sproost.com

That's my new favorite website. You take a quiz...they define your home furnishing style.  Turns out they're pretty accurate. I'm 67% wine country, 33% Nantucket.  In my words, "casual with warm tones." Anyway, then they show multiple pieces of furniture that fits your style and budget, and you're on to designing your whole house! Very fun. And extremely addicting.

sproost.com

Baking for the Halibut

I am happily blogging away in a clean kitchen waiting for dinner to finish cooking in the oven. Why?  Because I have prepared my favorite baked halibut.  How? Because it is oh so easy to prepare. For all you fish loving people I am including the recipe.

3 lbs. halibut
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 tsp. dried dill weed
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
Paprika

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place halibut in 9"x13" baking dish. Combine sour cream, Parmesan cheese, butter, dill, salt and pepper; spoon over halibut. Cover and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover; sprinkle with paprika. Bake 10-15 minutes longer or until fish flakes easily with a fork. Do Not Overbake.

(The title is a goofy family joke which you may or may not get!)

A Rambling

We're settled. At least as much as we plan on settling in this particular house. In the living room, we have a conglomeration of furniture consisting of two sofas, one recliner, one upholstered rocking chair, a piano, one glass display cabinet, one black console table, one media cabinet, one end table,and one floor lamp all in one very small room.  It looks like a really disorganized furniture showroom.

And we still have a 10' by 20' storage unit completely packed top to bottom with stuff. Now here's the interesting part. We don't even miss the things we don't have. William and I did pull out a few boxes of kitchen stuff...dishes, glasses, a few baking dishes, flatware, so we could function. Of course, I retrieved the essentials...KitchenAid mixer, food processor, ice cream maker, waffle iron, cookie sheets, muffin tin, and crockpot!

So, the moral of this rambling?  We put in storage every little thing we felt we couldn't live without. Guess what?    WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS SO IMPORTANT, REALLY ISN'T. 

Dream Bike

Yesterday, I test drove (rode) my birthday present...a new Electra Townie bicycle. No, it isn't my birthday, yet. But I've had my eye on this bike for many months now. I had seen it at REI here in Fresno back in June when I flew down to find us a place to live, but they no longer had it in stock, and informed Sean that it was backordered at the manufacturer.  PANIC!  Sean decided we needed to find one in stock immediately, so that's what we did.  Right here in Fresno at Stephen's Bicycles and test drive it I did. All around the driveways and alleys behind the store. It is such fun to ride and it makes me smile. And I love it! And it's sitting in our garage right now. And Sean won't let me ride it until September 23!

Cookbook Preview

I never realized how many recipes I've collected over the years. In my quest to be ultra organized (or maybe just my quest to be able to find recipes when I want them), I am making my very own cookbook. I am typing all my recipes into one Word document, and then I'll make a trip to Kinko's and have it printed.  And I'll never have to look for a missing recipe again! That is until I start collecting more recipes. I guess I'll have to plan on compiling Volume II in another 50 years!

This is the cover for my book. Had a little problem getting an image of it in an uploadable format so it's a little (ok, maybe quite a bit) stretched out; but you get the idea.