What happens when People get bored at our house...

I am a brunette. I have a nice medium brown color, but every once in a while I think about doing something DRASTIC... Well, when you mix that feeling with boredom, this is what you get...

It starts out innocent enough...

And I end up with red hair...

Husband came home and saw me in process, and said something along the lines of, "Let's do something crazy to my hair." So, this is what we did...

I had some FIRE ENGINE RED hair color in the closet... don't ask, I just did. ha. So, I pulled out my developer and mixed it up...

(The above picture is Husband in process)...

 (He likes to maintain anonymity).

And the end result is pretty crazy if I do say so myself...
It's always a party over here! ha ha.

With Love,
Suz

Mommy and Son day date

I took little lamb to go see HOW TO TRAIN A DRAGON and then to Costco for a Hot dog... We had lots of fun. 

Here we are after the movie... Look at that face! He is so beautiful.
Here's another one in case you couldn't tell from the last picture...

He loves Costco Dogs and "Medowade." (Lemonade)

The movie was great, and so was the company. Love that little one oodles.

With Love,
Suz

I have found some new blogs...

I LOVE finding new blogs. Especially if they are devoted to being gluten free. It just makes me so happy to know that there are others out there who make my life so much easier with their wonderful ideas and beautiful dishes that are delicious and inspiring. I also love to read the stories of the people behind the blogs...

Here are a few new favorites.

Simply Sugar and Gluten Free (Seriously her life story is mine for the most part)
She Let Them Eat Cake (This lady rocks!)
Adventures of a Gluten Free Mom (Her stuff is SO beautiful)
Living Free (This is wonderful because she cooks without Dairy, Gluten or Sugar!)
Gluten Free Easily (Just browsed her site, and things are looking pretty good!)
Gluten Free Gidget (Super yummy stuff here!)
Cook it Allergy Free! (Some yummy recipes and good info on her site)
The Spunky Coconut (She's Casein/Gluten/Sugar free and also has some RAW recipes too!)
Z's Cup of Tea (Grain/Gluten/Dairy/Sugar Free!)
The Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen (She won me over with her Avocado Fudge-scicles)
Celiac Teen (How awesome is this girl? She's 17 and a whiz in the GF kitchen!)

And of course here are some old standby's that I still lurve.

The Gluten Free Goddess (AKA Karina's Kitchen... she is amazing)
Elana's Pantry (She cooks amazing things)
Ginger Lemon Girl (Awesome)
Gluten Free Mommy (She is so cool for so many reasons)


Today marks day one of being SUGAR FREE as well as GLUTEN FREE. I will be slowly but surely cutting out my DAIRY as well. So, blogs that address all THREE to me, are AMAZING.

With Love,
Suz

SCULPTURE or WATERCOLOR?

You tell me... Should I take sculpture or watercolor in the Fall? They are both offered at the same time, and I'm on the waitlist for both. I have a pretty good chance of getting in to both of them, so I wonder what you think.

Should I show up on the first day of school to the sculpture class or the watercolor class?

With Love,
Suz

I'm back... with a recipe!

I know I've been a real slacker lately. I promise it isn't because I hate blogging... in fact, it's just because I haven't really known what to write about. I've had a bad case of bloggers block.

Tonight, I made Ez and myself some nummy dinner. I'll tell you all about it.

I made it up on the fly, trying to think of something Mediterranean/Italian but that was Gluten Free (of course) and light... I didn't want anything too heavy. Summertime is not for super heavy saucy dishes in my mind.

So, I looked at what ingredients I had on hand.

Canned tomatoes and black olives, white rice (I would recommend brown rice, but I didn't have the time to cook rice for 80 minutes) fresh baby spinach, minced garlic, onion powder, fresh whole white mushrooms (the biggest I've ever seen!) olive oil, and dried basil... what to make?

So, I decided on a rice goulash of sorts. I call it...

SPINACH & STUFF RICE...
(I'm not too creative I guess! ha ha) 
And it looks a little something like this:

 
I started out making the plain rice... I usually have it on hand already made so that I can cut my cooking time down exponentially. As I said, I prefer brown rice, but decided on the quick route today with white rice.

Then, I got out a large bowl, and my other ingredients. 

1 1/2 - 2 cups CUT FRESH BABY SPINACH (I love the big bag of it at Costco)
1 Can of CANNED DICED TOMATOES (with the juice)
1 can of CANNED LARGE BLACK OLIVES
1-2 cups of FRESH WHOLE (EXTRA LARGE) WHITE MUSHROOMS


Take the baby spinach, and cut it... I guess you could use a food processor, but I wanted mine a little larger pieces so I used my kitchen scissors. (It made about 1 1/2-2 cups of spinach) then put it in the bowl.

Then I took the canned diced tomatoes and added the tomatoes and the juice to the spinach in the bowl. 


Then I put the large black olives in to my Vita Mix 5200 and chopped them finely (this was more for my toddler's benefit... if veg is too big, he usually turns up his nose so I have to hide it).  I then added the finely chopped olives to the bowl. 

I then chopped up the mushrooms in to 1/4- 1/2 inch square pieces... just diced them, I didn't bother measuring them with a ruler or anything... then I added them to the bowl too. 


I mixed everything together and then let the bowl sit for a little while as I prepared the stove top. For this you'll need:


2 tablespoons Olive Oil
1- 1 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon (or more depending on your tastes) dried BASIL
A few shakes of onion powder (again, make it taste good to you)
About a 1/4 teaspoon of salt... (add however much you want, I don't like things salty, because I like to taste the freshness of my food)


I added 2 Tablespoons of Olive oil to the pan and set the temp to med-high and added 1 teaspoon of minced garlic (I might have added a little bit more, since I love garlic so much... but just add it to your taste preference). I continually stirred the garlic and oil so that the garlic wouldn't burn. STIR STIR STIR. 


Add the basil and the onion powder. Continue to stir for about 2 minutes. Once you feel the garlic is cooked enough so as not to be too pungent, add the bowl of ingredients to the pan. 


Stir it all together and saute for about 3 minutes... just enough to cook the mushrooms a little bit but not long enough to give yourself soggy spinach. (You be the judge) 


Add your salt, and stir some more, then add your rice (about 2 cups worth of cooked rice) and stir it all together and set it aside. 


This should feed about 3 or 4 people. 


I think if you wanted to, you could add some bacon or chicken to it and it would be delicious! 

 Yummy in the tummy! It has Ez's stamp of approval... which is saying a lot!

With Love,
Suz

Today...

Today I feel sick for some reason... The last time I felt this way was when I found out about Daisy. It freaks me out when I feel like this. I'm just a bundle of stress right now and the worst part is I don't know why, and I'm afraid I'm going to find out...

But, Ez comes home in two days, and I can't wait! I miss that kid so much! I feel like it's been SO LONG since I've seen his cute face! I got to talk to him last night, which was awesome, and we sang songs together and I listened as he told me about his day and what he was doing right then. He'd show me the moon and the Christmas lights (It's Vegas-everything looks like Christmas lights there). I "ooh"ed and "aahh"ed with him, and it made my night to hear his voice. I miss him like crazy.

Meanwhile, I've been up to something while he's been gone. I've been rearranging his room and cleaning and we have some new additions to his Thomas collection that I think he'll like. I'll be sure to post pictures when it's all done.

Anyway...

With Love,
Suz

I've been having a hard time...

I have been having a really hard time thinking of things to "blog" about... My life... is it really that interesting? So, I stopped for a while. I am still not entirely sure I have anything worthwhile to write about, but I'll have a go I guess.

In the last little while as I have seemed silent, I have gone to the library with my little one so that he could meet Clifford the Big Red Dog.

These photos are from my phone, so they aren't great, but he had an awesome time because he LOVES Clifford.

I've had quite a few photo shoots, and we had family in town a few weekends, we celebrated our 8th anniversary as well as Mother's Day, and played at the park quite a bit.

Husband was stoked to find out I got him tickets to U2, and he got me tickets to Jack Johnson, and our enthusiasm quickly turned to disappointment when we heard that the U2 concert tour has been postponed... But, it's all fine and dandy, because we are holding on to our tickets.

Little man also left for Vegas to go visit family down there. Originally it was supposed to be for just a few nights to allow us to go to U2, and have a few days and nights to ourselves, but then it turned in to a week, when Grandma asked if she could keep him for a week, and then it turned in to two weeks when Auntie Leesie called and said they would be coming up to visit the next weekend anyway, so she would just keep him another week and bring him back when they drove up... So we've been without little man for a week now, and this week will be the last week without him.

We are planning to do some fun things this week that would normally be challenging with Ez, and I'm really excited to have him home.

Before he left, we all went as a family to go see Thomas for the day. It was pretty awesome. Ez was super happy about the whole experience.

All in all, we have had a great last month.

With Love,
Suz