Favorite Things: House Edition

As I was cleaning up the kitchen last night, I was thinking about some items that are staples in our house.  I love reading other blogs about products they love, so I thought I would do my own little version.

1.  Parchment paper.  I use this all the time.  It eliminates using cooking spray on pans in the oven and makes cookies crispier in the oven.  It also makes for easy clean up.

2.  Epsom salt.  This has unlimited possibilities. My chief use of it is for cuts.  I get very dry hands and then subsequently have a lot of hang nails.  You know those times where you have a really sore hang nail?  Heat up water, as hot as you can stand, and mix in a tablespoon of Epsom salt.  Soak the your finger in it and the pain and infection goes away.    No joke.  It's amazing.

3.  Borax.  I use this as a laundry booster.  It's all natural, fragrance free and revitalizes laundry and colors.  I put just a little in each load of laundry I do.  It really helps.

4.  Wool blanket.  Okay, so this one isn't necessarily a product.  My mom always put a wool blanket on our beds growing up in the fall/winter and now I do the same thing.  Amazingly, it adds so much warmth to our bed.  You might immediately think that it would get very scratchy, but the wool blanket is one top of our sheet and microfiber blanket.  Makes our bed so warm and cozy on those chilly nights.  Come spring, I wash it, dry it on my clothesline, and store it away for another year. 

What's For Dinner?

I could not wait to post these two recipes!  All throughout November, I have been trying out different/healthy recipes to see what we like and don't like.   I've had about 85% success.  A few tweeks to the recipes here and there and we've got a nice stash of new recipes!
Here is what we had for dinner last nice and it was delicious!  I am a big fan of coconut and broccoli, but B not so much.  We were surprised how much he liked both of these recipes!  We haven't done much with fish before, besides salmon and tuna, but it's nice to branch out.  **We didn't have Tilapia, but had Flounder, so that is what we used.  Enjoy!!

Coconut Crusted Tilapia

Ingredients: 6 Pieces of Tilapia, thawed
1/4 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup Italian Bread Crumbs
1/4 cup Whole Wheat Ritz Crackers, crushed
1/3 cup egg whites
olive oil spray
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Place foil on a cookie sheet and spray with non stick spray.
Combine coconut flakes, Italian crumbs, and crackers in a bowl. Put egg whites in another bowl.
Dip the Tilapia in the egg, then in the coconut crumb mixture. Then place them on a cookie sheet lined with foil.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until Tilapia is done. (Check Tilapia at about 15 minutes and watch it so it won't burn)


Roasted Parmesan Broccoli

Ingredients:
2 cups broccoli, cut into bite-size pieces
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/3 cup fresh shredded Parmesan cheese
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Dump the broccoli into a large bowl and drizzle oil on top. Toss broccoli to coat with oil. Sprinkle garlic salt on top and mix to incorporate.
Spread broccoli on a large baking sheet covered with aluminum foil and bake for about 15 minutes, until it starts to turn golden brown (you want it to caramelize, but not burn!).
Dump the broccoli back in a bowl as soon as you pull it out of the oven and mix with cheese. Serve immediately.
Serves 2-4.

Calling all Chocoholics!

http://www.weightwatchers.com/food/rcp/RecipePage.aspx?recipeid=337455170

If you are like me, sometimes you just need a little chocolate pick me up.  As I've gotten older, I've really come to realize that I am a chocoholic.  I really am.  Is that a good or a bad thing?  I don't really know :)

Well, so at a teacher meeting this fall, a teacher was talking about these delicious cookies she had made.  They were fairly low calorie and super easy to make.  Me, being kind of snoopy, listened in and went home and looked up a recipe that I thought was similar.  The ingredients are very simple, cake mix, pumpkin puree, chocolate chips.  Seriously!

We are trying to live a healthy life style, so these cookies fit right in.  Enjoy!

Fall Fun

I knew that as soon as school started back up, our poor blog wouldn't be updated as often! 

We have had quite a busy few months.  Almost every Friday has been taken by B. officiating high school football and now that the football season is winding down, it's nice to have him back on the weekends. 

Fall is such a fun season.  Here's some of our favorites from this fall:

-white pumpkins

-our wool blanket on our bed

-sugar cookie candles

-fleeces

-and of course...

Hawkeye football!

Coming Soon

Check out this "diamond in the rough" for our front porch!  A friend of our family was going to throw this chair away and offered it to my dad who offered it to me and of course was I going to pass it up?  No way! 

MN Vacation

A few weeks ago, my family loaded up the kayak (at that time my parents only had one...) and traveled 7+ hours up to northern MN.  We spent a little under a week at a beautiful lake.  The water and the weather were both glorious, however maybe a little bit chilly for late July weather.  The lake was clear, yes I said clear!  You could kayak out towards the middle and still see the bottom.  We spent the week reading, laying out, having camp fires, swimming, canoeing and kayaking and it was so relaxing!  We tried to convince my parents that they needed to buy a cabin that was for sale up the road from where we rented out cabin :)  Can we go back please??

The fam.!

You can just get a glimpse of our cabin behind A in this picture.

Yes folks, we even had camp fires!

1970s At Its Best!

So, here is the story of this bed.  Before I moved into my first apartment in college, someone from our church offered an old bed frame to my family.  It was from the 1970s (clearly) but it was functional and just what I needed.  I bought a mattress, a friend gave us their box spring and we were set.  This little old bed served its purpose for me, then "moved" out of state to go to college with A.  A got good use out of it and then the bed made its journey back in state to go to college with K last year when she moved into her first apartment.
 
Well, the nice thing about being a teacher is that we get summers off.  So, I decided this summer that after going to college three different times and after countless moves in and out of state, this little old bed needed an update. 
We painted it aqua that my dad had left over from another painting project, distressed it...because that's what I love to do, and set it up in K's new apartment.  It looks great!  Cost of the project?  FREE!!