Holy Blog, Batman! Two Whole Months!

Ok, so I'm a couple days late posting this - but, whatever. Tim and I have been married two whole months - and it will be two whole decades before we know it! I am happy to say that I am as ecstatic to be married as I was the day I said "I do" :)

It has just been a crazy, fun-filled week!

I've been cleaning and organizing and cooking up a storm.

I bought a cube storage from Target (put together all by myself - aaaand it is still standing thank you). 

 My computer won't let me rotate the image....

I finally tackled the garbage bags full of clothing that were taking over the bedroom floor (sorry, no picture for that)

I made no-bake energy balls (thanks Pinterest),

 meringues, 

 These are a great way to use leftover egg whites!

and I improved my creme brulee recipe! 

Sorry, I'm not posting my super fabulous recipe online...yet...

So, that was pretty much my week in a nutshell. Tim is back in the swing of things at school - and very excited to have a student teacher so he has more time to write :) and Sabrina is just causing trouble as usual.

I'm also reading some fiery books at the moment

Well, until next time....

Putting Our Life in Order

So, there are a few of you devoted readers who may know that neither Tim nor I are very organized... Ok, that may be an understatement - our apartment is about as chaotic as you could imagine.  I like to think it is because we have our priorities straight - we would rather spend time with each other than clean :).

Unfortunately, this strategy is beginning to wear on my sanity. Maybe it is because I grew up with a notorious neat freak (sorry, Mom), but I'm just not used to living in the wake of a tornado.

So, I have come up with a plan, and that plan is to clean and organize the apartment and keep it that way.

Simple, right?  Apparently not.

The more I think about it, the more daunting this task is. So, I'm going to try to tackle it room by room.

Step One: The Bedroom

• Purge the closets - we have more clothes than any two twenty somethings should ever have.
• Put away all of the dirty and clean clothes and get them off the floor (and keep them off!)
• Finish my new DIY jewelry organizer
• Decorate the walls - we have a few posters we want to get and frame
• Put up a couple shelves for odds and ends
• Get the floor cleared off enough to vaccuum...
• ...Vaccuum the floor

Step Two:  The Bathroom

• Find an old CD tower to repurpose and hang on the wall for organizing skin care products, etc.
• Get some shelves for the wall nook by the shower for spare towels
• Paint the bathroom (we have to get permission from the super first...)

Step Three:  The Kitchen

• Finish unpacking the new china from the wedding
• Wash all of the new china
• Clean out the spice cabinet
• Get a binder with plastic sleeves for all of my recipes
• Reorganize the tops of the cabinets

Step Four:  The Living Room

• Get another end table
• Get a silk plant for atop the end table
• Sort through and throw away the stuff behind the couches
• Clean out the entryway closets and make use of our storage locker
• Clean out the desk
• Get all the stuff off of the dining chairs

Whew... That is the master list. I suppose we will have to tackle it one weekend at a time - my goal being to finish it all before Speech season starts. We have until the second weekend in November then.

I'll start with the bedroom this weekend :)

Hopefully each time I post I will have finished  a new task and will have found some fun tip or DIY project to post as well.

Whats in a Name...Change

That which we call a rose would still smell as sweet, yeah yeah yeah. Romeo's last name may not have mattered to Juliet, but it does matter to my husband.  Originally I was just going to hyphenate my name (idea planted by my husband's sister :)) but Tim wanted us to have the same last name so we really felt like a family. He was even ready to take my last name. It turns out my last name was more important to him than it was to me, so I decided to change it (but only if he agreed to wear his wedding band - compromise is a beautiful thing).

So, as of yesterday, everything is official. I finally have all my new cards and IDs (not my passport - I'll deal with that when I need to).  I thought that to change everything was going to be much more complicated than it actually was, but it ended up being relatively simple. Just follow these simple steps.


How to Change Your Name - the Five Step Process
Step One:  get your marriage license - the original, not the certified copy (Social Security Office only takes the original, and order a couple certified copies for posterity's sake
Step Two:  make a list of all the institutions/companies you need to change your name with (for example: Social Security Office, DMV, Bank, Credit Card Company, Student Loans, Netflix, HR at work, etc.) and find out what you will need to provide to each to make the change.
Step Three:  Go to the Social Security Office first then the DMV, you will probably need the new license for the bank and HR at work.
Step Four:  Get to the Social Security Office and the DMV EARLY, unless you want to wait until Death Do You Part.
Step Five:  Once everyone is notified of all the changes you are set :) You can order new checks and cards and all that fun stuff.

So I would, were I not Greenlee call'd,
Retain that dear perfection (Shakespeare said it - not me) which I owe
Without that title.

One Month of the Married Life

Although this post is nearly a week late - we will just pretend that I didn't procrastinate in writing it. Tim and I have been married for a moth now, and holy buckets has it flown by!

We celebrated this momentous occasion in a very fitting manner - we helped my best friend and her wonderful husband celebrate their own marriage! Their wedding was in Valparaiso, Indiana and it was so fun!

Congrats Ben and Elizabeth!

We also celebrated my adorable niece's third birthday this weekend - busy times in the Hanson household!

I've done some major cooking the past two weeks (Tim and I have resolved to cook at home more for the well being of both our bodies and our bank account). Some of the successes include Man Pleasing Chicken (chicken thighs baked in a honey mustard marinade - 1/2 cup Dijon mustard, 1/4 cup maple syrup, and 1 tsp rice wine vinegar), and Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons & Parsley Brown Butter (recipe found below courtesy of Eating Well.com)

The 2012 Summer Olympics in London start tomorrow! Tim and I are going to his mom and dad's for the Opening Ceremony - I'm totally psyched! I love the Olympics! My favorite is Swimming (as long as is isn't the 500m Freestyle or the 400m Freestyle Relay), and Gymnastics takes a close second (not that rhythmic gymnastics crap, though).

Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons & Parsley Brown Butter

Time: 20-30min

1 pound fresh or frozen gnocchi
2 tablespoons butter
2 medium shallots, chopped
1 pound zucchini (about 3 small), very thinly sliced lengthwise (use vegetable peeler or a mandolin)
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup grated Parmesan Cheese
1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley

1. Bring large saucepan of water to a boil. Cook gnocchi until they float. Drain.
2. Meanwhile, melt butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Cook until butter just starts to brown, about 2 minutes. Add shallots and zucchini ribbons and cook, stirring often, until softened (2-3 min). Add tomatoes, salt, nutmeg, and pepper and continue cooking, stirring often, until tomatoes just start to break down (about 1-2 min). Stir in Parmesan and parsley. Add the gnocchi and toss to coat. Serve immediately.

Nutrition information can be found by following the link to the original recipe at EatingWell.com.

Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons and Parsley Brown Butter

The Dells

Well, my life was a little more exciting this weekend!

Tim and I went up to Wisconsin Dells with my family on Friday and came home yesterday evening. We had 2 action packed days!  Tim went golfing on Saturday with my grandparents, and my mom, stepsister and I went Ziplining (totally awesome!) then we went on a winery tour (also awesome). After all of that fun nonsense we got some dinner and relaxed (what?!?) at the villa. THEN on Sunday we did even more great stuff. Breakfast then mini putting and roller coasters, then painting pottery - pictures to come (I have to wait for my mom to bring it back for me).

The strawberry basil sorbet was delicious!  I put the recipe down below, so if anybody wants to give it a whirl - go right ahead.

This weekend will also be pretty jam packed. Friday morning I am going to officially change my name, and then Tim and I will be driving to Valparaiso, IN for my best friend Elizabeth's wedding! Rehearsal/Rehearsal Dinner/Pre-Wedding Bonfire on Friday, Wedding Saturday, and Post-Wedding Brunch Sunday Morning (and then my niece's birthday party later on Sunday). Whew - it will be busy :)



Strawberry Basil Sorbet

1 lb. sliced and hulled strawberries
2/3 cup sugar (original recipe calls for 3/4 cup, but was too sugary for me)
1/4 cup chopped basil (may add more to taste)
1 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice

Combine sliced and hulled strawberries in a bowl with sugar, and stir to coat all strawberries with sugar. Let sit for at least 1 hour stirring occasionally.
Blend strawberries and liquid, basil, and lemon juice until smooth.
Chill thoroughly.
Follow ice cream maker's instructions for freezing.

Enjoy :)

Posting for the Sake of Posting

Oh, dear readers (Elizabeth - thank you for still reading) I wish I had an intersting update, or an amusing anecdote to share with you, but it seems my life has been rather boring the past week or so.

Lets see here, Tim and I went to my cousins' double whammy graduation party - lots of fun (and I loved being called the newlyweds :).  We had a lovely dinner at Abreo in Rockford to celebrate lasting 2 weeks as a married couple (watch out Kim K and Chris Humphries, if we can make it past your 60 day record, we are golden).

Ummmm, we cleaned the carpet?

Like I said, pretty boring stuff.

I am going to make Strawberry Basil Sorbet this week to take up to Wisconsin Dells for the Radebaugh Family Semi-Annual Dells Extravaganza, and I was thinking about devising an adult beverage to go along with it.... any ideas?

Hopefully the sorbet making goes according to plan, so I can post pictures and the successful recipe later this week!



Here is hoping your lives are more exciting than mine :)

Patience is a Virtue...

That I don't have.

Tim and I have now been married for exactly 12 days, and I have been anxious to get all of the paperwork and name change business out of the way.

As you may have read in my last post, we have been trying to switch my auto insurance, but we found out that the title has to be in my name. Fine, thats cool. So, I got the title from my mom, but then I realized that if I switch it now, then I will just have to change it again once my name gets changed (and I am sure as heck not paying that fee twice), so we decided to wait to do that until after I am officially a Hanson.

Needless to say, I really want to get my name taken care of so I can take care of all of the other stuff after the Social Security office and the DMV (dealing with HR at work, changing my name at the bank, credit card, student loans, health insurance, doctors office, dentist, etc). So, yesterday I decided to try and hammer down why we had not recieved the marriage certificate yet.

I started getting a little panicky when I called the Orange County courthouse and they had no record of the marriage, so I tried the Osceola County courthouse (Walt Disney World is located in both of those counties) and no record there either. At this point, I was a little beyond just panicky and venturing into the territory of total meltdown. So my wonderful Mother-In-Law contacted the officiant for us and found out that the it takes a few weeks for the courthouse (which is Lake County, FL apparently... oops) to process the certificate. Panic Averted thanks to Mom Hanson!

So, now we wait.

All of this is made infinitely more bearable by coming home to a spotless apartment and my wonderful husband cooking dinner for us (Chicken Fajita a la Tim)!

Anyway, have a safe and happy 4th of July!