Chinese dunkers

Now that I'm a stay-at-home-wife with no pets (although I really want a puppy!) and no kids (don't hold your breath on that one, it'll be a while) to look after... I have lots and lots of time on my hands. I wake up, get dressed, make the bed,  make a latte, check email/facebook/blogs, pick up the house a bit... and don't worry, mom, I haven't forgotten about my online classes... and when that's all over I COOK. Yesterday I set out to make a spinach-beef biscuit bake. I browned the beef and onions, chopped up the spinach, and then realized I didn't have some of the other key ingredients. I rummaged around in my fridge and spotted a nice big ginger root... and my mind immediately thought "chinese dumplings! yum!". It probably should have phased me that I didn't have any wonton wrappers, but it didn't. Once you get chinese dumplings in your mind, you have to have them. I set about chopping up the ginger and garlic... and more ginger and garlic... and more ginger and garlic... and you get the idea. I cooked up the beef/spinach/spice mixture and made up the dipping sauce... and hey presto it was all ready, except for the wonton wrappers. Then I remembered I had these tubes of biscuits for the spinach-beef biscuit bake I was supposed to be making:

I flattened them out and used them instead of the wonton wrappers, and they worked perfectly!

And they're a whole lot easier to cook because you just put them in the oven instead of frying them and then steaming them. They tasted great too!

The dipping sauce... garlicy, gingery, soy-saucey, vinegary, sesame seed oil-y yummyness :)

The biscuits worked so well, they were light and fluffy and bread-y and soaked up the sauce, yummmm

They were so good (and we had so much left-over meat mixture and dipping sauce) that we used more biscuits and made them again tonight!

I renamed this variety chinese dunkers... they're not exactly chinese dumplings since they don't use wonton wrappers... but they taste just as good!

The move, part 2

Moving in!

So I'm kind of reluctant to put these pictures of our new apartment up... because it is such a mess! And I would tell you that a week later, it looks a lot better. But that would be a lie.

Thomas driving the U-haul through Dallas to pick up our new bed. Such a cool dude.

New bed!

And I'm just going to post this picture again, because it makes me feel better about putting up pictures of the rest of the house, which, as you will see, is in shambles. 

OK. Now for the shambles. These pictures were taken the day after we moved in.

One side of the living room

Other side of living room

Looking from living room to dining area. 

Dining area

The bar looking through to the kitchen with the awesome bar stools that were thrown in for free with the bed we bought.

Kitchen looking through to dining area.

Kitchen from doorway

Right side

Yes, that is a dishwasher *sings Hallelujah chorus*

Left side... fridge and pantry

Doorway through to bathroom, coat closet, bedroom

On the right, the bedroom

On the left, the bathroom. Behind those closet doors is a washer and dryer *more Hallelujah chorus singing*

I'm going to throw in a couple "before and after" pictures just to prove that we have, indeed, made some progress this week. In the bathroom.
Before:

After:

Before:

After:

And, finally, more evidence of progress: our first [proper] meal in our new house. I'm not going to mention the frozen pizzas or all the times we ate out because we hadn't unpacked the dishes yet we were too tired to cook.

The move, part 1

Moving out!

The U-haul

The mess

The labels

The [wonderful] helpers

Loading up

Nothing left to sit on!

Packing it all in

All done!

Empty house!

Closing the door on that chapter of our lives :)

One last picture

Goodbye first little home!

I went a little nuts taking pictures at our old apartment in Arkansas so we would remember our "first home." So this post is mostly for my own benefit since I plan to make a memory book out of this blog - and we have to have our first home documented in there!

Living room

Dining room

Office/study

Kitchen

Bedroom

Bathroom

Front door/entry way

It was a fun little place to spend the first year and a half of our married life! Our new apartment is about the same size, but with just one bedroom and a bigger living space... we don't need anything bigger for just the two of us :) We left most of our old furniture behind so we're in the middle of setting up almost from scratch, which is so much fun!