Goodbye Dress, Hello Skirt!

There are too many dresses and skirts in my closet that I rarely or never wear, for various reasons. I could give a few for this maxi dress, and for why I'm turning it into a skirt.

I bought this dress from Target four years ago for $13 and have only worn it a handful of times. For one, it's a tube top, so I always have to wear a cardigan with it...not exactly a Summer dress. It's also a bit short on me (it hits my ankles) and this makes matching shoes with it difficult. Heaven forbid I ever wear this around children because one tug and it'll fall right down.

My dress has also begun falling apart. See the ruffle at the top of the dress? So I figure that by turning my dress into a skirt, I will be able to match more tops with it, and make it so the skirt covers my ankles.

I followed this tutorial on "Make It & Love It". All I needed to buy was elastic for the waistband ($5), and it really didn't take long at all. Ta da! It hits the floor and is much more comfortable than before.

Cinnamon Banana Muffins

(scroll down for full recipe; makes 12 muffins)

Ever have bananas turn brown before you have the chance to eat them? Well, I have never liked bananas, but I have always heard that overripe ones are great for baking into bread. So after Jared's giant Costco bunch literally fell apart, I decided to make cinnamon sugar banana muffins. I can tolerate banana bread, but I knew it would be even better with extra sugar on top.

First, take four bananas, peel, and mash them. I had to cut off a couple of small brown spots and then I mashed the bananas with my knuckles. Don't worry, they were clean!

Next, add butter, sugar, an egg, vanilla, baking soda, salt, and flour. In a separate bowl, combine cinnamon and sugar for the topping. Now you're ready to go!

Fill muffin cups about 1/3 of the way with muffin batter, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, top with more muffin batter and more cinnamon sugar. Your muffins will have four layers. And your muffin pan will have lots of sugar sprinkled all over it.

Bake in an oven preheated to 350°F for 25 minutes, and let cool. You now have twelve very moist muffins to share or throw in the freezer for later when you need a snack. Just kidding, who actually does that?!

Muffin Mixture

4 overripe bananas, smashed

1/3 C. butter, melted

3/4 C. sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 C. flour

Cinnamon Sugar

1/3 C. sugar

1 Tbsp. cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and prepare muffin pan with paper liners

2. Mix bananas, melted butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla in a large bowl

3. Add baking soda, salt, and flour, and gently stir

4. In a separate bowl, combine sugar and cinnamon 

5. Fill the muffin liners 1/3 of the way with muffin mixture

6. Sprinkle half of the cinnamon sugar onto the muffins, then top with remaining muffin mixture and cinnamon sugar

7. Bake for 25 minutes, cool, and enjoy!

Nutrition

I attempted to calculate calories per muffin, and each one has about 220. To decrease this, use one less banana and less cinnamon sugar. You can also substitute some or all of the butter with applesauce. 

That Baby

In 2012, after seven years of being the only married child in the family, my sister gave birth to a little girl. 

Before that, I always said that I loved babies, but why? Well, because they are cute. They are tiny, delicate, and dependent. They need love.

Photo by Lindsey Stokes

Since she arrived, my niece has been the topic of discussion in my family. We have an ongoing group message on our phones where you can bet daily that someone will ask, "Where's the baby?", and receive pictures, videos, and stories in return. 

When you have a baby in your life, that's actually a part of your life, you have the chance to witness something miraculous. I have always been fascinated by pregnancy, the miracle of life. You start with something microscopic and it rapidly grows into a tiny human. That tiny human resembles you in looks and maybe even develops a personality and interests like yours, and you get to be there to see it all transpire. You get to see a life begin, and I mean a life in the sense that this baby has a future. This little one will grow up to be someone with hobbies and passions and a history, and you can be there from the beginning to help her discover who she is and what she can do. You have the privilege of introducing her to the world, and the fun part is seeing how she reacts to it.

For a long time I admired babies from afar, hoping their moms would ask me to hold them. Now I have that baby whom I'm always thinking about, always asking after, and of whom I love to see a new picture. Never mind the fact that she's an absolutely cute baby; she's just plain fun. She's fun because she is new to the world, and the world is new to her, and as young as she is, it's true that she is discovering herself and the part that she plays in all of this. 

They say that the first year passes all too quickly, but I hope that each of us sees the miracle in its occurrence by finding that baby whom we can love. Because however you come to know that baby, she allows you to be a part of something precious when you allow her to be a part of your story too. 

"When do you suppose babies became so very precious? Are they more valued now because they can survive or do they survive because they are more valued?"

-Sister Monica Joan, Call the Midwives

Jared's Food Post

I should preface this story with the following fact which may stun many of you: according to my coworkers, I'm a pretty quiet person. One of the reasons for this is that when I was getting training for my job, one of trainers told us (and I quote): "First year staff should probably just be seen, and not heard". That means that when I'm out at a client, I generally don't talk to anyone except the person I'm with, and I talk to the client if I'm spoken to.

This last week, the audit manager for this client took our engagement team and the executives of our client out for lunch. My audit supervisor told us about a place he ate at called the Honduran Kitchen. We all decided to eat there, based on his recommendation.

Just before we left to go eat, it occurred to me that Honduras is really close to Colombia, where I served my two-year mission back in 2007-2009. While I was there, I ate a dish called "Coconut Rice", which turned out to be my favorite food that I ate while there. I don't like coconut, and I didn't really like rice, so it made no sense that coconut rice should be as delicious as it is. Since I've been home from my mission, I participated in three attempts to make this rice. It's never worked out quite right, and I've been stumped as to how to make this dish.

I realized that since Honduras is in close proximity to Colombia (specifically, the northern part of Colombia), it would make sense that they would have a similar cuisine. I decided to see if they had coconut rice. I actually informed all of my coworkers of this beforehand because I was getting excited to see if they served it. They told me that they were rooting for me to be able to get the meal that I wanted.

After we sat down, a waiter asked for our drink orders. They had a few fruit drinks that I didn't recognize, until he said "And we also have guanabana". I jumped in my seat, startling everyone seated at the table. I yelped in surprise. "You have guanabana?" I asked. They certainly did. Guanabana happens to be my favorite fruit from Colombia, and it makes a delicious juice. "Give me some of that!" I declared affirmatively. Everyone laughed, saying things like "I thought he was so quiet!" after now seeing me in my excited state. When my drink came, I was entranced. It was like I was back in Colombia.

After looking through the menu, I realized that I could order steak and onions and fried plantains, just like we would eat on a nearly daily basis in Colombia. Lo and behold, they also offered "rice cooked in coconut milk and mixed with beans". I wasn't sure about the "beans" part, but that sure sounded like coconut rice to me! I ordered the plate, and now everyone could feel my anticipation. Like I mentioned, I'd been burned in the past when it came to getting this food, and I was hoping that everything would turn out all right.

When I got my plate, I knew they'd done it right. Everything looked just like I'd remembered. When the moment came to taste the coconut rice, everyone watched as I lifted the fork to my mouth. I savored the taste; the beans were there, of course, but they didn't block out the true taste of coconut rice. I had finally found it. Everyone at the table was excited for me.

After cleaning off my plate (I didn't eat the ensalada, like a good little Barranquillan missionary! Some habits die hard!), I walked up to the waiter and ordered an additional side of coconut rice, to-go. I wanted an order for myself to take home and share with my wife, just so she would know what it tasted like. It was truly one of my favorite meals of all time.

Remove Rust from Your Knives

Just last week I was pouting over the rust stains on my knives that are only as old as my marriage. Today I saw some tips online for how to remove rust, so I gave them a try and am very happy with the results.

How To:
Soak your rusty knife in lemon juice, then scrub away at the rust with the rough side of a sponge until it comes off! I didn't fill my cup all the way because I didn't want to waste lemon juice, and it's a good thing because there is an even more effective method.

I found that by pouring baking soda directly onto the knife, then using a wet sponge to scrub the rust stains, removes them almost immediately. There is no soaking required!

Beautiful knife, happy me.

Our Valentine's Tradition

We have a Valentine's Day tradition that we have kept up for three years now (go us!). It came about because we really wanted to make Alice Springs chicken, which is basically chicken smothered in cheese, honey mustard, and bacon, but we were in college and didn't want to spend a lot of money on one meal. We decided to save the recipe for Valentine's day and not worry about how expensive it would be, because it would be cheaper than any other restaurant we might have gone to that night. Since then it has been our tradition to replicate a restaurant meal at home. 

This year we went the Olive Garden route. It may just be soup and salad, but it was delicious. We did have plans to make the bread sticks but we didn't account for the fact that the dough has to rise for 45 minutes and we'd have to roll it out, cut it and blah, blah, it was just too much work. Together we made Zuppa Toscana soup and a simple romaine salad complete with Olive Garden Italian dressing, thank you Walmart. 

After dinner we raced to the theater to catch an early showing of the Lego movie, which is by the way, pretty weird but hilarious and worth seeing. Plus it's only an hour and a half, which I love. That's how long I wish all movies were!

After the movie we made a "fancy" dessert at home: the pizookie! My sister Ami introduced me to these just a week ago so I passed the favor along to Jared. Technically a pizookie is a giant, round cookie topped with ice cream and shared by all, but we don't have a pie pan so our cookie is a rectangle and my ice cream is tucked into the corner. Still delicious.

And of course, here are my flowers! I picked them out earlier in the week and Jared "surprised" me with them. Thanks love!

I'm Peanut Butter & You are Jelly

For our anniversary last year I bought PB&J keychains from an etsy shop. I had been singing, "I'm peanut butter and you are jelly..." for a few weeks in preparation for the reveal of this cute gift, and Jared would even sing the song to me. Well those stinkin' keychains both broke within a matter of weeks and we were left with two little pieces of bread and nothing to do with them. Until now. 

Introducing: an anniversary fail turned into a Valentine's day success!

I have had this idea brewing for a long time, and of course waited until the day of to put it all together. Wait til you see it. It's precious. 

Materials:

I measured and cut the fabric and pillowcase to fit the frame using my new rotary cutting set that Santa gave me. It is awesome! Then I brought back my old stitching skills and got myself a hand cramp as I stitched some of the song's lyrics onto the pillowcase piece.

After that I indulged in some peanut butter m&ms, tested out a few new styles of stitches on my sewing machine, and sewed the two pieces together.

After that, all it took was some super glue to attach Jared Peanut Butter and Lauren Jelly - I'm not about to be the chunky one - and now I'm waiting for Jared to come home and open up his gift!

I really shouldn't point it out, but see how the word "bread" slants upward? That is proof that my left hand was completely cramped and almost useless at that point. But I'm very happy with how it turned out and that I could still get my money's worth out of those two keychains.