For the Face

 Sooo… Making this a joint-blog for Rob and me is not panning out so well, as you can see!  Oh well, I mention him a lot, so I guess that is the role he will play on this blog.  With that being said, let's talk about make-up!  (Fun fact: I worked part-time at Origins toward the end of high school.)  I'm definitely no expert, but after trying several foundations over the years I have found the best foundation (for me) and have been using it for a few years.

I swear by Lacome's Teint Miracle foundation. (I've also got my sister and mom hooked on it.) This is a medium coverage foundation, and leaves your skin glowing. It's known for "reflecting skin's natural light," and has SPF 15.

I recently added a primer to my make-up routine, which makes quite a difference. I use Lancome's La Base Pro primer.  I apply it with a brush before my foundation (which I also use a brush to apply), and the primer gives me a smooth base surface, and helps my make-up stay on longer.  What foundations or primers do you love?

Snow Daze

Snow days mean…. lots of baking, reading, board games, movies (finally watched Argo), cleaning neglected items (like make-up brushes), and pretty views (even if the view from our apartment is the highway, ha)

Kansas City got around a foot of snow yesterday, so nearly the whole city got a snow day yesterday, and this lucky teacher got another one today!  Today, though, needs to be a bit more productive than yesterday...

Pantry Stuffed Peppers

I am always looking for creative, healthy, and EASY dinner ideas.  Our regular weekly rotation often consists of tacos, breakfast for dinner, some kind of soup, a simple pasta dish, a baked chicken dish, and I always attempt to try about one new recipe a week.  This week I finally made stuffed peppers, a dish I have been meaning to try forever.  I looked at a handful of recipes for them online, and created my own…  The very best thing about this dish is you can browse your fridge and pantry, and use pretty much whatever you have…  Aside from what I listed in the ingredients below, other ideas are rice, onions, jalapenos, cilantro, Rotel, etc.

Pantry Stuffed Peppers

• 2 green peppers (red and yellow work too)
• ~2 Tbsp olive oil (or olive oil spray)
• taco seasoning (Try this homemade one we love.)
• ground beef (a 1/2 lb would be plenty)- If Rob would approve I'd use ground turkey, but he prefers beef
• 1 can of black beans (drained)- I used about 1/2 of a regular-sized can
• 1 can of corn
• 1 can of seasoned dice tomatoes (drained)- I used about 1/2 of a regular sized can
• 1 small can of green chiles
• Low-fat shredded cheddar cheese
• Light sour cream (to add at very end)

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Fry the hamburger, drain, then add in taco seasoning.  (I've been making my own lately to avoid all the bad chemicals in store-bought seasoning.)
3. In the meantime, cut your peppers in half and de-seed them.  Place peppers, empty bowl-side up, and drizzle the pepper with olive oil and place on a baking sheet (still bowl-side up.)  Bake the peppers for about 10 minutes, until they start to feel slightly soft.
4. Once the taco-seasoned hamburger is pretty much finished, add in corn, black beans, tomatoes, and green chiles to soften for about 5-8 minutes.
5. Take your peppers out of the oven and generously fill them with the hamburger/veggie mix.  Sprinkle cheese on each stuffed pepper, and put in oven for about 8 minutes.  Add sour cream before eating!

Stuffed peppers are definitely making their way into our dinner rotation!  YUMMM!

Valentine's Day Cooking Class

Why am I so bad about keeping up a blog?!  Fortunately, I have a 3-day weekend, so I will get back in gear with blogging and plan some posts ahead of time on my day off.  Aside from working on my blog on Monday, I also plan to put together a recipe binder.  I use cookbooks and Pinterest for recipes, but I'd like to be able to consolidate our favorite recipes to one spot.  I also get Real Simple and Cooking Light magazines monthly, so I'd like to cut out recipes from those sources and get them organized in a binder.  How do you organize your recipes?  Do you use a binder?  What suggestions do you have for setting it up?

Some new recipes that are definitely making their way into the binder are the ones we learned about and ate at our cooking class this past week.  For Valentine's Day, instead of dinner out or gifts, Rob and I decided to take a cooking class taught by one of my favorite bloggers, Jenny Steffens Hobick at a local cooking store.  (My mom and I both love Jenny's adorable lifestyle and cooking blog, and it was such a treat meeting her!)  The menu at the class consisted of spinach salad with a hot bacon dressing, garlic bread, lemon cream shrimp scampi linguine, slow-roasted beef tenderloin, and baked chocolate brownie pudding- YUM!  (I believe all these recipes are on her blog.)  We both really enjoyed the class, and I'm hoping a couples cooking class can be a new Valentine's Day tradition for us!

House Hunters

Recently Rob and I have started house hunting! We have really liked our apartment, but we would like to buy a home by summertime. (You can only live in a one-bedroom apartment with minimal closet space and storage for so long…) Now that we have started looking, it makes pinning home inspiration photos all the more fun!  I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite home inspiration photos I've pinned…

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Can you tell I really like white, blue, and all things neutral?

Wedding Wednesday: Mutual Weirdness

Because we all know true love and mutual weirdness are synonymous…

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Tried and True Read Alouds

My most cherished time of the day in my classroom has always been read aloud time. Most days, I try to take out a fifteen minute chunk to read a novel to my class, where they can grow in their auditory comprehension skills and just enjoy. I have gotten in the habit of reading the same books every year, and a few of my all-time favorite read alouds are Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, Witches by Roald Dahl, Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson, and we just finished up The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Katie DiCamillo.  Recently, we started a new (to me) novel called Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper.  I hear wonderful things about this book, and am excited about adding it into my reading rotation (if we love it.)  If you know a fourth grader or you just love children's literature, I'd recommend all of these fabulous books.  My two very favorites are The Witches and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Happy reading!!!

Wedding Wednesday: Shoes

For our wedding day, I chose a pair of low, navy heels to wear. They were comfortable, classic, and my something blue! I totally understand the appeal of fun, fancy wedding shoes, but no one even sees them, and comfort was (and is) a huge priority for me!

(collage from our photographer's website which included my navy shoes)

I couldn't help but get excited about these new flats that J.Crew just got in… in our wedding colors! These would have been so fun to slip into for the reception, or at least wear them while getting ready the day of!

While I probably should take a break from yellow and navy in my life for at least a year, I'd love to own this pair in pink and navy. These are definitely on the top of my Spring wish list!

Mint

I'd say one of the biggest adjustments so far in marriage has been to put our finances together, and learning to communicate about money. (It is truly hard, and we are still learning.) I'll be the first to admit, saving and budgeting has never been my strong suite. Rob is quite the opposite (praise Jesus!) He has his degree in finance and his day job has to do with money and bonds and stuff (please don't ask me to explain…) Thankfully, everyday our way of managing money together is improving (a.k.a I'm learning lots from him, and he's learning it's absolutely necessary to budget $30 a month for me to get a pedicure, ha!)

With all that said, I am so excited about something Rob and I have recently started.  We started budgeting on Mint. Have you heard of it? We have known about this website for a while, but hadn't fully set everything up on it until a few weeks ago. It is pretty much the greatest thing ever….  Simply put, it's a website that links up to your bank account and/or credit card(s.) You set a monthly budget, and as you spend, it shows (with color-coordinated visuals) how much you have spent and how much is left in that category.  Setting a budget and seeing it visually on Mint helps me so much.  Obsessively checking my Mint app (such a great app, btw) is a new hobby of mine, and a great way as a couple to hold each other accountable on spending. I will warn you, it takes a bit to figure out how to set everything up on the site, but once you play around with it for a bit, it's fabulous!

I also really like Dave Ramsey's financial advice.  Here is a great article from his website actually having to do with newlyweds and money that is helpful. If you are anything like me, and strive off of structure and visuals, I'd highly recommend looking into Mint.

Wedding Wednesday: Video

One of the best decisions Rob and I made when it came to wedding planning was opting out of giving gifts to each other on our wedding day. Instead we saved up for a videographer for the big day. While we really love our wedding photos, nothing can capture the emotions of the day better than a video.  In honor of yesterday being our 6 month wedding anniversary, I thought I'd share the video with you!


Lindsey + Robert from The Brickhouse on Vimeo.

Walnut Chicken with Basil

I am so excited to share this recipe with you today. I made this dish for Rob and my younger sister, Courtney, a little while back. We all LOVED it. I found it in our Williams-Sonoma Healthy in a Hurry cookbook (great cookbook, btw.)  This was actually my first time making stir fry, and definitely not the last! In fact, I think I'll make it again this week.

Walnut Chicken with Basil
1/2 c. walnut pieces
3 Tbs. low-sodium soy sauce
2 Tbs. fresh lime juice
2 Tbs. honey
3 tsp. peanut oil
1 red bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
2 large shallots, thinly sliced
3 (5 oz.) boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, thinly sliced across the grain
1/2 c. packed fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces

Note: It's probably ideal to use a wok, but I just used a large, heavy frying pan.  Also, be sure to heat the oil before adding any ingredients.  I served it alone, but it obviously would be perfect served over rice.

Preparation:

• Preheat over to 350 degrees F.  Spread walnuts on a baking sheet and toast until lightly browned and fragrant, about 10 minutes.  Immediately pour on a plate to cool.  Set aside.
• In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, lime juice and honey.  Set aside.
• Heat 1 1/2 teaspoons of oil in a wok over high heat.  Add bell pepper and cook just until wilted, 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer bell pepper to a plate and add remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons oil to pan. Add shallots and cook, stirring constantly, until just beginning to brown, 30 seconds to 1 minute.
• Add chicken to pan with shallots and cook, stirring often, until opaque throughout, 3 to 4 minutes. Return bell pepper to pan and stir in soy sauce mixture, basil and walnuts. Toss and stir just until basil is wilted about 1 minute longer.  Serve right away.  Serves 4.

(instructions directly from Blender, the Williams-Sonoma Blog)

Lindsey

Wedding Wednesday: NYE

I like alliteration and I love weddings, so I decided to devote Wednesdays to all things wedding (particularly ours.) I'll go through the fun details and maybe even dish out some wedding planning advice- who knows! We'll do Wedding Wednesday until there is nothing I can think of to discuss regarding weddings… Due to the fact that we just attended a fabulous NYE wedding, I will devote today to our Monday night festivities! It was such a beautiful, memorable, and FUN night!

Stunning bride

(Fun fact: Molly and I coincidentally had the same wedding dress!  We had no idea, and when describing her dress to me when we were both engaged last year, I quickly realized she was describing the same dress I had chosen! Ha, what can I say… It's a great dress, if I do say so myself.)

Sequins seemed to be the trend of the night

Gotta love some awkward candid photos...

There were some very serious discussions going on about necklaces apparently, ha!

Kappa tradition

Dapper dates

Instagram action