Ooh! Ooh! Make this on Sunday!

This soup takes a bit of time despite it’s ease to cook. You need a good 2.5 hours for this one, which makes it the perfect thing to cook on a lazy weekend afternoon. Speaking of, hope you all have a great weekend!

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients:
1/2 head of cabbage, shredded
1 medium onion, cut up
2 zucchini, cut up
1 potato, cut up (catching on to the “cut up” trend yet?)
1 cup celery, diced (threw you for a loop there, huh?)
2 cups cauliflower, cut up (and we’re back on track)
2 carrots, cut up
1 can of green beans, drained
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 parsley, cut up
Any other veggie that strikes your fancy (kale perhaps?)
16 oz. tomato juice
4 cups of vegetable broth
4 cups of chicken broth
3/4 cup red wine

Add all to a pot, except corn and peas, and simmer for two hours.
Add corn and peas to the pot 15 minutes before serving to warm through
I also added a TON of garlic, about 4 TBS of lemon juice (it brightened all of the flavors), salt, pepper, and a bay leaf.

For those doing Weight Watchers, 2 cups of this crazy healthy soup is 3 points. Pretty sweet, huh?

Confession Thursday

1. I work with a man who routinely compliments me on my choice of outfits. This comes after a bit of scrutiny from all angles. I assure you this is not skeevy – he just sincerely likes what I put together. Aside from working at CU-Boulder he’s also an actor in local theater. Often his praise of my outfits comes in the form of singing a line or two from a musical that my ensemble reminds him of. This is both awesome and awkward.
2. I ran into a woman last night (bad pun, which you’ll understand here in a minute) who’s been in three back-to-back accidents. None of them her fault and all of them requiring years of rehabilitation. She had, no joke, just finished three years of rehab from a head-on collision when a chic, who was texting BTW, rear-ended her. I felt so bad for her I was choked up.
3. After watching this video I promptly walked in to the bedroom where Stella was sleeping on her bed. I knelt down next to her and gave her a rousing round of skritches while whispering to her how much I love her and and how glad I am that we can give her a nice, safe, healthy life.
4. I ordered three boxes of Girl Scout cookies. I did this to a) support a coworker’s daughter and b) to fly in the face of this shit. So far I’ve been very judicious in my consumption of the cookies, which is REALLY hard for me to do considering my first instinct is to huddle in a corner and cram them all in my face. I blame this on growing up with siblings and the need to get your share before your kid brother descends and eats everything. Yes, I’m speaking of you Logan!
5. Every day I anxiously await news that my sister-in-law has gone into labor. I’m very excited, peeps!

A little redecorating around these parts

My bedroom used to look like this:

But I decided, after three years of living with it, that the red wall had to go. I wanted something more cooling, peaceful, calm. So now my bedroom looks like this:

Not much changed in the room other than the wall color and yet I feel like there’s been a big change. That’s the beauty of paint. It’s a relatively affordable, sometimes quick (ha) way to make a big change.

What do you guys think of the color change?

I found my niche!

Well, at least in the world of thrifting. I HATE going to thrift stores for clothes. Nothing saps my patience quicker than sifting through rack after rack of the quasi-randomness that is a clothing thrift store. About 15 minutes of that and I suddenly become a whinny toddler on the verge of sitting down in the middle of store, legs too tired to stand, in a huff.

But, BUT! I have recently come to understand that I love thrifting for household stuff – furniture, decor, etc. I chalk this up to my Pintrest and interior design blog addictions. Through those two sources I’ve come to appreciate the wonders that flea markets and furniture thrift stores hold. And the best part? If an item has appeal in it’s lines and over-all look, a can of stray paint can make it new again!

Here are a couple of the lovely things I’ve picked up in the past couple of weekends:

Milk glass candle holders.

Black floral chair.

Mirrored tray (um, and please ignore the pile of laundry on the bed. Whoops!)

Amber glass vase.

5 things I’m loving right now

The manfriend and I have decided to turn the TV off for the month of January. We did this last year as well. Anyway, we don’t have cable so our TV viewing is limited to what we get from Netflix. Hell, we can’t even stream that shit, we’re so old skool around here. But somehow we still manage to take in about 2 hours of viewing a night. That being said, our consumption of the brain mush that is TV is still quite a bit lower than most people and we both really notice how much else we get done in the absence of cable and a DVR. But taking a full month off entirely gives us lots to love.

1. Conversing and connecting in the quiet that exists when the boob-tube is off.
2. Playing games like Put and Take Jacks. My apologies that I can’t give you info on how to get your paws on this great game. The couple that used to make these suckers to order has retired. So sad.
3. Snuggles and naps.
4. Reading amazingness like The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s a hard book to get into, but once Dantes lands in the Chateau D’if and meets Faria, well it just gets mind-bogglingly great. The dialogue! The dialogue! I tried to read this last year when we took a TV break as well and couldn’t get into it. I’m glad I didn’t give up this time around.
5. A lovely night out with my sister, her friend Michaele, and her sister. Thanks ladies! That was fun. Let’s do it again soon…