T woke me up before he left this morning by saying, "hon, if I was you I wouldn't go outside today."  I took his advice and I got no further than my garage...with the door shut, naturally.  It got down to at least -4, but I'm sure it was actually much colder.

I was thinking about how to best utilize my indoor day, and decided upon a leisurely breakfast followed by a chat with one of my former Vietnamese students.  When I told her how much snow we currently have, she told me she thought she'd die if she experienced it.  Haha, poor thing has never seen snow!  Ah, for a tropical climate today!  Almost made me want to go back to Hanoi.  Almost.

On to the topic of my post:  living fabulously indoors.  Living in South Dakota, it's pretty unpleasant from oh, December through March.  It's pretty easy to get cabin fever, and mine hit early this year.

Here's idea number 1:  rearrange a room in your house.  Last night I got the idea to rearrange our living room.  Here's a before picture:


It was a pretty great open layout, but with the coffee table in the middle it was hard to play the wii.  Just not a whole lot of space.  The couch did create a nice entryway space, though.  (That's our front door at the far left edge of the picture.)  You can also see the corner of our table at the far right edge.
After:  We found a nice niche for the entertainment center and even had room to bring in my favorite purple chair from the bedroom!  It may not seem like there's a ton of extra room, but it does in real life.  At least I won't have to move the huge heavy coffee table when I want to play the new wii fit!  The coffee table is now between the couch and the wall.  The only thing I don't like about it is that now the living room is pretty cut off from the dining area.  I suppose it defines the spaces more though...or something.

Anyway, we had fun doing it.  Well, I had fun directing T around.  He really likes the new arrangement, and I think it will grow on me.  Maybe I should post pics of the rest of our apartment so those of you who will never make it out to SD can see it!

So, step 2 of living fabulously indoors:  make yourself a tasty tropical drink!

While T was on the phone with his brother I scanned through my fav cookbook:  Better Homes and Gardens!  We made mocha smoothies.  It had banana in it, which I didn't think I'd like, but actually it worked really well and gave it more of a smoothie texture.  Haha, I just noticed that we match.  Ridiculous.  This was of course after our new dessert, pumpkin pie with frosting.  I found a pumpkin pie that a student had given me before break (don't worry, it was properly refrigerated!) but we didn't have ice cream or whipped cream, so I softened some frosting and used it for topping. Perfectly delicious!

Tomorrow should be pretty frigid too, look for more ideas of living fabulously indoors!  And, while you're at it, let me know if you like the "before" living room or the "after" better!

Ciao!