We're *so* Metropolitan...

Er, we will be tomorrow, when we hit NYC and visit the Met Museum of Art and attend a Mets baseball game. It's like too cute, but I promise that's not the reason we decided to do each of those things...

So yeah, TOMORROW is our day of fun in New York City - we fly out super early at 6am (don't do the math on when we have to arrive at the airport and park our car...just don't.) But the upside of that is we get to New York early and get an entire day there! And first task: figure out all the lovely public transit. Oh, and get coffee, which I think should come first, don't you??

The Met is on the agenda first, which I'm totally jazzed about. Somehow I've never been there, and quite honestly, I can't remember ever going to Central Park either. The Met is kind of on the border of Central Park and the city, so I think we're going to walk it and check out the park. So many movies and TV shows have scenes that take place there, it'll be really neat to actually *see* it.

We don't really have anything else planned until the evening. The top rated attraction in NYC and the thing that's been recommended to me up and down is Top of the Rock - which is high up on the Rockafeller Center building and supposedly the best panoramic view of the city. I'm having a hard time rationalizing *another* $20/pp cost just to see the city from up high... (pardon my flip tone... I don't mean to be so dismissive. I guess I'm just so *metropolitan* now, it's all commonplace to me ;) ) so I haven't bought any tickets and I think we'll do it if we feel totally inspired to see the city from up high... IDK. TBD.

Then we're light on the agenda till the Mets v Marlins game at 7:10. Woot! Again with the figuring out public transit to whatever the heck borough Shea Stadium is in. Beers cost $9 at the concert we went to last week at Walnut Creek, I'm on the edge of my seat to see how much they cost at Shea. Seriously! If you didn't assume it already, this is "Scott's thing" that he chose, and I chose The Met.

I'm excited because we're staying downtown, right near Times Square. We're leaving fairly early the next morning (though after reading when we're leaving NC, "early" kind of takes on a new meaning...) to hop a train to New Jersey with one of Scott's college friends who lives in the city. I was foolishly hoping to get a run in in Central Park (cause it's kind of like the quintessential place to run, if you ask me...) but with the train time and taking into account that I'll likely be really tired and not want to be in a bad mood all day bc I got up early... I decided to spare Scott that fun :) On to Montvale and wedding fun!! It's going to be a lot of fun to see them again. And fun to wear my new dress.

Then we leave from Newark early in the afternoon, and come home to Carolina just in time for a Sunday afternoon nap. And I'll post lots and lots of pictures, don't worry, Internets.

Pigs in a Blanket

I made this recipe a few weeks ago and we've been excited the whole time to make it again. :) Make it with the mac & cheese - it does not disappoint!

Pigs in a Blanket
From: The Way the Cookie Crumbles

Bread dough:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
¾ cup milk
1½ tablespoons sugar
2 eggs
3½ cups (17½ ounces) unbleached flour
1½ teaspoons instant yeast
1½ teaspoons salt

10 hot dogs (we use low fat turkey dogs)
2 tablespoons milk

1. Heat butter in small saucepan over medium heat until just melted. Add ¾ cup milk and sugar. If butter re-solidifies, heat until it’s completely melted. Remove from the heat and beat in the eggs.

2. Mix flour, salt, and yeast in bowl of standing mixer fitted with dough hook. Turn machine to low and slowly add milk mixture. When dough comes together, increase speed to medium (setting number 4 on a KitchenAid mixer) and mix until dough is smooth, shiny, and elastic, stopping machine two or three times to scrape dough from hook if necessary, about 8 minutes. Knead in extra flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, if the dough is too sticky. The dough should be not be dry, but soft. Turn dough onto lightly floured work surface; knead to form smooth, round ball, about 15 seconds. (Alternatively, you can knead by hand for 10 minutes.)

3. Place dough in very lightly oiled bowl, rubbing dough around bowl to lightly coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap; place in warm, draft-free spot until dough doubles in size, about 1-1½ hours.

4. Divide the dough into 10 pieces. Shape each piece into a smooth ball. Let rest 10 minutes. Line baking pan with silicon baking mat or parchment paper.

5. Flatten each piece into a rough rectangle using the tips of your fingers. Roll in one direction until dough is ¼-inch thick. Roll in opposite direction (across shorter width) a few times, then fold in long edges to make perfect rectangle. Roll in long direction until dough is 1/8-inch thick. Place 1 hot dog near a short end, then tightly roll, keeping the tips of the hot dog exposed. Place seam side down on prepared baking pan. Repeat with remaining dough and hot dogs.

6. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until dough is slightly inflated, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, heat oven to 375 degrees.

7. Brush the dough with milk. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden. Let cool 15 minutes before serving.

Battle Number 2: Guest Bedroom

I declare Mission (semi) Accomplished.

It's not night and day ... this I realize. And the only reason I'm not declaring full out victory is that the I still have the very daunting project to tackle...photo organization. That's a big one, folks, and it's just plain not gonna happen this weekend!

Once again, I was shocked/impressed at the amount of stuff we had in there and the amount of stuff we were able to get rid of. I just got back from taking ANOTHER huge trunk-full to the recycling center. We have another basically full carload to take to Goodwill too. And we've made a promise to each other never to let this happen again.

Though Scott did request that I include that I found a bank statement from 2/4/01 in going through my notes from Farmers First Bank. He said "Hah! Who's getting made fun of in the blog now?!" I can take it like a man. I'd also like to point out this was my ONE box of school notes, all of which are now in the Wake County recycling center and it was only one bank statement.

Oh, and did I mention we're *exhausted* after all of this?? :)

Here are the afters:

We have a reversible comforter...so I changed it around to change the feel of the room. I was afraid it wouldn't look different enough and the blog world would judge me harshly!

We were able to grab the matching nightstand (formerly of the office) to go back with the bed. So guests, get ready! You'll now have a surface, a clock, and a LIGHT beside the bed. High style at Jamie & Scott's.
Oh, and the shelves beside the bed are totally empty now so the plan is to get rid of them...woohoo!

The light we inherited from my parents at some point, it was bronzy and weathered looking.... A can of black spray paint changed all that...wouldn't you say?

Oh, and those two boxes are our centerpiece candles from the wedding, IDK what to do w/ them, but I just can't seem to toss them. They're salvageable...just need to have the candles frozen out and soot cleaned off.

Ok, the shelves. Not worlds different, but we did manage to consolidate the books to one side, getting rid of some, and I'm hoping to fill the other semi-empty cubes with photo "stuff" once I get that in working order.

This is one of our favorite pieces - Scott's Pop-Pop caned this child's rocker for us. Well, not for *us* but for our children someday and, yeah, it doesn't get much use. So this bear seemed to fit perfectly. I think Scott got me this bear for when he went off to college or something, it's so cute and huggable, and I can't manage to make myself donate it. So he'll keep the rocking chair busy till it's needed.

Coming Up This Weekend: The Guest Bedroom

Our next battle in the War on Stuff is the Guest Bedroom, aka Smarty's room, aka where my wedding dress lives, aka "just throw it in the guest room." It's kind of a conglomeration of all of our random stuff that has never had a real place of its own. Oh, and it's where our guests sleep, in a really pitiful old bed. (Sorry 'bout that) It's pretty bad at the moment, since it's right beside the new, pristine office. We were admittedly a little lax last weekend, using the guest room to house stuff we wanted to keep but didn't know where to put it. Well, watch out, stuff...your moment of truth is coming!!

So, this weekend (hopefully just Saturday) is going to be dedicated to getting that organized, decluttered and usable. And maybe even pretty? I won't get my heart set on that last one, but who knows. Dream Big.

Some related organization projects we'll have to tackle in concert with the guest room will be:

1. Music (CD's, mp3 file organization). I'll throw DVDs in here for good measure.

2. Photos. Oooooh, photos. How do I love you and hate you all at the same time? I'm half digital, half negatives, which, am I really ever going to find the negative I need when I need it? My goal is to get the photos I have printed out in an album so we can at least look at them and enjoy them. And I want to get my photos that are older than the last four years at least in chronological order and somewhere where they won't get ruined.

And now, embarrassed, I give you The Before Shots:

In this shot, note Smarty on "her" bed. Note entire shelf full of pictures and crap like that. Note wedding dress draped over kids' rocking chair. And the rest of the stuff is from the office, and will NOT be going back into the office when we clean this room. I'm contemplating closing the door to preserve the organization in there.

Our IKEA shelves... they're cute and I think could really be functional. I think we need to get rid of some books, and better utilize these bad boys. Note extra wedding crap off to the side. I'm too cheap to throw it away but what do I do w/ it?

Stay tuned, and wish us luck.

Prodigal Summer

All done! It took me forever...which is not to say it wasn't an excellent book and really captivating writing. It was really good. But I just feel like I don't have as much time to read lately so it was more chopped up than I would have liked. This book felt like it would be really nice to just spend a few days with at the beach and read it all at once.

It was essentially 3 interconnected and simultaneous short stories, which encompass 1 summer in a small Kentucky town. It had a lot of very ambitious and grandiose themes - man's place in nature, the unintended consequences of hunting, different ways of viewing natural farming and the laws of nature. Oh, and God and relationships and all kinds of stuff. The characters were pretty interesting. I liked the story called Old Chestnuts, it followed a crotchety old widower who came off very elderly Stephen Colbert to me, which made me enjoy him. I did have a hard time w/ Deanna, the mountain woman who lives up in the wilderness. The only thing that bugged me was her hair. They explained her as having a long braid that came down to here knees. Just the idea of that kinda puts me off. Sorry, you have to have a knife up there or a basic pair of scissors... And the third story was about Lusa, this person who was of Polish and Palestinian descent. And she apparently had red hair. I think I'm a very visual reader and I just couldn't place this kind of look... hers was another moving story.

I really enjoyed this book overall! On to re-read the Red Tent for book club next week... I'm considering this practice school since I'm on a deadline. :) I'm looking forward to reading it though - I got all nostalgic bc it looks like I bought this book in Ireland! It still has the Waterstone's sticker on it. It was 11 Euros. :)

1st Battle: The Office

We did it!! :) It only took ALL weekend, and kind of threw our home into a state of unrest...but it was so needed. I cannot believe the amount of stuff that was crammed into this teeny room. The goal was to make it less "Scott's Lair" and more "Jamie and Scott's Office". Especially with me entering school in less than a month. It feels like someone just handed me an extra room to our house...

Here's a pic from early on Saturday morning:

And here's a few minutes ago... just for effect.


Some of my favorite things we found in the office:
1. Credit card statements from Feb 04
2. Savings account statements from Farmers First Bank in Lititz, PA... good times.
3. Lots and lots of checks from Scott's 1st Raleigh apartment. Yes, this means they've been moved TWICE. :)
4. All the cords that any computer company made...ever. They're in a drawer, with the 5 mice we have "just in case". We also had a punch card, you know, from like old 1970's computers? No clue. But we have one.
5. Also, all the computers and various parts of computers from all of our friends and family.

We did an incredible amount of "downsizing"... we piled everything out into the hall into piles - Trash, Keep, Donate, Sell/Consign/Craigslist...and of course, IDK.


Some of my favorite enviro-saving/doesn't cost me a dime things we did:
1. Scott had a lot of papers printed out to read for school over the past few years. Like, a lot. So, we've saved all the one-sided sheets that were in decent condition and we're going to primarily print our stuff on the backs of those - like grocery lists, directions...whatever. And only print on "real" paper when it's 100% necessary not to have it on the back of a study of human computer interaction.
2. Recycled the paper and cardboard boxes. We took 7 or 8 bags of paper to the Wake Country convenience center.
3. Donated to Goodwill...pretty much anything we could get away with! Lots and lots of various stuff.
4. Craigslisting!! I have 4 active postings right now... fingers crossed our "junk" can be someone else's treasure. Or at least something they'd pay money for...?

So here's the gallery...

The Desk & Workspace!

OMG, was there always a WINDOW there?? :) I keep walking up the stairs and I'm like, is there a light on in that room?? Nope, just the sun. Very cool!

We do want to get a new desk chair, if I do end up using it to do schoolwork/working from home. I really love what we've done with what we have... I don't think we'd *have* to buy anything new at all to make this a very usable room.

Okay, gotta soak up the rest of the weekend...

This is me, working from home...

...and this is Smarty saying "Don't work, pet me."

Meatballs. Not just any meatballs, the best ones. Ever.

Tonight, I think Scott and I found a new favorite meal. We raised a bar in our kitchen... those boring old recipes and casseroles are going to have to work hard to compete with this.

I just finished eating, and I'm still going to have to tell my stomach not to growl and my mouth not to salivate as I type out the recipe and post the picture. Mmmmm, it was fabulous!!!

Florentine Meatballs
(from Rachel Ray...who knew?!)

Ingredients:
1 box frozen spinach, defrosted in the microwave
1 1/3 lb ground turkey breast
1/2 of a medium onion, finely chopped (it called for all but 3 tbsp of a med onion, but we used 3 tbsp tonight and it was perfect...your call.)
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large egg
1/4 c milk
1/2 c grated Parm cheese
3/4 c bread crumbs
Olive oil

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400.

Wring out defrosted spinach. (Trivia: this is one of my LEAST favorite things to do in any recipe ever.) Place turkey in a bowl and make a well in the middle of it. Add the spinach, onion, garlic, egg, milk, bread crumbs, Parm and salt and pepper to taste. Mix well and form into 12 large balls. (Next time we will make more smaller balls. It makes 12 VERY large meatballs...) Place on a non-stick cookie sheet & drizzle with virgin olive oil. Cook for 20 min in the oven until cooked through.

We LOVED them w/ a nice soft bakery sub roll. And some tomato sauce, and a slice of provolone cheese... Mmmmm.

Follow up to War on Stuff...

Some very interesting links I've found and been perusing off and on for most of the day. Good thing I'm not working from home today - I'd be very unproductive I think!

• Steps for De-Cluttering - I enjoyed the link from this page to the guy who's trying to live with only 100 personal items. A little drastic, but hey, good for him.
  
• Unclutterer...I subscribed to this blog and looove it. Good stuff.
• Good clutter destroying tips
• And... I want to do this when we clean up the office. But don't worry, Scott, we probably won't :)
  

I'm Declaring War On STUFF

Junk, Random Crap...whatever. We have too much of it, and I'm declaring war. We had the fun task of trying to remove some of the Random Crap (RC) from downstairs to try to make the terrain a little less treacherous for a 11 month old this weekend, and for the most part we succeeded. I'd blame what was left behind on the cat toys. Anyway... I'm considering the baby's visit the push we needed to just de-clutterify the place. Here's how I see it: We're young. WHY do we have so much RC??? Most of the junk we took upstairs we never even use and wouldn't miss if we'd just taken it out to the trash rather than upstairs to the guest room.

So, it's not like we live in a junkyard, I don't want to paint an unfair picture. I just get fed up with the amount of stuff we have that we don't need or use on a daily, weekly, monthly, annual...any basis at all, and the amount of time it takes us to save up for/rationalize buying stuff we really do need/want. There's something wrong there...

This is me declaring war... Scott and I are committing our entire next weekend to going through stuff and trashing the unsaveable, donating the potentially reusable, craigslisting the potentially sellable and shuffling around the underutilized. We're going to be smart and green in our approach - I don't want to just throw things away that could be recycled or used by someone else. But I'm tired of having so much more stuff than we need.

Whew, ok, so I said it. Wish me luck. :)