Elusinian 2013

One of my favorite spring time events has come and gone and I cannot believe it has been seven years! At the beginning of the month I attended Psi Epsilon's Elusinian Brunch to Celebrate Chi Omega's 118th Birthday. Happy Birthday Sisters!

This year I was even more excited than usual, I had been scheming and creating for over a month on the outfit I wore to the event. It was my second attempt at a maxi skirt and my first time working with silk (I learned ALOT) and editing a pattern. After all my hard work I decided to debut the skirt on Easter and show it off again at this dressy occasion.

Like I have done every year, I posed with my sister in front of the beautiful backdrop. After the obligatory "Hawaii" photos had been snapped I enjoyed brunch to the sound of a successful and inspiring keynote speaker as well as other Chi Omega traditions.

Feeling accomplished for my second showing of the stellar skirt and lovely morning in good company I headed out to the parking lot. And that, is where things literally started unraveling rather quickly. My sandal caught the bottom of my skirt and I looked down just in time to see the binding falling off the bottom. After almost tripping over my skirt, now in two pieces I hiked the sucker up and speedily made my way to the car.

The timing couldn't have been better. I am just thankful I was walking out of the resort instead of into it! All my hard work, frustration, and tears was now undoing itself. Apparently the fabric was so fine that it started shredding, causing the binding (bottom of the skirt serving as a hem) to fall off. Luckily, I had worn a different dress to church earlier that morning and was able to change before heading to another sorority event.

I have to be honest, I am not as upset as I expect myself to be. When I consider the following reasons I feel better:

1. (as previously stated) I have never worked with the fabric, as a result I will never forget to surge silk before sewing it to anything.
2. I blatantly disregarded several steps in the pattern and altered it from it's original design.
3. I wore it twice before it fell off of my body.

All in all, it was a success. The thing I'm most disappointed about is how our pictures turned out this year. We usually take pictures after brunch, but do to a scheduling conflict we had to take them before. Lesson learned I will never do this again!

 

My skirt in one piece.

I can't get over that she graduates in December!!!

 

I LOVE Haleigh's dress! 

On another note, I will steer clear of bright pink lipstick until I am ready to purposefully emulate my great grandmother.

always carry an extra outfit when wearing handmade clothing!

front yard facelift

 Last weekend our neighborhood held one of the two annual community yard sales. Basically it is awesome because they pay for all the advertising and signage and all I had to do was lug my junk out onto the carport at the crack of dawn (okay, more like 7:30am). I combined my unwanted items with some of my aunt's things. My mom and sister Emily came by with some of their stuff too.

 It was by no means the snazziest sale I've been to, but it made me enough to take my husband out for a night on the town! But more importantly, my neighbor traded me some jars for her old wheelbarrow!! At first Clayton was giving me his skeptical look mixed in with his "humor her" eyes. After a quick trip to Home Depot I transformed the old wheelbarrow into a lovely front yard addition.

I drilled/hammered a few holes in that sucker and planted an assortment of pansies and petnunias. I fell for the little white pansies with the sweet purple faces, which turned out to be a great color contrast for the new (old) green planter.

What was that? You noticed something in our carport in the background of one of these photos? It's another project we are working on, also purchased on the same day as the Willo yard sale!

so excited to share my next project!

fall comfort food

Let me start this post by telling you about my obsession for the wonderful dairy product cheese. If you have ever read any post of mine you already know I have a food obsession, but today I would like to focus on items that include actual cheese, a cheese flavoring, and foods that taste delicious with cheese.

After our wedding was over we found we had about 378 glass jars of shapes and sizes from hand picked center pieces and drinking cups that were left behind. I gave a couple cases of the smaller Kerr jars away to our friends to be used for canning. Karma did me right! The the reward was a jar of sweet and slightly spicy green tomato chutney!

They recommended we serve the chutney over lamb chops, but since I've only ever eaten lamb inside of a gyro we decided to try it on something a little more basic...

Yes, we decided to add it to our grilled cheese sandwiches.

We sliced sourdough and melted provolone, pepper jack, and colby (I think, it was a yellow cheese anyway) with a generous amount of butter slathered on both sides of each slice of bread. 

  

 I could only serve this caliber of sandwich with a superb soup (have I mentioned I also have a passion for awesome alliterations?), sundried tomato basil from the Safeway Select brand. Yum!

p.s. all those empties were not from the same night this dinner was concocted...

 

 Tuesday night dinner is served!

what the pho?

One of the best parts of my job is working with all different kinds of people from different cities and unique backgrounds. For some, therapy is getting back into the kitchen and doing what you love. It is my patient' s turn to teach me something when we are in the kitchen. I have learned to make some of our favorite dishes from watching and listening as these people heal.

Today I pieced together a recipe from an old shopping list I found in my binder at work, a hazy memory, and some (actual) recipes found on Google. The dish is pho (pronounced "fuh?') and I chose to make it with chicken like the original woman who showed it to me, but it can be made with beef or vegetables.

Clayton and I first tried pho at Rice Paper, a Vietnamese restaurant close to our house. It is especially delicious on a cold night! I was so excited to try and make something that we enjoy so much, and something that was never served in our family home growing up.

The ingredient list is fairly basic, I only needed a few things to throw it together. After a brief trip to the market I came up with the following:

Pho:
6 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons fish sauce
4 cloves freshly chopped garlic ( or to taste)
2 clove star anise
1 chicken breast
1 package rice noodles (I used udon noodles because it's what we had)

Toppings:
bean sprouts
cilantro
green onion
sweet chili paste
hoisin sauce


First I mixed the chicken stock, fish sauce, garlic, and star anise in a pot and brought it to a boil and then reduced heat and allowed it to simmer. Simultaneously, I boiled the chicken breast. Some recipes called for boiling the chicken in the pho, but I didn't want any weird stuff from the chicken coming off into the broth. Also, I am a total freak about undercooked chicken. My chicken turned out a little dry, but I am convinced I am going to get salmonella poisoning. If you have been doing this longer than me (anyone) you probably won't have this problem. After boiling the chicken I shredded it into generous chunks and added it to the pho.

Don't forget about the noodles! I nearly did! Mine took 13-14 minutes to simmer, so depending on how long you have to allow your pho to simmer on the stove you can start the noodles first for a quicker dinner or after for more flavor.

 

I chopped the cilantro and green onion and mixed the two together, however they can be served separate. I rinsed the beans and the toppings were done!

The best part about the dish is that everyone gets to dress their own to make it sweeter or spicy depending on preference. I added a handful of bean sprouts, about half a tablespoon of hoisin sauce, a heap of chili paste, and finished it off with cilantro and green onion. The bean sprouts give it a nice crunch, and the chili paste gives it a sweet and spicy flavor.

i promise i hang out outside of my kitchen.

breakfast bundt

Recently I inherited a bundt cake pan. I will be honest, I have never baked a bundt in my life. I haven't even baked a 9x13 cake that turned out like it was supposed to. As I was rambling to my mother-in-law about what exactly I was going to do with said pan, she pulled out a cook book called "The Cake Doctor" and sent me home.  The book is written by a woman who spent years testing recipes made by fixing up cake mixes. In the last two or three weeks I have already made three bundts, all of which turned out moist and delicious!

I have to give the credit to the recipes, for my reading/following instructions abilities have not vastly improved (if anything they are declining).  I snapped some photos of the most recent cake, a breakfast cinnamon cake.

I started by putting the walnuts on the bottom of the pan so they would have a chance to toast while the batter baked.

Pictured is the fabulous book (I now must go and buy my own copy instead of holding this one hostage), some ingredients, the batter mixture, the cinnamon sugar mixture, and my amazing hand mixer!

 

Just out of the oven

 

 

On the cooling rack, you can see the toasted nuts and the two layers of the sugary filling. Also my MIL gave me the pictured owl towel for Valentine's day. We literally own four towels that do not have owls on them.

 

Final product with the glaze 

(Clayton was not patient enough for me to take the picture before cutting out the first slice).

Despite being a "breakfast" cake, it is delicious at all times of day. The best part is, since I am adding additional ingredients like pudding or sour cream I feel slightly closer to making some thing from scratch.

 After the cake was finished and the dishes were washed I was tapped out on the "good little wife" front. 

This is what I made for dinner last night:

 

their crust is seriously the best.

increased storage

Lately life has been something like this equation:

living life > blogging

But I am here to report that our stab at refinishing a desk has festered into somewhat of a hobby.  I was at a second hand furniture store and found this sweet little night stand for an amazing price of just $2! I knew I couldn't beat that deal, so I handed over a couple crinkled up ones and jammed it into the back seat of the cavie with ideas buzzing about.

I made the impulse purchase just a few days before our Salt Lake City trip, so I brought it home and it sat until we made it back. Upon our return we realized we had committed ourselves to house sitting, so we brought it along and had glorious amount of space to redo the piece.

 

We had picked up some paint samples while on our trip from various Walmart type stores, but in the end I scratched what we had found and went with "Fern Gully" from the locally owned Ace Store. Thanks Paul!

Quickly we found out why the nightstand had been so heavy, it wasn't actually comprised of wood but made with some particle board type stuff. I mean, technically it is wood but not the kind I was hoping for.

 

Eww.

 We basically followed the same steps used for the desk, except I forgot to water down the paint so it took a little more elbow grease to make the night stand look "roughed up".

In less than three days we were able to get from start to finish. I am so excited to have more drawer space in our room now!

i. am. ecstatic!

made with love

Hello my friends! I have a new and very exciting hobby to report that I have recently taken up. Clayton and I really wanted a different/more practical look for our little bungalow. We settled on the idea of finding older furniture and re-finishing it instead of spending gobs of money on something we'd come to hate in about 2.5 years. I'd have to say for our first attempt we did a fantastic job! I had a rough start, but after one week, a handful of blisters, and four separate trips to Home Depot we have a lovely piece of furniture living under our window in the new sitting room.

Yay for us!

 We found the desk at a little antique trove in the Melrose District at a place called Magpies.

Before it just had a finish on top of the original wood and a little leftover red paint from a previous owner.

 Step one was to strip all the finish and old paint from the desk and drawers. I used a citrus stripper because it was less caustic.

 After scraping everything off we sanded the wood down so it was nice and smooth.

Thank god for power tools, it made this project much easier!

I totally missed out on a few in between pics... we painted a coat of brown before putting on a bright blue. We sanded the parts we wanted to look worn (edges, corners, and bits that are supposed to be worn over time) and put a dark wood finish on it. The last step was to put a matte varnish on it and move it inside!

i hope you know husband deserves almost all the credit :D

i'll take my day sunny side up please

Hello my name is Aimee and this is a real life adventure...

After a crummy day yesterday I really needed something to boost my mood. Ask and you shall receive. Clayton offered to make me breakfast this morning, so I woke up extra early (8:00am doesn't sound bad, but it feels worse) to make sure I had time to get ready before heading over to his house and then onto class. My roommate had curled my hair from the night before and somehow most of it managed to stay curled. I touched up a few pieces in the front, powdered my nose, and added a coat of mascara and voila! I was ready.

Did I mention that the weather happened to be PERFECT for sporting sundresses? Yep, it's official- I broke out my first one today and don't plan to stop until October!

Being absolutely wonderful Clayton not only offered to make breakfast, but also picked me up. We ran by Babeway to get the necessities and then headed back to his house where the cooking would commence.

We decided on omelets, but after a not-so-successful flip it turned into scrambled eggs.
Despite the small disaster, it was DELICIOUS! Here's the recipe:

3 eggs
1 dash of milk
1 dash of butter (melted)
1/4 of a green bell pepper (or as much as you desire) chopped
1/4 of a yellow onion (again based on preference) diced
1/4 of a small Roma tomato (as much as you like...) diced
1 clove of garlic minced
spinach (you know the drill... add to your taste)
1/4 cup of shredded cheese (we used Monterrey jack cheddar)
1/2 avocado sliced
splash of olive oil

1. Mix eggs, milk, and butter in a small bowl with a fork.
2. Saute onions, bell peppers, and garlic in olive oil until onions begin to brown.
3. Add onion and bell pepper mixture to eggs.
4. Over medium heat, cook egg mixture. Avoid stirring to allow the bottom of the omelet to cook.
5. Once the edges look like they are cooked add in spinach and tomato. Allow egg mixture to complete cook on bottom.
6. (This is where things went all wrong for us) Flip the egg mixture over with a spatula and cook the other side for an even amount of time.
7. Sprinkle cheese and avocado slices, fold in half, serve and enjoy!

I suggest consuming this breakfast with salsa, it's the perfect compliment. We accompanied it with buttered toast and half a banana, but bacon or potatoes would be great too!

I hope you made time for breakfast.

busy in the kitchen

Hello my name is Aimee and this is a real life adventure...


As promised I am (slowly) becoming more domesticated through activities such as sewing, cooking, and crafting. This week my Momma decided we should serve enchiladas for family dinner. Of course I was her right hand man up until the rice started to burn and my wonderful 13 year old sister dropped the I'm-going-to-switch-schools-hope-that's-okay-with-you bomb. Then I was in charge. After adding more water, bullion, and garlic the rice was on it's way to saved and a bottle of wine later my Momma felt better. :)

The meal took about an hour and a half to make from start to finish. We made both red and green sauce enchiladas, however I much prefer the green ones.

Here's what you'll need:

1lb of boneless chicken breast
15-20 corn tortillas (the small ones)
cooking oil
salt
pepper
red chili flakes (optional- adds spice and flavor!)
1 bulb of fresh garlic (I guess garlic powder is okay too)
1 10.5 oz can of cream of chicken soup
1 7 oz can diced green chilis
1 28 oz can green enchilada sauce
2 cups (1 pkg) shredded cheese

1. Boil the chicken until it is cooked all the way through (at least 10 min)
2. While the chicken is boiling, coat the bottom 1/2 in of a frying pan with cooking oil and put over medium-high heat.
3. After oil is heated, one by one, place the corn tortillas in the oil for about 30 seconds on each side. This will make them pliable when stuffing. Set aside.
4. Shred the chicken (I do it with two forks)
5. Combine shredded chicken with salt, pepper, garlic and red chili flakes(to your liking), green chilis, and soup.
6. Place about 2 spoonfuls of mixture in each corn tortilla and roll up leaving both ends open. Place in a casserole dish.
7. After filling all the tortillas, pour green sauce on top of the enchiladas and cover with cheese.
8. Cover with tin foil and place in the oven at 350F for about 25 minutes.

Serve with re-fried beans and Spanish rice. Enjoy!

Here I am channeling my inner Betty

On leftover night I whipped up these guys to celebrate finishing off the enchiladas

These homemade ice cream sandwiches are super easy to make and can be done with homemade cookies (like I did) or store bought ones. I used chocolate chip cookies and stuffed them with vanilla ice cream, but you can choose any cookie and any ice cream to make endless amounts of delicious concoctions!

I hope you enjoy the recipe!

southwest chicken casserole

Hello my name is Aimee and this is a real life adventure...

Winter break has given me seemingly more time to do the things I normally do not have time for. For instance the other night I went to my Mom's to work on my sister Bee's super secret Christmas present and decided to make dinner. Of course everyone else was busy shopping (Mom), out with friends(Abbey), and visiting Sedona (Bee, p.s. I am super jealous) so Emily and I invited my prospective dating future (more on him later) over to help eat the giant casserole I concocted.

I would like to pause here and point out that this is the beginning of a new series I am titling "Queen of Domesticity" cause it's kind of ironic.

After slaving away for forty minutes we ended up with a version of a southwest chicken casserole, Spanish rice, re-fried beans and tortillas. I made Emily and Prospect boy try it first.

*It was delicious*

So here's the recipe:

3/4 28 oz can of diced tomatoes

1 4 oz can of diced green chilis (the small cans)
1 4 oz can of diced jalapenos
1 10 oz can of cream of mushroom soup (you can use cream of chicken instead, if you prefer)
1 bulb of garlic
1/2 yellow onion (diced)
1lb of chicken
2 cups of mexican blend shredded cheese (or any type of cheese you choose)
salt
pepper
garlic powder (my dad says you can't get enough garlic, it keeps the vampires away!)

1. Boil the chicken in a stalk pot (or any pot you can fit it into) until the middle is white.

2. Shred the chicken on a plate (I usually do it by using two forks).

3. In a frying pan combine a little oil with the entire bulb of garlic (crush it either with a knife or a garlic press) and the diced onion.

4. After the onion and garlic brown, add in the shredded chicken and sprinkle generously with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

5. Add in soup, tomatoes, green chilis, and jalapenos.

6. Stir the mixture and let it sit over medium-low heat for a few minutes.

7. Transfer mixture from frying pan to a casserole dish and cover with cheese (I suggest piling it on so you can't see anything but cheese).

8. Set oven to broil and bake casserole until cheese is melty and brown.

9. Serve with Spanish rice, re-fried beans, and tortillas. Enjoy!

After consuming almost the entire pan the three of us agreed that adding a small can of diced black olives would be heavenly.

Do you have a favorite recipe to share?