June 27th - July 1st, 2011

Phew another week has swooped on by and I have found myself behind on my posting.  I'll condense my week done into a few paragraphs and of course some pictures.

Mostly I spent my time working and all those fun shenanigans.  One of the days I went to the History Center in St. Paul with some free tickets I got from the library.

I saw this plane and had to think of my friend Jenny.  It also didn't help that I was in a history center either. :P

Did I mention that I was there two days before the State was planning on shutting down because they can't seem to figure out what they want to do with their budget.  Is it really that difficult to plan a budget?   How is it that all the other states have theirs planned but we don't?  Come on Minnesota.  Get your head in the game.

Also, I have to wonder what they removed just for the shutdown.  All the items that seemed to be missing were from the Minnesota History part of the place and no where else.  It was really odd.  They close down the whole building anyway...so why would they need to remove things?  Weird.

 One of the cool items that was there was this sweet mustache cup.  The extra ledge was made specifically to protect your bushy mustache from getting wet from you drink.  How brilliant is that?!  Why don't we have those now?!  I would totally want one of those if I had a bushy mustache.  Me thinks I need to go online and see if I can find some for sale.  I have plenty of relatives that I'm sure could use some mustache protection.

Now for something completely different!  I had my house inspected on Thursday and you will be glad to know that nothing to wild and woolly showed up.  I took some more detailed pictures of things like the tile on the wall in my bathroom(above).  The walls in the house aren't bad but I'm really considering painting them.  I like the idea of having colored walls for once in my life.  Not sure what I can do with the walls in the bathroom.  Only part of it has the blue tile.

I've been more concerned with the kitchen.  There is this blue and white vinyl on the floor and wooden panel part way up the side of the wall.  I'm thinking I'll paint my cabinets a white color to brighten up the room because they are a dark brown right now.  There is also a small amount of yellow/white tile on the wall next to the shelves.  Sooo.  I'm looking for ideas on what color to use. Any one?

Oh I almost forgot!  I had some delicious turkey sliders from Good Earth restaurant in Edina.  I really like their food.  I've never been their for lunch before but it is pretty good.  Their breakfast is pretty tasty.  Now I'm craving their breakfast!

June 26th, 2011

Never have been one to count my eggs before they have fully hatched, but in the case of my house I'm pretty sure I can put all of them in one basket.  (That was painful to write that many cliches in one sentence. )

Used my lovely Sunday afternoon to wonder aimlessly about Ikea to get ideas for what I would want in my house.  Got some good ideas as far as furniture for my living room and second bed room.  Probably won't fork out the dough for Ikea furniture but at least I can start visualizing what I'd like to have.

For a couch I would probably want something similar to this. The link for this couch is:  http://www.roomstogo.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=showItem&ipac_id=36886  One of the things I have come to discover I am a big fan of is a Chaise.  They work nicely when you can connect them onto a couch like the picture above.  Most versions of the chaise/couch combination at Ikea that I saw had the ability to switch sides or be free standing, and I really like that idea.

That couch also has a pull out sleeper inside the couch.  I'm think of getting just a small sleeper sofa for the second bedroom for guests to use when they come over.  Then I can still have the guest room to use as an 'office' but also a place to keep quests.  Plus if I had a big couch like the one above in the living room people could sleep on that too!

Who knew having a house could make one so excited about buying furniture!

June 25th, 2011

Good news!!! Excellent news! Probably the best darn news I can get...well me winning the lottery would be better, but this is pretty close.

Today was the day I found out my offer on the house was accepted!  Here I was thinking it was going to take until next week before we could even start to haggle with them, but they must be eager to sell because they got back to us over the weekend.

Now I have a place to rest my head after my lease is up.  There are plenty of things I will need to be figuring out now that I have a house!  Technically first I'll have an inspection done and then wait for all the paper work to do what it has to do.  Originally I was going to move end of August but the seller wants to move the closing date up to the end of July.  So, I will most likely have a whole month to move into my home.  That is crazy!

Still think I'm in a bit of a shock from having it go so well.  Please hope and pray that the inspection doesn't find something terribly wrong with the place.  Definitely don't want to look for houses yet again.  Plus I think I got the place for a pretty good price. : )

My house!  I'm so excited to be working towards owning a place instead of renting.  Lets just say the 'block' party our apartment place had while I was trying to sleep today was more than annoying and solidified my choice to get a house even more!

June 24th, 2011

Sometimes your body doesn't like to make plans.  Today was one of those days.  My morning plans went through without a hitch, it was what I had to do in the afternoon that got a wrench thrown in it.

My morning was filled with paperwork to make an offer on a house.  The papers probably won't be seen by the seller until monday.  Not really looking forward to waiting, but that is part of the game.  Despite the intial money I will have to spend on the house I can't help but look forward to the smaller monthly payments.  Need to be careful though...don't want to get my hopes up and have this get shatter.  Really, really, reaalllllly hoping that does not happen.  High hopes for all of this.

As for the rest of my day; did some picking up around the apartment because they apartment people wanted to show our place to a perspective renter.  Since the showing was at 5:30 I needed to get some sleep before hand because I had worked the night before.  Thinking I would get up an hour beforehand and scooch on out before they got there was my plan.  

Sadly that didn't happen.  My phone kept ringing while I was trying to sleep and kept me jerking in and out of sleep.  This ended up causing me to sleep through my alarm later and be woken up when I hear someone opening my room's door.  There was no panic or screaming "Omg who are you??!!?!"  Somehow I remembered they were showing it and laid still and the person mentioned something about someone sleeping and left me alone.  

Oops?  Guess I can't really feel too bad about it.  They got to see the rest of the apartment....just not my bedroom.  Not like they are judging my room, it's the place itself they want to judge.

Oh, one more thing about this viewing.  They told me that they would give us at least a day advance warning if they wanted to bring someone in and they had tried to schedule the viewing the same day they called.  Come on people, if you are going to say something please try to keep to your word.

P.s. Flower pots have their first bloom!  I can't remember what all is in there, but if you can tell me what it is you get a high five.

June 23rd, 2011

Today was a day for firsts.  Never have I ever cooked with eggplant before and for some reason this was the week to do so.  Admittedly, I should have read up more on the technique to get it to cook correctly before I jumped into the recipe but I was hungry!  Hind site; never cook when you are very hungry or you'll make too much or do something wrong.  It is kind of like how you should never shop while hungry, expect entirely different.

When I bought the eggplant I did at least look up how to find one that was ripe and I think I succeeded at least in that.  The recipe I found was eggplant parmigiana.  Basically it is just like chicken parmigiana except with eggplant in place of chicken (imagine that).

Some of the ingredients listed were not in my cupboards or I had forgotten to get them at the store, but I made due.  The only things I think I changed were crackers instead of bread crumbs.  After having made them I'm almost sure bread crumbs would have worked better.

The recipe in a nut shell: eggplant, crackers, egg whites, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, pasta sauce, and mozzarella cheese.  The eggplant is put in the egg whites and then dipped into the crackers, Italian seasoning, and garlic powder mix.  Then it is baked, flipping them once.

After they baked on the sheet you lay them in a pan and slather on the pasta sauce and cheese in layers, and then baked it again!  Some how with all this time in the oven I'm pretty sure I still managed to some how under cook them because they seemed far to crunchy and chewy.  Then again I haven't ever cooked them so I'm not really sure how they should taste.

All I can say about it is, I doubt I'll probably make it again.  Definitely not added to my favorites.

June 22nd, 2011

So I decided to finally risk the grey skies today and ride my bike.  It didn't look like it was going to pour rain or anything so I took it as a challenge.  Well, sort of... 

Having not had a bagel from Bruegger's Bagels in far too long I decided that should be my destination.  There was more uphill parts of the path than I expected.  Guess I never really noticed while driving.  About half way there I walked next to my bike; I'll admit partly because my legs were not used to hills and partly because I had to answer the phone and make some other phone calls as well.  

I made it to Bruegger's Bagels without any rain.  Did I really succeed so easily?! Nope.  While I enjoyed one of their new skinny bagel options (egg white patty, turkey sausage, and some tomato tasty spread on a sesame seed bagel) outside in the cool morning air I got a phone call and moved back into the building.  

Shortly after I was on the phone it started to mist rain outside.  Bah!  I ended up having to ride part way home in the misting rain.  Luckily it was only the annoying mist kind and not heavy drops or I would have probably had to stay at Bruegger's until it let up...which probably would have led to me eating more bagels which would be oh so bad for the diet.

My reaction to having to ride in the rain.  I had to carry my purse under my light jacket to keep it safe from rain and I decided that I kind of looked like a pregnant lady on a bicycle.  I wonder how many people passing on the road thought I was.

June 16th-20th, 2011

I seriously hate when I get behind on my blog like this and I'm not really sure why I didn't do it over the weekend.  I had one of those extremely lazy streaks come over me.  Now the challenge is trying to remember what I did during the days I missed.

I went to the movie Super 8 and that was pretty good.  I've heard it described as the modern day ET and I guess you could kind of say that.  I would have to agree with some that the mystery with seeing the alien for so long doesn't let you get time to truly connect and care about the alien.  I wish that there could have been a moment where we could become to understand what it wanted more.  Ah well.  Still good anyway.

On Friday, I believe, I went to some houses.  Well, I finally got to see the inside of a few houses.  This house search is kind of annoying but I have a feeling that apartment searching would be just as annoying.  I'm hoping to get the whole housing situation figured out soon.  There are a few hopefuls as far as a place to live, but we shall see how that goes.

Weekend was extremely boring.  I wanted to make something that needed some brown sugar...which brought to my attention that someone had thrown out my brown sugar..soooo I didn't make it. I made rice crispy treats instead!  Totally worth the 3 weight watcher points for each piece.

Speaking of weight watchers, lately I seem to be magically eating my exact amount of points without using my points calculator like a nazi.  I think I'm finally start to memorize what certain things count as and getting better at mentally figuring it out.  Which is helpful because my mobile app isn't working.  Apparently I don't have enough room on my phone...again...Bah.

Lastly, my garden is doing wonderfully!  Just check out my lettuce!

(Part of the reason I'm excited for a house is that I can finally have a real garden!)

Oh yeah and I forgot that sometime during this stretch of me being a lame face and not posting this happened. I opened an egg and it had two yolks...I'm not sure if that is supposed to happen...I think the second egg I cracked open did the same thing.  Is that what happens when eggs get old?  I was kind of concerned after that and threw them away a few days later just in case.  I mean I did eat the ones I cracked and I'm not dead now, but it just seems odd.

June 15th, 2011

Just another day for me...not! Went to Theatre in the Round to get a tour of the place and talk about volunteering there.  I'm not going to lie but I'm pretty excited to work in a new place.  Not only will I gain experience working in a place that performs in the round but I will be adding a new theatre to my resume.  They seem like a reputable place.  They have been around since 1952 according to the pamphlet they gave me.

I'm going to say it again, I'm excited.  The technical volunteer coordinator that I talked to seemed like they were really helpful getting people headed towards working professionally.  That is all I can hope for.  Getting closer to doing what I want to do on a professional level.

I just hope they think I meet their standards after the show I'm working on for them and bring me back for others.  I can't wait. : )

The show I'm working on for them is The Fantasticks.  It's going to be fantastic! :P

June 14th, 2011

Today was a sort of cooking adventure for me.  I have been trying to figure out what to do with the canned salmon I bought from Costco.  Haven't really made much with salmon before so I wasn't really sure where to start.  My grandma makes some delicious salmon patties but I can never remember the recipe for those.  In the end I decided on making what I believe would be called a Salmon salad?  It's similar to what you would make for a tuna fish sandwich, but with salmon and missing a few other ingredients.

The salmon I used was a wild Alaskan salmon.  Bear salmon (rawr).  It was boneless and skinless so I didn't have to check for bones, but I did anyway.  Never can be too careful.

I didn't have any mayo like I would normally use in a tuna salad or chicken salad.  I scowered my fridge for something that would work and came across something my parents had bought and left in my fridge when they visited me last.  It is ranch that is apparently calorie free, fat free and gluten free.  So in my world of weight watchers it was 0 points.  Woot woot.  I doesn't taste too bad either.  I would say it doesn't taste just like ranch but it's not a bad taste either.

I also added some celery to the salmon and ranch mixture to give it some crunch.

Finally I put the mixture in lettuce leaves instead of bread for less points.  I would have used bigger lettuce leaves but my romaine lettuce was getting into the smaller pieces.  Ah well.  The tomatoes are just because I like eating tomatoes. : )

Some of posts might be more about what I cook lately...mostly because I'm trying to figure out new ways to cook lighter and healthier.  Don't worry, all my posts are not going to be about food...I think. Haha.

June 13th, 2011

Time to get creative with my food.  Well, semi-creative.  I made pancakes today with strawberry chunks cut into the batter.  I think they turned out pretty well considering I haven't made pancakes with fruit in it.  The only thing I have added to my pancakes is chocolate chips and those are definitely not on my healthy eating radar.

Is it just me or does everyone else have issues turning over the first two pancakes?  The first two pancakes I make I usually end up screwing up because they don't flip over nicely.  One of them ended up in two halves and the other one kind of folded into itself, but then the  next two I made turned out perfectly.  Pancakes.  Funny things.

I also made some turkey bacon to go with my pancakes.  Someone please tell me if they think this is totally crazy but I was considering making pancakes with pieces of bacon in them.  Is that super strange? Ha ha.  I think it might be interesting.  I might try it some day.

June 12th, 2011

Today's little tidbit and chunk of advice is don't buy these shoes.

They are called Rykä.  I believe they are Kelly Ripa's shoe line.  It's supposed to be a running shoe but it doesn't give the right support for my feet.  


My friend's and I went for a walk when we woke up in the morning and walked an hour.  During the walk my feet were fine but later in the afternoon my ankle started to hurt and starting to work its way up my leg later.


I really wish I could take my shoes back for different ones because these are starting to bug me.   I thought that wearing them would help me have less pain at work but my feet just kill my feet now.


Other than complaining about my shoes I started watching a new show on Netflix, Flash Forward.  The premise of the show so far is that the world blacks out at the exact same time and for the same amount of time.  During those blackout everyone gets a glimpse of the same time and day in the future.  This guy in the FBI sees himself working on figuring out why the blackouts happen so they use his flash forward to try to figure out why it happened.  I'm enjoying it thus far.

June 11th, 2011

Today I traveled to my friend Sarah's to help her family out with her little brother's graduation party.  He graduated this year from high school just like my little brother.

It was nice to have something to do on a Saturday for once. Ha ha.  We prepared the food for the party and kept the supplies full.  Her mom cut two cool bowls out of watermelons for the fruit salad we made.  They looked very festive.  I wish I would have thought to take some pictures of our spread but I totally forgot.

It was hard to resist the Costco cake...and I didn't.  Woopsie!  It's ok, though. We went for a walk after the party died down to burn off some of that unwanted calories.

It was a beautiful walk though.  I hope my friends don't mind being in my picture, but I was trying to take it while we walk.  The lake looked beautiful.

We decided to start a fire to have s'mores when we went back but had to run and get some wood.  We also stopped at the store of liquors as Sarah puts it.  Sarah and Kelsey got some MGD lemonade or something like that.  It was beer supposedly lemonade flavored, but it didn't really taste like lemonade to me.  I don't really care for beer so I didn't really find them all that good.

I bought this wine while at the store.  I didn't open it but I'm looking forward to trying it and partly because of the name.  It had a neat blue bottle too. I like keeping certain bottles, but not all.

I unfortunately had to sleep on a tiny couch with a table pushed up to it because of a full house of people at Sarah's, but I made the best of it.  Just going feel a bit kinky in the morning. (Not that kind.  Pervos.)

June 10th, 2011

Sometimes trying new contraptions can lead to unusual occurrences.  I had bought a wine opener from a thrift store awhile back and finally decided to try it out.  

The Houdini wine bottle opener.  Quite the weird looking contraption.  It comes with a foil cutter that is used to obviously cut the foil on top of the wine bottle.  The directions to use the opener seemed easy enough but they were not!

We put the opener on top and did as the directions said....and next thing we know the cork went down instead of coming up.  Woops?  I've never seen a cork go down instead of upwards.  I have no idea what we did wrong but no way that was going to keep me from finally opening my bottle of Working Girl wine!  I just pushed it down into the bottle.  I think I'll have to keep the bottle with the cork inside as a reminder of what happened.

June 9th, 2011

Staying on my recent topic of websites I have found I'll let you know about www.skinnytaste.com.  She is actually a food blogger that includes the points for people who are part of weight watchers.  I'm looking forward to looking through her blog and figuring out some new recipes.  I like coming up with my own sometimes, but there are times when I don't know what would be  healthy to eat besides fruit and veggies.  Here are a couple recipes I want to try out from her page. The pictures included are her pictures, not mine.

http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/04/chicken-rollatini-with-spinach-alla.html#more

This is a Chicken Rollatini with spinach alla parmigiana.  Too me it just looks delicious!

http://www.skinnytaste.com/2010/06/skinny-italian-spinach-meatballs.html

Meatballs with a secret... a tasty one! Spinach snuck there way into these meatballs.  I love meatballs and I like the idea of mixing my veggies into my meat because sometimes I don't feel like eating veggies and feel more like having some good ol' meat.

http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/02/chocolate-pistachio-biscotti.html

Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti.  I don't know about you but these look too good to be true. I want to make them soooo bad but not at the same time because I'm afraid I would just keep eating them!  All I can say is thanks to this lady for making this blog so I can't find new food ideas.

I enjoy cooking for the most part. : )  Except when I get really lazy.

June 8th, 2011

Today I discovered the website www.omgpop.com. When I opened my google Chrome browser they had asked if I wanted to play angry birds on Chrome.  I thought, "sure" and clicked on it.  It took me to some sort of app store for Chrome and didn't actually find angry birds, but the game Balloono.  This game attracted me because is had a cute monkey. : )

Isn't he cute? I guess cute things just pull me in.  The game was just as cute as the picture.  You get balloons to pop boxes and power ups and what nots.  Pretty fun.  I suggest trying it.

Besides playing a cute monkey game I had a regular day.  Had some free nachos at work...which probably was not the best for me but it is oh so hard to say no to free food.

I'm going to try out some other games on that website.  They look fun as well.

June 5th, 2011

Just another lazy Sunday.  Laying around and looking at the internets.

I got so incredibly bored laying around that actually got up and went for a bike ride.  I ran into a dead end on the path I picked though.  I could have swore the path was supposed to go all the way around the lake, but I couldn't see where it went.  It came out to a street and I couldn't see it starting anywhere near by.  Maybe there was something I was missing.  I guess I'll try going the other direction next time.

After the bike ride I decided to work out a bit on the elliptical machine too.  I'm beginning to think the best way to lose weight is to work out every time you are bored.  I get bored pretty frequently when I don't have much planned so I'm pretty sure I'd be working out all the time. haha.  Something to try out at least.  It's a better choice than just napping when bored, or worse eating.

Maybe that would be the solution to obesity in america.  Work out when you are bored, or at least move around instead of vegetating.

June 4th, 2011

I wanted to fly my kite on Friday but another case of running out of time.  Soooo I fit it in on Saturday.  Sadly the wind did not cooperate with me.  I got it up for maybe a minute and then the wind just died down.  Meh.

I just kind of gave up on getting it to fly.  Kinda sad.  I was rather frustrated because I checked online and it said there was some wind blowing.  I will have a better kite flying day.  Or else! *Shakes fist in the air*

For dinner I decided to get creative and make some taco hot dish thing.  Basically I took my Jenni-o taco seasoned ground turkey and cooked it.  Then I added diced tomatoes, and celery.  Mixed it all together with some elbow maccaroni and threw some cheese on top and baked it for a few minutes to melt it.  It's pretty good.  I've got plenty though!  I know I'll be having some leftovers.

June 3rd, 2011

In the oh so 'wise' words of Rebecca Black.  "It's Friday, Friday, gonna have fun on Friday!"  I now apologize for anyone that got that song stuck in their head now.

I went to the movie X-Men: First Class.  It was pretty good.  I'm not a big comic book nerd so I didn't know how much of it was true to the comics.  I hope most of it was true so that what I know now about the characters isn't all lies.

After the movie I had some tasty lettuce roll ups.  Lettuce roll ups have become a staple in my diet because they are so easy to make and not bad for you either.  Just take a leaf of romaine lettuce, and your choice of deli meat and roll it up.  You can add cheese if you please.  I have been splitting my cheese slices in half for one roll up.  Pretty tasty.

Later in the day I went for a brief bike ride because we lated so late to go for the ride.  We started to run out of sunlight so had to turn back.  My butt isn't use to riding a bike.  I definitely had a pain in my butt afterwards and it wasn't even that long!  I might have to invest in a new seat if my bum doesn't get used to it.

I didn't actually use my new helmet when I rode my bike... I was riding near my place on a path so I didn't feel like I would need it, and I also forgot I had got it. Haha.

June 2nd, 2011

Bet you can't guess where I went today...and if you can't figure it out, well maybe if you try really really hard you can guess correctly.

I went to Ovo.  One of the traveling shows for Cirque du Soliel.  They set themselves up outside the Mall of America. Not the best location for the show but it worked out well enough.  The planes taking off over head were noticeable during the show but they covered them for the most part with the music.

Please don't hurt me or get angry at me of fantastic Cirque but I took pictures before the show started.  None during, so that's less bad. Right?

First thing you see when you come in is this big balloon egg in the middle of the stage.  The big top is a nice size on the inside.  I was worried how we were all going to fit inside but it is 'bigger on the inside'.  (For all those Doctor Who lovers)

My seats weren't half bad either.  I don't there was really any seats that would be considered bad.   The ones on the far sides would have probably had issues seeing.  My seats were on a main aisle too so at one point one of the main characters, the fly I believe, walked past right in front of us.  I could'a tripped him if I was mean...and probably gotten kicked out. lol  Great show though.  Just like any other Cirque show out there.

Now on to some of the technical stuff!  Well only one thing could I really get a picture of because it was so dark and there is no flash photography allowed.  In front of me was one of the rigging towers where two of the spot light people sat.  They had these cool chairs with the spot connected to them and could swivel around freely.  It's pretty impressive if I may say so myself.  I would totally hate getting up there because of the height but it would be way cool to spot up there.

A picture of the spider web set up at the beginning of the second half.  We got a 30 minute intermission to wonder about and they set this up while people were distracted by merchandise and super expensive concessions.  I did however get 5 dollars off my program by using my American Express card. Cha-Ching!

Omg I almost forgot! My favorite part of the entire show; besides everything, was this giant flower that bloomed during a part and then un-bloomed later.  It actually bloomed twice.  It was quiet possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and it isn't even a real flower.  There was a second flower that bloomed too but it wasn't nearly as impressive as the first one, or at least in my opinion.

All I can say is...I love Cirque.  The end.

June 1st, 2011

Well my day today has been far better than the one before.  I had a lovely day walking around the Mall of America.

I enjoyed some tasty food throughout the time spent there.  I think I did pretty well keeping with my points.  I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but I joined weight watchers a few weeks back.  It's been interesting keeping up with it but I'm doing well so far I think.

First I shared a strawberry-banana crepe from the Magic Pan Crepe stand.  I'm pretty fond of crepes and they are only 2 points according to WW.  I'm glad that I can still eat the things I like.

Next I had a tea from the Tea Garden.  I really enjoy the selection there.  I can't remember what kind I got.  It had something to do with blood oranges... Oh well.  It was good.  I think I'll try to taste all the teas there.  I'm sure that'll be a challenge but I'm up for it!  It's tasty tea!  I love tea.

After enjoying some tasty tea I tried Tiger Sushi for my meal before work.  It was surprisingly good.  I tried grilled calamari instead of fried.  As much as I love me some fried food I know grilled would be much better for me and was pretty darn good.

Grilled Calamari...I had already ate from it before I remembered to take a photo...oops.

We also order and order of what they called tiger balls.  The name itself is pretty comical and partly the reason I wanted to try them.  It was just salmon prepared nigiri style.  Basically it was some balled up rice with salmon on top and a small strip of what I believe to be seaweed around it.  Also delicious.

Mmm balls...lol

However, it was not as delicious as the main course.  We just did the option of let the chef pick what to make and this beautiful roll came out.

Does't it just look delicious!  I believe it has eel on top because they asked if we had an preferences to give the chef ideas and I told him I liked eel.  Then in the middle is some shrimp tempura and I honestly can't remember what the yellow thing was.  All I know is that it was fantastic.  I also know that I love eel sauce...whatever it is....

I love me some food. 'Nuff said.