Lemonade Stand Time

Sometimes my mind goes crazy and starts spitting out ideas.  I think my entrepreneurial father left just a tiny bit of his imprint on me.  I received an email from our condo association about a community yard sale in five weeks.  And BOOM my mind decided I should:

• invite friends to join me to have a more appealing table 

• go through the bags for Goodwill and pull things out 

• go to WalMart and buy that folding table I saw last night 

•  this will be perfect to promote my home business in my new local area

• AND I should definitely make make lemonade and cookies to sell (now to pick the perfect flavor...)

I'd LOVE to know how you have used your entrepreneurial and/or hospitable skills to create the BEST yard sale EVER! And if you enjoy visiting yard sale in NoVa, how to do you find them?  Craigslist, WaPo, neighborhood signs?
Please, all suggestions welcome.

Homemaking

My last post was about health. To update, cutting diet coke has curbed my afternoon carb cravings, so that's a plus! I'll still drink one now and and again, like when I'm at a party. But if I drink one at work I feel all gross and bloated, so that's not all that appealing. Haven't bought a Lean Cuisine again...but haven't been making amazing lunches either. Gotta work on that. But to be honest, I was all motivated to get in shape because I was anticipating 2013 being a year when there are a LOT of photos taken of myself. Why???

We're getting married!!!

On Sunday afternoon, February 3rd, the love of my life asked me to marry him. With tears in our eyes, I said yes!  It was a sweet, intimate proposal with the Lord's presence upon it. We were able to enjoy the moment, find time to call family, and then go celebrate with friends at Super Bowl parties. A perfect day.

Through our relationship and especially now, I've seen my love of homemaking shine. When I make him a meal and he enjoys it, it makes my heart happy. When I use my couponing to restock his toiletries for a what he would have spent on a tube of toothpaste, it makes my heart happy. When he leaves his gym bag behind by accident (we have have been hitting the gym a LOT) and I toss his laundry in with mine, it makes my heart happy. And we're talking laundry here, that never makes me happy!

I've spent the last two years in a lovely apartment that is lacking a few full blown amenities. It's a studio, so some things are mini. I am so looking forward to making our new home in a place with a standard size fridge, oven and dishwasher. Because baking and buying produce at CostCo (and not doing ALL the dishes) makes my heart happy. I've written before about entertaining with a small space, but I'm looking forward to entertaining MORE! To having space for my friends kids to play. For more than 4 people to be able to watch a movie.

I've gotten excited about building our gift registries and finding items to organize and entertain. Items to make a home. Our home. A home where we can retreat and relax. A home where we can invite others in to retreat and relax. A home where we can celebrate milestones together and with our friends. I might be in an office 40 ours a week, but I am a homemaker through and through. It makes my heart happy. The Fiance makes my heart happy. This is going to be a good year.

Okay, I wanna know. Did ANYONE read the paragraph above the first photo?  ;-)

Clutter awry

Ladies and Gentlemen, this project has been a failure! Sometimes, the best intentions go awry. There has been no deculttering in my home since my last post. Technically, I've cluttered. You see, I had this storage unit that I've finally cleaned out. And by cleaned out, I mean I moved it all into my living room.  So the storage unit is 100% decluttered! But my living room? Not so much. My personal goal is now to get all those boxes opened up and taken care of once and for all.  Some need to be condensed into scrapbooks. Some need to be repacked in Rubbermade and shoved into the crawl space. Some might just need to be trashed.

What about you?  Did any of you keep up with Simple Mom and her projects? (http://simplemom.net/project-simplify-2012/)  She's a great motivator!

Life otherwise is peachy keen! Winter is gone, spring has come, and all is well in the world. See you soon for a real post!

Our first project!

Okay, time to get with the simplifying!

Tsh has posted a great motivational kick-off post to get us moving. Check it out and then tackle your first project; either the kids' stuff or your bathroom/linen closet like I plan to do.

Before: (cleaning products, travel toiletries and shampoo in one big mess!)

Tune in later this week for the AFTER picture!

Is "decluttering" a real word?*

It's become very trendy to claim a word for a year. Sometimes the word is about something they're learning that year, such as learning about joy or grace. Sometimes the word is about action, such as challenge or expand. I haven't followed the trend very well. I waited until last year was half over and then I choose TWO words and I'm reusing them this year. My words are RICH and FOCUSED.

I am an organized person living with some messy person tenancies. I procrastinate, hoard and, well, I think those are the main issues. My home is regularly in need of some TLC which my mind is SCREAMING to offer it, yet that pesky procrastination keeps interfering with again and again.

In my quest to be FOCUSED in this area, I'm joining a blog challenge for the month of March and I'm offering you to join me. Start by reading this amazing post titled What's Holding You Back from Decluttering?

(((waiting, waiting, oh, you're back!)))

That was a really good post, wasn't it?? I realized my lack of FOCUS here was robbing me of the RICHness I was desiring. This is why I am joining Project: Simplify for the month. You'll be seeing two posts a week from me on this topic. The first will be sharing the week's assignment from Tsh over at Simplemom.net and the second will be sharing how I actually DID on that assignment, complete with before and after photos!

Click on that empty box and you can read about how Tsh plans to get us moving. One little tweak I'll offer to you. Her first project is to declutter your kids' stuff.   don't have any of those at the moment, so I'm planning to declutter my bathroom and my equivalent of a linen closet.

See you Monday for our first assignment!


*not according to m-w.com  Maybe in the next edition?

Home - revisited

Three months ago, I issued you a challenge. Remember? I never fully circled back, though I did give you MY update and gave you an extenstion through the end of the year

The Challenge: Have people over to your house between now and Thanksgiving. As long as they come in and stay long enough to sit down, it counts. I'll be asking how it went!

So now I want to know!  How did it go??? What are you doing NOW to open your home this year? Fill me in!

I've been stretching my boundaries a bit. A few months back I opened my home and started leading a bible study a couple times a month. I threw the party I told you all about. I've had friends over hear and there. I've been happy to invite people over at the spur of the moment for two reasons. #1 - my home stays cleaner and less cluttered when I routinely have people over and #2 - when I routinely have people over, my impossibly high standards of perfection lower to a more normal level. Know what I do now? I let people into my home when there are dirty dishes in my kitchen sink and hair on my bathroom floor!

SHOCK   HORROR   Really, I need to keep up with both of these a little more, but I'm not letting them hold me back.

My next challenge? Can I make my home kid friendly? Hmmmmm.......

(Don't forget, leave a comment with your own story of how you met this challenge.)

Pose for me, pose for me

I love photographs that = memories. I would much rather take pictures than buy souvenirs on a trip. I love the stories that are held in my photo albums. A few weeks ago I was given the privilege of participating in a photoshoot sponsored by my church leadership and Ginny Filer Photography. The church was prepping for a new website that launched this week (which looks AMAZING [because Jenna Jones Designs rocks too!].) We took pics we would need for the site and Ginny was gracious enough to take extra pics for all of us. It was a lot of fun and I'm so excited to have new memories of my dearest friends!

(You can check out the official public album HERE on Facebook.)

I really do love hospitality!  I'm offering you a muffin and coffee right now.

 There were also some fun color effects!

(more pics after the jump)

Mmmmm, Chicken!

Once upon a time, I promised this blog would have occasional recipes. And I posted...one. As of today, we are going to have 100% MORE recipes! Meaning, I'm posting another and now there will be TWO.

With holiday travel coming up, I realized I had a ton of food in my tiny fridge that needed to be eaten ASAP. So what's a girl do? Invite The Boyfriend to dinner and hit up Google for something tasty to make with what I have on hand. And it turned out amazing!

I made a few tweeks. I used baby bellas and not shiitakes, since that was what I had. I was also missing shallots, so I added a little onion and garlic power for zing. And lastly, the chicken that I had was tenders, so I pounded them out thin, layered them in the pan, covered them with the stuffing, and then added a second layer of chicken. And I cooked it all at 400 degrees.  Who cooks at 500???

I'll be making this again for sure!

Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Shiitakes and Provolone

When cutting the pockets for the stuffing, make them as large as possible on the inside without enlarging the 3-inch-long incision on the outside.

Yield: Makes 4 servings
Active Time: 20 min
Total Time: 45 min

Ingredients

1 (6-oz) piece provolone
6 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems discarded
1/4 cup chopped shallot (1 large)
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 chicken breast halves with skin and bones (2 1/2 to 3 lb total)

Preparation

• Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 500°F. Line a shallow baking pan with foil.
• Coarsely grate cheese and set aside in a medium bowl. Pulse mushrooms and shallot in a food processor with thyme, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper until finely chopped.
• Heat 2 tablespoons butter in a 10-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until foam subsides, then sauté mushroom mixture, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Stir into cheese (some cheese will melt).
• Pat chicken dry, then cut a deep 3-inch-long pocket horizontally in long curved side of each chicken breast half and fill each pocket with one fourth of cheese mixture (some filling will be visible).
• Put chicken in baking pan, then melt remaining tablespoon butter and brush over chicken. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and remaining 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Roast until cooked through and cheese is melted (filling will ooze), 20 to 25 minutes.

Original recipe may be found at: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chicken-Breasts-Stuffed-with-Shiitakes-and-Provolone-232608

The house is packed

When love is in the house, the house is packed, so much so we left the back door cracked...  Lyrics by TobyMac where running through my head as friends gathered at my place last week to help me put up my Christmas tree. (Though it was more about cracking windows open than the door.) After writing the post a few weeks ago about HOME I realized I needed to just go for it and have a party. No more stressing over exactly how many people would be comfortable in my space. Just invite and let things happen as they would. And it was great!

Sure, we were stepping on each other now and again, but no one minded. I packed 14 people into a studio basement apartment and it was such a good time, it was midnight before I was alone again.

Everything is more fun with friends. Setting up the three-piece tree, figuring out how to connect all the cords and fixing the star upon the top, when it is REALLY hard to get it to connect to my tree, doesn't feel like a chore when there are lots of hands involved. I enjoyed watching a group of budding civil engineers make sure the covered bridge lined up with the invisible river powering the big water wheel on the mill as we set up my ceramic snow village. Hopefully I've sparked a trend of tree trimming parties!

My actual tree, not clip art. -------->

Which reminds me, how are YOU doing on The Challenge? You still have a little time to pull it off! And if you ask REALLY nice, I'll even give you an extension until the end of the year.

The Challenge: Have people over to your house between now and Thanksgiving. As long as they come in and stay long enough to sit down, it counts. I'll be asking how it went!

Home!!

I'd like to issue a challenge to you. Yes you. The one sitting there thinking this probably won't apply to you since, be honest, that's what most of us think when we hear an opening line like that.

We need to reclaim the home as the social hub of our lives. Inviting people into your home is not just for people who live in 2000 sq ft or more. It's not just for married people. It's not just for good cooks. Almost* all of us can open our door and let people chill with us.

The home lends itself to personal warmth and depth. There is safety. There is family. There is relationship in the home. How much of that can you say about the movie theater or Chili's?

As a young adults in the DC area, my friends and I face two main hurdles in opening our homes. One is the idea that as younger people, we just aren't ready to be the hosts. Our home is too small. Our furniture doesn't match. We can't layout a food spread as good as mom used to do. That's just plain baloney. No one cares if your stuff doesn't match or if you pour salsa from a jar into a cereal bowl as your only snack (but we would like some chips too). And small spaces? We all have them. In reality, it kinda makes things more cozy. So pile people into your little home!

Putting my hospitality to work

Have you ever wished you had a hobby that MADE you money instead of cost you money? (you'd think I sat up late at night watching infomercials with that line! But really, I'm not trying to con you.) I used to have one. Back home in Florida I had a great hobby for about 4 years. This summer I said, "Hey! Let's do that again!" I love messing around with food and making things homey and so forth and so on in a hospitable sort of way. My cooking skills and baking repertoire were very much widened by this hobby before and I'm already seeing that happen again.

On the back of a snail

I've said my heart lies with Jesus, music and hospitality. I could have said food, but I'm not a foodie and I'm not a chef. I love making a home, sharing a home, lending a home, bringing home to less homey places. And yes, even sending a little home out on the back of a snail.

Cutting back on my social networking made me more aware of other ways to reach out and touch someone. Remember being a kid and getting a piece of mail, any mail? SO EXCITING!! As adults, we get mail and the thrill is gone. Until we see something with handwriting and maybe a fun color. Then we perk up just like when we were kids. I GOT MAIL! REAL MAIL!

A little taste

I've introduced you to Anthem Lights and shared a little about what Jesus is doing with my internet habits, so now it's time for a dash of hospitality. Since this might not appeal to as large a readership, we'll keep these posts short and sweet.

I'm not an expert cook or baker, though I can hold my own. But I love presentation. For a birthday party recently I threw a trifle together that, I must say, came out looking pretty spiffy due to my trifle bowl. When I moved into my studio apartment earlier this year, I culled my kitchen down to my idea of the bare essentials, which included keeping this bowl!  I was able to fill it with yummy layers, seal it up with the lid, throw the removable stand in my purse, and voilà! Have trifle, will travel!

Let's call this THE Trifle ;)