Happy New Years!

As I sit here typing this Meeko is sitting on the chair across the room staring at me with demon eyes very intently as if I must be up to something no good. The demon eyes are probably from the glow of the laptop in the dark, but considering that my cat is crazy I wouldn't put anything past him.

Anyways... I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and is ready to ring in the New Year. It's coming whether you like it or not (I'm not quite sure what camp I'm in as I'm still trying to figure out what happened to twenty-twelve....). Currently though I am planning on staying home with fancy appetizers and fancy wine to ring in the new year low key. While I'm sure that going out and partying the night away is great fun, large groups of people freak me out and New Years Eve is definitely one of the worst nights for large groups of people to gather.

Not to mention the fact that Christmas is always right before New Years and always involves atleast 4 large family gatherings (this year it was 6), so by the time I get to New Years, I'm pretty much done with people.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by people? What are your New Years plans, and the ever encouraging (at least for the first three months :) ) resolutions?

Friday Check-in

I've decided on Fridays I'm going to start doing a weekly wrap-up and check-in to help keep myself accountable and to give myself a place to talk about random things that happened during the week that don't necessarily need their own post.

This week I started strong on Wednesday getting a blog up and then working on my novel in the evening. I was able to write another 150 words. Something surprising I found was that I slept a lot better than I had in a while after spending the last part of my evening writing instead of watching television, which is something I may have to think about more.

Thursday I slacked off a little because my inlaws came into town and we spent both my lunch hour and then the entire evening with them. After getting up and going into work early yesterday, I just didn't have it in me to work on either when we got home last night. I still followed through this morning though, so I'll forgive myself for missing day 2. :)

Today the hubby and I are heading downtown to hang with the inlaws so I'm getting my post and writing done this morning. Hope everyone enjoys their day.

A New Year, A New Beginning

I don't know how 2012 is already almost at a close, but I feel like time is just flying by. I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. I also enjoyed celebrating our anniversary with my hubby. We are 1 yr married, 9 yrs together this December.

Now that we are coming to the end of December has everyone started thinking about New Year's resolutions? I'm not normally a resolution person, but this year have decided that I will give in a make a small list.

# 1: To work out a new exercise routine. I've and sick and burnout for the last few months so my work outs have kind of been all over the place.
#2: To spend at least 15 minutes a day working on this blog and on the novel that was the whole reason for this blog in the first place.  The hubby was awesome and bought me this cool writing book and Scrivner (like Word from writers) for Christmas.
#3: To work on my etsy/retail stores weekly, by either updating products, evaluating pricing or whatever else needs to be done. If I want to be able to run a soap making business I need to really devote some time to it.

Anyways, that is all I have for today. I hope every one is enjoying themselves this holiday season and I will be back on Friday. :)

Stuffed Pepper Recipe

Today I have a food recipe for you. :) The food recipe is quickly becoming a popular staple in our household, so I thought I would share it with you.

Stuffed Pepper Recipe

I found a yummy and quick(!) stuffed pepper recipe while reading Mama Laughlin's blog, that actually looked good to me. I decided to try it out with a couple of changes, and have since made it several times. It's super quick (especially if you make the rice in advance), and even the hubby likes it (after lots of convincing to try it :) ). Here's how I made it:

Stuffed Pepper Recipe:

Makes about 8 peppers

1 lb lean ground beef

1-2 cups cooked homemade spanish rice (recipe to come later this week :), but could substitute any recipe, or boxed/frozen version you like)

1/4-1/2 cup chopped bell peppers

1/4 cup low fat sour cream (just enough to get everything to stick together, could substitute for plain low fat greek yogurt)

1/2 cup low fat mexican blend cheese

8 Bell Peppers (any color you like, I normally just buy a couple packages of the tri-colored peppers because the hubs likes the red peppers and I like the yellow and orange ones. I use the extra pepper and the tops for the copped bell pepper)

I start by turning the oven on to 350 and browning the ground beef with about 1 to 1 1/2 tbls of taco seasoning. While the ground beef is browning I remove the tops and inards of the peppers, reserving the tops to add to the filling. I start a pot of boiling water and boil the pepers for 3 to 5 minutes, just until they start to soften. I then pull the peppers out and let them cool in the baking dish. I chop the tops and remaining peppers into bite size pieces and add them to the ground beef.

At this point I normally get out a large bowl and dump in the rice, sour cream, 1/4-1/3 cup of the shredded cheese (approximated to how cheesy I want the filling) and ground beef/pepper mixture. I just stir it all together until everything looks like it's evenly mixed and holding together, then I fill the cooked peppers with the filling and top with the remaining shredded cheese.

You can then put the baking dish of peppers in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until the cheese starts to brown.

This has become a new staple in our house. The last couple times I've decided that I'm too lazy for all the work with the peppers though and have just made the filling into a casserole with some extra chopped peppers. We also tried a variation with shredded chicken and left-over black beans, that was really good. The ground beef is still my favorite, but the black beans may have to make their way into our regular recipe. :)

A Simpler Life

I was reading the blog of my newest follower and came across her post on simple living. It really struck me, since this is something the hubby and I have been trying to work towards. This probably should have been my first post of this new series, although frankly I'm still trying to figure this out as we go.

Our simpler life:

What is a simpler life? What does that mean for us? We've started by trying to declutter our home, and change our spending habits (I'm forcibly dragging the hubby through this one :) ) to support as many local and sustanible products and services as possible, but is that really simple living? They are steps toward where we want to be, but not the whole.

I was really struck. A couple Saturdays ago, the hubby and I went and spent the day at Barnes and Noble, researching our next trip. We got a bottle of water in the cafe, collected a couple books from the travel section and broke out a spiral notebook and the laptop. We didn't need anything fancy, or to be running from one entertainment to the next. We were content to sit with a couple of books and just talk to each other for hours. I was amazed by the fact that it was probably the most fun Saturday we had spent together since I started getting Saturdays off a couple months ago.

All that is to say that we found our bliss. Doing simple tasks with minimal fuss and distractions.

I am also working to make our lives more sustainable by removing unnecessary chemicals and energy drains. As you might have seen, I have been using up the last of our chemical laden cleaning supplies and switching them out for homemade non-toxic versions. It has been exciting and satisfying to find recipes that work, though some have required a few experiments first. I'm finding that it is making me impatient to get rid of the products I use less often.

Needless to say, we still have quite aways to go, but for now this is how we are trying to simplify our lives.

And because no post is complete with out photos... Here are two of my cat acting like a jerk:

And here is one where he saw the camera before I took the picture. He wanted to make sure he looked nice and normal for the camera : P

Less Dryer Month

For the month of August we participated in our version of no dryer month.  We live in an apartment with a tiny balcony, so no room for a line. I have been hang drying everything possible on hangers. I'm trying to convince the hubby that we should get a drying rack, but he's not quite on board with the crunchy clothes thing.

My first load of clothes came out pretty stiff and crunchy. I've progressively reduced the amount of laundry detergent in each load, trying to reduce the amount of soap left in my clothes as that's what makes them crunchy. I've also started adding vinegar to the rinse cycle to help remove left over residue from past washes. I'm thinking I'm going to have to do 2-3 vinegar rinses per load until I can get the clothes to dry without crunchiness. I'm amazed that when I hang dry my clothes instead of popping them into the dryer I can actually see the soap residue when they're dry. Some of my heavier cottons have a slight white film on them. :( Yuck!

And because every post need pictures...

 I did try to hang dry a load of bath and kitchen towels, but after hanging all day the bath towels were still soaked. I have been hanging the kitchen towels and smaller rags, since they do dry well, but I gave in on the bath towels and have been drying those in the dryer. Luckily we use the same bath towels for about a week and a half so I've only had to do two loads so far this month.

Has anyone else had success without their dryer?

Farmer's Market

I have a new love of farmer's markets!

Since trying to simplify our lives, I have been trying to get into the habit of buying everything we can from a farmer's market. The food is fresher, I enjoy supporting local small businesses, and I feel better about the quality of product we're getting.

Some of the fresh produce I got :)

So far we've tried five different markets, still trying to find one that has everything we need. So far though we've been able to find meat, cheese, and bread products along with the traditional produce and crafts.There are times I wish we lived a little closer to Seattle so we could grocery shop at Pike Place on a regular basis. Or even better that there would be a market like Pike Place north of Seattle. Preferably somewhere with parking. :)

I've actually started considering joining a farmer's market. It's a little scary as that would mean getting a real business license and starting my own real business with taxes and regulations and being committed. In exciting news though I had my first sale this last weekend. :)

This has been a hard post for me to get through for some reason, so I think I'm just going to leave it as is. Tune back in later this week for sofa cleaning and how my less dryer month went.