Friday, June 10, 2011

Dress Love

So I love dresses, skirts too, but dresses are my go to (bet you couldn't have guessed that).  Especially with summer on the way.  Most of the blogs that I follow have posts throughout the week that show cute fashion.  I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorite sites to shop for dresses.

I thought today I would share the mother ship of the amazing dress world.  Most of you are already aware of this store.  I was wearing a dress one time from this particular store, and a girl asked me where I got it.  So I told her, and she checked them out online.  The next time I saw her she referred them as dress porn.  Appropriate.  This mystery store is none other than Anthropologie.




Aren't they lovely? I would love to get these dirty. 

Wedding invites are almost done, I will post them for you to check out as soon as I know people have received them.  Don't want to ruin it for my readers that are getting one in the mail.  

Sun is out, so ready for it to be 4pm.   Sorry about the lack of posts lately, the pre summer is getting the best of me.

Fortune Friday

Monday, June 6, 2011

Strawberry Basil Pasta Salad


I love anything that you can turn from a dish into a meal.  Throw a few little extras into a simple salad, and in no time you have a side dish gone full meal deal.  This salad had a lot of different flavors going for it, but they all seemed to work together nicely.  I will definitely make this again.

What you'll need:
6 cups dry pasta (Your favorite kind. I bought mine in bulk, so I have no idea how many ounces it is)
1 small cucumber diced, about 2 cups
3 cups sliced strawberries
1 can white or navy beans rinsed
1 3oz package prosciutto thin sliced
15 medium to large fresh basil leaves sliced into strips
3/4 cup feta crumbles
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon pesto
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon cracked pepper
1 teaspoon sea salt
Bag of baby spinach

Cook pasta, rinse with cold water and set aside.  In a large bowl, add diced cucumber, sliced strawberries, beans, prosciutto, and basil.  Toss until combined.  In a small bowl combine pesto, olive oil, pepper and salt.  Once pasta is cool add to large bowl.  Pour pesto dressing over pasta and toss until everything is well coated.  Serve over a bed of spinach.












This was really quick and full of flavor.  I love the contrast of the salty prosciutto, the sweet strawberries, and the creamy beans.  Enjoy!

Fortune Monday

This is my all time favorite fortune.  It makes me giggle every time I read it.  Some fortune huh?  Fortune Friday will continue on its normal scheduled time.  Hope everyone had a great weekend.  We found a great spot to take our photos, maybe I will share one or two sometime soon!  

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Avocado Ice Cream


So weird, I know.  Here's the back story on this one.  Way back when we worked at Roche Harbor, during the summer months about 80% of the employees were there on working visas.  We would go from about 50 local employees in the 3 other seasons to about 250 employees in a mater of weeks for summer.  So we met a lot of people from around the world.  One summer, I spent a lot of time with a few Brazilians.  One of my Brazilian buddies made friends some someone who worked at the ice cream stand.  One evening he shows up with a green milk shake.  Come to find out it's an avocado milk shake and he is in heaven. Huh and weird I thought.  Apparently, avocado treats are really popular in that part of the world.  So lately I have noticed recipes for avocado deserts, quite a few being just fresh avocado drizzled with honey.  It was time, I had try it.

What you'll need:
3 Avocados (not too overly ripe, no brown)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 plain greek yogurt (or sour cream)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

Slice avocado, remove the pit, and scoop out flesh.  Place everything in a food processor and pulse until well combined and smooth.  My food processor is tiny so I had to pulse the avocado in stages.  Then I used the hand mixer to blend everything.  You could use a blender too.  What ever you have will work.

 Freeze in your ice cream maker.  That simple.









So my thoughts.  It was good, but definitely not going to be on my top five.  When you first taste it, it seems a little awkward.  But once your pallet adjusts to it, its actually really good.  That avocado creamy flavor that we all love really comes out.  It's actually really rich, which surprised me.  I could even finish my little bowl.  I also made a chocolate honey sauce to go on top.  I just felt that the plain avocado might need some sort of contrasting taste.  The chocolate honey sauce was amazing!

What you'll need:
3/4 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Place chocolate chips in a bowl, set aside.  In a small sauce pan, heat cream and honey over medium heat, stirring until combined.  Once cream is just about to boil, add vanilla and pour over chocolate.  Let sit for 2 minutes for chocolate to melt. Whisk until combined.  Store in fridge.






I found ketchup and mustard bottles for $.99 so bought them.  Didn't know when exactly they would come on handy, but they eventually did!



I cut the top off a strawberry and filled the inside cavity with this stuff.  I didn't regret that decision. Enjoy!

Friday, June 3, 2011

Broccoli Tomato Salad


I love broccoli salads.  I have two favs.  This is my #2 favorite, I'll be making my #1 favorite sometime soon.  I had an idea of how this salad is usually made, but wasn't completely sure what seasonings go into the dressing for it.  So I just took a guess, and it came out great.  The only thing that I would change next time is that my bacon my must have been cured in something super salty, because I added a little salt to the dressing, and its a tad too much.  I'm pretty sure I just got a salty batch of bacon, maybe keep that in mind when you're making it, test bacon for saltiness.

What you'll need:
3 medium crowns broccoli
3 Roma tomatoes
1 cup bacon crumbles
1/2 cup mayo (I like the olive oil kind)
1/2 cup plain green yogurt
1 teaspoon ground mustard
1 teaspoon cracked black peper
1/4 teaspoon celery seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
1 tablespoon olive oil

Cook bacon.  Set aside and let cool.  Cut broccoli crowns down into bite sized pieces, I like mine pretty small.  Slice tomatoes in half and remove all seeds and slime.  Cut into quarters and chop into smaller pieces.  Crumble bacon.  Mix the remain ingredients in a small bowl until well combined.  Pour over broccoli/tomato/bacon and toss until evenly distributed and all the broccoli is coated.













Eat it up!  Little protein, little veggies, meal in a bowl.  Enjoy!

p.s. I had a super crazy day at work today and totally spaced fortune friday...rain check until monday for your weekly fortune.  I will make it up to you by sharing my favorite fortune ever!  Be excited, it's a good one!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

it's a...


MOOSE, as he slams on the brakes, throws the car into reverse, and everything in the back seat goes flying.  We were on a country gravel road somewhere outside of Cheney early Monday evening, so there was no one around.  We were driving around looking for a nice little spot to take a few couples photos for our wedding invites when we came across this young moose fellow.  Luckily the camera was in arms reach so Kam got a few good shots of the him.  We seem to see moose around this area once or twice a summer, which is really cool, me thinks.

As for the photo, we found 2 great spots but didn't get one photo.  The first spot that we had planned to go to was all fenced in and 100 no trespassing signs all over.  And the second we came across was this beautiful field with all these wild sun flowers and some sort of purple flower.  We were going to get into the middle of the field and take the pics.  When we got out to the perfect spot, we were standing there for a whole 30 seconds when we realized we were being full on attacked by vicious hungry mosquitoes.  I literally grabbed my camera and tripod and RAN back to the car.  Mosquitoes love me more than the average person.  A few summers ago, we were camping and I had sprayed so much Deep Woods Off on my feet (I know this is bad, but I was desperate) that they were sticky, and those evil bugs were biting me through the thick Off.  I had so many bites that my feet swelled up so much that they didn't fit into any of my shoes, even flip flops were too tight.  Bad memory, not sure why I just shared all that.

Anyways, moose are cool...and so are you!

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