Easy Glazed Salmon

Now that summer is upon us, I realize that I can't keep eating all of these crazy unhealthy delicious pasta dishes every night (so I've settled for every other night instead). In an effort to lighten up our meals around here, Ryan and I have been killing this recipe for a couple months now and it is an absolute favorite of both of ours. It's actually one that Ryan introduced to me during the time where I was stuck in class all night long and he was responsible for dinner. Not only is it a fairly easy recipe, but it takes hardly any time at all! Double win!

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup Brown Sugar
• 2 tbsp. Soy Sauce
• 1 1/4 lb. Salmon, skinned and cut into filets
• 1 tbsp. Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper, to taste

Directions:
1. Heat broiler. In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar and soy sauce. Set aside.
2. Place the salmon in a casserole dish or on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and season both sides with salt and pepper. I always ask someone at the grocery store to remove the skin for me before I buy the fish saving us time when we go to put this meal together.

3. Broil the salmon until it is opaque throughout, about 8-10 minutes. Pull it out of the oven and brush the soy sauce glaze over the top of the salmon. Put it back in the oven and broil it for 2-3 more minutes, or until completely cooked through. Enjoy!

And that's it! Seriously, so easy and flavorful! We usually eat ours with broiled asparagus or broccoli and a side of rice!

One more day until the weekend!

Happy Summer!

Summer is officially here!!

While I am happy that summertime has arrived, I will definitely miss the 15-16 smiling faces I was greeted with almost every morning over the past 180 school days. I have learned so much from them and from the teachers at Nash this year that I will carry with me through my final year of this master's program and beyond. Thanks for the great memories, Nash!! Here's a little look back on some of the fun happenings at our little school over the 2013-14 year!

Open House: 

For Open House Night, Jill and I set up the room to look like it does with every student working at their desks. The kids colored faces of themselves and brought in t-shirts that we put on the seats with their open house worksheets.

Thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving Math Turkeys

The Nash Olympics:

My Favorite Valentines Card: 

Working on our Geometry:

Christmas Time:

Polar Express Day 

End of the Year Field Trips and Activities:

Giant Lobster Claw 

For our end of the year gifts, Jill and I went to the dollar store to pick up some beach buckets which Candy, Jill, Lori, and I filled with goodies for each student. I printed off the cute printable that says "Have buckets of fun this summer!", backed them on to yellow construction paper and tied them to the buckets! We also printed out pictures from the year to give to each student to help them remember all the fun times they had at school.

We also did two sets of superlatives, teacher awards and classroom awards. The four of us voted on teacher awards which were awards like "Neatest Handwriting", "Science Superstar", and "Math Master". Each child received a certificate and a medal. The students all voted on the classroom awards and I tallied up the votes afterwards. We went to the dollar store (Love that place for stuff like this!) and picked out silly prizes that went along with the awards. These awards were funnier rather than serious, like "Classroom Comedian", "Amazing Artist" and "Little Miss Fashionista". The kids seemed to love finding out who won the awards and getting the little prizes that go along with them!

The Certificates with the corresponding prize! 

That really is just a brief glimpse into the school year. We did so many fun activities but in the interest of privacy, those pictures cannot be displayed on the internet, so you'll just have to take my word for it!

Have a great summer, teacher friends!! 

Throwback Thursday: My April Trip to Georgia

This past April, I was lucky enough to spend my spring break from work in Georgia celebrating some pretty big events! If we're being honest, most of this blog post is going to be pictures though because.. well.. I just can't really remember everything that happened 2 months ago! 

The first weekend of my trip was spent putting together and celebrating my sister-in-law, Rachel's baby shower for their (now 1 week old) baby girl, Leah! Aunt Jane, Beth,and Becca came in from Alabama to help put everything together the night before and it was just SO great to spend some time with them! 

Rachel's baby shower was the day before easter so we decided her theme should be "About to Hatch." Everything was decorated very "easter-y" and I just LOVE how it turned out! Since I live so far away, most of the decorations are courtesy of Jane, Susan, Becca, and Beth and they just did an AMAZING job putting things together before the big day!! I'm not so secretly hoping I happen to be pregnant around this time in the future so we can use all these beautiful decorations you're about to see again!

We served chicken salad, deviled eggs, fruit salad, cheese and crackers, carrot cake cupcakes, and a couple different dips among other things I'm probably forgetting about! Becca's friends mother made and decorated these cookies below that were one of my favorite touches for the shower! So beautiful!

The jelly bean tree is another one of my favorite touches to the shower!! 

During the shower, we played a couple of games, and watched Rach open all of her's (or Leah's) gifts- which she is able to use now that Leah has joined us! She was born last Tuesday at midnight and is BEAUTIFUL! I can't wait to meet her during our next trip back to Georgia in July!

The second half of the trip was devoted to my friend Vida who married her college sweetheart Joe on the following Saturday! Friday, we all gathered at the church for the rehearsal before heading to Joe's parents house for the rehearsal dinner!

Ryan and I before the rehearsal

The bride with her bridesmaids!! 

We went to bed fairly early Friday night so that we would all be well-rested for the big day, which started bright and early the next morning at the hair salon!

OMG wasn't she just BEAUTIFUL! 

Once we got to the venue, Vida kicked us out of the bridal room so that she could put her dress on and surprise all of us, since we (or me at least) had never seen it on her in person! Let me tell you, she looked so stunning! Afterwards, we did the usual wedding pictures before the ceremony.

Oh la la Vida!! I can't wait to see the professional pictures!

The ceremony was perfect and before we knew it, my friend became as Mrs. and was on her way with her new husband to Georgia Tech to take some pictures! My parents, Ryan, and I decided to go get some drinks and appetizers in between the ceremony and reception before heading to the cocktail hour.

The rest of the night was spent eating, drinking, and dancing our butts off the way any good wedding reception should be spent. Vida, your day was wonderful and I'm so blessed to have gotten to be a part of it all!!

And that's my throwback Thursday for ya'll! Better two months late than never, right?!

Cast-Iron Skillet Sausage & Spinach Pasta

For those of you who are intetested, my June goals are coming along nicely! I've been trying all sorts of new recipes in the kitchen that I can't wait to share with y'all over the next couple of days! Last week, I decided to bust out the cast iron skillet for the first time in a while to attempt a new one-pot pasta dish and let me tell you... It turned out A-mazing! Plus, there was hardly any clean up and lots of leftovers which are both wins in my book. 

Ingredients: 

• I package Hillshire Farms Smoked Sausage
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 (14.5 oz.) can diced tomatoes w/chiles 
• 2 cups chicken broth 
• 1/2 box of pasta 
• 3 cups fresh spinach 
• 1 cup shredded monterrey jack 

Instructions

1. Thinly slice the smoked sausage and add it to a large skillet with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Saute the sausage over medium heat until it is nicely browned (about 5-7 minutes). Drain off the excess fat.
2. Dice the onion and add it to the skillet. Continue to saute until the onion has softened(about 5 minutes). Add the can of diced tomatoes with chiles and the chicken broth. Stir to combine. 
3. Add the uncooked pasta to the skillet and make sure it is almost completely submerged under the liquid. Place a lid on the skillet and allow the mixture to come up to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer for about ten minutes, or until the pasta is tender. Stir once or twice while the pasta cooks to keep it from sticking.
4. Stir in the fresh spinach, a little bit at a time, until wilted. Keep the heat on while adding the spinach, so the liquid will continue to simmer and thicken.

5. Sprinkle the cheese on top and replace the lid, letting the cheese melt. Enjoy! 

Now I'm one step closer to being able to cross off #25 from my 101 in 1001 list! If you want to see my progress, you can always click on the 101 in 1001 tab at the top of this page. I do my best to keep that updated as I go.


Have a great Tuesday night!

Exploring

Hey ya'll! Happy Monday! The eCard above is exactly how I'm feeling right about now! This morning was rough because I'm still coming down from my weekend high. This weekend was GREAT! It was jam-packed with fun and spontaneous events and we even got to do a couple things I've wanted to do in Boston since we moved here! We also got to spend some time with our long lost friends Kristen and Stephen, which always results in a fun time! 

My weekend started off at Not Your Average Joe's with some friends from work, Jill and Rachel. We were all trying to kill some time after work before we had other places to be and decided sitting on a patio enjoying some drinks would be the best way to do so. Around 5:45 we all parted ways and I headed home to meet up with Ryan and get to our softball game. Ryan joined our church's softball team a couple weeks ago, but this is the first night I've been free to go. While at the restaurant, Ryan called and said that the team was going to be short a girl (They need two girls playing in order to put 10 people in the field) and they wanted me to be the catcher for the night. I didn't want to be put on the spot since I had never even seen a game before but I showed up ready to play! Fortunately for me, two other girls ended up showing up and I was off the hook! Now that I've seen how the league works, I'll definitely be more prepared for next time! Our team ended up losing their first game of the season 18-13..(I think) even though everyone played really well. Once we had said our goodbyes, Ryan and I headed back to the apartment to meet up with Jenna and Trevor for pizza and a game night. We ordered pizza from Domino's and played Domino's (We love a good theme) for a couple hours before calling it a night.

Saturday morning, Ryan and I woke up and got a good workout in (Workin' hard on my June goals!) before heading to Faxon Park for a church picnic. We spent a couple hours chatting with friends, stuffing our faces with hot dogs and hamburgers, and throwing the Frisbee around. Around 3, Ryan and I left to meet Kristen and Stephen in the Public Garden. We planned on hopping on a swan boat, but when we got there, the boats didn't seem as exciting as we thought so we skipped out on that idea. Instead, we walked around Boston Common for a bit and headed for our restaurant/bar for the night.

Ryan had been wanting to check out some rooftop bars in the city so I started asking around and doing some research. Kristen mentioned that she had heard good things about Rattlesnake, so we went there first for some drinks and ended up eating an early dinner there. Kristen and I split a carafe of Sangria which ended up being much stronger than either of us expected!

Once we finished up at the rattlesnake, we all got the crazy idea to walk over to the Prudential Center and grab desserts and drinks round two at the Top of the Hub restaurant while watching the sun set. Ryan and I split the Cherry Cheesecake, which was pretty good! Our final stop for the night was another bar (I can't remember the name) on Boylston where we met up with Eliot and Lauren and some of their friends. This night was an absolute whirlwind but we had a great time bar-hopping around the city.

We didn't get home until around 2 a.m. so we only got about 5 hours of sleep before our alarms went off Sunday morning to get to church on time. Needless to say, we were both pretty tired. As soon as we got home from church and the grocery store, we threw our bathing suits on and spent the rest of the day lounging and sleeping by the pool. It was the perfect way to end a pretty great weekend!