Guest Post: Malo from Life Feels Good in Portbail Beach

Today my guest is Malo from Life Feels Good in Portbail Beach.  She is pretty awesome.  Just sayin'. 
She lives in France, is a teacher, and is getting married soon!
I've been following her since the beginning of my blogging "career" and she is a pretty sweet lady.
You'll have fun getting to know her and I hope you go show her some commenting love!  She definitely deserves it.

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Hey Alison's readers, I'm Malo @ Life feels good in Portbail Beach. First, let me thank Alison for having me here. Thank you, girl! I've been a reader of her blog for a long time and was so pleased when she asked me to write a guest post! I hope she and Nick are having great holidays.

My name is Malorie but everyone calls me Malo. I'm French and live in Portbail, a small port situated in Normandy, France. I live next to Cherbourg, known for being an arsenal and one of Titanic's ports of call, and we even have a permanent exhibition about the Titanic in town. I'm also not very far from the landing beaches so you can see a lot of Star-Spangled Banners here. I live in a small house by the beach with my fiancé Ludo and our cat Garfield. We love being here, this is so beautiful and peaceful.

I teach English in a small rural secondary school and I love my job. I recently wrote a post about the reasons why I love teaching. You can read it here. Obviously that's not easy everyday but I can't see myself doing anything else!

I have three big addictions: I drink many cappuccinos a day, I would love to meet British Royals and I'm obsessed with TV series. I can easily be addicted to a TV show. A few weeks ago, I was completely obsessed with The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey and Mad Men, which resulted in me dreaming of zombies in my garden, talking with a Lady Mary's accent and wishing I could be friends with Joan. Silly I know. Buy me any TV series and I'm the happiest girl!

Let's keep the best for the end... I'm getting married next year! Ludo and I have been together for three years and a half and he proposed last February! I'm so proud to become his Mrs and we can't wait for the big day to come. I also plan to write a series of posts about the wedding planning so stay tuned!

Come visit Life feels good in Portbail Beach and say hi!! You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram.

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Guest Post: Casey from Everyday Adventures

I'm glad you all get to meet my next guest blogger.  We met only a few weeks ago via the blog world and I'm so glad we did!  Her name is Casey and she blogs at Everyday Adventures here today.  Her and her husband are very cute and even better, they only live one state away from me!  Show her some love and become her newest follower.  Do it!

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Hey all! My name is Casey and I write at a blog called Everyday Adventures. I like to think of it as a way to share my daily adventures in crafting, cooking, teaching... really whatever pops into my head. Today, I would love to share a little recipe with you all. This is a great make ahead recipe. It is perfect to give a new mom/family, its full of veggies and can be tweaked to fit whatever is in season or whatever your tastes are.

I found this recipe last year when I was scouring the Internet for new ways to fix zucchini. Zucchini is one of those plants that you have to be a moron to kill off.

Oh wait, that's a picture of my "garden." Seriously I don't know how I killed it. It must have been defective. Or something. Do you know who doesn't kill off zucchinis? The grocery store. So that's where I went.

Zucchini Casserole

• 3 zucchinis- sliced (or the giant one that was hiding under the leaves in the garden)
• 1 small onion- sliced
• handful of baby carrots
• 1 package of sliced mushrooms (Usually they are the same price as the bulk mushrooms)
• 1 small head of broccoli- chopped
• 1 container of plain Greek yogurt (I decided to swap out the sour cream with the Greek yogurt. This was mostly due to it being healthier expiration dates.)
• 1 box Stove Top Stuffing Mix (I shop the sales, and Stove Top was not on sale today. Hy-Top it is!)
• 1 can cream of something soup 
• 1/2 c. butter, melted
• Red pepper flake
• Parmesan cheese

Slice vegetables and place in a large pot filled with water. Bring water (with vegetables) to a boil. Get annoyed that your pot is too small and you never really see a boil. Let boil for 2-3 minutes and then remove from heat. Drain vegetables. Set aside.


Mix together the yogurt and cream of something soup.


Melt the butter and pour on top of the stuffing mix.  Combine until the stuffing is moist. Add red pepper flakes to the stuffing mix.


In a 9x13 pan, pour 1/2 of the stuffing mix on the bottom of the pan. Add the drained vegetables on top of the stuffing. Spread the sour cream and soup mixture on top of the vegetables. Cover with the rest of the stuffing mix on top. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.


Here is the stopping point if you are giving it away or are making it ahead of time. Wrap it up and put it in the fridge.


When you are ready, bake it at 350 for 30 minutes or so until its bubbly and brown.

Enjoy!


Thanks Alison for letting me guest post for you! I hope you like this recipe, it's one of our favorites around here. If you try it, let me know how you liked it or what changes you made to it!

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Guest Post: Lauren from The Merry Mrs. Mobely

The lovely Lauren from The Merry Mrs. Mobley is blogging today!  She is adorable and you will fall in love with her and her cute family, especially her dog Daisy.
Make sure to hop on over to her blog and follow her as soon as you show her some love on this blog! 

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Hello readers of Life of Two Sokools, my name is Lauren and I blog over at the merry mrs. mobley!

No matter where you are these days, Mother Nature is rearing her nasty head and showing us what she is all about by throwing hundred degree temps at us. Here in North Cackalacki not only are we getting the heat, but we're getting the humidity too. I cannot express how grateful I am for ceiling fans and AC on these days:-) Today I am going to share with you some of my favorite ways to beat the heat. . .

Hit the pool, beach, sprinkler! 

We are fortunate enough to live four hours from the beach, four minutes from the pool, and four seconds from the sprinkler. These sources of water are a great help when I am in need of a quick cool-down. You can even be a redneck like us and wait 'til your yard's irrigation system comes on to cool off. No sprinkler set-up there;-)

Watch the Olympics

 As a former swimmer, I absolutely adore the Summer Olympics. What better excuse to stay in and watch them than these ridiculous temps? We are a few short weeks away from weeks of entertainment. Who are you rooting for?? As NC State grads we'll be cheering on Cullen Jones from our couches!

Drinks

 Whether they are virgin or not, it's hard to deny the thirst quenching ability of a good iced drink. I'm a big fan of the Strawberry Daiquiri, or anything fruity really!

Library 

This teacher loves to hit the library on those blazing days and get a few good books. Our library allows drinks, so you can often find me curled up in a corner with an iced latte and a good book. Books aren't really your thing? Grab a magazine!

Movies

You often hear people complain about how cold movie theaters are. This is not the case come summertime! Don't have a lot of money to spend? Go during the day! Our local theater has tickets for $5 Sunday-Thursday during the day.

Come on over to my little corner of the blog world and let me know your favorite ways to stay cool this summer!

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Guest Post: Meg from Mr. C and Me

Meg from Mr. C and Me is taking over my blog today!  

She is hilarious, cute, and so much fun.  

You'll love her and make sure to hop on over to her blog, befriend her, and show her how awesome she is!

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Hello Life of Two Sokools readers!  I'm Meg and I blog over at Mr.C & Me, a lifestyle blog that features the day-to-day life of my husband and I. We are newlywed high school sweethearts who have traded in Illinois cornfields for cold Minnesota winters and are always on the look out for the next fun adventure. 

Before we begin - I'd like to thank Alison for letting me (attempt) to fill her shoes while she's off vacationing! Hope you are having a wonderful time, we can't wait to hear about all your adventures!

And speaking of adventures and vacations - here we are already, closing in on the peak of summer. So I thought I'd share a few of my favorite summer things with you!

No. 1 - Every season should be accompanied by a great soundtrack. My summer jams usually consist of upbeat, happy numbers mixed with sassy island beats. Right now I cannot get enough of "Selewa" by King Selewa Calysonians! And right now you can download it free from Amazon.com - how cool is that - enjoy! 

No. 2 - With the warm weather comes a plethora of homegrown goodies + fresh fruit. When snacking I like to indulge in some healthy(ish) sweet treats. Just thinking about these next two recipes makes me drool... As an apple fiend I am obsessed with this hard-to-pass-up decadent apple dip. With brown sugar and cream cheese, it's so sinfully scrumptious you won't be able to resist!

  
  Recipe is as follows - 1 package of cream cheese, 1 cup of brown sugar, and a dash of vanilla extract. Mix with a spoon until smooth. Serve with apple slices.

 So easy right?! Well this next fruit-centered dish is even easier (if you can believe it!). To some people these are "dessert oranges" while in Greece it's known as Portokalia me Meli...and in my house, well, it's known as just plain yummy. So, grab some fresh orange slices, drizzle a little honey over it, add a sprinkle or two of cinnamon and you're done. 

A light juicy snack perfect for summer celebrations! 

No. 3 - Summer is a time to spend enjoying friends + family. Whether it's spending an afternoon in escaping the heat or late nights around the campfire - games like Apples to Apples, Euchre, Charades, and Never Have I Ever are always crowd pleasers. Our newest favorite is called The Game of Things. Here's how to play: sit in a circle, give everyone paper & a pen, and appoint one person as the leader for that round and one person as the reader/collector. The leader makes up a prompt and announces it the group. Sample prompts include: "Things you wish you could check out from the library", "Things you are afraid of", "Things cannibals think about when dining", "Things you can't wait to do when you get home", etc. Then everyone writes down their name & response to the prompt on a piece of paper and hands it to the reader/collector. The reader/collector then reads the answers (but not then names!) out loud to the leader. The leader must then try to match up the responses to the people who wrote them. You can make up your own point system if you like - but we like to just play and laugh at all the silly answers. It's especially fun when the leader mismatches the responses! It's not a very "deep" game, but it is simple, and very fun to play! 

So there you have it, a few of my favorite summer things! 

It has been a pleasure visiting with you all & thanks again to Alison for having me!

 xo, Meg

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Guest Post: Mrs. Robinson from My New Wife Life

While you're reading this I'll be in the middle of a Montana forest with my family.  I'm serious.  You'll hear all about the trip once we get back, but until that time I have asked some lovely bloggers to take over for me whilst I'm away!

I am super excited for you to meet one of my favorite bloggers.  She is incredibly sweet and blogs from the heart.
 Her name is Mrs. Robinson and she blogs over at My New Wife Life.
If you aren't a follower of her or haven't heard of her, go check out her blog!  Show her some love! 

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Hello!  I'm Mrs. Robinson from My New Wife Life.  Maybe you've heard of it?  Probably not, but I'll be entertaining y'all today while Alison is on vacation!  I'm so excited to be guest posting for her today...she's just so cool.  ;)   

Anyway, I'm a newlywed just like Mrs. Alison, and I'm sure both of us could say we weren't expecting to learn so many different lessons during the first year of marriage.  I've been thinking about all the things in life that prepared me for marriage, even if I didn't realize it at the time.  I've narrowed it down to 3 ways slumber parties prepared for me marriage.  Let's go!    
1.  You don't always get to watch the movie you want to watch.
Whenever I had Slumber Parties as a girl, my mom always made me accommodate the other girls.  They were the guests, and somehow that meant that their votes counted more than mine did!  The horror!  It was something I really didn't understand at the time, but it taught me a valuable lesson about marriage.  It prepared me for all the action flicks my husband would force me to watch.  It prepared me for the Star Wars marathons.  It prepared me for ESPN.  Sure, there are plenty of times when my husband lets me "win" and we watch the movie or show of my choice.  But, if my parent's hadn't been cruel enough to make me let the other little girls pick what we watch, I might not have been able to welcome my husband's awful taste in television quite as easily.     2.  Sometimes you get peer pressured into doing weird things. When you're a young girl at a Slumber Party, all sorts of things are possible.  You might steal a pack of cigarettes and smoke in the bushes.  You might dip someone's bra in water and then put it in the freezer.  Someone could wake-up with crazy make-up, marker designs, or even toothpaste smeared across their faces.  Anything is possible, and anything weird is probable.  And thank goodness for those experiences, because they prepared me for jumping into the unknown of shaving neck hair.  Because of Slumber Parties, I've developed a tolerance to tasting and smelling weird things like dark beer or ... something that smells weird (I'll just leave that to the imagination).  Slumber Parties prepared me for the weirdness that is eating junk foods for dinner!  The list of weird things my husband peer pressures me into doing could go on and on, but I'll just leave it with some basic weird things we can all relate to.  I won't write about discussions of bowel movements, making weird faces, talking in foreign accents, or anything of the like.  :)  And I definitely won't get into the list of things that look like fun but hurt like heck in reality.  Tee-hee. 3. The amount of fun you have is measured by the mess that's left behind.
We've all been there, right?  You had just experience the best sleep over ever.  The last mom shows up, the last girl leaves, and you are left with a huge mess to clean up.  Well-behaved girls don't make messes.  (I guess I don't know that for certain.  I was never well-behaved, so I'm just assuming what the opposite of "me" would have done.)  The more trouble we got into, the more damage we did, the bigger mess we made!  That applies to marriage more-so than any other analogy of I've use in this post.  The best meals leave behind the messiest kitchens.  The best "alone time" leaves the sheets all messed up.  The best weekends that are full of quality time do not usually include a spotless home.  The best memories are made when we aren't worried about the messes we create in the process.  
I hope that at least some of this made sense.  I really hope it made you laugh.  :)  When we really think about it, so many aspects of our youth prepared us for the very moment we're living in.  I wonder what lessons we're learning now that will pay off 20 years from today....
Thanks for having me, Alison! 

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Guest blogging!

Want to know something insanely awesome?!

This girl, Lauren, has asked me to guest post for her!!



I'm super stoked!

'cause...
 
1. It's my first time guest posting
&
2. I'm guest posting for an incredibly sweet lady

So go check it out!  I'm writing about ways that we get outside!


And also show her some love (and me too, if you want) because she is awesome.