craft night - love it or hate it?

What do you do when you invite 20+ high school girls over to “hang out”? My idea was a craft night. Despite my love for crafting now, I wasn’t always that way. In fact, when I was a high school girl, I’m pretty sure I despised crafty stuff. I was too much of a perfectionist back then to be satisfied with my attempted craft. So if these 20(ish) girls I invited were anything like me in high school, we were in a world of hurt. I had to create an idea that was easy enough for everyone to enjoy and affordable. Not an easy task.

With the help of the massive blog world and pinterest, I found a number of websites featuring different projects you can do with an old t-shirt, scissors, and a hot glue gun.

Here are some of the resources I used:

DIY Accessories From A T-Shirt over at Tripping Over Joy

Tshirt Crafts and Headband Tutorials over at Sugar Bee Crafts

Explaining how to do these projects to 20+ giggling and talkative high school girls was not an easy feat. My type A, perfectionist self, quickly had to let go and let the girls have fun. The projects weren’t glamorous but the night was perfect. 

apple cider baked chicken

I am obsessed with pumpkin. I am also obsessed with fall. But Colorado just recently had the arrival of true fall. The temperatures were still a little too high for me to bust out all the fall-ish treats. I also don’t want to overdo it too soon. I don’t want to ruin my love for pumpkin or for fall. But, like many, I was craving it. I was SO ready for fall to be here. I had to resort to other “fall” things to get my fix without prematurely jumping on the pumpkin bandwagon. Instead of pumpkin bread, I made banana muffins. Instead of pumpkin soup, I made Apple Cider Baked Chicken. Apple Cider recipes scream fall too so I successfully postponed my pumpkin while still getting my fall fix.

I absolutely loved this meal. In fact, it may just make it into the “staples” category for meals. Please try this. Quite easy and amazingly tasty.

RECIPE: (adapted from here)

Ingredients:

• 3 chicken breasts, cut into large chunks
• 1/2 large onion, cut into large chunks
• 1 red bell paper, cut into large chunks
• 1 lemon, cut into thin rounds
• 2 cups apple cider
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 Tbsp. dried thyme (fresh would be better - put in about 1/4 cup if you use fresh)
• 2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• 2 tsp. coarse ground dijon mustard
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 1 large apple, sliced 
• 1/2 lb small red or yukon potatoes, cut into large chunks

Place all ingredients except the apple and potatoes into a large ziploc bag, shaking and combining well. Allow to marinate in fridge overnight or at least 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour entire bag of ingredients (including liquid marinade) into a roasting pan -- I used my iron skillet and it worked great. Cook for 1 hour and 30 minutes and stir halfway through. I like my potatoes on the softer side so I had to cook those for an additional 10 minutes or so. 

Now that Colorado has had the first two snows of the year and halloween is in a few short days, I'm beyond ready to bust out the pumpkin! Thanks to pinterest, here are a few recipes I want to try out.

Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Buns

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

Pumpkin Better Than... Cake

Pumpkin Poppers

Pumpkin Coffee Cake w/ Brown Sugar Glaze

Or my friend, Mackenzie, posted this great little treat

Pumpkin Cheesecake Squares

Oh, did I say a few? I guess I meant a lot. I told you that I can easily get carried away with pumpkin!

Do you have a favorite pumpkin recipe that I should try out? Or what about apple cider recipes? Let's bring on fall!

unexpected benefits

Believe it or not, there are some perks to being a med school wife. A couple months back, the husband and I had a conversation that went a little something like this:

Husband: “I have a med school conference that I have to go.”

Me: “Ohhh…” (while busily and distractedly doing something else)

Pause…

Me: “When is it?” (attempting to be interested)

Husband: (starting to conceal a grin) “First weekend of October”

Me: “Oh cool – where is it?”

Husband: “San Diego…” (not holding the grin in so well anymore)

Note: San Diego is where my best friend, Betsy, lives.

Me: (excitedly) “Wait, what?!?!? Is your school paying for you to go?”

Husband: “Yep…” (still grinning)

Me: “So do I get to go???”

Husband: “I figured I couldn’t go to San Diego without taking you with me!”

So there it is – the perk of being a med school wife. I got to go to San Diego for a brief, 36-hour, mini-vacation to visit my best friend and her hubby. To top things off, friends of ours from Seattle were visiting San Diego that same weekend.

The 36-hour trip included a visit to the local street market, lounging on the beach, watching Husky football, eating delicious food, having photo shoots, going on a coastline hike, and strolling the streets of downtown San Diego. Oh, and a med school conference for the husband.

Warning: Pictures Galore!

No big deal, just hanging out on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean!

 

Husky Football & Photo shoot fun!

Meet Dodger... :)

Best Friends! I love you Betsy! 

We saw dolphins.

And went "hiking" (San Diego style)

Bad lighting but don't we look like the modern day "Friends"? 

The beautiful red head in the photos is my sweet friend, Erika, from rouge + whimsy and she posted about our fun San Diego trip here. Check out her amazing blog too!

p.s. thanks for so patiently waiting for me to blog again. keep checking back because there's more to come this week!

who needs a reason for a party?

I adore parties. Not necessarily the wild, loud music, jump-up-and-down in a drunken orgy type of party but the let's decorate, drink a glass of wine, and socialize type of party. Some of you are probably thinking, "that's a party?". But, that's my kind of party! Can you tell I'm not in college anymore?

A couple months ago, I was desperately itching to throw a party. The husband and I had plans to have a few friends over for dinner. Much to his surprise, I transformed our casual "have friends over" into a themed dinner party. Yes, I said, themed. It was very slight and hardly tacky. You probably won't even notice it in the pictures. The friends were coming over the day after the opening ceremony for the summer Olympics. This meant red, white, and blue were running through my veins. I didn't want the potentially tacky summer BBQ look. I wanted something elegant and classy, yet still showing a hint of American pride.

Side note, the chairs on the right hand side of the table were a side of the road gem. Completely free and a perfect addition for our table. I'm planning on sprucing them up with a coat of paint! I can't wait to do the project and I promise, I'll post pictures of the final outcome.

Now, back on topic. The dinner party was a great success. Our friends, the Hutchins and the Mengels, came over for a kabob and appetizer feast.

I am absolutely obsessed with caprese, so that was an appetizer must. I also fell in love with these cucumber boats, found on susie freaking homemaker's blog. 

The food was delicious and the company was amazing. Now it's time for me to plan my next dinner party!

p.s. this is way late post so all pictures are from our old house -- I promise to get some pictures up soon of our new place.

quinoa + quesadilla

I haven't really been cooking lately. Or baking. In fact, I think I'm losing my touch. The few recipes I've tried out recently, have somehow managed to be utter disasters. Despite my never-ending to-do list, I keep longing to be in the kitchen. Yet, whenever I squeeze in the time, I fail miserably. So until I have enough time to give my kitchen the proper attention again, you'll have to deal with recipes I tried out over the summer -- like this one:

There's so much goodness going on in this meal that I don't even know what to call it. The name would be really long...something like Quinoa, Black Bean, Feta & Peach Salsa Quesadilla. Whoa. Too many words for a title. Especially a food title. But, that's what it is.

This recipe was inspired by a couple cooks. You can check out their page for detailed instructions. I didn't modify it much - basically just added crumbled feta cheese and placed it in a tortilla.

But here's the basic rundown of ingredients:

• 2 cups quinoa
• 2 cans black beans
• 6-8 green onions
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp chili powder
• salt & pepper to taste
• 4 ripe peaches
• 1/2 red onion
• 1/2 jalapeño pepper
• 1 lime
• handful of cilantro
• crumbled feta
• tortillas

Try it out - it was delish! 

celebrate good times

This summer hasn't been much of a summer for the husband and me.

100 degree weather and 100 hours/week of surgery work didn't make for a great combination.

After a month delay, the husband and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary by taking a trip into the mountains.

Typically, our mountain getaways are filled with activities - such as hiking, skiing, camping, etc. We weren't quite as lucky this go round. The husband has had a bad hamstring all summer making hiking an improbable adventure. When we first moved to Colorado, we committed to conquering a 14er every year. This year's 14er goes under the questionable category of "conquering". Instead of hiking it - we drove almost all the way to the top of it. It sounds lazy, I know. But give us a break! I would say we made the most of our circumstances.

The sweet husband also surprised me with a great Pinterest idea. He bought me a chalkboard and chalk and told me we had to take a photo every year marking our anniversary. Note: Please forgive the out of focus pictures - the camera was on the hood of our car!

And we topped the weekend off with some amazing dessert at a sweet cafe in Eagle, CO. 

Do you do anything special to celebrate wedding anniversaries? Any traditions? Even if it's small, you got to go out and celebrate the good times!

an abstract of my life

This is the abstract of my life. The full article will come later.

Important things to note:

• We moved. The first picture is the staged version of our new condo. I will post pictures soon of what our place actually looks like. We're almost fully settled. Almost.
• Just got home from two weekends away. One in Steamboat Springs with Mackenzie. One in Fraser at Crooked Creek Younglife Camp.
• Younglife is in full swing - the picture above is my team of leaders. They're great. I love them.
• I'm the new pitching coach for the Arapahoe High School JV Softball team. It's a blast being "on" the field again.
• But most of my time is spent at school. Studying away. Got to get back to that now.

I can't wait to write more about my life but right now I'm a little carried away with living my life! :)