One day, Rebecca and I will be ‘retired’ and on a beach in Maui.  We’ll own a small taco restuarant on par with the likes of Maui Tacos and Surf Taco.  We’ll grow our own avocados (uhh I paid 2 bucks for 1 avocado tonight; something is not right!) and continually make fresh guacamole.  We’ll serve all types of tacos, burritos and the like.  Heck, we’ll probably even open up a road side stand on the Hana Highway where we’ll sell fresh banana bread.  One can dream, right?

How do I do that by 30?

We played the “what do you want for dinner? … I don’t know, what do you want? … I don’t care, what are you in the mood for?” game tonight.  We settled with doing some kind of fajitas.  Typically when we’ve previously made vegetable fajitas, the veggies were bland — maybe only a sprinkle of cumin and cayenne pepper.  So we both agreed that these veggies tonight had to have some kind of flavor.  We briefly talked about using the packet fajita seasoning, but we both shrugged it off.  Rebecca had the vegetable fajitas at Jose Tejas the other night and loved them, so she set off to find a recipe.

And sure enough a few seconds later, she found one and emailed me so I could pick up the ingredients.  We settled on some peppers, onions, carrots, mushrooms and broccoli.  These veggies would be cooked in the marinade provided by the Allrecipes.com recipe (btw, how come all recipe sites are horrible?). The marinade was pretty easy.  I just combined the following ingredients.

• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke flavoring
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

I let the veggies soak in the marinade a bit before I cooked them in a wok.  I especially wanted the mushrooms to soak in the marinade knowing they would pick up, and hold, all the good flavors.

The broccoli and carrots were cooked for about 10 minutes first since they were the thickest and would need the most cooking time.

Once cooked, I added the remaining vegetables and cooked for another 10-15 minutes or so in the wok — constantly stirring.

And after spilling a glass of water ALL OVER THE PLACE, we finally sat down to relax and eat our fajitas.  And then Macky started SCREAMING for our attention.  It’s never ending here at our house with our three needy, yet very lovable, cats.  And to think, we almost adopted a little girl today too!

Oh!  And I cannot forget about the fresh guacamole!  3 avocados (at 2 bucks each!  2 bucks!  each!), some diced onion, diced tomato, a squeeze of fresh lime juice, salt+pepper, and some cilantro!  So good!

As usual, we’re linking this up to What I Ate Wednesday at Peas & Crayons!

Tomorrow marks one year since we closed on the house! To say this snuck up on us would be an understatement, especially since I think I just realized this last week. It has been a better year than we ever could have asked for and thankfully, half of it is chronicled on this blog. The other half? Lives on my iPhone. It is amazing how much of the past 2 years of my life is documented on my phone. I have around 1,500 pictures and take nearly one a day.

So I’ve decided to show you the first few weeks of our homeownership, through the lens of my iPhone. Please excuse the poor quality as I reminisce 🙂

What the exterior looked like when we closed on Tuesday, March 30 2010

That Friday we had the wainscoting installed in our living and dining rooms

After our fridge was delivered and we managed to squeeze our table out of storage, the kitchen began to look more like home

We had painters scheduled for the Monday after we closed, so we didn’t have too much time to agonize over paint colors

Some words of wisdom on the morning the painters arrived, courtesy of a Ssips juice box. This place has given me millions of mind stretching opportunities!

The two story entryway painting in progress, we could have never, ever done this ourselves! In fact, that ugly light is still hanging until we hire someone to change it!

The hallway in progress

The nerve-racking process of waiting for paint to dry to see the true color

And waiting some more…

Bet you never noticed that our ceilings are painted a very light gray! This is the only picture where it’s noticeable. We just wanted to take away some of the starkness of the builder white.

The hallway between the entryway and kitchen was originally blue. After seeing it, we asked them to repaint these walls the same light taupe as the entryway.

The moment the kitchen turned blue! (see that the dining room back there is still white?)

Blue family room and a newly delivered entertainment center

After the dining room was painted, we headed to Ikea later that week to purchase our Stornas table… but the color we wanted was discontinued and out of stock. This picture is from our 8pm trip to Brooklyn to get one of the last tables in the tri-state area.

But it was so worth the trip!

Maybe it was our pot of gold? This rainbow was over the entrance to our neighborhood in early April of last year.

Pretty grass! The builder laid our sod a couple of weeks after closing, when it was a little warmer.

However, we still hadn’t moved ourselves in. Our mini-family was still squeezing on a full sized bed at Mike’s parent’s place. We saved the best part of the house for last…

In mid-April, we moved the kittens in. This is Mowie about 10 seconds after we let her out of her carrier, she loved it immediately.

While Macky and Darwin snuggled behind the couch for a few hours

But pretty soon, they were enjoying the finer parts of the house

And everything seemed right in the world (and the yard!)

Happy day you become ours, little house.

I had a post planned for tonight (in my head), but about eh, 5 minutes ago I decided to can it.

It’s 9:15, and I just finished my second round of homework. I had the most awful stiff neck in the history of the world this weekend, more than likely from stress and the fact that I spend at least 12 hours a day on a computer. So when I looked up and saw this guy staring at me….

MoMMmMa! Hewwo? Get off computer and listen to meeeee!

…I knew it was time to call a time-out. I mean, Valentine’s Day is about being with the people you love right? And I don’t get nearly enough time with them these days. So I’m about to close the laptop and sit on the couch with Mike. We go all out for these holidays 🙂

Oh and I’m also about to eat one of these…

Mmmm! I think I’m going to go with the Cookies n’ Cream one!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, hope you had some cupcakes on the couch time 🙂

We’re approaching that time! The time where we will all try to carve the greatest pumpkins ever.  Well, I’ll just fail at it really bad — I can’t carve or sculp for the life of me.  But the wife, Rebecca, can sure carve a pumpkin.

Last year, Rebecca carved Macky’s mug into a pumpkin.  Macky has excellent features, strong contrasting colors and solid lines — perfect for carving.  After Rebecca’s co-worker helped her create the Macky stencil (maybe using these tips?), she was able to carve the perfect Macky.

But the moral of the story is to get creative with your pumpkins this year.  While the whole “pumpkin-throwing-up” thing is insanely funny, it’s been done before;  so this year is the perfect opportunity to start thinking outside the box with those pumpkins.