A nice gender-neutral yellow :)

Alright, I decided it's finally time to paint the guestroom.  When we bought the house the guest room was a light blue color with cobalt blue carpeting.  Yuck! Now since the guest room will one day be a baby's room, we decided on a nice gender-neutral yellow.  :)


Here is a pic of the room when we bought the house, before we had moved in...

Okay, this is after we moved in, and I put all my old things in the room.  So basically it looked like a college dorm room, haha.

Here it is mid-painting..

Finished product!  It still looks like a college dorm room, but it's a cheery color don't you think?

Date Night! : Homemade Pizza and The Lights at the Zoo :)

Thanks to my generous brother who gave us Cincinnati Zoo tickets for Christmas, Matt and I took a date night.  I made homemade pizza, and then we went to see the lights!  It was a wonderful evening :)

Here is a homemade pepperoni, pepper, and cheese

A pesto, sundried tomato, and chicken pizza: (my fav!)

And a little pasta salad with chopped broccoli, Swiss cheese, pepperonis, tri-color pasta all mixed with Italian dressing.

And, the Zoo!

I'll Be Home for Christmas

Home to Tiffin for the holidays!

Best friends, Layla and Roxy all dressed up for the holidays.

A favorite yearly tradition:  Christmas cutout decorating at the Gase household.

  Don't ask questions.

 A grinchy Santa Claus

The only moose cutout and I managed to cut the antlers off and make him look like a horse. Sigh.

Go Bearcats! Made by Matt.

Christmas creations

Reindeer donuts.  (Shh, don't tell- I didn't bake the donuts myself, I used Hostess!)

White Chocolate Peppermint Bark- with crushed oreos, white chocolate, and crushed peppermint.  The best part was grinding up the peppermint into a dust.  That was fun! 

Milk Chocolate brownies, but I used my mother's homemade icing recipe and mixed in leftover peppermint dust to create a peppermint frosting!  

Happy birthday!!

My birthday dinner.  Thanks, Matt!

Homemade Ugly Christmas sweaters

We were invited to an ugly Christmas sweater party but didn't have anything to wear.
So we made our costumes ourselves!

New dinner #4: quinoa stuffed green peppers

A new favorite! I stuffed 4 large peppers and Matt and I each ate a whole pepper! We love the new superfood, quinoa, and I added a little extra to give it a spicy touch.

Steamed the peppers, made the quinoa, and sautéd mushrooms, onions, and diced tomatoes.
Mixed quinoa, veggies, spicy Mexican salsa all together and stuffed in peppers. I poured the remaining mixture on top of peppers, topped with mozzarella and baked for 30 min.
I added avocado slices to the top, which was a really yummy touch.

I found the recipe on the back of the Quinoa box, but added my own touch :)

New dinner #3: Stir fried lime pork with spinach

I've stir-fried pork before, but this is the first time I've stir-fried spinach. I fried the pork first in oil, then took it off and stir-fried the spinach in the remaining oils, added lime juice, garlic, and soy sauce. It was amazing to me that a huge bowl of spinach could fill the entire skillet and within seconds be reduced to practically nothing! I then mixed in some rice with the mixture.

Result: this meal tasted like it was from PF Changs, only better!

First pic: the pork.
Second pic: a typical fruit salad we have each night, but I thought the pic was really neat :)

Lemon Bars from scratch

That's right, no box mix for this girl. I made it from scratch :)

Crust:
1 cup flour
1 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar all mixed and pressed to bottom of pan 8x8. Bake at 350 for 20
Minutes.

Then mix 3 eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 cup lemon juice and then I added 4 packets of true lemon. Pour onto crust and bake an additional 25 minutes.

Happy December!!!

Our tree :)

And Miss Roxy Claus

#2 Traditional Pot Roast (grandma style)

Ok, I know what you are thinking, "Sarah never eats red meat anymore, and she refuses to cook it!"
Well, you're right. BUT I love my husband and my husband loves pot roast. I decided that it's time I make it, since I never have. Plus, both our grandmothers gave us recipes, so I just had to try it.

I slow cooked it in the crock pot for ten hours..
Also added:
Chopped onions
Chopped celery
Baby carrots
Baby red potatoes
Beef broth
I also seasoned all the vegetables and meat the night before with paprika, garlic, salt & pepper.

Cooking post #1: 3 Cheese Enchiladas

1 cup shredded cheddar
1 cup shredded Monterrey
8 oz cream cheese (Phili reduced fat)
1 cup salsa
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped pepper
*even though it didn't call for it, I added 1 lb. shredded chicken. Roots brand, of course!
I also added extra cheese and salsa to the top.

Wrap inside tortillas and bake in a 13x9 pan at 350 for 20 minutes.

Instant favorite. Matt loved them! And I was happy I used low fat cheese and whole wheat tortillas :)

Advent Craft Project

Hello! It's a new church year, a new Advent season, and yesterday I woke up feeling like a new me. So, I thought why not a new blog? This blog will be mainly focused on cooking and other house projects with the occasional post about my life in the teaching world. Enjoy :)

First picture: my Advent bouquet I put together. Pic was editing with instagram