Windows and Cucumbers

I'm sitting on our bed. It's Tuesday night at 9:30 and I feel like I haven't stopped sweating all day... it's been brutally hot. But here's the things I'm thankful for: a car with air conditioning that works (I couldn't have said that last summer) and that we have a beach so close by to swim in the chilly ocean.

here we are Monday, he loves taking our sunglasses off our face. :)

AJ took the afternoon on Sunday to do some finish work in our bedroom. As I was chasing Drew around Tuck's Point (the small beach and ocean harbor we've been going to this summer, pictured above), and completely becoming exhausted, I hoped AJ was making good progress. I've learned not to expect too much from experience because both he and I have had kinks thrown into our carefully timed plans and glitches happen that makes our progress not quite as fast as we anticipate. But thankfully, Sunday was not a day like that. In fact, it was the opposite. I got home to almost completely redone windows... but before I show them to you, here are the before photos:

Notice the rough edges around the inside of the windows and how it's lacking trim around the entire window.

And now...  for a view with and without the curtains... we are finishing up some plaster work on the wall with the pink photos so the curtains aren't up there yet.

Doesn't it look so much more polished now?

The inside boards surrounding the window came with the window, the outside trim boards came from Home Depot and AJ just painted them white to match the rest of the trim in the house.

Notice how the upper board is slightly longer? All the trim boards in the house are like that so we decided to replicate it when installing new windows to stay with the look the house has had for years since it is so classic and simple.

 

Enough about windows. Onto one of my favorite things: food. It is so easy for me to get stuck in a rut when making dinner. I lucked out yesterday and Drew fell asleep in the car on the way to the grocery store so I sat there for 15 minutes and googled "Real Simple Summer Dinners" and looked through all the recipes. I have some great new ideas for this week that aren't like what I've been making in the past. Last night I made salmon paired with this amazing salad, which is perfect for a hot summer night!

I could have kept eating and eating it... I made a couple modifications to Real Simple's recipe to have it be less soupy and have more veggies. Here is my altered recipe:

Ingredients:

1/4 cup (plus one soup spoon sized scoop) of plain low-fat Greek yogurt

1 tbs white wine vinegar

sea salt and pepper to taste

2 cucumbers, thinly sliced

3 stalks celery

1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley

Directions:

In a large bowl stir the yogurt, white wine vinegar and salt and pepper together. Add the cucumbers, celery and parsley. I added additional sea salt to taste after sampling and finding it was too blah... use your own judgement on that. :)

Any new recipes I should try for summer meals?