Happy Friday, friends!

I’m linking up with A Little Bit of Everything and Momfessionals for a fun packed Friday Favorites post.

Today’s post covers a random list of FAVORITES for our family including a delicious shrimp salad recipe, our new Nespresso Vertuo machine, a home project, my new car, plus lots more!

Let’s get down to business shall we…..

Grilled Shrimp Buffalo Salad

This is the perfect no fuss, lets eat healthy but not slack on the flavor kinda meal! Jason and I loved it and you need to add it to your menu plan ASAP! We made this salad with ingredients for 2 people, if you need it for more just double the ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. Shrimp (I purchase peeled and deveined frozen shrimp from Trader Joes, defrost in late afternoon).
• Zest and juice from two limes
• 1/4 cup of EVOO
• Salt & Pepper
• Romaine Lettuce
• 1/4 red onion, chopped
• 1 Avocado, diced
• 1 cup Cherry Tomatoes, I halved them and then quartered them
• Crispy Bacon (I cooked up 4 pieces)
• Favorite Ranch Dressing
• Buffalo Sauce
• Blue cheese or Feta, crumbled

Directions:

Prepare Marinade: Get out a large zip lock bag and add in your shrimp. Then put the juice and zest of 2 limes, olive oil, salt and pepper. Seal it up & mix well. Put the shrimp bag in the fridge to marinade 20 minutes prior to cooking.

• Preheat your out door grill or grill pan. Make sure to spray your cooking grate or pan with cooking spray so the shrimp won’t stick.
• Chop up onion, avocado, tomatoes, cheese and add on top of your lettuce
• Fry up your bacon while the shrimp are cooking. Cook the shrimp for 2ish minutes per side.
• To make the dressing use equal parts ranch and buffalo sauce and mix together. I used 2 tbsp of each.
• Assemble the salad, add the bacon and shrimp after finished cooking top with the dressing and ENJOY!

**Original recipe is found on Mix and Match Mama Blog**

Cooking Lessons with Tyler

Tyler has wanted to take his food/restaurant passion to the next level and learn how to cook. We started with scrabbled eggs and he did great! He learned how to crack an egg, season the food, whisk, and cook the eggs in the pan.

Best part is enjoying your food after you prepare it!

Nespresso Vertuo Machine | Coffee Pod Holder

Okay a little back story, this past April we went to Cabo and while there we enjoyed coffee from a mini Nespresso machine in our hotel room. Fast forward a couple of weeks and we were both thinking how nice it would be to have a quality coffee with foam at home. We’ve never been people that regularly go to say, Starbucks to get coffee but that doesn’t mean we don’t truly enjoy a gourmet cup. So, we decided for our Anniversary this past July to go for it and purchase our own Nespresso machine and frother. And we are loving it!!! Every morning we are happy to enjoy a delicious fresh homemade quality coffee.

Our 13th Anniversary Date!

We enjoyed our first cup after a date night out for our Anniversary (we did make a decaf cup).

It can make espresso, latte, and cappuccino! We’ve been enjoying trying all they different types and flavors!

Clear Coffee Mugs

On the weekends, we enjoy a Vanilla Latte, my favorite!! We use these Torani flavorings for the latte’s.

Couple things to note: are Nespresso pods more expensive than k-cup pods? Yes, they are. Now that we have tried all the different types, we have narrowed it down to which ones we like and we buy them in bulk. Our new routine to keep the costs under control, is to have one Nespresso cup and one regular k-cup coffee per day. Then we only have latte’s or espresso’s on the weekends to make it more of a “special treat”. We also recycle our pods, we take them over to Willliam-Sonoma at the mission viejo mall to help our environment. Let me know if I can answer any of your questions. Otherwise, we have been very happy with this delicious and FUN purchase 🙂

Words of Wisdom to Believe

Cleaning out projects are always a FAVORITE for me!

Our closet needed a mini clean out, particularly my shoes, my shorts & legging shelf and my pajama & comfy clothes drawer. I finally got rid of ALL shoes, sandals, and heels that no longer fit (umm pregnancy!!) and ones I haven’t worn in recent.

I’m not all hyper and crazy with using the KonMari method. However, rolling your clothes so that you can see more of what is in your drawer, I can get behind that task because it’s useful. I’m not a perfectionist about how I roll my clothes by any means, which is why I needed to go revisit drawers like this. But I’m happy with my reorganizing job and organizing is always a FAVORITE for me!

New Car: 2021 Subaru Ascent

Our car search is finally done and that is a FAVORITE! I had my old car for over a decade and things were breaking, work needed to be done, our car needs have changed, so we were on the hunt to replace our family car.

As you probably know or have heard the car industry is crazy right now. The costs of cars are up and the inventory is low. This past weekend we took the boys and headed to Irvine to explore all the different mid-size SUV’s. After 5 hours of going to dealerships, test driving and not finding what we were looking for we were ready to throw in the towel for the day.

Trust me I lowered my expectations, we were flexible on the trim color and it was like scraping the bottom of the barrel out there. After lunch I was like nope, I want to finish going to all of the dealerships and be done with the test driving so we can just work towards purchasing the car online instead. In the last hour we went to Subaru and there she was waiting patiently for me 🙂 I couldn’t be happier that we found a car in my preferred color, it was equipped with what we were looking for, and we got the price to be within the range we wanted…. hallelujah!!

Getting out of my comfort zone has been a FAVORITE!

Going on hikes with my bestie Megan and getting out of my comfort zone has been a FAVORITE!

Seeing animals on our hike and taking the time to watch them has been a FAVORITE!

What I told myself, I can’t go hiking; I’ll get lost, what if I run into a snake, I’m not in good enough shape, I don’t want to do it alone. Well, turns out my bestie is an experienced hiker, knows the trails, I read up on what to do if I saw a snake and I’ve been consistently working out now so I’m in good enough physical shape to handle it.

I’m loving it, we get one on one time to chat about all the things, exercise while being outdoors, burn a TON of calories and enjoy the beautiful views. We treat ourselves to a yummy lunch afterwards and we decided to do our best to make this a weekly routine. Best part is when you get out of your way and try something new that’s when you feel stronger, happier with yourself and grow as a person, so yes I’m proud of myself for getting out of my comfort zone and doing something new 🙂

After the hike we headed to downtown San Juan and checked out the new restaurant, Mayfield. We started with an after the hike cocktail (don’t worry won’t get a cocktail every-time, but it was a celebratory moment!)

We like to split meals so we get to enjoy more then one item off the menu and we chose well, both dishes were delicious!

Eggplant Toast

Bacon Brioche

In case you missed my posts from this week:

Central Coast, CA Family Vacation-Part 1

Summer Corn Chowder

Final Thought:

Words I’m choosing to live by as I find myself sad with everything happening in our world. Life still feels uncertain so it’s best not to worry about the future. We can rest in this TRUTH and that’s a FAVORITE!

I hope you have a wonderful 3-day weekend! Enjoy Labor Day with your families and/or friends, kick up shoes and relax your feet and take a moment to appreciate how hard you work, you deserve a break!!

XO