Well as I said yesterday, we just adopted a 13 week old basset hound puppy. We actually got her for free if you can believe that. The office manager at my school was giving her away and Ryan and I jumped on the offer to get a wonderful dog without the hefty price tag. She is just so beautiful and smart and loving already. We have decided to name her Ginny Joanna, she is a red-head! Ginny loves her belly rubs and today we got her some fun chewy toys that she is totally into. Her ears are super long and she gets them in her water bowl and steps on them all the time, which totally cracks me up! We know she’ll be a lot of work, but the love she has already shown us will make it all worth it. Ryan and I are just so happy Ginny is part of our family. So without further ado here are two pictures showing her in all her puppy cuteness!

Just look at those beautiful eyes and big floppy ears. Here she is trying to convince me to give her food, she is a beggar already, which we are working on breaking.

Last night I put her on the couch when Kirk and Nikki were over and she fell asleep between Nikki and I belly up which was too cute and funny, that we had to put a blanket over her! 

I’ll post more pictures soon, but for now we are just enjoying our new puppy life!

~Cheers

So Ryan and I just adopted a sweet little 13 week old basset hound puppy, from someone at my work! She is so cute, I’ve wanted a puppy for forever. Now we just need a name I’m toying around with different Harry Potter names. We’ll see what sticks. I’ll post pictures tomorrow!

Well in light of the fact that Ryan and I have an unworking, white sanatorium of a kitchen and an unreasonable list of expenses, we have ventured into the world of eating at home every night and doing so with only two kitchen appliances: a toaster oven and a rice cooker. That’s right, no microwave, stove, or oven here. Well let me just tell you it has not been pretty nor easy. I am a delicate creature I like my food best when prepared by someone else, and served with a nice long wine list thank you very much. But no… “the budget” doesn’t allow such wonderful experiences, “the budget” doesn’t allow for Taco Bell or Sonic either, much to my dismay.

So into the awful kitchen I have ventured. Over the past 3 weeks I have become a toaster chef! In the beginning it was mainly just Eggos, but I have become better. I have made french bread pizza, nice salads with cheese toast, english muffin pizza, and sourdough bread pizza… Notice a trend? Well to go along with the saving money thing turkey pepperoni, cheese, and tomato sauce were pretty much what we had. Check out the sourdough pizza from last night. It was actually pretty good.

Wine makes this 1000 times better – but on its own it was good too!

Well even me, who really really likes pizza needs a change. Last week when the gas company came to hook up our stove and it didn’t work I almost cried because all I wanted was pasta! Ryan got the message and surprised me with the best meal of bowtie pasta and tomato sauce. How did he make it? I wondered. He made it in the rice cooker! That’s right… in a pinch you to can make pasta in a rice cooker,  and it turns out just as delicious as on the stove. So tonight I took the same idea and applied to another pasta dish. I made crab fettuccine alfredo. It was so good. I just used the refrigerator fettuccine noodles, Trader Joe’s pre-made alfredo, and a can of crab (that my mom and I hand canned two summers ago – still so good). The fridge noodles cooked super fast in the rice cooker and then I just stirred the sauce and crab over the hot noodles. 

The Ingredients

The Process

The Finished Product!

I’m super proud because I have self-proclaimed my dislike of the domestic job of cooking, but I am getting better, getting over my aversion to cooking and becoming more creative with my ideas and dishes to boot! I think its good… and I know it will all be worth it when I have my shiny new kitchen to use and enjoy, *fingers crossed*, in the very near future. Stay tuned I might let you in on more of my adventures with the toaster and rice cooker. I have some things up my chef sleeve, at least I think I do!

~Cheers

Hi to anyone who actually still reads this,

Well I am officially awful at blogging. But to justify the last few weeks have been horrendously busy. In July I was away visiting my family in beautiful Birch Bay, and thus I was almost completely away from all of civilization. My Grandma’s cabin where I spent my summer has no cable let alone internet. It was a perfect holiday, so relaxing and fun to see my whole family. It made me wonder why I ever wanted to move to Phoenix, but then I remember, ahh yes, jobs! Anyways so that is my bullshit excuse for where I was in July. Now you wonder, “well its the end of August, Andrea, explain that huh?”

Well August has kind of slipped through my fingers. Upon my arrival into bloody hot Phoenix, I went straight back to work in my classroom, finishing the purge of my classroom. I am happy to say that now it is a functional and cute learning space, albeit a bit tiny. In conjunction with that, we began our pack up and prepared for the big moving day. My mom arrived to help the 29th of July and we packed and packed and cleaned and cleaned. The 1st of August was the big moving day. Our wonderful friends Kirk and Nikki helped us load our worldly possessions into a U-Haul and we caravanned them to the new house! Did I mention it was 115 degrees that day? See pictures below of us moving….

Ryan and Kirk move the couch.

…and the bookcase, and then everything else too

Andrea and Nikki look adorable!

Well when we got to the house and all our stuff was here, we sat. And we sat, and we were officially overwhelmed. Thus began a new phase in Ryan and I’s lives in which we got our home improvement handy man skills on. Now if you had asked people last month, “Are Ryan and Andrea handy?” they would have laughed in your face. But now, hah, we have begun to prove the doubters wrong. Ryan and I have single handedly (or is it duel handedly), changed 6 plugs in our house to 3-prong from 2-prong, we have cleaned and lined all the shelves in the kitchen and bathroom, hung a shower curtain, and our biggest accomplishment to date… we replumbed our bathroom sink! Check it out in all its nastiness below.

Am I right, or am I right… disgusting!

And there it is… so fresh and so clean!

Anyways the house is more work than we could have ever imagined. I think when I thought of living here I only ever pictured myself in the house when it was all finished. Well that is certainly not the reality of having an old house. The problems come quicker than we can fix them, such as the gas not working to the stove, and the sunroom leaking (it rained cats and dogs last night and the water poured in). We are going slow and working it all out though. We are getting quotes to get the wall separating the kitchen from the rest of the house torn down, and have big dreams for our perfect little kitchen. More of that to come as it all unfolds. Mostly all the boxes are unpacked, and I have begun to really get in there and clean everything to our standards. Also I got rid of 3 big boxes of clothes, but all of our stuff still didn’t fit so after 2 weeks of searching on Craigslist we finally got this beauty for $60 today. The best thing is they delivered it!

Ahh… isn’t just so pretty?

Anyways that has been our life these last 2 months, I am just now getting in the swing of being a homeowner and a teacher, sometimes I feel like I can’t catch my breath I’ve been so busy.

I do promise to update more regularly from here on out, I have a lot to say. So many plans, and so little money to execute them all. Can Ryan and I do it? Stay tuned… this blog will kickass I guarantee it!

Cheers…