Uncle Sam Got Our Wine

We finished our taxes today and like a lot of people we know, we owe big bucks to Uncle Sam this year.  I'm trying to not get too bummed out about it but certainly some things are going to have to give in our monthly budget.  We decided to start with the source of our sanity--wine.
We enjoy a glass most nights of the week with our dinner.  So, we decided to try out a new (to us) brand of box wine:

I'll admit that I get a bit squimish about drinking alcohol, let alone wine, from a plastic bag.  I once put a mixed drink in a Nalgene bottle and the drink ended up tasting chemical-ish.  Blech! 
Plus, box wine always conjures up images of college freshman house parties.  Classy, no?  
None the less, we tried the Big House boxed Zinfandal last week and this week we are trying the Big House Red (a blend).  I put the wine carafe to work tonight to classy it up and help the wine breathe.  It seems silly for boxed wine, but it's all mental for me because the wine is actually pretty good for a value wine. 

Affection for wine runs in the family:

Well, hello there! 

The box of wine holds 3 liters and retails for $18.99.  With tax it breaks down to about $5 a bottle... a value wine.  My overall impression with this wine is that it is one of the better tasting $5 wines. 
Here's some verbage from the packaging:
"Instead of 4 glass bottles, you are reducing packaging waste by 92% and carbon emissions by 55%."  Is this suppose to make us feel better about drinking wine from a cardboard box?!  Furthermore, the "patent pending design prevents oxidation.  So every glass tastes as fresh and flavorful as if the wine was just opened, even up to six weeks after your first sip." 
Six Weeks?  Get real!  Here's hoping that within six weeks we'll be back to sampling some finer vino. 

Sunday Busy-ness

I've really been enjoying and taking full advantage of our unstructured weekends.  Last Sunday while Mikey was at work, I went on an organizing binge.  My motivation and inspiration came from my trip to Ikea a couple weeks ago.  I really want to install a geeked-out-organization-to-the-max wardrobe unit in our bedroom.  So, while I wait to save up for the wardrobe, I figured I'd at least start clearing the area in our room for the wardrobe.  This meant I needed to find a new home for the dresser in our room.  Our dresser was my dresser when I was a baby and my mom kindly re-finished it 5 years ago to match our bedroom furniture.  Thankfully, the finish fits in well with the style of our older home so it's easy to re-purpose.

While at Ikea, I purchased new knobs for the dresser and new magazine organizers for Mikey's cooking magazines.  I organized the magazines by the season (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer) for ease of browsing recipes by ingredients that are in season.  Clearly, I need to purchase a couple more magazine organizers as I don't have any "growing" room- the key to making any organizing system work!   

The dresser now resides in our dining room and I'm real happy with how it fits the space.  I don't intend to keep the magazines on display permanently but they will live there until we get a buffet with closed storage some day.  I want a wardrobe system more than a buffet right now!

Of course, the dresser had to be completely emptied and cleaned prior to re-purposing it.  So, the shuffle went like this:
Clothes in bedroom closet--> reorganized to make open shelf space
Clothes in dresser--> stacked & sorted in bedroom closet, some became cleaning rags, some went to the Goodwill pile

I hauled the dresser downstairs and started scheming about how I would fill it.  I decided to fill this dresser with all things kitchen & dining room related.  So, the next shuffle went like this:
Kitchen Linens: Emptied 2 kitchen drawers--> towels & napkins in dresser
Empty Kitchen drawers--> filled with glass Pyrex bowls (they are all finally in one place!)
1 of 4 dresser drawers filled:

Media Storage/TV Stand in Living Room--> Emptied 3 drawers of cookbooks & table linens (clearly, not "media" storage)
Cookbooks, Candles & Linens--> moved to dresser
All of my kitchen & dining room stuff fit in the dresser and there is growing space.  Success!

Now, the media storage drawers were empty in the living room but where was all the media storage, you ask?
The office upstairs, of course!
So, I headed back upstairs and went through all the DVDs, VHS tapes and gaming controls.  I really love the look of baskets organized in drawers, but with no budget for cute baskets, I used what I had: cardboard shoe boxes:

This drawer looks quite familiar to the drawers above, doesn't it?  There is a method to my madness.  Our TV Stand/Media Storage is actually a dresser as well (spotted by my mom at a garage sale a couple years ago) and is stained very similar to my old dresser that now resides in the dining room.  Cohesion at its best!
The best part about all this?  I have an entire drawer in the media/tv dresser to fill with whatever we accumulate in the future.  Cheers to that!

The last round of organizing was filling the now-empty baskets in the office.  I rounded up all our random pictures and albums into one basket and re-shuffled everything on our office shelves.  Everything "breathes" again!

As soon as Mikey got home from work, I overwhelmed him with my excitement of everything I had done that morning.  Per usual, I thought he'd be more excited :)  Totally a girl thing, right?  I think his comment was something like, "Where on earth do you get all this energy?  You're making me feel guilty about how I spend my days off."  Ha!  I just got on a roll.

Next, I recruited Mikey to help me hang some new hooks in our bedroom (sorry, forgot to take pics) and hang our mail sorter & key holder unit in the kitchen.    I feel like our lives are finally back in order after taking so many things off the wall to paint over winter break.

Throughout the day long organizing binge, I also worked on making our contribution for dinner club. We were in charge of dessert this month and the theme was Brinner (Breakfast for Dinner).
So, I made popovers (for the first time ever) and lavender honey butter:

I used Cooks Illustrated recipes which never fail me.  But, since this was my first time with popovers and they can be finicky, I also made Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting just in case:

After such a busy day, we rushed out the door to dinner club and I forgot my camera.  So, I don't have Dinner Club pics but here is what we ate:
Katie & Lyndon brought homemade oat bread with 2 different homemade spreads (one was a cheese spread and the other one was a berry ginger spread)

Frank & Erin made:
-baked egg ramekins with cheese and veggies
-fingerling potatoes
-Erin's famous baked oatmeal
-berry mint smoothies with rum (yum!)
-prosciutto-wrapped asparagus

You can imagine that we were pretty stuffed at this point so the light and airy popovers were a good end to the meal.  Most of us passed on the cupcakes due to exploding stomachs.  Per usual, everything tasted great and we had a wonderful time!

Saturday Fun

Want to know the best way to win over Mikey's heart? 
Bake him his favorite cookie:

Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip- the best combination ever!

I only baked one dozen cookies and then froze the rest of the dough:

These babies rolled up easily and then I "flash froze" them on a plate in the freezer.  Once they were frozen, I put them in a ziplock bag for a later time.  It seems to be working great for portion control!

Baking cookies is my favorite way to spend a Saturday afternoon.  I love to put on some tunes and let my mind wander while I work in the kitchen.  The house smells fantastic afterward and it's fun to surprise Mikey with his favorite treat when he gets home from work.  He surprised me this past Saturday by getting home an hour early so that we could get outside and enjoy the beautiful day.

After eating a cookie or two, we were off with Anna for a nice hilly brisk walk.  It's finally starting to feel like spring.  While on our walk, we talked about what we should have for dinner and Mikey was definitely in the mood to do some grillin and chillin.  After all, grilling is probably his favorite hobby.  Our Saturday was shaping up to be a great day!

After some errands, Mikey put the tunes on and got to work on dinner.  My tasks for dinner were:
-setting the grill up and getting the charcoal chimney lit
-baking the oven fries
-cooking some bacon

Mikey took care of the rest:

Tis the season for asparagus, right?

The grill master:

That, my friends, is an ooey gooey jalapeno cheddar burger: 

With burgers & fries on Mikey's menu, I demanded some veggies in the mix.  Cheers to asparagus:

The meal was fantastic but very filling!  I forgot to mention that Mikey grilled up some onions for the burgers and garnished the asparagus with parmesan cheese:

We finished up dinner just in time for the tip-off of the NCAA semi-final mens basketball games. 
A day full of baking, exercising, grilling, chilling & watching college hoops was an ideal day for us.  I just wish we could have more of them:) 

Getting Closer

After a crazy month of basketball, my dad was able to come up the last weekend in March to finish constructing our guest bed.  We primarily had to cut and assemble the headboard.  We also had to assemble the base and make sure everything was square.
I was quite fond of using the air nailer!!

  Hannah and Matt helped out too:

It takes a lot of extra hands to make sure everything attaches correctly in the final assembly phase.  It's a good thing my dad is meticulous with measuring and squaring everything up. 

And here is is:

It is 100% solid oak.  There's a subtle angle on the headboard to allow for people to sit up and read comfortably.
Mike and I still need to add a few finishing touches like adding the support pieces for the plywood and attaching the headboard to the base. 

 

Next up: Staining & Final Coating

Yippee!!  My goal is have this done by the time our next guests arrive- April 22nd.  Better get hoppin'!