Easy Yummy Healthy

I've come up with some super awesome recipes lately and thought that I'd share with you all.

First up: Open Faced Smoked Salmon Sammie

Ingredients [what I used, exactly]:

• 1 piece of bread [sprouted whole grain bread]
• 2-3 tablespoons of hummus [roasted pine nut hummus]
• 1 small tomato/3-4 slices
• Smoked salmon slices
• 1/2 avocado, sliced lengthwise
• Salt and pepper to taste

What to do: Toast your slice of bread to your liking, spread hummus on toast. Place sliced tomato on top of hummus. Layer smoked salmon and top with sliced avocado. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to your liking.

Wow...easy and sooo delicious. Small but filled me up so much! 

I ate it with my hands...and a little help from a fork and knife....little messy.

I'm not a calorie counter...if something has fresh veggies/fruit, whole grains, etc...that's healthy to me. But...if you're interested...

|Estimation of calories|

Bread: 90 Hummus: 80 Tomato: 12 Smoked Salmon: 100 Avocado: 120

|Total| 402

I hope you try it!

Suki's Homemade Bed

You know I'm into sewing. And to Collin's astonishment, it's not as short lived as my other hobbies/obsessions. I actually love it....a lot! I always have at least one project ready to go....as in raw fabric that is so darn pretty laying next to my sewing machine....and always many projects on my mind. My biggest and boldest project right now...this one is still in my mind, but I do have the pretty fabric laying out too...is a really cute patchwork duvet for our king size bed! Don't think country, amish, or anything along those lines...that's not what I'm going for. More of a bohemian, eclectic, bold piece............ BUT that's not what my post is about....

Anywho.

I've been wanting to make Suki a bed but had trouble finding a "pattern" online that I liked. By pattern, I really just mean a tutorial because I have yet to sew anything with a pattern....apparently it's supposed to help you but it just seems like too much trouble!

I finally found one that I really liked and it seemed simple enough as well. It's actually for a little dog...one that Suki would probably beat the shit out of...but I could see Suki liking it just as much. Here is the tutorial that I followed: Dog Under My Desk.

Her finished product!

Adorable and super comfy...what more could a leopard kitty ask for!?

I bought cute fleece fabric from Joann's but haven't had time since Lauren's visit and then I worked five 12's with only a day off in between (aka no time off when you work night shift!) Tuesday morning was my last day of my long stretch so when I got home I got right to cutting, pinning, and sewing Suk's bed.

Well, I really whipped this sucker out. I got home around 7:45am, changed, ate, got Suki's moving crate together, and started cutting fleece. By 10am I was finished with the whole thing except the stuffing part....forgot to buy it! I was already unpresentable to the folks of Joann's, Target, or really anywhere outside my apartment, so I went to sleep for a while, woke up and went to run some errands, including stuffing.

How fast was that!?

I stuffed it and put it on the floor for the little princess.

She took one look at it and then looked up at me, eyes only, without moving her head.

Kinda like this...

"What the hell is that? Oh, you want me to lay on it...ha...no."

Yeah...she hates it...the little shit! I guess we're going to have to get a dog to use this thing. Collin curled up on it and said it was pretty comfy. Suki prefers places that aren't meant for her...so I should have figured she wouldn't like it!

Pretty little bed...no pretty little sleeping kitty. She won't even sit on it for a picture. She's actually half scared of the friggin' thing. Oh well....bring on that puppy Collin!

Visitor of the Week

Goes tooooooo......Lauren! One of my best friends from college came to visit last week with her boyfriend Jared. We went camping for a couple nights up in Summit County with all intentions of going to the Yarmony Grass Festival... didn't happen. We wanted to get single day passes but for some reason they chose not to sell them this year. So we debated back and forth if it was worth it to spend almost $100 per person for a two day pass but only go one night. In the end we decided against it. Instead, we headed to Frisco and went to a brewery for dinner and drinks.

The bartender happened to be going out of his mind and gave us literally all of our drinks and 6 different appetizers for $25! He was apparently in a feud with his boss and was purposely trying to screw him and didn't care if he got fired. OK then. Whatever.

Collin and I being the old losers of the bunch couldn't hang past dinner and headed back to get some rest. The other three stayed out and ended up getting free T-shirts and one of every glass they sold. Wow, that guy is totally getting fired.

We also walked around Breckenridge, had some amazing sandwiches at Duggan's Deli...

...found this in the bathroom...haha!!

and lastly but most importantly, got free to-die-for cookies from Lauren's friend at Mary's Mountain Cookies. YUM! They were ahhhhmazing!

The next day Lauren and Jared headed to Aspen to visit their friend Addison and Collin and I travelled home so Collin could get ready for work the next day. On our way home we stopped in Woodland Park for some wood-fired pizza and a couple of beers. There was also an art festival across the street so we took a look around before heading home to unpack.

Most of Monday I started packing by boxing up my winter clothes, books, sewing stuff, cleaning the oven and microwave and I tried (with little success) to figure out menus to use up our food before the move.

On Tuesday, I headed up to Denver to meet up with Collin who is dog-sitting for our friends Jake and Mari. He finished working and we headed up to Boulder to meet up with Lauren and Jared again after they got back from Aspen! On our way we stopped to pick up my Craigslist purchase: an awesome olive green metal file cabinet for $15!

We got to Boulder and hadn't heard from Lauren and Jared so we decided to walk around Pearl Street while we waited for them to get there. As soon as we parked and started walking over to Pearl St we ran right into them. Lauren's phone had died! What timing!

So, we all walked around, went into a few of the shops, and had a few beers at the local brewery. I got an awesome new ski coat from GoLite for $99 (originally $350!)...queen of deals I tell you! I also learned that the designer of Boulder's Pearl Street is the same guy who designed a part of downtown Burlington VT (where L&J were visiting from), how interesting! They said it looked almost identical in some parts.

After walking around a bit we drove about five minutes to one of Collins favvvvorite restaurants, Darkhorse. We've been there before, very unique place for sure. After wings and burgers, we headed to the air hockey table. This particular time was a little of a downer though because.....Collin beat me in air hockey....for the very first time...in front of my friends....total embarrassment. We only had enough quarters for one game per couple so I didn't even have a chance to redeem myself! Boys won....this time.

After dinner, drinks, and air hockey it was getting late and time to part ways. Little sad. We're already thinking of visiting Vermont in the near future and they want to come back to ski/snowboard so plans are in the making! All in all a great time and fabulous to see one of my best girls!

Hi, We're Moving Again!

No mom and Nana...not to Pennsylvania! To Denver...no, still not in PA! Woo! A whole hour away. But what a difference an hour makes...to us anyway. We love Denver and wished that we would have moved there (or Durango) from the start. The Springs has been good to us, no doubt, but it's just not for us. Denver has so much more to do, it's closer to friends, and more easily accessible for visitors (wink wink wink winkkkkkkk!!!!)

Unfortunately, it's going to be a couple weeks after Allison & co. move to Florida. I'm very sad about that but on the up side, we now have someone to visit in Florida! :)

Collin has been searching for a new job for probably a good 8 months. He's had everything from offers he didn't want, to no call-backs, to offers that just didn't work out (ie. Durango bc of my job). He finally found a good one in a good location.

So, we're moving this month! We just found a place and I can't wait! We'll finally have a yard, a basement, and we'll be about a block away from the main street of my favorite little part of Denver, the Highlands. I am super excited!

I also just found out that one of my old college friends and her soon-to-be husband are moving less than four blocks from us and around the same time. So fun!

Here is our new living room...not our furniture obviously.

I'm a little concerned with only having one bathroom, less closet space, and some of the rooms are a little tighter than we have now BUT location location location! We can walk to everything except work really. All of the homes in this area are smaller bungalow style homes but I think it's worth it for the location plus we have a yard now!

I'll keep my job in the Springs for a while until I at least finish out the year and can find a job in Denver.

And how fitting...my parents will be our first Denver guests! They're coming at the beginning of September!

Very exciting! Now onto the actual moving part, ugh!

C Tee to E Tee

Refashioning is my new favorite thing. I've recently come across some awesome blogs about girls who take thrift store clothes that most people wouldn't take a second look at, ill fitting clothes of their own, or even their boyfriend/husbands old clothes and make some seriously amazing clothing for themselves (or kiddos). One of my favorite sites of the bunch is Cotton & Curls. This girl is ridiculously talented; if I could learn a fraction of her skill I'd be happy.

One of her projects was taking a simple mens T-shirt and making it into a fitted T for herself. She painted stripes on hers as well but I wasn't feeling that ambitious.

Cotton & Curls 2012

Both of those shirts were originally men's t-shirts...whaaaat!? Awesome.

While Collin was at work I peeped into his "goodwill bag" and pulled out a few T-shirts to practice. Here is the post, complete with directions, from her blog.

Here is my attempt:














After trying the shirt on inside-out, I pinned and sewed. That easy! Well, I had to re-sew a few times but it's actually pretty fool proof. You can't see any of the seams when it's done...no matter how many times you sew over it.

The sleeves and armpits were the most annoying part. I don't know how to make actual sleeves but the tutorial didn't make them any different than I did so I just went with it.

Next, I cut the bottom hem into a U shape and I cut out the collar and then cut the neck opening a little deeper.

It was a pain in the butt but I wanted to keep the original collar but put it into the new neckline so I had to seam rip the entire thing so that it was stretchable. It ended up fitting perfectly.

It came together rather nicely I think!

There we have it. Glamor shots and all. I have more projects in mind and will post when I get the guts to try another one!

Have a great week!