Menu Monday: Nourishing Body and Soul

 

                Good Memorial Day morning to you, friends! If you’re here today looking for a lot of inspiring recipes, I fear you’ll be disappointed. This week has been about fun dates, leftovers, and oddities, more than anything else. But maybe you’ll find something to try, even if not everything has a full recipe!

Monday: Leftover Amish Breakfast Casserole and Air Fried Chicken Tenders

What We Did: We needed to use up leftovers before they started going bad, and we hadn’t been to the grocery store in a little while, so I tried to work with what we had. I air fried the last of the chicken tenders we had in the freezer and paired them with breakfast casserole. A strange combo, but it worked! We were fed.

Tuesday: Slow Cooked Brisket, Tater Tots, and Salad with Candy Shop Pizza

What We Loved: The last time we shopped at Aldi, they had some pre-seasoned brisket on a pretty major sale. We bought one and froze it for someday. Someday came this week! I decided to put it in the slow cooker with a little water and let it cook all day. It was so good. It was seasoned with black pepper and was tender and tasty. I had salad and just a tiny bit of tater tots with mine, and Ryan had a more generous serving of tater tots. Ryan also took Candy Shop Pizza to work for a carry-in. I used plain M&Ms on it this time, and it was so pretty!

Wednesday: Leftover Slow Cooked Brisket, Tater Tots, and Salad

What We Loved: We both ended up working long days, so coming home to leftovers was the best kind of gift.

Thursday: Cobbled Together Breakfast Made from Leftovers

What We Did: You know it’s almost grocery day when you are scraping out the last of the refrigerator leftovers to eat dinner! Eggs, biscuits, gravy…it was a good, odd dinner.

Friday: Boiled Egg

What Were We Thinking? We were on our way to visit some friends and did not have time to eat dinner so…we each had a boiled egg from the snack bag. Possibly the saddest dinner I have ever shared with you in this history of this roundup. 0/10 recommend as a dinner in its entirety! There is (understandably) no photo of this meal.

Saturday: Date Night: Seafood!

What We Had: Ryan and I enjoyed a Saturday date night, and we tried something different: seafood! He chose a cheesy shrimp and grits dish, and I tried blackened redfish. (I didn’t eat the bun and gave Ryan half the fries.) I’d never had redfish before, but it was not too fishy, so I liked it!

Sunday: Chicken and Pasta Salad

What We Had: In a nod to the picnic-style of Memorial Day weekend, we purchased some chicken and pasta salad. These are rarities for us, and they were quite delicious!

Sunday Scrapbook: Moments from the Week

Good morning, friends! I hope your weekend is treating you well. We’ve had a good week around here, and these are just a few of the highlights.

Last Sunday evening we took the first boat ride of the season! It was a perfect evening…a good breeze, a sweet sunset, and Lexi couldn’t have been any happier to be back on the boat! Here’s to a beautiful summer of boat rides.

Is there much that is more fulfilling than beginning a new paper planner? I frequently start mine in the summer, and this year is no different. Writing in the first items, adding the pretties and the color coding…ahhh.

As I shared with you, this week marked 30 years since I graduated from high school, and I marked the day by writing a sermon and going to a meeting at Swiss Village. I also carved out time to reflect on the beautiful life God has allowed me to live in the last 30 years. It hasn’t been perfect. Some parts have been really hard. But God has been so faithful, and I celebrate the goodness He’s allowed me to live.

Though the week has been good, life has been quite overwhelming on many fronts lately. I was at church this week and found myself unable to catch a deep breath, so I put down my work, walked to the sanctuary, and sat there for a while, praying, taking breaths, and allowing the Lord to calm and settle my heart. I am so thankful for this room and the chance to steal away and pray here when life is too much. (Or even when it’s not!)

I worked from home on Thursday, and Lexi was ALL SNUGGLES all day while we worked on everything on my list. (It was garage sale weekend here, so we had SO much traffic. This offends her, so we had to hide away in the living room where she couldn’t see the golf cards and cars and trucks with trailers and…and…)

Rain has slowed us down from taking walks, but we were able to get one in early in the morning this week – even though it was coat-worthy weather. As I shared in a Facebook post this week, taking walks has been something Ryan and I have dearly loved for our entire marriage. Everywhere we have ever lived, we’ve found walking paths and visited them as often as possible. We have our best talks on walks, and now we have Lexi to love the walks as much as we do! (As long as Hank the Heron isn’t hanging around…)

We had a chance to visit some friends yesterday – friends we haven’t seen in a long, long time. They invited us to sit with them on the screened in porch, talk, and drink coffee. It was raining, and it was just so serene. I was thankful for the slowness, the friendship, the conversation, and the sound of the rain hitting the roof. We should sit on porches in rain more often.

Saturday Suggestions: Inspirations for Your Weekend

 

Good morning! Happy Saturday of a long weekend to you! I’m so looking forward to this weekend, and I hope you are as well. Maybe you’ll have extra time to read/watch videos, and if so, I have just the links for you!

I think I’ve told you before that I dearly love looking at floor plans for houses. It was a hobby of mine growing up, when magazines used to carry floor plans. I’d tear out my favorites, put them in a file folder in my file cabinet (because what teenager doesn’t have her own file cabinet??) and dream about the day I’d have my own house. I have my own house now, but I still love looking at fun floor plans. I’ve noticed my tastes have shrunk significantly. I used to pick out three story Victorians and now I love something that looks a little more like this.

I’ve shared, once or twice before, a YouTube video from the “Darling Desi” channel. Her storytelling in video format is such a refreshing change from the typical content creators. In this video, she redecorated her bedroom and embraced all the 90s things most of us have just thrown away: an old, boxy TV,  landline phone, actual DVDs. It was so much fun to watch. If you need a half hour of good storytime, give it a watch!

Sometimes when we travel, we stay in hotels, and sometimes we stay in Airbnb rentals. Anymore, unfortunately, hotels are cheaper, so we are returning to those, primarily, but whenever do get to stay in a short term rental, I always love exploring the home itself. We’ve had some definite favorites over the years. One of those was in Louisville, and while we didn’t fall in love with the city itself, we loved the cute little carriage house where we stayed. We remember declaring it felt like the kind of place we could actually live in, even though it was small. I stumbled upon this floor plan of a house that reminds me a lot of the layout of that Airbnb, and it’s still so cute. I still think we could do it. It would take some downsizing, but we could do it!

I dearly love a good object lesson, as you might know if you have ever heard me speak! Yvonne’s object lesson here is so good. It’s one she presented to her kids to teach them truths about what they allow themselves to think about, but honestly, I’m confident we can all benefit from the wisdom of this little lesson!

Summer is here! I’m declaring it. I love a white skirt in summer, which reminds me – have I ever told you my white skirt debacle? I had one in high school and wore it to school one day. I looked down halfway through the day and there were giant holes in the front of my skirt. I had apparently leaned against some skirt-eating chemical during our Chemistry lab and destroyed my skirt! Now I can’t think about white skirts without thinking about that. Anyway. That was a side story for free. 😊 What I really want to tell you is to check out these outfit inspirations to accompany a proper summer white skirt!

I am excited that our garden is FINALLY underway, and I look forward to seeing produce ripening out there! Jami writes here about vegetables that are easy to grow and some that are not. I concur with the ones I know about! While I haven’t planted everything on her easy-to-grow list, the ones I have (most of them) have done well for me, except for last year when nothing did well. I haven’t tried any of the not-so-easy-to-grow except the peppers, and it is true that those usually give me some fits. How about you? Any of these work for you?

Friday Fun: Celebrating My Birthday!

 

                It’s been just over a week since my birthday, and I haven’t had a chance to properly tell you all about the fun celebration! Would you like to see?

                Well, poor Ryan had to end up spoiling the surprise of the birthday gift he planned for me. He chose to get me this beautiful spinning bookcase that I’ve had on my wish list for a few years now. It had arrived and was hidden away –  but when we started working on the office overhaul, he felt like I might need to know I was getting it so I could factor it into the furniture placement. I felt so awful that it had to ruin his surprise, but I was SO HAPPY to have it! And I love how it looks in the office.

                On my actual birthday, I found beautiful flowers, a card, and a breakfast treat waiting on the island when I got up. Ryan had gone to White Cottage for some birthday treats. One of them was this little coffeecake for my breakfast! And the flowers were just stunning. I have carried them all over the house ever since (still going!) to enjoy them from room to room, depending on where I land.

                Last year my birthday fell on moving day for our church, so I worked something like a 14 hour day, hauling boxes and furniture. This year I elected to work from home and wrote all day long. I’m writing Sunday School curriculum, and this was the greatest joy and gift for a working birthday, let me tell you.

                I took a break at lunchtime to go to Swiss Village to have lunch with Ryan in his new office. He found salads for us in the café, and we ate part of them (saved the rest for leftovers), and then I opened my cards and gifts from my family! Ryan had also surprised me with my favorite White Cottage dessert: eclairs. They are SO GOOD.

                Before I left Swiss Village, I went to see Mom and Dad. They were eating lunch, so I spent some time with them in the dining room. Mom sang to me and I was able to get my picture with both of them.

                Then it was back to work time! (I have the cutest little coworker.)

                When Ryan came home from work, it was time to go to my special birthday dinner. I did not know what it was going to be – only that I should dress “smart casual” and be ready to leave at 4:45.

                Check!

                I never dreamed he would make reservations at Joseph Decuis. It’s a far fancier restaurant than we ever eat at, but what a treat it was!

                The coffee flowed all night.

                We also never get appetizers, but he said we should, so we split a hummus board. Best hummus I’ve ever eaten.

                I chose the kale salad and seafood gumbo, and Ryan opted for coq a vin.

                It was the best dinner. Our servers were so kind, and we had ample time to talk, laugh, and completely enjoy ourselves.

                Because it was my birthday, I got a free dessert, but there was no way I had room for it, so they brought it out for the candle/photo opportunity, and then they boxed it up for me to enjoy another day.

                It was such a nice night that after dinner, we took a walk around downtown Roanoke, which is just cute as a little button.

                Made it home just in time for the last of the sunset. A perfectly sweet birthday. Thank you, Ryan, for making it wonderful at every turn!