Friday Foods - Greek Pitas (My Way)

Friday has blessed us with it's presence again, oh yeah.  It's supposed to be a raining weekend here, so I think we'll be keeping it simple and low stress.  We want to get a few small projects finished up, the bathroom (rolls eyes), that we've been putting off for a while.  I also have a bunch of things I want to get done in the studio this weekend.  I can't wait to do some creating.

But enough about our plans, lets get to the FOOD.  This week I have one of our favorite dishes, Greek Pitas.  Now, I won't be making claim that these are authentic or anything, they are just how we make them.  They are delicious  I can tell you that.

Now I've already shared my yummy Tzatziki sauce with you, if you have not seen it, click here for that recipe.  It's yummy.

And this is what the spread usually looks like in our house for pita night.  We set up the pitas sort of like you would for taco bar.  That way you can put what your want and how much you would like on your pita.  They are wonderful.

We get awesome pita pockets we get from the local grocery store.  They are yummy.  Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to try and make pitas from scratch.

We also have a variety of veggies and toppings.  Here are some ideas for veggies you can use:
~ tomatoes
~ cucumbers
~ Kalamata olives
~ black olives
~ red onion
~ lettuce
~ hummus (this isn't a veggie, but it's delicious on a pita).

And don't forget the Feta cheese, or you can be like us and use a locally produced goat cheese.  We use goat cheese because most Feta cheese in the United States is made with cow's milk, making it a lot more bland then imported Feta.  So I suggest either buying imported cheese or if you want to support local farmers, like we do, buy goat cheese.

So what are you waiting for, go out and make some delicious pitas tonight.

Ingredients for dressing

~ 1 half lime (the other half can be used for your Tzatziki sauce)
~ 1/4 c white vinegar
~ 2 tbs sugar
~ 1/2 tsp kosher salt
~ 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
~ freshly ground pepper
~ 3-5 fresh pealed garlic cloves
~ 1/4 tsp oregano
~ 1/4 tsp basil
~ pinch of dill
~ 1 c canola oil (I've used olive oil as well)
~ 1/2 c goat cheese

Directions
1. Add everything except the oil and cheese in a blender, food processor, or tall container if using an immersion blender.
2. Blend everything until smooth.
3. While the blender is one, slowly add the oil.
4. Turn off the blender, and add the cheese.  Hit the pulse button until the dressing is the consistence you're looking for.  Shorter if you would like cheese chunks, longer if you want a smooth dressing.

This recipe is adapted from Our Best Bites.   

I like to blend the dressing until it is really smooth and there are no visible chunks of cheese.  I also have been known to add a little more red pepper for a bit of a bite.  You can also make this dressing with lemon juice, as is in the original recipe, but with some experimenting we like the how the lime juice tastes.

Directions for Pita
1. Marinade your meat choice with the Greek dressing (we use soy chicken strips).  I normally let it sit for about a half an hour, but you can let it sit for as long as you would like.
2. Grill the meat.
3. Lightly grill pittas until soft
4. Add all your veggies, meat and Tzatziki sauce to the pitas
5. Enjoy

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Don't forget to stop by my other blog, Three Fates Design, for today's Freebie Friday.  You can pick up this adorable Halloween paper craft.

Have a fantastic weekend.

It's starting to feel a lot like autumn

Autumn has arrived and I'm loving it!!  Other then the fact that it's pitch black out when I get up in the morning, there is not much I hate about autumn.  I'm pretty sure I've stated that before, like when I showed you my new fall themed wreath.  I love me some autumn and I love making the house feel like autumn as well.

We don't have a mantel because we don't have a fireplace, though I have tried convincing J we need a fireplace, so I decorate our side table.

I do some decorating other places as well, like our dining room table and our entertainment center.  Look at these pretty flowers I picked up at Micheal's for half price.  Okay, most of them were on sale, one wasn't, and it was expensive, but don't tell J.  Shhhhhhh.

I love how just changing out the flowers gives the room a much more fall feel.  And I love these fake flowers.  I mean look at those orange berry things.  I have no idea what the are supposed to be, but they are cool looking.  And my amber jar I stole borrowed from work, looks awesome.  My boss knows I took the jar, we have a whole box of them, so don't go thinking I'm stealing thing from work.  ;-)

But anyway, back to our side table.  I picked up a bunch of stuff from our local Dollar Store a few weeks ago. I got a few plastic gourds, which I had all intention of painting, but I kinda like the colors they are now, so we'll see if I end up painting them. We found the large amber jar at a thrift store a month or so ago. It's an old A&W jug and is very cool looking. I have my little glass pumpkin I got from JoAnn's last year (for 70% off) that I adore.

I also picked up this little ceramic pumpkin and owl at the Dollar Store. Yup, both of these adorable things were only a buck a piece. How adorable are they?  I love the owl so much, it makes me smile every time I see him.

I also made some bunting out of scrapbook paper and some string I had. I just cut out triangles (I didn't use a template, I just eyeballed them) and then taped them onto the thick string I had. They turned out pretty cute, well I think they did.

And because not only is if autumn, but Halloween is coming, I added my little bat. I have had this thing for years and years. I think I've had it longer then J and I have been together. I love it, it's so cute. Time is starting to show on her though, and the cat has pulled her little feet off, but I still love her.  The perfect little Halloween addition.

The left over gourds from my wreath ended up in the little bowl on our coffee table. I also plan on painting these little guys because they are pretty cheap looking, but I haven't gotten around to that yet. Maybe I'll paint them before next fall ;-)  I'm also waiting for the cats to discover these.  I have not woken up to these little guys all over the floor, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

So that's what I have for autumn decorating.  It's not a lot, but it's just right for us.  Just enough to make me smile.

Do you decorate for the different seasons or do you go all out for each holiday?  

Weekend Recap

Oh my, this weekend was a crazy, busy, fun weekend.  We drove up to Chippewa Falls for a wedding.  Now Chippewa Falls is about 3-3.5 hours from Madtown, so it was a little bit of a drive.  Luckily the leaves have started to change and it was a beautiful drive.  Northern WI really is a beautiful place, so if you ever get the chance to visit, you should.

And not only J and I went on this trip, Yoda got to come along as well.  This was her first overnight trip at a hotel.  Such a little jet-setter she is.

She was extremely well behaved on both the long car ride and staying in a hotel.  She even handled our loud rowdy friends who followed us back to the room after the reception.  This might mean the little shit will be able to travel with us more often.

 
It was a super fun weekend that both J and I needed.  Just a weekend hanging out with our awesome friends having a good time, not worrying about things like work or school or house stuff.

Here are the bride and groom singing to each other.  Oh yes there was karaoke.  Like I said, it was an awesome wedding.  The bride and groom are fantastic together and we were happy to be there to celebrate this special day with them.

Here's more karaoke.  J's rocking out along with the rest of our friends.  We had a fantastic time.  The best part was staying in the hotel that the wedding and reception were held at.  We didn't have to think about driving anywhere or bringing anything with us.  Our room was only 2 minutes away from the banquet hall, so we could stop back there when needed (to check on our little pug).

That's how we spent our past weekend.  A lot of driving, a lot of partying  a lot of having fun.  A fantastic weekend!

What did you do this past weekend?  Any kind of partying or did you lay low?  

DIY Fall Wreath

It's starting to feel a lot like fall around here.  The temps have dropped and the leaves are falling.  The days are already shorter, it's pitch black outside when I get up at 5:00 now.  But that's okay, as much as I love summer, I might love autumn more.  I love sweaters, and boots, and bonfires.  All good things

I've started adding little bits of fall decoration all around the house.  A little here and a little there.  I love the warm colors of fall.

I also picked up some stuff to make a new wreath for our front door.  Now, I never thought I would be a wreath person.  But since we bought the house, I'm loving decorating the front door.  Maybe it makes me forget about how ugly the storm door is (it's coming down soon).

So here is what I created for fall.  Nothing that really reinvents the wreath, but still a nice little touch for fall.

So what did I do?  First I picked up a wreath from the thrift store.  This is a great place to find wreaths, they always seem to have some.  I recommend looking there before shelling out the dough at the craft store.

I painted the wreath with an ivory spray paint.  I won't show you how to spray paint, since I feel most of you already know how to do that ;-)

I then grabbed some small flowers from Micheal's.  These are from there dollar section.  They normally have a small little section of smaller flowers that are between $1.00-$1.50, and they normally come in bunches of three.  They are perfect for something like this.  You can also check out thrift stores.  One I like to go to always has silk flowers.

I just stuck the flowers in the wreath where I saw fit to stick them.  I didn't use any wire to hold them down because they were pretty secure by just weaving the ends through the wreath, but if you wreath is different, you may need to wire of glue them in.

I picked up the little gourds from the Dollar Store.  They came in little packs of five foam gourds and were perfect size for this.

I punched a hole in them using one of my very, very long needles.  I discovered later that I didn't need to do this because the wire I was using was strong enough to poke through the little gourds.

Then I just threaded wire through the gourd.  I normally use a lot lighter gauge wire then this, but I used a heavier gauge this time because I had some left over from a different project.  It worked just fine.  So you can use what ever you have.

I also thought about hot gluing the gourds in place because they are so light, but I wasn't sure how well this would hold up.  I might try gluing one on and see if it hold up as well as the ones wired on.  Just as an experiment.

I then wire the little guys on the wreath were  I felt the looked the best.  I'm sure there are professional wreath makers out there just appalled by my attempt, but I like it.  It's simple and feels like fall.

   
I think it looks pretty good.  I only added three little gourds, because I didn't want to over do it, but now I'm thinking about adding a few more.  I'm letting the current one settle and see how I feel in a week or so.  Then I'll decide if I need to change it up.

I also decided to not paint the gourds.  I bought paint to paint them lovely fall colors, but I decided to just go with their original color.  Again, we'll see how I feel about them in about a week.  I might change my mind.

How have you been bringing fall into your home?  Or are you avoiding the fact that summer is over and fall is here?  :-)

It's Hump Day

Well today I had planned on giving you an update about our second plumber visit, but I can't.  I can't because we still haven't called the plumber and set up a second appointment.  Maybe we'll do that next week, I can only hope.

So instead of the normal scheduled post I give you a picture of Yoda, hopefully you'll be okay with this ;-)

I should be back the the regular boring schedule tomorrow.  But I do have some fun fall themed DIY projects coming up, so stay tuned for those.

Bathroom Update #2

Last week I showed you some of the small things we've done to the bathroom since we've finished 90% of the remodel.  And as promised, this is an update of the 10% that we still have to do.  That pesky 10% that never seems to get done with our large projects (don't even ask if we've caulked the tile in the kitchen yet).

 The ceiling is bare, but we will be installing a new light and fan.  The upstairs bathroom didn't have a fan, so all the woodwork molded.  We would like to not replace the woodwork a second time, so that's where the fan comes in.

We picked it up a few months ago and it's been hanging out in the linen closet.  It has a nice industrial feel that will compliment the rest of the bathroom.  It also has a built in light, which will be nice because right now we only have the vanity lights.  It also has a fancy night light built in.  Will we use this?  Probably not, but it might be nice when we have people visiting.

And because the new fan will require three new switches, you read that right, we'll have to replace the singe switch (you see the pattern of how everything effects everything else).  We picked up one of  those fancy three-in-one switches as well as a double switch (this will be for the vanity lights) so we don't have a long line of switches in here.  I'm hoping that having five switches won't be overly confusing, though I'm sure it will be.  If you ever come to visit, just keep hitting switches till lights turn on.  You'll get what you're looking for eventually :-)

Yes, I accidentally got paint on this, but we're replacing it, so it doesn't matter :-)

And because we will be replacing the switches, we will also be moving the current outlet and adding an additional one.  The current outlet is on the one and only switch in the bathroom, so if the lights are off, so is the outlet.  That means my toothbrush only charges when the lights are on and we can't have a night light (which won't matter because the new fan will have one).  It doesn't make any sense to me, but a lot of things in our house don't make sense.  So if we have to do some electrical work, we might as well do it all at once.

And last but not least, we have to finish this up.

Yup, our tub is still unusable.  When we took the old molding down, we discovered that it was put in place to hide the horrid install job that was done.  So now we're working on fixing the job that was done.  This includes having to make a false wall above the back of the tub to install the waterproof sheeting (I don't know what it's called).  We also have to finish the trim piece that hides the fact that the tub was installed so unsquare (is this a word) that it sits a good two inches from the wall at the top, but flush at that bottom.  It's a mess.  We plan on replacing the tub with a walk in shower at some point, so we just want to make what we have usable for now.  What a headache this has turned into.

Once we finish up the bathtub, we can clean up this mess.  Wow,that is slightly embarrassing to show you this.  Then we will be 100% finished with this remodel.  Now we just have to convince ourselves to do these last couple things.      

Do you do this with projects, finish 90% of them and then leave the last 10% in limbo?

October Goals

Wow, it's October already.  Where did September go?  It feels like we just blew through that month, but isn't that how it always goes.  The closer we get to the holidays, the faster the time seems to go.  Maybe it's the cooler weather and the shorter days.  Who knows?  But that doesn't change the fact that one month is over and a new one is beginning.  And that means that it's time to plan out our goals for the month.

Most of you know that last month was not as productive as we hoped, we really didn't finish anything on our goals list, so most of the goals are just going to transfer to this month.  Sad face.  That's okay, we needed a break from projects :-)

So lets get to it.

1.  Finish Painting the Sun Room
This has been a goal for two months now, so I'm really hoping I can rally my ambition and finish this project. The good news is, I'm almost done with priming.  That means the paint can go up soon.  And this can be crossed off the list, finally.

2.  Finish Trim Around Bathtub
We haven't made any progress on this one, but it has to be finished.  We both want to be able to take showers upstairs again.  We don't have much to go, it just seems to be the thorn in our sides.  But I've got a good feeling about this month.

3.  Install Fan/Light in Bathroom - Install new outlets and switches
We were waiting to start this one after the temperatures cooled down.  No one wants to be up in the attic while it's 100+ degrees.  We're also waiting on J's dad to come help us.  I'm electricity impaired, so I'm not a lot of help to J on these projects.  As soon as his dad is able to come help, we should be able to cross this off the list.

4.  Caulk the Kitchen Tile
How many times has this one been on the list?  We have to get this done.  WE HAVE TO.  We just need to set a little bit of time aside to take and caulk, it should be a couple hour job.  So what have we been waiting for?

5.  Make a List off all the Little Stuff
While J's in school, we don't have the time to take on larger projects, so we have to sit down and make a list of all the little things that need to be done around the house.  The things that I can tackle myself or that would only take us a couple hours on a weekend.  Then I plan on taking a few vacation days, and setting to work on this list.

So those are the goals for this month.  Will we accomplish them?  I don't know, I hope we can.  I have faith in us, we've accomplished so much, we just need to keep the momentum going.

What are your goals for the month?  Any large projects this month or are you trying to finish up the last 10% of old projects?

This is Toonce's goal for the month, relaxing.  The same goal for every month :-)