First House Disappointment

First, a few updates. When we first decided to buy a house up here we were planning on buying a townhome. We've decided that it's worth a little more money to us to be able to get a single family home. A yard is important to both of us. Up here, townhomes with a decent size yard really aren't much cheaper than a single family home.

We've been to look at houses a couple times since we've been back from vacation. We had a favorite that I haven't had a chance to post about yet. It was in a great location, it had a great yard & an AMAZING pantry! The storage was wonderful. Of course there were a few nit picky things we didn't like. The only real downfalls were that there was no bathroom on the main level & the basement didn't have outside access. It was also a little over our budget but it had only been on the market for about 2 weeks. We were confident that the price would come down since the comps were a little lower.

I fell in love with the house. I pictured exactly what I was going to do with the kitchen, how we were going to arrange our furniture, everything. I had it all planned out.

I checked online every day to see if the price dropped or if anything else changed. It went under contract last week. I was SO disappointed. We don't have long at all so I was sure the house would still be available.

I kind of expected something like this to happen. I guess I just hoped it wouldn't. It's ok though. I've moved on. We just weren't meant to be in that house. We rode around yesterday & found a few houses we want to look at with our agent. We'll be going home next weekend for a wedding. Hopefully we'll get a chance to look at a house or 2 before we go home.

Bananas Foster with Sweet Cinnamon Chips

Bananas Foster

Ingredients
- 2 ripe bananas
- 2 T butter
- 1/3 lightly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup rum
1/8 t cinnamon

Directions
- Peel bananas, cut them into 8 pieces each. Set aside.
- Melt butter in 10 in. skillet over med-high heat. Add brown sugar, rum & cinnamon. Stir & cook until mixture comes to a boil (about 2 minutes). Reduce to medium & cook (stirring constantly) until the sauce begins to thicken (about 2 more minutes).
- Add the bananas, stirring constantly but gently. Cook until heated through, about 3 minutes.
- Remove skillet from heat. Serve with ice cream & cinnamon ships.

YUM! I would have probably served this with vanilla ice cream. But...my husband lives with me and he picked this ice cream. Chocolate is a definite requirement for him when it comes to ice cream. We got fudge swirl & I'm glad we did :-)

Cinnamon Chips

Ingredients
- 2 large flour tortillas
- 3 T butter, melted
- 2 T sugar
- 1 t cinnamon

Directions
- Preheat oven to 375
- Stack tortillas & cut into 8 equal triangles (a pizza cutter makes this super easy)
- Combine sugar & cinnamon
- Drag 1 side of each triangle through melted butter, place, butter side up on baking sheet. Sprinkle evenly with cinnamon sugar
- Bake until the chips begin to barely crisp (8 minutes) Transfer to serving to a serving plate to cool & crisp.

These are SO good! I've made them twice & I haven't gotten them quite right. The first time they seemed too soft so I baked them a little longer & some of them got burnt (as you can tell in my picture). The second time I took them out just a minute or 2 sooner & they didn't harden as much as I would like. My oven sucks.

Tomatillo Salsa & Tortilla Casserole

Mexican food is probably my absolute favorite. The weekend after we got back from vacation I was definitely craving some. I decided I would attempt to make some tomatillo salsa. I'm glad I did...it was YUM! Pretty easy too.

Tomatillo Salsa


Ingredients
-1 cup tomatillos, husked & finely chopped
- 1/3 cup onion, chopped
- 2 serrano (or jalapeno) peppers, chopped
- 2 T cilantro
- 2 cloves garlic, minced

(The original recipe had celery. I hate celery. I left that out.)


Directions
husk the tomatillos, just throw everything in the food processor whole. Pulse until it looks the way you want it to. I didn't do this the first time I made it. I chopped everything by hand. It didn't take that long but the food processor route only took about 30 seconds. I'll definitely stick to this way now.

Tortilla Casserole


Ingredients
- 6 6in. corn tortillas
- 2 c shredded cheddar cheese
- 1/2 c chopped onion
- 1 1/2 c tomatillo salsa
- 1/3 c dairy sour cream
- 1 T water
- 1 med. avacado

(I added chopped chicken to this recipe, it just didn't sound very filling as-is)

Directions
Layer tortillas, cheese, onion, tomatillo salsa & chicken in a greased 2-qt baking dish. (Kind of like you would layer a lasagna) Sprinkle remaining cheese over top of casserole when you're finished layering. Bake, covered, at 350 for about 25 minutes.

Combine sour cream & water in a small bowl. Drizzle over casserole & garnish with avacado & cilantro.

I got both of these recipes from this book. It has lots of delicious recipes.

Miami!

On our last day with my family, we drove to Melbourne (where we were originally planning on moving in a year or so! haha) for John to pick us up. We had breakfast with my family & said our goodbyes. It was really hard for me. I was excited to spend time in Miami with Anna & John but I wasn't ready to leave my family just yet. It didn't matter, I had to.

We had about a 3 hour drive to Miami so this gave us plenty of time to catch up & talk about what we would do over the next few days. Once we got there I wasn't really sad about leaving my family anymore. We spent our first day there at South Beach. It was fun but it was crowded. Years ago it probably would have been my favorite of the beaches we went to.

We saw a cruise ship departing while we were there.

On the second day we went to a beach that wasn't South Beach. I have no idea where it was, but it was my favorite beach we went to.


A Man O' War. They sting. It hurts. But it didn't sting me :-) I knew it was safe to touch the top because of Finding Nemo, of course! I also have a picture of me picking it up, but it's a horrible picture of me. I refuse to post it.

On our third day we drove down to Key Largo where we rented a boat. It was super windy and a bit chilly but we had a ton of fun still. There was a small craft advisory because of the winds. We were supposed to stay pretty close because of that. We stopped at one area of the reef & the water was SUPER choppy & cloudy. We couldn't see a thing! Because of this we decided to ignore the rules & go out a little more. I'm so glad we did. The second place was WAY better. I don't have any of my own pictures from this day because I lost my awesome underwater camera. So...I decided to steal some from Anna :-)

Snorkel gear is so sexy.

Barracuda. Josh's favorite. I'm kidding...he hated them. We saw several.

The next day we just stayed around the house to hang out during the day. We slept in, played cornhole & just had a good time catching up. We went out for dinner that night. We found an Irish restaurant named John Martin's. haha. The food was SO good! I got a fisherman's pie. It's like a shepherd's pie but with seafood instead of beef. SO good! A few pics borrowed from Anna :-)

Our last full day was spent at another beach. I was excited because this one had a lighthouse! The Martins took this one while we were walking toward the lighthouse. I like it :-)

One of my favorite pictures I took during the trip.

From the top of the lighthouse. You can see downtown Miami in the background.

The lighthouse was beautiful but the beach itself was a little dirty :-/ This day it was way too cold to get in so we just played a bunch of Bocce.

He's so cute! I've never seen a raccoon on the beach. He tried to steal food from the boys.

We saw lots of sailboats...we decided it was a sailing class.

We spent the rest of the night catching up & playing games. I love hanging out with the Martins. They're our best friends & every time we visit everything just falls into place. It doesn't feel like it's been forever since we've seen each other. This time I guess it really wasn't, we saw each other over New Years. This time it will be longer. We'll probably get to visit with them in October. We decided that we'll try to visit each other once a year. Then we'll at least get to visit twice a year plus Christmas :-)

Miami

Disney World!

I can't believe it's been over a month since I've blogged! I have SO much to catch up on. Of course, I'll split it up :-)

At the end of February Josh and I took a much needed vacation. We spent the first half of it at Disney World with my sister, niece & dad. I can't remember the last time we went on a family vacation so this was LONG overdue.

We got a little bit of snow a few days before we left for Florida. This picture was taken on our balcony the morning we left. I wore flip flops & a hoodie to the airport. I got lots of crazy looks :-) I didn't care.

We flew into Jacksonville, FL & rode the rest of the way with my family. I'm glad we didn't fly into Orlando. This gave us time to just catch up. We spent 4 days at Disney World. One day for each park. The first day was short so we chose the park with the smallest amount of things for Natalia to do. This was definitely a good choice. I think the only thing she really enjoyed was the Toy Story ride...that was an hour & a half wait. Waiting in line for an hour and a half with an impatient toddler isn't on the top of my list of things to do on vacation. This picture was taken about half way through the line.

The next day we went to Magic Kingdom. Of course she loved it there. There is so much for a kid her age to do there. This is where she met her first characters. She was so good with them! She was SO scared of them when we took her to Disney a few years back. She wasn't even 2 yet.

I love this picture. She couldn't find us in the crowd so she just waved all the way around. Haha.
Everyone loved Animal Kingdom. It's like a ginormous zoo...but better :-) Natalia took this picture (of course I was holding the camera, she just pushed the button). We took tons of pictures on the safari ride but she said the baby elephant was her favorite.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture we took of all of us. We were so focused on doing as much as we could that we didn't stop to take many pictures. I really wish we would have...my hair looks horrible in this one ;-)
Natalia with Goofy. He is the only character she really opened up with. She loved him. His line wasn't super long so she got to play around with him for a little bit.

She's playing with his whiskers in this one. I have a video of this but she looks like she's slapping him. Haha.


Of course, Goofy holds a special place in my heart too ;-)


By the end of the trip...and each day...this is pretty much what we all felt like.


We had such a great time & I hope we get to take another family vacation before so long. The next one will definitely involve a day of relaxation. Walking around those parks all day were much more tiring than they used to be. We used to do it with not problem. Of course, that was before we were both used to desk jobs!

Texas Cowboy's Pie

I checked this book out at the library recently. It's filled with tons of fast & inexpensive recipes, along with shopping, food storage & nutrition tips. I've tried two of them already & this was my favorite. My mom used to make Shepherd's Pie every once in a while when I was younger. I had completely forgotten about it until I saw this recipe. It's very different from the Shepherd's Pie my mom used to make, but it's delicious! I made a few changes from the original, of course. This is a great way to utilize left over mashed potatoes or beef. The recipe calls for shredded beef but I used ground beef. Here is what I did:

Ingredients
-1 lb ground beef
- 1 cup mild salsa
- 1 t chili powder
- 1 t cumin
- 1 cup frozen corn
- 1/2 cup diced greed peppers
- 1/2 cup diced red peppers
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 2 1/2 cups mashed potatoes
- 1 T butter
- 1 cup shredded cheese (I used cheddar)

Directions
Turn broiler to high. Brown ground beef, add in corn, peppers, seasonings & salsa. Cook for a few minutes & add sour cream. (If you happen to have any other leftover beef you can just add all these ingredients & microwave for 4 minutes). Season mashed potatoes to taste & heat for 4 minutes (whatever you do, don't use instant mashed potatoes, they're gross). Spoon potatoes over beef mixture in 8 in. baking dish. Add cheese & place under broiler until cheese is bubbly, about 2-3 minutes.

This was yummy & SO fast. It's perfect for a busy night.