Monday, August 16, 2010

Productive night!

I just made my own "dinners by design" and am VERY excited about it. I marinated and froze two flank steaks using the recipe below and then I bought a bag of frozen chicken tenders and put them in smaller zip top bags with two different dressing marinades. I have 6 dinners ready to go - just thaw in the fridge for a day and cook!

Weight Watchers Marinated Flank Steak
Serves 6

Ingredients:

* 3/4 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
* 1/4 cup canola oil
* 1/4 cup honey
* 1/4 cup water
* 3 scallions, chopped [I forgot these]
* 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
* 18 oz lean flank steak

Directions:

* In a large resealable plastic bag, combine all ingredients except steak. After ingredients are combined, add the steak.
* Seal bag, squeezing out excess air, and refrigerate at least two hours.
* Remove steak from marinade.
* Transfer marinade to a small saucepan; set aside.
* Grill or broil steak, turning once, until medium.
* While steak is cooking, bring marinade to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for five minutes.
* To serve, slice steak across the grain and spoon marinade over it.

Enjoy!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Long time...

Sorry I haven't written! Things have been busy in our house with every day stuff. I have found that I really enjoy cooking, so I'm trying to do more of that. Steve and I are just busy doing youth group, work, playing with Alton and catching up on our DVR (VERY important stuff there!). Also, we went to Vegas last month and had a really nice time. My work is work...nothing too exciting going on there, which is good in some ways. Steve is really liking his job, which sent him to Chile a couple weeks ago - exciting for him, not me :)

I have thought of so many random things to share, and will try to post them soon in the future. Just wanted to drop a quick line and say hi. Hope you have a great week!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

I've been meaning to post for a while. We've done a lot and I've had a lot of random thoughts that I wanted to post since July, but I always get sidetracked by Facebook or DVR instead. Sorry about that!

We had a couple whirlwind months where we went to Mackinac for a 4 day weekend, had a 5 year reunion with my MBA class in Bloomington, went to North Carolina with Steve's family for a 4 day weekend (where I really really wanted to see Dawson's Creek locations, but wasn't able to find much w/out paying for the tour), had our 1 year anniversary, and a ton of other stuff! Things are really going well with both of us - our work is keeping us busy during the week, but we're both enjoying it.

Our dog is teaching us patience and teaching us to not care about objects because they can all be chewed by a puppy. Our ottoman, bedspread, comforter, door frames, shoes, etc have not been able to escape the wrath of Alton. Last night he even barfed on our bedspread in the middle of the night - that was fun.

We put our townhouse on the market back in September. We've had a few showings (one was a 2nd) but no offers and the activity had died down to nothing now. It's kind of sad, but then again we're happy here. We just want to buy a house with a yard because now is a great time to buy. No big deal, but if you know anyone who wants a nice townhome - feel free point them in our direction :)

We're going over to my parents' for dinner tonight - we are that cool :) Have a good week, I'll do my best to post soon (at least more soon than July, sorry!).

Monday, July 27, 2009

How many have you read?

29/100

Where do you fall in the list? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.
Share this with other cool people or the walking damn dead. :D
Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an X after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x
6 The Bible (The entire thing!) x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: = 7

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 0
Total so far: 7

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky x
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 2
Total so far: 9

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma-Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 5
Total so far: 14

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (I feel like I might have...)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 4
Total so far: 18

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 1
Total so far: 19

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Aleandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 3
Total so far: 22

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 1
Total so far: 23

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistr
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (I read his other book...come on!)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 0
Total so far: 23

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Aleandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total: 1

Grand Total: 24

I would just like to say that there are a few "classic" books I've read that are not on here and I think that is CRAP! :) PLUS, I have read ALL the Harry Potter books - that should count for 7. AND I have seen the movie versions of at least 10 of these - so I'm saying I've read a lot more :)

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Hi! I know it's been a while, sorry. Not much is new here, but yet I've been BUSY since the last post. I don't think we've had a free weekend since early May practically.

We got to go to Symphony on the Prairie twice in two weeks! We went with friends to the Harry Potter music night and then the next week we went for the 3rd of July with Steve's family + my friend Gemma. We had great weather both nights and I just LOVED being there :) It is such a fun thing to do!!

On the 4th of July, we went to the IMA with Steve's family. Did you know it's free?! I didn't - they should really work on advertising that! It was really fun and I highly recommend it on a rainy day, like the 4th.

On the 5th of July I went to my friend Abby's baby shower - I can't believe she's having a baby!! Very exciting for her, but crazy to think that people my age are really starting to have kids regularly. I'm not ready for that yet. A dog suits us just fine for now, and even our dog has made me break down and cry a couple times (yes - one day before work while I was getting ready he would not calm down or stop biting me and I just couldn't stop him or myself from sitting on the floor and just crying!).

The next weekend was Sophia's wedding - it was good to see some people that I don't normally see - we had a good time! I can't believe she's in Palestine right now. That would be VERY cool, but VERY scary. Not sure I could be as brave as her.

Last weekend, we saw Harry Potter on Friday night and Braden & Anna's wedding party on Saturday night. Both good times.

After this, we're going camping, hosting Steve's brother Kevin & seeing DMB at Deercreek, going to Lisa's wedding, going to my 5 year MBA class reunion in Bloomginton, family reunion, trip to Mackinac Island (we're staying here and I'm VERY excited for the getaway weekend!), going somewhere with Steve's family TBD, going to Gretchen & Andy's wedding, and I feel like there are a couple other things on the schedule in between :) I really do like being busy. But it is tiring.

Work is pretty crazy right now - did you know that banks aren't doing well? :) Yeah, that keeps me busy since those are my only clients. I was "lucky" enough to be selected/nominated to join the leadership academy at my work - there was a whole application and selection process, so it's pretty cool but it also means I have tons more "noncharge" work on top of my normal work. We'll see how this goes...

I think that's it for now. I need to get some sleep. Have a great week!

Saturday, June 13, 2009

And we're off

We leave tomorrow for caravan. We dropped Alton off at my parents for the week and it's actually kind of sad being at home without him now. It's only been 3 weeks and he's already become such a big part of our lives - we spend so much time walking him and playing with him and figuring out how to get him to stop biting and eating our shoes :) I can't imagine what kids would be like - yikes!

Things are good here. Work is busy, but good - and at this point in time, I'm happy to have stuff to do and have some sense of job security. Steve's work seems to be pretty busy too - so it's a good thing :) We have our summer practically planned already. Last weekend we went to Coldplay on Friday and then Chicago for the weekend to see the US play Honduras. We got to spend some time with a friend on Saturday then had brunch with some more friends on Sunday. We also went to Ikea and I got to buy a milk frother, which I've been wanting for a while :) Steve got an espresso maker for his birthday, so I really wanted a latte!!

When we get back from Caravan, we're going to do Habitat for Humanity the next Saturday. Then we have the List's in town for the Fourth of July. Then a wedding. Then I think we MAY be free for a weekend or two, but we have a couple weddings and some family reunions, and Steve's brother Kevin is coming into town for a weekend to see Dave Matthews Band with us, and whew. It's a whirlwind. We're also trying to plan a weekend to Mackinac Island in MI in September, I think. We wanted it to be an anniversary weekend, but it says October is near the end of it's season. I don't like being cold - so Sept. will be fine :)

Ok, gotta finish up packing! Talk to you soon!

Monday, May 25, 2009

Taking the plunge


We got a dog!! We had been talking about getting a puppy for a while and found a cute one on the Indy Humane Society website last week that we decided to look into. We played with him today and he is just SO cute!! He has some puppy playfulness issues (ie: he likes to play bite when he plays...we're DEFINITELY going to have to train him out of this) but when he's calm he's perfect! This is definitely going to be a change for us - we have to be responsible for another being now. I think it will be good for us, but it will be a BIG change :) You'll hear more later, I'm sure...it will be interesting.

Introducing Alton Timberlake List (photos from the Indy Humane Society website - I have no idea where they got these almost professional pics!)

It was a nice weekend all around. Steve's brother Brandon came to town and we went to the 500 yesterday w/my family. My brother got hit by some debris!!! CRAZY! I haven't seen him since it happened, but got a nice war wound text picture. He's ok, but it is a good story!

Ok, gotta watch The Hills and play with the puppy!