2011 in a word...

This year seems to be cruising by, don't you think? I mean where did February go? It's the last day!! At least I have something to show for it this year. Two weekends ago we decided to tackle a pretty gigantic problem area of our house... the basement. The laundry room in particular. It has been our "out of sight out of mind" area pretty much since we moved into the house. We had so much stuff in there that it was starting to overflow into where I actually do the laundry. So we left all reasoning behind and decided to tackle it. Nine hours and eight garbage bags later we had defeated the mess! We threw away a lot of junk and gave some of the stuff to DI. My laundry room is HUGE!!! And everything we kept is nicely organized and we have extra tubs to continue storing things in. I am so proud of us!

Dave decided that he wanted our big screen tv on the main floor and the smaller tv in the basement. I told him that if he was going to move the tvs I wanted the basement cleaned up and organized. So he went to town. He rearranged the basement so we can all do our desired projects (crafting, music, tv, reading, etc.) while still keeping an eye on Bradley. It is so open and spacious now! I took the next day organizing all of my craft stuff and let me tell you I have quite a bit. Everything has a place now and I love it!! Here are some pictures of my craft area...



I papered the little boxes on the wall next to the window so they could be pretty while they hold some handy craft supplies. It was my first craft project with my new area. It worked out wonderfully!



My wonderful husband brought home a big box to hold all of my magazines. For the record I have 101 magazines that are now all cataloged and categorized. Sooo happy!!


In other news I have a few food pics to post as well. I have been slacking on cooking new foods. But I have done a few things here and there. Most of them were eaten before I could get a picture. Having two boys in the house is like having a pack of wolves nipping at your ankles every five minutes when food is being prepared. Not to mention WRX is a food fanatic. She ran off with a piece of raw chicken the other day.
It was ridiculous. So here are a few that I have been able to catch before they were devoured...



This is a chicken caesar salad that I threw together last month. The bowl that it's in is one that Dave did for me at Color Me Mine on our 1st wedding anniversary. Sweet isn't it? The salad was amazing and surprisingly filling with the chicken.




Now I've never been one for soup. I don't like slurping my food. Now there is a cure for that... BREAD BOWLS!! Bread bowls make everything amazing. I have done sourdough bowls and french bread bowls. I've made taco soup, clam chowder and I also did the spinach dip for the super bowl in a bread bowl. If you ever get bored of just soup and crackers, I highly recommend shaking it up with a bread bowls.

So here's to next month! Maybe I can get around to experimenting so more in March!

PS. The word for 2011 is ORGANIZED, and I love it!!

Super Bowl 2011

This year for the Super Bowl Dominique and I decided to go all out for the menu. We had an almost proper 3 course meal. (That ended up as more like a 6 course meal.) We started planning said menu about four weeks in advance, and broke the shopping list up so we were both spending about the same for groceries. Our menu consisted of the following: Stuffed jalapeños wrapped in bacon, spinach dip in a homemade sourdough bread bowl, shrimp dip, and homemade onion rings for the appetizers. For the main course we had bacon wrapped chicken strips with homemade BBQ sauce, homemade sweet chili in mini sourdough bread bowls, and asian peanut slaw. Dessert was white chocolate covered pretzels and Dominique's dad was bringing cheesecake. Needless to say, we had WAY too much food for the six of us. I figured we could pace ourselves and get through the food.... Boy was I wrong. We brought home so much food! It took us three days AFTER the Super Bowl to eat it all! At least the Packers won. Though that was little comfort for the tummy ache we all had for the next week. Here are some pictures we took of the food before it was attacked by the boys.




Dominique and I have decided that since we overdid ourselves this year, we will be using a much simpler menu next year - Pizza and wings. Because no one should have to be up until 3am prepping food to then stand in the kitchen for 4.5 hours to cook it. It was pretty delicious though. Maybe I'll do this menu again in a few years.