Go Fish

For awhile now Jordan has been encouraging me to cook more fish. For one he likes it, and also for the health benefits. I have been a little reluctant, not because I dislike fish, but because of the lack of good selection around here. Growing up in WA there was always a good selection of fresh fish because our location was so close to fresh water. I have decided to give up my prejudices and to cook fish once a week. Since I have a half day on Fridays I have decided Friday is the day for fish. After I get off work I stop by the grocery store and pick out whatever is wild caught and then go home and figure out what to do with it. So far I have done this for 2 weeks. The first week was wild caught Cod. It's a nice mild white flaky fish. I dipped it in an egg mixture then a seasoned flour mixture, it was quite tasty.

The next week I found some wild caught Sockeye Salmon. We love Salmon :). A little butter, lemon juice and herbs was all it needed. It was so delicious!

Next I want to make this Mahi Mahi recipe from a friends blog! I wasn't able to find fresh Mahi Mahi so I went with frozen, it says its wild caught but who really knows.

Time to Rearrange

As a young kid I would frequently rearrange my room. I always enjoyed a fresh new look to my room and loved to reorganize. Since I have grown up so has my furniture. Instead of my twin bed and skinny dresser I now have a Queen bed and and very long dresser. So it seems there is only one way our room can be. I started thinking about other rooms in our apartment and our Living room came to mind. I began visualizing all the ways I thought our furniture could fit. Our living room isn't huge but for some reason we didn't feel very cozy in it and it didn't feel like a good conversational layout. Whoever was on our chaise lounger felt ages away from whoever was on the couch. One day a rearrangement idea hit me and although I wasn't positive it would all fit well, we gave it a go...and loved it!! Jordan and I were so excited we wanted to spend more time in this room. It felt fresh and new even though it was the same furniture.

Here are some before shot's. It's tough to get the whole room in one shot but here is an idea of how it was set up. The couch was facing the fireplace, which is not shown in any of the pictures. The chaise lounge was on one side and the TV is on the other side of the fireplace.


Here are a couple shots of how it is now! Our couch faces out our window/door to the deck, which is a wonderful view to look out at. Also with the rearrangement we feel closer together as well as feeling like a more conversational space. The new arrangement even gave room for a lovely new storage ottoman we bought, which provides easier access to our board games! Check it out.

Gifts

It is fun giving gifts especially when they are a little homemade. My brother recently got married! I'm excited I have a sister now and I am very excited for my Brother too:)

I wanted to get her something special and I have had friends in the past who gave this kind of gift to their soon to be sisters so the idea came to mind. I got her a necklace with two tags one is round and has her new initials on it and the other is rectangle and has their wedding date in it. I found the necklace on etsy at this store. Then I went out and found a beautiful yellow bead (since yellow is her favorite color) and added it also I got some extras and made little earrings to go with. It was so fun to mail to her. And their wedding was beautiful!!
Here is a picture of the finished product

There is a First Time for Everything

I am excited to share with you two very fun things that I have tried in the last two weeks.

1. I had Sushi for the first time...unless you count the California roll...This was my first raw sushi experience. I loved it! I always thought I would get the gag reflex as soon as it hit my mouth so I never would try it. As years have passed and I continue to meet more and more people who really like it I decided that next time we went to a Sushi place I was going to try some no matter what. Last weekend Jordan and I went out to a place called Mimosa's. There I ordered the Vegas roll which had salmon, cream cheese and avocado; Jordan ordered the Mimosa roll which had tuna, eel, a few other things and topped with caviar. I ended up liking his more but they were both really good and so fun to eat!


2. This past weekend we went Cross Country Skiing!! It was so much fun! Before this weekend the only snow activity I had ever experienced was tubing. For several years I have wanted to try Cross Country Skiing but it has never worked out. We went with Jordan's parents who have gone 4 times this season and love it; so they showed us the ropes. The whole day was gorgeous, full of sunshine and beautiful views. We can't wait to go again next season.






It's so fun to try new things!

Spring Time Here I Come!

We enjoyed a small glimmer of warmer weather this weekend and it got me thinking of Spring! I am very excited for Springtime. This year I am going to get a few rectangular hanging flower boxes to place on our porch railing. This will be my first outdoor growing attempt so I am very excited. At the present time our porch is completely empty accept for a strand of Christmas lights we still have out. So it will be so fun to have some pretty flowers and plants to look at. Also this weekend I ventured out to Pier 1, a store that I love. For my birthday my husbands family gave me a gift card to this wonderful store and I was very excited to use it. After walking around the entire store not wanting to make a rash decision I stumbled upon a beautiful outdoor chair in a weathered dark teal/green color and then I saw the price tag and got super excited...this chair was normally $100 and is now marked down to $24.99!!! It so happens that it is from last year's collection how awesome is that!! I was a little nervous cause there was only one on the floor but after asking someone they had six in the back!!! Jordan and I have been looking for outdoor chairs for a couple years now, but the ones we actually liked were are always way out of our price range so we have just stuck with our camping chairs. Now we have chairs for our porch that are something we actually find attractive! I'm so glad we never settled :)
Here they are


Also I updated my wall sconce flowers for spring. The past 4 years I have had the same red Gerber daises in my sconces and I was ready for something different. So a few weeks ago I found these beautiful spring green hydrangeas; it's a fresh new look for our dinning room and I love them!

Then while I was grocery shopping I found these beautiful orange baby roses. I love bright baby roses they always brighten my day.


Happy almost Spring to you all. Please let me know if you have any growing tips for my new growing adventure.

Valentines Day Celebration

I love days of celebration! Since Valentines day is just a couple days after my birthday it has become our tradition to stay in because we usually go out for my birthday. I love coming up with a special menu for dinner. This year I decided to crack open a cookbook we received as a wedding gift. It's called the "Newlywed Cookbook", and I found some scrumptious recipes to use. I made Roasted Chicken with Apples and Dried Fruit and then Scalloped Potatoes with Gorgonzola Cheese. It was simply delectable....mmm. We ended the meal with Chocolate Lava Cakes...also quite scrumptious.

We also gave each other sweet gifts
Jordan got me this beautiful Sugar Jar that I had my eye on. It's made with that pretty green opaque glass I love, and on the wrapping he wrote "Because your sweeter than Sugar"...Too cute, Thank you my Love :)


I gave Jordan a drink mixer. Often times for our celebrations we like to make special drinks and up until now we have been using Jordan's travel mug to shake the drinks in. So I found this in the Valentines section at Target and knew it would be the perfect gift. Also it has about 12 different drinks listed around the rim and in the circles below it tells you what goes in for the drink, how cool is that!


So we toasted to our Love with a Sea Breeze drink :)

Snowed in at the Watkins

We have been getting a fair amount of snow which has caused our regular schedules to be put to a halt. Jordan has not been to school since last Thursday! He is becoming stressed as he is seeing the work piling up. Luckily he has been able to study with a classmate a few times. As for me; in the last 3 days have only been able to work 6 hours because of the snow. Today I was told not to come in at all because of the weather. I can't complain the time off has been fun, but today I was feeling especially snowed in... My loving husband gave me the brilliant suggestion to make a list of things I wanted to accomplish today. What an amazing idea...why didn't I think of this? Lucky for me I have Jordan in my life to give me these wonderful ideas. So I did just that. I made my list and have had a great time checking things off. It truly has made me feel super accomplished and not so snowed in :). Jordan and I are not at all prepared for the snow, neither of us even have boots!! Needless to say there has not been much exploring the outdoors as of late. The only time we have gone outside is to un-bury our cars :). This has caused us to feel rather unhealthy and because of another brilliant idea from Jordan, we have been using our kitchen stool to do step ups, running in place, running laps around our apartment, push ups and sit ups it has been pretty funny that is for sure.

I will leave you with a picture of our parking lot. This was taken on Saturday, it has been plowed and then we got more snow last night/today so now it looks similar to this again but not quite as bad
Well back to my list!!