the goose loves tuesday's ten (#12) - on friday

Just ignore that Tuesday's post is three days late and that Friday's Garden post is nowhere to be found. Yet. Just enjoy what you're getting when you get it.

1. SUNSHINE. Yes, for a whole freaking-ly awesome week. YES.

Sunshine = painted toes and cute sandals. Painted those babies myself, mind you - still saving the big bucks for loans. Pretty sure that when we're done paying loans, I'm getting monthy pedicures and manicures. Take that, budget.

2. Sunshine = dogpark. Let's play where's Waldo Bentley again.

Found him!

3. Easy = ideal. Curried goose goose cous cous. The longest part of this dinner prep was finding the craisins in the back of the pantry and toasting the pitas. Yes it was that easy. (Looking to make some of your own? Boil your water, then add to cous cous in a bowl, let steam for 5 minutes covered. Mix curry (or other spices) in a cup of plain yogurt, mix into fluffed/cooked cous cous. Add toppings. Eat.)

4. Warm nights = party on the town. I ignored my 74-year-old ways and stayed up past 10pm, and it was so worth it. Hung out with Carolyn, Caryn, and Caryn's cousin Jenny from Michigan.

That was a delicious pitcher of McMenamin's Ruby Ale we shared.

5. Dog + dock = summer. We went with Billy to his drum lessons at Willamette Park, and enjoyed ourselves on the dock at the boat launch. Bentley almost got the geese.

He also almost jumped into the water.

I stopped him, before he grew an extra tail from all the contaminants and diseases in the Willamette River. Even though two tails could be useful, I guess.

Go grab your sunglasses before my pale skin blinds you.

6. Quinoa=TASTY. Want to put in slightly more effort for dinner than the curried cous cous above? Make quinoa (20 min) and then add salsa (0 min), feta (0 min), pumpkin seeds (0 min), and sliced avocado (1 min). The taste to effort ratio on this one is perfect.

7. Sunshine = BBQ. After having a fabulous craft day with the girls (Allison - send photos!), we let them stay for some BBQ action. Billy mastered ribs, and we also had chicken, corn, bread, pasta salad, and a little lot of alcohol. Here's Monika and her bf Josh. At least one of them is happy in that relationship...

And the gang. Allison loves the food, Carolyn is wondering where the dessert is.

The ribs were devoured pretty quickly.

8. Bentley = weird. Who sleeps like this? I do love that his relationship with Moose has left the agression stage and is entering the cuddle-buddy stage.

9. Bentley = psycho. Look at those crazy eyes!

A. We finally bought more dog food.

B. No, we don't usually let him eat dinner like this, even though he loves it.

10. Heart Walk = Success!

Thanks to many generous donations from you all, we've surpassed our goal! Big shoutout of gratitude for a generous $500 from Dad & Mom, and to Carolyn and Allison for raising $$ and walking! And to family members Peggy & George, Monika, and Grandma & Grandpa, for your generous dollars too!!!



Also a big thank you to my coworkers for helping me raise $300!

I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night making 75 chocolate chip cookies and 50 red-velvet-cheesecake-brownies, and sold them at work on Wednesday and Thursday. I roped in $250 in cookie sales and another $50 from generous coworkers.

Here are the brownies:

 And the packaged baggies:

It was lots of fun, and I probably only spent an hour (between the two days) peddling my goods. Cookies may not be entirely heart healthy, but they sell FAST!

We're gearing up for the walk first thing tomorrow (Saturday) morning, so think of us and walk in your own neighborhoods in support! Photos will follow...

the gooes loves tuesday's ten (#11)

Welcome to Tuesday. I hope it's sunny where you are, too.

1. Friday night was celebration time for me - major work deadlines checked off the list, too many hours of overtime complete, and an "excellent work" comment from the CFO. Yesssss.

Billy and I took that opportunity to try happy hour at the Doug Fir Lounge, a classically-Portland-weird place. We enjoyed drinks, snacks, and a white man dressed in full middle-eastern garb, robe and headpiece included, all for $25 (including tax!) What a steal. 

 2. The sun is back! And we are all happy. Especially my cat dog, who loves naps in the sun. 

 3. Billy worked the UP graduation all weekend, so as a congratulatory treat, I made him salted chocolate peanut butter cookies that I pinned. They turned out pretty good, but they don't look quite so hot. The cocoa powder makes them a funny poop color. After Billy worked graduation last year, I made him Boston Cream Pie. And although he loves cookies, he really wants me to recreate that delicious-ness. We'll see.

 

 4. It's not really fair to make Billy cookies but not make Bentley cookies, so I ended up making treats for both my boys. Bentley's were slightly less tasty, though. :) 

 Are they ready, yet?! I'm waiting!!! 

 I made a bunch of bone shapes, and then a few paw, fire hydrant, dog house, and heart shapes too. He loves these things. I can get him to do 10 to 12 tricks in a row before giving the treat to him, except that by that time, he's drooling all over... 

 5. Saturday was my beautiful mother's birthday! She just turned "35." What a young thing! Look how beautiful she was on my wedding day (almost two years ago, back when she was "33"!). 

Love you, Mom, and Happy Birthday! I swear I'm going to put your package in the mail today tomorrow!! 

 6. Saturday was also Cinco de Mayo. Billy worked a long day at UP, and I worked a long day at home, so we went out for a drink and a snack to celebrate the day of Mexican victory over something. We went to our local Cha Cha Cha, where we enjoyed drinks, chips, and tacos. It rocked. (Like my instagram shot?)

 7. Saturday was not as nice as Sunday, so Bentley and I spent most of the day inside. By about 4pm, though, he was driving me crazy so we went out for some fresh air and energy-releasing. We walked around Cathedral Park, under the St. John's Bridge.  

Bentley had fun - he pooped once and peed about 15 times. Gotta show that lamp post who's boss, you know.

 8. Sunday was much sunnier, and Billy was finally done working around 6pm, so we pulled out the BBQ and grilled up some burgers. We didn't have buns, but we had pita bread, so we had a burger-building-with-pita station. Mmmm avocados!

 FYI - toothpicks make any meal look fancier. Before, it was a pita-burger falling apart. Post-toothpick, it's a fancy deli-style pita burger.

 9. In less-fun news, we are on a mission to pay off our student loan debt in the next year. We were halfway through our 5-year goal when we decided that loans suck and we're wasting way too much money on interest and far too much of our income is stuck paying loans. So now we're paying them off very aggressively, which means even more of our income is stuck paying loans. But not for long.

Sallie Mae alone has about $15k. And then you add in the other four places between Billy's loans and mine, and you're looking at close to $45k. But we're determined to get rid of this fast.

10. Which leads me to last night's dinner - healthy and easy on our budget. I made falafels from Peas and Thank You, the same book I made the Blueberry Muffins (#5) from. They were pretty good, but I think I over did the garlic a bit lot. It's good that garlic is good for you!

Any of you making healthy garlick-y things? Or spending all your money on stupid loans? Or taking naps in the sun with your dogs?

the goose loves l-o-v-e pillows

Boo! I'm back!

You thought I was gone for good, huh. But not so. I was just on an extended hiatus. Pesky things like work and cooking and cleaning and walking the dog have gotten in the way of posting fun projects and tasty recipes and poorly-taken photos.

But even if I've been slacking in the posting department, I certainly haven't been slacking in the making department. I've been sewing things, building things, baking things, cooking things, and beautify-ing things. And slowly checking items off my 25 for 25 list. Emphasis on slowly.

But here's one for the sewing and "make from pinterest" categories. A few weeks ago, I saw this adorable pillow on the crafty blog UCreate - full tutorial here.



via

That weekend, I was in sewing mode but not ready to take on the full bedroom makeover project, so I decided to whip up a pillow that could live in my soon-to-be-beautiful bedroom.

The best part of this project (and what makes many projects just terrific) is that I had all the supplies on hand. Old ugly pillow that came from the couch and made with both leather and suede? Check. Cheerful green home dec fabric in enough yardage? Check. (It's Amsterdam in Chartreuse) Enough felt in a coordiating color? Check. About two dog-free hours? Well no, but it worked out anyway.

The project was super easy - just a basic envelope style pillow cover, cut out letters (I just drew letters on paper, cut them out, pinned them to felt, and cut.) I almost didn't have enough fabric, so my pillow sticks out a little in back. But who looks at the backs of pillows anyway?

In the tutorial, the letters were sewn on with embroidery thread in big stiches, which looked super cute. But I do my best to avoid threading needles and sewing in the old fashioned way, especially when it means that it'll take me another 30 minutes to finish. So I just ran the pinned-down letters through the machine, sewing along all sides in white. For the heart "O" I used a decorative stitch, which looks sweet.

It was an enjoyable afternoon and it felt good to just get a project done. Now if only I could finish the room makeover that quickly...

the goose loves halloweenie

 Happy Halloweenie!!

This is a very special post. I want you all to know that today is STILL Halloween, which means that this post is perfectly ON TIME! I'm not writing this two weeks later and pretending I'm on time!

These photos are so fresh that the mac n cheese is still warm. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
 
Okay this picture is actually like three days old. Our dear friend Jackie came over on Thursday night to celebrate pre-Halloween, since she works tonight (as an ER nurse - wowza). Here she is decorating her punkin like a piggy!

 It even comes with a tail! It's like pumpkin-meets-potato-head.

 Then on Saturday night, our good friends (and sisters!) Carolyn and Stephanie came over on their way to go partay-ing to show off their cute costumes. Carolyn is Dorothy and Stephanie is Eeyore, if you are having trouble there. P.S. Stephanie scared the sh** out of Bentley - something about the big furry ears and paws and stuff made him howl for a good 10 minutes straight. It was AWESOME. I'm having trouble uploading the video to the blog, otherwise you'd all be enjoying that spectacle.

 Okay so now we're caught up. Here's Jackie again, with her sweet puppy-bee Dakota. They look like they're in costume, huh! Well Jackie's actually just going to work. As a nurse. Haha. Kody is with us for the night, having a sleepover with Bentley.

 So after Jackie dropped Dakota off, Billy and I got to work on our delish dinner. We hid from the trick or treaters - we're too cheap and lazy to pass out candy. Our front door is really far from our kitchen/living room, and we'd have to cross the dog gate and keep two dogs from bolting out the door or howling at the poor little princesses and pirates, so we decided to skip it.

We celebrated the holiday with food, instead! Yep, Lucy's Famous Mac n Cheese.

Not necessarily famous in a good way, though, if you ask Carolyn. She's had one of the failure batches. But tonight's was a real winner. I'll share the top secret recipe with you, my friends.

Chop half an onion and a few cloves of garlic, and saute it all in butter. Or Smart Balance, if you want to be healthy. We do.

 Once your garlic and onion is toasty brown and fragrant, whisk in about 2 tbsp of flour. You want to make sure you still have a little butter or oil or smart balance liquid in there - a dry pan with the onions won't do. You're making a roux here. Sounds fancy and french, but it's really no biggie.

 While you're vigorously stirring your flour mixture, measure two cups of milk (you can throw in some half and half or heavy cream if you happen to have some on hand. defeats the purpose of being healthy with the smart balance, though...) and throw it in the microwave for about a minute.

 Once your flour and onion mixture is nice and mixed up - not chalky/powdery, but a little bubbly and thick, start slowly pouring in your two cups of milk. And when I mean slow, I mean pour a quarter cup at a time, and whisk vigorously for a minute or two in between each pour. Using the whole glass will take a good 5-8 minutes. You don't want to get all the liquid in there too fast, or your flour will clump. Having the milk a little warm (hence the microwave minute) also helps it gel well with the flour.

 You should notice your flour-y mixture slowly getting creamy, like sauce. This is a bechemel sauce, technically speaking. Not sure I spelled that right, though.

So to celebrate Halloween in our own way, I thought we'd go extreme with the orange. I started with adding some yellow food-coloring gel to the sauce.

 Side note - yummy cheddar cheese, to be added later.

 Then I added red, to get a nice deep orange. There's the spirit!

 Once your sauce is good and bubbly, pull it off the heat and stir in your cheese - about three cups. We usually use a combo of mozzarella and parmesan, because that's what we usually have around, but we went with the holiday spirit and got a small block of medium cheddar, shredded by Mrs. Cuisinart.

 Once your cheese is pretty melty, fold in your pasta. We had pre-cooked mini wheels.

 Ughmmm. I could eat this stuff as is.

 But no, here's an opportunity to practice self control. Pour your cheesy pasta into a baking dish of any shape or size, and then sprinkle generously with parmesan (or other) cheese and breadcrumbs. Bake for about 20 minutes at 375, then broil for 5 minutes at about 400 (or high).

 Meanwhile, take photos of the pumpkin that you decorated earlier that evening.

 I was going for my own take on this Pinterest pumpkin, but not entirely sure I succeeded. I wanted to use bigger dots, but now you can't see the swirly effect as clearly.

 That's okay - it kinda reminds me of spiders, which is equally halloweenie.

 After you finish taking photos of your pumpkin and finish cleaning your kitchen, your glorious mac n cheese is complete. So take some photos of it.

Close ups are important.

 Mmmm, cheesy-bread-crummy-crispy-top.

 Bubbly mac-n-cheese goodness on the sides.

 Like how that mounds? I do.

 And then serve, but don't give to your husband until you get a few more shots. That's okay, he can wait. He's still cleaning up the kitchen anyway.

 Yay for cheesy-orange wheels. This stuff actually reminds me of the Kraft stuff, but with real cheese...

 

So Happy Halloween, y'all. Hooray for catching up in posts! See you soon.