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Frittatas for Breakfast :)

I cooked green pepper, onion, and mushrooms in a little olive oil in a skillet. Then added in some leftover rotisserie chicken we had and a diced tomato. In a separate bowl, I combined eggs, a dash of milk, salt, pepper, and a little garlic and whisked with a fork. Add the egg mixture over the veggies, cook over medium heat and use a spatula to spoon up the edges and allow the egg mixture to run underneath, until eggs are cooked. Add cheddar cheese to the top and stick under the broiler for a minute to melt the cheese. Voila! Frittata! šŸ™‚

Drew put salsa on his, of course.

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Bedside Lamps and Stuffed Chicken

Today, I ended up starting on two of the things on my 20 before 20 list.

3. try cooking new things with new ingredients (I think we might pick at least 1 new recipe a week)

and

16. work on decorating Drew’s apartment so it feels more “homey”

We set out to shop for new sheets for Drew’s bed. He has some gray ones that I bought him last year, but I thought that he needed an extra set. Especially because he always forgets to take the sheets to the laundromat when he washes his clothes.Ā  So we went shopping and found some creamy colored ones that I liked. They are a bit satiny and really soft. They also match his bedspread better than the gray ones did. Plus they weren’t super expensive, but were still Ralph Lauren. While shopping, I saw these two matching bedside table lamps that I really, really liked. I tried to ignore them and walk on past. But they were just so lovely. We didn’t really need bedside table lamps for another year and a half, until we are married and it becomes our bedroom instead of his. However, we are trying to slowly collect things for our house together now, because after paying for a wedding, we aren’t going to have any money to spend on household items. So anyway, I debated and debated about the lamps, but I really wanted them. They weren’t actually as expensive as I thought that they would be and I figured it was better for us to get them now, because you can never find what you are looking for right when you need it. So now we are the happy owners of two matching lamps that look like this:

I’m trying to figure out the perfect mix of my style and his for our future house. He is a big fan of modern. But classic too. My tastes are somewhat similar, although a little less modern. More elegant/classic/country/with a little modern. I don’t really know how to describe it. In my dorm room, I have a lot of bright colors and quite a bit of pink. I’m trying to figure out what styles, colors, and patterns to choose to accommodate a boy. Although Drew isn’t all that picky. I could probably put anything I wanted in our house. But I like these lamps for several reasons. I like their curvy bases. I like the stainless steel. I like that they seem durable. I’m also a big fan of textured lampshades.Ā  To me, I think it is a good balance of classy with a modern feel. Plus, as neutral as they may seem, they gave me inspiration for our bedroom color palette and style. šŸ™‚

Anyway, next we will have to get bedside tables. šŸ™‚

Once we got home and got our lamps set up, I sent Drew to the laundromat to wash the new sheets and I set about cooking dinner. I’ve been wanting to start cooking new things, because we get to where we make the same things that we like over and over. I was looking through one of my cookbooks the other day and saw a recipe for cheese-stuffed chicken breasts that sounded good. I didn’t really follow the recipe because it was for 6 chicken breasts and I definitely wasn’t making that many for just us two. So I sort-of improvised it all, like I usually do, but it turned out great!

I took two chicken breasts and sliced them in half far enough to have room to stuff them. I sliced several small mushrooms and sauteed them in a skillet with a little olive oil. In a small bowl, I mixed together part of a bag of grated cheeses (mozzarella, provolone, parmesan, romano, fontina, asiago) and a little muenster cheese we had with some garlic, salt, and herbs. I stuffed the mushrooms and the cheese mixture into the chicken. I put them in a rectangular baking dish with a little olive oil and some fresh green beans to bake in the oven at 375 degrees for 45-55 minutes. I also made a little couscous to accompany it. I would have to say though that the green beans cooked a little too long in there with the chicken, so next time I might add those into the oven after the chicken had cooked for a little bit. Other than that, it turned out pretty great! šŸ™‚

I’m happy to have started on my 20 before 20 list. Drew’s apartment is looking a little more “homey” and although I didn’t use new ingredients, I did make something new for dinner this week. šŸ™‚

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Wedding Color Palette :)

I know I haven’t posted anything yet about wedding ideas. However, I’ve been thinking and planning quite a bit and I have a pretty good idea of what I want for most things. So far everything seems to be working out nicely. I promise to share more about it all later, but so far here is a little tidbit:

I know the colors might seem a little bright, but I plan on pretty much only introducing color through accents, so I’m pretty confident in my vision. Trust me, you’ll see. šŸ™‚

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My First Painting (in class that is)

I was on a roll lately with blogging more often and this week I’ve been slacking a little. It has been a crazy, busy week, partly because we went home last weekend to celebrate Kelsey’s 16th birthday and it seems like all week since then I’ve been trying to catch up on sleep and on work I didn’t get done over the weekend. But I don’t have class on Fridays, so it is the weekend for me. (that would be a relief, except that I think I have more work to do this weekend than I have all year!)

Anyway, this week we turned in our first paintings in my painting class. Mine is no where near perfect, but I’m still pretty pleased with the outcome. It looks pretty simple, but it was a little bit of a challenge for me, figuring out how to mix paint to get the right value and all that. I think it is also the first painting that I’ve ever done in only black and white and I think maybe my first painted still life as well. šŸ™‚

Oil Can and Small Bowling Pin

I took the picture with my phone right before I turned it in, so sorry for the lower quality image. Also forgive the waviness of the paper, it wasn’t laying flat.

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Evie, The Artist

I know I haven’t posted many blog posts lately with pictures in them. Sorry, I’ve been sort-of in a thoughtful/writing mood lately, it seems. This post however is all about pictures. Pictures that is, that my niece draws for me. Evie is five and she loves lots of things, drawing being one of them. I like encouraging her to draw her own pictures, rather than those in coloring books, because I think it allows her to be more creative and use her imagination, rather than just focus on coloring inside the lines of the pictures on coloring book pages. The drawing imagination of this five-year-old girl is similar to that of most other girls her age–butterflies, rainbows, flowers, hearts and pretty things.Ā  Who doesn’t like to draw those things?

Anyway, these are just a couple of the pictures that Evie has drawn for me that I happen to currently have in my dorm room. They are not for sale, although I’m sure if you inquired about commissioning the artist, she would be more than happy to come up with a lovely artwork for you. šŸ™‚

This one she did a couple years ago because it has been sitting on my dresser the whole time I've been in college. I love that she drew us both together. She also went through a phase then where she signed her name as just, EV. (I mean you get the same idea as Evie, I guess the 'ie' in her name really doesn't add much to the sound. That is pretty smart thinking for a three-year-old)
Here is a close-up of that one šŸ™‚ I do slightly look like a dog or someone with a black eye, but then again, she has a red clown nose. šŸ™‚
My diet must be working. I look pretty skinny in this one. I think I might need to start brushing my teeth a little more often though. They are looking a little crusty. But I guess when you only have three fingers on each hand, mega eyelashes and are walking among giant flowers, no one really notices your teeth. šŸ™‚
I'm really liking my dress in this one, sort-of a Marie Antoinette look. I still only have three fingers and it looks like I've put on a little weight since last time. šŸ™‚
This is the latest one she made for me this past weekend. šŸ™‚

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20 Before Twenty

Drew and I are in the car right now on our way back to New Orleans after a weekend at home. (it is so nice that with these modernĀ conveniences today, I can be on the internet while we are driving down the interstate) Anyway, I needed to be reading my book for my contemporary American literature class, but instead I opted to read the January issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine that I subscribe to and haven’t had the time to read yet, even though I’ve already gotten the February issue. Since it was the January issue, it was all about the new year and starting it with a blank slate and about organization, healthy living tips, and things that would be good to do in the new year.

I had already been thinking about a lot of these things lately. I really love the way a new year feels. To me, it always feels so fresh and exciting. It is always nice to think of all the things that are going to happen this year. I am really excited about 2011. I’m excited about planning a wedding this year, about being halfway done with college this year, about getting my own apartment in New Orleans sometime this year and finally moving off campus, possibly staying in New Orleans and working this summer, and all sorts of other things that this year holds. I’m also turning 20 this year!

Speaking of turning twenty, I got this idea last week of something that I wanted to accomplish in the last few months before I turn twenty this May. It was inspired by a project on one of the blogs that I read frequently, Making it Lovely. For the girl on the blog, it was a list of 30 things that she wanted to before she turned 30. Mine is similar, although it is a list of 20 things that I want to do before I turn 20.

To start thinking about 20 things that I wanted to do before I turned twenty, I first started thinking about what had I already accomplished in the twenty years that I’ve been alive. I had a great childhood, graduated from high school with honors, got into Tulane University, got a full-ride scholarship for college, moved to Louisiana, survived the first two years at Tulane, survived the first two years away from home, spent a month and a half outside of the United States by myself (in France, Germany & Belgium), traveled many places in the United States (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,Ā Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin), visited the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and the English Channel, fell in love, went on a vacation with just Drew, got ENGAGED, started planning my wedding, got a pretty good idea of what I want to do for my career, and about a million other things. Overall, I’m pretty happy with what all I’ve accomplished so far in life.

I only have three and a half months before I turn 20, and this semester won’t end until about the week before then, so I know that I can’t plan to try to do anything outrageous before then. So my list is just a small list of little to-dos that it is my goal to accomplish before May 13, 2011. So here it goes:

(and these are in no particular order either)

1. get engagement photos taken
2. officially set the date for the wedding
3. try cooking new things with new ingredients (I think we might pick at least 1 new recipe a week)
4. write a substantial poem
5. launch Drew & I’s combined design business (We’ve been working on it and I’m excited about it!)
6. finish the stuff I need to do for my mom’s bow business
7. officially decide on a location for the wedding & reception
8. go bridal shopping and try on my first wedding dress!
9. sew something on my new sewing machine I got for Christmas (I have several projects I want to do)
10. Have a Corks N Canvas date night with Drew (more about that here)
11. write another creative non-fiction short story
12. get a job for this summer
13. start a bible study that Drew & I do together
14. Make a budget/spending plan for Drew & I
15. Continue my healthier self diet & start going on more walks
16. work on decorating Drew’s apartment so it feels more “homey”
17. finish my 50 hours of community service for my scholarship that I need this semester
18. make my creative portfolio of all my art and design work
19. get my first apartment
20. work on the design for my wedding invitations and other various wedding planning

I’ll probably blog about most of them as I get them done, so you should be hearing about them again soon. šŸ™‚

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On the Edge of Understanding

I can’t get the idea of being on the edge of understanding, or on the edge of what you know, out of my head. It was a comment that Robert Hass stated in his poetry reading last night that I blogged about before. It seems be the perfect metaphor for life right now.

Well, I guess you could say that it is the perfect metaphor for everyone’s life, because no one truly knows what is ahead in life, so we are all at the edge of what we know. But I think it is particularly relevant to that of someone my age. As a child, I had this sort of idea of where life would take me. Of going to school and making good grades, graduating, getting a scholarship and going to a good college. I had ideas of things other than that, like getting married, working and having kids, but it was all in some far off land from what I knew. I think that the time after graduating from high school, and then for some, being in college as well, is generally a time of being on the edge of understanding. It is this weird space of time where what you used to know is no longer the case and how events will unfold in the future isn’t certain. Everyday, I am further pushing myself up against my edge of understanding to learn more about the things in life I don’t know. Be this simply figuring out what the future holds, or getting a grasp on it.

Apart from that, if that even made any sense, are more literal examples. In my painting class for instance. I love art and I’ve painted since I was two years old. However, I’ve never had an intense painting course like this one, so I constantly find myself on the edge of my current understanding. The good thing about being there though, is the fact, that usually by the end of the day, you’ve pushed your edge of understanding just a little farther. You know more than you did when you walked in the studio that day.

The same with my contemporary American literature class. It drives me up the wall. I wanted to drop it and switch to a different class. It is all about politics, which I hate. Politics are all about opinions and what someone thinks is right verses what someone else thinks. It gives me a headache. However, the thing I think that made me dislike the class from the start, was the fact that it wasn’t my style. It wasn’t the literature that I liked. It wasn’t in my comfort zone. It wasn’t my preference. The political opinions weren’t my own. But what if I only read things I liked? How would I learn about new things? Or more than that, how would I know what I didn’t like if I hadn’t read it? I keep reminding myself that I have to stick with the class because it is on the edge of what I know. The class has a lot of new concepts for me. There is a lot of reading. Half the time, I don’t completely understand what we are talking about in class.Ā  But I’m starting to. I’m at the edge of my understanding. The class definitely isn’t my favorite, but I am certain that I will learn from it. Everyday I’m pushing my edge of understanding out a little farther than it was before.

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The Little Weasel

Okay so I promise, this is my last post for today. I had been meaning to link to Drew’s blog a couple days ago and just hadn’t gotten around to doing it. Over the weekend, he re-designed it and it looks pretty awesome. You should definitely check it out. The Sweet Spot can be found here. There is a pretty interesting post about him weaseling his way around our “diet” that he just posted here. šŸ™‚

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Thoughts on the Rain

Today I have just been in the writing mood. Or maybe I’ve just been in the creative mood. I wrote a blog post earlier today and had ideas for several others, I painted for several hours and went to a poetry reading. Then I wrote a poem in the car to and from the grocery store. Then I blogged about the poetry reading. Now I’m blogging about the poem.

Well, I would hardly call it a poem just yet. I’m new to this and I just wrote down my thoughts and so it seems too new a creation that it can’t be called a poem just yet. That’s why I’ll just call it: Thoughts on the Rain.

Rain streaks wet color on the pavement.
Blurry then clear again.
A painting in progress.
Movement. Shifting. Drifting, on.

I pass between the raindrops like a maze.
Someone once told me.

Well the first stanza I wrote in the car. It seems a little more cohesive. The last stanza I actually wrote earlier today before I even went to the poetry thing and it doesn’t really fit exactly with the other, but the idea of walking in the spaces in between raindrops seems like such a neat thing that I couldn’t help but mention it as well. Hopefully after a revision or two, I can make this into a better poem, but hey, it is a start. I’ve started to explore poetry and I did more than my two minutes of writing for the day! šŸ™‚ I’d say it was a successful day, except that so far, I’ve read none of the reading for any of my classes tomorrow. šŸ™

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Robert Hass Poetry Reading

In one of my previous posts, about my life list of creative things that I wanted to do, one of the things that I mentioned was exploring poetry. Well, I’ve started on that one at least a little more today.

This evening, Tulane hosted Robert Hass, a well-known poet, as part of their Poet Laureate Series. I made Drew come with me and we went and listened to the poetry reading. Poetry is something that I was really only introduced to last semester in my creative writing class and since then I’ve been very intrigued by it. I was very inspired by listening to the poems that Hass read, by the things he wrote about, the way they sounded, the interesting things he paired together and just the way that everything flows together in poetry.

When describing poetry, he said, in poetry “all you want to do is catch a livingĀ  moment.” I’m not sure if those were his words or if he was quoting someone else, but either way, I like the statement. He also said, concerning what poetry does is “makes rock, rock and grass, grass by freeing us from the autonomy of perception.” Again I don’t know if those were his words or a quote from someone else.

He read a very interesting poem about consciousness. He said a good exercise is to try to locate the first moment of consciousness that you remember and write about it. For some reason, I automatically thought about what you see first when you wake up in the mornings, but I don’t know if that is solely what he meant, considering Drew took it as the first thing that you could remember ever. The poem Hass wrote seemed to have images from different times, so it seems like you could try the exercise either way. I think I might try writing about this.

He also read his poem entitled, “State of the Planet.” I thought it was very interesting, the things that he mentioned, considering there are a million ways you could write about the state of the planet. The imagery was exceptional and I liked the way he combined different things.

About his writing process, he said that he recommended to others to write a little everyday. He said that “if you only work when inspired, it would all be like dictation from angels and you would have no work properly speaking.” This I do believe was a quote from someone else, but I was writing so fast to jot it down and I didn’t catch the name of who originally said it. He said that he tells himself to write at least 2 minutes everyday. Sometimes he writes only that, but if he tells himself that he only has to set aside two minutes it gets him writing and many times he writes for longer. He also quoted, “you can’t revise nothing.” So if you don’t have any writing done, you can’t revise it and make it better. So you have to start somewhere.

He said to work on the edge of what you know and understand. He also described the writing process as the same with any art (he referenced painting, which I’ve been doing today too, so I appreciated that) and that as far as ideas or images, you are “finding your way towards something that you don’t know, but you’ll know when you get there.”

His most recent book, The Apple Trees at Olema: Selected Poems & Essays, 1985-2009 is definitely going to be added to my list of books to read soon.

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