things about moving

so we got the house:) and will be moving to beautiful portland oregon at the end of may. as you can imagine i have been busy and preoccupied. but i do want to write all about it and i will soon but for now a post on apartment therapy hit it right on.

Best Parts of Packing:
• Taking inventory of all that we own.
• Remembering the stories attached to objects.
• Spending time with my husband, even if it's not the most fun time.
• Appreciating what we own.
• Getting rid of what we don't want or need.
• Listening to old CDs we found in a shoebox.
• Locating a lost receipt we thought we'd never find.

Worst Parts of Packing:
• Getting everything done while working and dealing with daily life.
• Stressing about whether or not we'll get everything done.
• Realizing that, despite our best efforts to pare down, we still have too much stuff.
• Tripping over boxes on our way to the bathroom.
• Eating take out because our cooking supplies are packed.
• Misplacing the phone charger and dealing with a dead cell phone.
• Feeling like we'll never finish.

W is for Wish

This is the house i found today that is perfect for us and that i so so wish we get. wish us luck.

A is for Animal Head

I don't think I'm doing this alphabet theme justist....but hey it's getting me to post'n, so who cares.

check this out. awesome right?

it's from Cardboard Safari which i just read about in the new issue of ReadyMade.
They also have Rhinos and Moose and they are all made from 100% recycled cardboard (nice). I like them all and plan to get at least one for the new house. I'm really liking animal decor lately. I will do a post later this month on all the great animal things i have acquired over the years.

Happy Friday!

C is for: "Cooked All Day Chili" in 1 and a half hours.

made some awesome chili a few weeks back and i thought i would share. i do what the hubby calls adventure cooking, which pretty much means I work from the heart and soul. sometimes i use recipes for inspiration but mostly i just draw on experiences and trying to recreate things others have made.

i needed to do the meat separately but this actually worked out better than if i had mixed it it. i think one of the biggest rules of cooking is to cook each ingredient how it likes to be cooked. this means adding ingredients at the right time and sometimes cooking a bunch of stuff separately and adding them together near the end.

this is a stewed chicken. i took 6 thighs (bone in, never without or you miss all the flavor) I pulled the majority of the skin off, dropped them in a pot, added a bunch of salt and covered with water. After about 15 mins in i added stewed tomatoes with some of their juice (not all of it because you want most of the water to boil off. I then added freshly toasted and ground cumin and coriander. If you've never used these spices straight from the oven and freshly ground you're really missing out, I think they are actually the key to this entire dish.

while the chicken was cooking I took 4 different types of peppers, chopped them and got them sauteing with garlic and oil.here are the spices. so pretty.

To the peppers I added pototes, frozen corn, black and red beans from a can (not the best i know) and some stewed tomatoes.
the chicken finished like this.
i put fresh tomatoes, cilantro, sour cream and avocados out for garnish and served with fresh made corn bread. i forgot to take a picture of the plate. sorry. the guests i had loved it hence the name as most thought i must have had it cooking all day to get such flavor.

i hope you are inspired to do some adventure cooking yourself!

L is for Lemon pillows

spring time is a great time to get back into cooking and baking after a long winter that turns you into an unproductive sloth. i think it's because it stays light so late so there is more time for it in the spring. if you are feeling like baking something may i suggest some lovely lemon bars or as i like to call them lemon pillows?

I used this recipe this past fall at the McG's baby shower. they were wonderful!

enjoy

NaBloPoMo and R is for "Rudi and the River"

The McG's turned me on to National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). I guess participants are supposed to post at least one blog entry each day in April. As you can see from my last few months of posting I am out of practice and letting my off line life get in the way of my on line life (how could I!) But i miss my blog. I miss you. so I'm going to try it.

Here's how you can help:
Get on my case if it is dark out and you have yet to see a post.
Comment, comment, comment. Comments are the juice that runs this engine.
Come and read.

Well here goes........

_________________________________________________________________
Video.

I've been having a lot of fun taking little videos with my little digital camera (not a video camera. just using the video function on my regular camera) It is so fun. If a picture tells a 1000 words then a video must tell at least 1050. I am currently on a mission to find the best way to host my little films so i can share them with peeks. This weekend i tried out Vimeo. It has a wonderful user interface and beautiful design but I'm not sure if it is the one I will stick with.

It was some what complicated to upload my first video due to not so great error messages that didn't tell me exactly what was wrong, but after an hour or so i figured it out. In order to get something that would work on the site I had to move the file from my camera into iphoto, then import into imovie then export as a certain type of file to a folder that i could access through browsing then finally upload to Vimeo. Sounds crazy but once i did it once, i got quick at it.

the film i am about to share lost some quality in the translation so you can't really read the slides but i think it is fun to watch anyway. i hope you enjoy. Important: TURN UP YOUR SOUND


rudi and the river from Tyesha on Vimeo.


see you tomorrow.