Autumn on my mind

The best time of year, without a doubt, happens between September - November. Crunchy leaves, pumpkin patches and crisp air... nothing better. And I haven't even mentioned the scarves, cardigans and boots. Can't wait!

New food groups

We've been venturing downtown to try and find some of the best restaurant gems this city has to offer. First off: Le French Fix bakery. They just had their one year anniversary this week. What a cute little shop! One week, I got one of their homemade croissants. It was so flaky and buttery! We've also gotten their macarons a few times. I didn't think I was missing out on the craze by not having tried one. I was SO wrong. I don't want to overreact by saying they were life-changing but... They definitely should be a food group. 

We try to eat somewhere new every time we go out. We went to the farmer's market and we each got a cronut! They are also separate food group material. An amazing lemon glaze and creamy filling... Couldn't go wrong. 

My view

Living in Halifax means always having weird weather. One minute, it's sunny. The next: pouring rain.  We live on the top floor of our apartment building (we lovingly call it the penthouse... It is everything but) so we also a familiar with another Halifax staple: wind. It is always windy. And I don't mean a nice cool breeze. I mean wind that pushes down the sidewalk. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating. But it is some of the weirdest weather I've ever experienced. 

Another thing living on the Atlantic Ocean offers is fog. I always thought it was so cool as a kid to drive through a foggy patch. I may or may not attribute fog to Nancy Drew books. Haliwood (I went there) is consumed with fog every morning. Not a tiny area... The entire city. You can't see ten feet in front of you. Thankfully, the morning mist clears and you get something beautiful to look at. 

Lime-Chicken Tacos

Ever get in a cooking rut? You know what you're good at, so you just rotate those few meals every week? I'm not picky when it comes to meals... I could probably eat toast for every meal if I didn't have to cook for someone else! But I tried something new this week. If you know my husband and I, you know we love Mexican food. I don't claim to cook anything "authentic", but tacos happen way to often to mention in our household. Rather than just using plain old chicken breast, I switched it up with the recipe below. It was so good! And it tasted like it was from a restaurant. Super easy to make, too.

INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast meat - cubed
1/8 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 lime, juiced
1 teaspoon white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
10 (6 inch) flour tortilla

DIRECTIONS
Saute chicken in a medium saucepan over medium high heat for about 20 minutes. Add vinegar, lime juice, sugar, salt, pepper, green onion, garlic and oregano. Simmer for an extra 10 minutes.
Heat an iron skillet over medium heat. Place a tortilla in the pan, warm, and turn over to heat the other side. Repeat with remaining tortillas. Serve lime chicken mixture in warm tortillas topped with tomato, lettuce, cheese and salsa.


THINGS I CHANGED:
When it comes to cooking, it's a bit of an experiment (while baking is a science). Unless the ingredient is essential to the recipe (like the chicken!), it's okay to omit things/change things up. One thing I always do before making something I've found online is read the reviews. A few people mentioned leaving out the oregano, because it gave it an "italian" taste. So I left it out. A good replacement for that would be cilantro, though it seems that people either hate or love it!
I also left out ground black pepper and green onions (simply because I didn't have any!). I also only had bone-in chicken breast. I was really wary of how that would cook in the pan, so I baked it first (425F for 50 mins), then cut off the meat and cooked it in the pan. That takes a bit more planning; even cooking it a day or so beforehand would be alright.


A second new thing I tried with this meal was the guacamole. I had never made it before but I love it so much! Just one of those things that are intimidating to make. I used this recipe:

INGREDIENTS
3 avocados - peeled, pitted, and mashed
1 lime, juiced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup diced onion
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 roma (plum) tomatoes, diced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 pinch ground cayenne pepper (optional)

DIRECTIONS
In a medium bowl, mash together the avocados, lime juice, and salt. Mix in onion, cilantro, tomatoes, and garlic. Stir in cayenne pepper. Refrigerate 1 hour for best flavor, or serve immediately.

THINGS I CHANGED

I only used one avocado. I had another one I was keeping as a backup just in case! Because of that, I only used the juice of half of a lime (the other half from the tacos). The reviews said to use about half the amount of salt, so I just added a pinch. I didn't use onions, cilantro or cayenne pepper. And my tomato was just a regular (half) tomato. I made it about an hour ahead of time (room temperature dip makes me cringe). Wow. This guac was good. I highly recommend! Here's a close up of my taco. 

I wouldn't mind adding this to my meal rotation!

Simple gift idea

We were invited to a housewarming party a few weeks ago. The problem was, we didn't really know the person who had bought their new home. She is part of the church we just began attending a few weeks ago. I had been around her but never had a chance to really find out what gift would best suit her. I finally got the chance to talk to her for an hour or so. She is such a kind and sweet person... so, of course, she said she didn't need a gift! That's the way nice people are. 

I didn't want to get her a gift card (That was my husband's idea. Take the easy way out? Not I.) I scoured the internet for a while before I found this saying: 

"Bread – So you never go hungry. 
Wine – So that joy and prosperity may reign forever.
Salt – So there is always spice in your life. 
And a Candle – So you always have light."

It was perfect for her! She had already saved up and bought everything she "needed" for her new home. And I know that buying decorative items for a house you haven't seen is a little crazy. This was a great place to start. 

I picked up a basket from Homesense similar to the one below and filled it with goodies!

I picked up a loaf of bread from the bakery section of my local grocery store. I could have attempted to make it myself, but the chances of it turning out were slim to none. 

I also had a bit of an issue with the bread... well, the bag the bread was in. While trying (carefully) to pull off the price tag, I ripped the bag half open. My crafty self decided to wrap it in parchment paper and tie it with baker's twine. Maybe it looked homemade after all!

I also added sparkling apple juice and sea salt. I tried to find the cutest sea salt packaging I could. I got the one below at Homesense too. A lot prettier than a regular box of salt!

This was the candle I got for her. Buying candles can be tough because everyone has a scent preference. This one was front Chapters and was really nice and light smelling. If they had any "C"'s left, I would have bought one or two! 

Below is the very rushed picture my husband took of the basket in the elevator! I was one of those days that I could have used an extra 5 minutes. 

I also forgot to print off the little gift tag I had made. 

This was both easy and inexpensive. I really loved putting this together! 

What are some thoughtful + simple gifts you have given or received?

New prints!

We've been in our new place for almost a month now! Crazy how time has flown. What's great about this move is that it isn't our first apartment. We already have all of our furniture, decorative items, etc. The not-so-great part is that we had a lot of wall space to fill in our last place. Here... not so much. The layout is so different that things that looked good don't look so good anymore.

I decided to try and find something that I loved online that I wouldn't pay an arm and a leg in shipping for. A harder task than one might think. I wanted something unique and beautiful. Some of a few I loved from Pinterest are below:

One day while browsing Etsy, I found this shop called "Stay Gold Media". I was blown away with how many of the prints I loved. The space I wanted to fill would fit three prints. It was tough to choose but I chose these 3:

I loved the top print with the elephant because it was just so whimsical. Add in butterflies? Perfect. My living room colours are grey, turquoise and green. I was able to sneak a few more in with this print!

I chose the second print with my husband in mind. He spent his teen years living in North Carolina. A piece of his heart is still there! 

I chose the bottom print partially because it was one of the few that was printed landscape like the other two. I'm not sure why I loved this one so much though. She kind of reminds me of the Morton Salt mascot! I also really loved this one, but I wanted more colour. 

The great thing about prints is that they can be switched out whenever you need a change (or get bored!) Still, totally in love with these at the moment. 

Rock climbing

My husband and I took a morning trip to Peggy's Cove yesterday. With it being about 30 minutes away from our apartment, it was the perfect place to spend a sunny morning. I didn't think the ocean could be closer than it was to our last apartment (40 mins to Kouchibuguac) so I was excited when we arrived at our destination.

Talk about beautiful!

It was a pretty spectacular day. There were also two bagpipers and an accordion player at the foot of the lighthouse. I loved it! What you don't see in these pictures is all the rocks I had to climb. Needless to say, my husband was much faster and more "agile" than I was! 

The smell of the salty sea was so great. It made the hour we stayed there seem like a little vacation! We will definitely be back soon. Here are two more shots I got on the way back to the car. Perfection!

Turning pages

I love to read. I honestly do. But unless the storyline advances quickly (like the Hunger Games... couldn't stop reading!), I could be "reading" a book for months. Right now, I'm reading "Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald" by Therese Anne Fowler.

I actually really enjoy this book. Every time I pick it up, I wonder why I've put it down for so long. Here's Amazon's description:

"When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the “ungettable” Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn’t wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner’s, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

What comes, here at the dawn of the Jazz Age, is unimagined attention and success and celebrity that will make Scott and Zelda legends in their own time. Everyone wants to meet the dashing young author of the scandalous novel—and his witty, perhaps even more scandalous wife. Zelda bobs her hair, adopts daring new fashions, and revels in this wild new world. Each place they go becomes a playground: New York City, Long Island, Hollywood, Paris, and the French Riviera—where they join the endless party of the glamorous, sometimes doomed Lost Generation that includes Ernest Hemingway, Sara and Gerald Murphy, and Gertrude Stein.

Everything seems new and possible. Troubles, at first, seem to fade like morning mist. But not even Jay Gatsby’s parties go on forever. Who is Zelda, other than the wife of a famous—sometimes infamous—husband? How can she forge her own identity while fighting her demons and Scott’s, too? With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler brings us Zelda’s irresistible story as she herself might have told it."

The author really creates a beautiful place for the reader to visit. Especially coming along around the same time "The Great Gatsby" film release, who can blame a girl for falling into a time and place as beautiful as New York in the 20's? 

Blog life

We've been in our new apartment in a brand new city for 3 weeks. I knew I missed the city, I just didn't know how much. I think I missed the variety (food, people, etc.) Feels good to be back. 

Ever wish you could do what you love for a living? Some people are so lucky that they can, and do. My ambitions aren't as high as doctors or lawyers... can I get paid to read blogs? Is that a thing? Please tell me (if it is). 

Sigh. 

Below is the most lovely office space I've seen lately. In our cute little apartment, our "office" space (i.e. our second bedroom) is the designated man cave, so I can't touch it. Nevertheless, I can dream. 

Clean lines. Perfect gold accents. That chair? Divine. I found this on Pinterest via Fairly Light. What a lovely blog. See what I mean about reading blogs for a living?