Yummies

Every month, Jenna at That Wife holds a food challenge. This month’s challenge is to make a salad and lucky for me it's probably my favorite thing to both make and eat at dinner with the husband.

For as long as I can remember, my mother made a huge salad every evening with dinner. I don't recall ever seeing a bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch in our fridge either... or any type of bottled dressing for that matter. My mom is a salad goddess. Seriously. I grew up watching her create her daily masterpiece and there isn't really an exact recipe - it's all thrown together by taste and sight. My mom would say her salads are a little different from day-to-day, however Dad says they all taste the same - amazing. Hopefully my husband would say the same about mine. So I give to you my version of...

Mommy's Famous Lebanese Salad

2 handfuls of baby spinach
2 handfuls of any other type of lettuce (we like the Fresh Express Tender Baby Greens)
1 roma tomato
1/2 cucumber
1/2 zucchini*
1/2 avocado*
1-2 chopped green onions
a sprinkle of crumbled feta cheese (sorry, there is parmesan in my photo - we were out of feta.)

Combine above yummies into a bowl. Here's the tricky part... the following ingredients can be adjusted to your taste.

Garlic powder (give it a few good shakes...)
Salt
Fresh ground black pepper
Crushed dried mint leaves, about 1 1/2 teaspoons (trust me here, I promise.)
Dried basil, about 1 teaspoon

After adding the spices, juice 1/2 a lemon over the salad (attempt to fetch out lemon seeds if you can - those bad boys taste horrible) and drizzle 3 tablespoons of oilve oil over. Gently toss the salad well to combine spices, oil, lemon.

And an important note creating you own: Once the dressing is added to the salad it should be served ASAP or else the lettuce and veggies will wilt and become soggy. If you would like to prepare ahead of time, combine veggies and spices but do not add the oil and lemon until the very last minute.

*Zucchini and avocado are not really part of a "real" Lebanese salad but we love them too much to leave them out.

So there you go! Hope you can try something new - and don't be afraid of the mint on the salad. I promise it won't end up tasting like a tic-tac.

Oh baby...

Here are the latest creations from Pulp & Ink - my so-far-just-pretend invitation design company. Clearly, the theme of the shower is butterflies. Let me know what you think! ...And if you are interested in giving me another project.

Design 1:

Design 2:

Design 3:

Design 4:

Latest Creation...

Although I did not win ThatWife's contest to design her new header (I did, however, come in a close second), I kept truckin' along with another project. Here are a couple versions of a baby shower invitation that I have been working on this weekend. Please let me know what you think! And don't worry, I have some pretty thick skin so I can take the good and the bad critiques. Oh, and each onesie or pennant flag will be "die-cut" (ha - aka hand cut) by yours truly. Cute? I think so.

Or... option 2 for the front...

Here is the back:

Pendant Invite:
Back:

That Wife Contest!

One of my very favorite blogs, That Wife, is having a contest for readers to design a new header for her adorable blog - and yours truly submitted an entry! It would probably be considered cheating for me to post which design is mine, so I will just have to let you guess! Voting ends tonight so stop on by and put in your 2 cents!

And if you know me and my font-geeky-ness well enough, you can probably determine which submission is mine...

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Tutus and Trophies Pt. 2

A few days ago I started writing about my Thanksgiving extravaganza. Here's the rest of the story.

Remember how my parents were downsizing their home and came to Tennessee with many of my childhood "artifacts"? Well let's take a trip back to 1991, a time when my curly hair was so big that it didn't even fit into the frame of school pictures.

Back in 1991, I participated in a pageant. (Go ahead and gag.) Miss America's Favorite Pre-Teen, to be exact. For some reason I begged my parents to let me do this "scholarship pageant" even though I'm pretty sure I had no idea what that meant, and for some reason, they let me. From the minute my mom and I arrived we knew we were in way over our heads. Surrounding us were pageant queens who had done this a million times and it was pretty clear we had no idea what the hell was going on. I remember going to the "get to know each other" dinner the first night... we walked in to the room and all of the other little girls had on full makeup. I'm talking foundation, blue eyeshadow, REAL lipstick. I think I might have been sporting some Bonnie Bell Pink Lemonade chapstick. Maybe. Mom looked at me with a face that said "we can run now, it's not too late..." Oh, but we stayed. We stayed and we won lots and lots of trophies. Probably because the judges felt sorry for the little Lebanese girl with the big hair, who clearly did not belong with the painted faces and monster, neon dresses.

One of the categories had something to do with athletics, and if you know me, you know I'm strictly a ballerina. I never even played t-ball - I was too busy weary a tutu. Anyway, each girl had to dress up in some kind of sports uniform and pretend to play said sport while the announcer talked about their whopping 10 year old accomplishments. Right. I actually had to borrow a soccer uniform from a friend. I don't think I had ever kicked a soccer ball in my life, but I sure as hell tried to act like I had. And I'm also sure I looked like a big jackass. Hopefully a cute jackass. Somewhere my grandparents have all of this on home video and I hope it never, ever surfaces.

I was the youngest contestant, only 8, probably the only brunette, definitely the only curly-head, and for sure the only child with some sort of ethnic heritage that didn't travel across on the Mayflower. The whole experience was totally bizarre and at least we can get a good laugh out of it now.

So, back to Thanksgiving.

My parents and sister arrived, we hug, we laugh, we give the grand tour of our new home, unload their car and head inside. Coffee is brewed and we sit, relax, and catch up before the other 357 people arrive. And then I see one... top shelf, left corner.


There it is, in all of it's golden glory - State Finalist trophy. Awesome.


Conversation continues. And then I spy another. This time, it's in the kitchen - it's the Scholastic Achievement trophy *applause*


Oh but wait, there is one more.


Miss Photogenic. That's right, little Lebanese contestant with budding sideburns, bigass curls, rockin' headband, and Bonnie Bell lips was awarded Miss Photogenic. All the blonde girls with teased bangs were jealous.

Somehow my dad was super stealth and upon entering our newlywed home he placed these little gems all around. Hilarious! He said mom only let him bring 3, or else our home would be littered with these badboys. Sadly, my 2nd place trophy was too big to haul to Tennessee, and definitly too bit to sneak into our home. Oh, I didn't tell you? Yea, 2nd place. Ha!

I can't wait to see my super sneaky dad and the rest of my amazing family this Christmas!

Redo.

Update: I re-vamped my MyPublisher album... I was lucky enough to call and cancel the order before it was shipped, which means I wasn't charged (yey!) And I managed to upload the correct photo to the front of the album and also spread out a couple pages where Husband and his groomsmen serenaded me with their rendition of the Backstreet Boys "I Want It That Way." Priceless. And sober. Seriously, they were all sober. So here is the new image in the cover window... We received the albums on Saturday and they look a-m-a-z-i-n-g. I'm quite glad that I went with the largest size (11"x15") because the details look amazing. I opened the box, removed the plastic, and cried. Mom and Dad are going to love this - thank you, MyPublisher! You can see the updated version of my album here.