In My Kitchen: fresh fridays

Welcome back.

1. I think that I need to make these. Like now.

2. Devin had Butler rehearsal last Friday so I was home alone. I decided it was time to watch one of my favorite holiday movies (which I watch every year), The Holiday. It is such a cute romcom or maybe romdram. I am not quite sure what it would be considered, but I do know that you should watch it!

3. Hello favorite holiday drink.

4. I finally got my Pinterest invite thanks to Tracy. I love pinterest! It is this great site where people "pin" things that they are interested in. I have found great DIY projects and cute nails and adorable pets. There are pins for anything and everything. I cannot wait to get a house to be able to do some of these projects.

5. So about my love for Bob Harper: I'm not going to lie, I lost it a bit during and for the entire day after I first tried the Total Body Transformation. So you start the DVD and the first thing he says is "This is going to be the hardest workout EVER. Let me repeat that, THIS IS GOING TO BE THE HARDEST WORKOUT EVER!" The man was not lying.

It was the most challenging workout I have ever done. I think it is because I have zero arm strength. That is not entirely true, I have a good amount of arm strength. I however have incredibly narrow shoulders which I think prevents me from being able to really do push-ups. At least that is what I tell myself. I have been working out for a long time and doing all sorts of yoga chaturangas, but I cannot for the life of me do a real push-up. It is incredibly frustrating and incredibly unreasonable. So, at this point, I have resorted to blaming it on my tiny narrow shoulders.

There are like 100 push-ups and dive-bombs involved in this workout and that was on top of all the work with weights beforehand. Then there were burpees and prisoner lunges, plyo sumo squats and russian squat kicks, and the list goes on and on. All things that I wouldn't want to do on their own let alone one after another with no stopping and Bob yelling at me.

I swore on Saturday that I was turning into Broc Lesnar because the muscles on the side of my neck were bulging out and I kept shrugging my shoulders. All you had to do was lightly touch my neck to drop me like a sac of potatoes.

I don't know what I was thinking, but I did this workout again on Tuesday. It was still so ridiculously hard, but I was not nearly as sore the next day. I also did Yoga for the Warrior again and was not as sore after that either. These DVDs really work and while they are incredibly intense I love them and I love Bob again!!

6. This is what I was talking about with the cloves in the oranges from this blog entry. I might make some up.

7. We went to Point Brugge for dinner Thursday night. I had the Chaud Chèvre Salad. For those of you that ne parle pas français, that means Warm Goat Cheese Salad. Yum! Besides the warm goat cheese it had asparagus, roasted red peppers and a lemon vinaigrette. Plus I got grilled salmon on top. Treat Yo Self!

8. I decided when we first moved to Pittsburgh that I would not get a Christmas tree for our place until we moved into our own house. For one, we go home for the week around Christmas and so the tree would just sit alone in our apartment. Also, I take tree decorating very seriously (as you might imagine) and I do not want to be locked into a theme (lights, colors, ornaments, etc.) before I have my future furniture and wall color and paintings, etc. Christmas stuff is too expensive to be buying year after year.

So even though Whole Foods had these adorable 18 inch trees for $20, I told myself no. For two weeks now I have looked at those cutey patootey trees. I stayed strong. But then Tuesday I went to Whole Foods and they had these little baby living trees. Living, as in you can plant them in the yard when they get bigger. So I bought it. And I bought some beads and some darling mini candy canes. What do you think?

I got it home and forgot that Janey eats all plants and there is not a single place in our house that she can't get to besides a closed closet. So my sweet little Christmas tree is taking up precious space on my already too small kitchen counter. Don't get me wrong, Janey can get up there, but Devin has scared her enough times that she is now smart enough not to.

9. I am totally addicted to caffeine. It happened over Thanksgiving break. I had Tim Hortons every single day that I was home. Sometimes twice. Damn Café Mochas. I have always tried to not become dependent on caffeine. I would have some sort of espresso drink two or three times a week, just when Devin and I would go out for it. I never actually needed it. I still do not need it. Not to keep me awake at least. I just kind of enjoy having a warm espresso drink in the morning. My wonderful husband now takes the time to make me a cortado every single morning before school.

10. This is pretty hilarious. But probably only to statisticians.

11. I feel as though I need fancy plates and silverware and place mats for my food pictures. I think I am going to try and collect a few random things to use. Another blogger recommended hitting up the Anthropology sale section. TJMaxx has some fun stuff too. I don't know if this is going to happen before we move. I have no place to store anymore dishes. I hate my kitchen. It is going to be a dream come true when I get a new kitchen. Big kitchen is the number one thing that I want in our house (or course aside from the essentials, like a shower and heat).

12. So I decided that it would be a good idea to buy myself a Christmas present.

A major(ly expensive) present.

I got a new camera!

It is an SLR digital camera which means that it has an auto setting, but you can also set everything yourself like the ISO and f-stop. I know that I may sound like I know what I am talking about but I do not. I used to know about this stuff because I took a class in high school and I was actually pretty good at it. I even developed my own film. Does film even exist anymore? Anyways, I have just been using the auto setting for now, but it is my hope that I can learn about all this other stuff and make photography a serious hobby.

For the time being (while I still cook in my minuscule kitchen) I am going to continue using my iPhone to photograph my recipes for the blog. I just do not have enough space to be able to cook and keep a camera clean and safe. Eventually I will use it though.

The camera has this awesome setting where you can pick anywhere from 1 to 3 colors and those colors will show while everything else will be on a grey scale. I used it on the close up of the candy canes above. This is a another picture where I just chose red.

Here are some pictures where I just picked the color of the girls eyes. Unfortunately with Janey being black and white already, you cannot really tell so much and for Deeley, some of her fur is the same color as her eyes so she is not in the grey scale.