Friday Adventures

Week three of Friday adventures! Our Friday adventures started on a night early, so that we could have a date night. It was such a nice day yesterday that I got to wear shorts to dinner! 

Major sock tan going on...

I have no pictures of dinner because we were kind of hungry. We went to Mexican Inn, one of my new favorites! I had the chicken and rice plate and took half of it home, it's so good! So are the chips and tortillas!

Then we went over to Target to walk around, and ended up buying quite a few things. Mostly gifts though so it's all okay! Kyle loves to walk through the Lego aisle and pick out all the things that he wants buy. 

Kyle looked a lot like the lego guy on the box

Selfie in the lego aisle

Anyways, Friday adventures started out good I woke up early, probably cause I went to bed super early. I spent some time reading and Buddy decided to lay on my lap instead of behind me.

"You can read while I'm laying here right?"

The rest of our morning was just hanging out, Kyle mowed the lawn, I frosted cookies, and Buddy slept. Then we went for a walk around the park to enjoy the nice weather. 

Kyle had some work to get done at the church so we headed up there and I helped him. He sent out some emails while I folded bulletins and cut out game sheets for the shower tomorrow.

We worked really hard and deserved some fast food, or at least that's what we convinced ourselves so we stopped by Taco Bell and picked up some greasy, super not healthy, grilled stuffed burritos.

Yum

Kyle went to hang out with friends tonight, and I am supposed to be writing a paper. But instead I made a batch of cake balls and have been binge watching Veronica Mars. Let's just say senioritis is a real thing. I have four more weeks to go and I'm having a hard time staying focused. As evident by this blog instead of my paper.

See you next week!

M

Friday Adventures

Here goes week two of our Friday adventures....

Started the day off with some reading again

Buddy was again sitting behind my head but I didn't get a picture this time.

Last year in the townhouse we started a garden and it was pretty fun to watch it grow and we ended up with lots of jalapeños and several tomatoes. Towards the end of summer we realized we were going to be moving and had to let the garden die in order to pull everything out--plus our cherry tomato plants got way out of control. Anyways, we were super excited when the house we moved into already had a raised garden bed in the backyard! Yesterday we decided to go to Lowe's and get our garden started for this year.

Cart full of soil and plants! We also went to Walmart, but let's face it there are no good pictures that happen at Walmart. I'm still slightly bitter that Saginaw/Lake Worth area does not have a Kroger, because I can't stand Walmart. But that's off topic...

Here is the before and after picture of the garden. Well actually like middle and after picture, we had already done a lot of work by the time I remembered to take a picture. Ignore the fact that my outfit is ridiculous, it's my gardening clothes ;)

Last year our garden was probably half the size of this one and we planted way more than we did this year. And everything started growing on top of each other, so this year we kept it pretty small. Plus, not all of the garden gets sun because of the trees so we had to plant strategically. We decided to go with tomatoes (not cherry learned our lesson there!), jalapeños, red bell peppers, cilantro, and strawberries! I'm super excited about the strawberries just because it's something fun and different from the other things we have grown.

I mentioned the trees that are shading some areas of the garden. They are actually peach trees, and have hundreds of buds on them. There is a very good chance that we could be exploding with peaches soon. I've already started a Pinterest board with peach recipes!

This is just part of one branch, and you can see all of the little green buds that will eventually turn into peaches. I'm so excited!

We worked outside for a long time, pulling weeds and cutting branches on the rose bushes in the backyard. I think we both have battle wounds from those rose bushes, man those thorns hurt! We decided to take a walk around the park even though we were tired. Kyle and Bud took a little nap when we got home and I attempted to make cut out sugar cookies for the bridal shower next weekend. I have never been good at cut out cookies but I found this super cute cookie cutter and wanted to try it. Let's just say my batch made 12 usable cookies, so I was slightly frustrated when that was done.

We had decided on trying out a new recipe for dinner Spicy Hawaiian Chicken Burgers! They turned out delicious, we followed the recipe pretty closely, except only used one pound of ground chicken since we didn't need six burgers.

I was a few bites in before I remembered to take a picture. There's pepper jack cheese and grilled pineapple on top. It was delicious!

The rest of the night involved coating another batch of cake balls, finishing Star Trek Into Darkness, and watching the Tonight Show.

See you next week!
-M

Friday Adventures

Kyle has Fridays off work so we try to take advantage of this day by going on adventures and just spending time together. I'm going to try and start a new series of posts of our Friday Adventures, so here is week one!

Kyle had to go get some shots in the morning. I started my morning with some quiet time and coffee while Bud made sure we were safe and sat basically on my shoulder to look out the window. He's a strange one...

We went on a long walk around the park close by our house. This was our attempt to take a picture of the three of us--Buddy was clearly distracted by a bird, or a squirrel, or a leaf.

Then we went to Best Buy to look at laptops (ended up buying one later in the day) and then headed downtown for some lunch. We decided to try out Swiss Pastry Shop which ended up being a great idea!

Everything sounded so good I was having a very hard time deciding what to get but ended up going with the Big Tex--a smoked brisket sandwich with cheese and BBQ sauce. Kyle got a burger, no surprise there! According to him it was one of the best he's had, which says a lot! They also had three displays worth of pies and desserts, we ended up ordering a slice of Black Forest Macaroon Cake to share.

The texture is really different, kind of crumbly because it's made from egg whites and almond flour and then has layers of whipped cream. It was quite delicious and not too heavy. I did get one big bite of all whipped cream which was a little overwhelming but that was my fault for not realizing what I had picked up. Overall it was a fun little place to have lunch, the food was awesome and the prices were great! Give it a try if you can!

We stopped at Walmart on the way home cause I wanted to start making cake balls for the bridal shower I have in a few weeks. The great thing about cake balls is they last for several weeks in the freezer and taste just as good as the day you made them. Love recipes you can make ahead of time!

I made a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and a vanilla with vanilla frosting. Maybe my next post will be directions about cake balls but for now I'll just show you the final product. I only finished the vanilla ones, and I had just enough cake left over to make a mini cake ball which I thought was adorable and might make a whole batch this tiny next time.

Those were our Friday Adventures for the week, it was a pretty busy day as you can tell from my Fit Bit app (my determination to get at least 10,000 steps a day is a post for another day)

Hope your Friday was full of adventures, or full of rest! See you next week!
-M

Season of Showers

It's been a long time but, let's just pick up here. It's been a season of showers, meaning house warming showers, throwing baby showers, and soon throwing a bridal shower. I've attended lots of showers, but never really thrown one until recently, now I'm a pro--not really!

House Warming Shower

We recently moved over to the Saginaw area in order to be closer to our church community. The ladies from church welcomed us with a very sweet house warming shower. We we blessed by many rolls of paper towels, toilet paper and some pantry staples. It's been a good adjustment moving over here, we love being able to have students over and host a lifegroup on Sunday evenings. Plus, the neighborhood is great and we are right across the street from a great park so we go on lots of walks, which Buddy loves!

The very cute decorations at our house warming shower

My favorite part of the house--our coffee hutch

Baby Shower x2

Kyle's oldest brother and his wife are expecting their first baby next month! So last month my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, and I threw them a baby shower at our new house. The shower was about a month after we moved into our house and definitely gave us an incentive to get everything unpacked and put away! The shower turned out great, it was so nice to have everyone over to celebrate with them. The decorations and food turned out great--we did a taco bar with shredded chicken and beef as well as lots of different toppings so everyone could make their own tacos. Then we did a dessert bar with lots of different bite sized treats--cake balls, rice krispies, candy, and pretzel sticks. It was such a fun night and we can't wait to meet our niece in a few weeks!

Decorations from the shower

We also threw a baby shower at church for our worship leader and his wife who are expecting their first baby, a boy, very soon! The wives of staff members and ladies on staff helped throw the party and it turned out really cute. I can't take credit for the decorations, the other ladies worked very hard to make sure it looked great. I did do the chalkboards for it and thought they turned out well.

Bridal Shower

My sweet friend Aarika is getting married in June and we are throwing her a bridal shower in a few weeks. I will have to post pictures after we throw it, I'm sure it's going to be a pretty shower!

Desert Song

I'm sure most everyone is aware of this song by now but it has been a good inspiration to me in the past few weeks and I just wanted to share it.

Nashville

I was pretty bummed out last Thursday because my parents were leaving to take Nick to Nashville for college and I was unable to go because of class. I maybe might have, okay did start crying in my afternoon class when talking about him leaving. Mostly I was sad that I wasn't able to go on the trip with them, see his dorm, and spend that time with my family. They were planning on leaving by 5 pm, and I have a class in Arlington from 6pm-10pm so there was no way I was going to be able to go. Planning would be the key word in that sentence.

My dad and Nick had spent lots of hours trying to figure out the best way to transport Nick's Jeep out to Nashville and had decided to tow it behind the Pilot on their drive out. So Thursday afternoon rolled around and they were hooking all the components up and trying to get everything worked out. I kept getting texts from my mom throughout the day with all the problems they were having getting everything set up right. Around 7pm my mom said they were getting close, well I think her exact words were "If this doesn't work Nick can go to TCC for the year..." haha. I sent Kyle a message and said if you pack a bag for me maybe I would be able to go! Mostly just joking around, but my class got out early and the timing was just too perfect to pass up.

I am not a spur of the moment person, I take a long time to make decisions so the choice to go was way out of my comfort zone. I was going back and forth about going but finally decided I was going. Kyle packed me a bag and met me at my parent's house and we were off to Nashville!

The trip was full of craziness, but it wouldn't be a Sage Family Vacation without some crazy ;) We ended up unhooking the Jeep halfway and driving both cars because we were having to drive so slow when towing it.

We pulled up to Belmont around 2 pm and the move-in crew had both cars unloaded in less than 5 minutes! We spent the rest of the day unpacking the boxes and getting Nick's room situated. The campus is beautiful and the city is full of things to do. I am so glad I got to go and see where Nick is going to be for the next four years. The goodbye was really hard and it's going to be much quieter around here without him, but we are all so excited for what God has in store for him in Nashville.

Lifeway Kefir Smoothie

I few months ago I joined a website called Influenster, which basically looks at how "internet involved" you are and based on your activity level you can participate in different programs. The programs involve receiving new products and reviewing them. I love freebies and so I thought I would give it a chance. Back in May I received my first box and had a great time trying out the products. I meant to write a blog post about it but time slipped away.

The latest program was for a product called Kefir, which is a cultured milk smoothie containing lots of probiotics. I have tried this drink before, I think it was the strawberry kind, but had not bought it for quite some time. I took my free coupon to Kroger and they had a pretty decent selection to choose from:

I chose the Organic Plain kind because I wanted to add my own flavor to it. (Obviously I should have taken the picture before taking mine off the shelf so there wasn't an awkward hole). The small sign below the one I chose is Kroger's way of indicating a product is gluten free. I'm not sure why the organic one is the only one with this sign because from my understanding they are all gluten free.

I had read some complaints from people on Kefir's facebook page about the amount of sugar in the plain Kefir (12g). I didn't have a problem with this amount, I buy plain yogurt all the time and that is about the same amount of sugar it contains. Keep in mind, this sugar is not added to the product, it is not sweet at all, it is the amount of sugar found in a plain dairy product.

I used my Kefir to make a green smoothie. Green meaning it has some sort of veggies in it, in this case baby spinach.

Green Strawberry Banana Kefir Smoothie
1/2 cup Organic Plain Kefir
1/2 cup unsweetened Almond milk
1/2 cup frozen strawberries
about 1/2 frozen banana
handful of baby spinach
1 tsp of honey (or other sweetener)

The frozen banana is the key to any smoothie, it adds texture and creaminess. Always break up the banana into chunks before freezing it for easy use. I usually add a scoop of protein powder to my smoothies but I left it out this time so it wouldn't mask the flavor of the Kefir.

Add all the ingredients to the blender, blend until smooth

Finished product. Overall the taste was really good, I maybe would add a little less almond milk to have a thicker consistency.

Little tip on green smoothies, if you have trouble with the color try using a cup with a lid and a color tinted straw. The spinach doesn't add much flavor but lots of vitamins!

I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes.

If you are interested in joining Influenster let me know and I can send you an email with an invite :)