The Adventures of a Calamari Queen

Hi friends! We had a lovely dinner at Daniels Broiler earlier because Hubs got a gift card from his workplace many years ago. I really wanted to use it before we forgot that we had a gift card!HA. We’ve been to their Seattle restaurant before, so we wanted to try their Bellevue location. Mia joined us because we wanted her to see a “nicer/fancy” restaurant and she loved every minute of the experience! It was so special:) We enjoyed the experience, service was quick and very accommodating. Steaks were very good! Sis and I shared a Tomahawk Rib eye, Hubs got his usual Ribeye too! Mia had Fish and chips. We all loved their Filet Mignon Steak bites (we had it as an appetizer). We shared a very decadent chocolate cake for dessert.

Hi friends! Happy Friday! This summer my family had really indulged in Dungeness Crabs. We have a local seafood market in our area where we get fat crabs! It’s pricey but for the amount of crabs we get, and when we compare it to eating out/crab restaurants it’s worth it to us to buy it from our local market. I do all the cracking and getting the meat out! I don’t mind it at all:) We did a couple of crab dishes like crab fried rice, crab rangoon, crab dip, crab rolls,sushi,crabs with noodles! We did this over a 3 day period. HA! Just like any other seafood, you have to eat it ASAP to enjoy the freshness. They go bad quickly.

Hubs made rolls and it was so perfect with the crab meat.

Hubs made us sushi crab roll. We love crab rolls, we normally pay extra just for real crab meat when we go out to sushi restaurants.

This is a filipino dish called “crab sotanghon”. Rice vermicelli with crabs and herbs. In the Philippines, we normally use chicken meat when we make this dish.

Have a great Friday friends. My mouth is watering as I look at these pictures again. HA!

Take Care!

Hi Friends! How’s your summer going? I’ve finally been able to get in here and share what I’ve been up to. My family visited us and we got to have some special family time. We didn’t travel outside WA and visited local cities. Lots of lake time and enjoying the waters. WA is such a beautiful place during summer time. We had a heat wave a little while back too, not a fan of that! HA. Mia had VBS at her old preschool and she had fun, especially seeing her preschool friends.

We celebrated my sister’s birthday, we had brunch and a home cooked dinner for her. It was scrumptious!

I hope you are having a great Friday friends!:) Take Care!

Hi friends! We are enjoying our summer (finally) here and celebrated Independence day yesterday with family. We’ve been spending most days in our backyard and our local parks. We got the kids a kiddie pool and they’ve been using it daily! Between that, and watering the garden, I don’t even want to know how much our water bill will be! HA! Brace for impact! LOL.

It’s been nice to have less structured days with the kids but come fall it will be a different story. I’m starting to plan for our homeschooling this year and getting materials, reading books about homeschooling, decluttering and still simplifying things in our home. We have family visiting us these coming weeks so we are looking forward to some family time. We are so excited!

Mia had fun during her soccer camp last week. This week she will start with her golf lessons. She’s excited:) One busy girl!

Have a wonderful day friends! Enjoy summer and take care:) God Bless!

Hi friends, this week was Mia’s last day of Preschool! They had a little program for all of the parents, showing us what they’ve learned for the whole year! I’m so happy for her because it was such a special year and she made lots of friends, learned so much, and built her confidence. Yesterday (Friday) we attended their end of school get together/birthday party of one of her classmates. Lots of fun despite the PNW rain!

We had dinner at a local Pizza/Italian restaurant to celebrate the event. Thank God both kids behaved. HA!

A little throwback of her first day of school!

Have a great Father’s day weekend friends!

Hi Friends! How’s it going? Our Roses and Rhododendrons are blooming right now. I don’t really notice our Rhododendrons unless I’m in the kitchen but these last couple of days the kids and I were in the park so we got to see it outside. It’s really pretty and they are all over our neighborhood right now. I particularly loved the red ones. The double delight roses that my MIL gave us are starting to bloom too. I cut one this morning so I can enjoy it inside the house. The best smelling roses that I know of / have smelled.

I did the groceries for the week and spent $96 (and another $10 for our milk delivery). I consider it low because we normally pay around $150 for a weekly grocery and that’s not including meat/chicken. We try to buy in bulk when we shop for meat/chicken/beef. Prices are going up for sure so I always check the grocery ads to see if there are sale items that we can use/like. This week the cereals that Hubs likes are on sale. Not sure if this is the lowest price we can get, but we are low on cereals and I don’t want to be driving all over the place for cheap cereals when gas prices are increasing too. It says I saved $23, so I will take it.

Hubs made homemade pizza this week. Matthew really loved it. It was good but Hubs wants to try other pizza dough recipe. We added caramelized onions and it added so much flavor:)

I cooked Chicken adobo this week too. Recipe by Joshua Weismann, my DIL sent me a video of him making adobo. (He has a youtube video,you can check it online). It’s a legit recipe and authentic to what I grew up back in the Philippines.

For affordable breakfast, I made potato hash and eggs. Toast and eggs! Easy and budget friendly recipes.

So far the grocery budget is doing well. I continue to use what’s in the freezer and pantry, but I plan to get meat this month too (running low on ground beef, pork). Hopefully I can find a good deal on that!

Have a great evening friends. It’s raining nonstop here, so no park for the kids! Going to do some crafts here.

Hi friends! I spent my morning planting the rest of the vegetables/plants that we have and I’m tired!HA. It’s been a productive morning in the yard, and I still have two pots I want to use so I will probably be going back to Home Depot to buy more flowers and 1 hanging basket, then I think we will be done. I took a couple of pictures but forgot to include the vegetable box (my toddler was having too much fun playing in the dirt too!) I got distracted!HA

Hubby is very ambitious with our garden this year. He wanted us to plant strawberries and an eggplant! LOL. Mind you we’ve planted both before(twice) and we always fail, I think it’s because of the weather. So yeah, he’s determined to plant again and hopefully we will be successful (maybe 3 strawberries?HA).

It’s been 6 months since I started my No/Low spend year! It’s been going great, I can’t believe that I haven’t bought any new things for myself. Aside from the Staub pots that were gifted to me and the Ipad, nothing new for me. It’s a big help personally that I continue to declutter my stuff/our house so I’m careful about what I bring inside the house (as the homemaker I’m the one taking care of stuff so I try to be picky). My family doesn’t follow this “challenge” because my kids are growing and they need comfortable clothes/shoes that fit them. Hubs is not participating too, he still loves his Starbucks coffee every week!HA. He buys me coffee too so I do have splurges when it comes to treats, Hubs likes to spoil me and the kids:)

I’m looking forward to continuing this challenge for the rest of the year but I “MIGHT” buy some new work out shorts because one of my work out shorts is beyond repair. HA! We will see…

I plan to have a low spend June month, because we have lots of expenses when it comes to house maintenance fees. We had our roof gutters cleaned out, pressure washed the back patio / front steps, garden weeded out and cleaned. This is just seasonal expenses that we budget for because when you own a house, there is a lot of upkeep that needs to happen.

I plan to stick to our budget and live minimal this June. I will try to share here what I’m doing in terms of groceries, meal planning, etc.

Have a great Thursday friends! Weekend is almost here:)

Hello Friends! Where did the time Go? It’s already June, Mia will be done with school this month, so let the summer fun begin! We have lots of plans these coming months with family visiting us too, we are really excited! We enrolled Mia in soccer and golf lessons too. We’ve been having nice summery weather this past week (it’s been rainy today though) so we started planting our garden and hopefully this will be a successful gardening year!

Our view from the kitchen couple of nights ago! God reminding us how beautiful His creation is:) Amazing!

Hubs and I got to have a lunch date when my In laws offered to watch the kids. We had Ramen at our fave place:) We stopped at Home Depot and Fred Meyer to get herbs/vegetables for our garden.

We had a simple Memorial Day at the house. Thank You to all the men and women (and their families) that gave their life for our country’s freedom. We had the usual burgers and side dishes for the gathering. Hubs baked our buns and it was a hit!

We’ve been going to the park a lot too because Mia loves playing on the monkey bars!

Have a great evening friends!

Hi Friends! How’s it going? It’s been a busy day here because the kids had dental appointments this morning (it’s exhausting!HA), I did some grocery shopping, organized the freezer/pantry, house chores! It’s been a nice day though, so that’s a bonus. Our spring so far has not been garden friendly weather. I so want to start planting some vegetables and herbs but Hubs doesn’t think that’s a good idea yet. I’ve been “collecting ” some herbs like chives and parsley so far and used them in my cooking this week.

We had a couple of nice, sunny days this week, and the kids love going to the park, biking/scooting around our area. We’ve been going there everyday this week.

I checked our grocery store’s weekly ad and they had a decent sale on their meat/chicken. With the price increases/inflation/supply chain issues I wanted to take advantage of these sales and thank God I was able to. Last week, I wanted to get some pork ribs because they were on sale but everything was empty/sold out. My kids love a Filipino dish called “Pork nilaga” or Pork ribs soup, so I’m always looking for a decent pork ribs sale. I got some chips too!HA.. Summer will be here before we know it! We like to go to the lake and junky salty chips are nice to have! I’m proud of my savings!LOL

This week is an exciting week for me because my Mother’s day gift from Hubs and family arrived and I’ve been having fun using them. Hubs gifted me with the new iPad, it’s nice to have quality gadgets! Mia got to use it too, she has a subscription for the ABC mouse app.

My sisters asked me what I wanted for Mother’s day and I’ve been eyeing this new Staub everyday pan. I’m on a personal “no spend” challenge(no way I would buy this using my own money)HA ,so when they asked what can they give me, this is what I wanted. I really like the size and color of this but to be honest this is one heavy pan!

My In laws gave me money for Mother’s day and this is what I bought!LOL. I just love Staub quality and this size is perfect for soups/braising smaller quantity/servings.

I made Chicken Hamonado (Filipino chicken stew) for the first time and Hubs liked it! The kids weren’t big fans, they wanted adobo over this.

I made korean beef lettuce wraps this week too for lunch. Perfect with kimchi.

I baked banana bread yesterday and everybody liked it! Surprisingly it turned out great. I’m not a baker so I had low expectations about this bread!HA

Anyways, I hope you have a great weekend friends! Stay safe and take care:)

Hi Friends! Happy Saturday. I thought it was going to be a rainy day for us but I was pleasantly surprised that most of the time we’ve had the sun shining (since yesterday). We had a playdate with Mia’s friends and had a nice walk around the neighborhood! Lot’s of pretty trees and flowers surrounding us:) I’m so grateful to live in a well maintained community (in terms of trees/plants). Our HOA are expensive in my opinion.HA! I did some decluttering in the kids playroom and I’m continuing to donate and get rid of toys that they hardly use/play with. I plan to make an area for our homeschool this year. We are going to homeschool the kids this coming school year. We are excited!

He got so tired after playing with Big sis and her friends!

I made this Filipino dish called “Crispy Pata” yesterday (Crispy pork hocks). I used the air fryer, so no splattering around the kitchen. We are satisfied with the result. I had to boil/tenderize the meat for 1 hour in the stove though before air frying.

I’m so glad this room is decluttered. Hubs watched the kids this morning so I can really focus and get this room clean. The kids love spending time here so this gets messy quickly.

We had lunch with my In laws too earlier. It’s been a while since we had been out with them. We normally get together at our house. Thank God the kids “behaved”!HA

For dinner tonight, Hubs made Ahi Poke! We enjoyed this and it hit the spot! We rarely have this because the tuna is quite expensive.UGH! $38 per pound. Lord have mercy with all these prices:)

Have a great evening friends! Stay safe and Take Care:)