C&G January

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January started out pretty lazy. G had a hell of a cold and they used the excuse to binge watch Grey’s Anatomy and lay around.

They both also had to get themselves together enough to go to work after a long vacation, which was not fun.

They discovered a new game that they played quite a bit in front of the fire since the weather outside was cold and wet most of the month.

C was able to finish a few more projects around the house (more on those soon).

G got back in touch with painting, crafting, and decorating, finally choosing a color for the living room.

Settling into this life that they have built together is really been a great time.

French Lentil and Arugula Salad

By Jessica

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This is a review of Food 52 Vegan.

Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for this review through the Blogging for Books Program.

As we try to eat more vegetable based meals I find that I’m running out of steam. I’ve kind of been stuck in the same rotation of meals, which quite clearly has not helped our waste lines. That’s why both Chuck and I are trying a diet challenge for the month of January. These little challenges give me a chance to flex my creative muscles in the kitchen and cook a different style of food. I have found that in my attempt to make sure I’m still getting enough protein on a restricted diet, while also maintaining my part time vegetarian diet and not getting completely bored, vegan cooking seems to be the way to go.

I recently picked up Food52 Vegan Cookbook and immediately fell in love. Not only are the pictures amazing, and the recipes superb, but there is a lot of really amazing step by step instruction, and additional info to help the average person understand the foundations of vegan cooking and diets.

This salad has been one of my favorites of the book, and a great go to for week night meals and lunches. I have made it exactly as prescribed, but also added a few ingredients here and there to spice it up. Thing like roasted red peppers, leftover black beans, hummus, and peanut dressing all work wonderfully with this salad base.

French Lentil and Arugula Salad

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 5 mins

Total time: 25 mins

Serves: Serves 4

Ingredients

1/3 cup olive oil
1 small shallot, minced
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 ½ cups cooked lentils
2 cups firmly packed baby arugula leaves
1 cup thinly sliced radishes
1 cup chopped endive
1 cup sliced cucumber
¼ cup chopped fresh dill
1/3 cup toasted walnuts, chopped
Fresh cracked black pepper

Instructions

In a small bowl whisk together the olive oil, shallot, salt, lemon juice, vinegar and mustard until evenly blended. Set aside.
In a large bowl, stir together the lentils, arugula radishes, endive, cucumber, and dill. Drizzle evenly with the prepared dressing, then toss until the ingredients are evenly coated. Stir in the walnuts and season with black pepper to taste.
Serve immediately.

A Photo Book Project

By Jessica

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This is Project No. 11 in my 12-12-12 Series, this time I utilized photos.

I had a lot of plans to do things with photos while during this project. I even went out and bought a scrap book, paper, printed pictures and the whole 9 yards. Then I spent about an hour working on it before I lost all interest. I decided to take a different approach and go with a printed book instead.

Putting together this book was so much easier on a computer screen. I could mess with the layouts as many times as I wanted, add words without my horrible handwriting screwing it up, and even add cool layers and frames to the photos. And I didn’t even have to spend a bajillion (technical term there) dollars at the craft store on things like paper, stickers and fancy scissors.

I had it printed 8×10 because that is the size of the book that was given to us by our photographer. Ideally I would love to have a little collection of books that I can look back on over the years to remember our lives together. It will be fun for us to look back, laugh at out fashion choice and reminisce about all the fun times that we had.

This book starts when we met, way back in college and includes some of our college adventures then moves forward through our first place together, traveling to Ireland adopting Brody, and finally our engagement. There are of course a scattering of some of my favorite photos of us, our adventures and our friends.

I really liked this project and already have plans for the next photo book, which I will create in the fall I’m hoping to use to commemorate our first year of marriage.

I used Shutterfly, but you can get these books from CVS, Artifact Uprising, and numerous others.

Meal Plan 1.17.16

By Jessica

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This is a meal plan based on the real meals that I cook at home weekly. To kick off the new year Chuck and I are taking on a new challenge and trying out the Slow Carb Diet. That means that the next few weeks of meal plans are going to be a direct reflection of that diet. This is week 3 (week 1, week 2)

Monday – Red Lentil Stuffed Peppers with Grilled Fajita Chicken (Use about 1/2 a tablespoon as a rub on the chicken)

Tuesday – Spanish Style Seafood Stew with Salad

Wednesday – Pantry Lemon Pepper & Herb Chicken over Loaded Greek Salad

Thursday – Venison with 3 Bean Salad,

Friday – Seared Scallops with Tuscan Beans

My (Less than $200) Wedding Dress

By Jessica

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I’m sort of falling behind in all the things I wanted to post about for my wedding series. I’m just not into gushing about the thing, not that this should be a surprise to anyone.

One thing I do want to gush about a bit however is my dress. I love my dress, like totally and completely love it.

I did the whole bridal shop thing and tried on a few dresses, but never really loved any of them, and certainly not the price tags on them. So as any smart chick in my generation would do I turned to the internet and started snooping around for some options.

I stumbled onto it somehow when I was just clicking around on ModCloth. It was on sale, it was just the style I liked, minus a few things small things I could do myself and so despite the no return policy on sales items I bought it, and another one for extra material. The total for both of these dresses was about $120.

As it turns out I didn’t end up using the second dress. Originally wanted a train added to the dress, but after testing out a few options I decided that anything I added just took away from the dress itself. The only alteration I really made was cutting out a center piece of lace on the neckline to make it a kind of scalloped v-neck.

I did add a beaded belt to break up all the white lace, which cost about $15.

For the vale, I simple bought a cheap one from a local craft store and made the alterations to it myself. I didn’t want anything fancy, so there was no need to spend a couple hundred dollars on one at the bridal shop. The vale cost roughly $5.

I found the earrings at one of my favorite local artists shop Corina Jewelry, and had her make a necklace to match. The total for those came to about $50.

You may or may not have noticed from the pictures that I did not wear shoes. I had a lot of reasons for choosing not to wear shoes, but there is more on that in my Wedding Traditions we are Not Doing post.

I’m still in awe of how it all came together, and so proud that I had a hand in making my dress complete. It’s beautiful and unique and everything that I dreamed of. All together, my dress (not including the unused second dress), and jewelry cost a whopping total of $130.00. You read that correctly. My entire ensemble for the wedding cost barely anything, and I loved it.

I realize that not everyone is ok with a simple dress, but that’s what I wanted, and I’m glad I was able to help keep the costs of the wedding low to boot. If you are interested in a unique and simple dress I would definitely suggest you check out ModCloth. They have some great stuff.

C&G January

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