Investing in my students

So, blogosphere, I'm going to give you a wonderful chance to make a difference for my students.

I *finally* got around to posting a few projects on Donors Choose for a few Conga drums and some speakers (imagine, a music teacher having quality speakers! That project will be up in a few days). Check out my page, read a little about my students, and even give a little if you're feeling so inspired! Also, I'm following my friend Alyssa's example, and posting a permanent link to this page in the sidebar.

http://www.donorschoose.org/mrs.wiarda

Thanks in advance for your support!

Tomato Garlic Chicken with Cous-Cous

Jordan and I created this recipe while searching for something a little healthier and it's definitely one of our favorites.  So favorite that we made it for our anniversary. It's very simple, too, as that's the only thing I like to cook!

You'll need:

 1 pint (or whatever size container you have) of grape tomatoes, sliced in half

2-3 cloves garlic, minced. Or more. Garlic is good.

1 lb. Chicken breasts or tenderloins (we used tenderloins here)

Your favorite seasoning mix (we use Mrs. Dash)

Salt

Pepper

Chicken stock

1 box garlic flavored cous-cous

Olive Oil

1. Cook cous-cous according to package directions.

2. Go twice around the pan (probably will be about 2 tbsp.) with your olive oil and turn burner to medium high.

3. Season your chicken with the seasoning mix and salt and pepper.

4. Once oil is hot, brown chicken until cooked thoroughly.

5. Once chicken is cooked, remove from pan. Add more olive oil, once around the pan, and once oil is heated, add garlic. Let cook for about a minute or until you can smell the garlic, then add the tomatoes. Let it cook for 2-3 minutes.

6. Deglaze the pan by adding a splash of chicken stock. Be sure to rub the bottom to get all those delicious bits off of the bottom.

7. Let this get happy and warm for at 5-7 minutes, or until the tomatoes are melt-y (squishy? shriveled? I don't know the technical term) and the chicken stock has reduced significantly. You can squish some of the tomatoes down with your spatula, too, as this will help create a sort of sauce. It'll be more like a broth, but incredibly tasty.

8. Add the pan again, and let this get happy for another 2-3 minutes, until the chicken is heated again.

9. Make a bed of cous-cous on the plate, and then put the Tomato Garlic Chicken over the top. Make sure to add a spoonful or two of the delicious sauce-broth over all of it.

And then, if you're really feeling really nice to your husband, make him this for dessert.

Recipe here!
But, no matter how much your husband wants to eat it, it has to sit in the freezer for a long time first.
Otherwise all the ice cream squishes out, and you get sad because it's not pretty anymore.
Also, if you really want to make him happy, use hot fudge instead of chocolate sauce.



Thrift Hits

The thrift stores I frequent tend to be very hit and miss, resulting in more hits than misses. However, yesterday proved to all hits! I've been looking for accent pieces for the space above our new cabinets (didn't have that before!). Yesterday finally yielded some yellow and orange accent pieces for above the cabinets, as well as some other vases for which I've got nifty plans. Then, Jordan found a Kindermusic instrument, the exact name of which I don't know, but it was $.99, so I snatched that. AND I got a skirt. Told you it was a day of hits, no misses.

Small sounds HIGH, big sounds LOW. That is science we should know!

Linen Merona (Target)  for $3.99. I have this same skirt in coral.

Flash bleaches it out, but this is to give you an idea of the length. I love it!

Stay tuned to see what happens!

Grandma's Earrings

I'm winding up for school starting again (three weeks!!) and getting super productive around the house. I saw something like these at an antique store a while ago, along with a bulletin board that I'm going to make tomorrow (stay tuned!), and knew I had to make them. They were super fast and honestly took around 5 minutes, including removing the backs of the earrings.

I had my dad bring back some of my grandma's old jewelry, combined them with some of my broken and single earrings (where does the other one go?), put some hot glue on the back, added a thumbtack, and voila! Chic pushpins. These are so much more fun in my craft room, and I can't wait to add them onto that bulletin board I'm making tomorrow.

Now I know we're married.

Despite having our second anniversary on Monday, I am now 100% convinced that Jordan and I are really a married couple. Here's an excerpt from the conversation we had regarding what to eat for dinner:

N: I don't want to go out to eat.
J: Well, I don't want to cook.
N: You haven't been wanting to cook lately.
J: Who says I cook in the summer?
(In my head: "I do!" with a good deal of sass)
J: Oh whatever. (Not missing a beat, and with the same tone he uses when I'm being sassy.)

Yep. He can now read my mind. Either that or I'm sassy far too often.

We'll go with the first one.

The finished product!

It's done! It's done! It was a loooong month, full of LOTS of work and very little sleep, but it's done. And here is photographic proof!

The cabinets I finished myself. Yep, that's right. I never knew I was so handy. Oak cabinets are not our fav and weren't our first choice, but we got them for such a great price that it was worth it in the end. But the ugly stove is staying for a while thanks to the moldy floors and drywall.

That landing beside the fridge wasn't there before. And all of those drawers (which will have pulls once we  find the tape measure . . .) tripled the amount of drawer storage that I had before. We now have six drawers, and before I had two. Yep. I'm excited.

 The counter tops are my second favorite part of the kitchen. Really anything is an improvement from the ugly faux butcher block laminate mess that was there before. AND the sink is integrated into the counter top, so away go the toothpicks and the awful task of cleaning that edge where all the grease and grime accumulates.

The tile!! My number one favorite thing about this kitchen! It's a mix of gray toned glass and various natural stones including white marble (gush!). I was determined to get that pretty stuff into our little house somehow. All Jordan had to say about this tile was "I think it has some marble" and it was in the cart. Immediately. The other tile was purchased at Habitat for $.10 a tile (compared to the $.22 we were going to spend on the same thing at Lowe's.)

We went with a light grayish blue for the wall color. It's fun to watch it change throughout the day from bright blue to steely gray. And I love the orange accents with it and can't wait to figure out how to incorporate more.

Things I'd made for the green kitchen still work really well with the new kitchen, which means I have less new decorating things to find/create :)

Our beautiful new floors! We went with the spice brown (thanks for all your input) and couldn't be happier. As you can tell, it turned out to be much richer than initially thought, and I absolutely love it. And I love it even more because they were done while I was at camp and I did nothing but write a check to make them look this pretty.

The bathroom even got a new floor. Not the greatest picture, and the bath mat blends perfectly, but you get the idea. Much improved from the stained white linoleum that was there when we bought the house. How does one stain a floor purple and florescent yellow? Actually, I'm not sure that I want to know.

So there it is. Our little house is all of it's shiny new glory. I think it's pretty happy with the changes. I'm also shocked that we did this, albeit with help from family and friends, but we did this. Call us brave, naive, young and stupid, whatever, but by the grace of God we made this happen with our own two hands. No one died in the process either, and we're still married. All good things in my book.

I think our pride in our work will last for a very long time. So long, in fact, that I think we'll never do anything like this again. Or at least we'll pay someone else to do it.