In general, we try to be diligent about minimizing our impact on the environment - reduce, reuse, recycle, and all that good stuff. But I have a confession to make - I'm a horrible paper towel waster (although I do buy recycled paper towels, at least!). They're just so easy. But I keep seeing these reusable towel rolls and figured they shouldn't be toooo much more of a pain than regular towels, so I decided to finally suck it up and make a set of my own.
At the beginning of the year, I was super motivated to lose some weight before we went on Bryan's company trip to Jamaica. I did great - I met my goal and got back to my 'normal-heavy' weight and out of the 'oh crap, it is not normal for me to be this heavy!' range. But on the trip, I ate and drank all I wanted. Then the week after the trip is dubbed 'feast week' - as in, the annual beach trip is over, now we can eat lots of junk. And since then (for the last month now!), I keep saying to myself that next week I'll start being healthy again. Well I finally stepped on the scale again, and that was plenty of motivation to make me quit procrastinating (eek!!). So this week, finally, I'm bringing healthy back - for good this time!
For one thing, we've jumped on the green smoothie bandwagon. Gotta admit - I am totally shocked Bryan likes these too! I'd expect the color alone to frighten him away from trying a sip, but he reluctantly gave it a try, and he's hooked. If you're still skeptical that they actually taste good, let my vegetable-hating husband be a testament to how delicious they are!
Angel food cake is one of our go-to desserts when we're trying to be somewhat healthy - light & fluffy & fat free - what could be better than that? ...Chocolate, duh. And peanut butter. I was all set to make a pink angel food cake for Valentine's Day, then Bryan suggested making it chocolatey. Which then led me to realize we should make it peanut buttery too. The result was a chocolate peanut butter angel food cake that is still {almost} fat-free.
Although I've since crossed the Potomac, I'm a born & raised Maryland girl, and true to my heritage, I love me some crabs. I also love me some Ravens and wanted to do a Maryland-inspired post when they won the Super Bowl. It took me a few weeks, and the Super Bowl probably isn't on most of your minds anymore, but this is my 'Hooray, Ravens!' celebration post. Even if you're a 49ers fan and are hating the Ravens at the moment, I'd still recommend giving this recipe a try. I made this for Valentine's Day, and Bryan dubbed it his favorite meal I ever cooked him.
I've been participating in Fat Mum Slim's photo a day challenge for a few months, although I got kind of flaky with it at the end of 2012. With the new year starting, I decided that I really wanted to keep up with it throughout all of 2013 and get a full 365 photo challenge in!
If you're not familiar with it, there's a new list of daily photo prompts each month. Each day, you take a photo inspired by the day's theme, then tag your photo with #FMSphotoaday on Instagram (or elsewhere, but IG is my method). There are no real rules; it's just meant to be a fun way to inject a little extra creativity into your day. You can read more about how to play here. And if you'd like to hop in on February, here's the list for this month.
I had lunch recently at Le Pain Quotidien and ordered a pear and prosciutto tartine. It was such a simple and tasty meal that I had to recreate something similar. And (shh, don't tell) but I like my version even better!
Wow, it has been a looooong time since I've actually had an update on the house. We've been waiting on the building permit for ages! We thought we'd have it in December at least, but after the first review, the county apparently had some major questions. Our builder resubmitted before the holidays, but then of course, nothing gets done over the holidays, then the county was backed up from the holidays allll through January. Lately, we've been pestering our builder, and our builder's been pestering the county, and today, finally, we got this in an email from our builder:
We celebrated with some champagne! I posted this on Vine - are you using Vine? If so, find me at Jess - Homevolution and I'll follow you back!
Update...
Ecstatic to be writing such a 'small'
check to the county for sewer fees
Turns out we celebrated just a little too early. When our builder went to get the permit, we found out we were already supposed to have paid our sewer fees and submitted the easement paperwork. And of course, they hadn't recorded the fact that we didn't need to pay an extra $15k fee - a surprise we discovered way, way back here. They wouldn't let the builder rep pick up the permit until we got all of that settled, but luckily it only took another couple of days, and we reconfirmed that the $15k fee wasn't needed (phew!).
So a few days after we thought we were getting it, we finally got this thing:
Even though we popped that champagne a little early, it turns out it wasn't a big deal and didn't hold us up too much at all. So once again - huzzah, we have a building permit!
If you follow me on Instagram (@jdeares), you may have gotten a sneak peak of this project over the weekend. I submitted a pic of it for A Night Owl blog's #ANOweekend project since this weekend's theme was handmade. Check out A Night Owl's Instagram section if you're not familiar with the project - there's a new theme each weekend, and it's always a lot of fun!
I've never made bread before last night. Wait, scratch that - I tried to make bread once when I was in high school and failed. I tried to make some sort of special French Christmas bread that I thought would be perfect for my French class Christmas party - all I remember is that it took forever to make, required letting the dough sit overnight, and then it turned out as hard as a rock.
Ever since then, I've always thought of bread as a difficult and time consuming thing to make, and I haven't bothered trying to bake it again - until last night. I found a recipe from Alexandra's Kitchen that was labeled the best and easiest bread you will ever make - and I promise you, Alexandra wasn't kidding!
I made the bread in the evening, and it only took a few hours from start to finish - plus there's no kneading involved. Mine didn't exactly turn out perfect - I didn't have the proper kind of bowls to use, so for that reason (or possibly something else I screwed up) my bread didn't rise very high.
However, despite the puny appearance of my bread, it was DELICIOUS! I really think it is one of my favorite breads ever.
Apologies for the yellowish, blurry pictures in this post. I had no intention of posting about this initially, but since I am still mentally obsessing over this bread a day later, I figured I'd write up a quick post to recommend it, ugly phone pics and all!
A tasty slice!
Do you make homemade bread or are you as scared of it as I was? Either way, I seriously recommend giving this recipe a try!!
Bryan's company goes to the Caribbean every January. Each time, he goes off for a few days, then comes home all bronzed...or sometimes lobster-like. Either way, I am always extremely jealous that he gets to go off to a tropical paradise while I'm home alone in the cold. Not this year though!! This time, I finally got to tag along! The trip this year was to Secrets St. James in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
We had a great view from our balcony - especially at sunset.
We went on a catamaran excursion that included snorkeling and playing at Margaritaville.
We spent time at the beach...
...and the pools.
Did some activities like kayaking, volleyball, and bocce ball...
But mostly, we did a lot of drinking. All inclusive resort + huge group + very young company... really it's more like a college spring break trip than a company event. Lots of fun, even though it definitely makes me feel old at the ripe ol' age of 29.
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