Day of Shopping

I had the day off today so I decided to go shopping. I spent the morning in the yard working on our flower beds with Greg until he left for work, then I spent the morning on Facebook and catching up on my tivo'd episodes of Chelsea Lately. Around 12:00 I left the house and didn't get back until almost 5:00. I don't go shopping very often and when I do, it's usually a quick trip to Target, so it was nice to have an afternoon of shopping.
I started a Kirklands where I got a beautiful fall wreath for 50% off, a black and white jewelry holder that you hang in your closet, and a pretty plate with the letter "W" on it for the kitchen. The purpose of going shopping today was to get a few things for the house and get some ideas of what I want for my birthday/Christmas. I wanted to stick to house things, like frames, pictures, candle holders, etc.
But, I had a coupon for New York & Company, so I stopped by there and managed to spend most of my afternoon in there trying on clothes. I found so many things. I'm so excited. Between their great sales and my 30% off coupon, I bought over $340.00 worth of stuff for only $170.00. Here's some of the things I got. The pictures on their website are not the best. I think the clothes look much cuter on the mannequins in the store all dressed up and with accessories.

I hate these shoes! I think the jeans look much better without those shoes in the picture.

After spending so much at New York & Company, I didn't think it'd be a good idea to go into all the stores I had planned on going in to. So, I went to Bath & Body works and used a coupon for a free product, then did a little bit of Christmas shopping for some gifts. It doesn't count as spending money if you spend it on somebody else. ;)

After this hard day of shopping, I'm going to relax with a cranberry vodka and diet sprite, read my Us Weekly, and watch some Thursday night tv--Survivor, The Community, and The Office.

Weekend

This post is a little late, but we had a great weekend. Friday night we rented "Land of the Lost" with Will Ferrell. It was better than I thought it'd be, but it was still pretty cheesy. I love Will Ferrell though, so he made it worth it. Saturday we went to a pumpkin carving/fall party.

It was raining all day but cleared up as soon as everybody got to the party so we were able to go out in the yard and enjoy a campfire. Greg even went out on a canoe in the lake. It was a lot of fun.
This isn't a great picture, but I wanted to post something from the party.


Sunday we got up early and worked out in the yard. I bought some bulbs to plant. I've never, ever planted flowers before, so it was all very new to me. I planted bulbs while Greg made me a flower bed around our mailbox and extended the flower bed in front of the house. We weren't able to get it completey finished and it's been raining every day since. It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, so hopefully I can get that finished. I can't wait for spring to see how my flowers look.

Before:
Before:

After:

After:



After we worked out in the yard we met my friend and her son to see "Paranormal Activity". I loved it! Greg thought it was kinda boring and stupid, but I really enjoyed it because it'd seemed very realistic and super creepy.

This weekend is Halloween and I can't wait to hand out candy and see all the cute little kids in their costumes. On Sunday we're going to a town about an hour away to do some shopping. I'm hoping to get some fall decorations on sale and get some Christmas shopping done.

Mexican Bean Dip

This is a healthy, weight watcher version of 7 layer dip and only has 1 point per serving. I didn't think I would like this because I didn't think it would compare to regular, fattening 7-layer dip. But, I was pleasantly surprised, it was really good. Of course it's not as good as 7-layer dip, but it's pretty good and much better for you.

Mexican Bean Dip
Points: 1
Servings: 17

* 1 can fat-free refried beans
* 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
* 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
* 1/2 cup light sour cream
* 3/4 cup reduced fat mexican blend cheese
* 1 cup of refrigerated fresh salsa
* 1 can sliced ripe olives (I omitted these because I hate olives)
* 2 tablespoons chopped green onions
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro



1. Combine refried beans, garlic powder, and chili powder in a small bowl, stirring until blended. Spread mixture into bottom of a 9-inch pie plate.
2. Combine sour cream and 1/4 cup cheese, spread sour cream mixture over bean mixture.
3. Combine salsa, olives, green onions, and cilantro; spread salsa mixture over sour cream mixture. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup cheese.
**I read the directions wrong and added all the cheese to the sour cream layer, so my dip will look different**

Southwestern Corn Salad

I tried this salad because it looked so fresh and delicious in the picture. It's good, but it had a strong lime flavor. I think the dressing needed something else, but I'm not sure what. I also think it could use some chopped onion and some tomato.
***AFTER I ORIGINALLY POSTED THIS, I HAD SOME OF THIS SALAD LEFTOVER AND IT WAS DELICIOUS, THE STRONG LIME FLAVOR WAS TONED DOWN A LITTLE AND IT TASTED FRESH. I WOULD SUGGEST REFRIGERATING THIS DISH FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS BEFORE EATING IT***

Southwestern Corn Salad
Points: 2
Servings: 8

* 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
* 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
* 1/2 teaspoon salt'
* 1/4 teaspoon pepper
* 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
* 1 can white corn
* 1 1/4 cup of chopped green pepper, red pepper and yellow pepper
* 1/3 cup sliced green onion
* 1 diced peeled avocado
* 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and mince


1. Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Add black beans and remaining ingredients; toss gently to combine. Serve immediately.

Szechuan Chicken

I thought this chicken was good, I would recommend adding more crushed red pepper if you like things spicy. I served it with Pioneer Woman's Simply Sesame Noodles, which were also delicious, but I didn't get a picture of them.

Szechuan Chicken
Points: 4
Servings: 4

* 1/4 cup chopped green onions
* 1 1/2 tablespoons less-sodium soy sauce
* 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
* 2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce
* 2 teaspoons brown sugar
* 1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
* 1 teaspoon grated, peeled fresh ginger
* 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper
* 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts



1. Combine first 8 ingredients in a large ziploc bag. Add chicken to bag; seal. Marinate in refrigerator 8 hours or overnight, turning occasionally. Remove chicken from bag. discard marinade.
2. Cook in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes or until no longer pink.

WW Quick Posole

This is my favorite Weight Watcher recipe! There's just something about it that I cannot get enough of. I think it's the taco seasoning, I like any recipe that calls for taco seasoning. Greg thought the recipe was alright. It's not one of his favorites, which is fine, more for me! :)

Quick Posole
Points: 4
Servings: 5

* 1 pound lean ground pork
* 1 package taco seasoning
* 1 (15.5oz) can white hominy, rinsed and drained
* 1 (14.5oz) can zesty chili-style diced tomatoes
* 1 (14oz) can fat-free, less-sodium beef broth

1. Cook pork in a large saucepan over medium-high heat until browned, stirring to crumble. Drain, if necessary, and return pork to pain. Sprinkle pork with taco season, and cook, stirring constantly, over medium-high heat for 30 seconds.
2. Stir in hominy, tomatoes, and broth. Cover and bring to a boil; reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes. Ladel into bowls.

Philly Cheesesteak Quesadillas

Inspired by our recent trip to Philly, I made some Philly Cheesesteak Quesadillas for dinner last night. Greg loves quesadillas, so I thought it would be a fun, different twist on his traditional chicken and cheese quesadillas. They turned out really good. This is not a healthy recipe by any means, but I've been trying a ton of Weight Watcher recipes lately, so it was nice to try something different.

Philly Cheesesteak Quesadillas

* 1 small box of Steak-Ums Slice Steak
* 1 onion
* 1 green pepper
* mushrooms
* mozzerella cheese
* hot sauce



Saute onions, green peppers, and mushrooms until soft. Remove from pan. Cook steak according to package directions. Remove from pan. Place tortilla in pan, add cheese, steak and onion/pepper/mushroom mixture. Cook until cheese is melted and tortilla is slightly brown. Remove from pan. Add hot sauce. A big thing in Philly is Cheez Whiz on their cheesesteaks. This quesadilla would be delicious with Cheez Whiz drizzled over top, or on the side to dip the quesadilla in.

Philadelphia

Greg and I took advantage of the Columbus Day weekend and went to Philadelphia to do some sightseeing. We had a lot of fun. We did a lot of walking and saw a lot of things. Of course, we went by the Liberty Bell and got some pictures with that. We also toured the East State Penitentiary, which was the first penitentiary and was were Al Capone stayed when he was locked up. It was very interesting and a little eerie.

We did the daytime tour, they offered a nighttime haunted house, which I thought would be fun, but we didn't want to worry about trying to catch a bus at night. We had enough of a time trying to figure out which bus took us where in the daytime. Parking is super expensive there, so we got a special deal-book a room for two nights, and get hotel parking for free, and we just left our car in the parking lot the entire time. We walked most places, but some we had to take a bus for and we got quite lost. The bus drivers there are really sweet though and helped us get back to our hotel.
We went to some bars both nights that we were there. According to one website I researched before the trip, Philadelphia is the "beer drinking capital". They have several local breweries and almost everything on tap was nothing we had ever heard of, so we had fun going from bar to bar trying different beers out. And of course we had to have a Philly Cheese Steak. It was good, but honestly, I like my dad's better. We also met some fun people at our hotel bar, a girl who just got out of the Navy, her sister and her dad, we had some drinks with them and really enjoyed hanging out with them our last night there.

I love going on trips, it's one of my favorite things to do and I love having a trip planned for the future so I have something to look forward to and plan for. I'm not sure where we're going to go next (I'm not counting trips to see our families over the holidays, that's not sightseeing trips) I'm thinking of Boston, Niagara Falls, or Chicago. We'll see. Check out the pictures from a our trip. You can see all of them at our Shutterfly website.

The penitentiary was especially creepy because of the cloudy day we were having.





We had to get an authentic Philly cheese steak while we were here.


Greg, drinking a local beer.

Taking a soco and lime shot. There were advertised at every bar we went to, so I thought maybe it was a local favorite.

Crunchy Italian Chicken

I've been wanting to try Panko for awhile now. I've seen it on Paula Deen, Rachel Ray, and in several cooking magazines. Panko is Japanese breadcrumbs. When I found a recipe in my Weight Watcher cookbook that called for panko, I had to try it. I goofed up and bought plain panko when the recipe called for italian, so I seasoned the panko with garlic salt, oregano, and Italian seasoning. I liked it. I tasted very similar to ordinary bread crumbs but seemed to coat the chi ken a little better and not clump up so much. I liked this recipe. Greg liked it but thought it was a little plain. Also, I skipped the step where it called for pounding the chicken, because I thought it'd be easier to just cook the chicken a little longer.

Weight Watcher Crunchy Italian Chicken
Points: 6
Servings 2

* 1/3 cup Italian-style panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
* 1 tablespoon grated fresh Parmesan cheese
* 2 (6 ounce) skinless boneless chicken breast halves
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* cooking spray
* 1 cup grape tomatoes


1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. Combine panko and Parmesan cheese in a shallow bowl; set aside
3. Place chicken between 2 sheets of heavy duty plastic wrap, and pound to 1/2 inch thickness using a meat mallet or heavy skillet. Sprinkle chicken with pepper. Dredge chicken breasts in panko mixture, pressing mixture onto chicken, if necessary.
4. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add chicken to pan, and cook 3 minutes. Coat top of chicken with cooking spray; turn and cook 3 minutes
5. Transfer chicken to baking sheet, and cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 450 for 5 to 6 minutes or until done.
6. While chicken bakes, add tomatoes to hot skillet, and cook over medium-high heat 5 minutes or until tomatoes begin to burs. Serve tomatoes over chicken.



I got this out of Weight Watchers 20 minute recipes

Songs I'm Loving Right Now

There are so many songs out now that I'm absolutely loving! I spent an embarrassing amount of time the other day on the Billboard website seeing what songs were out right now. I never listen the radio in my car, I listen to my cds, so the only way for me to find out what songs are out are to look it up. Here are some of my favorites that are out right now. I wanted to post a video of all of them, even if it wasn't an "official" video, just so you wouldn't have to go to another website to hear them, but some of the videos on youtube disabled the code to copy and paste them on your blog, so I just uploaded the lyrics video. As you can see from the videos below, I like every type of music--rap, r&b, pop, country, dance, etc.

"Meet Me Halfway" Black Eyed Peas


"Watchu Say" Jason Derulo


"Down" Jay Sean featuring Lil' Wayne


"Sweet Dreams" Beyonce
See the real video Here




"Cowboy Casanova" Carrie Underwood
See the real video here



"Love Your Love The Most" Eric Church


"Hotel Room Service" Pitbull
See the real video here


"Party In the USA" Miley Cyrus


My favorite group right now is LMFAO. I went and bought their cd and absolutely love it. I like almost every song. My favorites are "La La La", "Yes" and "Scream My Name"

Apple Festival

The weather was so beautiful this weekend. I love fall, it is my favorite time of year. I love being able to have the windows open. We took advantage of this great weather and went to an Apple Festival at Carter Mountain Apple Orchard. They had hay rides, food, crafts, wine tasting, pick your own apples, etc. The wine tasting was fun, we ended up finding some new wines that we really liked. We have several apple orchards around, so I'm going to try some new apple recipes this month. I have some homemade applesauce cooking in the crock pot right now, if it turns out good, I'll post the recipe on here. I can't wait to do more fall activities like this. Every year we go to a pumpkin patch and try to go to a corn maize. We've been doing it ever since we started living together in Tucson, when we had to drive over an hour to get to the nearest pumpkin patch.

Here's some pictures from this weekend.

Spicy Stir-Fried Chicken and Spinach

We tried this weight watcher recipe for dinner the other night and we both liked it. It used a couple of things that I have never cooked with before, like chili sauce and Chinese noodles and one ingredient that I've never heard of before--Ponzu sauce. I don't know if this is a common ingredient that most people know about, but I had never heard of it. You can find it in the Asian section of your supermarket with the soy sauce. It's a citrus soy sauce/dressing and it wasn't expensive. Despite the name, this dish wasn't very spicy, so if you like spice, try adding more chili sauce. Also, we added soy sauce to ours which added some extra flavor.

Weight Watcher Spicy Stir-Fried Chicken and Spinach
Points: 5
Servings: 4

Ingredients
* 3/4 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
* 3 tablespoons ponzu sauce (it's a citrus-y soy sauce)
* 1 tablespoon cornstarch
* 2 teaspoons chili sauce
* 1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
* 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
* cooking spray
* 2 garlic gloves, minced
* 1 8oz package presliced mushrooms
* 1 pound chicken breast, cut into 1-inch pieces
* 1 6oz package fresh baby spinach
* 1/2 cup cut green onions
* 2 cups hot cooked Chinese noodles
* 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
* chopped green onions, for garnish



1. Combine first 6 ingredients in a bowl; stir with a whisk. Set aside. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add garlic; saute 30 seconds. Add mushroom; saute 4 minutes. Remove from pan.
2. Coat pan with cooking spray; add chicken, and cook 4 to 5 minutes. Add reserved sauce mixture to pan; bring to a boil, and cook 1 minute. Reduce heat. Add spinach and green onions; cook 1 to 2 minutes or until spinach wilts. Add reserved mushroom mixture and noodles; toss gently to combine, and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Garnish with green onions, if desired, and serve immediately.





I got this recipe out of 20 Minute Recipes.

Fall TV

I was very excited for the new seasons of my favorite shows this fall. Several posts ago, I said I would post my reviews/opinions of the shows I'm watching this fall, so here it goes.

The Community- I'm not very impressed. I had high hopes for this show since it stars Joel Mchale, who I absolutely love. I watch his show, "The Soup" on E! every week and he's so funny. I was so excited when I heard he had a comedy coming to NBC this fall, but unfortunately, it's not that good. It's kinda cheesy. It's not really funny and it's a little boring. I've only seen two episodes, so I'm going to give it a little more time. I really hope it gets better.

Survivor- I love this show. I really look forward to watching this every Thursday evening. It's the only show we watch live. Most shows we tivo and watch a few days later, but not this show. We are always so excited to see what's going to happen next. This season there is a hateful jerk on there named Russell. He's an awful person and so full of himself. He's mean and is only there to make everybody miserable. He owns an oil company and has made it clear that he doesn't need the money, he's just on there to manipulate people. It's so annoying. There was another jerk on there to, Ben, but he got voted out last night. I'm not sure who I want to win the game yet. I have some people I like, Jaison, Ashley, & Mick, but it's still a little early for me to have a favorite.

The Office- I absolutely love this show and will never get tired of it. Some shows stop being funny after a couple of seasons but not this show. It's hilarious. And next week Pam & Jim get married, which I can't wait to see. They are the cutest couple ever.

How I Met Your Mother- This show is really funny. My favorite character is Barney played by Neil Patrick Harris (Dougie Howser).

Heroes- We have the first 2 episodes of this season tivo'd, we're currently watching season 3 on dvd and want to get caught up before we start watching season 4, so I don't know how this season is so far, but I'm sure it's good. I love Heroes. It's not really my type of tv show, I usually like reality shows and comedies, but there's something addicting about this show. It's so good. Plus, it's full of hot guys!

The Amazing Race- this is the first time we've ever watched this show and we've only seen 1 episode, but I think we're going to like it. The first episode was 2 hours, which is way too long for me, but other than that, it was pretty good. I like seeing how the teams treat each other when they're stressed out. Some teams are so positive and supportive and others are so hateful.

And 2 shows that I know I'm way too old to be watching but I just can't help myself.

The Hills- I haven't watched this in a couple of seasons because it was so
ridiculous. It's very staged and kinda boring, but then this season they brought back Kristin Cavelerri from Laguna Beach, so I had to watch it. I love Laguna Beach. The first episode had a lot of drama in it, so I'm hooked. I will have to watch the entire season now. Damnit.

Real World/Road Rules Challenge- I love these challenges. I cannot get enough. I've been looking forward to this one ever since the last one ended. They are so full of drama, I just can't stop watching. I've been addicted to the challenges for quite some time, so I know all the players and who they don't like, who they've dated, etc. All they do is compete during the day and drink and party at night, which has led to some great fights. I know that this show is so ridiculous and stupid and that I'm far too old to be watching it, but I just can't help it. It's one of my favorite shows!

Friday

It's "Show Us Your Life" over on Kelly's Korner. This week's theme is "Best Baby Gear". No babies for me yet, so I didn't have anything to post for this, but I love Kelly's Korner and read it every day. So, I wanted to post a link for everybody so they could go check it out. next week is "Showing off your Team, Tailgating, Etc".

Weight Watchers is going good. I lost another 2.4lbs this week. I'm very excited. I love trying all the new recipes out of my Weight Watcher's cookbooks, it makes it much easier to stick to it when I have fun things to cook. I'm so glad I started Weight Watchers before the holidays because now I feel that I'm prepared to handle all the temptation that comes with the holidays.

Well, I'm off to plan our upcoming trip to Philly. I would love to hear ideas of things to do, places to see, and restaurants to eat at.