all we can do is keep breathing

I took a little bit of a breather this weekend. And by a breather, I mean, I didn't really do a whole lot? I guess I took a breather from my debbie downer posts.

I guess that isn't entirely true. Friday night we had grandiose plans to go to the gym, but I was tired when I got home, so we sat around and ate, instead. A viable alternative, I assure you.

Saturday morning Nate had to work, so I slept in a little -- til 10:30 or so -- and then got up and cleaned up some. And then, before I got to the real cleaning, I realized we were almost completely out of paper towels. So mostly I picked up and took out the trash. Then I made pumpkin bread, because we've had this can of pumpkin I wanted sitting it our cupboard for a while and I am always up for pumpkin flavored things. I am a firm believer that pumpkin should not just be a fall flavor -- it should be an every day flavor! It is so good and almost gone. It is also a dessert that I eat for breakfast. (me = gluttonous)

 On his way home, Nate got paper towels so we could actually clean. We swept and everything! Only thing we still can't do is mop or vacuum. But the (only) carpet is dark green, so you don't see anything on it and we can just use damp paper towels to "mop" the 6' x 3' kitchen space, so I'm not sure it will get remedied anytime soon. The place gets pretty dusty, though, so maybe we should invest in some Swiffer products, since we have a whole book of coupons =P

We finished cleaning and hung out until Nate's sister and Brent showed up, then sat around and talked for a while before deciding we should leave before it got dark. We took the bus down to Westlake, then wandered around the market for a little while before deciding we were all kind of hungry. So we hit up Noc Noc and discovered it was 80s night. Unfortunately, the music didn't start until 9PM and when it did start, it was kind of lame. The best things they played were One Night in Bangkok (which not many people know, besides me, apparently) and Walkin' on Sunshine (one of Nate's most hated songs.) There was no Bon Jovi, Journey, Whitney or anything of merit. Granted, that probably comes out later on in the night, but a little something upbeat for the five people who were dancing might have been nice, Mr. DJ.

Anywho.

Sunday was for grocery shopping! We didn't leave the house until after 12:30PM, but we didn't think it would take us that long, so we planned to go to the gym afterwards -- doncha know, we just love planning on going to the gym. Well, we wound up spending two hours at the grocery store and didn't get everything we needed. So we dropped stuff off at home and headed to the drug store/small grocery store downtown to see what they had. We wound up getting everything on our list except coffee, which we couldn't find for a decent (enough) price (for us.) We've set a budget of $75 a week for groceries and managed to only go over by about $10 on our first shopping trip. It should be noted, however, that some of the items we purchased we won't need every week (like dry goods, condiments, spices, etc.) so hopefully some weeks we'll be able to keep it well under $75. (We also didn't include household items in our $75 budget, because we can't just decided not to buy toilet paper because it doesn't fit in the budget.)

For our $85, we purchased:

• 1.5lbs brussel sprouts
• 1 zucchini
• 2lbs strawberries (on sale because they were on their "way out," so we took them home and cut out the brown spots.)
• 1 bag baby carrots
• 1 head iceburg lettuce
• 1 box pre-chopped mushrooms (I don't really understand this, but you can buy 1 box whole mushrooms for the same price. I don't think it's done by weight, so the chopped is a way better deal! In any case, we still have a couple whole mushrooms for stuffing and baking. Noms =)
• 3 roma tomatoes
• 2 kiwis
• 3 white peaches
• 2 packs of spaghetti
• 5-pack large chicken breasts
• small pack of ground beef
• one salmon steak (unfortunately atlantic farm salmon, not pacific wild, but the wild is way more expensive.)
• one gallon milk
• 8oz sour cream
• frozen edamame in the pod
• two boxes no-sugar chocolate covered almonds
• one box pistachios
• coconut water w/ mango and peach
• two loaves of bread (one wheat, one white)
• 8oz fresh cow mozzarella (from Pike Place)
• one bottle chocolate syrup
• one bottle caramel syrup
• one pack double fudge brownies
• one box margarine
• one cup yoplait (free w/ coupon!)
• one bottle strawberry jelly

It was pretty good haul. The fudge brownie mix is actually to see if it adds enough chocolatey sweetness to a smoothie to be as cost-effective as the syrup, since it costs less than two dollars. We'll see.

We also got this yesterday:

Because it does this:



It's the JosephJoseph Chop 2 Pot cutting board and it's quite possibly one of my favorite inventions. We're slowly but surely trying to replace all our kitchen things with JosephJoseph: they are both colorful and functional!

We had the mozzarella and tomatoes last night for a caprese salad before dinner. SO GOOD. The fresh mozzarella was so very very delicious. Mild, with just enough flavor. So different from store mozzarella. Also calorie-laden. Hehe. Good thing we walked around for five hours beforehand!

For dinner we had salmon in catalina with couscous, onions and spinach. Definitely one of my favorite meals. The catalina left over from cooking the salmon makes a perfect sauce for the couscous, with veggies for extra flare!

I'm so tired, because I couldn't sleep last night. My coffee helped, but I'm probably going to crash after I eat lunch. Ugh.



feel the fire burning

So, my hips and thighs are driving my insane this morning. To explain, I think I have this thing they call 'RLS,' except that while the actual sensations sound similar to what I go through, the way that it effects my body doesn't sound typical to anything I read, mainly because it doesn't disrupt my sleep, it actually goes away when I sleep -- and sometimes sleeping is the only thing that will make it better. There were rare occasions when I used to work retail and I was REALLY tired where I'd get the sensations while standing, but that's another time and place. It isn't usually enough to interrupt my daily life, so I haven't spoken to el doctor about it, but it canmake long movies and/or long plane/car rides somewhat uncomfortable (e.g. back when I was in college, that 13-hour flight to China was a doozy! It's a good thing we could get up and walk around for most of it.) It's probably caused by the fact that I don't get enough iron, which I used to take supplements for, but I got lazy and now I don't. Go figure.

In any case, my sister sent me these tweets:

Hilarious.

Yesterday night, Nate and I checked out Trader Joe's and Safeway for some groceries. We spent too much money, but we got some yummies, including some new stuff we haven't tried before and some different snacks than we normally get. I also discovered the brussel sprouts are cheaper there than at Uwajimaya. Too bad they're both too far away to walk from our current location, and they aren't in the free ride zone. Boo.

I really wish I could go to NYC this weekend for ICCA finals, but even if I could, they are sold out! Yay for them, bad for me. Oh well.

It might be sunny more than rainy for the next ten days! Score!

-C

concrete jungle where dreams are made

Empire State of Mind always reminds me of my friend Zoe. She's from LA, but moved to Boston for a year or so (where I met her,) before she moved up to NYC. Now she works for Food Network (! -- that exclamation point represents my seething jealousy.) And she does a mean Alicia Keys impersonation.

Last night out before Nate and I left on our adventure!

We are both from non-snowy places, so we get real excited about snow.

I've decided that there's no point in checking the weather for any reason other than the temperature here in Seattle, because it was supposed to rain all day yesterday and it didn't do anything until about 6PM, when it decided to thunderstorm and hail, as Nate and I were walking home from the grocery store. Today was supposed to be mostly sunny, and it's been raining since I left the house at 7:45 this morning.

I love grocery shopping, but sometimes going to the grocery store (especially on Sundays, when it's a made house) makes me feel like this:

{via}

Hehe.

In any case, we made burritos last night for dinner, because our fridge is malfunctioning and likes to freeze things. So I asked Nate to put the chicken that was in the freezer in the fridge to defrost and it didn't. So we used the ground beef we got, instead. I cooked up some mushrooms, onions and yellow corn to put as the filling (Nate added green peppers and jalapenos -- so spicy!) and we stuffed it inside burrito shells with some iceberg lettuce and cheddar cheese. It was super delicious, and there was plenty left over, so I have the makings for a taco salad for lunch!

In other news, I got my beauty bag from Target! Free things rock my life.

{via}

You can never have too many small makeup bags! I also love the book of coupons and the extra moisteurizing chapstick and lotion (because I am always extra dry-skinned.) The only thing I'm not positive I'll use is the hot pink lip gloss sample. My lips are naturally pretty pink, so I don't like to add a whole lot of color to them. (And by 'not use,' I mean I'll probably put it on at home, decide it's way too much color and take it off before I leave the house.)

Also, I always read about people bookmarking things, and I'd like to take this time to mention my favorite way to bookmark: SVPPLY

Basically, it's like a feed for your 'want to buy's, with an easy-to-install bookmark app that allows you to add things from outside sources to your feed. You can also follow people and see what they're adding, and add them if you like their taste! I can't share my feed on here, because I use it to keep track of things I think would make good gifts for people, but I did find that grocery bag on the site. So check it out! (and if you really want to see my feed, you can e-mail me.

-C