New

I've started adding some new things to the blog.

New pages at the top, new buttons on the side, a new background.

More to come!

Enjoy!

Another dinner

Our work schedules have returned to their normal, hectic pace; leaving us with few precious moments together. This week I worked 74 hours (Monday-Saturday) and Chris worked 48.

When we don't have time together, I start to feel disconnected, not being able to have meals together (especially home-cooked meals), talk in person, or do mundane errands together makes me a lonely girl. I was glad to have Friday off so that I could make us dinner.

We have been eating a lot of chicken, so I decided to make some steak and while I was at the market I remembered a meal my Dad made a long time ago and decided to recreate it.

I used:

Old Country Deli Rib Roundup

Veri Veri Teriyaki sauce

Philadelphia cooking creme (I used the savory garlic)

Spinach

(Broccoli and scalloped potatoes for sides)

At the market I bought some thin cuts of meat (they might have been flank steak?) and marinated them in the Rib Roundup and teriyaki sauce for a few hours.

I spread the creme spread on top of the steak.

{At this point I remembered that my Dad used cheese in the middle. I checked our fridge and only found Swiss cheese. I wasn't sure how it would taste, so I only put on two of the four steaks}

Next I layered the spinach on top of the cheese.

Then I rolled it all up with the fillings on the inside.

I'm pretty sure Dad used baking twine but I couldn't find any, so I used BBQ skewers and toothpicks to keep the steaks rolled up.

A closer look before it goes into the oven.

 I baked them at 375 for about 40 minutes but it was a little too long in the oven. Maybe 20-30 minutes would have been better, depending on how done you like your steak.

After they came out of the oven.

The creme melted out of the sides, but I was able to scoop it up and put it on top, which turned out well because it could have been a little too garlic-y. Putting it on top made it easier to control how much garlic we wanted.

The finished dinner.

The steak had such great flavor due to the marinade {and the ones with Swiss cheese were delicious!}. I would definitely recommend this and I think I'm going to make it at work one night.

Have you cooked anything new lately? What is one of your favorite recipes to make? 

Blog friends

Have you ever read another's blog and think to yourself :

"I would love to be friends with them!"

I have found a couple of new blogs and the more I read their posts and "get to know them" I am convinced that we could be friends in "real life".

I am pretty shy (although I try to hide it) but am trying to be more outgoing.

Meeting new people at this stage of my life has been difficult. I made new friends in college when I moved here, but they all moved away after graduation and I stayed. My best friends live anywhere from an hour to six hours away.

We don't have kids yet, so meeting people at playgroups or mommy and me classes aren't for us yet.

Work schedules make it difficult to join groups or take classes that meet at the same time and day, because my schedule is different every week. I have met a couple of people at church and hopefully will meet more as we become more involved.

So back to my original question...

If you have read someones blog and thought they would make a good friend, do you email them? Comment on their posts? Hope that they will look at your blog, feel the same, and pray that they email you? 

Would you feel odd if some stranger emailed you on your blog and told you they thought you had a lot in common? 

Hopefully this blog will help me to meet new people and help those I already know keep up with us! I'd love to meet you so feel free to introduce yourself!

Maybe we can go bike riding together!

Updating

I've recently found some new blogs that I'm enjoying reading. Seeing these blogs and their style/designs/layouts have inspired me to make a few changes on my blog. So standby for some upcoming layout changes and as always...if I make a change and you don't like it, please let me know!

Happy Wednesday!!!

weekend work

Before we left for Catalina, Mom and Dad came down to see the new furniture and to help with a few projects. I'm glad they were there for many reasons, but also because I bought Chris a BBQ for our anniversary and I needed their muscles to help get it out of the truck!

The main project of the weekend was hanging more kitchen cupboards (will they ever be done???) and putting new hinges on them. We bought new hinges to match our knobs (brushed nickel) and many of the old hinges were broken and painted over many times, but we bought the wrong ones but Mom was nice enough to run to Home Depot to exchange them.

Dad was smart because when we removed the cupboard doors he numbered them and wrote the corresponding number on the cupboard, making it somewhat easier to figure out where they go. What a guy!  

Dad helping us hang cupboards. I'm so glad I didn't have to do it myself, they were not as easy as I expected!

The cupboards in the bar area had glass panels in the doors and we wanted something a little different, We found chalkboard "stickers" {a roll of thin chalkboard material with a sticky backing} at Michael's and Mom cut them to size and covered the glass. Such an easy transformation and we can just peel them off if we want to go back to the glass!

And Mom left us a sweet anniversary note when she was done.  

We purchased a new patio set last week. Mom and Dad helped me put it together (well, I pretty much helped them put it together since they did more work on it than I did). It is going to be so great to sit out there on a warm evening and enjoy the backyard!

Dad had some help from Brick when he was trying to shorten our outlet cover in the floor.

We have started to let the cats outside and Jack seems to like to roam around; as a few times we haven't been able to find him for hours at at time, but he has always come home.

Mom suggested that we put our old patio set in the kitchen to use as a little breakfast nook. It is the perfect size and adding a plaid table cloth and some sunflowers sure make it cheery (and a little country which I love)!

I probably say this every time, but I am so glad the house is coming together and feeling more and more like home. We have someone coming over today to give us a quote on finishing our fireplace so hopefully I will have more to share on that soon.

Happy Tuesday!!

Catalina

We were fortunate enough to celebrate our first wedding anniversary on Catalina Island and enjoyed a relaxing four days on the island. We stayed at the cute Vista Del Mar hotel where they served milk and cookies every night.

The beautiful hallway of the hotel, our room is on the left.

We saved the top layer of our wedding cake and we were really excited to eat it! It was a custom flavor of vanilla cake with Olallieberry buttercream inside. When we unwrapped the cake, it had yellowed a bit, but we still wanted to try it. The cake itself was pretty dry but the filling was delicious! Chris said to me "next time we get married, we are going to eat the top layer the next day." Ok!

Before heading out to look at the shops and to decide what we wanted to do all week.

We wanted to go on a fishing charter boat, but it was WAY over priced, so that was out. While fishing was off the list, we did meet someone who takes charters out around the island looking for flying fish. We had seen it advertised online but the website said that they didn't start until June so we were excited to hop on the boat.

The Catalina Island Casino. We took a tour and learned a lot about the history of the island.

See that white spot in the picture? That is an eagle! John, the Captain of the boat told us to look for a white spot in the trees and that would be the eagle. Almost immediately, Chris spotted it!

I think I might turn this picture into a canvas print for our guest room, I just love the clouds!

 It was a gorgeous night and the moon was full and so many stars came out! It was the perfect way to spend our anniversary night.

 

Chris searching for flying fish (that's a flashlight, not binoculars)



We saw quite a few flying fish and it was really exciting when we spotted one and it was magical watching them launch out of the water and fly over it! One fish flew so high it hit the top of the boat and fell down into my arms, then it jumped out and Chris caught it. So exciting!!

{I even got a "free" t-shirt for getting hit by a fish!}



So odd looking!



On Monday we rode our bikes all over the island (we took our own bikes over as it was only $6 extra to take them on the ferry and it costs $20/day to rent them). This pelican came to sit by us as we fed the fish down below.

Chris playing with the pelican.

This might be lover's cove, but remember, this is not a petting zoo! :-)

Having lunch after we took the casino tour.

A painting above the movie screen in the casino.

I love this song and the quote was on the wall in the ladies lounge at the casino.

The green building is the pleasure pier {not to be confused with lovers cove} where most of the sea tours leave from. We also spent about three hours fishing off of the pier on Tuesday and caught over 30 fish, we released them all and of course the pictures are all on Chris' camera.

We played miniature golf and both got scores that qualified us as "better than most"...good enough for me, the only type of golf I play!

We lingered over dinner one night and enjoyed some drinks while watching people on the promenade.

Overall it was a wonderful vacation. It was so refreshing to have four interrupted days together and not have errands to run or house projects to work on.

 I am so very lucky to have married my best friend and have him as part of my support system. He makes me laugh, smile, and feel beautiful.

I am the luckiest.

It's a shame...

that I have once again lost my camera cord to upload pictures. It's a shame because you can't see my exceptionally clean house, how great I looked today, or how much work I got done on the house on my day off. So instead of those wonderful, wonderful pictures, I will leave you with this:

A picture from one of our trips to Disneyland.

Happy weekend!!

Anniversary sneak peak!

Our anniversary has come and gone...and we are no longer newlyweds! It is shocking to me how fast this year went.
When we were plodding along through the year, it didn't feel like we were doing much other than working and trying to see each other as often as we could but looking back, it was filled with lots of events:

*An amazing eight days in paradise (aka Tahiti) on our honeymoon.
* A quick trip to Washington to visit some special people
* Adopted our two kittens
* Saw the Beatles Love show in Las Vegas
* Purchasing our first house
* Visits to SLO (not enough)
* Many hockey games
* Spent many, many many days off working on the house

I think it was a wonderful first year of marriage. We have made many new friends and are excited to see what the next years hold for us!

I have pictures to share from our mini-vacation but here is a little snippet: We took a chartered boat out one night and went looking for flying fish (and one jumped into the boat and I caught it!) Click HERE for a mini-picture {scroll down and on the right hand side, above the buffalo!}.

More to share soon! Happy Thursday!

Furniture!!!

I am so glad to be able to share with you our furniture! It seemed to take so long to get it delivered (about 7 weeks) and it was hard paying money and walking out of the store with nothing but a receipt. We purchased a new bedroom set, a sectional sofa and a buffet for our TV accessories.

A few weeks ago Chris, his Dad and cousin hung our TV on the wall and the buffet fits perfectly under it. The pile of movies and rock band accessories will be put away in the cupboards of the buffet eventually.

Our big, comfortable, soft sectional sofa is A.MA.ZING!!!! It is a charcoal grey color and has a corduroy feel to it. Once you sit down, you definitely do not want to get up, you just sink into the cushions and want to stay there forever.

Here is the view from the hallway looking into the room. (sorry for the strange color of the picture my camera was acting up)

With the sectional in the den, we were able to move our other couches and the alien chairs into the living room. We put one chair in front of the fireplace, creating a little reading nook.

We are still working out how we want to set up the living room but we are really happy with what we came up with last night (after changing the layout about ten times). It creates a small conversation area that keeps the open feeling of the large room.

We are now sleeping on a Cal-king bed! I was worried that the black furniture would make the room too dark, or clash with our caramel colored walls, but it looks great (in my opinion) and it is nice to have furniture that matches! I'm starting to feel like a grown up!

With the bedroom set came a dresser and we found the perfect place to put it; across from the bed and it is a great height to have the TV on. I wasn't sure about how I felt having a TV in the bedroom but it is really nice because when I have to get up early, we can go to bed and Chris can watch TV while I fall asleep.

Even Brick is enjoying the new bed!

With our new bedroom furniture in place, we shifted our queen bed into the guest room. Hopefully that room will come together soon so I can share with you that transformation too! I am SO happy to see our house coming together!