Spicy Seafood & Udon Stir Fry
about 4 -6 servings

Ingredients:
1 pack of seafood mix, thawed (usually found in the frozen section at the grocery store)
1 head of napa caggage, core removed and thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced (I’m the worst at keeping all the pieces uniformed)
Pack of enoki mushrooms
1 onion, sliced
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
1 serrano pepper, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 packs of udon noodles
1/4 cup noodle soup base
1 tbsp of Korean chili pepper flakes
1 tbsp of Korean chili paste
2 tbsp of canola oil

Directions:
Follow the package instructions to cook the udon noodles, and then set aside.

Heat up the canola oil in a large pan (or pot, but if you have a wok that would be perfect!), give the oil a minute to heat up, then add the garlic and onions and stir fry for a minute until fragrant. Add the carrots, mushrooms, and cabbage, and continue to stir fry until wilted and soft about 6 minutes. Add in the noodle soup base, along with the chili paste, serranos, and the chili pepper flakes and continue to stir for another minute. Proceed to add in the seafood mix and stir fry until cooked completely. If it seems a little dry, put in a splash of the noodle soup base, and continue to mix. Lastly, add the noodles and half of the green onions in and toss together for an additional 3-4 minutes or until everything is heated through. Serve warm and garnish with the remaining green onions.

I actually doubled the recipe and did half of it without the chili paste and peppers for the kids (with imitation crab instead of the seafood mix), and Ben and I got the half with the spice. Just typing this up is making me hungry and I think I’m going to make this again for dinner tonight. I’m going to break my meal plan for the week because the weekend was so busy that I never was able to get fontina cheese to make pizza, so that recipe will probably get made next week instead.

If you don’t like spice, just omit the spicy ingredients. Or if you don’t have the Korean spices and paste, I’d make it with regular cayenne pepper and add a bit more noodle soup base (or soy sauce if you don’t have noodle base). Also, if you don’t eat seafood, you could most certainly stir fry in some chicken or leave meat out if you are vegetarian and just up the amount of vegetables you put in. I love how easily adaptable this dish can be. If you give it a try, I’d love to hear how it works out for you!

Crepe Paper Heart Crown

Supplies:
Crepe paper streamers in various colors
Scissors
Floral wire (a roll of 30 gauge floral wire from the craft store did the job for this project)
Wire cutter
White floral tape
Directions:
1. Fold 2.5″ of crepe paper over and cut out your heart. Be sure to not cut out the bottom of the heart as you will want two hearts to be attached together at the bottom (see photo). Cut out about 12 – 15 hearts in various colors.

2. Using the wire cutter, cut 6″ strands of wire that amount to same as the number of crepe paper hearts you previously cut out. Open up your paper heart, center the wire on it, then fold in half, pinching the heart closed. Continue to wrap the entire wire completely with floral tape. Repeat for each of your paper hearts.

3. Overlap the end of the heart stems over each other by about 1.5″ – 2″, and intertwine each stem tightly around the next until you’ve connected them all together to create your heart crown. I used about 12 – 15 heart stems per crown for my little girls, but when you near the end, keep the sweet little head nearby to double check measurements to make sure it will fit.

I made 4 of these heart crowns for our Valentine Day festivities. I’m not even sure what we’ll be doing, but they’re all about these types of celebrations, so I try to make it as fun for them as possible. Plus, not only is it Valentine’s Day, but it’s also my mom and dad’s wedding anniversary, so we do have a lot to celebrate on February 14th!

If you’ve got some crown loving princesses in your home, you should definitely make them one (or several) of these for Valentine’s Day! If you’re wanting a floral crown, check out this crepe paper floral crown we did awhile back.

Several months back, I asked my instagram friends their thoughts on a stainless steel sink versus a cast iron enamel one (and I promised to share what I ended up picking). Our old sink was really worn and beaten up (these tract home builders give you the cheapest stuff they can get away with!) and our faucet hadn’t been functioning properly for several months. Anytime a guest used the sink, they could never turn it off because there was a special (unconventional) way to do it. We kind of got used to our broken sink since we knew how to turn it on and off, but it was definitely a pain.

I had been doing research online about the pros and cons of various kitchen sinks, read things on consumer reports, but just couldn’t decide. It’s always been a dream to have a farm house sink, but it would be too much trouble (and money) to break the granite and have it adjusted, as well as the get the cabinet rebuilt for that. Another challenge was that the sink we picked out would have to have faucet holes in it, since there’s no room to have it on the counter top. After agonizing over which a sink and faucet for few months, we finally made our selections.

For our sink, I decided to go with a cast iron enamel one from Kohler (this one bought from a local showroom). This particular sink came with a no chip, stain, or crack guarantee (otherwise, they’ll replace it), so I thought I’d take my chance with it. I just love the look of the cast iron enamel over the stainless steel, and it’s as close as I’ll get to a farmhouse sink right now. It’s nice and deep, so much deeper than our previous sink; the shape of the opening makes it really spacious, which means that it can hide our dish messes well, definitely a plus!

After finally having the sink picked out, it was time to find a faucet. Ben’s mom has a touch one and we love using it when we’re in Texas, while we wanted that, we’ve read mixed reviews on them, so we opted against it. I like the farm looking faucet fixtures, but Ben didn’t like those, so we searched for something more simple. In the end, we picked this one (in stainless steel) from Pfister. We were both sold on the simplicity of it and Ben was excited about the retracting spray head. Also, it came with a pretty good warranty, so we felt good about it.

Even though we ordered our sink and faucet in the summer, it took awhile for them to get here, so we didn’t get them put into the kitchen until right before Thanksgiving, and we’ve been loving both ever since! We had our handy man install both the sink and faucet (I like DIY, but sometimes we leave certain things to the professionals, plus that sink weighed 125 pounds!), and he was impressed with the quality of both and said they should both last us a long time. I was nervous Ben wasn’t going to like the sink because I knew he wanted an equal dual basin sink (the right basin is smaller), but surprisingly he has no complaints (and none about the faucet either)!

We’ve been using both for about two months now and we’re pleased with our decisions. The sink is nice and big and keeps clean well, and the water comes out of the faucet so nicely. The retractable head is heavy duty and has a magnet that easily attaches back. It feels so much fancier (and better quality) than our previous sink and faucet, and it makes washes dishes feel a little bit more fun, well as fun as it could be! We ended up purchasing automatic this soap dispenser, and despite the mixed reviews about it, it has worked out pretty well for us so far. True’s currently into washing the dishes, and I think it has a lot to do with the fancy faucet and soap dispenser. Either way, I’ll enjoy it for as long as I can because I know one day it will be like pulling teeth to get her to wash the dishes. I hope that day doesn’t come too soon.

Ever since I pinned this awhile ago, I’ve always wanted to spray paint a basket silver. The only problem is I would always forget to buy metallic silver paint every time I went to the hardware store, but a week ago my memory was working properly, and I finally picked up a can. Thus, I took a basket we already had, taped off where I wanted to color block it, and then went to town spraying. I let the first coat dry completely, which took about an hour, and then I sprayed it again. All it took was two coats and my basket now has a little more personality!

I definitely still have lots of silver spray paint left, so I think I might be going silver crazy with various things that are paintable in our home! I’m going to spray one more basket silver and maybe some pots for plants. What are some things you’d like to change up a bit with a can of silver spray paint?

Bossam. I mixed this and this recipe together, healthified it a bit (by using more veggies and lean pork sirloin), threw in some of my Korean food know-how (thanks to this lady!), and we had a yummy dinner that had my husband wow-ed. We are making this again soon for sure, especially because the reason I made this was to find a use for the 4-pack of lean pork sirloin Ben bought on sale (we don’t normally eat pork, but thought we’d try it).

Spicy Tomatillo and Chicken Enchiladas. I used to follow this recipe, but this time I didn’t follow it, and just went off memory and what I thought. I’m getting more courageous in the kitchen to not follow something word for word, but I have made a few mistakes here and there (like forgetting to put salt, but which is just as well because we go light on salt anyway). I make the girls a batch without the spice and they love it too!

Week of 1/27 – 1/31
Monday: Spaghetti
Tuesday: Caramelized Butternut, Crispy Kale, and Fontina Pizza
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: White Bean Chili (we didn’t have dinner club last week, but we’re bringing it back this week)
Friday: Sushi/pizza night

I’m feeling some homemade pizza this coming week, so we will be doing dough making on Monday. I can’t wait to teach True how to make it! What are some of your favorite homemade pizza recipes?

This week’s learned, links, and thankfulness…

This big girl of mine started doing her own baking this week. Granted, they’ve been box mixes, but you’ve got to start somewhere!

My soul needed the reminders in this song (shared to me from my bff)… everything is meaningful and doing something. Those are wise words.

I’m so awed by how Katie’s family is converting a school bus into a living space for a home! This and this post is so interesting!

Good and interesting article that was circling Facebook.

I love the colors in this room.

I realized this week that I enjoy cooking. I’m not a natural and it’s taken over a year to get used to it, but I really like it!

Thankful for the maturity I see my big girls exhibiting.

My friend told me about Giada’s new cookbook and I can’t wait to check it out! Anyone have it yet?

We had a busy Saturday of having to take care of some unexpected things, but we did get to take the girls to the Safari Park, so I’m so thankful for that family time!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!!