Recovery Week Five

I have to admit I am feeling pretty good!  I am finally at the point where I am actually enjoying my time off from work.  Excellent.  I have a meeting with my boss on Monday to talk about coming back to work.  Just in time.

Oh, look...flowers on the blog.  Weird.

Really the only time I am uncomfortable is if anything pushes against my lower abdomen.  Sammy is having problems with this part.

"Why can't I climb in your lap, mom?  I am an excellent lap dog."

Today marks the beginning of Easter weekend. The husband only works a half day today and then he is off until Monday. Yay. It should be a fun weekend with family.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Insta-Friday and a Restaurant Review

Happy Friday to you!  I hope you have had a great week.  My week has been filled with flowers,

haircuts,

new toys for Sam,

and a new restaurant.

Local Pour has been open a week in Houston.  The husband and I went to check it out for date night last night.

I loved the atmosphere and decor of Local Pour.  It was a great mixture of old and new and included one of my favorite things...subway tile!

I love how it was paired with antique looking light fixtures.  I loved the blue, black and grey color scheme.  The restaurant was definitely very cozy with cushy seating areas and an open kitchen.  They have a front dining area that opens to the outside and a stage for live music.  Their bar boasts a huge selection of craft beers, fancy cocktails and wines.  It is a great place for date night.

The husband enjoyed this local brew that he had never tried before...

...and I enjoyed this bottle of Patron.

I kid.  The restaurant has re-purposed liquor bottles into water refill containers for the tables.  Just another fun touch I loved.

As far as food goes, we started with shrimp and crab nachos, which were unique and delicious, however the crab and shrimp was kind of hard to taste with all the other flavors going on for the nachos.  The husband had their LP choice burger and loved it.  It was served on a croissant bun (yummy).  I enjoyed their sirloin beef kabobs with a side of zucchini fries.  It was delicious!  I was a stepping outside of my box ordering the kabobs since they had pineapple on them, but let me say grilled pineapple is wonderful and tasted so great with all the other flavors going on with the dish.

There was a band setting up around the time we were calling it a night.  If it had not been a "school night" we probably would have stayed a little longer and enjoyed the live music.  Too bad someone had to go to work today.  Sorry husband!  :)

In short, this was a great place and if you are in Houston you should give it a try.



Here is a great quote to for you to start your weekend, "Miracles start to happen when you give as much energy to your dreams as you do to your fears."  I like it.

Have a great weekend!!!

Recovery Week Four

I will warn you up front that there will be lots of pictures of flowers in this post.  I am in love with the spring weather we are having here in Houston and possibly more in love with the flowers and plants I got planted last weekend.

If you are a hater of flowers, this will be a tough post for you.  And while I am on things I love, I love that this is my view right now.

I am working from my beautiful dining room right now...I really love this room in my house.

As far as recovery goes, I am feeling pretty good.  I am back driving now which I missed.  It is nice to be able to run to the post office or shopping.  I still can't pick up heavy items, of course, and I do still get very tired in the afternoon.

One of the most frustrating things to me right now is not being able to go to the gym.  Since I lack that ability I kind of have a terrible attitude of well since I can't really work on the weight loss I might as well eat whatever I want.  So counter productive.  I have some good days with food and some bad days.  I guess I should be happy they are not all bad days.

The other thing that still freaks me out a bit is that my lower belly is still asleep.  I have very little feeling down there, I can feel pressure, but not much more.  I am told this is normal, but it is still super weird.  That's great that it's normal, but why does that happen!?  Crazy.  I have talked with some friends who have had c-sections and they have had the same experience.  Ehh.

Yesterday I took the opportunity to get my hair cut.  It was kind of nice to go get my hair cut at 10:45 AM on a Wednesday.  I could get used to that.  I got 6 inches cut off, added some layers and some side swept bangs.

(I was parked while taking this picture)

Love it.  Thanks Rob!

I hope you are having a great week!

Weekly Finds

Outside of all the wonderful flowers I got this week to spring-ify my backyard, I fell in love and had to have these great chalkboard pots from Home Depot.

Considering you can get a plan clay pot in this size for around a buck, these were definitely a splurge since they were almost 9 bucks each, but aren't they cute?  Googling around this morning I did find this tutorial on HGTV on how to make a chalkboard pot if you're interested in a DIY version.

Sammy received her second BarkBox yesterday.  She was very excited.

"I love my BarkBox."

 The box included two toys, two bags of treats, and a poop bag dispenser.

Sammy loves this wool rat toy she scored.  It has a hilarious tail that sticks straight out.

I think Sammy likes it extra since it freaked her grand mother out.  :)

Weekend Recap

Spring has sprung in my backyard.

I love this new planter!  You might remember it from last week's Weekly Finds post.  In the top basket I planted a mixture of red salvia, dianthus, and marigolds; and in the bottom pot I have a mixture of riviera blue eyes (which are still going strong since the last planting) and purple petunias.  My backyard gets plenty of sun and these are all sun loving plants.  I have never grown the salvias or dianthus before so I am anxious to see how they do.

I revamped this hanging basket with a new insert and flowers (marigolds and petunias) and I planted some veggies this year!

This pot has tomatoes, bell peppers and pink petunias.  I hope I get some yumminess from here.

The only other news I have to report from the weekend is that the husband started on our spice rack.  I can't wait until it is fully completed so I can do a before and after post on it.  Our house was built in the 1930's and our kitchen has an old ironing cabinet in it.

I thought this space would re-purpose nicely into a spice cabinet.  After some of the husband's work this weekend I know I was right!

I can't wait to share the finished product with you!

Thanks husband for being so handy.  <3 br="">

Have a great week!

Insta-Friday with a Recipe!

This week I tried a great new recipe from my Martha Stewart Living magazine called Roasted Chicken Thighs with Tomatoes, Olives, and Feta.

Since I always have my phone in the kitchen with me, the majority of my food pictures are on my phone, so I figured a recipe would be a great thing to share from the week here at Insta-Friday.  Now if you have been reading the blog for a while you know I never follow recipes exactly (you may have already noticed the broccoli above); here is the original recipe:

Here is how I changed it up:

Ingredients

• I used only 6 thighs and they were boneless skinless
• No switch on the olive oil or tomatoes
• Instead of Spanish olives, I used kalamata
• I had no shallots so I used an onion
• I substituted dried thyme for fresh
• I used garlic salt and pepper
• I left out the mint; I am not a huge fan of mint in savory foods
• Instead of feta cheese I used goat cheese (and loved the substitution by the way)
• I added garlic, broccoli, and balsamic vinegar

Preparation:

• I marinated the chicken thighs in a mixture of 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar,  3 tablespoons of olive oil and crushed garlic cloves for 5 hours (this could be done longer, even over night)
• I sliced the onion in chunks and made florets from my broccoli

Cooking:

• Spray a corning ware with cooking spray and put in the chicken thighs
• Add all vegetables and garlic
• Drizzle remaining marinade over top
• Sprinkle with garlic salt
• Cook according to directions above, then garnish with crumbed goat cheese

I served it with store bought sun dried tomato and garlic polenta.

And a side of steamed sugar snap peas.

It made for a tasty dinner.

Sammy also likes chicken, but hers was of the plastic squeaky variety.

If you wanted to follow me on Instagram, you can find me here: http://instagram.com/emadw. You will find lots of pictures of Sammy along with other random things like this quote I stole from a friend on Facebook and love.

So true.



Before I go, allow me to point out the Pin It button below my signature (a new addition as of yesterday)...just in case you saw something you might want to remember.  Also you can follow me on Pinterest here: http://pinterest.com/emadw/.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Recovery Week Three

Today marks three weeks since surgery.  I have to admit I am feeling kind of blah and frustrated.  It is hard to not be able to do everything you want to do, like stretch to reach things from high shelves, bend over easily, run to the grocery store, walk the dog, and pick up stuff without assistance.  I know I shouldn't be complaining.  I am in a great position with wonderful support and this is a temporary thing...I am lucky.  There are some people things like this are not temporary for and I shouldn't complain.  So there you go, pity party over.  Shifting focus now.  Oh, I know...flowers!

I mentioned in last week's recovery post that I was on my last bouquet of flowers.  Well, the mom drove me up to Trader Joe's on Monday and I found these daffodils for five bucks.  Yes, please and thank you.  I like them here next to my kitchen window and cute yellow bird the sister gave me.

Birds and flowers are so spring, I love spring.  It is one of my most favorite seasons.  The fact that everything is in bloom here, like my azaleas was probably one of my motivators to redo my blog header.

Speaking of which, what do you think of the new header?  I like it, but I did like the old one too.  :)  In spring cleaning fashion I also updated my About Me page.  I definitely like it much better now.

I also embellished my door bucket for Easter.  You might remember from this post that I had gotten some new flowers for my door bucket back in February that I added hearts to for Valentine's Day.  Well, I found some sparkly Easter eggs at Hobby Lobby a while back (pre-surgery) and transitioned it perfectly to Easter.

While we are on the Easter subject, here is my Easter mantel.

Yes, of course there is an Easter mantel.

I love these bunnies.  I picked them up at Pier 1 back in February.

Along with these Easter eggs.

 

I think it makes up a fun and simple Easter mantel.  I do hope to pick up a few more bunnies on clearance after Easter.  Who doesn't need extra bunnies?

The husband hung a bird feeder in the backyard for me last weekend.  The sparrows are loving it.  Trixie is enjoying the view.

I know we are not the only ones who are loving the weather and flowers here in Houston.

I hope you have a fantastic day friends!!