step 1.

So the first step to addiction is admitting you have a problem.


My name is Colleen and I'm addicted to pinterest.


It's only been one day and it's so bad already, hopefully it won't be this bad all the time.


Anywho, check out my board, and follow me so I can follow you too! Yay friends!

Spinal Tap and Mexican

So overall the weekend was great! Still haven't cooked very much besides ravioli or a pizza but on Saturday Karl and I were in Batavia and we got to go to the new MEXICAN restaurant they opened up there! I have to say I was devastated when Margarita's closed. Now I know, it's a little crazy I don't even live in Batavia but we're out there often enough that I would go there basically everytime we were there. So you can understand why I was SO excited a new mexican food place opened up.

I have to say the place was delicious! The chips could have been a little bit better, tasted a little bit too crunchy but not exactly on the stale side of things. Salsa was delish. I ordered the chicken chimichanga's, of course, they were delicious. The guac was yum, everything was really flavorful, I didn't feel like I wanted to douse it in hot sauce because the flavor was there. I posted it here if you want to see what it looked like. Overall, they get an A+ from me!

Sunday night we had the Maciag movie viewing extravaganza!! Love my techy/AV nerdy boyfriend. He borrowed the projector from work and we were going to watch Spinal Tap on the garage door but due to weather set backs we just watched it inside.
Well, here:

Not a great shot but you get the idea. Wanted a double feature with Spinal Tap/The Big Lebowski but it got too late for that :( Next time.

Welp, I tried out some new recipes a few months back and never posted so here is one of them! All you need to know about this one is PESTO! If you want to make it yourself go here.

f-o-o-d food food!!

Doesn't everything taste better with a little bit of fresh basil??? Yum yum! 

passion & encouragment

You know you're doing the right thing in life when you get super excited about it. I'm so excited about promoting to District Manager this month. It had to happen this month, it couldn't have happened any other month. I had worked so hard the past two months for this and I finally saw it come to life.

This experience has been so much more rewarding that a month at my last job. The feeling that my hard work was rewarded and I received recognition for it. And then you're encouraged even more for the next month and the upcoming months. Instead of getting the complete opposite of this at my last job, always on to bigger and better things and well you're not doing this.

I love Arbonne. I love the opportunity. I love God.

i'm back

My goodness has life been crazy the past few months. I can't believe how much I missed blogging and how long it's been since I last really blogged. I'm making a commitment to myself to keep up on this because even if I'm the only one who reads this I so need it for myself. It's just nice to look back at your life and what you were feeling, thinking, eating on a specific day.

Well, I started Arbonne as a Plan B to my current job and then my current job took a dive for the worse. When they say about 80-90% of people say they quit they're job because of their boss, that is true. And that's all I'm going to say about that! With that, I do have a new Plan A and I'm very excited about exploring the world of Microsoft and Ingram Micro. It's going to be a great, great opportunity for me and I can't wait to start! While doing this my Arbonne business is just BOOMING! My goodness do I just love that stuff. Trying not to idolize it so much and praise the One who has brought me to this stuff but honestly, it's so great I dream about it!!

I've finally taken back my desk space (from myself and by then I mean I'm not allowing myself to put piles and piles of crap and mail on my desk) and created a nice, pleasant and cozy workspace for myself. Today is close day for the month of August and I'm this {..} close to making District Manager this month I can taste it! I've worked so hard for it this month and I'm seeing the benefits pay off in a big, big way.

I haven't really been cooking at all this summer because one it's just been so insanely hot. Secondly because of the lack of time for it. It's been a crazy busy summer with me starting Arbonne and all but emotionally it's been a lot too. Plus I do a lot of my cooking at Karl's and he has no a/c in the house except for a unit in the upstairs living room. Plus his oven was broken for an entire month!! Needless to say we've ate out a lot but it's been mostly deliciously wonderful! There's a new place in Hamburg called O'Brien's Smokehouse that has the most deliciously juicy burger you've ever laid your eyes on. Then there's The Blue Monk which is kind of my current new obsession. It's a little joint down in the city they have thousands of different beers and their duck frites are out of this world. Then Lloyd's taco truck...how can I even explain that truck. While I created this blog as a main outlet to post photos and descriptions for my cooking extravaganza's I've joined a site to post my eating out experiences. Check it out here!

Blog Giveaway

Check it out folks. This is a great friend who is an incredible photographer. I for serious sweat his photography and him and his wife know it :)

http://jalexanderphotography.blogspot.com/2011/07/life-field-couch-couple-giveaway.html?showComment=1309984887125#c140418323629149877

Passion

I'm yearning for something so much more and something in which I have GREAT passion....I just have no idea what that looks like.

help me Lord.

Pomme Frites & Mini burgers

So this was my first attempt at making my own pomme frites. At first I thought I had failed, trying to turn them half way through was not possible due to the fact they were stuck to the foil then after the last 15 minutes I was able to salvage most of them. Some were crispier than others but they were still delicious! If anyone has any pointers that would be great, my only thought is maybe using some Pam and maybe cutting them a little big larger. Well, here they are!

Snow, snow go away

I think I spoke to soon! Not enjoying the snow and ice and wind and cold.

Spring!

It's coming!!

Extra virgin

This past weekend was a wonderfully lazy weekend full of laying around and watching cooking shows and salivating and the images and of course...cooking! If anyone gets this channel, the new Cooking Channel....it's incredible! There's shows from Food Network but there's some different ones too. 


The new one that I really enjoyed stars Debi Mazer and her husband who is from Tuscany, it's called Extra Virgin (and everyone knows I love my olive oil, too!) It's a super cute show they're so in love and it's all about how he cooks for her and it's all classic Tuscan/Italian dishes. I have to say that Italian dishes are my favorite to cook, maybe that has a lot to do with the fact that it's also one of my top 2 favorite kinds of food to eat (the other is of course, Mexican.) On the episode I watched he makes a traditional Tuscan lasagna with the béchamel sauce and all the other good stuff. I really want to start making lasagna, my grandmother on my mom's side was the one who did it for the family and everyone came to her for lasagna and now my mom has carried on the tradition and now it's up to me! I will do it :) 


Then I was watching Giada...LOVE. She made this delicious lemon Parmesan risotto that looked delicious. I've never had it or made it before this is definitely going to be the recipe I will use to try it. 


So on Sunday Karl's boss came over and I cooked a delicious meal of Chicken Parm with smoked mozzarella, pasta and sauce, garlic bread that I made (Butter, parsley, sea salt, and garlic) and then accompanied by a salad with field greens, feta, dried cranberries and sugared walnuts. 

Yummy Salad

Yummy meal!

Taco Saturday?

So this weekend was spent being lazy and sleeping in. It was glorious. Friday Karl and I went to the movies and dinner on Friday and this was the first real meal I've had to eat since Sunday, after having food poisoning and all. It wasn't anything special, just Jack Astor's, but I will say their Lobster dip is quite delicious!

On Saturday I made an old stand by, tacos! You can't really go wrong with tacos, can you? I had the usual toppings: Cheese, lettuce, tomato, sour cream, hot sauce but I made my own guacamole! I haven't made it in awhile so it felt really good to make it myself, I've had some good mixes and the Wholly Guacamole is pretty good too in a pinch but there's not like fresh, homemade guac! I put the usual suspects in there, jalapeño, cilantro, red onion, tomato, salt, pepper, fresh lime juice, and then my special ingredient....hot sauce! It gives it that extra kick that is super delicious. I had some left over so made myself a bean quasadilla for lunch today

With being sick most of the week, I wasn't doing much cooking or much eating for that matter. Almost everything bothered my stomach, it's still a little bothersome but I'm getting back to normal.

Yum!

This past Friday we celebrated a good friend of our's, Ed, birthday. Karl had everyone over to his place and we ordered pizza and wings and I made a delicious salad made of field greens (my favorite,) dried cranberries, feta cheese and sugared walnuts (that I made myself) with a basil balsamic vinnagerette dressing. It was delicious, to the say least, probably could have ate the whole thing if I let myself.

Then of course with it being a birthday there had to be some sort of a baked good, right? Well, in light of me wanting to start baking more and trying to utilize my cake decorating skills from working at Tops way back when, I have started to make cupcakes. I use the Pillsbury white cake mix (sorry guys, when you have a couple dozen to make this stuff is much less time consuming) and then I make the frosting myself. I use the classic buttercream frostings with the Wilton website and for the vanilla I put just a touch of almond extract = Yumminess! Well, here they are!

Yes, the are as delicious as they look! 

vintage

For any of my fashion/vintage/shopping friends out there: Madewell has teamed up with Refinery29 have found some beautiful vintage pieces that are FOR SALE but for a very limited time. I just thought I should share this with all of you loves out there.

Enjoy :)

P.S. I have some delicious, sugary goodness to post about from this weekend that I will try to get to later on today or tomorrow.

love.love.love

This past weekend was excellent. Triple dated with our friends and my sister and her boyfriend. It was full of silly moments and delicious pizza! We went to Trattoria Aroma in Williamsville. Let me just say that I love brick oven pizza, it's real bad. I can't get enough of it, I would love to have my own brick oven (oh, to dream!) First, my love and I started with the Riesling Braised Rabbit. It was delicious, cooked just right, this was my first rabbit experience and I must say it was a good one. The sauce was just sweet enough with a nice creaminess too it and the rabbit was served with crostinis and that served a nice sort of 'crunch' to it. YUM! Then I had their mushroom pizza that was incredible! Nice and thin and delicious, although I was a little envious of Nic's pizza with pesto, fresh mozzarella and tomato. 


Then on Monday my dreamboat of a boyfriend hand delivered these to my office:

Aren't I just the luckiest??

Simple things.

This weekend was good. I spent some much needed time with my two best friends eating delicious white pizza and salad while drinking wine and talking about life, jesus, married life (as one of them is married) and all sorts of good stuff.

It really is the simple things in life.

This morning I went to church and it was great, as always. I love feeling like I have a 'home' with Church On Tap. Sundays really are my favorite day of the week (except for Thursdays at 10pm...fist pumping time) I love how great everyone is. I just love worshiping God amongst some fantastic people and gaining new friends and growing new friendships. It's just great and I feel like it's really where I'm supposed to be right now.

I started this blog with a few things in mind. I wanted to talk and express some passions of mine. One of them being food, I have not been cooking recently as much as I would love to and I'm hoping that this will give me that push. Also, to talk about God, another thing that I haven't been spending as much time on. I'm hoping to start a new study this week (If the postal service is quick enough) and just pose some questions and hopefully get some feedback...maybe I would need some followers then huh? And also, to just talk about life in general, exciting things (like my new car) going on in my life and hopefully no female hormonal rants.

In my quest to learn more about creationism vs evolution I'm currently reading Darwin's Black Box by Michael J. Behe. The whole topic is something that I always was fascinated by but never knew much about either side to form an opinion on or just blindy follow one or the other (which is something I would never do.) It's something that has really been on my mind lately so I spoke with my pastor who was once a science teacher and wanted to pick his brain on the topic and he told me to read this book and it helps explain it more. So far I've completed two chapters and while it has it's boring biology parts it's still really interesting. Will talk more about this later. Feedback on the topic is encouraged :)

Strongholds

Today in church we talked about weaknesses. And how God created us with these particular weakness that we will continue and continue to pray to God about and try to give it to Him. Sometimes it seems like He's not listening because you still continue to feel them but He is listening. He really is. It's not that God doesn't want to take that away from you, it's that He wants these 'thorns' to stay in our 'sides' so that we can turn to Him and use them to go to Him in times of sadness and distraught and only He is the one who can deliver us and help us to get through these times.

I need to start looking at my problems and weaknesses that I continually try to give to God as opportunities, while it will be hard and really hard at times. I need to use these moments to turn to God.

This message could not have come at a better time for me. I've been struggling lately and this was exactly what I needed to hear.