June - All home cooked meals

June 1 - Josh was camping and golfing with the boys - he went out to dinner at a bar.  And I completely forgot about the without.  I made breakfast at home (eggs), munched on celery and peanut butter for lunch, went to a Korean Day Spa (a wonderful experience), then had Wendy's.  Bad! 

June 2 - We had burgers on the grill at home, and tater tots.  I'm going to say that the burgers don't count.  We had to cook them ourselves, even though they were prepared by the store.  However, the tater tots...they count

June 3 - I made lunches and breakfast at home for both of us.  We went to a Mariners game with my Dad, so we totally gave in to the ball game food.  This counts too.

June 4 -12 - I don't remember exactly what we had, but I know we didn't cheat.  We had homecooked meals with nothing pre-prepared.  It was also sometime during this time that I realized I do 90% of the cooking, therefore, this months without was all on me.  So Josh and I discussed it and decided that we were going to redefine homemade and store bought.  Some prepared ingredients to a meal are perfectly acceptable, like raw frozen burger patties or a seasoning packet for lettuce wraps.  However, any dish or meal that is more than 75% prepped and ready to eat from the store, is considered store bought and if we eat it this month, we will owe to the charity fund.

June 13 - We went to Costco, which means that we needed to eat something before we went so we didn't buy the entire store.  We wanted something quick, so I threw in one of my "emergency" meals I keep in the freezer.  It was a Schwan's Orange Chicken Skillet.  It was delicious, don't judge.  Its nice to keep these kinds of things in the freezer for nights just like this one.  We need something that I can cook at home, that isn't awful for us.  I fully understand that this is not a healthy meal, however, if you compare it to most of the other freezer meals out there this one is pretty darn good.  Excuses for the contents of my freezer aside, this meal counts on the tally.

June 14 - We went out to see the new Star Trek in 3D.  We split a Jimmy John's Sandwhich, and ate a ridiculous amount of popcorn.  Super tasty dinner, awesome movie, and a date with a handsome man - does it get any better?  It could if it also means money for charity, add 1 to the tally.

June 15 - Leftover night!  Turns out leftovers (bacon, shredded chicken, various veggies and ciabatta rolls) make phenomenal homemade sammiches.

June 16 - Happy Fathers Day!  We went to Grandma and Papa's up in Everett and they made us a delicious flank steak.  Nothing you buy at the store can even come close to a meal at Grandma and Papa's table.

June 17 - We got back late the night of the 16th and I'm not sure if I was too tired, or if I just didn't remember, either way I forgot to make lunches.  Josh got a pizza bagel and I had teriyaki.  The guilt for this one just piles up!  I feel guilty for having a bad for me meal, and because I'm cheating on the without.  Dinner was good though - we had veggies, buttered bread and a piece of Hake.

June 18-21 - I didn't keep a menu list, but we were home-cooking fools!


June 22 - We did The Dirty Dash again!  I'll post some pics of when I have it, in the meantime check out the post about it from last year.  We were completely exhausted when we got home, and we took a 2 hour nap.  After we woke up, neither of us were thinking clearly and couldn't even comprehend cooking, so we ordered a delicious pizza from Pop's Pizza.  Definitely worth an extra tip to charity!

June 23 - Josh's table saw decided it was time to drop out of use, and it broke its second motor.  Josh has been looking for a replacement motor on Craigslist, but he ended up scoring a killer deal on a super nice new one instead.  All three of us took the truck down to Tacoma, picked up the table saw, took a nice walk on the Ruston Way waterfront, and since we were in Tacoma...we stopped at Steamer's.  Steamer's is the perfect rainy Sunday treat, even if it costs us $2 more!

This was Leonard's first trip to the Ruston waterfront, and his first experience with the memorial to fallen firefighters.  We had to take some time and let him approach these tough guys.  Leonard was terrified, he was jumping back from them, reaching way out with his nose to sniff them, and circling them like at any moment they might spray him with the hose.  I agree with him, it is a very nice memorial and they are pretty realistic, but its still funny to watch the 100 lb critter who always has my back, be scared of a statue.


June 24 -  Have I mentioned how amazing our new grill is?  The hassle we went through to get it is paying off, it rocks!  AND, even better than the grill, is the phenomenal grill-master.  Josh grills a mean steak!

June 25-30 - We did it! We successfully spent the rest of the month without any store bought pre-prepared meals.  With the heat we had to fight off a pretty wicked craving for McDonald's soft serve, but we won the battle!  There were BBQ ribs, a pasta primivera, some fish,, and a treat night including a boneless rib-eye and bacon wrapped scallops.  We ate well!

Ok, so whats the take away from this month?  Buying quick easy meals from the store is...quick and easy.  But, by avoiding the easy option, we ate a lot more fresh vegetables and otherwise "whole foods".  I think we ate healthier, and its been a good learning experience for me to see that it doesn't take that much more time to cook something from scratch rather than have something ready to go in the freezer.  It just take a little bit of planning.

Total Tally for June:
Josh: 8
Kiki: 8

The English Laurel

Ever since we moved into this house the front door has been blocked by greenery.  I've always had a thing against arborvitaes, and the English Laurel (I had take a piece of it to the local nursery to identify it), does its best to take over our entire house. 

Getting rid of these monstrosities and the giant circle of rock that highlights them has been on our list of Dream Projects to accomplish at the house.

Now that the roof is done, the house is painted, and our living room and dining room are painted...it is finally time!


My Dad gave Josh a chainsaw, and he has been itching to use it.  Josh started hacking up the arborvitaes, and the Laurel, and we got them to the point where we could start pulling the stumps out with the truck.  The arborvitaes were easy, but of course the Laurel gave us a hard time, it was a long process of: pull with the truck, cut newly exposed roots, and repeat, until this!

Victory! Take that you house eating monster!

The rocks had to go too.  It was such an 80s addition to the house, and in all honesty, it was done very poorly.  Unfortunately the rocks were huge and there was no way we could lift them, so Josh rented a chisel from Home Depot to break them up.

The rocks were granite, and although Josh gave it a valiant effort, there was no way that was going to work.  So, I did my part and called in the big guns.

After the rocks were removed, Josh cleaned and leveled the area.  He got a little carried away, and ended up turning it into a zen garden.

While the area was in this phase, we had three separate neighbors mention how much they love that we took out the Laurel.  Turns out we weren't the only ones who hated it!  Leonard did his own celebration.  He loves the new dirt spot.

But, we do live in an amphitheater, see previous post, so some sort of privacy screen is necessary.  We picked out a green Japanese maple from my favorite summer place, the Frager farm stand.  Only $145!

Josh dug a great big hole.  We may have used a tape measure to get the placement exactly right, but since that would be neurotic...I'm not going to confirm that.

I helped by stomping down the dirt.

Now the difficult part - moving the tree.  We were told originally that the tree would be 200-300 lbs.  Doug, from the farm stand, was excited that he was able to pull the tree for us with so much root still attached because it meant an easier transition for the tree, but this meant that now the whole mess was at least 400 lbs and probably more.  Josh worked out a very clever winch system.

It mostly worked.  We were able to get to the point where we were almost there, but then we got stuck.  Our neighbor took pity on us, and a third set of hands was exactly what we needed to get it the rest of the way.  Thanks Scott!

After making sure the tree was oriented just right, Josh filled in the hole.

A little bit of cleanup, and a pic to show exactly how tall the tree is on its first day in its new home.

Add sod....and we're done!

You can see a second trunk to the right of the main trunk of the tree.  There is one branch on our new tree that I want to train to grow at a different angle.  I used a stick from the old Laurel to pull that branch in the right direction.  Poetic Justice.

We could not be any happier with how it turned out, we love our new tree and the way the front of our home looks!  What do you think?

May - no TV

May without TV went well.  It got us eating at the dinner table almost every night, something I love doing, and try to do as often as possible.

It started off a little rocky.  On May 2, Josh and I were watching Jeopardy, and a light bulb switched on in my head.  I said "I don't think we are supposed to be watching TV this month".  I'm not sure if we forgot what May's without was, or if we didn't realize it was May, but either way we added two to the tally for May 1 and 2.

Then there was one night when Josh was exhausted and just wanted to veg out to the TV.  I don't blame him - his favorite spot to sleep is the couch, and there is no better way for him to sleep on the couch than to watch TV - but, I held strong.  He fell asleep to Treasure Quest, and I read in the other room.

Full disclosure: we did watch Netflix toward the end of the month.  We talked it over and decided it didn't count.  With TV, we found that we just watched whatever was on.  It sucked us in, and took up the entire night.  With Netflix, we are much more mindful about what we watch.  Netflix requires you to actively select what  to watch - meaning you don't get drawn into some celebrity dive show that comes on after Jeopardy and you really don't care about it, but it has lots of shiny costumes and similar to a train wreck you just keep watching until its over.  Although unlike a train wreck, in five years I won't remember how that one celebrity I don't recognize totally rocked her dive, but I'm sure I'd remember the train...motivation to keep avoiding TV.

Lesson:
Don't waste time on something that is not worth remembering.

Tally:
Josh: 3
Kiki: 2

Update on TV as of June 14 - we still aren't watching TV.  And we don't miss it.  Its wonderful!  We still watch Netflix, right now we are totally into Wilfred and Arrested Development (we realize we are late to the party on both of those shows, but they are great!), we only watch 1 or 2 episodes a night - that's only 40 minutes of TV and no commercials.  Instead, we spend our evenings doing fun things, last night we decided to go see the new Star Trek in 3D, earlier this week we went to Leonard's favorite dog park.  Most of these nights we end up chatting and eating dinner at the kitchen table.  It feels good to connect, catch up with each other, and enjoy the lovely centerpiece my husband brought home.