Chicken Flautas & Chocolate Truffles

These past two weeks I have ventured out and tried some new things. After having a bad experience with my bread pudding it took me awhile to try a new a recipe but these past two weeks I have tried two new recipes and even made a fun small piece of work. The first recipe I tried was “Chicken Flautas”, I always like to try recipes of foods that I enjoy eating out. This is kind of a gamble because when you make something you love eating somewhere else you have this expectation in your mind of what you want it to taste like and that can be bad if it doesn’t turn out like that; so I have to completely erase that expectation and know that okay these chicken flautas are not going to taste like the ones at my favorite Mexican restaurant. With this is in mind, I was set to go and they turned out fabulous! This is a high rating from myself pretty much what that means is that this recipe will be put away in my recipe box and will be made again!

The other recipe I tried was one for “Chocolate truffles” I love chocolate it’s a weakness of mine! This one I hit a couple bumps along the road but in the end they turned out pretty good. It was just a standard chocolate truffle with a hint of coffee and a lil bit of liquor (the leftover liquor from the bread pudding (: With this recipe I would love to try it again and maybe alter it a little with raspberry or cream filling. But overall not a letdown at all!

Cooking has become a developing passion of mine and I try to cook one new recipe a week to expand my desire for it as well as my collection of recipes. So far I have only had two really bad recipes I made that I followed exactly as it read, it just tasted horrible, one was a casserole, and apparently I didn’t read enough reviews or any for that matter! The other well you know was the bread pudding :(

My last piece of work I had fun doing was a small craft I saw online that I wanted to try. Basically I took the idea and completely changed it. The craft was making a brooch out of bottle caps and beads but I made mine out of fabric and buttons. It turned out cute and I have actually already worn it! I tell you with summer coming it just has this way of making me want to try new projects and have fun with it! I have this book from Joyce Meyers called “I dare you” and it’s about purpose and living out your dreams. I know that God has a big purpose for my life and I’m not there yet but I also have dreams some small and some big and one of them is to be a mom. So I know that my desire to cook and make small projects is a small stepping stone into becoming a mom hopefully one that is fun and creative. Find what you like to do and do it!

Home is where the Heart is

A few weeks ago my husband Lance and I upgraded to a 2 bedroom apartment, you might be thinking what did u upgrade from well a 1 bedroom of course! When we first got married we didn’t have much money not that we do now but we were newlyweds just trying to start our life together. To justify getting a 1 bedroom with hardly any money we said “We are not going to have anyone staying with us in our first year of marriage anyways.” Which for the most part we really didn’t up until the month of February when our church and Masters Commission had its annual conference and alumni banquet we had 3 very close friends stay with us. So in our tiny 1 bedroom apt there were 5 people and one night there were 6 of us all crammed in this small living space for about a week. It was the college life with roommates all over again; staying up late, clothes and stuff lying around, figuring out bathroom times to get ready, and it was just a lot of fun. But it wasn’t until this time that Lance and I realized “Ok we need a bigger apartment.” Don’t get me wrong I loved our 1 bedroom apartment it was our first home together as a married couple, we have so many memories there. When we first moved into our apt all our stuff fit in the corner of the living room. Our first meal was a pizza sitting on the carpet, with a card board box as our table and we watched a movie on my small 13” TV. I love that we have that as our first memory in our apt, its one I will never forget it makes you appreciate what you have and greatly appreciate what is to come. Sometimes Lance would ask me where I am going and I would say, “I’m going to the kitchen where else can I go in this 1 bedroom apt.” Honestly I probably could have stayed there longer just because it was our first home but sometimes that season of change comes and you have to go with it.

We love having people over and hanging out with friends and I believe one of my spiritual gifts is hospitality.

 Oh I forgot to mention our kid well she’s a cat. Her name is Addy she needed the bigger space as well. Most of the time she runs the place (I kind of let her) She is part of the family and we love her, especially Lance. (: All that to say is now we have a bigger apartment and I love it! Of course one day I would love to have a house and a dog to run the backyard and a really big kitchen but something I have learned since being married is to really enjoy where I am at in the moment. I love it being just the two of us me and lance best friends leaving our place at 10:00 at night for a sonic run of M&M blast and slushies, going for walks at our favorite park, or having sleepovers in the living room with our mattress watching 24 all night. I know we will never get this time back and I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world! They say “Home is where the heart is” our home could be anywhere as long as we are together! So here we are a small change not too drastic but one that will hold even more memories! I would post some pics but unfortunately the decorating part of our home is not complete. Welcome to our Home!

D. I. Y

                                                                                                                                                                                 

My two favorite seasons are fall and summer. I love summer because; there’s just something about it that makes me feel good about myself. It’s like it starts getting hot outside so you want to drink lots of water (with lemon), go swimming, lay out, eat salads, make fresh smoothies, and work on house projects. Well at least that’s how I feel about summer, it’s a feel good about yourself time of the year! So with summer practically around the corner I have already begun some mini projects; the first is our patio, we bought this patio set a couple months ago and it was painted an olive/mint green color and the cushions were kind of a shabby-chic floral design not really our style. So I decided to paint it black and I got clearance leftover fabric from Hobby Lobby and sewed new cushion covers. I got these cute little candle lanterns at the dollar spot at target. And for the ceiling I pulled out these hanging Asian lanterns that we used for our wedding, so all I had to buy was fishing line. For this whole patio make-over I only spent $20. I love making things on a small budget I find a lot of gratification in it.

My other works are taking a little longer but I hope to be done by the end of the summer so I can show you. Challenge for the week if you dare, pick a project that you want to take on something you have wanted to learn to do or have wanted to make and dive in. Take your time because if you get frustrated you will stop and forget about it. Maybe it will only take a couple days or maybe the whole summer but you will feel good about yourself once you finish it, trust me I know! Have fun!!!