Food

I wanted to do a round-up of some yummy recipes I've made in the last little while and taken pictures of. Above is some Blue Bell Banana Pudding ice cream that I sprinkled walnuts and sprinkles on. Sprinkles make everything even better.

This isn't the best picture of the prettiest meal, but it was delicious. It is Taco Soup from the crock pot lady. I didn't add any meat. I ate it with sour cream and tortilla chips. It was yummy and made a ton. It filled up almost my whole crockpot.

Ken made pizza. He made the crust and everything. It's just cheese but I think it was one of the best pizzas I've had in a long time.

This is a citrus salad inspired by Smitten Kitchen's Citrus Salad. It had a ton of different citrus fruits in it. Central Market was having their "citrus fest" so I grabbed two of everything. There was ruby red grapefruit, two different kinds of mandarin oranges, some clementines, a honey tangerine and a Cara Cara. I squeezed Meyer lemon juice over it too. There might have also been a key lime in there. I added some mint, spinach and feta.

Just looking at the picture makes me want to make this again right now. It was Carrot Salad. It was amazing. I added some mushrooms and Parmesan because I'm American and couldn't just leave something alone lol.

Whew, that was quite a few pictures. I'll have to post tomorrow about Smitten Kitchen's Monkey Bread and her Oreos. They deserve a post all to themselves. I highly recommend both. The Oreos taste like Nabisco's, even without black cacoa powder. The filling is spot on too.

Small things that make me smile

I took pictures of little things throughout the day that make me smile:

On the left is a plastic crystal thing that my great grandma had, a little round faceted one that my mom gave me, and a more elaborate one that was on sale at Kohls from their Christmas stuff.
On the left is a ...thing that I got when my mom, brother, and I stopped in Kima, which is near Houston.

My makeup brushes are awesome. They are so much better for makeup application. I wash them when I remember, probably about every ten days. I have them in a candle holder with aquarium gravel in the bottom so they stand up on their own and don't get lost in the jar.

Surprise flowers for absolutely no reason other than the fact that Ken loves me. And of course a cat has to get in the way of a picture and check out the flowers before I shoo him away.

That's all for now.

A long overdue Valentine's Day post

I meant to post this last weekend but I didn't quite get to it. It snowed a lot last week. On Thursday I tried to go to work and it didn't work. I called my boss and he said just to go home. I had already asked for Friday and Saturday off from work so I wasn't too concerned about the snow. The only thing was that Ken and I had reservations at Ferre for 7:30 on Friday. We ended up canceling the reservation and rescheduling it for Saturday at 10:00 pm. It was really nice. We had a gazpacho with scallops for the first course. Then we both had ravioli with fontina cheese and a black truffle butter sauce. For the entree I had sea bass with tortellini which was excellent. Ken had some kind of cow that wasn't quite to his liking. It was a good cut of meat and cooked perfectly, but it wasn't seasoned very well. He likes meat when he cooks it. After we finished with our entree Ken got down on one knee and I have no idea what he really said but I said yes and everyone 'awww'ed and for dessert we had a cornmeal lava cake with chocolate gelato and caramel sauce. Another table saw Ken proposing and bought us a bottle of champagne. It was really sweet and romantic. I'll add more pictures later.

Decorating

I'm trying to decide on paint colors for the inside of my house. I have a pallet that sounds good on paper and should flow through the house. My carpet is burgundy though and it doesn't exactly go with the style I want in my house. It's brand new carpet and it's soft and nice, just...very very burgundy. Here are the colors I'm deciding between. I've narrowed it down since taking this picture, but it's a neat picure.

Walking The Dog

No, I'm not talking about the yo-yo trick. And more accurately for it's walking the dogs. All three of them, for as long and as often as possible. When Bear was a puppy: 

he was a monster to walk. He had a ton of energy and is very strong. He pulled the entire time and I could not walk him next to me. I bought a gentle leader and he walks beautifully with it on. He hates it, but he heels and walks beside or behind me. I started reading www.dogbreedinfo.com when I was bored at work and read "walking on a leash" many many times. That website also taught me how important it is to walk dogs every day. It doens't matter how big a house or yard you have, dogs instinctually need to walk. A backyard is really just like a huge kennel to them. They are migratory animals. I walk my dogs before they eat. Recently I decided to take Bear on a walk without his Gentle Leader. We jogged at first to wear him out a bit, then we settled into a more comfortable pace. It took a lot of corrections, but he seemed to understand that he was to walk next to me, not in front and he is not allowed to pull on the lead. He does ok passing by barking dogs and people at a distance. When we get closer to people or to another dog walking he wants to play with them and sniff them. I'm still working on ignoring distractions with him. I also bought him a backpack which he seems to enjoy. It gives him a job to do and it also gives him a better work out. I also like that it gives me a place to put things when I don't have pockets.

Buster is a puppy and has a lot of energy. He does ok with not pulling on the lead after we've walked a couple blocks. About a week ago I put Bear's backpack on him and I thought I was walking a different dog. He slowed down. He heeled. He was a pleasure to walk. I found a bigger "hydration backpack" at Tuesday Morning for Bear and a medium sized one for Gurdie. Today when I walked the dogs they all wore backpacks. They look kind of silly but it really does make a huge difference. Gurdie doesn't seem to mind. I didn't put anything in her backpack today just to get her used to something on her back. I'll have to get Ken to take a picture of me walking the dogs and the dogs with their backpacks.

I also realized today that I need to work on obeying my commands with distractions present. I'm going to start making them all sit right next to a yard with a barking dog. We pass by horses and Bear has stopped barking at them. The horses trot along the fence next to us when we're walking. It's kind of neat. Hopefully it won't be raining tomorrow when I walk the dogs. I don't like walking in the cold rain and neither do they.

Taxes

My taxes are done. I get to keep like $60 and the rest is going towards my house. But hey it's much better than having to pay or something crazy like that. I use the free edition of turbo tax because mine are easy and it's entering info off of my W-2 and going click click click. Yay.