Weekend Recap with Shrimp and Grits

Good morning!

It was a beautiful weekend and great way to enter into Spring. Quick weekend recap: went to Lazy Goat downtown with friends (didn’t take any pictures, but was amazing!), hung up our new hammock/hammock stand, enjoyed the perfect 75 degree sunny weather on Saturday, 8 mile run, went to our friends’ house for a cookout, went to Cabella’s and throughly enjoyed a lazy Sunday.

I have been redecorating/painting our house for the past few months. When we bought the house most of the rooms were painted in dark, strong colors. For example, our kitchen, living room, powder room and breakfast nook were all painted a DEEP DARK brown. I am a fan of lighter colors and really like gray over beige–so our house has turned into 5 shades of gray (not 50 ha!). It is so hard to choose from the vast variety of color options, the need to have our house “flow” as it is open concept and wanting to be light, but not white–so we are pretty happy with our selection.

As I am on a painting break (seriously, do not want to look at another paint roller for a while!), I have been organizing and needing to do a little redecorating. Yesterday after yoga, I went to Joanne’s to pick out fabric to resurface our dining room table chairs and noticed a furniture store next door. After selecting my fabric, I ventured into the furniture store–it had a ton of reasonably priced items (and really cute items too). I will definitely be back there with Drew!

Buying regret–I may have to go back this week!

Last night for dinner I made Shrimp and Grits. Admittedly, it is the first time that I have made this dish. There really is no reason that I have not tried to make it before–I guess I just thought that it was too challenging! I picked out a recipe from the Lee Brothers Cookbook (a gift from my mother in law) and got to cooking. Everything that we have tried from their cookbook is seriously AMAZING. This recipe took sometime to prepare (about an hour and half in total), but was well worth it! I debated about making “shrimp water”** and was really happy that I did–I think that it added a more shrimp flavor that made the dish pop! ***”Shrimp water” is when you put the peeled off shrimp shells into boiling water (with old bay) and simmer the water for 20-30 minutes. I used this water in the grits and the gravy.