I am undeniably full of flaws. I know and recognize them all too well. While sometimes they make me cringe uncomfortably, oddly most of the time I fully embrace them as my own. I believe that owning your flaws is the most important step in self-growth. Until you love your own flaws, you will never love who you really are inside. Every mistake I ever made is a part of me, and I am entirely whole because of them.
Author Archives: Mandy
Three Simple Rules in Life
This morning I arose from my splendid slumber feeling completely rejuvenated and rather spiritedly because it’s Friday. The fact that it’s payday does not hurt either. I have been struggling much lately with the fact that I feel bound by many obligations that I feel are inhibiting my dreams and complete happiness.
I am in need of some serious life changes that require me to woman up and just make and stand by my decisions. I heard a quote yesterday that was something like, “A weak man has doubts before a major decision; A strong man has them after.” I am being weak.
With that said, I don’t want to be weak anymore, and neither should you. Happy Friday!
Cinco de Mayo Skinny Margarita
Cinco de Mayo is this weekend, and there’s no better way to indulge and behave inappropriately than with guilt-free margaritas!
- 2 ounces clear tequila
- splash fresh lime juice
- splash triple sec or Grand Marnier
- ice
- salt(optional)
- lime wedge
Directions:
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Rub lime wedge around rim of glass.
-
Dip edge of glass in salt or sugar.
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Place desired amount of ice in glass.
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Pour all other ingredients over ice.
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Garnish with lime wedge.
Summer roasted vegetables
Servings Per Recipe: 6
Cost per serving: $1.10
Prep time: 15 min. Cook time: 45 min. Total: 1 hr.
INGREDIENTS | COST | |
1 Tbsp | olive oil | $0.11 |
1 medium | yellow onion | $0.70 |
1 tsp | minced garlic | $0.08 |
1 medium | zucchini | $0.71 |
1 medium | yellow squash | $0.85 |
1 medium | potato | $0.91 |
1 medium | tomato | $1.65 |
1 tsp | dried thyme | $0.05 |
to taste | salt & pepper | $0.05 |
1 cup | shredded Italian cheese | $1.49 |
TOTAL | $6.60 |
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Finely dice the onion and mince the garlic. Saute both in a skillet with olive oil until softened (about five minutes).
While the onion and garlic are sauteing, thinly slice the rest of the vegetables.
Spray the inside of an 8×8 square or round baking dish with non-stick spray. Spread the softened onion and garlic in the bottom of the dish. Place the thinly sliced vegetables in the baking dish vertically, in an alternating pattern. Sprinkle generously with salt, pepper, and thyme.
Cover the dish with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, top with cheese and bake for another 15-20 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown. Bon appétit!
Sunday R&R
Sundays are a time of rejuvenation for myself, as I find delight in the most simple and slow-paced delights. Coffee tastes better on Sundays with breakfast after sleeping in with no care in the world about time frames. My neglected laundry gets the attention it deserves in between whatever endeavors I deem pleasant to pass the time. I hope you’re having a wonderful Sunday!
Book List
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
- His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
- The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- The Stand by Stephen King
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
- Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
- Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- The Trial by Franz Kafka
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- Emma by Jane Austen
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- Siddharta by Hermann Hesse
- The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
- Atonement by Ian McEwan
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
New tradition
I have decided that my new tradition to establish will occur yearly on my birthday, obviously beginning next year. The tradition that I am tentatively establishing (since it hasn’t been made official) is to write down the names of cities I’d like to go to for a few days that I have never been, proceed to draw one from a jar or my trusty Texas Rangers cap, and purchase a ticket and hop on a plane to said destination for a long weekend every year. Boom.
Road Trip
I am deeply craving a road trip through NM, AZ, NV to CA and back. I want to see the Grand Canyon as well as stay a night in Vegas and knock out several of my list items all in one swoop. I’m thinking that some saving is in order for this one!
Pride & Prejudice
I have commenced the reading of the first novel on my list, which is the timeless classic Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen. I purchased the book a while back at my local Barnes & Noble and completely fell in love with the leather-bound book (picture to follow).
It amazes and saddens me to read such eloquent grammar and inadvertently compare it along the way to modern vocabulary, or lack thereof. It shames me to think that we seemingly only use one fourth of the English language in our day to day communications.
Anyway, so far I am loving the book. Cheers!