Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Pumpkin Carving

Tonight was our first time carving pumpkins together!! Mine.... didn't turn out so well.. but Danny's made the final cut!









I'll post pictures of his lit up when we light it for Halloween tomorrow! :)

XOXO

Friday, October 26, 2012

Flower Friday

On Friday's flowers go on sale at our local flower shop.  So... Danny likes to get me flowers on Friday! Danny always picks out the prettiest arraignments!  Sometimes they are the flowers in vases that are on sale and sometimes he picks out the flowers for the arraignments himself! Here are some pictures of the latest ones!


We had a discussion this week about how pink just absolutely makes me happy! I love pink everything!   So my flowers were all pink this week!  I think they're just beautiful!! How lucky am I?

XOXO

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Danny's Halloween Wars

    So my grandparents and Danny and I LOVE watching a show on FoodNetwork called Halloween Wars!  They have these teams made up of candy makers, cake decorators and pumpkin carvers who compete to create all different kinds of Halloween themed displays to win money and obviously bragging rights!  Anyway, the pumpkin carvers on this show are spectacular!!!



They do amazing things with pumpkins that I never would have dreamed of before watching this show!  So after dinner tonight Danny decided he'd have a try at carving his pear at dinner!




Not bad! :P So his pear went uneaten and placed on the windowsill to brown and get "more scary" hahahaha obviously he's not that hungry.... :P

Sunday, October 21, 2012

New Home in the Kitchen

This week with our new eating habits of trying to eliminate all animal products including dairy has been interesting.  The first few days were the hardest for me then it all seems to be okay.  I spend more time this week cooking in the kitchen than I have probably in my entire life! Lots of chopping, cutting mincing ect.  Although I've learned that doing this in advance makes meal prep a heck of a lot easier!

Even our cat has been going crazy with all the time we spend in the kitchen!
 As crazy as things were we still managed to stay on course, we did have a few things that weren't menu appropriate... But that's okay! Our goal was just to eat more healthy with a diet that is more focused on whole foods and fruits and vegetables than anything else and this week we accomplished that!
Danny helping me cut up a particularly strong onion, and crying the whole way!

All in all pretty crazy week!  Other than eating a brand new diet, Danny finished his first set of finals for the masters program and I am prepping for our seasonal dance show for Halloween! 

I hope this coming week will be a great week, with everything we have to do!!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

FOOD... FOOD... FOOD

Recently, Danny and I watched an interesting documentary on Netflix called "Knives Over Forks" that made us think twice about our eating habits!  In short we are cutting, meat, dairy, and processed foods out of our diets.  We are moving away from animal based diet into a whole food plant based diet!  Not easy but do-able!

Today was my first day shopping with new "guidelines"... oh man... so much processed JUNK!!!


I tried to shop with these things is mind:



Less ingredients the better
No enriched white (wheat) flour
No sugar
No olive oil, or canola oil (which are 100% fat)
No Milk, eggs, or cheese
No Meat

I did really did pretty well.  Interestingly enough, a lot of things that were organic and just the pure ingredients without all the preservatives and such, were cheaper than their counter parts! I was surprised as I thought it would be more expensive!

So tonight, I made my first meal without any of those ingredients!!!

Fiesta Quinoa Salad 
1 cup white quinoa, plus 1/4 cup red quinoa, washed and drained (I used all white)
1 cup fresh corn, off the cob (I used fresh off the cob that had been frozen)
2 cups filtered water

Pinch sea salt ( I didn't add any salt)
1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained

1/2 cup finely diced yellow pepper 
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
1/4 cup cilantro leaves
Dressing:
2 teaspoons lime zest
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 tablespoons tamari (I used soy sauce because we didn't have any tamari)
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar 





Not bad! I was pretty impressed!  It wasn't all that bad!! Danny ate it! FYI Danny has..... a very selective pallet. It was good! We ate it and I actually thought it was quite filling for being a lot of natural stuff and no meat!!


Now I should say we are still eating a few things we shouldn't as we are cleaning out our cupboards of old stuff and trying out new recipes... which, frankly, we have no idea what is good and what is not!  We do plan on eating meat occasionally, but for the most part we want to be much more whole food and plant based, with our diet than we have been.


Anyway, I'll update on what we figure out as we go!

Monday, October 15, 2012

Then there was us...

This blog is all about my husband and me!! And eventually our family:) He's going to do some posts, and I'm going to just to keep track of things we're doing, and keep a record of our lives.

Danny is currently getting his MBA and I am at the tail end of finishing my bachelors in Criminal Justice.  Danny is super active and loves basketball, and I love to dance and have taught Irish Dancing for several years.

We have a cat named Teddy who is king of the house, and loves to chat as much as I do!

We've were married on August 17, 2012 in the LDS San Diego temple, for all time and eternity.