Roasted Zucchini with Thyme

I made a New Year's resolution for 2013 to cook and eat more vegetables. I've actually been sticking to it, and I've discovered that I LOVE roasted veggies. It's so easy to cook vegetables on a foil-lined baking sheet (easy clean-up!), and the flavors are so delicious! Thyme makes the zucchini SO tasty, and I just love this recipe!

Recipe adapted from here.
Ingredients: 3 zucchini, quartered and cut into 1 1/2 inch chunks 1 small onion, thinly sliced 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp dried thyme 1/4 tsp salt 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
Directions: 1. Cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil and lightly spray it with olive oil spray.  2. On the baking sheet, toss zucchini and onion with oil, thyme, salt, and pepper. Spread zucchini into a single layer. 3. Roast at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring and tossing halfway through. 
(combining ingredients)
(ready for the oven!)
(out of the oven)
Mmm, roasty zucchini-y goodness! 
Ta-da!
Enjoy!

Spring & Summer Monogram Wreath

AKA, the Easiest Wreath Ever.



So I needed a wreath for the Spring and Summer. I wanted to make something that could last from after Easter all the way until the Fall. And then I found this green wreath on sale at Target, and after that it all happened very quickly and now I have a pretty little wreath! You can have one too because it's SO easy! Here's all you need to know:
Supplies: Green leafy wreath Large chipboard letter White paint Thin green ribbon Hot glue gun
First, paint your letter white (or you know, any other color) and let it dry.

Next, cut two little strips of ribbon and hot glue them to the top and bottom of your letter. You really don't have to do this step (you could just hot glue your letter directly to the wreath), but I wanted to leave myself the option of removing the letter later, so this way you don't mess up the wreath itself at all!


Then get out your wreath...

... and tie those two ribbons to the top and bottom of the wreath (just pick some branches to tie to). You'll want to attach the ribbons slightly higher up than it looks like you should because the letter will "sink" a little when you hang it up (gracias, gravity). 
And then you're done!

Enjoy your cheery monogrammed front door!

Five Things

It's been a while since I did a Five Things post, huh? I guess I was just saving up my "things" until I had five good ones! So here we go... 
1. I Love Free Flowers! Spring is so great. Everything in our yard is blooming, so I have plenty of fresh flowers, and they're all free! 
Irises from our backyard!
Knock-out roses from the front yard!
Lantana from the front yard!
I'll be so sad when it gets hotter and everything stops making beautiful flowers! 
2. Summer Recipe Features Some of my recipes have been featured recently by a couple wonderful bloggers, and I just wanted to give them a shout-out here! Sober Julie just did a feature on frozen desserts (sorbet, gelato, ice cream) and included my lemon ice cream!

And The Saturday Evening Pot just did a feature all about lemons, including my lemon pound cake, lemon berry trifle, lemon tarts, and lemon cake with lemon buttercream (along with lots of other lemony recipes I can't wait to try!).

That lemon & eggplant risotto is calling my name. I love risotto!
3. Simple Produce Wash I'm horrible. I usually just rinse my fruits and veggies with water and call it a day. And I don't like to pay extra for the organic stuff, so my fruits and veggies are probably covered in pesticide and scary stuff. We haven't died yet, so I guess it's not that big of a deal, but I decided I ought to be doing a better job with the produce cleaning.
So now this is my method (based on this website): Plug the drain in the sink. Put a cup of vinegar in the sink. Fill the sink halfway with lukewarm water. Mix it up. Put the fruits & veggies in the sink. Let it sit for 10 minutes. Rinse and dry everything.


I do it whenever I go to the grocery store and everything gets washed all at once and it's super easy. For stuff like green beans and berries it's helpful to stick a big colander in the sink so you have something to scoop 'em up with. :) 
4. A Visit from Blog/Real-life Friends! We got to see our friends Caitlin and Adam when they visited Humble a couple weeks ago! 

Caitlin is an example for me of how blogging can be so wonderful. I actually met her on our Engaged Encounter retreat (they got married on the same day as us), and we talked a bit but I never would've ever seen her again if we hadn't found each other through blogging a few weeks later and realized we had so much in common! And here we are, three years later, about to celebrate our third anniversaries. :) 
5. Moving my Sister's Stuff  I love my family for lots of reasons. One reason is that we're always there for each other and willing to help make each other's lives easier. That's why my parents moved my sister's stuff home from college and we unpacked it (heavy furniture and all) entirely without my sister because she was still in Fort Worth finishing up a summer semester (but not in her unfurnished apartment anymore).
This is the outfit I wear when I come over on a Sunday after church and don't know we're about to move a bunch of furniture.
I also love my family because they're just so funny and they make me laugh. And that's why we took a picture of just how exhausted we were after hauling all of my sisters stuff out of the U-Haul to send to her while she was in Fort Worth not helping.

Haha! Love you, Kristen! 
And that's it! Is anyone else guilty of just rinsing the produce with water and calling it done? What about painting an entire room with two coats before realizing you bought the wrong paint? Here's hoping I'm not the only one... :)

Strawberry Picking!

A few weekends ago, Jeff had a guys' weekend with some friends and went camping, and my parents went to Fort Worth to pack up my middle sister's college stuff, so I got to have a girl's weekend at home with my littlest sister, Karoline!

Karoline's always up for joining me on a silly adventure, so when I got it into my head that we should go strawberry picking, she was equally excited and didn't mind the hour-long drive at all! 

We went to Froberg's Farm, about an hour away, and we had such a blast! 

Normally the strawberry season ends around Mother's Day here in Houston, but thanks to some unseasonably cool temperatures this spring, they were still going strong in the end of May! 

We got a cute little bucket, and we set out to pick some yummy strawberries!

We had read online that the smaller ones tend to have better flavor, so we avoided the ginormous ones and looked for the small, bright red, and firm ones!

The teeniest, tiniest strawberry! Karoline may or may not have eaten that one immediately. Haha!

It ended up being a beautiful day, so it was really nice to stroll through the rows and rows of strawberries!

We filled our bucket much more quickly than we expected. There were just so many red juicy strawberries! Haha! Some other people got a bit carried away...

So many strawberries!

Every time I do something like this (strawberry farm, Christmas tree farm, pumpkin patch, whatever), I convince myself that we should move to the country and open a strawberry farm (or Christmas tree farm, or whatever) and live a simpler life. It's just so pretty out there! Except I'm pretty sure it would not be a simpler life because we're not really that good at growing things. Revising contracts? I'm pretty good at that. Growing trees? Not so much. 

In the end, we took home a bunch of delicious strawberries!

And we made strawberry muffins! Mmmm!

We'll be back next year, Froberg's Farm! 

March Spring Cleaning

Remember when I posted my March Spring Cleaning checklist (way back in March)?

Well, I did finally finish it (toward the end of April, haha!). Lots of areas in our house are looking more organized these days!



Check out this before-and-after of my baking dish cabinet:
Before:
After:
There's more stuff in it now than there was before, but it looks like less stuff! And it's all easily accessible thanks to these mesh shelves from Bed Bath & Beyond.
Our pots and pans are nicely organized now too, thanks to these pan protectors (my sister actually bought me these for Christmas!):

Previously I had dish towels in between each one (you're not supposed to stack Calphalon pans), so this is MUCH better!

Here's a before-and-after on our napkin & napkin ring drawer:
Before:
After:
Here's our organized wine gadget & koozie drawer:

Even the "junk drawer" doesn't look very junky anymore, thanks to these little containers from Target!

I'll share a few more organizing projects in their own posts soon (organizing below our kitchen sink, organizing our First Aid stuff, rearranging our china cabinet, etc.)!