Category: regular

Letter to Oprah

Posted on by jplatt27

When I was a kid,  I wanted to send Oprah a letter telling her that I had the best mom ever. For some reason, I thought Oprah was the person that would recognize and appreciate this and would honor my mom appropriately.  Here’s what I would’ve written:

Dear Oprah,

I’m writing to tell you about my mom.  She’s the best mom in the world. My mom has 5 kids and she does everything for us. She makes sure we get all our homework done and that we have snack. She lets us watch TV and have icecream before bed. She makes sure we all go to bed on time. My mom is very organized.  She has a calendar book to keep track of everything. She takes us to all of our activities: band, karate, soccer. She lets us have friends over all the time. She gives us allowance for our chores and we each have a saving cup and a spending cup.  We usually use our money for the icecream man. She is always there for me and my brother and sisters. 

My dad works long hours so my mom has to do most things for us herself.  And she doesn’t complain.  She does everything for us because she loves us. My mom doesn’t take much time for herself or do many things just for her.  I’d love if you could do something to celebrate my mom.  Maybe send her on a cruise or to come visit your show and have everyone cheer and clap for her.  She really deserves it. 

Thanks, Oprah.

Joanna

 

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

Our "first" Valentine's Day

Posted on by jplatt27

Our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple was probably our best yet.  Ok, definitely our best yet.  Considering I asked Mike to brainstorm some past Valentine’s Days for a post on 2/14 and neither of us could remember what we did last year.

This Valentine’s Day, Mike had a sweet idea: to try to replicate the dessert pizza from one of our favorite DC restaurants and have dinner at home.  I’d been wanting to recreate Matchbox‘s dessert pizza since we started making our own pizza months ago so I loved this thoughtful idea.

Mike let me choose what we had for dinner so we made this amazing lasagna. We made this lasagna over a year ago and hadn’t been able to find the recipe since. But with a little searching, Mike was able to find it. (Click here for the recipe.)

I had the sauce for the lasagna working when Mike got home from work. And he quickly got to work on the dough for the pizza. We had the Pandora love songs station going and were totally in our element.

After the lasagna was in, the dough was rising, and we had some dishes done, we sat down at the island for a little appetizer.  (I can get grumpy when I’m hungry so I this was a precautionary measure that turned out sweet.) We had the rest of that delicious bread leftover from dinner on Sunday, dipped in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and some wine.

I was so happy. We were chatting, reminiscing about past Valentine’s Days, and kissing and I got really emotional and started to cry happy tears.

The lasagna turned out delicious and we ate on the couch while watching an episode of our new show Modern Family. I later thought that it was odd that we ate in front of the TV instead of at the table on Valentine’s Day but we were in the kitchen for so long prepping the meal and washing the dishes that we probably both just wanted to relax on the couch.

Then it was time for the dessert pizza.  We did a little “recon” on Friday night by going to Matchbox and ordering dessert pizza.  OK, we planned to go out to dinner that night to catch up and we hadn’t been to Matchbox in quite a while and chalked it up as “research.” But I’m so glad we did.  Our server was able to shed some light into the icing which we would’ve never gotten close otherwise. We were also able to focus in on some of the flavors to make sure we didn’t forget anything.

Well, the pizza was a success! All the flavors were there: cinnamon, sugar, blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, mint, and balsamic reduction.  The dough was very chewy and we’ll probably make some changes to that next time but overall the dessert hit the spot. We were so proud of ourselves. We ate our pizza on the couch while watching another episode of Modern Family.

Honestly, this was a perfect evening. We talked, we laughed, we cooked, we ate delicious food.  We were really connected and really enjoyed each other’s company.  It was different than a normal night because we were technically on a date and neither one of us was expecting to do anything else other than be with each other.

Neither of us wanted the night to end. When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I was bummed that it was all over.  I wanted to stretch the date and stay in our happy, relaxed, connected state. You know, like a long weekend that you just don’t want to end.

Definitely the best Valentine’s Day yet.

Jeans, a cat, and a million bucks

Posted on by jplatt27

Happy Friday! I don’t have anything profound to say today so I’m just going to share a list of random things on my mind.

  1. I’m excited to see my mom this weekend. We’ll spend some time together tomorrow afternoon and I’m really looking forward to it.
  2. Being able to wear jeans to work on Fridays makes my day. I currently only have one pair of work pants, I only have black tights but only have brown shoes that are appropriate to wear with skirts so I’m so happy I can just wear jeans today.
  3. I felt like a million bucks running on the treadmill this morning.  I almost got back in bed but didn’t so instead of lifting told myself I’d just walk on the treadmill.  But when Blackout came on my iPod I got super pumped up and ran to the beat of the song.  I knew I bought that song for a reason!  I only ran for the duration of that one song but I had goosebumps while doing so, I was so in the zone.
  4. I’ve been spending my lunch breaks this week with this cute guy.  I almost kinda fell asleep on Wednesday while we cuddling on the couch.  I wish I had a couch to sit on and a window to look out for every lunch break. However, I’m not that excited for our time today because there’s a little bit of a mess on the carpet that I have to clean up.
  5. Zach and Emily are getting married on Sunday! We’re headed up to Long Island to see them tie the knot.  It’s going to be a great time. Can’t wait to see how pretty Emily looks.
  6. When I randomly woke up at 4 am this morning, I heard a baby crying in the apartment above ours and I thought “oh, those poor parents.” Then I wanted to stick a note under their door saying something like “don’t worry, it won’t be like this for long” or “you can get through this” or some other encouraging thing.  Or bake a lasagna or something. Since I don’t know these people, the above things would be weird.  So instead I just sent them some calm, relaxing thoughts and happy baby wishes. I also tried to turn our alarm off pretty quickly just in case the baby could hear it 🙂
  7. Also looking forward to going to “the D” with my girlfriends from home tomorrow night!
  8. Plans for tonight: post about Valentine’s Day and schedule to post tomorrow morning, finish cake balls to bring home for our families, and pack.
  9. Looking forward to some nice long car rides with Mike this weekend and the good talks we usually have during them.

Talk to me:

Have you felt like a million bucks recently? What are you looking forward to this weekend?

How I talk to my husband

Posted on by jplatt27

We had a great Valentine’s Day!  I’m looking forward to sharing it with you all probably tomorrow or Friday.  For now, some thoughts I had on Monday.

Most of the time, my words towards my husband are warm, caring, gentle, loving, encouraging, happy, complimentary, cheerful, appreciative, or pleasant.  I say a lot of “thank you” and “I love you” or just give him a big hug and say “mmm.” This afternoon when we met to hand-off our car, the first thing I said to him was “you look so sexy in a suit.”  So most of the time, I speak kindly to Mike.

But then there are other times when my comments are snappy, short, biting, or accompanied with an eye-roll. These lines of snappiness come out so quickly that I don’t even realize I’m saying them until it’s already stung. And they hurt my husband. I don’t want to speak to any person like that and certainly not Mike.

I don’t know where they come from either. Two examples:

  1. While we were making the cake balls, Mike asked where the sprinkles were. I said “here” or something along those lines and when he turned around and looked for them on the other counter, couldn’t find them and asked again I pointed with head and eyes and said “they’re right here” and rolled my eyes as he picked them up.
  2. This morning I was sitting in bed blogging when Mike came in and turned the heat on. Within 5 minutes, I was really hot and snapped saying something like “it’s so hot in here, can you please turn the heat off?” with a tone of serious urgency. When Mike was like “uh, yeah, sure, what’s with the attitude?” I replied by saying “it’s just so hot in here I can’t stand it” and proceeded to storm out of the room saying that it was “frickin’ ridiculous.”

Like, why do I this?  Clearly, none of these things deserve attitude.  And honestly, sharing my behavior here is a little embarrassing. Luckily, Mike is pretty easy going and lets things roll right off his back. But that doesn’t make these outbursts ok.

I don’t want to get in the habit of treating my husband like this regardless of how infrequent these things are. So what do I do? Try to take a deep breath to compose myself before I make a rude remark? Apologize instantly if I let one slip out? Try to be uber-aware of my facial expressions and keep my eye rolls to a minimum?

I’d love to know:

Do you have moments where you’re snappy like this?  Where do they come from and why do we act like this? How do you rein it in? 

 

 

 

 

Simple delights

Posted on by jplatt27

Happy Valentine’s Day!

My day started off on the right foot after wobbling on the wrong foot momentarily.  Mike had to leave early for work this morning so we set our alarm for 5 am to go to the gym. It went off and Mike decided that he wasn’t going to make it and I was laying there debating about whether to go or not.  I got out of bed to get ready and got kind of annoyed that we set the alarm so early and Mike didn’t even end up going to the gym.  Washing my face I realized that I was still really tired and could use like another half hour of sleep, wishing that we had just set the alarm for 5:25 or 5:30.  Though it’s just a half hour, there is a big difference between 5 am, 5:30 am, and 6 am. I got back in bed and said to Mike “I wish we would’ve set the alarm later, I could use another half hour of sleep” and then turned to see the time was 5:28.  I could still get a half hour of sleep and then get up and go to the gym. So that’s what I did.  And the extra half hour was amazing. I felt very different when I woke up. I love when things like this happen.  I would’ve hated to start my Valentine’s Day (and Mike’s) on the wrong foot.

But that’s actually not why I’m writing this morning.  I’m writing to share some simple, delicious foods I’ve been eating lately.

First, last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast.

 While I was making a smoothie yesterday morning, I noticed a recipe on the side of the Chobani container for gorgonzola and yogurt crostini. Gorgonzola is my favorite cheese and we just happened to have some in the fridge from a gorgonzola cream sauce we made a few weeks ago. We also had this delicious loaf of bread I bought at Trader Joe’s to go with dinner on Sunday night. So I thought, yep, this is what I’ll have for dinner tonight. (Mike has class on Monday nights so we do our own thing for dinner.)

I whipped it up pretty quickly: toast some bread, mix yogurt and gorgonzola in a 2:1 ratio in a bowl with a fork and spoon to mash the cheese and spread the yogurt mixture on the toasted bread.  I topped mine with fresh blackberries (BOGO this week and we needed some for tonight’s dessert) and a drizzle of honey.  Delicious!

Another simple, tasty breakfast I’m in love with is this apple cinnamon oatmeal (in the crock pot, no less!) from Cooking with Jax.  My boss shared this recipe and I tried it late last week.  I made a batch on Thursday night, brought it for breakfast on Friday morning and shared with two co-workers, had more Friday afternoon, and finished it up for yesterday’s 10 o’clock snack. Clearly it made a ton, and it stayed perfectly fine in the refrigerator.  I topped mine with some brown sugar.  Mmm, Mmm, Mmm.

And last but not least, my go-to snack this week is chocolate pudding with crunchy peanut butter.  I mentioned this here before but haven’t had it in quite some time. I take a Jello pudding cup, pour the pudding in a larger dish and add about a tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter (for some texture, crunch and protein). So quick, so easy, so delicious.

I have some more delicious food coming my way today and I can’t wait to share our Valentine’s Day date here later this week. Until then, Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’d love to know:

What delicious things are you eating lately? 

What's for Dinner? Wednesday: Risotto

Posted on by jplatt27

Back with another What’s for Dinner? Wednesday! Tonight I’m sharing one of our favorite meals to make together and eat together: red wine risotto with peas!

Risotto is a great meal to cook with someone.  Not because it’s extremely complicated (it’s not really at all) but because it’s a time consuming meal and gives you time to chat in the kitchen (without the distractions of phone, computer, TV). It’s pretty much just stirring constantly for 25-30 minutes and it’s nice to have someone to keep you company.  Oh, and you put like a cup of wine in the recipe and drink the rest 🙂

Mike and I love to make risotto together because it gives us time to connect. We’ll take turns stirring and sitting, talk about things that are on our minds, and drink wine. Sometimes, though, much of the conversation is “mmm, this is going to be so good” or some variation of that statement.

Risotto is really just a fancy comfort food.  It’s warm, creamy, and you eat it out of a bowl with a spoon. What’s not to love?

Our go-to risotto is Giada’s red wine risotto with peas.

I’d love to know:

Do you like risotto?  Share/link up your favorite risotto recipe in the comments!

Are there any meals that you bond over with your significant other/family/roommates?

What's for Dinner Wednesday: Date Night

Posted on by jplatt27

Back again with another What’s for Dinner? Wednesday and tonight happened to be date night! We haven’t had date night in quite some time: either since my birthday date or when we went to the Nationals’ game. It’s one of my 2012 resolutions to go on one date night per month so tonight not only did I have a nice dinner with my husband but I also got to check a box on resolutions spreadsheet. Win-win!

Mike’s trying to “get into sushi” and we had a Living Social deal for Sushiko in Chevy Chase (Friendship Heights) that expires at the end of the month so we decided to go to Sushiko for our first date night of the year.

We started with some drinks: a rum and Coke for Mike and a mangotini for me.

Then I had a house salad with ginger dressing to start (which I pretty much inhaled and then had to tell myself to slow down, that I’m not in an eating contest, I’m on a date).

Don’t you love how vibrant and fresh that looks?

Next we ordered two rolls to share: the rock shrimp cilantro and the crunchy spicy salmon.  Mike chose both of these and I was happy to oblige.  Sometimes it feels so good to just trust your partner’s judgement. And it paid off.  Both rolls were delicious. The cilantro in the rock shrimp cilantro roll was so bright and fresh, it was awesome!

We topped off our meal with a soft shell crab roll.

Good meal.  I imagine we’ll be back again soon.

I’m glad we both enjoy sushi now.  Sometimes if we need a quick dinner we’ll stop at Whole Foods and grab some out of their pre-made case. It’s so funny how tastes can change.  If you would’ve told me 3 years ago that I’d like sushi by now I probably would’ve said you’re crazy.

I still kind of struggle while eating it though.  I feel like it’s a lot to put the whole thing in your mouth at once but it’s really poor sushi etiquette to not take it all in one bite.  (I learned that on a Bobby Flay Throwdown I think).  And honestly it just looks bad if you don’t. But I feel like it’s a lot to get down and I start to swallow it before I even get to taste it. Does anyone else have this problem?

I’d love to know:

Are you a sushi fan?  

What did you have for dinner?

Appreciation —> Happiness

Posted on by jplatt27

Yesterday Jess shared this nugget of wisdom over on Makeunder My Life:

“Stuff doesn’t make people happy. The appreciation of stuff makes people happy.”

As soon as I read this in my Google reader I stopped and immediately posted to Twitter:

Then I pulled up MML to get the URL, hit “Tweet,” and continued reading.  The next line was “Yep, go ahead and tweet it.” And then I felt like a complete tool.  But that’s not the point of this.

The point is that Jess’ statement is so true. The beautiful duvet we got for our wedding doesn’t make me happy; the sight of it on a nicely made bed and the thought of the comfort it provides makes me happy.  Owning a new black cardigan doesn’t make me happy; appreciating that it was exactly what I was looking for, is soft, fits me perfectly, and was only $17 makes me happy. The diamond earrings I got for my wedding don’t make me happy; appreciating their beauty and the fact that they go with everything and I can wear them every day makes me happy.

I think this statement applies to relationships too.  Having a husband/boyfriend/partner doesn’t necessarily make you happy.  Appreciating the laughs you share, the thoughtful things they do for you, the comfort you feel when resting your head on their shoulder or getting a big hug, that’s the stuff that makes you happy. This goes for family members, friends, co-workers, kids, and probably pets as well.

So it’s true appreciation yields happiness.

I’d love to know:

Who or what are you appreciating these days?

PS–A big thanks to Colleen for teaching me how to take a screen shot today!

What's for Dinner? Wednesday: How Sweet It Is edition

Posted on by jplatt27

Happy Hump Day! Aren’t long weekends great?  Having an extra day or two to relax and unwind is a wonderful thing.  But long weekends are a gift that keeps on giving: a short work week before or after.

But after two short weeks of work, the last two days in my office have had me feeling wiped out by 3:30. All I wanted to do when I came home today was take a nap.  After my 15 minute power nap on the couch, I was still pretty drained so I was happy to see that the meal we had planned for tonight was actually pretty speedy.

Me, as we sit down at the coffee table to eat: “Wow, this is going to be soo good.”

Mike: “Yeah, where’d you get this recipe?”

Me: “Where do you think?”

Mike: “How Sweet It Is?”

Me: “Uh, huh.”

[I get most of my recipes here so this is no surprise. Like the sangria and cookies I made for NYE, the fish sticks we had for dinner earlier this week, and the crockpot recipe we’ll have tomorrow or Friday.]

Me: “Don’t you love Jessica?”

Mike: “Yeah, is she single?”

What?! Isn’t my referencing her blog and bringing her delicious recipes into your life enough? I mean, I know she has a good sense of humor but come on!

So anyway, this is what we had for dinner:

BLT Salmon Tacos

These were really good, though I think I’d have much more to say if I hadn’t literally inhaled my first one.  Yeah, I kind of felt overwhelmed after that.

After Mike wolfed down his tacos in like four bites: “Mmm, yeah, that’s a keeper. I’d definitely have that again. That would be good in the summer too.”

Remember when I told you to make “try one of Jessica’s recipes” one of your new year’s resolutions? Yeah, I meant that.  Have you?

For dessert, we shared a Karen’s Birthday cupcake from Baked and Wired that I picked up on a lunch walk with my friend Allie.

And, I just put in the last 5 loads of laundry from our bed bug situation.  Good. Day.

 

 

Day One

Posted on by jplatt27

January 1, 2012 was a good day.

We got up and relaxed and then picked up breakfast items at Starbucks.  We came back and made coffee in the mugs Mike got me for Christmas and had breakfast.

Then we had our money conversation where we figured out our budget, made some goals, and came up with a plan to monitor our variable budget lines: the tracker below.

Our current goals: allocate money each month for life events (i.e. friends’ weddings, Christmas) so we don’t have to put those things on our credit cards, and pay off the lowest of my student loans by the 4th of July. In addition to those two joint goals my goal is to pay off my American Express by April 1. (You can read more about our various accounts here.)

Our other new plan is to chat each time one of us gets paid about upcoming expenses so that we can stay on top of things and continue to be on the same page. Usually we’d just chat when the accounts were getting low, or after one of us randomly checked our online banking. This often left us frustrated and feeling like “we have no money.” But that’s a reactive way to deal with things and we don’t want to be reactive, we want to be proactive. Being reactive leaves you feeling out of control but being proactive will leave you feeling on top.

After our talk, I got in bed to read Catching Fire (the second in The Hunger Games series). I love laying in bed reading especially when it’s sunny out and the sun shines through the window. Of course I fell asleep.  Then I woke up to our neighbor talking on the phone and wishing someone a Happy Birthday! Like not OK. This happens pretty regularly (mostly at night when I get in bed at 9pm) so I figured it was a good opportunity to knock on the door and tell her.  She didn’t answer the door.

We had lunch and did laundry.  Folded it while listening to an old episode of the Dave Ramsey show.  Have you listened to this show? It’s crazy how much debt these people have paid off. Mike and I find it inspiring.

Then we headed down to the National Mall to throw the frisbee around. It was a warm day for winter, Mike was wearing shorts, and when my heart rate started to get up after a few good throws and catches, I took off my jacket.

Sometime in the last two years, Mike and I started throwing the frisbee around. I’m not sure why but I’m so glad we did. Mike really likes to play sports, any type of sport, and when we throw the frisbee around I feel like his buddy.  It’s also exercise, I can get a pretty good sweat going and feel my heart pumping. And it’s a good time for us to chat. When we lived in our old apartment, we’d walk up to the mall and toss it around on the lawn in front of the Capitol. Now that we live further from the Mall, we’ll have to make more of an effort to get down there to do but I really hope we do that more.  Why not take advantage of the great city we live in?

We stopped at Pinkberry on the way home for a light snack.  And then hit the grocery store to get ingredients for dinner.

We made a butternut squash calzone , using the filling from Jessica’s stuffed shells, with a gorgonzola cream sauce on the side. OMG was this good.  I think Mike almost died of satisfaction.

Then we watched Crazy Stupid Love.

January 1, 2012 is reflective of a lot of things I hope the rest of the year will be filled with: productivity, fun, quality time together, creativity in the kitchen, and relaxing time. We were out and about but also home. We were productive but also had time to play.

I’m really hopeful for 2012.  I think it’s going to be a great year.

I’d love to know:

How did you spend January 1, 2012?