and veggies?
Saturday: probably soup from a can. we're lazy on the weekends.
Sunday: eh, we'll figure something out.

To Do:
- finish my valentine's bench.
- work on quilt stuffs.
- prep kitchen for paint.

do these posts bore you? does anyone actually care what we're eating? sorry they're not more entertaining, but i mostly write these for my own sanity, to keep from losing my mind over dinnertime, and to have something to post on mondays. it works for me. i'll try and post something slightly more interesting tomorrow.

'explosive' chicken casserole.

for the first time in a few weeks, i tried a new recipe for dinner wednesday night. it was sent to me by a friend who i hadn't heard from in a while. she was a high school student in the youth group i volunteered with for a few years in college. (and if i can be totally honest she was one of my absolute favorites) thanks to facebook, we have kept in touch in the stalker-ish kind of way that only facebook allows, she read my blog and sent me a new, easy, and interesting recipe to try out.

i was intrigued by the concept of the adjective 'exploding' being used to describe any sort of edible meal, so this recipe gets double bonus points for coming with a great back-story that had me doubled-over in my cubicle at work laughing for a solid 5 minutes. and then i couldnt stop laughing. every time i almost calmed myself down, i just lost it and cracked up again. so of course i knew i had to share it.

'Explosive' Chicken Casserole

- 2 sleeves of Ritz crackers
- 1 can cream of chicken soup (or cream of mushroom)
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup chicken broth
- 4 to 6 boneless chicken breasts, cooked
- 4 oz melted butter

*Preheat oven to 300 degrees

1. Crumble one sleeve of Ritz crackers in bottom of a casserole dish. Drizzle with half of the melted butter.
2. Mix soup, sour cream, broth, & chicken.
3. Pour over crackers.
4. Crumble remaining sleeve of crackers over chicken mixture. Drizzle with remaining butter.
5. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until hot & bubbly.

*serves 6 (great reheated!)
*crumble crackers inside of sleeve
*chicken is cooked when metal fork comes out clean, but may be placed into casserole before so, as long as it is NOT pink.

"Here's why I've called it the 'explosive' chicken casserole. My BFF was teaching me how to cook and so I wanted to make a recipe that we didn't make together that would be amazing. So, I got this one off of a friend and got down to business. I made it completely without her help and put it in the oven. Meanwhile, we were getting ready for a business holiday party. Well, it was smelling fantastic and so i snuck a peek inside about ten minutes before it was to come out. Not even two minutes later we hear this odd crushing sound. I looked at my roommate and I looked at my bestie, and we all then looked at the oven. Here, I used a faulty glass dish that had been recalled that I did not know about and my wonderful dinner had exploded inside the oven. I cried, we ate cocoa puffs and I spent five hours cleaning broken glass and chicken casserole remains from the oven (after the party of course). Ha, I went out and bought a nonglass bakeware dish, just to be safe... "

this stuff was delicious. after his first bite, Mark declared that he was definitely getting seconds. the only deviations i made from the recipe were that i cut my chicken into cubes, and i dont think i baked it long enough. it was hot, but it was not bubbly when i took it out. (but at least it didnt explode... whew!)  if and when i try this recipe again, i will probably add more chicken, make sure i have more time to let it get good and bubbly, and maybe throw in some broccoli instead of serving it on the side.

oh, and this recipe even came with an extra bonus of a good idea of something to do with the leftover chicken stock:
Also, if you have extra chicken broth, you can make a really scrumptious tortellini & spinach soup for later that week. (Boil the broth, add the tortellini until cooked, take off of stove and throw in a handful of raw spinach; stir and enjoy!)
 
so i tried it for dinner last night. and it was good too! Mark was impressed that i made soup by doing more actual cooking than just opening a can of Progresso.

we have leftovers from both meals, which should make for some easy and tasty meals this weekend, which should hopefully mean we can make some progress on our numerous projects!

TGIF, ammirite? hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

heads up.

an email exchange that happened this morning around 10:15am:

Me: I have already eaten my breakfast bar. And my apple. And my last 4 almonds. It is too early in the day to start on my actual lunch. I didn’t bring any chocolate with me today. I am going to die of hunger today. just thought you should know, I figured it might be nice to have a heads up on big news like that.
Just know I have always loved you and now without me to hold you back you can go ahead and take that dream job out west.
:-*
But seriously, is it too early for lunch?

Hubs: I love you :-* just a heads up. I think I'm going to work late tonight. is that ok?

Me: Its cool. I'll be dead by then. either that or jazzercising.

Hubs: Hopefully jazzercising :-*

around 11:00 i broke down and ate the strawberries out of my lunch. i'm not dead yet. i really hope i make it to the end of the day.

our low-key valentines day.

im pretty certain that i have mentioned here before that i have not always been a huge valentine's day fan. as in i have been known to wear all black and be an outspoken advocate for singles-awareness-day. but for some reason, my attitude has been shifting over the past few years. it may or may not have something to do with having the kind of friends that helped me to understand that Valentine's day is about celebrating ALL the love in our lives, even if its not of the romantic variety. oh, and finding the love of my life, too. that was pretty cool.

so i kind of went a little overboard this year. well, overboard for ME that is, which means that our celebration would probably be considered low-key by anyone who considers the kind of romantic overkill found only in rom-coms to be normal or the standard by which all romantic gestures must be measured. but for us, it was pretty close to perfect.

we exchanged our gifts over the weekend. we didn't really plan to, but it just kind of happened. you see, i went a little crazy and decided that in addition to the meaningful little crafty things i was working on that i really loved and i knew would look really cute hung on the walls of our front room, i needed to also get the hubs something that he would actually really like. so i bought him a miter saw. i was really sneaky about buying it and i was going to make him wait until tuesday... aand then i just gave it to him. i didn't wrap it. i didnt sneak it into the house and set it up for him. i didnt send him on an elaborate scavenger hunt. i didnt even put a bow on it. it was just like "hey, i have this thing in the trunk of my car that you said you wanted and i cant come up with any sort of believable lie to keep you from buying one for yourself in the next 3 days. its really heavy so you're going to have to heft it into the house yourself. happy valentines day."

he does really like it. and he proved that by immediately building me this giant awesome bench.

and then he even put a coat of stain on it over the weekend. isn't it fantastic?!? it still needs another coat of stain and a few coats of polyurethane, and a cushion for the top, and some baskets for underneath, but i'm really excited about it and i cant wait until it can move upstairs for good.

so with all the big gift-giving all out of the way we were all set up for a relaxing tuesday evening. we made an uber-romantic grilled chicken salad for dinner, which was made uber-romantic by working on it together while chatting about our days at work and not getting in a fight over having to share our teeny-tiny kitchen.

i gave mark one of the two crafty gifts i had been working on, the one that was mostly finished. the only thing missing is the dry erase marker so we would actually be able to write our love notes. (this morning i just yelled down the hall, 'because you take out the trash! that's why i love you today!' so at least its not a complete waste without the marker) i'm still waiting on my free map of Maine to come in the mail so that i can finish my other project, but i'll be sure to share it when i get it done.

and do you see that rose? that right there is the first flower that mark has ever bought me that has not come wrapped in dirt. its simple and perfect and i hope i can keep it alive for at least a few days.

we spent the rest of our evening snuggled on the couch for a rom-com double feature of Friends with Benefits and Crazy Stupid Love, courtesy of our local redbox because we dont actually own any good rom-coms.

it was a perfectly low-key-but-still-super-special valentine's day, and a great way to celebrate our three-year dating anniversary. (a day early) hope you all had a wonderful day, too!