The Lucky Wife

On Sunday Katie and I canned a bunch of the strawberries we had picked the day before.  We picked about 15 pounds of berries, and we canned probably six of them.

We used the recipe/instructions from pickyourown.org and it went really well!  Bryan enjoyed some jam with breakfast this morning and said it was delicious.

Fresh picked berries, ready to go:

Boiling the strawberry/sugar/pectin mixture:

Katie:

Me:

Every summer is like this - so busy!  The longer days mean I do more after work and stay up a lot later.  And the weekends are not exactly a break - they're jam-packed with things to do!

My birthday was June 21, and we were up north visiting the in-laws at their cottage.  It was a great time!  We came back for a nice Father's Day/My Birthday BBQ at my parents' house.

This past weekend was incredibly busy and it flew by.  Friday I went to Ann Arbor with Katie, searching for a place for her to live this fall.  Saturday Katie and I went strawberry picking at 7:30 a.m. (yum!) then I ran my first 5K at OpaFest! in Troy.  It was awesome!  It may be a short distance, but it was a personal goal of mine for a while so I am very happy to have completed it. :)

Saturday afternoon I tried a few new baking recipes that I will share in the next day or two.  They were both delicious.  I brought them to a BBQ we went to at one of Bryan's co-worker's houses.

Sunday Katie and I canned all afternoon.  The end result is some yummy strawberry jam!  I need to make some fresh bread to go with it - so good!  And canning was a relatively simple process, just time consuming.  We had fun though.

Sunday evening Bryan and I met up with Jamie and Ryan for dinner.  We also discussed going on a Fall vacation with them and another couple - it could be a lot of fun!! :)

Last night I hung out with Laura and my little cousins Andrea (12) and Elise (9).  Laura is due in September with her second child and it was fun to talk about decorating the baby's room and other preparations before he arrives.  

I am looking forward to staying in town this holiday weekend!  Thankfully we don't have too many plans (yet). :)

Congratulations to my sister Katie!!  She just got accepted as a 2L transfer student to the University of Michigan's law school!  After living in Detroit and attending Wayne State for her first year she is very excited to live in Ann Arbor (a much nicer area to walk around).  Not to mention the fact that U of M is an excellent law school..  :)

I tried a new recipe on Friday - Pizza Braid.  It turned out really good!  I made the crust as directed in the recipe, and then for the filling I used pizza sauce, fresh mozzarella, fresh pepperoni, and pineapple.  Yum!  It even re-heated well last night. :)

The garden is growing like crazy!  All of my plants are taking off, especially the green/wax beans and potatoes.  I can't wait until it is ready to harvest.

I went to Orion Oaks and the Orion Oaks Dog Park a few times this weekend.  It was very nice.  Sunday afternoon we went for a very long walk, and Bryan fished a little.  He's very into fishing lately.  I tried to get the dogs to sit (hence the fist) for a picture, but that wasn't going to happen.  There were too many wildlife distractions, I guess.

I constantly come across new recipes that I want to try. It’s been over a month since I stated that I want to organize them, but not too much has been done since then.. I am still working on the recipe organization, but I think that’s a work in progress.

In the mean time I would like to start trying a new recipe most Fridays. I have Fridays off until after Labor Day, so in theory this should be tangible. There are three or four weekends that won’t work since we’re going out of town, but I should be able to sample a handful of new recipes this summer! Last Friday I made lasagna from scratch (minus the noodles) and I really liked the relaxation of leisurely preparing it. I hope that is how the future Fridays go.

Tomorrow will be my first new recipe trial in a while. Other than bakery delights and the brunch, I don’t think I have tried a new dinner dish since before my fettuccini nightmare. This Friday I am considering a few different recipes, one of which is a chicken pot pie and another is pizza. I tried making pizza a few times over the winter, and none turned out quite right. 

I am hoping for the best with this experiment! I also hope that it will help me to get some of the recipes more organized. :)

As far as working out/eating right goes, I am doing alright. The weather has definitely helped to keep me motivated to get in activity outside whenever it’s nice out. This weekend I did not walk or exercise as much as I normally might, but that’s mostly due to all of the yard work that we did. Yard work = squats = tight hamstrings!!

Recently I started walking a lunch every so often. It is very relaxing to go out with my iPod and take a leisurely stroll and take a break for 30 minutes. :) Today I actually walked to 7-11 to get a pack of gum.

The 30 Day Shred is okay. I felt that I saw results when I was doing it, and those results have not vanished, but I will admit that I have taken about two weeks, if only because I was enjoying the weather outside more than anything. I am currently on day 18 (Level 2, Workout 8). I think that my arms have become a little more toned, which is great. I really need to resume the Shred to keep up the toned arms and maybe get them even more defined!!

I have also been eating healthier and consuming a lot more fruits and veggies. I have found that if I have a 100 calorie pack or other random processed snack at my desk, I will eat it right around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. So I try not to bring one and have a piece of fruit instead. Such logic :)

This week I would like to continue eating lots of fruits and veggies, do the Shred at least twice, and get out and run a few times as well. It’s not a super busy week so I don’t anticipate these goals being an issue.

Our current project around the house is doing some landscaping in the front yard. Our friend Emily is kind enough to give us a few hostas that we’ll plant together on Friday, and she’s also helping me come us with a bit of a design/plan. I am trying to put in more perennials to avoid tons of annuals each year. Katie and I are going to the farmer’s market on Saturday to hopefully find some wonderful plants.

I also have a vegetable garden this year. I transported the seeds outside last weekend, and unfortunately they did not flourish as I hoped they would. Most of my lettuce has wilted pretty badly. If it doesn’t get revived within the next week or so I think I will have to re-plant that crop.

Here are a few pictures: one that shows the seedlings before they were moved, one after I planted everything outside, and one of some pretty tulips that bloomed last week.

Sorry for the lack of blog posts as of late. It’s been a very busy month! Our crazy wedding weekend went really well. Both weddings were beautiful and a lot of fun. We got to hang out with Bryan’s family at one and then with our good friends Jamie and Ryan at another. :) Memorial Weekend was nice, too. Busy, but not too busy. We had at least one activity/event each day so that was the perfect amount of activity.

Sunday Bryan and I hosted a brunch at our house for my grandparents and my mom. It turned out great! Here is the menu:
-Oatmeal Buttermilk Pancakes
-Buttermilk Pancakes (I somehow lost the blueberries on the way home from the grocery store so those were omitted from the recipe – it was still tasty!)
-Waffles – From the Betty Crocker cookbook
-Bacon and Sausage
-Fresh strawberries
-Homemade breakfast potatoes (shredded and diced, courtesy of my dad and brother)
-Apple coffee cake (super easy recipe and super scrumptious as well)
-Birthday cake for my mom (courtesy of my grandmother)

For the next party at our house I don’t think I will do a brunch. It’s a lot of work and a lot of mess! :) It was worth it though, and everyone loved the food. I hope everyone enjoyed a nice holiday weekend!

Oh, and here is a picture from one of the weddings:

Last night I did a lot of organizing.  I went through our kitchen junk drawer, sorted through tons of magazines, and cleaned a few other kitchen cabinets out.

I also switched out all of my winter/summer clothes! In the process I tried a lot of old summer clothes on, and it was great! Clothes that I haven't worn for a few years now fit. :) Granted, some are out of style (i.e. skirts) but there are other basics such as khaki shorts and tanks. I can't wait till it is warm enough to wear them now!

I also tried on the bridesmaid dress that I wore for Jamie's wedding in October.  It is WAY too big on me now.  I was even wearing the same undergarments and the bust has several extra inches of room.  The length is extra long now, too, since it's so loose everywhere else.  I started to eat better the week after Jamie's wedding, and I began exercising again in January. It is very nice to be able to visually see such a difference. Talk about great motivation. :)

I have been incredibly busy lately, and it doesn’t look like the business will be ending any time soon! I guess that’s what comes with summer. This past weekend we were busy helping Katie move from Detroit to Royal Oak (into a super cute house from which she’s renting a room), and then I helped my Aunt Becky out with my cousin Elise’s eighth birthday party. They had 20 seven and eight-year-olds over for pizza, a craft, and High School Musical 3. It was intense.

Sunday was Mother’s Day, and Bryan and I went to my grandparents along with my family and my Aunt Kelly and her family. It was nice to see everyone. But with all of these things that we had going on we weren’t home much at all!

There are several things I want to do around the house, such as swapping out winter clothes for summer clothes and planting some flowers, but I don’t know when I will do so. This coming weekend we have a wedding on both Friday and Saturday night, the first one being two hours away in Grand Rapids.

This week is also busy. Tonight we’re hanging out with some friends, tomorrow night I have a few things going on, and then Thursday will be cleaning the house and prepping to be gone for the weekend.

Luckily it’s a four day weekend coming up for Memorial Day. It will be nice to just get things done around the house, and relax. :) I also have all Fridays off from Memorial Day to Labor Day, so it’s a three day work week the last week of May – excellent.