Bangkok: The Grand Palace

The Grand Palace is one of the most ornate architectural structures I’ve ever seen in person. It is beautiful! I want to finish up posting the rest of the pictures from our Thailand trip and then it’s on to sharing adventures from our Taiwan trip. I know they happened months ago, but to be honest I take so many pictures and between blogging with an iPad and editing all of those pictures (one by one with a touch screen) it just got to be too much and took too long. I’m going to spend the next two weeks sharing the rest of the vacation pictures from our time living in Manila and then it’s all America from then on out!

Ok back to the Palace.  I didn’t know much about it, so Erik and I shared an audio tour as we went through it. I highly recommend this! Maybe not the sharing part – Jessie had her own! Also, if you visit, make sure you are wearing long pants and shoulders are covered. That means at least a t-shirt, I saw women being turned away for just having a scarf around their shoulders. To be honest, I only half listened to the tour and spent a lot of time snapping away, so I’m just going to share some of my favorite pictures. If you make it to Bangkok, visiting this place is an absolute must!

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Meal Planning And Last Week’s Menu

I love everything about cooking: going to the grocery store to get ingredients, chopping, cooking, and of course eating the actual meal.  However, I was never that great about meal planning. Blame it on having a grocery store in the neighborhood where we live, but sometimes I’d get enough food for one or two meals and yet somehow come home with a cart full of groceries, but no meals!

That all changed soon after we moved to Manila.  It was not the easiest to get to the store and between taxis and monsoons, it was better to try to limit the number of trips I made each week.  Now that we’re back, I’m trying to continue my meal planning efforts.  I’m keeping it pretty realistic as I know that we are not going to eat every meal at home.  My other main focus when planning meals is to find recipes that use some of the same ingredients so I don’t buy a whole bag of carrots, use one, and throw the rest away.  I hate wasting food, so I’m trying to make a solid effort to use what I have. Here’s how things went last week.

Meal One: Spaghetti with Turkey Bolognese Sauce

Recipe: From Woman’s Day. I modified it by using only one pound of ground turkey (we didn’t need that much sauce!) and served with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and pepper.  I think I meant to make a salad or vegetable or something with this. Whoops! We saved some of this for leftovers and I froze the rest (it makes a ton!) so it’s available for another quick dinner.

Meal Two: Classic Beef Stew with Garlic-Herb Breadmaker Bread

Recipe: From Health.com. I modified it by only using 1 1/2 pounds of beef stew meat, low sodium beef broth (instead of chicken broth, that made no sense) regular sliced white mushrooms in place of shitake and a little extra cornstarch to thicken it up.  The bread recipe is something I’ve made before and posted here on the blog.  Breadmaker and crockpot did all of the work for me on these too! Just some measuring and chopping. Both were so good and perfect for the snow day we had!

Meal Three: Taco Cupcakes

Recipe: A sassy wife recipe! I love making this dish because I’m basically obsessed with Mexican food. This is lighter than some of my other favorites and I love the crunch with the baked wonton wrappers. This time around, I added in a little corn in as well. Serve with delicious homemade guacamole and salsa over a bed of lettuce. This makes a ton of cupcakes, so a fun recipe if you are having guests over but we love it during the week as well.

Meal Four: Scallion Pancakes with Eggs and Bacon

Recipe: Scallion pancakes found here. My only modification is I used slightly less scallions. Including this recipe is kind of a cheat but we ended up eating two dinners out this week, so this is what I made for brunch to use some of the scallions I was planning to use for pad thai. Basically we just made the pancake and added eggs bacon cheese and a little hot sauce, then folded it taco style and ate them. Yum! And it still counts because we didn’t go out, right?

Meal Five: Shrimp Pad Thai

Recipe: based off my chicken pad thai recipe. I used shrimp instead and a new type of thai peanut sauce, but this has become a family favorite! A little whoopsie on buying smaller shrimp here, but this is so tasty!

I think I did pretty good using up most of the produce, and I also purchased organic cilantro and parsley plants. I need to find some pretty pots to put these in, but I figure growing them vs. buying at the store every week should help cut down on food waste. Most (if not all) of our lunches were leftovers.

If anyone has some good meal planning tips, please share!

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January Birchbox Review

I mentioned in my Five on Friday how I recently became a Birchbox subscriber, and I wanted to post a full review on my first box.  When I found out we were moving back to the USA, I hopped on the bandwagon because  I really liked the idea of a subscription box service.  I decided on Birchbox over other beauty boxes because of the quality of products included. My favorite part of online Sephora shopping is getting some fun samples of new products, and who doesn’t like a fun little snail mail package each month?

One of the things to note is that all Birchboxes are different depending on how you fill out your beauty profile. The profile asks questions like “I can never have too much…” and I checked the boxes perfume, make up, and nail polish.  There are other questions in the profile such as your skin tone, and your level of beauty expertise (from newbie all the way up to makeup artist.) I am happy about all the little things in my first box, yet I have heard that some people have had mixed reviews from time to time on what they receive in their box.  You may not love every single thing, but I’ve heard the key is to maybe take a look at your beauty profile and change things around if you are consistently getting items you don’t like. Be honest when you fill out the questionnaire!

These boxes may appear big in the pictures, but they are actually pretty small. As in, my Birchbox easily fit in my mailbox. The outer package is bright pink (so cute!) and inside is a cute cardboard box with all of your goodies. I’m excited to reuse these boxes for organization!

Here is a closer look at all of the items inside my January Birchbox.

The first item: five postcard sized prints. Since they have tips and tricks listed on the back, you can’t use them as actual postcards. However, i do like the fun prints and will be using them on my inspirational board in my office.

Next up, a Reviver dry deodorant for clothes. What a fun concept! These cloths can be used several times. As listed on the back of the packaging, it can eliminate odors on clothes from smoke, sweat, food, etc. I’m definitely tossing this in my travel box for freshening up. Pretty cool!

Also included: a 100% pure fruit pigmented natural mascara (black tea ultra lengthening). I’ll admit, I have not tried very many natural beauty products besides a few things from Burt Bee’s. I tested this out over the weekend.  While I typically go for more of a volumizing lengthening type of mascara, this was nice for a more natural look. Definitely a keeper and I will use the rest of this tube when my current mascara runs out!

I’m happy I got this little Origins Smarty Plants CC Creams because I use either a BB cream or tinted moisturizer instead of foundation about 99% of the time. Blame it on the freckles, but I’ve always had a hard time finding a foundation that isn’t too cakey or looks like I’m trying to cover them up.  I do love the color and coverage of this, but to keep it real it does smell like you are smearing a plant all over your face.  This should probably make me feel better instead of a plastic or perfume smell, but it is certainly an adjustment.

How fun is this nail polish? Although I don’t typically gravitate towards glitter nail polish, this is so cute. It also apparently changes to a red color in the sun? I wish I had had this for New Year’s Eve, but will be giving this a test run soon.

And the last little item: Super Comb Prep & Protect. I typically use the It’s a 10 Miracle Leave In and have been LOVING it. Although I don’t have a ton of hair care products, I do consider hair like to use a product that protects my hair. Especially in the winter months with all the blow drying, this helps keep your hair from getting too dry. I did test this out over the weekend as well. It definitely helped to detangle my hair, and it kind of smells like chocolate? Maybe that’s just me. I don’t feel like this added as much shine as my It’s a 10, so I added a little Moroccan oil on my hair for shine. I’ll keep this one as well for travel!

I definitely enjoyed receiving my first Birchbox and will continue to review my box every month. If you are interested in trying out Birchbox, you can use my invite code here: https://www.birchbox.com/invite/61sk8. I signed up for the one year subscription, which basically gave me one free box AND I also was recently gifted a three month subscription from Jessie (aka my beauty fairy godmother apparently!) so I will post monthly reviews on my boxes. Are you currently subscribed to any fun monthly boxes? Leave a comment below!

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*Please note, this is not a post sponsored by Birchbox, I paid for my own subscription and all of the opinions are my own.