Lemon Garlic Spaghetti and Pinterest

If you haven't discovered Pinterest yet, discover it NOW.  (Seriously. Amazing.  Check it out here.)

Pinterest is my current form of crack.  I can get lost in the pages for hours and feel like i've been a creative  and productive person all day.

While perusing the many pins I came across this recipe for Lemon Garlic Spaghetti and put the ingredients at the top of my shopping list.
I made an amended version of Lemon Garlic Spaghetti for dinner tonight and it was very, very good.  Its pretty much the same version with garlic sauteed portobello mushrooms and it was yum!
Here is my version...

Lemon Garlic and Portobello Spagetti
serves 4

1 16oz pkg of dried spaghetti noodles
2 tbsp of olive oil
2 tsp butter + 1 more tsp for mushrooms
4 cloves of garlic + 1 clove of garlic for the mushrooms, minced
4-5 basil leaves, chiffonaded
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 tsp pine nuts
approximately 1/2 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese + extra for topping
1 portobello mushroom diced (I did it fairly large as the mushroom I bought was already sliced)


First, start the water for the noodles and gather the rest of the ingredients.  
In a separate pan start 1 tsp of the butter and 1 clove of minced garlic heating.
Once the butter is melted add the mushrooms to sauté
A few minutes before the mushrooms are ready add the pine nuts to the mushrooms to toast them lightly.
Once the mushrooms are nice and brown and the pine nuts lightly toasted, remove from the pan and set them aside.
When the water is ready, put the noodles in to boil and start the oil, two tsp butter and the remaining garlic heating in the same pan you sautéed the mushrooms in.
Once the butter and oil is warmed and the garlic has cooked for a few minutes at the basil to the pan and turn the heat to low.
When the noodles are ready, strain and add to the pan and stir to coat the noodles.
Next add the lemon, and stir again.
Add parmesan and the portobello mushrooms and pine nuts.
Toss gently and serve with more fresh parm over the top.



If you try my version, please let me know how you liked it!
Goodnight!
B

Insomniac creativity

Do you ever have those nights when you want to sleep?
When your body wants you to sleep but your mind JUST WON'T LET GO!!!!

This is one of those nights for me.

Image by Paul Roca

My eyes sting, and my body aches but sleep eludes me because when I close my eyes visions begin to swirl and one idea leads to the next and they are all fabulous and I must write them down and oh that chocolate was good tonight and oh wouldn't this painting idea be new and creative and amazing and OH! that reminds me that you were going to do that once and I like pink and swirls and Did I lock the door and Oh! The dogs want out....Do they need water and...water....I like watercolors I should paint...

You get the picture.   So here I am blogging at midnight and still the ideas are there.

Taunting me.

I'm going to write them down and then maybe I'll be able to sleep but even as I type the words "write them down" more ideas spring into my insomniac brain.

Before I do that though, I am going to share something with you.
This blog has recently come to my attention. 

Emilie Griottes is simply amazing.  She is a french stylist and author who's work simply inspires me in so many ways.
I found out about her through Decor8 blog.  I already look forward to my daily fix from Decor8 but now I have even more to look forward to as Emilie will be a regular contributor to the blog! Please be sure to check her out because I know you will be as inspired as I was.

I'm off to write down my ideas and attempt to shut my brain up.
Goodnight!
B

JUST kidding!!

Did I say tomorrow?  Hahaha....

I actually meant someday.

As you can see (or maybe not) my blog is a mess.

Kind of like the title except without the crafty part.

(I'm working on it!!!)
(Kind of.)
(Sometimes....)

I am inspired to blog.  I have a schedule and lots of fun ideas in mind.
If you have stuck by me this long....
DON'T GIVE UP ON ME YET!!!

I have plans.
Big ones.

Stay tuned.

Love,
B

Work In Progress...

Happy Holidays!

Please forgive my weird messy blog.  I'm in the midst of learning how to manage it again and re-doing my blog.

Wow.  Nearly a year since I blogged.  I quit referring to myself as a blogger a LONG time ago but there may be another term for me.

Perpetual procrastinator.  I think thats it.

Anyhow,  I've had blogging on my mind a lot lately and I'm going to give it another shot but with less pressure on myself and we'll see how it goes.

I have photos of my holiday decorations to post AND a super easy tutorial, coming (hopefully) tomorrow.
(Crosses fingers)

For now, its 10 pm and my brain is mush.
Goodnight!
B

The Mile

My oldest child ran the mile in school today for P.E.

This evening she came to me and asked me to write her an exuse note for "being too lazy and in pain to run" tomorrow.

Here is what I wrote to the teacher.

To the gym teacher -

My daughter will not be able to participate in class today.
There is no real reason why.
She's just feeling the pain and being lazy.

Sincrely,
Bridget Atchison


hehehehe.

I told her i'd give her $5.00 if she actually gave it to her teacher.  We shall see....

Owning Up & Evidence of Chaos

So, Im not the gratest blogger.  I mean to blog, I think of awesome blog posts.  Sometimes I even take pictures to blog about.  But......I never get it done.  I hold myself back because there are always things I SHOULD be doing instead of blogging.  I should be in the laundry room right now folding laundry (fresh out of the dryer or it just NEVER gets folded) so that I can continue to do more laundry so that my family will stop complaining about not having clean underwear, or their favorite top, or that pair of jeans or........! (whew!)  You see where I"m going with this.  Also, I think blogging is a bit daunting.  I always have things I want to say but then I wonder....who cares really?  My grammar is poor and I know my sentence structure comes from a fourth grader.  THEN....I also think, well I didn't get a picture for that and who wants to read a blog with no pictures.  

But the biggest reason I don't blog is I sit down on the computer and without thinking about it I open my web browser to start blogging and see all the blogs I haven't read today....then I read the 1000+ blogs I LOVE to read and oh....no more time to blog.  Well...maybe tomorrow.  Yeah right. 

So that is me, owning up.  I"m a sucky blogger who wants to blog but doesn't.  Thats ok.  If you gave up on me because my last post was last summer.  Thats ok.  I would too probably, but then again....maybe not. 

This is a new year and I"m hoping to blog more.  I'm going to tell my reasons to not blog to shut up and just blog for me.  We'll see how it goes.  No promises.

On that note....

It IS a new year and I didn't set any new years resolutions this year because I never keep them anyway and it just get discouraging so, I've set my goals to be a bit more realistic.  This year, I"m going month by month with my goals for the most part.  (I've also resolved that I'd like to loose 30 lbs by the first week in April also but thats another blog)

For January:  The one goal I set for January is to FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY get my craft room set up and useable so I can actually, oh I dunno.....CRAFT.  And I'm happy to say that I've made a lot of progress.  I went through all my craft items and purged them (again, probably for the 4th time since I've moved into this house so that would be in under 1 year) and I even managed to sell some of it!  The rest has been donated.  However, since the purge was done in a speedy fashion, the stuff that got kept is just halfhazardly strewn in piles all over my craft room with bits of dog hair thrown in.  (eww!)  

I thought that posting the evidence of the chaos would be good to keep me on my toes as it is approximatley a week until my self imposed deadline is up!  So here it is....don't judge too harshly...this is post-purge-pre organized!

My cluttered little "command center"

that white thing in the middle of the room is supposed to be a work table.  ummm...ya

there is a super cute apron on that mannaquin....I think. 

(sigh) the closet....

my fabric storage and....something else

Scary Twitters!!!

Good Morning!

This morning one of my friends called me with some horrible news about my blog!  Apparently, if you log onto my blog from Internet Explorer my twitter feeds show scary, inappropriate messages.  I hope I have fixed the problem by removing the twitter feed.  (Which, incidentally shows normal on Safari, so I dunno what's going on there.)  Anyhow, I just wanted to blog very quickly to let you all know that I did not post those terrible tweets!  I am going to go check my twitter account next to see if its been hacked of if its some freaky internet explorer bug.

Thank you for checking my blog and I hope that there aren't any scary messages the next time you visit!
B

Update:  I just checked my twitter acct and it is as boring as it was before, no freakyness.  So, it must be a creepy internet explorer hack.