shout out!

EVERY time I go to the grocery store as of late, I am complimented on my basket that I tote around with me.

 

It was a gift for our wedding from Ben’s sister and I am in LOVE with it šŸ™‚

You can reshape the basket by soaking it in warm water, then you are set to mold it whichever way you want! It was handmade, and I know I have the tag around somewhere that says where it is from… and I can let you know!

In other news, we installed a handle and deadbolt to our door so we are now able to lock it up tight from the inside. We are in a secure location so our bungee chord method was doing okay… but with the cold weather, it was nice to be able to get it to close tight and keep the chilly air out!

I will have a better picture of it, it’s still pretty ugly to look at currently because we will need to put a fresh “face” on the inside of the door.

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excuses and delays.

Entirely too long of a break — BUT it’s the hoooolidays!

Is this an excuse?!

Seriously tho, celebrate them or don’t, but this time of year always seems to pick up and get really busy for some reason.

Of course the energy in the air is picked up because of the major few.. The kick off starts with Halloween, then followed by Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years… it doesn’t seem to end for a few months. Everyone who partakes in the festivities naturally gives off a buzz and whether I like it or not it seems to affect me.

I just seem to get busy.

Here’s what I’ve been doing! Backing up a bit if I may, jumping around, and coming back to the present.

I mentioned a few posts back that I went to work with Ben! Well, here is that proof. At the end of the day, I stripped off the paper and tape that covered my feet to my knees and I posed for a picture or two!

 

(Seriously I think I know entirely too much about spray foam.. and I don’t know when why or how!)

Scooting forward a bit closer to present day, Thanksgiving we took a road trip to Council Bluffs Iowa to stay with some friends of ours! It was bad weather in Colorado and a short enough drive to make it happen! The last time I was in Omaha (butts right up with Council Bluffs) was for a volleyball tournament when I was in high school, so it was fun to explore the area some!Ā  It was a nice time of R&R and a lot of Super Mario Bros on the old Nintendo game counsel!

Lost time was made up, and I’ve improved my skill!

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I don’t want to overload in one post so I am going to break this down into a couple I think.

The trailer is still amazing. More on that in the next post.

 

And I will leave you with this.

I think I am going to turn into pizza.

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Honestly I could eat it daily and not get tired. All kinds of pizza… vegan, supreme, cauliflower crust, just cheese…  it doesn’t matter. I am not biased.

I bring this up because Ben and I have been trying out different Pizzerias in the area — because well.. pizza. Every place we have has been really good… so we keep trying more! #foodies

Ben’s tastes in pizza are pretty straightforward … meat, everything, more. I like to switch it up however and try specialty pizzas — I love a good Margherita pizza, and I did a sort of “make your own” at the last joint we went to, and it basically turned into the Margherita pizza :p

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The two we have recently tried, Serafini’s Pizzeria and Fuhgidabowdit Pizzeria have been unique in their own way and I would for SURE go back to them. Again… pizza. It’s hard to go wrong.

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Cheers!

Okay in my next post I will be letting you know how my homemade toothpaste turned out! We are still in the ā€œtestingā€ phase so I want to gather more data before presenting!

The MoST comforting of FOODS – –

PIZZA!

One of my favorite meals to make is homemade pizza with Ben. It’s SO easy, cheap, and usually the pizza is WAY better than take out.

Let me back up a few steps first. My standards for pizza were developed and grew to be the way they are as a result of being raised in close proximity to the great Chicago šŸ˜‰

– – – Ā I am not trying to be snobby about it, because truly I believe that Little Caesars is underrated, but I also do know there is good pizza, and then there is good pizza.

Anywho, I don’t like spending a lot of time on the crust, so honestly I just buy the Jiffy pizza crust mix, yeah the one that cost a bit under $2.00 and you just add water, that one. It’s rather good, I am able to create a “deep dish” or thin crust if I desired, and it is so quick to make.

The fun part about making the pizza is we just grab whatever toppings we want to put on it that time, and have at it. No two pizzas we make are ever the same, and usually the two staples are mozzarella cheese and jalapenos. Everything else is subject to change. šŸ™‚

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I baked this ‘za in a pie pan, which enabled me to make it more of a deep dish, rather reminded me of Uno’s Pizza. mmmmm Uno’s…

I will get better with my images with time, I hope. Sorry for the dark images (if they are, they seem to be to me).

Part of the reason I baked in a pie pan is because the pan I WAS going to use is a bit big for our oven… I grabbed the wrong one from storage. Whoops! But it turned out to be great, in fact, I may prefer it to a sheet or circular pan. It makes the perfect size pizza for the two of us. Sometimes we double the recipe and make two crusts and cook it on a cookie sheet, but that’s out of the question as you’ll see below.

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Can you find the elephant in the room? šŸ˜‰Ā 

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It’s smaller in size but as you can see it has a lot of different options for cooking and a timer which is great. For comparison sake, it would be big enough for one frozen pizza perfectly!

This was also found at a great deal! I think it was less than $15 bucks and in near perfect condition at Goodwill. I found it about two years ago, but that was also something that I was in the market for, for quite a long time as well before I finally found it.

The key is PATIENCE! If you allow yourself time to browse, sometimes having to go back a few times, eventually what you are looking for will filter thru and that persons junk becomes your treasure! I usually go to the thrift stores about once a week and just walk thru casually with my list in the back of my mind.

For instance… yesterday I found an amazing stool / seat for meditating!

I do NOT have patience for walking around a mall, but thrift stores… I can give the time of day.

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Okay so back on track … this is pretty standard for our pizza topping options.

Salt and pepper (if needed, but usually always pepper)

TEXAS PETE hot sauce (personal favorite)

And of course classic parmesan and crushed red pepper.

Comfort foods. All of them.

I am also pleasently suprised over how great cooking is in the trailer. Sure its not AS easy as it could be, but it still is not that tedious, cramped, inconvient, (instert complaint here) as you may think it could be. I just CANNOT wait until we get our cupboards and counter design in place and put in!

Okay. Go forth now, and PIZZA!

Someone say fOOD?!

I have been trying to be better about cooking at home rather than eating out. Something I feel like a lot of us can relate to, it’s easier to sometimes make excuses and not cook. I am beyond guilty! I am not a bad cook, (I know that makes me sound great at the start of my rant LOL bear with me… ) but I feel like I lack originality when it comes to meal planning and meal making. That and I love a good cheeseburger any day and every day.

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Morning tea in my favorite mug, the only one I kept out of the packed boxes for me actually… and that’s saying something because I LOVE mugs šŸ™‚

I am the same ol’ same ol’ type of person — Ā Honestly Ben is a really good cook, and very original, almost to the point I’m worried I may need to have a plan B simply because it looks like a science experiment because it just forms as it goes. I have yet to have had plan B put into action so that’s really good! Some of the dishes were VERY good but we never wrote down what was put in and don’t remember what was done. Lost in food heaven.

Anywhoo, (Every time I hear/say/type that word it makes me think of that lady cop from the movie/show Fargo… or basically anyone from Minnesota. Makes me smile and miss living there) –

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From our wedding I kept one of the lace tablecloths and donated the rest (I originally bought them all second-hand). I found it to be the perfect privacy curtain when I have the back patio open!

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♄

Another thing, or two, eating out rather than cooking at home does for you is thin out your wallet and more often than not the food you’re making at home is healthier that what’s ā€˜out there’. Ā We all know this, BUT I still struggle with following thru with the knowledge. With all that being said, I obviously want to cook more at home and make it a regular practice again.

… I am going to digress for a moment … Something also I want to talk about. So I have this love/hate relationship with CHANGE. It is constant and we cannot avoid it. With moving around often change is constant, and I can feel uncomfortable and not really ā€œat homeā€ yet, and I forget my healthy routines and I tend to spend more, or be wasteful more, eat out more, not exercise etc. It’s happens like a rollercoaster / cycle and once I become more settled in the area and familiar with everything my energy settles down and I am able to re-center and remember my good routines.

So this is also something I saw coming, but living in a box (as I like to call it) throws a special wrench into the situation.

I am constantly saving recipes on Pinterest or Facebook on my phone and I do have a few cookbooks but I am rarely cooking them, so I want to be more conscious about that and try my hand at making them. BUT I am kind of limited to what I can do for my meals because I don’t have an oven. I do have a stove top burner, toaster/convection oven, griddle and my…. Ā CROCK POT! Scowering thru Pinterest I realized I (of course) have a TON of crock pot recipes pinned and have yet to make one of them (typical).

Well not anymore! I am realizing my fortune in that thing and am about to start utilizing it a hell of a lot more, and see what else I can make in this small space with my limited resources, and see if it really makes much of a difference at all. Ā Stay tuned! I will be posting what I make and letting you know where I got the recipe from, how they turn out and flops that just don’t cut it.

SPEAKING of flop… I tried to make a “breakfast quesadilla” — It started out promising, but it. was. not. Ah well, it was a good effort on my part simply because I have a really bad habit of not eating breakfast. I did get half of it down tho šŸ˜‰

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My dad made this handy caddy out of old barn wood, and it is awesome! It perfectly holds together what my kitchen counter / table otherwise would šŸ™‚

**Oh I am also making a lot of updates to the site, tweaking and seeing what I like, so things may be changing a lot over the next few days. If you have an opinion and liked one layout and I changed it, feel free to drop a comment and let me know!