I Fought the Lawn and the Lawn Won!

Sunday was the first day that Adam mowed our lawn! When we moved into the house we had sod (slightly dead) in the front yard and grass seed with straw over it on the sides and back yard, so we had no grass to mow! I was very dedicated to growing grass this past fall, and apparently I did a pretty good job. With the few days of rain and warm weather, our lawn started growing like weeds! On one side of the house, we had a small jungle growing!
Adam bought a lawn mower off a coworker for $50! It is a good lawn mower; however, it hadn't been used in 2 years so it needed a little work. A little work turned into a whole day of work, and after all that it still didn't work and we had to borrow one from Adam's dad! Thanks Frank!
We went to the 8 AM service on Sunday so Adam could get back home in time to mow before the UT/Butler game! I took a nap and when I woke up, he was worn out, but the grass was pretty much cut! Poor guy! He wasn't expecting the steep side of our yard to be so difficult to cut, and he wasn't able to cut it all because part of the yard is way too steep to stand on, much less push a lawn mower on. We are not exactly sure what we are going to do about it. I keep suggesting that we invest in a mountain goat! They are used to standing on steep areas and eating grass! Problem solved - except we are not allowed to have such animals in our neighborhood!
I think that we are going to have to put up a retaining wall, which is not cheap, and build up the area so it is not so steep. What I hate most about the situation is that when we picked out the lot we wanted to build on, it wasn't steep. We really had no choice in the matter, but I know that Adam and I would never have bought a house with a yard so steep if we had known beforehand.

This is the steep side of the house! It is too steep to walk on towards the back of the house. Adam is going to hate cutting the grass this summer!

When All Else Fails, Make A Trifle

Several days ago, I saw this wonderful recipe on The Food Network by Giada De Laurentiis called Strawberry and Mascarpone Filled Cupcakes. Originally I thought I would make it for Adam as a surprise because he LOVES strawberries! He suggested that I wait and make the recipe for Easter because we were going to have dinner with his family.
I always tweak recipes, so I decided to take the recipe for cupcakes and make it into a cake instead. Also, instead of mascarpone cheese, which is expensive and hard to find, I substituted cream cheese and a little whipping cream. The cream cheese/whipping cream substitution worked very well; however, my decision to make a layer cake instead of cupcakes was something short of a disaster. Strike that - it was a disaster! My cake literally looked like a 4 year-old decided to bake a cake!! I am no 'top chef', but I can make cakes better than that!
I was so upset about the cake, with mere hours before Easter dinner. Adam told me to take the cake anyway because no one would care about how it looked. He suggested saying that the cat made it! I really didn't have time to make another one, but I was seriously thinking about it. Finally I decided to not take the cake to dinner, so I cut a piece to eat, and it tasted like a little piece of Strawberry Heaven! I felt bad about not taking such a awesome tasting cake, so when all else fails - make a trifle!
I cut the cake up in pieces, made more strawberry filling and added cool whip to the top and Viola - a Trifle was born!
Here is the original recipe. I suggest sticking to the directions, except the mascarpone cheese!

Our Big Weekend

Adam and I have become somewhat "homebodies" lately! We have been spending most of our weekends at home or in Kingston with our families! It is actually nice being able to stay at home some. However, this weekend was the start of Spring Break for so many of my friends. My friend, Charlotte, just finished one of her hardest semesters in Law School, so she wanted to go out to celebrate. She and her husband invited us to go along. There is not a lot to do in Knoxville other than go out to eat or see a movie, so we decided to go all out! Ha! We went to a new restaurant called Amerigo's, and then we decided to go see a movie. We got to the movie theater and nothing was showing, that we all wanted to see, until later in the evening. I wanted to see Horton Hears a Who, that was showing at 9:40, but I could not convince the 3 other adults to see a children's movie, and Charlotte's husband used his only veto on my movie! So we decided to see an older movie at the dollar theater - big spenders, I know! Then we decided to be as cheap as possible so we went to Target to buy candy to take into the theater, since theater candy is incredibly overpriced! So we get to the theater and are at the window to purchase our tickets ($2 a person!) and the window guy asks Adam if the card he was paying with was a debit card - Yes! Then the guy tells Adam that they charge $0.99 to run a debit card, so Adam tells him to run it as credit. The window guy then told Adam that they do not take credit cards! Ha! Adam did his signature move when he is stupefied - head down, 1 slow blink, nods his head, then looks up again and swallows his pride, and anger! We got the tickets and then Adam proceeded to talk about how their credit card policy is so stupid! We saw I Am Legend and loved it. It comes out on video tomorrow, I think!
So that is Our Big [spenders] Weekend in a nut shell! Ha!

So Fresh and So Clean Clean

I recently saw a commercial on TV for the Mr Clean Magic Eraser. I love these things! They are great for scuff marks on doors and walls and other things. However, until I saw the new commercial for the Magic Eraser with Febreze, I had never thought to use it to clean the shower or tub! So tonight I decided to give it a try. It really did a wonderful job! I am kinda a cleaning freak. I am a little OCD about it!
I have had a really hard time keeping the bottom of our shower clean, especially in the little textured grooves that keep you from 'bustin' a move' in the shower! Adam really contributes to the grunginess of the shower because he get really sweaty and grimy when he plays basketball once a week...and now softball and basketball, each once a week! I usually use shampoo to get break down the grungy stuff, and that works well, and then a soap scrum cleaner on top of that, but I have never gotten the shower completely clean - at least not to my standards.
The Magic Eraser did a great job even in the textured grooves. You could say that the grunge just magically erased! For the really tough spot I used a little shampoo, as well!

Tomato Zucchini Medley

I made a new side dish. I have no recipe - just the ole noggin, so it is still a 'recipe in the making.'

2 14oz cans of diced tomatoes (or 1 big can)
2 medium sized zucchinis
Rosemary Leaf (generous amount)

Dice zucchinis into pieces about the size of the diced tomatoes! Add diced zucchinis, diced tomatoes and Rosemary leaves to a medium sized pot. Cook on medium to medium-high heat until the zucchini are squishy (that's a sophisticated cooking term!) and flaccid (that's the best term I could come up with so get your mind out of the gutter!) And Voila!

I will probably try it with fresh tomatoes when they are more in season and maybe add some squash or something like that! I'll keep you updated!

Sam's Salmon

I found this wonderful recipe while Adam and I were walking around Sam's Club in 2004. As a rule, I always going into Sam's Club hungry because they have such awesome samples to try, and on this particular visit it paid off well! Adam and I tried what we thought was chicken with some kind of cracker on it and it was so good that we asked the Sample Lady what it was and all the other ingredients. We were both shocked that it was salmon with ranch dressing mix and Ritz crackers on top. If you know Adam then you know that he hates white creamy foods like sour cream, mayonnaise, cream-based dips (blue cheese dip, etc.), and Ranch dressing! So after getting all the ingredients at Sam's Club I put them all together, and figured out how to cook it to perfection! I made this for the first time for Adam on Valentine's Day in 2004 and he LOVED it - ranch dressing and all!!!

Sam's Salmon

2 lbs of salmon fillets (if you get a big piece so salmon, cut it into portions)
1 packet of Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing mix
15 Ritz crackers

Lightly grease the bottom of a 13x9 inch baking dish with Pam or butter. Wash the salmon fillets and lightly cover each fillet with the Ranch dressing mix ( I only put a little on Adam's because he still has a Ranch dressing phobia). Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. While the salmon is cooking, put the 15 Ritz crackers in a ziploc bag and crush into small pieces. After salmon has cooked about 15 minutes, pull it out and top each fillet generously with Ritz cracker pieces. Put dish back in oven for about 20 to 25 more minutes. The salmon should 'flake' when it is throughly cooked!

This is a simple, easy recipe that I hope you all will love!

A New Earth

My last semester of college I took the Senior Seminar course in Psychology - my less than mediocre major. The class was known for being an 'easy A.' The focus of the class was meditation and 'new age' topics. The first 15 minutes of almost every class was spent lying on the floor in meditation...or sleeping! Towards the middle of the semester we starting reading a book for class called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. The book focused on the NOW - thinking in the present! Basically the gist of the very simple, yet complex book was that the way to live is by living and thinking in the present moment. Thinking too much about the future causes anxiety and thinking too much about the past causes regret and/or depression for some. I really enjoyed the book, but it was very dense in material so we had to take it one chapter at a time.

Last month I was watching Oprah, as usual, and she introduced her new Oprah's Book Club book of the month and it was a new book by Eckhart Tolle, called A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. Immediately I ran out and got the book knowing that if Oprah was raving about it then it had to be good. She even started a online class that meets every Monday night, live with her and Eckhart, which I enrolled in!

A New Earth is sooo much easier to read than The Power of Now. It is profound and enlightening! So many people have been writing into oprah.com about their 'Aha moments' and telling what page on which they had their Aha moment. I was a little disappointed that these people were only having 1 Aha moment. I was having Aha moment after Aha moment with each page that I turned! I felt as if someone wrote a book about my life, and wondered if I should be getting some royalties for the inspiration! It is disappointing to think that the world has become so negative lately, and much is lost of what true human nature is.

I feel like this book is helping my life, my job, my marriage and my relationships with others. I love how Tolle uses excerpts from the Bible to relate to his message in the book, because I try to use the Bible as a guideline for my life. There is not much more that I can explain in words - it is like a burst of positive energy or life! However, the feeling you will get from reading the book really has no word for it; it just IS!

I suggest that EVERYONE go buy the book and read it! You may not understand the entire meaning of the book the first time you read it, but read it again and it will come to you. This book is truly life-changing!