Greek Balloaves (huh?)

I actually found time to cook last night! Although Sean was busy outside doing some projects, and I was running around getting stuff done for the wedding, I thought I’d whip something up for dinner while watching the RHONJ Reunion. I love brain numbing stupid shows… and it was just that.

Let’s start out with the fact that I. Love. Greek. Food. I’m obsessed. I’m a sucker for a good gyro, tzatziki, and feta, oh man… don’t even get me started. So, I mixed some simple ingredients together to make what were either jumbo meatballs, or super small meatloaves… I’m not entirely sure. But they were delish! Even though I totally forgot tzatziki at the store to have with it, dangit!

The main ingredients, and pretty much only ingredients, were:

1-1.5lbs of ground turkey

1 bag of spinach

1 container of feta (I totally failed to see how much it was exactly, maybe 8 oz?)

Spices (I used garlic and Montreal Steak seasoning)

I started out by throwing the whole bag of spinach in a microwave safe bowl and nuking it for a few minutes to make it wilt. Once that step was done, I just threw everything else in the bowl and mixed it all together! I tried mixing it with a fork… and then a spoon… until I soon found that mixing it with my hands was not only gross feeling, but the best option for getting it all blended.

After all of the ingredients were combined, I rolled them into ball/loaf things and plopped them on a non-stick pan. I then put them in the oven at 350* for about 30-35 minutes.

After I saw that the juices were running clear, I took them out of the oven. I served my Greek Balloaves (technical term) with spicy yellow rice, the only thing missing was tzatziki sauce (sad face!). Next time… count on it.

Enjoy folks!

No time to be domestic...

After looking at my blog, I’ve realized that I’m starting to stray away from my domestic journey. We’ve been so busy recently that I haven’t gotten a chance to do much in the kitchen or around the house. Which is probably why it’s such a mess… the kitchen is still torn apart due to putting up the backsplash (we still have yet to grout), I still have some stuff to put away from the bridal shower but I don’t have any room in our tiny kitchen, the wedding is coming up super fast and I have a ton of little stuff to do, and there are tumbleweeds of dog hair drifting across our floors. I swear we have two of the hairiest dogs on the planet, but we love them to pieces!

Anyhoo, we had a fun filled weekend (which is my excuse for why we have such a messy house) that I would love to recap for you! Saturday we went up to the Citrus County Speedway to watch the races with Phil’s family, we had some fun with his silly little nieces J

Then Sunday we got up super early, enjoyed some homemade biscuits and gravy, and then we were off to River Ranch to check out the property! Here are some pictures of what we got ourselves into:

Beautiful! The land goes on forever, as in we rode for 20 miles and still didn’t see half of it. Crazy! It was a fun day (except for getting completely lost and dehydrated) but we got to see what River Ranch was all about.

I forgot to mention the pain in the butt mishap that we had with deal with… We stopped to get some grub at Wendy’s Saturday night before the race and when we went to leave, we didn’t move. Phil’s truck was in drive, but it most certainly wasn’t driving! From there on out, every time that Phil had to put his truck in drive, Sean had to literally get under the truck and move the transmission cable and click it into drive... I secretly think he just likes taking off his shirt, besides the fact that he was one of the only ones that could fit under the truck and actually knew how to do it haha. Either way, we were still able to press on with our adventure.

We all had a great time and we’re so excited for future trips to RR. This week Sean and I are going to focus on getting the house all cleaned up and “normal” again, all while preparing for our awesome weekend ahead! This will be our motto next weekend:

Yessss J

Randomness and snot...

No domesticated bliss in this post, just some bragging, complaining and some request for prayers. Sounds depressing already, geez…

Let’s start with gramma. My Nana fell (again) and didn’t break anything! How she has managed to fall all of these times and not break one single bone is beyond me. And while she does seem to hurt herself each time (or so we think), I’m beginning to think that she actually likes rides in ambulances and hospital food. A little change of scenery is nice every once in a while, I guess. Every single time I visit her in the hospital she always seems to be in high spirits and loves the company and always compliments the food. I’m on to that woman… and I think she knows it… and while I would love to go see her in her home away from home, I’ve been crazy sick this past week. Sore throat, achy and super snotty, in both the attitude and nasal department. Sorry Sean! This was actually the text I sent him yesterday:

Stumpy = Sean hehehe

The amount of tissues I used yesterday was into the hundreds I think… my nose was like a faucet, and a free flowing one at that. But enough about snot, I seem to be getting better and hopefully my Nana is too. So, that’s where the prayers will come in handy, thanks peeps!

Now for the bragging portion… my fiancé is a pretty awesome and talented dude, and even more so since buying the company. He now has a ton of extra time on his hands, which makes for happy puppies, a happy girl and a happy house! Check out what I came home to on Monday!

Yeah buddy! We haven’t had a backsplash in our kitchen since about the first week we bought the house almost three years ago (crazy how time has flown by). My new obsession is Subway tile and after pricing it out at a big tile store, we later found it for half the price at Home Depot! Score! We found the cool looking listello accent tile (which is actually real metal!) at Lowes. Super cool and we both love it. Once we get the big part of the kitchen done, we’ll grout it and be done! I told Sean that stainless steel appliances would look awesome in our kitchen since the whites in the tile and appliances dont exactly match up, he just rolled his eyes and walked away, which is pretty typical of him when the lightbulb above my head goes off... Oh well! Stick around for more pics when it’s all finished J

Also, once again, we have an exciting weekend planned, yippee! Saturday we’re headed to Inverness to check out the races at Citrus Motor Speedway which should be a good time, and Sunday we’re headed to our property! I’m so excited; we just signed the papers for it a few weeks ago with our friends Mike and Nick. We have three acres of land in River Ranch. The awesome thing about it is that we technically own three acres, but we have access to over 60,000 to ride four wheelers, drive trucks and roam around the beautiful untouched land of Florida! See y’all soon!

Ghosts and Ghouls

It’s beginning to look a little Halloweeny around here!  This weekend, the decorations were busted out, made and put up. In an effort to save some cash, I made some ghosts to hang in our palm tree outside. They’re super cute, super easy, super cheap (it only cost around $3.50 for materials) and they look really cool when the wind blows the palm fronds and they whip around J

So, here goes nothing! I started out with these three things, cheese cloth, heavy starch and Sean’s coffee to-go-cup-thingy. I used it because it was tall and it had a round top. You can use whatever you want to make that shape; this is just what I had on hand that would work.

I started by wrapping the cup in cellophane so I wouldn’t ruin the cup. I later found out that a plastic grocery bag worked much better.  I. Hate. Cellophane. And it hates me.  I then rolled out the cheese cloth and separated all the layers and cut it into strips about 14-16” long. The ghosts turn out really cool looking if you lay the strips of cheese cloth like a cross, it gives it some dimension.

After those steps, I draped the cheese cloth over the coffee cup.

And now, we spray  J   I took it outside for this step and sprayed the heavy starch reeeaaalllyyy generously all over the cheese cloth. To the point of where the whole thing was a foamy white because I sprayed so much haha.

After that, you just leave it to dry. This first one that was photographed took hours to dry, and since I’m impatient, I decided to take the blow dryer to the rest of them to hurry the drying process. That worked like a charm!

Once I had my form, I took a Sharpie marker to draw some eyes and a mouth on it. I then ran some fishing line through its head so it could hang. Here’s one all completed!

Super cute right? Here is what the front of the house looks like, with the exception of the pumpkin that’s hanging from my mailbox, I totally forgot to squeeze him in the pic.

Not too long after I took that picture, a storm rolled in... In fear that the rain would totally ruin my project, I took the little guys inside and hung them in our Ficus tree. They look kinda cool with the glow of the tv!

I carried the Halloween theme inside, as well, with some table décor. I found this awesome table runner at Michaels and made the centerpiece out of a wine glass, candles and some Candy Corn. If it’s looking a little scarce on Candy Corn, it’s because I cant stop eating it… Oops.

We were also given this creepy looking little dude from Sean’s mom. He lights up and weirds everyone out that comes in the house.  But that’s what Halloween is all about, right? He kinda looks like Casper with a little bit of Michelin Man mixed in there... You can even see a faint line of a training bra, do you see it? What a weirdo!

What are you doing for Halloween? Are you decorating your house?

Gwen Stephonics!

This sh** is bananas! B-a-n-a-n-a-s! Ok, so, I have a habit… I buy bananas with the intent to eat them every morning and I always end up leaving the house without a nanner in hand. A few days later and they end up looking like this:

Ew!

In an effort to not be a waste case, I put them to good use and made banana bread! So, instead of forgetting to bring a banana to work, I can now forget to bring the bread to work, ha!

Here’s the recipe I use to make my banana bread J

3 Bananas (mashed)

1 cup Sugar (I was just shy of a cup so I used a heaping tbsp of brown sugar)

2 Eggs (beaten)

½ cup Vegetable oil (I used coconut oil)

1tsp Baking Soda

½ tsp Salt

Checking to make sure you have the ingredients needed is usually a good idea, but if you’re like me and you don’t even look, just pray you have other things to improvise! A way to make this a tad bit healthier would be to use Stevia instead of Sugar, Coconut Oil instead of Vegetable Oil, and Wheat Flour instead of White Flour.

The next step is to mix all of the ingredients together and put it in a greased pan. I skipped that step because I have a stone baking pan from Pampered Chef that doesn’t really require that. Then you plop it in the oven at 350* for one hour!

Your house will soon smell uhhhhmazing, then when the dinger goes off, pull it out and let it cool! Check out that yumminess!

After it cooled for a bit, I cut into it to sneak a piece. It was awesome!

It was so fluffy it reminded me of this awesome chick:

Yes, that is a Despicable Me reference. I stooped that low to make you giggle, hopefully it worked ;) 

Well folks, that’s all for now. We’ve got a fun, exciting weekend ahead! Its Sean’s birthday Saturday, but we’ll be celebrating tonight. I planned a surprise dinner for him, hopefully it’ll work out! Then Saturday, we’re attending our friend’s Trevor and Jesica’s wedding at the Florida Aquarium! I’m so excited J



Concrete, breakfast and bad outfits

What a busy weekend! I left off Friday with a picture of Sean tearing up our yard with a bobcat… About three or four months ago I came home for lunch and found him and his friend clearing out our side yard, what a mess!

Throughout the next few weeks we prepped the area for concrete. I had some wire mesh and rebar delivered to the house from my work and everything was ready to go! We did a cool free form pattern connecting the slab to our back porch. You can kind of see from the picture how it carries into the back yard, it looks really neat!

So seven in the morning on Saturday, this big guy showed up. A loud concrete truck to wake up all the neighbors; who definitely hate us now… Sorry!

Everything went pretty smoothly once we got going and we definitely had a good crew of friends to help finish the slab.

Now, let’s pause for a second to discuss Sean’s choice of outfits… I know this picture below is blurry, but do you see this hot mess? In his mind, its practical; board shorts to rinse off, rubber boots to rinse off as well, and no shirt, because it was freakin hot out, but really? He will never dress our children… Mark my words.

As the work went on, I continued to fill up waters and I also fed the boys breakfast. More on that in a little bit.

Later on in the day, as the concrete dried, we used a quick cut saw to cut lines in the slab. This is done so that the slab doesn’t crack. Normal people would use proper safety gear such as safety glasses, ear protection, steel toe boots, and pants. But, not my boy. He wore safety glasses and ear protection, but still had on his board shorts and by that time had kicked off the rubber boots and threw on some flip flops. OSHA would have a field day with this one, but I guess two out of four isn’t that bad… ha!

I'm happy to report that all ten toes are still attached :)

Also, since no one wants to wake up ridiculously early on Saturday morning, I thought I would make it somewhat worth their time to come over and help, so I made breakfast. When it comes to making breakfast for 8 hungry boys, the easiest way to do it is to make breakfast casserole. So I took all of the wonderful breakfast items that everyone loves and through it all together. It makes for fewer dishes, which I most definitely appreciate. I started with a 9x13 glass dish and lined it with hash browns, kind of like a pie crust. I used the southwest style hash browns for some extra flavor.  

I then took a pound of cooked bacon (that I cooked the night before) and chopped it up and put it on top of the hash browns. It was actually less than a pound because Sean found it in the fridge and ate some... Dangit.

Next, I cracked 12 eggs and whisked them up. I threw in a bunch of spices, salt, pepper, garlic, parsley, Cajun seasoning, and a dash of cayenne pepper for some bite. Once that was all mixed up, I poured the mixture into my hash brown and bacon lined dish. I tossed it in the oven at 325* for about 20 minutes.

Once it was all cooked, I took it out and sprinkled 2 cups of Colby Jack cheese on top and placed it back in the oven for about 3-4 minutes to get the cheese all melted. Here’s what it looked like when I pulled it out, check out that cheesy masterpiece, yum!

 

And here’s what it looked like 5 minutes later…

Apparently they liked it!

All in all, Saturday was a successful day and we are very thankful to our helpful and dedicated friends. We now have a slab to park the trailer for the lawn maintenance business, which Sean started today! September was a whirlwind of a month, and we couldn’t be more excited for our future. Let’s hope the rest of the year is as exciting and full of good news like September was!

We bought a...

Zoo! Just kidding, we bought a Lawn Maintenance Company! Big Huge things have been happening in our little Dockerty household lately and I’m so excited to spill the beans.

Small recap: Sean and I both started our new jobs at around the same time last year, him working for Bright House and me working for HD Supply. I love my job, meanwhile; he wasn’t so fond of his… Sean is such a hard worker and he is so driven and has always wanted to be his own boss.

So, when the opportunity came along to buy the business, we looked into it and examined how our lives would change (home life, finances, etc.) and decided that this plan was totally feasible. Now, he’ll have more time for side jobs, Haulin’ It, LLC (the other company he currently owns and runs), time with me and the fur-kids, and, my personal favorite, more time to get stuff done around the house! Yippee!!! Not only that, but he’ll be making more money. For our little family, this plan is a win/win and we couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities that are to come our way.

Without further ado, here it is!

So proud! Do you like the celtic symbol? Very Irish for my Dockerty boy :)

Today is actually Sean’s last day with Bright House Networks, which means no more free cable and internet (sad face!) but we couldn’t be more excited for him to start his latest endeavor. Please keep us in your prayers as we go through this huge transition, it should, (in theory) be a smooth one, but you never know what can happen….

As for wedding updates, most of our guests have received their wedding invites and we’ve gotten many compliments, which definitely makes the hard work of assembling them seem worth it! And, my wedding dress is officially altered! As well as my future sister-in-law’s dresses and Sean’s tie! By the way, it’s much cheaper to have a tie made than to buy one, plus you get to pick the perfect fabric for the occasion! Just a lil tip for ya, no need to thank me ;)

Also, this weekend there are big things happening to the house, I’ll be sure to upload some pictures and fill you in on the madness. Here’s a quick pic to hold you over, ahhh!!!

Who's that hunk driving? Oh, it's just Sean... Destroying things around our house... No big deal.