The House of Payne

I love our closet. Not only does it give us plenty of room for our clothes and shoes, but it also has enough space for us to store some of our little-used/seasonal/miscellaneous belongings. When we moved in, the top shelf seemed to lack some of the strength necessary to hold a lot but being the impatient and relatively organized person I am, I ignored the structural deficiencies and proceeded to put numerous Rubbermaid storage bins full of random crap on it. So, over the months, the shelf lost much of it’s already small amount of stability and started throwing crap onto the floor. I’ve been caught in a bin avalanche a few times and I can tell you from experience that it’s really no fun getting hit in the head with a 50-pound box. Not good times at all. For the last few months, we’ve just set the some of the bins on the floor. However, that has really cramped my need for, oh, I don’t know, access to clothes at the back of the closet. So, I dragged Johnny down to Lowes where he flexed his man muscles in choosing the needed material to fix the closet shelf. Yesterday, we spent a lovely Sunday evening working our home repair magic and fixed it!

Johnny fixing the supports for the shelf...

It looks like our closet threw up into our bedroom.

Okay, I'm not gonna lie. I rummaged through a Christmas bin and got a little (okay, a lot) excited about decorating in a few weeks...

The final product (still had to put an AC on the floor, but it's really such a vast improvement over what it looked like before).

After we worked in the closet, we ate dinner. I made fiesta chicken salad and served it in a whole wheat tortilla with refried beans.

SOOOOO delicious!

I love the salad because it’s made without mayonnaise (which I despise) and with fat free yogurt instead. It has a hint of lime and it’s really light and very tasty. I tweaked the recipe and used the following:

- cooked chicken breast

- green bell pepper

- tomato

- onion

- fat free plain yogurt

- red wine vinegar

- lime

- cumin

- paprika

Tonight's dinner - leftover fiesta chicken salad with a side of black beans, corn and salsa.

For lunch today, I made some awesome canapes using slices of cucumber, Laughing Cow Garlic and Herb cheese (which is awesome and only 35 calories a wedge), thin sliced chipped turkey and sliced green onion. I served it with a pear and discovered that the whole lunch was only 200 calories!

Tasty and really easy.

I’ve really enjoyed experimenting with healthier foods to see what I can make that’s not only low in calories and higher in good stuff like fiber, etc., but that’s actually tasty.

I leave you with a picture of Roxie taking in the warmth of a blanket. Our next project is taking out two remaining window AC units and sealing up the windows so we can turn on the heat. Johnny’s against us turning it on until we properly insulate the house so that we’re not letting money seep out of the windows in the form of heat. Can’t blame him, but it’s SO COLD in our house. We do turn the heat on in the bedroom at night though, but that’s about it. So, as you can see, even fur-covered Roxie is not digging the frigidness that is our house. Brrrrrr!!!

I wish I had on a permanent fur coat right about now.

Posted on November 17th, 2008 by Hollie
Filed under: Food, Life