Bookshelf Redo

Lane's best friend's mom gave us some furniture when she moved to Hawaii which we happily accepted. I decided that it was time to add some color to our house, so I redid the bookshelf. It used to be a dark brown laminate, but now it's a distressed teal (and Lane found the paint on the clearance shelf at Lowe's for $5)! I didn't take pictures after every step, but I cut and glued trim on the top and bottom, had to paint 2 coats of primer, sand, paint 3 coats of teal, sand it, and then put a wax finish on it. I had to work around the rainy weather, so it took me about a week.

Before

After

I still need to work on decorating it, but it looks so much brighter and more fun! I can't wait for my next project!

Our Favorite Shows

As starving students, we don't have much of a disposable income, so a lot of our entertainment comes from either Netflix or regular TV. Here's a list of some of the shows that we like. Lest you think that all we do is watch TV, keep in mind that this list had been compiled over our 4 years of marriage. Maybe next time you feel like you don't have anything to watch you can take a gander and let inspiration strike!

• Psych. I swear, I have not talked to ANYONE who doesn't like this show. Young, old, gullible, cynical. It doesn't matter. We all love a little mystery, especially when Shaun and Gus are involved.
• White Collar. A famous conman and world-renowned counterfeiter working for the good guy. We love suave Neal Caffrey working with bumbling FBI agent Peter Burke. 
• Burn Notice. A blacklisted spy tries to figure out who burned him. His easygoing sidekick, Sam Axe, is definitely our kind of guy.
• Suits. A genius ne'er do well fakes his way into a prestigious law firm. Some people are suspicious but he hasn't been caught yet...
• 30 Rock. Liz Lemon, the TV producer of the fake "The Girlie Show" has breakdowns/issues she has to address with herself and the cast every week. Hilarious! Too bad it's in its last season.
• Parks & Rec. Oh Leslie Knope, what would we do without you and Ron Swanson? They work at the Parks Department (obviously) and have all sorts of interesting characters making their lives difficult.
• Modern Family. I think everyone knows this show, but if not, watch it! Phil Dunphy's sweet-natured ineptness is awesome primetime viewing. The family drama makes this non-drama a family favorite.
• Arrested Development. The Bluth family is in a lot of trouble! All of them (except their son Michael and his son, George Michael) are lying scoundrels who would do anything to save themselves. When the government intervenes and freezes their assets while also throwing George Bluth, Sr. into jail, who knows what will happen? Also, happily, Netflix has bought the series and will be making about 10 new episodes that will premiere next summer. A movie is rumored to not be too far behind.
• Sherlock. This a BBC show, and each episode is more like a movie. Each mystery is so different from anything we've seen before that we love it! 
• Friends. 'Nuff said. Also, they just released a Blu-Ray version of the series. Happy day!
• Ok, well that's all the shows I can think of right now. Obviously we're not very deep and prefer comedies. If you have any suggestions for us, we'd love to hear them!

What Have We Been Up To?

Weeellll.......... let's see... since January? Dang, I've got to blog more often. I'm just going to list things off as I think of them:

• I went down to Tucson in January for my dad's birthday and to see the sun for a week! 
• I also went down to Tucson in May for my mom's 50th birthday as a surprise-and it worked! She was surprised! We even had a surprise party for her (thanks, Reay clan, for all of the help!). I think it may have slightly eased the pain of entering a new decade.
• The news about Lane is basically that he just fishes all the time. If you ever wonder where he's been/what he's caught, just go to his Facebook page. I swear the only reason he has an account is to put up fishing pictures.
• We went on a family reunion camping trip with Lane's mom's side of the family for a week at Blue Hole (in Eastern Oregon, don't ask me to be more specific!). It was awesome! The weather was great. We ate all of our meals together and even played Minute to Win It games one night, which were hilarious. I'm so glad we get to do that every year-if only the Kenners did it! We need to start.
• We went out to the coast a few times to go crabbing this summer. I'm not a fan of crab, but Lane is, and all of the boys go out on the boats while the girls sit around and talk. Works for me!
• In August we celebrated Lane's birthday. It was pretty chill. I can't believe he'll be 30 next year!
• My parents came out in September (oh, because it was my birthday) and enjoyed the nice Oregon weather. We kayaked on the Willamette one day, went to a movie in the park, and went over to Theron's and Pam's houses.
• We went over to Theron's a TON to pick raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, apples, plums, tomatoes, corn, bell peppers, pears, and cherries. And that's just the produce I can think of off the top of my head. Man I love Oregon summers. 
• There was this one day in September when my mom was still visiting that I swear was the perfect day. We woke up and went over to Theron's. We collected a bushel of apples. We cored them and canned them! (The applesauce is delicious by the way). I went outside and read a book on the grass in the warm sun, eventually falling asleep. I think it was Five Little Peppers. I woke up, and we went over to Pam's house for some grilled cheese and tomato soup. We had homemade ice cream, and then we worked on a craft. When we were lying in bed, I told Lane, "Remind me of this day when it gets cold and wet and dreary in a few months." I guess typing this right now while it's the winter is a good reminder for myself why it's so worth it to live here.
• In the beginning of October we went to a corn maze with a bunch of our dental school friends and their kids. It was a great fall day and we had so much fun getting lost!
• We went to Lane's brother's house for Thanksgiving. We almost had all of Lane's siblings and their spouses and kids there! We were only missing Ellen, Hamish, Rowan, and Heath. We missed you guys! We had an awesome Thanksgiving meal with like 15 pies and then went out that night to do some Black Friday shopping. We got everything we needed and were back by 8 PM Thursday night! Can you believe how quickly it went? We just had a nice relaxing vacation and it was so nice to see everyone and just be able to lounge about.

Well that's all I can think of right now! Happy Cyber Monday shopping!

Oops... I did it again!

Remember this post last February? Well unfortunately another pan cover has had the same fate. I guess I need to check the oven more thoroughly before I preheat it... In my defense, it frees up a lot of counter space to keep stuff in the oven. Since the brownies, cupcakes, and cookies stored inside were toast (literally!) I decided to console myself with this chocolate cake recipe. Delicious!

Let it Snow!

It doesn't often snow here, so having the forecast predict that it will snow doesn't mean much. But look what we woke up to this morning! It'll probably melt by tomorrow but it sure is a fun surprise for a day!

OHSU Class Christmas Party

Every year, OHSU has a class Christmas party. It's an ugly sweater themed party, and it's really fun to see what everyone's wearing. We went thrift storing the day before to find sweaters, but they were all out. Lane still wanted to dress up, so this is what he ended up doing:

It's kind of hard to see in the pictures, but besides gluing on Christmas ornaments, he strung battery-operated Christmas lights through the jean jacket. He had a slight mohawk too. Things are never dull with Lane around!

Banana Bread

This past week I cleaned out the freezer and found a TON of frozen bananas that I'd put in there to make banana bread. I buckled down and made some from a recipe on allrecipes. You can find the recipe here. I tried 2 different versions to try to make it healthier. I added plain Greek yogurt instead of sour cream and added some whole wheat flour. The first loaf I added only whole wheat:

 It tasted ok, but was missing a little bit of flavor.

The second loaf I did half whole wheat and half white flour. Obviously, it turned out a little bit better. This is all that was left of the loaf by the next day. Yes, we ate the whole loaf in 1 night. I'm definitely going to be making this again soon!