Master Bedroom "Makeover"

This week Aaron was in California for work and I decided to finish another room in the house (without telling him and as I am writing this he is on his way home from the airport!). All I did was paint and accessorize just a little bit and it made a really big difference. I'm sure I'll move things around but it is one more item to check off the list!

 

Our Current Weekend Activity

This is what our weekends have entailed for the past few months and this Saturday will be no different. This weekend we are headed to West Palm Beach for the Surfin 7's Tournament. 

Of course, we always find time in the weekend for a little of this:

Hotel Williamson

I'm going to add "install revolving door" to the honey-do list. Seriously! Since March 15th we had 31 visitors for a total of 36 days. I've never made so many beds in my life! Although, we love having everyone coming to visit us and can't wait for the next group to come. We spent 4 1/2 years in Iowa and the only people who visited us were our parents, my grandparents, my sister and our niece. Here are a few pictures from our visitors:

Benjamin, Molly & Caleb

Aunt Beth Anne, Aunt Cheryl, Adam, Andrew, Alex, Brian & Lauren

Mom & Dad

Aaron & his Mom

Nick, Carinne & Madison

Grandma & Grandpa Downs

Ven, Anu, Tanmay & baby (due in Sept)

Iowa friends!! Mike & Nikki

This guy hung out on our patio for a long time

Caleb, Molly, Michaela, Hudson & Benjamin

The best dinner I've made in a long time...

I made an amazing dinner tonight, it was super easy and delicious. I cut the recipe in half and it worked out perfectly. I will probably make the rice as a side dish for another dinner, it was that good! I had regular cooking rice so I cooked it in my rice cooker, but it's all the same. I didn't have a green bell pepper so I left that out. We had ours with roasted asparagus and cranberry sauce.

Ingredients

4 Cornish game hens, about 1 1/4 pounds each, giblets removed and discarded

Salt and ground black pepper

2 tsp olive oil

1/2 cup minced scallions

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp dried thyme

1 cup instant brown rice

1 1/2 cups chicken broth, divided

1 cup sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, drained and chopped

1 small green bellpepper, chopped

Prepared cranberry sauce, optional

Directions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Rinse hens inside and out and pat dry. Season the hens, inside and out, with salt and black pepper. Place hens in a large roasting pan and set aside.

Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add scallions and garlic and saute 2 minutes. Add brown rice and thyme and stir to combine. Add 1 cup of the chicken broth, cover and bring mixture to a simmer. Allow rice to cook for 3 minutes then add the sun-dried tomatoes and bell pepper. Season, to taste, with salt and black pepper.

Remove from heat and spoon rice mixture loosely into cavity of hens. Pour remaining 1/2 cup of chicken broth into bottom of pan. Place hens in oven and immediately reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until juices from thigh run clear when pierced with a fork, basting every 15 minutes with the pan juices. Remove the hens from the oven and transfer to a platter. Pour the pan juices over top and serve.

The weather here is finally getting AWESOME! The flip-flop tan has started (I will spare you a picture of my foot, gross!). We woke up this morning to a heavy fog in the backyard.. and by 9am it was sunny and clear.

Hopefully The First of Many..

I have finally decided to create my own blog rather than only being a blog-stalker. We'll see how it goes. As you can see by the title of our blog, we are not very exciting people so I'll try to make this as stimulating as possible.

This past weekend we went to Air Fest at MacDill AFB in Tampa. We waited for 45 minutes to get a into the base and get a parking spot, then another 1 1/2 hours to get into the actual festival. They were expecting 200,000 people to attend yesterday alone. No surprise since it's been raining and storming all day today. The weather was gorgeous and we got a little sunburn. Tennessee won against Ohio University yesterday and made it into the Elite Eight, which was a great way to end the day.. now we are just waiting to see who they will play on Thursday. Here are a few shots from the weekend: