Birthdays and Adoption Days!

Sunday (June 20) was Dan's birthday!  We celebrated on Saturday and I did my absolute best to get Dan exactly what he wanted.  Those things included:

• having people over to
• eat breakfast for dinner (cornmeal pancakes with blueberries and apricot compote)
• watch Tron and Total Recall
• play games- we ended up playing Pandemic (which is an awesome game and everyone either wins or loses- we lost, oops)

(save the planet! cure the diseases!)

• getting a robe as a present

Dan is a man who knows what he wants.  I also made him breakfast on Sunday, which I never do.  We accomplished everything on his list.  I highly recommend Pandemic for anyone who wants to tie themselves to other smart game players and ride their coattails to victory (or defeat in our case).  There are 4 diseases- red, yellow, black and blue- and each player has a special role (scientist, operations specialist, dispatcher, medic, etc.) and you all work in a team to "discover" cures to each disease and eradicate it from the map.  If there are too many outbreaks (no monkeys involved) then you lose.  We were THISCLOSE to finding the cure for our last disease (pesky blue!) and there were one too many outbreaks and dun Dun DUN! We lost.  Oh well.

Sunday was also the 1 year anniversary of adopting the pooch!  Happy Adoption Day Georgia!  She probably weighed 10-15 lbs when we got her and she had a bad case of kennel cough.  Now she is a very robust 41 lbs and couldn't be a happier doggie.  I swear she smiles!

    (Dan holding her when we got home)    (Georgia checks out her crate on day 1)

Now, remember that image above... and we have a bona fide monster below!!!

(this was taken about 4 months ago, she's grown since then!)

I will post a better comparison shot later.  What a pooch!

Contact Lens Suicide

I have been a bit... squinty lately.  I have one good eye and one bad eye.  Basically, my left eye does all the hard work and my right eye sits around eating ice cream and dreaming of shoes (or whatever an eye would do on a day off I suppose).  So, clearly, my solution to this dilemma is to wear ONE contact lens- like a fancy pirate.  I also have reading glasses that are red and awesome that I wear to work on the computer.  The reading glasses don't work without the contact lens in, by the way.  One side is plain ol' plastic and the other side looks like a coke bottle- it's awesome...

(this is my sad, overworked eye :( )

ANYWAYS, so the other day I was eating dinner (that I cooked by the way) and I noticed my eye felt funny.  Ironically, nothing looks different when my contact falls out because my left eye (see picture) takes over and takes care of business.  I looked down at my plate and there was my contact lens- right in a pile of zucchini.  Sad day.  Of course, this is the only contact I have left.  Dan convinced me that zucchini-eye was probably some sort of incurable disease.  So far, I have been too busy/lazy/cheap to order more contacts and so I have been sitting, squinting at my computer in pain for a week.  Although I can *see* just fine, my head doesn't like having to work so hard.  Also, my already-dubious parallel parking skills are shot.  This is my Monday lament!

Crab flavored popcorn

Yes, my friends, I saw it at SuperFresh! Such a thing as crab flavored microwave popcorn does exist!  My tongue shrivels up at the thought of the generic Old Bay flavoring sprinkled onto already-sodium-saturated microwave popcorn.  Dan got me a popcorn popper for Christmas 2 years ago and that thing is the best present I have ever gotten (after my engagement ring oh so many Christmases ago!).  It allows me to avoid EXACTLY this type of thing- the temptation of preservative-covered salt soaked in salt and then spread like a rash over corn.  I can put anything I want on MY popcorn and I know exactly what is in there- corn! Plus whatever I use to season it.  That crab corn makes me feel a bit dirty.  I feel like I need to go drink a GIANT glass of water.

Speaking of food, my foray into cooking is going somewhat well!  I am relying heavily on the lettuce/feta/berry/greek dressing combo but I DID try a recipe Friday that didn't kill anybody.  It was called the Summer Saute (a Whole Foods recipe from my iPhone app- gotta love it) and involved sausage (pre-cooked, who do I look like, Martha?), polenta (pre-cooked, see previous comment), red onion, zucchini and bell pepper (NOT pre-cooked, maybe a little Martha?).  The recipe wanted me to use red bell pepper but I said NO! Orange bell pepper is FAR superior to red bell pepper! So I substituted.  Basically, you do the following:

• heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a pan (yep, don't know the name of the pan- I used the Le Creuset skillet thing my brother, Andrew, got us as a wedding present)
• add 1/2 c. chopped red onion, 1 chopped med. zucchini, 1 sliced ORANGE bell pepper- cook for 5 min.
• add 1 package cooked sausage, sliced, cook for 7ish minutes
• I forgot to mention to slice the polenta 1/2 in. and cook- somehow- there were no specific instructions.  I stuck them on a griddle until they were warm and it seemed to work
• put polenta circles on bottom, everything else on top, serve!

Dan likes to make fun of me for only reading directions once I start cooking.  This time was no different.  BUT the recipe was so easy, I couldn't really screw it up.  I suggest everyone try it!

If it is made of wood, metal, plastic, or, well anything else...

I seem to have a spray paint addiction.  No, I don't like the smell or anything (well I kind of do, it's like gasoline and oooh I love gasoline- ignore that I said that) but I find that the SECOND it is warm enough to hang around outside without shoes on, I start spray painting things.  The newest victim was the screen door.  It is still half-painted.  Poor thing.  I can't decide if the green is a) retro b) hideous c) a crime against humanity d) chic.  It is probably a combination of these things.  Normally, I am a split-second decision maker.  This door befuddles me.  I can't decide if I should soldier on with the "ivy leaf" aka "avocado" green or give up and go for a nice sunny yellow and call it a day.  Only time will tell...

I am adding some pictures as further proof that my house is a technicolor mess- if the pictures of the basement weren't proof enough!  Disclaimer, these are not the prettiest pictures I have ever taken- not anywhere near actually, and the house isn't even "clean" exactly.  Well, it is clean in the sense that there isn't any spoiled food and I can see the floor.  We aim high in the Peterson house.  Behold!

I would like to point out that the red thing on the dining table is an unidentified red deer/dog/horse thing that I nabbed out of a pile of things my mom was getting rid of.  Honestly we have NO idea what it is.  Atomic deer?  I think that is the best guess so far.  You might have noticed that I am fond of ... lime green?  Why yes! Don't mind if I am!   The whole house is a work in process every day. Next pictures, the yard!  I know everyone is overwhelmed with excitement....

Clearly I am not very consistent

So the snow is long gone and now I am up to doing things like digging holes in the yard, painting ceilings, and spraypainting things that shouldn't be painted (not really).  Yesterday, my spraypaint victim was the wicker chair on our front porch. I left it au naturel for a few months or so, but then it got wet and started to turn kind of a weird grey speckled color.  Now, traffic cone orange.  The can said pumpkin orange but I think it may glow in the dark it is so bright! Tonight, my newest paint victim is a brand new screen door for the back.  Right now it is white.  It shall be green! I will post pics.  Killing the ozone, one can at a time.  (I hope not!)


After being stuck on the couch for a week and a half thanks to some lovely surgery, I think I am acting like I was in a coma for a few years and now I have to put my life together again.  I am behind in work and house stuff.  Fortunately, the daily trauma known as law school is currently at recess (yay summer!) so I didn't miss any school.  Georgia keeps looking at me like I am crazy and Edmond has always looked at me like that, so, no change there.  My house is all different colors now and we finished the basement!!! It is now "calypso orange" with black carpet and a polka dot rug over that.  It looks less like Halloween than you would think.  I love it down there but right now we seem to be having circulation problems and it is quite warm down there.

As other people in school and working may tell you, things have a tend to kind of fall apart during the school year.  There just isn't a lot that can be done between 10pm and 7am in the way of exercise, cooking, cleaning, studying etc. that allows you to also, you know, sleep, play with the dog and MAYBE have a conversation with loved ones.

That being said, summer is a little like New Years to us students.  We all sit around in April/May and fantasize about how awesome we will be when we aren't slogging through textbooks the size of aircraft carriers.  It turns into a bit of the resolution season.  SO! I shall write mine down in some sort of attempt to hold myself accountable (uhuh right because guilt ALWAYS compels me to act nicely, rather than say, just making me feel bad for eating a pound of pound cake):

• I promise to cook more
• I promise to get outside more
• I promise to play with Georgia more- preferably outside
• I promise to actually get exercise, hopefully in the shape of pilates and yoga
• I promise to help out around the house
• I promise to catch up with friends
• I promise to do creative things as much as possible
• I promise to catch up on all those movies I wanted to see when they came out in the past 10 months and neglected to see
• I promise to catch up on work in the hopes of staving off disaster for a few more months!

So far, I have gotten outside more.  That means I have seen the sun a few times- not hard to do.  I also have been seeing friends more, helping out around the house (see above paragraphs about spray paint) and I have cooked a few times! My dear friend Beverley and I are scrapbooking like infinitely cool soccer moms right now, which helps with the creativity.  She is making an album of her recent trip to South Africa and I am working on my wedding album.  It would be nice to actually finish that before our third anniversary- don't judge!  My ultimate goal is to create good habits that are sustainable during the school year.  IT CAN BE DONE!

Things to inspire me along the way:

• Shutterbean! - these recipes don't seem horribly complicated and they look so purdy!
• Design Sponge Online - everything is pretty and happy here, very inspirational for both house stuff and creative pursuits
• Apartment Therapy- (and the various incarnations like the Kitchn) where else can I spend HOURS finding all sorts of things that I have to do/buy/grow/make right now?
• Body + Soul- I must get my health in order!
• I shall add more to this list!  I need a good gardening blog 

To be continued!