A new career chapter

Today was a big day and a turning point in my career. I officially accepted a new position within my company. I got promoted to a marketing management position at the national level. I have been working for my company for almost 8 years. I worked 3 and a half years at the local office level and the past 4+ years at a regional level. I am excited for the challenges this new position brings. I will officially start my new position on September 20, so I will have time to wrap up my current projects and transition my responsibilities. I am excited to get started and see what my position has in store for me!

Menu Planning Monday

Monday: Mini meatball sandwiches (new recipe!)
Tuesday: Katsu Don (this didn't make it to the table last week)
Wednesday: Cheddar Cracker Chicken
Thursday: Pizza night
Friday: Date Night

Weekend Recap

Another weekend gone and it went by too fast! Both Michael and I had crazy Friday's so we knew we wanted to go out to dinner. We called up Rich and Tif and Michael's parents to see if they wanted to get some dinner. We met up at the Village Tavern and grabbed a bite to eat. We had to wait a little bit but we got to hang out and watch this little guy!

Look at all the hair he's got coming in, he's so cute!

Speaking of cute, look at this sweet picture from his 6 week photo shoot!

I haven't seen the rest of the pictures yet, but this one is so cute. I love his little hat! After dinner we headed home and Michael and I crashed. 

On Saturday, we woke up and got breakfast and then Michael headed home to work on a project and I headed out to do some shopping. I headed to the farmer's market and then out to Schaumburg to Home Goods and some other stores. I needed to get some new throw pillows for our new couch and I was hunting for a new side table for the living room. I lucked out finding the pillows, but not so much on the table. While I was gone, Michael was working on installing a screen door on our front door. It came out great and he was very proud!

 

Michael showing off his hard work!

Our new screen door

We relaxed for a bit and Michael took a little nap before we headed out for date night. We went to Tsukasa of Tokyo. We had never been there before but have heard great things from Rich, Tif, Paul and Ken. It's teppanyaki style dining and it was so good! The filet was incredible. It was a great date night!

Today, we got up and had breakfast and then went grocery shopping for the week. After grocery shopping Michael was back at work on our front door but this time, he was working on replacing our gold locks and hardware on our door to brushed nickel hardware. While Michael was working on the door, I was baking him up some of his favorite blueberry muffins. I picked up some blueberries on Saturday at the farmer's market just for him.

Michael's favorite!

Michael finished changing out the gold hardware to the much preferred nickel hardware and it looks so much better! Check out the before and after.

Before: This was taken around Easter this year

The After: Good bye Gold!

After finishing up the door, Michael helped me hang all of our photos on our new travel wall. I am so happy with how it came out. It is exactly how I pictured it in my head. The best part is that we can keep adding to the wall as we visit more places. I wanted to hang everything by sight, but Michael helped me measure and hang everything and adhere all of the vinyl wording. I got the frames from IKEA and the vinyl words from Etsy seller, thestickerhut.

Michael rubbing a vinyl travel word onto the wall

The finished product!

The view walking up the stairs

While Michael and I were busy working all day, this is what Porkchop did. So lazy, but very cute!

After all of our projects were done, I got started on Sunday dinner. I made BBQ baby back pork ribs, asparagus, cheesy potatoes and biscuits. It was really yummy! 

Sunday dinner

We are going to just relax what's left of tonight and get ready for Monday. At least it's a short week leading up to a 4-day weekend. So tomorrow is already my Tuesday, yay! I hope everyone had a great weekend and has a great week ahead!

Our week in pictures: 8/22 - 8/28

Sunday, August 22: We woke up to an amazing rainbow early in the morning

Monday, August 23: Our master bedroom re-design is almost complete!

Tuesday, August 24: Crispy fishwiches

Wednesday, August 25: Our new couch is here!

Thursday, August 26: Porkchop enjoying the new couch

Friday, August 27: We got to see our favorite nephew at dinner!

Saturday, August 28: Love when my husby surprises me with flowers, he's the best!

Fall Cravings

As much as I love the summer and it's long, sunny days, there is just something about Fall that I am always mesmerized by. As August is coming to a close, I can't help but think of all of the wonderful Fall things we have to look forward to in the next couple months.

Fall Clothes

One of my favorite parts of fall is the clothes! I have been lusting over all the new sweaters, jackets and dresses in the stores. Thank goodness for Old Navy coupons!

School supplies

If you know me well enough, you know how much I love paper and pens! Even though I am not back in school or have kids in school, my heart started beating just a little bit faster walking through Target a couple of weeks ago when all the pens, pencils, paper and markers were all set up waiting to be bought. It was very hard not to just scoop up some new supplies, just because.

The return of football and hockey

After a way too long and disappointing baseball season for our Chicago teams, I am ready for our football Sundays! I love our Sunday afternoons cuddled up on the couch watching football all day. The Blackhawks (the ones that are left) will be making their triumphant return to the ice in September as well. We were so caught up in hockey fever this past season, I can't wait!

Fall Decorating

Fall is one of my favorite times of year for decorating. I love all the rich colors mixed in with the playful Halloween decor. We do it up big in our house and I look forward to digging everything out of storage really soon!

Oktoberfest

We will be hosting our 5th annual Oktoberfest this year! I love throwing this party every year and have so much fun getting caught up in the menu planning, decorating, cooking and hosting of it! It always reminds me of the night Michael proposed since he proposed after everyone left the first time we held the party. I can't believe it is our 5th year already!

Goebberts Farm

We discovered this place last year and fell in love. Not only can you pick out your pumpkin, but you can feed giraffes and other animals, go through a corn maze, watch pig races and much more! We had a blast last year and I can't wait to go again!

Pumpkin Carving

Of course you can't go to the pumpkin farm and not carve the pumpkins! I love pumpkin carving and we do it every year. We always try to come up with new techniques to top the year before. Even Porkchop gets in on the act!

Apple Picking

This is a new fall tradition we are starting this year. We are getting a whole group together to go pick some apples. I see lots of applesauce and apple pie in our future!

Lake Geneva

It's no secret, the Grand Geneva Resort is one of our favorite weekend getaway retreats. Michael hasn't been since we were there for Valentine's Day, but I got to go in May for Arla's bachelorette party, so he feels deprived! We are heading up there the second weekend in October. I'm really excited, it's Oktoberfest weekend in town so there should be lots of fun festivities going on!

Our Birthdays

Michael and I are exactly 1 month apart to the day. We will be celebrating his big day September 23 and mine October 23!

New couch!

It's finally here! After 7 weeks of waiting for it to be built and 3 long weeks of evenings in the man den since we sold our old couch, I am happy to be back in our family room on our cozy new couch. It seems like we ordered it forever ago, but it was worth the wait, we love it!

 Here she is!

Michael has his side

I have mine!

New Recipe: Crispy Fishwiches

Michael loves a fish sandwich, so when I saw this recipe in this month's Everyday with Rachel Ray magazine, I knew we had to try it! I'm so glad we did because they came out great. It was a great weeknight meal and something different than one of our usual meals. Try them, you'll be glad you did!

Ingredients:
4 tablespoons melted butter, plus some for buns
1 1/2 cups panko breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon Old Bay seasoning
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
Zest and juice of 1 lemon, divided (juice is optional)
A couple of tablespoons fresh thyme, chopped
A couple of tablespoons chives, finely chopped
4 cod fillets (we used walleye)
Salt and pepper
2 egg whites, beaten
4 sandwich-size English muffins, toasted and buttered (we used bakery rolls)

Ingredients

Pre-heat the oven to 425˚F. Season the breadcrumbs with the Old Bay, onion powder, garlic powder, lemon zest, thyme and chives. 

Pour the melted butter over the panko breadcrumbs and work it into the crumbs to evenly distribute.

Season the fish with salt and pepper.

Coat in the flour, then egg whites, then the breadcrumb mixture

 

Arrange on a rack arranged over a baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes, or until deeply golden and crispy

Enjoy!

Menu Planning Monday

We are finally trying a new recipe this week, it has been awhile!

Monday: Crispy fishwiches (new recipe)

Tuesday: Salad night

Wednesday: Katsu Don

Thursday: Chicken pesto pasta

Friday: Date night

Weekend Recap

We had such a wonderful weekend! Last weekend we worked our tails off with the garage sale so we were looking forward to a weekend where we didn't have anything planned. On Friday, I worked from home, which was nice but I was really busy. The day went by fast and before I knew it the day was over and Michael was home.

We went to dinner at Weber Grill with Rich, Tif and Baby Jacob. We had a great time and Jacob was such a good little boy. While we had dinner, he drank his bottle and was very content. After dinner we headed back to Rich and Tif's to hang out. I tried to get some Auntie Sara time in with Jacob, but he was not having it! Normally I can calm him down with some walking around and butt patting, but my auntie powers were not working. He wanted his momma! So I got to look at his cute little face from across the room. Of course Michael and Rich thought it was hysterical that he was screaming when I held him, so not funny! After hanging out for a while, we headed home and crashed.

On Saturday, we got up and headed to breakfast and then we went to the Wheaton Farmer's Market. After the farmer's market, I headed out to do some shopping. I went out looking for fall and Halloween decor and ended up finding so much stuff for our master bedroom! I don't know why but every time I go out looking for bedroom decor I never find anything, so apparently I just need to stop looking for it! After shopping Michael and I went out to lunch and then we just relaxed the rest of the day. We had big plans for Sunday so we wanted to be rested!

Today, we got up and went to breakfast and then headed to Whole Foods to do our grocery shopping. After grocery shopping we stopped at the hardware store to pick up a few things and then headed home to start on our projects. The first project we tackled was to hang a vinyl wall hanging I ordered from Etsy in our entryway. It came out great!

New wall vinyl in the entryway

After hanging the vinyl, we finally hung the mirror over the entryway table. It's been propped up on the table for a couple of months now. I think I can finally call the entryway makeover done!

Next on the agenda was to accessorize our master bedroom with the new items I found on Saturday. While I was busy accessorizing, Michael was working on his own project, organizing our dvd's. 

He took several hundred dvd's

He alphabetized them and organized them in here

So long dvd cases!

I am really excited about the progress of our master bedroom re-decorating project. I have been having the hardest time finding yellow, white and gray accessories and I finally found some great items. I am still looking for a few more pieces and need to incorporate some pictures, but it's getting really close! Here are some progress pictures.

 

I also re-worked a lamp from another room to make it work in our bedroom. Here's the before:

I just added some grograin ribbon in black and yellow and presto, a new lamp! Here's the after:

One of the other projects I have been wanting to tackle is our travel wall going upstairs. I have all the frames and I ordered some vinyl travel words to incorporate as well. I wanted to lay out the configuration incorporating the words to make sure it still worked. 

Configuration with words

I also sat down and finally ordered all the pictures from our travels to fill these frames. The pictures should be coming this week so next weekend the wall will no longer be bare!

Travel wall coming soon!

After our projects were done, I started making Sunday dinner. Somehow planning on turkey breast turned into Thanksgiving dinner! I made an herbed turkey breast, stuffing, potatoes and biscuits. It was delicious!

Yummy Sunday dinner!

After all of that we are spending the rest of the night relaxing and I need to get caught up on this blog. I didn't intend on going dark this week, but somehow the week got away from me. I am hoping to be a better blog this week. I think my blogging will be better once we get our new couch this week too. For some reason I'm not as inspired in the man den, sorry baby! Our new couch is coming Wednesday and I can't wait, we really miss hanging out in our living room.

We really miss our couch! LOL

Well that's our weekend, have a great week everyone!