Yup

It's hard to believe that he's going to be a college graduate.

SO proud of you. I love you

Love

Things I hope to accomplish this week.

I am trying to give myself a list at the beginning of the week of things that I would like to get done daily. I know life happens and sometimes it gets hard to get everything done but without a goal, I tend to get lazy and before I know it, it's the weekend again and I did nothing all week!

Daily: Drink a green smoothie
Workout (I am putting this on the daily but noting that I can take two days off MAX)
Cook a meal(whether it be lunch or dinner)
Read my book/Bible
Do whatever I can to get Eric through this week of finals
Pray

OK! Here's to this upcoming week! May you bring lot's of good times, laughter, less stress and sunshine!

Weekend

Why do I always forget to blog on the weekends?

It always seems harder to sit down and type on the weekends even though I am not really anymore busy.

It also seems like it's so much harder to exercise on the weekends. Actually in general for me. It seems like I go one or two days in a row with super good workouts (5mile run, hour bike ride) and then I just burn out and don't feel like doing anything for two, three, four days! Not good. I am hoping now that Eric's school is wrapping up that he will be available to work out more with me.
I think I need a partner to keep my motivated and I have felt bad asking Eric to come with me lately because he has been so bogged down with school.

Eric's dad has been providing us with gifts from Costco.
Big boxes of Clif bars, pounds of walnuts, huge jars of salsa...and this bag of chips.

Seriously??

Well I'm off to clean my house and make some vegan cookies. We are having small group here tonight! Till we meet again...

Our plan

Ok so here is the "Leaving Michigan Plan."

Eric and I would love to move in July. That is the idea time, however August 6th he has to be here to receive his diploma and present his senior project. He has to. There is no getting out of it. So because of that one day we won't be leaving until August 7th.

We discussed moving in July and then flying back in August for that one day, but since August is such a busy month for traveling the airfare is outrageous. Even Southwest wants upwards of two hundred bucks one way each. So unless Eric gets a job before hand (which he will be applying left and right) August 7th is the official date.

Three more months here? Sometimes the thought of that makes me want to pack a bag and fly away now. Anyone that knows me knows that I am not a patient person so the thought that something is so close...you just have to wait three more months for it is killing me.
I can do it though.
I think I can.
I might have a breakdown somewhere in June but then I will be fine.

Breakfast

I found this recipe for creamy oats last week and so far I have made them everyday this week.

I love them.
I think my favorite part is that the base is always the same but you can top them with whatever you want/have on hand. Yesterday I topped mine with almond butter (super yum), craisins, and granola.Today as you can see I had peanut butter, nutella (just a little), granola and craisins.
The possibilities are endless! I am really enjoy the crunch from the granola with the sweet stickiness from the almond, peanut butter.
Anyways here's the recipe.

Super Creamed Steel Cut Oats

• 1/4c rounded Irish steel cut oats
• 1c water
• 1/4c unsweetened coconut milk(I have been using rice milk or almond milk)
  
• 1 egg white, whisked
• 1/2 banana
• 1t vanilla
• 1/2t cinnamon

1. Boil water.
2. Add in oats and stir for 1min.
3. Lower heat and let simmer for about 10-15min.
4. Pour in coconut milk, thin sliced banana, cinnamon, and vanilla.
5. Stir until combined and cook for another ~5min. [You want to cook it until it’s a tad runnier than the consistency you want to eat it at.]
6. Whisk in the egg and let cook 1-2min.
7. Pour out + top away!

source

If the egg turns you off, just leave it out. They taste great without it.

Three days off

Since I only work part-time I usually find myself with three-four days off every week. Most times they are three days right in a row with the other day being Sunday.
I am really getting to the point where I hate these days off.
At first it was nice because it was like a mini-vacation in the middle of my week.
But the more time off I have, the less things I have to get done.
There is only so much apartment cleaning a girl can do.

I don't sit still for long periods of time very well, and since we got rid of our tv (did I tell you that? well more on that later) it's challenging to find enough things to do before I go crazy.

This week however I am excited about. Chris (mother in law) is starting a community (church community) garden at Southside CofC and Eric and I are going to get a plot of land to grow on.
Since we are not going to be here the entire summer we have been looking for things that we can grow that will yield produce before we leave. Things like lettuce, spinach, herbs, tomatoes...you get the idea.

Anyways, I am going to be getting the seeds to begin sprouting them today or tomorrow and I'm excited. When I was young I hated gardening, but now I am really looking forward to it!

Cookies

I have been following this blog for a couple days now and I decided to try out some of the recipes she has. Angela the writer of the blog is a vegan and she is trying to open her own bakery in Canada which specializes in vegan, organic, healthy, and refined sugar free foods.

Tonight Eric and I opted to try her Raw Chocolate Chip cookie recipe.

It looked so interesting because there is no baking involved (hence the raw) and it looked super easy which is always a plus.

Turns out, it was ridiculously easy. We just ended up having to change two things.

One was we didn't have enough cashews and the only ones they sold at Meijer were salted so we didn't want to get those ones so we used a mix of: the limited amount of cashews we had, peanuts, almonds, walnuts and a few sunflower seeds.

Second- we didn't make our own chocolate chips. I know that's a big part of the recipe but it's kind of late and we wanted to eat these yet tonight, so we just used chips we had on hand.

They are AWESOME.

Please try them

Date

We have a date set for our departure from Michigan.

I can't say the exact day yet because a couple little tiny things need to fall into place first.

But I can tell you it's after May and before September.

How's that for vague? =o)

Meijer your killing me

There is this tea that I absolutely love.

I found it at Whole Foods in Portland on our trip this winter.
And then again at the Whole Foods trip that we took to Ann Arbor a little while ago.

Eric and I were grocery shopping a couple nights ago at this newer Meijer in Cascade. They have ton's more organic products, their produce is better, you can get your beer by the bottle and create your own six pack, -and basically everything is better there.
I was walking to grab some sparkling water and I noticed this.
It's the tea. The one that I get from WF.
You would think I might be excited about this...that now I can just get my tea from Meijer...but I'm not.
They are slowly taking away my need to go to Whole Foods by carrying more and more of the products that I usually buy at WF.
But Meijer will never be like WF, they are not even close to being cool enough. Even if they do carry some of the same stuff.

I miss Whole Food's now.

BTW

Did I mention that I have given up on my dishwasher?
For it to actually CLEAN the dishes, you have to wash them ahead of time so there is nothing on them. And I mean nothing. Not even oil residue or anything. Then you can put them into the dishwasher and have it soap them and rinse them.
I figured since I am already doing most of the work by rinsing all the food off of them, I might as well just grab the sponge and finish cleaning them. Dishwasher not needed.
It does take a little longer but I like that I can control how much water I am using and I LOVE the feeling of looking down and seeing all the dishes that I have just washed-by hand. =o)

Next up-washing my clothes in the bathtub?
.....

I don't think I am ready for that yet.

I need these spoons.
Seriously.

But in all honesty, I do. =)

We spent a ton of money grocery shopping tonight. I hate groceries. You spend so much and then a week later you do it all again. Maybe in effort to save money we will start living off pb&j. Or cereal.

We have decided that we are going to be selling pretty much everything we own before we move. Renting a van or using a POD is going to be way to expensive. We will be having a mass yardsale here in May/June probably.

Spring is here I think. The leaves are starting to come out, flowers everywhere...I love it.

My poor husband has two weeks left of school. We can make it. (and by we I mean him...I'm just here for hugs and moral support)

I can't wait to move to Portland. Eric showed me a site where they talk about how HUGE the farmer's market is there!!! Ah, just thinking about it makes me so excited.

That's all folks.

My struggles

Here is something that I/we are struggling with.
We want to move to Portland this summer. We would like to move the beginning of July. We would like to move whether or not we have jobs. That right there is our struggle. We of course are going to be looking for jobs over the next three months, however in my case I will probably just be getting something retail related-meaning find it when I get there because you can't really plan ahead for a retail job.

Eric on the other hand will be graduated with this Engineering degree and will be looking for an engineering job. He would ideally like to be in the bike industry but those jobs are REALLY heard to get into with no experience. So I guess he will just be looking for any engineering job. But that also is a dilemma because how will he know if he wants to work for a certain company if we know nothing about the company because we are here. And would they really hire someone who is a thousand miles away as opposed to someone who already lives in the city.
And then there is the possibility that he won't find an engineering job. We have talked about him take a job at a local bike shop so that he can just get the experience that he needs to get into the bike industry. But that's more of a retail thing and like I said it's so hard to plan ahead for those.

Now, another thing on our minds is the idea that we will set a date, pack up our belongings and move no matter if we have jobs or not. I want to know if that is an act of stepping out on Faith or if it's naive and foolish? We have enough money saved that we would possibly live for a few months without working which would buy us time.
This is what I want to do. I want to just say that we will try to find work until the date we set and if we don't have jobs, we will trust God to help us find work when we get there. I know in church all the time we talk about how do you know if something is God's will? I don't know if not finding jobs is God's way of saying don't go or if its His way of saying, go ahead and move and I will be there to help you.

Either way, we are still going to job hunt. So we might find jobs and this whole thing would be pointless-but if we don't, these are the thoughts I am having.

What I'm doing

I'm looking for apartments in Portland! And I'm so excited about it.

Storm

There's a storm rolling in.

I love how it smells and how dark the sky gets.
I love being at the beach when they roll over the lake.
They get a lot of storms in Portland so I will get to enjoy them a lot.