Completely Random

This is going to be one of those completely random posts that doesn't really seem cohesive, so be warned. 


First, my friends have had some awesome links that I'm loving.

• My friend Kristen, amazing author of theFrugalGirl.com, had a post today with her thoughts on surviving whatever may happen with gas prices in the upcoming year. Read it here.
• My best friend's precious daughter teaches us a great lesson about life. Read it here.
• My friend Aliesha made some homemade Chinese Takeout that has my mouth watering, and I'm absolutely dying to try it. Check out her Chinese Sesame Chicken here.
• One of my favorite people (and also the photographer from our wedding) - Brooke and her husband TJ are opening up a store! Please please go check out their video about the launch here (and also Walk In Love's website here).
• And last but not least...if you need a little puppy lovin', here's one of my favorite posts from one of my favorite bloggers who I'm friends with in my dreams. Otherwise known as Pioneer Woman, or Ree Drummond. Oh Charlie, what a dog.

Second...random pictures from recently. Because it's not a random post without random photos.

Anthropologie has won the award for best presentation of your birthday coupon. A little envelope with stars on it arrived in my mailbox, and inside the envelope was a little fabric pouch with a star-shaped button on it, and inside that little pouch was the birthday coupon. Talk about marketing!

One advantage of being up early is getting to see the morning sun on the city buildings. Love.

What in the world are all those dots?

Goosen! This was taken this weekend from the dock at Scott's parents house. We think these were snow geese. So beautiful and serene.

All the storms lately brought a new tree up to the surface near the dock. This picture doesn't do justice to how big it actually is - I think it's there to stay for a while.

Scott, jumping for joy that it's not below 30 degrees. Or maybe just because I told him to jump. You guess.

This should make you all feel better about the winter. This is my parents' driveway in Vermont as of yesterday, where they are no longer able to snow-blow and can barely even shovel because the snowbanks are nearing six feet tall in some locations. Believe it or not, there is a fence that ends at that light-post. you can almost see it peeking out. Oh, by the way, they got MORE snow this morning.

And last but not least, I found this gem on my cell phone. Scott's best friend Christian, and a frequent visitor to our house. We love him.

I think that's all my random for today. Hope you all had a great weekend!

Boof Bore-gihn-nyon.

Not just one, but TWO missed Thursday dinner features? What am I doing to you people! I'm a terrible friend I know. I have still been cooking, still been documenting, but my work life has been such lately that I've been going to bed or sitting dumbly on the couch shortly after arriving home. So, today will have to be the "Friday" dinner feature. I promise though...it will melt your knees straight into your toes.


This comes from my Gooseberry Patch Slow-Cooker Recipes cookbook, although I can tell you right now that even though it stays in the crock pot for 8 to 10 hours, you're going to need at least an hour or two to get it prepped in the morning. This is a great Saturday or Sunday adventure...definitely not a weeknight adventure. For sure.


This recipe is a crock pot version of Julia Child's infamous Boeuf Bourguignon that Scott has been begging me to make since seeing the movie Julie & Julia. And woah nelly. Just. Woah. Wait till you try it, you'll understand, but first read the recipe and you'll get a glimmer.


Company Beef Bourguignon


Ingredients:
3lbs boneless beef round steak, cubed (Julia Child recommends 2-inch cubes...mine were more like 1-inch)
6 slices bacon, crisply cooked and crumbled, drippings reserved
1 onion, sliced
1 cup baby carrots
salt and pepper to taste
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
10-1/2oz can beef broth
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
16-oz pkg sliced mushrooms
1 tbsp oil
15-oz jar pearl onions, drained
1/2 cup Burgundy wine or beef broth (I used Marsala, for better or for worse)


Directions:
Brown beef cubes in reserved bacon drippings; place in a slow cooker. Add onion, carrots, salt and pepper to skillet; stir in flour. Add broth and tomato paste; mix well and pour over beef. Sprinkle bacon, garlic and herbs over beef. Cover and cook on low setting for 8 to 10 hours. One hour before serving, saute mushrooms in oil; add to slow cooker along with pearl onions and wine or broth. Discard bay leaf. Makes 4 to 6 servings.


Simple, right?


In case the magnitude of the "wooahhh nelly" of this recipe didn't sink in to you, let's break it down.


Exhibit A: HUGE hunk'o'beef. I finally made this recipe because our grocery store had all beef round 50% off....which was certainly good enough for me!

 Cube it up.

 Hello, bacon. Have I told you lately that I love you?

 Crisp it up.

 Alright, hold onto your socks, here's where it gets greasy good. See all that liquid, that you're browning the meat in? That would be bacon grease.

 Julia Child recommended browning it in small batches, which worked out well since you have to rotate each piece a bit to get all sides browned. My little pattern was to get one batch going, then flip it, move it to the other side of the pan, then start the next batch, which produced beautiful beefy-multicolored pan.

For the whole pattern, I had a little system set up like this. I was putting the beef straight into the crock pot, and since it was a bit drippy, I just covered my burner/stovetop with wax paper to make for easy clean-up later. You don't exactly want bacon/beef grease dripping onto your burners. Hmm.

 I also didn't crumble my bacon, because I was feeling lazy. Oh well.

 So you finish up the beef. And believe it or not, there's still more bacon grease left. But we can't let it go to waste! So let's saute the veggies in it. (Don't deny it, your toes just curled a little.) This is right after adding the flour.

 You can't really tell from this photo, but by this point, the broth has thickened up quite nicely. Make sure you don't cook your veggies to death, since this will be in the crock pot all day.

 The whole ensemble in the crock pot, with the grease of six pieces of bacon, and, oh wait, six pieces of bacon. (Drool.)

 I never pass up an opportunity to photograph sauteeing mushrooms. Yum.

 Because I've been a loser the past few days, I may or may not have forgotten to photograph the final steps and the finished product the day we ate it. However, this is the next day when I ate leftovers. And truth: TEN TIMES better the next day. Whew.

Verdict:
A firm, resounding WOAH NELLY. If you need comfort food, this is pretty much the definition. And despite the prep time in the morning, clean-up was actually pretty easy. 


A few tips:

• Keep in mind your ingredients. Beef...bacon...broth...wine... We won't go into too much detail, but I highly recommend taking some Pepto or some such thing before eating. For everyone's safety.
• The pearl onions were an awesome touch, but for me, way too strong after only cooking for an hour. Scott and Christian liked them, but I couldn't eat them until the next day. I daresay I'd add them at the beginning of the cook time, or halfway through. 
• This recipe just screams for a nice little loaf of bread to sop up the juices. Too good to go to waste!
• And if it wasn't obvious enough, if you're on a diet, stay FAR far away from this recipe. Yowsa.

And that's that. If you haven't gained five pounds just from reading this, I highly recommend making this as soon as possible. Especially if your weather is anything like ours today - cold and majorly rainy. Eesh.

Happy...Friday!

Birthday Love and Life List Goals

I meant to post this yesterday, but since my work day began with spending two hours standing in the snow while our building was examined by the fire department and the energy company to investigate a strong electrical odor...I didn't get much else done last night.


However, my birthday and Monday off were fantastic! My precious friend Samantha drove an hour to come visit me with her sweet girl Ella.

Waiter! More coffee!

...we're getting her started young.


The rest of my day looked like this.

Ahhh...the luxury of a day in bed when you're not sick.


For my birthday, my parents gave me a gift that's getting me one step closer to my Life List goal of becoming yoga certified.

This program came highly recommended by several people. The center book is actually textbook-sized, and is a really interesting read. I'll probably be elaborating on various things later on, as many topics are also relaxation techniques that would be very handy for my working friends. 


Looking forward to a birthday celebration with friends this weekend. Thank you all for your birthday wishes - it was a truly wonderful day!

Staple-Gunner-ing.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and my amazing husband may or may not have gotten me a new wallet and a staple gun for the event.


Um. A staple gun, you say?


Best. Present. Ever.


I may or may not have been running around the apartment like a madwoman, cackling loudly, "CAN YOU FEEEEEL THE POWER KRONK!?"


But I digress. What on earth am I doing with a staple gun? Many things eventually, but first and foremost on my mind was making a "headboard" for our bed. Which was largely a part of beginning our bedroom make-over.


Here is what our bedroom looked like when I woke up this morning, give or take a few things since this is an older photo.

Photo arrangement on the wall.

Now, I didn't get any photos of the process of making my new "headboard". This was mainly because I was so excited to use my staple gun that I was almost done before it occurred to me I should be documenting the process.


Essentially what I did was take three canvases (I tend to buy the cheap 2-packs when they're on sale at Michael's since I usually end up hating what I paint) and covering them with fabric samples that I had from my days of interning at an interior design firm. These three canvases had already been used, with paintings on them that I naturally didn't like, so covering them didn't seem like a waste at all to me. That's where the staple gun came in handy. I centered the fabric on the design I wanted, pulled it taut, and then went to town. Awesome.


Here's the result.

It was difficult for me to get an accurate photo of the colors throughout the bedroom change process, but I promise things do match.

To address a few things:

• I didn't buy a new comforter - the previous blue one was a duvet cover - this is what always lived underneath.
• I'm undecided as to how I feel about the shelf over the covered panels, however I was feeling way too lazy to remove it, so for the time being, it's still there.
• The new rug on the floor does not match in any way shape or form, but it's the size of one that I would like to get for our bedroom to break up the constant beige of the walls and carpet.
• The constant beige is one reason we got a duvet cover, so I'm not sure how long I'll last with the original beige comforter, but we'll see.

Also, I did change the photos on the wall. It's a mixture of wallpaper samples and fabric samples...again from my days of interning. (They had tons of outdated samples that were just going to get thrown away so I volunteered to take them. If you love having scraps to work with, check out your local interior design shops to find out when they update their samples.)

I moved a few other things around the wall, but here's the final look of the bedroom for now.

I'm loving it for now, if not solely because it's a change. But also - the total cost of this transformation was the $27 we spent on the staple gun and staples. Not a penny more. Everything else was just shifted around from other locations in the house.

Many happy sighs from Megs today. Nothing like a good re-decoration for my birthday!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Get the Feeeeva!

My friend Lauren who frequently guest posts here also happens to work for a music company. Yes, I envy her daily. However, having such a friend has major perks. Check out her post below, my 9 to 5 friends!

One wonderful perk of working for a music company is getting schooled daily on new artists and songs by people way cooler than I. And there are very few things in life that I love more than themed playlists, so here's one for a nasty case of Spring Fever. My brother and I make one of these every year and usually title it "Windows Down" because that's exactly how it should feel. That first week of the Spring that you can ride with the windows down, warm air whipping your hair into oblivion - that deserves a soundtrack. You ladies stuck in front of a computer in an AC controlled environment with horrid fluorescent lighting, this one is for you!

Day 19

So remember when I started my 31 Days project? I'm still plowing along, along with two of my precious friends who decided to join me. And something interesting to know....around Day 13, I started to feel comfortable with the routine. And here on Day 19, I actually look forward to curling up on my little spot on the couch to dive into my Bible. I did miss a couple days here and there, but so far, the project is looking like a success, even in the early stages!


I wonder if I could apply this to diet and exercise? Hmm.. maybe a blog series to come?


Speaking of dieting...

Oh Snoopy...how well you know me.  (Sorry for yet again the photo overlapping...still learning the art of webpage wizardry. Hah.)

Love-ly Events

I know I've been hiding out lately, but for good reason! Scott and I went to his parents' house for Valentine's weekend, and spent Valentine's Day having some much needed, computer-free alone time. I hope you all had a great day of celebration too! Here's some of what we've been up to.


I was surrounded by a few very happy cheese-heads with the Packer's Superbowl Victory - woohoo!

We spent Saturday morning watching our niece scare away every other teammate. She's like a freight train - our future soccer star!

Scott's wonderful mom treated us and Scott's two older siblings to a Valentine's day treat at Kilby Creamery - YUM.

Our nephew Jadon opted for a PB&J instead of ice cream. How cute is this little boy?

Nothing like eating ice cream on a day that looks this cold. And it was COLD. And windy, which made it ten times colder.

Silo at Kilby Creamery.

This would be the cat that was begging us to adopt it. Such a sweet animal - mewing and poking and rubbing, trying to demonstrate to us how good of a pet it would be. If it wasn't for the intense fear of having to replace all our furniture, this little guy would have come home with us.

Valentine's Day cuppy-cakes.

My treat when I got home from work - my hubby knows me WELL!

Chocolate-covered strawberries to eat while we watched An Affair to Remember. Yum.

The steak dinner that was as good as a restaurant, if I do say so myself! More details on the preparation of the steak later, because you all HAVE to try it. So good.

How do you spell love? T-R-U-F-F-L-E-S. Ohh yes.

So there you have it. Care to share any of your Valentine's Day stories? I'd love to hear! I love a good romantic story. :)