The Allen Life: September 2010

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Nature Walk

Sunday after church I took Amy on a little nature walk through Lincoln Park. They were doing construction all last year on this part of the park/zoo. We could never figure out what they were doing until a few days ago when I went on a run up there. Even though we're in downtown Chicago, there is a little bit of nature...sort of. Chicago has no mountains like Idyllwild or ocean like Ventura, but at least it tries to do something. Here's a couple of shots of Amy and I on the Nature Boardwalk!

Second Month-a-versary!

On Saturday, September 25 Amy and I celebrated our 2nd Month-a-versary (8 weeks of marriage...crazy, I know). So we decided to celebrate with a little bit of fun. After thoroughly cleaning the house and washing all the laundry (we're trying to only do laundry every two weeks...its expensive), we got dressed up...Amy looking super cute in some Amy outfit and me in none other than jeans, vans, and a gray t-shirt. We walked a couple blocks west of our apartment to State Street, where everything was hoppin'. Not really, but we meandered our way into Anthropologie, where Amy was diagnosed with house project ADHD. I resorted to reading the cookbooks. Although, I guess this would be inappropriate to share on the internet I do actually like Anthropologie. I think one of the reasons why I like it is because everything is so expensive (ask Amy about the $198 grocery cart she wanted to buy from there) and we'll probably never buy anything. After an hour in the store we decided that it was time to eat. Our restaurant of choice was Big Bowl, a nice Asian food restaurant. Although it was a little bit overpriced, Amy and I had a good dinner together with authentic pomegranate ginger ale (with real ginger ale), gyoza a.k.a potstickers, kung fu chicken with noodles and teriyaki shrimp fried rice. It was rather delicious.

Instead of choosing dessert at the restaurant we went for the homemade dessert with a movie. We stopped by Jewel on the way home and picked up some chocolate chips and got "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" from Redbox.

The movie was okay...not the greatest plot or story development, but it did have some pretty good lines. The cookies were better though. Amy has jumped leaps in bounds in her cookie make skills. I think it was a combination of figuring out the oven and figuring out the exact amount of flower. I was really happy because the cookie jar, even after our date, was all filled up. Speaking of which, a cookie sounds really good right now.

600+ and No Blogging

Lack of blogging....homework, lots of it. Amy and I want to apologize for the lack of blogging recently. We seem to have hit a hump in the semester, where all of our classes and due dates coincide with each other, resulting in some late nights and early mornings.

In particular, I had the opportunity to read a 600 page book for my Historical Theology class. It was quite the challenge, as I attempted to finish it in about a week. I read it everywhere...in between class, on the train, at home, on the way to class, all the time. (Amy didn't like the book because I was always distracted by it.) I did finish it and managed to squeeze out a review on it too. I really liked the book and learned quite a bit from it. Roger Olson, the author, writes the history of Christian theology in story format sort of making all the key theologians characters within the grand scheme of God's plan of salvation for mankind. He scrutinizes all of the major events throughout history and breaks them down to show the major doctrines, creeds, and standpoints that have been established throughout history. I would definitely recommend it.

As for Amy, I'm not sure what she's been doing. Not really, she gladly switched me teaching dates so that way I could teach in our Teaching the Bible Practicum class this week. She did a great job. She also had lots of homework, but the last thing Amy would want to share on our blog would be about her homework.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Food Network by the Allens

I've decided that I really like cooking. We were having fish tacos this night. I can't say I've perfected them yet but we're going to try it out again sometime.

The home improvments are still in action. Just last weekend I went and bought some fabric from Joanne's and made pillow covers for these two couch cushions that Emily Pine stole for me :). I'm sitting on one in the picture and the grey one is to the left. They're super good for when we have people over because we have limited places for people to sit. We tried them out on some friends last Saturday night when we had like 10 guys from Colby 12 over for dessert and games. It was fun and we all fit surprisingly.
The table that we're eating off of we found outside our door. It sat there for about three days until we decided it was no ones and that they wanted us to have it. We don't think we'll keep it. It's not really practical for our space. we think we need a fold out table instead, but only for when people come over because otherwise we just eat at the bar on our sweet tractor seat barstools!

Jenny's Mashed Potatoes, yummy!

I had to throw a picture of this in here. It's Jenny Allen's recipe for mash potatoes and since I got my kitchen aid mixer (awesome! Thanks unlce Tim!) I decided I would try them. And even more significant is this is one of my favorite dishes that my mom bought me as a shower gift. It looked good and tasted good. Our trashcan in the background is super delicious looking also.

I've been using the cookbook that Jenny and Jacque Fuller made me practically every night. I've even dug into the recipe box that I recieved at my shower in ventura a couple times. I have the box displayed in my kitchen (no picture, sorry) because it's such a cute box that Heidi Shorts actually gave me out of her own kitchen :) Needless to say I love my kitchen! All our friends are betting that Jeremy is going to get fat because everytime they come over I'm baking (usually ruining something) but he tends to think it still tastes good.

We miss you all very much! And if you want a skype date all you have to do is ask! We love them especially when the picture is so dark you can hardly see them and my dad keeps making wierd faces at himself because he's so distracted by the little picture box of himself on the screen...
Jeremy is going to post soon about our awesome date to the Cubs game, but he's been a little distracted translating the bible from greek to english. I happen to have more time because us counseling majors tend to just discuss people's feelings, not much homework involved in that.
Adios!

Thursday, September 9, 2010

New Address

So for a little while I thought that it would be a good idea to post our new address on our blog...we still have our school addresses, but now we have an actual mailbox at our apartment building that is fully capable of receiving mail (with cash or checks only) or packages (with nice gifts/goodies/etc). But then my protective/paranoid side kicked in and said that posting our address online is probably not a good idea...in case there are some weirdos that read our blog. I don't know why they would because our blog isn't necessarily interesting, but just in case.

But if you need our new address feel free to contact me at: 805.....just kidding. Just send Amy or I an email.

We have a new address.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

The Princess and the Pea

Once upon a time there was a boy, his name was Jeremy. He got himself a new wife, her name was Amy, and then they moved into a shoe box. So you ask, were they little people? No, they were big people with little wallets. That is why they are two pods in a pea... pea size apartment, pod size people. 


Welcome to your new home!

This is the hallway to our new home. Looks cozy right? They're doing some construction in all the hallways in order to upgrade the building. We're trying to look at it as a good thing. Someday it will look much nicer we hope. :)

Moving in was a lot of hard work especially when you don't own a thing. I don't know how many trips we took to target but I think the cashiers probably know our firsts names by now. It was so much fun to decide where things would go and how we wanted them to look. Now our pea size apartment is a our little home and actually we're quite fond of it. It's kind of like our little baby. It's still a work in progress but that's the best part! Now the only problem is I can't seem to find my way out of all the wonderful Chicago antique shops and thrift stores, they make my brain sizzle with ideas, I believe a home is a project that is never ending. 

There's me in our new and empty home. So much potential!

Closet, he's in shock!

There's Jeremy in our kitchen. Doesn't he look like a giant compared to our stove. I think it was originally for little people. And there he is in our closet. Our closet could almost be another room it's so big, we love it, it actually fits all of our stuff... mostly. 

And there's me in our bathroom. It's little but we can both fit in there at the same time so it works. Upside Jeremy's knees don't hit the wall when he sits on the toilet! yA!


what a stud!

working so hard

The final (and I mean that in the loose sense) product turned out pretty stinkin' good if I do say so myself. We love it, and think that it fits us perfectly!