Making Stuff is Fun.....

Falentine's Weekend

2012-02-14T07:52:00.003-05:00

My Valentine and I decided to get a jump on Valentine's Day and do a little celebrating this past weekend. I call it Falentine's Day (you know I like to make up words).

The scones we made last year turned out so well that we decided to make them again. B looked mad in the first picture I took so I told him to look excited. This is what I got....

The beer was to help with the baking...not an actual ingredient. We also had our friend, pregnant (with an orange baby) Russian measuring cup doll to assist us with our ingredients.

I used the scones in the Falentine's Day brunch I prepared for us on Sunday (featuring fruit/granola parfaits). The bacon and potatoes (from the breakfast buffet at Harris Teeter) were a late add.

"Oh hey guys, it just me, Hobie. I would really like to take some of that bacon off your hands. Can you see me here? I'm waiting patiently but I will leap up on the coffee table if necessary."

"Mmmm, these also smell nice. What's that? Orange and cranberry? But really, just give me some of the bacon."

It was a lovely Sunday Morning brunch. B also took me out for a nice Falentine Dinner on Saturday on what turned out to be the coldest night of winter so far. Good times.

Later this week I will unveil the amazing Valentine's Day card I made B while watching How I Met Your Mother last night.

Are you doing anything for Valentine's Day?
Or do you hate Valentine's Day and think it's a stupid fake holiday made up by greeting card companies?

Either way, Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!!

Random Musings Friday...

2012-02-10T08:13:00.000-05:00

I'm sharing my random musings from the past week (with Shana's Random Musings from Fumbling Towards Normalcy). You will love them....

Is this the best form of laziness? I wanted to run (slow jog) two miles on the treadmill last night but the thought of jogging for a full 22 minutes made me sad so I decided to up my speed to 10 minutes miles to cut the time by 2 minutes. Making my run last less time was the sole purpose or the faster speed; not to try to increase my usual pace. Lazy or just less slow?

I also sometimes like to try to solve random math word problems that I create in my head while jogging. Yesterday on the treadmill I realized I weigh at least 20 times more than Beezus5's new baby (her baby weighs somewhere between 6 and 9 pounds-that's all I'm giving you). Who loves math!?!?!

Will Arnett has a really really deep voice. I know that this is pretty common knowledge but the other day I was discussing it with B. I think B has a normal male pitch voice but after watching Up All Night, B's voice suddenly seemed high pitched.

B jammed his finger playing basketball this week so he can't really bend his right pointer finger. So he attempted to have me tie one of his shoe laces for him the other day. Then he yelled* at me and said I was doing it all wrong. He also strongly disapproves of my method to just tie my tennis shoe one time and slip my feet in and out of them instead of having to tie them every time I put them on (another example of my laziness?) Which do you do?

And let's not forget Hobie. B purchased a Patriots balloon for the Super Bowl. I thought it would be fun to attach it to Hobie's collar. Hobie did not think that was fun. He tried his hardest to escape from the balloon by speed running around the basement but since it was attached to him he had no luck. So I removed it. But now every time he sees the balloon he viciously barks at it. I take it he's a Giants fan. His father strongly disapproves.

Fascinating stuff, right?
Happy Weekend!

*in a faux angry manner

Super Bowl Stuff and Such...

2012-02-07T08:05:00.000-05:00

We decided to have a few friends over to watch the Super Bowl and I decided to attempt a semi-hard looking recipe for Soft Pretzel Bites from What's Gaby Cooking. It wasn't that it was really complex, it just seemed to have a lot of steps. I got to use my dough hook for the first time and there was even a fun step where you poured baking soda into a pot of boiling water. You can check out the recipe for more details.

My final picture isn't great but they tasted really good and surprisingly pretzel like. It was a long process but worth it.

We had a ton of other food as per usual. B made some delightful blue cheese stuffed sliders.

I missed most of the commercials but I had a good reason.....

There was a baby there! It's my new mini BFF, KMU (we will call her that for the time being, I don't want her to get too famous too fast, Suri Cruise style). Beezus5 had a baby on her exact due date and her first outing was to my basement for some football. I'm pretty sure Hobie thought she was a giant burrito.

"Hobie, this is not food, it's a tiny person."

Look at her pretty hair.

I'm such a natural with babies....well I'm working on it.

Telling her stories about her mom from the olden days.

So that was my Super Bowl experience.

What did you do?
Did you bake anything?
Did any new babies attend your Super Bowl Party?

The Weirdest Thing I've Ever Pintered-Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough??

2012-02-02T08:07:00.000-05:00

Have you ever seen something on Pinterest (or the Internet) that just seemed too good to be true or just plain crazy? Well that's what I thought when I saw this pin for "healthy" chocolate chip cookie dough dip. It wasn't that I didn't believe it could be healthy. It was that I thought it would taste disgusting since one of the main ingredients was chickpeas. But I was curious. So I decided to give it a shot.

I did as the recipe said and mixed together the chickpeas, peanut butter, vanilla, etc in my food processor and then added in the chocolate chips.

So the big question.....How was it? It's hard to say. It tasted pretty good. There was a slight hint of chickpea taste and texture and I honestly just kept thinking about the chickpeas the whole time I was eating it. It definitely wasn't disgusting. I felt healthier eating it than I do when I "taste" raw cookie dough. I really wish I could have had a blind taste test without knowing about the chickpeas. I think that would have made me like it more. My husband seemed to like it ok but I didn't catch him running back in for extra servings.

But yes I would maybe make this again. It would be fun to take it somewhere and see if people like it before telling them there were chickpeas in it. Someone do this and let me know.

In other news, I also pintered these really easy pretzel and peanut butter truffles. I thought these were really good and I'm definitely going to make them again. You just food process some pretzels and mix a little peanut butter in until you can form balls. After freezing the balls, dip them in chocolate and let them set. Good stuff. Make some for your boyfriend for Valentine's Day. Or maybe your Dad if he really likes peanut butter.

So those are my recent Pinterest projects.

Has anyone else made the "healthy" cookie dough? It was a really popular pin on the site.

What have you been pintering?

Should I stop using the word 'pinter' as a verb? Yeah probably.

Pregnancy Inspiration

2012-01-31T08:58:00.001-05:00

So today is the big day....Beezus5's due date. Now I don't know if she will actually have this baby today but if she does my husband will totally win the B5 Baby Pool and we will be rich.* As sort of an inside joke I have been sending her some daily inspirational emails to prepare her to birth a human baby. I don't know anything about birthing a human baby and when you google 'pregnancy or birth inspiration' lots of weird stuff shows up. WEIRD. So I had to make my own inspiring pieces. I will spare you the haiku's I wrote and the 'Britney Spears-If she can do it, you can do it' series. But here are some of my other inspiring works of art. The original pictures came from the interwebs, I just added the text (so sorry if I borrowed your pic).

There was also an email titled "WWMWD?" aka what would Molly Weasley do.

So yeah, would this total inspire you to be a great mom/birth a baby or annoy you and make you think I'm crazy?

Go B5!

*by rich I mean, win $30

Fill in the Blank Friday-Travel Edition

2012-01-27T08:02:00.001-05:00

I'm participating in Fill In The Blank Friday again from the little things we do. Congrats to Lauren who just had a baby a couple weeks ago!

Today's blanks are about travel and I love planning trips (that I do or don't actually go one) so here goes....

1. My favorite places I've ever traveled to are most of the places I've been with my husband...Italy, Hawaii, Las Vegas.

2. Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Maine are places I'd love to go someday.

3. I pass the time on a plane (or bus, or car ride or train) by trying to sleep or watching dvd's on the portable dvd player.

4. My three must-haves when I travel are my own sheet (I sort of cocoon myself in it in hotels because I have a slight fear of hotel sheets), my tiny book bag, my aveeno lotion.
5. My favorite travel companion is B, my husband.

6. The craziest thing that ever happened to me while traveling is the Occupy protest that was happening in Rome on the day we were supposed to go to the Colosseum. They closed down the Colosseum and there were police everywhere and I didn't really know what was going on so I was slightly scared.

7. The most exotic food I've ever tried while traveling is... in Italy we had a meat platter that included rabbit. I also had a tiny taste of a $200 bottle of balsamic vinegar.

8. If I could live anywhere else, I'd live in hmmm, I really love living in NC but maybe somewhere exciting like NYC or somewhere that's good for people with allergies. But I really like NC. I plan to stay here foreva.

9. I have been to several states. I'm not counting states I've just driven through. I've been to Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Maryland and probably a few more.

Where have you travelled?
Has anything crazy every happened while you were travelling?

Happy Friday!!

Pinteresting-The Craft Version

2012-01-23T08:13:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I decided to 'pinter' some art work. I made this picture one night while my husband was watching some sort of sport downstairs. He never even saw me in action.

I got the idea from this from here. Essentially you just paint or draw branches with brown marker or paint and then paint circles on the branches as leaves. I used some old acrylic paint I had lying around.

I was not 100% happy with this when I finished. Once I put it in the frame, I liked it better (fun fact-you can make most bad art look decent by framing it). I like how it looks from far away but not so much from up close. Fortunately, I usually only look at it from far away. So for now it's a keeper. I can always re-frame something else when I get sick of it.

The second thing I made didn't come from a specific pin. I had seen that a lot of people use paint sample chips (cards from Lowe's, Home Depot) to make art work. So I thought I'd give it a try. After some trial and error I went with these hearts in varying shades of blue which I taped onto a piece of white paper. Then I framed them in this dollar store frame.

So if I end up hating it in a few weeks there will be no big monetary loss. (Free paint chips+ $1 frame=$1).

Here's how it looks all together.

Have you pintered any art for your house?

Random Musing Friday

2012-01-20T08:08:00.003-05:00

Shana at Fumbling Towards Normalcy has a wonderful Friday tradition called Random Musing Friday. I thought I'd participate this week.

These are the randon things I thought about this week.

During an email chain yesterday we were discussing Harry Potter for some reason and my husband realized he is essentially just like Hagrid.... "Half giant, unruly hair, best friend is a dog". I realized it's totally true. He should probably grow his facial hair out into a full beard though.

One time my husband was using my iPad and saw my recent history of google searches and then he made fun of me. Sometimes I search weird things. I also trust wikipedia way too much as my main source of info and it was really hard on me when they had that blackout the other day. My searches from the past week include....'Ryan Hansen', 'IRS home office deduction', 'Britney Spears/Matt Lauer pregnant interview', 'I Love Lucy birth episode', '5k's in Peoria', 'how to get water out of your ear', 'Does Aisha Tyler have kids?', 'can I workout with an ear infection'. I got some great info on all these topics this week.

I wish people would stop posting that gross picture of how chicken nuggets are made on Facebook. Have you seen it? It looks like pink frozen yogurt until you read the caption. I haven't had any chicken McNuggets in years but it still grosses me out thinking about it and I don't want to see it on Facebook. I probably shouldn't have even brought it up because now I'm grossed out again.

I had an ear infection this past week. Two people were like 'nah, only kids get ear infections'. Well the doctor told me I had one and gave me some antibiotics so I'm assuming adults can get them too. Also I had a serious incident where I had water stuck in my ear earlier in the week (which may have lead to my ear infection). I shook my head vigorously for about an hour trying to get it out. Apparently that was not a good idea because the next day I woke up with some serious neck pain and also an ear infection. The neck pain was worse though.

My favorite Golden Globe moment was when Michelle Williams thanked Busy Phillips in her speech. I had heard before that they were good friends and the camera showed them sitting together, hanging out at the show. Dawson's Creek friendships last forever (unless Tom Cruise takes you away). Also, please watch Cougar Town on Feb. 14th. It's a really good show and not about cougars at all.

pic from people.com

That's all the fascinating stuff my head has for you right now.

Happy Friday!

I Pintered-3 Easy Meals

2012-01-10T08:05:00.002-05:00

I have been using Pinterest for awhile and I love Pinning stuff to my boards. This past weekend I decided it was time to turn my pins into a reality again. So I made a few recipes that I had pinned.

Let's start with the healthy one. I love What's Gaby Cooking and she had a delightful looking raw kale salad on there the other day. Raw kale scares me a little but I trust Gaby, plus it looked insanely healthy. So I went for it.

My Raw Kale Salad...

Results-I think I did a good job following the recipe and I loved the flavor of the lemon vinaigrette but I'm just not a huge fan of the raw kale. I prefer my kale cooked down. But yeah, I still think eating this benefited my body somewhat.

2 Ingredient French Dip.
Ok I didn't exactly follow this recipe. I was looking for easy slow cooker recipes that weren't chicken and I found this 2 ingredient recipe at Six Sister's Stuff . There recipe called for a beef roast and beef consomme but I couldn't find consomme. So I bought a beef roast and cooked it in the slow cooker for 8 hours on low with a box of beef stock and a packet of onion soup mix.

I also added cheese to the sandwich and a side of the au jus made from the juice/broth that was left in the bottom of the slow cooker. Both my husband and I really enjoyed this although I think it's on the high sodium side (but it's ok, we ate kale the day before).

Last but not least, I made these Slow Cooker Pork Chops (ok I actually made these first but whatever). Again this recipe was really simple.....pork chops, cream of chicken soup and a ranch dressing mix packet.

I like the flavor of this (I used cream of celery soup instead) and I think it would have turned out slightly better if I cooked it a little less. I used less pork chops than the original recipe called for. (I also used frozen mashed potatoes instead of making my own garlic ones like the recipe suggests.) But overall it was good and far easier than trying to grill a pork chop.

In conclusion, Pinterest is cool. These recipes were easy (especially the last too). And if you want to feel healthy, eat a bunch of raw kale. Not only is it good for you but I think you burn extra calories by chewing on the kale for so long.

What have you pintered for dinner lately?

Oh and let me know if you Pinter so I can follow you. You can click on the big P at the top to go to my Pinterest and see all these recipes (and a bunch of other stuff I have pinned).

Coming soon...my recent craft Pinters.

Holiday Recap Three-My Vacation in Books, Movies, Television and Music...

2012-01-06T07:43:00.000-05:00

What???!?!?
You only thought there would be 2 holiday recap posts? I decided to add this third one in too.

I had really high hopes for tv/movie watching and book reading on my vacay.

I totally failed at the book reading aspect. I bought my husband the first book in the hot new teen trilogy series, Divergent. (OK yeah I know it might be weird that I bought him that, but he likes to read a lot and I wanted to put a book in his stocking and he liked the Hunger Games. He also really likes sports too, don't worry. Plus I want to read it. Win. Win. Win.) So I had planned on reading that after he finished (he finished it 2 days after I gave it to him) but never quite got around to it. At least I know what the next book I read will be.

I also planned on going to the movie theater a couple times. Fail. (Has anyone seen The Descendants though, I think I want to see that?) I went zero times. But we did have several movie nights in our basement. We watched Horrible Bosses. Jennifer Aniston is hilariously scary in that movie. I enjoyed it. We also rented My Idiot Brother which I also enjoyed. Plus it had a ton of my favorite people in it (I heart you, Adam Scott). Then, since Shanzles finally decided to dive in to the Harry Potter series books per Beezus5, B and my constant harassment, we finally allowed her to watch the second Harry Potter movie (featuring our beloved Dobby). And of course as mentioned before I finally saw A Christmas Story all the way through. We also watched the original Miracle on 34th St on Christmas day, which, although I was preparing 20 food dishes at the time, I did enjoy.

As far as TV goes, I had this weird goal of re-watching the first thee seasons of Parks and Recreation. I did not actual do this although PRec is still probably my favorite current comedy. But I did finish watching all the available Psych episodes on Netflix Streaming. So now I'm ready to watch the most current season. I became weirdly obsessed with this show and with Gus and Shawn in general. I still watch some of the old eps on my iPad before going to bed. Its such an easy, funny, non disturbing, silly-ish, pro-friendship type show that gives me no nightmares (plus I can do other stuff while watching it, like make wine charms and teach Hobie how to catch stuff in his mouth). Plus I also really like pineapples.

Pre-Paint Edited pic from http://psychpineapple.com/

Speaking of nightmares, I attempted to watch Breaking Bad because I've heard that it's really awesome. I watched the first 2 episodes which while deeply disturbing to me, were really good. I could see liking/becoming addicted to this show but then I kept having crazy nightmares about it so I decided not to watch it. I'm crazy like that. I used to have 24 nightmares all the time back in the day. I may attempt it again some day although I kind of wikipedia-ed some of the season so I know what happens.

So instead I went ahead and started the TV show that I was fairly confident I'd get strong addicted to right away, Friday Night Lights. I started this at the end of the break so I'm only on episode 4 but I did get strong addicted right away. I definitely cried in the first two episodes. I was also shocked that the dude, Blake, that I totally hated on The Good Wife was the injured football quarterback star from the beginning of FNL. I have to look at him in a whole new light now. I think I will love this show but I'm attempting to pace myself and only watch it when I can really focus on it.

I would like to thank my husband's Netflix Streaming account and my iPad for making binge-watching TV shows so convenient.

As far as music goes. I spent much of my car riding time listening to the She and Him Christmas Album. I also made a hot mix cd as one of the Murder Mystery Party Prizes. I realized that television greatly influences my music choices as well. The last three songs I bought in iTunes came from TV shows I was watching......Adele-Rumour Has It (from a recent episode of Ringer), fun-We Are Young (from Glee) and Band of Horses-I Go to the Barn Because I Like The (from a Psych episode). So apparently even in music, TV rules my life.

So that was my vacay in Books, Movies, TV and Music?

What did you watch, read or listen too?

Holiday Recap Part Deux-There's Been Another Murder and My 'Boyfriend' Turns 32!

2012-01-05T07:57:00.001-05:00

Some of my friends and I planned a low-key dinner party for New Year's Eve (since a few of our friends were out of town and another one of them was 8 months pregnant aka probably not into club/bar hopping). Then we decided that might be a little boring so we turned it in to another Murder Mystery Party. You might remember the first one from here. As long as you can get a group of people together who are willing to participate and dress up it can be a fun/entertaining night. I purchased our Murder Mystery kit online at Night of Mystery.

So More Holiday Awards.....

Best Hostess-Mrs. Acorn-She entertained. We will just leave it at that.

Best Sport-Our sweet pregnant friend Beezus5 who was dressed quite fashionable as a teen starlet even though she is 8 months pregnant. Although she had to wear flip flops due to ankle swellage, she did somehow manage to have the best looking hair of any of the girls. (No offense to anyone else's wonderful hair. I myself was rocking a bumpit).

The bumpit is always appropriate.

Best Dance Partner-Curly T refused to let B dance alone in the corner the whole night.

Best Dressed-Everyone, especially the boys. I wasn't quit sure all the boys would be in to dressing up since most of the male roles were former boy band members or rappers. But everyone really brought it especially with their faux jewels and berets. We forgot to take a big group picture so these will have to do.

Most Likely to be Super Late but Actually Showed up Semi-On Time-Shanzles! Yay, way to go!

Best Champagne Bar-B, for actually looking up champagne cocktails, printing out the recipes and buying all the ingredients.

Best Dessert-ME! For purchasing this lovely Raspberry Lemon Cake for my New Year's Day birthday boy. We ate it right after midnight on his actual birthday.

And and just FYI, I won the best acting award for my amazing range of fake accents. Yeah, go me.

My husband's birthday is on New Year's Day so I think I should also win the Best Birthday Celebrator Award by making sure he drank some water on New Year's Eve before bed so that he'd feel well enough to golf on his birthday. Success. I also took him out for a nice January 2nd birthday dinner since many places are closed on New Year's Day.

What did you do for New Year's Eve?

Holiday Vacation 2011 Recap-Part One-Christmas and Christmas-ish activities

2012-01-02T21:10:00.089-05:00

Wow, so I think this is the longest blog vacation I've ever taken. It just sort of happened. Around mid December I was struck with an intense cold that lasted until past Christmas. Then I was off work for a week and a half so I just decided to let the blog rest for awhile. But I'm back. My vacation was officially over at 6AM today when I woke up for work. But my vacation was awesome so I'd like to hand out some awards to my friends and family for making it so good.

Today we will discuss Fristmas, Christmas and the 1st Annual (yeah I'm going there-it should definitely be yearly) Post-Christmas Extravaganza....

Later I will recap New Years and my husband's birthday.

Best Baking-I'm going to go ahead and call this a tie between B and I. I was too ill to prepare the Gingerbread dough the night before we made the cookies so B followed my recipe and I coached him through it. There was a slight mix up between baking soda and baking powder but we worked through it. Then I used my new cake ball maker to whip up these brownie peppermint cake balls. They might have been slightly hard but look how cute they are.

Best Holiday Decor in my House-Another tie between B and I. B for single-handedly bringing in the tree by himself and setting it up on the tree stand. Me, for acquiring Christmas decor over the years and sitting it around the house.

Best attempt to open/eat his own Christmas presents-Hobie! Christmas is really about the kids, right. Hobie really enjoyed opening his presents on Fristmas*. He wasn't bad at gift giving either. He managed to get B and I some much needed new salt and pepper shakers.

Most Photogenic-My brother and sister. My brother gets it for actually agreeing to be in a photo and look at the camera and L-Fab is always great in photos!

Best Couple-Obviously B and sleeping Hobie win best couple. Always.

Best Inter-family Mingling-This goes to B's family below and my family (in the next pic). It was the first time we had members of both our families hang out together on Christmas. Plus B's family forced me to watch A Christmas Story which is good since I've never actually seen that movie all the way through (Crazy, I know).

Best Feast-My mom wins the Best Feast award for preparing billions of dishes for Christmas eve dinner as well as multiple meats. She even made a few vegan dishes for my mother-in-law. My Aunt gets runner up for the December 23rd holiday meal she made us. Delightful.

Best Post Christmas Gathering goes to me and all my homies who met up on December 27th for some good times. Special Shout out to the Young's for their guest appearance all the way from Vegas.

I was so excited to fit everyone in our freshly
painted basement!

Special shoutout to me for deciding not to cook a bunch of food and instead just get 3 Stouffers Lasagnas and some wine and beer.

Special shoutout award to Curly J aka the Brayer for suggesting we play Dirty Santa (aka White Elephant) and for bringing this awesome Sweet Talking Ken Doll as one of the prizes. It was hysterical and fun playing with my closest friends. (Curly T, you better be able to describe the whole second season of Parks and Rec to me next time I see you).

No special shoutout to Shanzles for bringing this wreath made of plastic bags (although it did come with a Starbucks gift card so not the worst gift ever.)

Best Holiday Craft-Shanzles. Shannon previously failed at beach craft hour but came back strong with these cute book themed Christmas ornament. You are officially redeemed!

Overall, it was an amazing break but I'm so happy to be back at work today. FALSE. I am not happy to be back at work today (but I am grateful that my University totally shuts down between Christmas and New Year's so I don't have to work).

I will return later this week with part deux of my holiday recap. You can't wait!

*Fristmas is the made up holiday B and I share where we open up our Christmas presents to each other a few days before real Christmas and then eat some sort of delightful breakfast or dinner together.

TV Talk Friday-Christmas Themed

2011-12-16T08:24:00.001-05:00

Well I think most of the shows I watch have showed their Fall finales or Christmas themed episodes.

My faves...

How I Met Your Mother-We had some Robin drama but how sweet was Ted with the ACDC Christmas light show? The Marshall trapped on the roof story line was just OK.

Parks and Recreation-AMAZING. Leslie's gifts to everyone were awesome. (These are the Black Eyed Peas and this is me killing them.) But the ending was amazing. I might have shed a single tear. Ron Swanson is one of my favorite TV characters ever. "Ron Swanson. Any other damn thing you might need." I want to inspire people like Leslie does. She's pretty much my idol now.

New Girl-I loved that Jess bought all her roomies roller skates. Candy Cane Lane at the end was pretty nice too. Plus they were playing the She & Him Christmas CD at the end which I have been listening to in my car all week.

Community-Community went all Glee on us and it was pretty funny. I like how they kept referring to Regionals. I think I liked last year's stop motion animation episode slightly better though.

My not as much faves...

Although it pains me to write this....
The Office-Christmas was rough without Michael Scott but without Pam too it was just too much to take. I did like the Jim and Dwight stuff though.

Glee-I just wasn't into this. I guess the black and white stuff was supposed to be semi-funny and a homage to other Christmas specials but I thought some of the songs were just too long and not that great. I fast forwarded through a couple. I guess I'm a hater. The end with Rachel and Finn exchanging gifts was nice though.

What did you think about this year's batch of holiday episodes?

And what is you favorite holiday themed episode of all time?

I will always hold the first couple Office Christmas episodes close to my heart. Remember when Jim bought Pam the teapot in Secret Santa or when Michael had to mark his "new girlfriend" on the arm to remember which Asian girl she was in a Benihana Christmas?
Friends had a few good ones. Remember Ross as the Holiday Armadillo?
And I think I recall enjoying the Chrismukkah eps of The OC.
There was also that really deep My So-Called Life episode featuring special guest star Juliana Hatfield. I remember being obsessed with that for awhile.

Christmas Crafts-Coasters

2011-12-12T08:52:00.000-05:00

I'm becoming a pro at coaster making. I originally discovered this phenomenon on Pinterest and have taken it to the next level for holiday gift giving and decor. Here is the set I made for my house. I love this Martha Stewart (I think) paper I got with a coupon at Michaels.

These are so easy. In case you need a reminder on what to do.... Buy tiles at Home Depot or Lowes. Tiles are super cheap, less than 20 cents each. Buy pretty craft paper at the craft store. Cut paper into squares (a cheap paper cutter makes this much easier) and mod podge the paper to the tile. I do a layer below the paper and over the top. Let this dry. Then spray a couple of coats of clear spray paint (also available at the craft store) and let dry for a couple days. Then add felt to the bottom (I bought a sheet of the sticky felt). Here's the original Pinterest link.

I also made some as an early Christmas gift for my in-laws and I'm considering giving them out to a few other people on my Christmas list. I think these make a great co-worker gift, which is always hard for me to figure out.

Are you making any Christmas presents this year?

Christmas Present Internet Window Shopping-Etsy Edition

2011-12-08T08:55:00.002-05:00

Etsy is a crazy place where you can find all sorts of things you never knew you needed. Since I have taken a semi-vow not to buy myself anything unnecessary this month in order to focus on others I decided to do a little Internet window shopping via Etsy. I'm not asking for these things, but I think they are really cool.
Things I like....

Ron Swanson Bacon and Eggs Art. I'm not lying. I lovvve Parks and Recreation. It's definitely in a tie for my current favorite comedy. And I love Ron Swanson. I'm sure I could find a place somewhere in my house for this.

pic from Etsy

I LIKE NAPS t-shirt. Why? I like naps. I like t-shirts. What's not to like?

pic from the bold banana

Spice Rack for the wall...I can never find my cumin in the spice area of my kitchen cabinets. Maybe this would help.

pic from KT's Woodshop

Pillow covers from Lynne's This and That. This would be an affordable pop of color on the den or basement couches. There are lots of really cute patterns.

pics from LynnesThisandThat

Kitchen themed magnets. These are cute and would be perfect to hold up my mixed assortment of papers and photos I keep on the fridge.

pic from SmackofJellyfish

A Bar table. I mean yes, this is over $10K and probably would not actually fit in my house. But if someone wants to go ahead and pick this up for me that would be great. I kidd. But I do think it's cool looking.

I could go on and on with this but I will go ahead and stop.

On another note, there is a section on etsy that recommends stuff to you that matches your taste. The following items apparently match my taste.... wood drawstring briefs (???????), gun key hook organizer (I'm against violence), grinning squirrel photography (although I did once buy B a squirrel t-shirt on etsy), and a fox hat (etsy apparently think I'm really into forest creatures). While I'm sure that these are wonderful shops and that some people would love these items, I'm starting to think that Etsy does not know me at all.

Are you buying any Christmas gifts from Etsy?

What would be on your fake Holiday wish list?

Has Etsy every suggested something for you that is the complete opposite of your taste?

Cheap and Easy Holiday DIY Decor, Hot Chocolate on a Spoon, and Hobie Clause...

2011-12-06T07:45:00.000-05:00

Here are some of the random cheap ideas I have used to decorate my house so far this holiday season...

I bought these red picture frames awhile back at Michaels for another craft project that did not go well. Then I bought some pretty holiday themed paper and framed some of it. Michaels has tons of pretty holiday paper. I bought a whole booklet of it for 40% off that I plan to use for other projects.

I made these candle holders last year by mod podging strips of tissue paper to the outside of small glass candle holders.

I bought this large vase on sale and filled it with ornaments I got from the Dollar Tree.

I'm still working on my holiday mantel decor but I will post that when I'm done. I know you can't wait to see it.

Now it's time for the delicious hot beverage portion of this post. While I was in Indiana for Thanksgiving, I hit up my favorite chocolate store, Debrands. We picked up a couple Hot Chocolates on a spoon. You stick the spoon in a mug and then pour hot milk over it. It was a nice tree decorating treat last night.

While we were decorating the tree, Hobie Clause made a brief appearance before ripping his hat off in disgust.

He hates it, but look how cute he is.

Have you done any holiday decorating?

Have you ever had Hot Chocolate on a spoon?

Fill In The Blank Friday-Holiday Edition

2011-12-02T08:09:00.003-05:00

I'm participating in Fill in the Blank Friday this week hosted by Lauren at the little things we do.

1. The holiday season is a time to eat a lot and hang out with friends and family.

2. Snow makes me immediately check the University web page 20 billion times to see if work is cancelled or delayed. It also makes me want to take lots of pictures of Hobie frolicking in the yard.

3. The best comfort food to eat when it's cold out is anything cooked in the crock pot. I need to go ahead and pull mine out and make something awesome.

4. Winter is the best time for drinking hot drinks and watching tv or movie marathons wrapped in a blanket.

5. I can hardly wait to go visit the giant waving Santa at the local shopping center and drive through the neighborhood with all the pretty Christmas balls.

6. When it comes to holiday gifts I prefer to shop online and make or bake things.

7. If I were to rate my excitement about the holiday season on a scale from 1-10, I would say I am at about an 8 this year. I want to really get in to decorating my house this weekend and up my holiday spirit level.

How do you feel about the holiday season?

Baby Shower Games-Simple and Hilarious

2011-11-28T08:19:00.001-05:00

Shower games are always hard. You don't want to be lame or cheesy or make anyone feel weird (or be forced to eat baby food) so it can get tough depending on who is attending the shower and what the mother-to-be likes.

Mrs. Curly J aka the Brayer was in charge of games for the shower. She decided to go simple and hilarious.

Our simple game involved guessing how many bookworms (to go with the Book Theme) were in a jar. Curly T, below, actually tied as one of the winners. She won the bookworms. The other winner got a Target gift card. (PS-Hobie did not grow by 20 billion times. That is my friend's dog Barkley, Hobie's Wise Old Man friend)

The second game was Baby Shower Bingo that we played while Beezus5 was opening her presents. Each person filled out a Bingo card with baby related items that we thought B5 would get. When she opened one of the items, we got to mark them off our card until someone got Bingo. It was fun/hard to come up with 25 baby items if you are not used to babies. My mom had no idea of the plethora of breast feeding supplies that are out there today.

The hilarious part came courtesy of the free space on the card. We decided that although this was a girls only event, the Dad should be present in some way. So Mr. Curly J did some photo shopping (or something) to create a baby version of the Dad to be, E.

I died laughing when J first emailed me the 'free space' pictures. Fortunately, I don't think E reads my blog and therefore won't see that I posted this pic on the interweb.

Luckily, I think most people found this funny and not totally disturbing.

Good job on games, Brayer!

What do you guys think?

Wordless Wednesday-Fall Themed Mantel Decor

2011-11-23T07:39:00.003-05:00

As part of my 31 for 31 goal, I have decided to decorate my mantel for each season. Here is my weak attempt at Fall. Considering I will probalby decorate for Christmas next week, I didn't go all out on this one.

Amazing, right?

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Baby Shower Craft Hour-Alphabet Book

2011-11-21T07:29:00.000-05:00

This weekend, my friends and I had a baby shower for Beezus5 who is having a baby in January-ish. I think that the most important thing about party planning is trying to make it personalized to the individual. Beezus5 likes reading so we had a book themed baby shower (with some owls and Harry Potter and Fall stuff thrown in there too).

I kind of like making stuff, so I thought it would be fun to force people to make a craft at the baby shower. We made an alphabet book for B5 and her baby that also doubled as a guest book so one day mini B5 will know who came to her mom's baby shower.

I bought a photo album and made a page for each letter of the alphabet (by adding alphabet sticker). Then we had each person draw or color a page and sign the back. I was concerned that some people would not want to draw (or think they were not good enough at drawing) so I found some alphabet pictures at the Dollar Tree that people could just color if they did not want to draw.

Shanzie and my mom were so excited to be getting their craft on...

This ended up working much better than I thought it would. I have come to realize recently that not everyone loves crafting or making stuff as much as me, but everyone at the shower willingly participated in this craft. Some of the drawings were realllllly awesome (not my drawing of a jar of jam per se)...

Have you ever been to a baby shower where you had to make a craft?

Don't you wish you had your own ABC book?

Wordless Friday...

2011-11-18T08:11:00.000-05:00

My craft room/spare bedroom looks like this now.....

My dining room table looks worse.
But next week you will get tons of exciting baby shower posts!

31 for 31-A New List for a New Year

2011-11-15T08:35:00.002-05:00

Well I turned 31 last week so here is my new list of goals/things to do for age 31...

JM's 31 for 31 List....
Let's start with things from last year that I didn't quite get done but still want to do....

1-Make a classic/fancy meal from scratch like Beef Bourgogne (and learn how to spell that word)
2-Teach Hobie how to catch something that I throw at him (not just hit him in the face and fall off). I believe in him!
3-Make a pie from scratch
4-Paint the wood panelling in the basement
5-Watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
6-And instead of a full 48 hours off of the Internet, how about I only check my email one time in a 24 hour period? (sad but true, I'm addicted to the Internet)

And some new stuff...

7-Figure out a really good birthday present for B
8-Reach 100 sales on Etsy (I am at 99 so hopefully this will happen)
9-Learn how to babysit a newborn on my own without adult supervision and without causing harm to myself or the newborn. Also make the newborn love me and want to be just like me when she grows up.
10-~~Convince Beezus5 to name her baby after me. Teach Beezus5's baby how to catch something in her mouth that I throw at her.~~ ~~Teach Beezus5's baby my name as her first word.~~ Be a good role model for Beezus5's baby.
11-Sew a skirt out of t-shirts or make something awesome out of t-shirt from my book about making things out of t-shirts
12-Keep track of my expenses/income/sales/profits on Etsy
13-Plan a trip to California or Maine
14-Get my fitness back on by....doing some light weightlifting 3 times a week for at least a month
15-Get my fitness back on part deux by....running/jogging on the treadmill or outside at least 3 times a week for at least a month
16-Make a really awesome (perhaps Pinterest inspired) piece of wall art for the den
17-Become an expert at baby shower planning
18-Organize my craft room and keep it clean
19-Turn an old piece of furniture into a new piece of furniture
20-Read 12 books
21-Run/Jog 2 5k's
22-Have another Movie Night (somewhere)
23-Try harder with makeup and hair
24-Make ice cream
25-Make cd's I've been meaning to make
26-Make a jewelry organizer
27-Watch Casablanca
28-Re-read To Kill a Mockingbird
29-Decorate the mantle for each season/holiday
30-Make a nice surprise for someone out of the blue
31-Be awesome/nice as much as possible on most, if not all days

Well I have already achieved #8 since I started writing this list, so I might have to change that one. But yay, go me!

I think last year's list encouraged me to do some things I wouldn't have normally done (ie:buying a groupon for a ski day trip, watching Shrek, making people birthday presents, etc) so we will see what happens this year.

Any changes I should make?

My Italian Food Birthday....

2011-11-10T07:26:00.001-05:00

My birthday got of to a good start. On my birthday I found it acceptable to have dessert for breakfast. So B and I headed to a local bakery, Ollie's, and I selected this raspberry tart as my breakfast. We also picked up 2 giant loaves of Italian Country bread....

because later that evening some of my friends (and parent friends) came over for an Italian feast. Here's our appetizer meat and cheese platter (including some fig chutney we got in Italy).

I made bruschetta that was similar to how we had it in Italy...
Bruschetta with Capers Recipe
-1 pint cherry tomatoes (quartered)
-1 to 2 garlic cloves minced
-2-3 tablespoons of capers
-some good quality olive oil (probably just a couple tablespoons)
Mix together and serve with toasted bread.

My mom got me some Italian spices to mix with oil and dip bread in. It was awesome. We had four types of spices and used our olive oil from Italy. This was a big hit.

The pregnant girl made a fig and ricotta tart.

And my husband made some tiramisu. (He also bought a backup tiramisu in case his failed. They were all awesome.)

There was also a lasagna in there somewhere.
Obligatory girl photo.

Obligatory girl photo where I awkwardly touch baby.

It was an excellent birthday party!

30 for 30 update-Part 2

2011-11-08T07:48:00.001-05:00

Here is the conclusion of my 30 for 30 list. I managed to turn 31 over the weekend so I will have to make an updated list soon.

16-Get my car detailed (or pro-cleaned on the inside, whatever that is called)-Well my car managed to get detailed but it was because B had to borrow my car one day and was sneezing due to the dust build up. So he got it cleaned for me. For my safety. I have done a really good job of keeping it clean since then though!
17-Watch Shrek-Check. A lovely film. Now I understand that Shrek ride I went on at Universal Studios.
18-~~Do something annoying that I've been procrastinating (like I usually do)~~ I realized this one would be hard to do or at least describe so I'm changing it to....Make my friends homemade birthday presents.-Now I don't know if my friends liked this but I did manage to make mostly all homemade presents this year for my girl friends. They got a random assortment of earrings, scarves and even coasters. Shanzie got a hand sewn camera case because her birthday was in February and that was before I knew just how hard sewing was.
19-Paint the wood panelling in the basement-We still want to do this, maybe over Christmas break.
20-~~Dye my hair dark brown~~. I am changing this one to...Do something daring with my hair.-I cut a billion inches of my hair off so I think this definitely counts. I'm back to ponytail length though but I like the new shortness of my hair and will probably get it cut again in a few months.
21-Attempt a fashion trend that I have been previously scared of (we're talking skinny jeans here or boots or tights with skirts) or just try to become more fashionable in general-Well I now have 2 pairs of skinny jeans and 2 pairs of boots. Plus I wore a semi short (for me) dress in Las Vegas. Does this count?
22-Get my passport renewed-Check. I'm pretty sure those Italian people wouldn't have let me in their country if I hadn't done this. Also the photo is from the day after I got my hair cut. So I'll be able to have a reminder of my insanely short hair for the next 10 years
23-Watch Anchorman-Check, good stuff. Although I realized I had already actually watched most of it.
24-Redecorate my office/craft room/spare bedroom.-Yes. We painted it and pulled up the carpet. I added in my grandmother's old writing desk and made a photo collage for the wall. It is currently slightly disorganized and cluttered but I will fix that soon.
25-Take a full day off from doing any chores/crafts/exercise/work/baking/cooking etc. And just chillax.-Hmm. I think one day when I was sick I watched like 3 Red Box movies in my bed. Does that count?
26-Take a full 48 hours off from any Internet.-I'm addicted to the Internet. Especially now that I have an iPad. I would still one day like to attempt this but I might have to be on an un wi-fi island somewhere for it to happen.
27-Watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia-I think I watched 3 more episodes. I like this show, I just always figure out something I want to watch more. So this is still a goal.
28-Read more books (I need suggestions)-I did ok at this. I read the Hunger Games Trilogy, the Tina Fey book and several other random things. I like reading. I just have to be in the mood for it. I'm currently reading Mindy Kaling's new book. Awesome.
29-Buy/Make birthday cards for B's family members and remember to send them.- I think I was mostly successful at this. Some of the cards were a little late though. I will try harder.
30-Be awesome everyday-OK, I won't lie, I think there were a couple minutes (hours?, days?) in there where I wasn't awesome but for the most part I was extremely awesome.

So how did I do?

I've Got a Lot To Do in the Next 2 Days aka an Update On My 30 for 30 List-Part 1

2011-11-03T08:23:00.004-04:00

Last year around this time I decided to make a list of things I wanted to do while I was 30. Well my 31st birthday is on Saturday so let's see how I've been doing.....

Here is the first half of the list with my comments.....

1-Take a sewing class-check! I took a class last year where we learned to sew a skirt....for more on that see below. In the class, I learned that sewing is really hard. I haven't done it in awhile but I have a few projects I want to try.

2-Make a classic/fancy meal from scratch like Beef Bourgogne (and learn how to spell that word)-Well I did not make the Beef B yet. I still want to. And I have made a lot of meals this year so I'll give myself half credit on this.

3-Plan a trip to Europe or California or both-Italy is in Europe right? Check. I went to Italy and it was awesome and I ate a lot. California is still on my future travel plan list.

4-Teach Hobie how to catch something that I throw at him (not just hit him in the face and fall off)-I have yet to accomplish this but I really blame Hobie for this. I have tried with many different object.....socks, goldfish, squeaky toys, tennis balls, rope bones. He gives me nothing. He either ducks or lets it hit him in the face and then picks it up. I even attempted to get him to leap off the couch and catch something mid-air. It was a no-go. He's still cute though.

5-Sew an apron-I sewed myself a nice Christmas apron and I look forward to pulling it out again in a few weeks. Again I would like to apologize to anyone who I may have yelled at during the process. It was only like the hardest thing ever.

6-Run/Jog a 5K without stopping-Check. And I'm very proud of this one as I'm not much of a runner but always hoped to be. I did 4 5ks this year. Two of them I ran the whole time. The Komen Race for the Cure was impossible to run due to the thousands of people surrounding me for the first mile but I finished up the last two miles at a slow and steady jog and I think they raised a lot of money so win win. The last 5k I did a few weeks ago ended with a GIANT hill so that put a cramp in my body and my plan to run the whole time. Although I think that one ended up being my best time even with the small amount of walking I did.

7-Go on the One Tree Hill Set tour in Wilmington. (why? because I'm obsessed with TV and my parents have a beach house that's an hour away from Wilmington)-My mom and I thoroughly enjoyed this tour although it was a shock to learn that none of the food in Brooke's refrigerator is real!

8-Host another dinner party that is eaten at the dining room table-Check, check, and check. My birthday party last year was a big dinner party and we had several more throughout the year.

9-Sew an article of clothing-I technically sewed myself a skirt in my sewing class although I don't know how to measure myself and made it way to big. So maybe my new goal will be to sew an article of clothing that I actually wear.

10-Make up something awesome to sell on Etsy-So as it turns out, some people actually like my customized wine charms on Etsy, especially Brides. I had over 60 orders this year, including multiple orders of over 100 charms. Yeah, go me. Wedding season got a little rough but I managed and I was able to pay for our food tour in Italy as well as some hot new boots for myself with some of my earnings.

11-Make the photo shelf wall in the guest bedroom-Well there is now a shelf in the guest bedroom but I wouldn't really call it a photo shelf wall. In other news I made a cool Young House Love inspired wall photo collage in my craft room. And I plan to make more soon.

12-Make a lasagna from scratch (not from scratch pasta noodles but besides that)-Well I ate a lasagna this year. Does that count?

13-Go skiing (where I actually have to get on a ski lift to get to where I will ski down from)-My body only hurt for three solid days after my first ski adventure. I also didn't fall out of the ski lift as I had feared. Next time I'm going to attempt to learn how to stop without hurling myself into the snow.

14-Make a pie from scratch-Beezus5 made us a skillet apple pie last Friday. Does that count? Maybe over the holidays this year, I will attempt a pie.

15-Learn how to work the downstairs DVR-Why would I need to learn how to use this when I watch all my TV upstairs except for things I watch with my husband? And when I watch with my husband, he is there and knows how to work the DVR. It would just be a waste of my brain space to learn this. Plus upstairs TIVO and I are bff and I don't want him to be jealous of downstairs DVR.

Not too shabby. I will be back tomorrow with more details on the rest of the list unless I'm too busy trying to make beef bourgogne or a pie from scratch while also sewing myself a dress to go with my new boots and tossing things at Hobie's face*.

PS-If you go ahead and send me my birthday present today, there is still a chance it will get here by Saturday.

*PPS-No dogs were harmed while trying to teach Hobie to catch stuff.

Wordless Wednesday-Halloween Baking

2011-11-02T09:33:00.000-04:00

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bars from What's Gaby Cooking...

Cast Iron Skillet Apple pie by Beezus5...

Both were delightful.

Did you do any Halloween baking?

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T07:55:00.001-04:00

Happy Halloween from Hobie and his new brother-friend, Pumpkin Brandon!

Did you carve a pumpkin (and/or watch your husband carve one)?

Do you have any big Halloween plans?

Evolution of a Baby Shower Invite

2011-10-27T07:52:00.001-04:00

When my friend, Beezus5, told me she was pregnant, I was obviously excited for her to have a baby and start a family and stuff but I was pretty much equally as excited about planning a baby shower. I knew from the start that I wanted to make the invitations. Somehow. I'm not a pro, nor do I have any special software. Also, I've never actually made invitations before. But after some trial and error I was able to make something that I deemed acceptable and something I think she liked. I used colored pencils, paper, a scanner, a computer, Microsoft Paint, Picasa, a printer and my trusty paper cutter.

B5 likes the following things....orange, green, books, owls and Harry Potter, so I tried to incorporate those into the invite (which also goes with the theme of the shower which we can discuss later). She also likes Christian Bale, Pearl Jam and Liver Pudding but I didn't really know how to work those in.

I started by trying to 'draw' something in Microsoft Paint. I didn't really like those that much.

Then I made a sketch and scanned it onto my computer. This seemed like something I could work with. The sketches started out very rough and evolved over time.

Finally I used colored pencils to draw this.

Then I scanned it on to my computer and saved it in the highest resolution I could. I opened it up in Picasa and added text with all the shower info. I printed it out (using the high quality photo setting) onto card stock from Michaels and trimmed them up with my paper cutter.

And here's the final product (ok I altered the text a bit).

And here's a picture of it on my fridge so I remember to go and stuff.

What do you think?

Should I have used pastel colors to be more babyshowerriffic?

Have you ever made your own invitations?

Would you read 'Hedwig Flies Again' if it were a real book?

Six and a Half Girls and a Minivan

2011-10-25T08:26:00.001-04:00

This weekend five and a half ladies* and I went on a girl trip to Asheville. My favorite things included....

The friendships shared in the mini van we borrowed from Curly T's parents...

This sizzling molcajete I got from Salsa's restaurant... It was HUGE and had beef, chicken, and shrimp in it.

And this beautiful red tree we saw at the NC Arboretum on our morning nature hike....

My other favorite thing was the dessert we got from the French Broad Chocolate Lounge but I don't have any pictures. The truffles and brownies were definitely worth the long line.

*The half lady is the baby in my friend's belly.

Have you ever been to Asheville?

I went to Italy and I ate A LOT.

2011-10-19T07:35:00.002-04:00

Are you hungry right now? No? Well you are about to be.

My first snack and wine in Italy!

Clearly, one of the most important things about my trip to Italy was the food. What souvenirs did I bring back? Pretty much all food/wine related items (ok, I also bought one shirt).

Before our trip, I was probably most excited about the Taste Florence food tour I had signed us up for. It lived up to the hype.

We started with a couple bakeries where we sampled artichoke bread and then a puffy pastry thing with cream in it. Awesome.

Then we headed to the market where we had some beef roast with tomatillo and a spicy red sauce. Also Awesome.

Then we had an olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting. It was amazing how different each little spoon of balsamic vinegar tasted. I did not spend the 80 euro per tiny bottle on 30 year aged balsamic though.

Then we had cheeses with jams and chutneys. I now know how to host my next cheese party.

To end our market tasting we had some crostini with artichokes and one with a mashed up olive. Olives are pretty much the only food I don't like, but hey, I was in Italy so I had to go for it. Not the worst thing ever. The sun dried tomato I had was much more amazing though. I don't have any pictures because I was so worried about eating the olive. I really had to focus.

Then we headed off to the gelataria. OMG. This was amazing. We got to try 8 flavors.......
Lavender and mixed berry and the Lavender was actually awesome.
Chocolate Chip and Pistachio and the Pistachio was actually amazing to my surprise.
Lemon and a Creme Vanilla flavor.
And my favorite mix of all... Chocolate Rum and Banana with a fresh Strawberry Cream Mousse on the side. The best banana-split-ish combo I have ever had. And I never would have ordered Banana on my own. I'm so glad we had the guide to make our choices for us. Three days later when we went back to Perche No, I ordered that same combo.

Our last stop was a wine bar that was open in the afternoon just for us. We sampled a Prosecco and a couple of reds and had some awesome bruschetta and sliced meat. Oddly I was pretty much the only one who was not too full to keep eating the bruschetta. I'm special like that.

Best Food tour ever.

At the B and B where we stayed in Tuscany, they provided a four course meal each night. In the morning they would post the menu and you were supposed to tell them if you had any problems or concerns. I assumed they knew what they were doing so I went with it.

Ham and Cheese stuffed fried dough balls, eggplant pasta,
sausage and bean stew, and tiramisu!

Awesome food that I normally wouldn't have ordered but am very glad I got to try. And yeah, I took pictures at dinner (we were the only couple one night and the other night it was just us and a couple from Germany-I think).

Fried polenta with mushrooms, fresh pasta with tomato sauce and pecorino (best pasta I had!),
roasted chicken, rabbit, pork and potatoes, and Grammy's Pie!

I was so full after I ate these 4 course meals at the B and B that I was having trouble moving. Worth it though.
Oh and here is a bonus picture of my favorite Gelato I had in Rome.
It was a last minute decision on a whim and it paid off. I'm serious guys.
FIG Gelato (wich a side of caramel). Good stuff.

Things I ate that I could not photograph that were awesome....
Pasta stuffed with Truffles and Pears
Pizza, 4 ways-each fourth had different topping. The part with Bacon was amazing. We also had part with pumpkin leaves (good actually), Marghereta, and Gorgonzola.

B and I walked about 20 billion miles total so hopefully I didn't gain too much weight. I'm eating a lot of salads this week just in case.

Do you tend to over-eat on vacation?

Ciao! My trip to Italy with my two tiny bags....

2011-10-18T07:29:00.001-04:00

I just got back from an amazing vacation to Italy!!! I could write about 700 posts about my trip but I will try to limit it. So as a starting point I will just show you some photos. My friends had serious doubts that I could make it 8 days with just my tiny purple carry-on roller bag and my trusty REI book bag as my only luggage. So my main goal during the trip was to prove that I could do that and still manage to change clothes each day......

My bags, my travel purse was inside my book bag!

I will spare you the pics of my travel outfit which consisted of some stretchy gap fashion workout pants and a tank top and jacket (9 hour overnight flight requires comfort).

The day we arrived we did some sightseeing. Here I am in a lovely pink shirt and target sunglasses at the Trevi Fountain.

The next day, was Vatican/Sistine Chapel Day! As you can see, I have changed outfits.

Tuesday we left Rome to go to Florence and make my dreams come true by going on a food tour. This tour obviously deserves it's own post but as you can see I did change clothes again.

The following day we were at an amazing B and B in the mountains of Tuscany near a place called Pontassieve. This is my fitness outfit for my intense 1 mile-ish bike ride to a nearby town. I also fancied it up with a dress for dinner that night....

Thursday was a big day. I had a wine tour outfit, another fitness outfit and then a dinner outfit. Wow.

Friday we headed back to Tuscany to tour the Uffizi and do some more sightseeing and then headed back to Rome....

OK, I might be wearing the same outfit I wore to dinner the night
before but it was a great outfit for sampling balsamic vinegars.

Saturday we walked 12 million miles and saw the outside of the Coliseum. We weren't allowed in for safety reasons due to the Occupy Protests but it was still really cool to see. I then fancied it up a little for our last dinner out in Rome.

You probably can't tell but I'm wearing my super
awesome Harry Potter t-shirt on my visit to the Coliseum.
The height of fashion.

The sunglasses are to make me look more Italian.

Sunday I gave up on fashion all together and wore this for our 11 our flight home which also featured 4 security lines at the Rome airport, 1 really long Customs line in Charlotte and a 1.5 hour drive from Charlotte back to Greensboro. Good times.

Ok, so maybe I'm not the most fashionable person ever but I did manage to change clothes at least once a day (usually more) and not run out of shampoo or lotion. I even had one extra pair of clean socks left over. I might have brought one more pair of jeans if I had to do it again. The two I brought covered a lot of mileage over 8 days. Don't worry the rest of my pictures aren't of me but are mostly of B in front of old famous stuff or food. You will love them.

Have you ever been to Italy?
Do you pack heavy or light?

Happy Birthday Mom/Breast Cancer Awareness Month

2011-10-04T08:08:00.000-04:00

Today is my mom's birthday so Happy Birthday Mom! I hope to enjoy a delicious meal with you tonight!

Mom-Here is your pre-birthday present. I finally started watching that show, Raising Hope, you've been telling me to watch for over a year. The first season is on Netflix streaming so I can watch it on my iPad. I'm on episode 4. Holla.
In honor of my mom and Breast Cancer Awareness month I'm going to go ahead and get serious with you for a minute. This weekend Shanzie and I ran in the Women's Only 5K in Greensboro. This race raises money for women without insurance to get mammograms. Fortunately, my mom can afford to get yearly mammograms and she does which led to her early detection of breast cancer earlier in the year. (She's now done with treatments and hard core growing her hair back slowly but surely!) However, a lot of women cannot afford to get a yearly mammogram or don't for various reasons. The race we ran (/walked) helps to provide funds for mammograms and also helps provide information on Breast Cancer. Knowledge is power so I encourage you to check out the info on these websites and to check yourself and/or get your mammogram if you're old enough.

Women's Only 5K Run in Greensboro
Susan G. Komen for the Cure

Ok that was semi serious so I'll leave you with some exciting race photos.

Boys were banned from participating in the race so Hobie and B just had to watch us and cheer us on from the sidelines (which was very nice of them). They (along with Curly T) took us out for a celebratory brunch after we finished.

Leave the Pumpkin Juice to the Experts....

2011-10-03T08:10:00.001-04:00

Almost exactly one year ago, B and I headed down to Florida to visit our dear friends, Harry, Ron and Hermione at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios. Most of our time in Harry Potter land was spent drinking one of their delicious beverages.

One day recently, I saw a recipe for Pumpkin Juice online. I thought this would be a great non-alcoholic beverage for my pregnant friend whose baby shower we are throwing in November. Also the Pumpkin Juice at Harry Potter Land was delicious and very refreshing and I just really wanted some.

The recipe has an apple cider base that you infuse with ginger and cinnamon. Then you add honey and brown sugar to it. The ginger/cinnamon infused cider was good. After I chilled the juice mixture, I added in the canned pumpkin puree. Unfortunately I feel as though the pumpkin ruined this drink. The texture was not delightful. I even strained the juice and pumpkin together to try to get it to blend and be smooth but the pumpkin puree was just not tasty in the drink in my opinion.

So in conclusion, I prefer my apple cider without canned pumpkin in it. Also good news for J and A, who I will now NOT have to convince to serve Pumpkin juice at the baby shower.

Have you been to HP land?

Do you like pumpkin juice?

Half-Full Friday-9/30/11

2011-09-30T07:56:00.002-04:00

-It's Friday, my half day. And it's actually a super half day today because I'm leaving at 9:30 to do a volunteer thing.
-Volunteering makes me feel good about myself.
-I'm actually enjoying The Office without Steve C. The Nard Dog is stepping up to the plate.
-So far I like new Fall TV. Revenge, The New Girl and Ringer are all definite maybes for my new favorite shows. Happy Endings was also really funny this week. Plus my old faves like How I Met Your Mother, P-Rec and The Office are enjoyable so far. Plus I'm caught up on the Good Wife and now watching it in real time. Good Stuff.
-I like Fall.
-It's almost October and I might be going on an awesome vacation in October.
-B taught Hobie how to leap into his arms. It's pretty awesome.
-I have tons of paint sample cards now to finally attempt some Pinterest Paint Chip Art.
-Shanzie and I are getting our fitness on tomorrow morning at a 5k for a good cause so that means I will at least walk 3.1 miles tomorrow (hopefully jogging most of it).
-B promised us brunch afterwards.
-And once again, it's Friday, my half day at work.

What's making your Friday half-full?

Faux Baklava aka Honey Pie

2011-09-27T07:50:00.000-04:00

I went to a local Greek Festival a few weeks ago and since then I've had baklava on my mind. Then my latest issues of Taste Of Home came in the mail with a picture of what appeared to be a baklava pie on the cover. I knew I had to make this. It was actually a Greek Honey Pie but it seems pretty baklava-ish to me and I'm assuming much easier.

So I made it. I halved the recipe though so it was a mini Greek Honey Pie...

Mini Greek Honey Pie (based on Taste of Home's Recipe)-Makes 4 servings

1.5 cups of walnut pieces
1/8 cup brown sugar
a couple sprinkles of cinnamon
1/2 package of phyllo dough (from freezer section) thawed
3/4 of a stick of butter (I cut this down some from the original recipe)

Syrup-
a little more than 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

I used a mini deep dish pizza pan to make this. You need something that's about half the size of a regular pie pan (like a small casserole dish).

-mix walnuts, brown sugar and cinnamon and set aside
-brush pan with some melted butter
-layer 8 1/2 sheets (I cut the sheets in half since I was using a smaller dish) of phyllo dough (slightly larger than the pan so it hangs over the sides) and brush each one with butter
-then add 1/3 of the nut mixture
-then four more sheets of butter/phyllo dough
-then 1/3 of nuts
-4 sheets butter/phyllo
-the rest of the nuts
-8 sheets butter/phyllo
-then fold the hanging edges of phyllo into the center of the pan and put one last layer of butter
-cook at 350 for about 35-40 minutes
-to make syrup, mix the remaining ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat until it boils, then let it simmer for 10 minutes
-pour the syrup over the warm pie and serve

This was delightful, although probably not the healthiest thing ever.

Do you have a Greek Festival in your city?
What's your favorite Greek food item?

TV Talk-New Shows and HIMYM Theories

2011-09-23T08:04:00.000-04:00

If you hate TV, I apologize in advance for this post....If you love TV, especially new Fall TV and How I Met Your Mother, then this post is for you.

Two Broke Girls-I cringed through many of the jokes on this show but by the end I felt slightly invested in what would happen to the two broke girls.

Ringer-This was somewhat cheesy and predictable but also intriguing and soap opera-ish in that special CW way. I have successfully predicted the end of both episodes so far, though.

The New Girl-This show had me after the first 2 minutes. I love Zooey. I love how she sings to herself, as that is also one of my favorite past times. And it has no laugh track, which in my mind is always a plus. This is by far my favorite new show I've seen. B hard laughed at this show a few times which is good for quality family TV time. Hobie was ambivalent.

Revenge-I really liked this. As far as nighttime soapy style shows go, I found this intriguing. And I liked it better than Ringer.

Up All Night-I saw half of the first episode (technological problems) and all of the second. I like Maya Rudolph and found her interaction with the baby relatable. As in she doesn't know what to do with/how to hold babies. Plus she purchased the baby a baby wallet b/c that is totally a thing. I'm on it. I think this show has potential and I like all the actors (even Nick Cannon-aka Mr. Mariah Carey).

Whitney-Ok I only watched half of this. The laugh track was annoying me and then I got invested in something I was doing on the internet. I will probably give it another try at some point.

Ok now its HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER THEORY TIME.
For more theories, check out Amanda's Post on It's Blogworthy!

THEORY ALERT aka NOT SPOILER ALERT unless you aren't up to date on HIMYM.
Personally I think THE BRIDE from Barney's wedding will end up being Robin. Why? Because even though they sucked together before, I still want them to get together. It all goes back to that episode in season 1 where they played laser tag together and drank scotch. There is something there between them. I also think we have NOT met THE MOTHER yet but now I think I know who she is......
Remember this 2 second scene where it flashed to future Marshall getting drunk again at a casino even after his sweeping declaration?
Here is a high tech photo I took of my TV screen.

I'm 87% confident (or maybe 13%) that the mother will be named Steph. See Marshall's shirt? I assume they are having something of a "Joey and Janice's Day of Fun" type sitch. If you didn't want Friends and don't watch HIMYM just ignore all this and have a great day. But if you do....calling it now...some chick named "Steph" is THE MOTHER. Theory alert over.

Whoa whoa whoa!! This just in. Here is an article regarding some casting news and something related to the Halloween episode from back in season 1. It's slightly spoilery so if you aren't into that don't click. My thoughts....I'm down for this especially if Dawson shows up again.

PS-Also Parks and Recreation was awesome and The Office was pretty good post Steve Carell. I'm down with new managerial choice and Pam was really cute.

What new shows are you watching?
Do you have any HIMYM theories?
How do you feel about the new boss on The Office?

Half-Full Friday-9/16/11

2011-09-16T08:23:00.001-04:00

I've been taking a non-paid blog vacation.
I've actually been working on some crafts but they are for a party I'm throwing for someone later so I can't share them yet.

Half Full Sitches-
I was insanely tired on Wednesday but that was because I stayed up past midnight watching the new SMG (Sarah Michelle Gellar, duh) show, Ringer. This is positive because....1-New TV is starting up again. 2-SMG is back on TV (your guys watched Buffy, right????). I was a little iffy on the pilot (and also the giant SMG art in the apartment) but I'm pretty sure I will eventually love it and get to discuss it with Shanzie every week.

I had to drive/walk all over main campus (my building is off campus) on Wednesday (my super sleepy day) to get payroll submitted for a new student employee. But.....1-I did get it, so her payments won't be delayed (although she will never know about all my hard behind the scenes work and that she almost didn't get paid) and 2-once I came back from campus the whole morning was gone and it was time for my lunch break (time passing fast at work=Win). So, win, win.

I bought some airplane pants (aka slightly fashionable sweatpants that can be worn on an overnight plane flight).

One of my friends had a new niece born this week while another friend has a new nephew 2 days later. They will probably get married in 28 years.

I learned how to make a really easy frozen key lime pie.

I'm addicted to Zappos.

It's semi cold today (50s). I heart Fall!

Half Day Friday!!

What's making your Friday, half full?
Did you watch Ringer?

TV Talk Tuesday-One Tree Hill Set Tour

2011-09-06T08:05:00.000-04:00

My mom and I hung out with these people this weekend.

OK well I didn't actually see any of those people but I did go on the One Tree Hill set tour in Wilmington, NC where One Tree Hill (and previously Dawson's Creek) is filmed (at Screen Gems Studios). I even conned my mom into going with me so I didn't have to go alone.

They threatened to escort us off the property if we took pictures so I don't have any pictures of the sets but it was pretty interesting. I saw Nathan and Haley's house, Brooke's Beach house and Red Bedroom Records.

Fun Facts...

1-The brick isn't real. Although Red Bedroom Records looks like it has brick walls, when you touch the walls you realize they are hollow. It's wood or plastic that has been painted. Same for the granite counter top in Haley's kitchen. It's actually just painted wood. I think the set designers do a really good job of making it look real on tv.

2-Lots of other stuff is fake. The sinks don't have running water. If they need water or electricity for any of the kitchen items, they have to run in a hose or bring in an extension cord.

3-There's no real food in the fridge. They showed us Brooke's fridge which has no power. Most of the stuff is just empty boxes or Tupperware that has been painted to make it look like there is food in it. Sometimes they move things around to make it look like people have actually been eating food from the fridge.

4-The pool from Nathan and Haley's house is inside. It's a real pool but they actually have it on a set beside the house. They definitely had me convinced that the pool was outside on the show.

5-The stairs lead to nowhere. All the sets are on one story so if you see someone go up stairs, they are not really going anywhere. It just ends. They put tops of trees outside of windows to make it look like they are on a higher level.

6-They have a side parking lot with cars used in the show. A few years back when I drove by I saw Peyton's old car. I guess they don't need that anymore. But I'm pretty sure these are the cars from the hit and run last year. Yeah, look familiar?

Ok, so those might only be fun facts if you've actually seen the show. Overall things were a lot less fancy and high tech than I would expect them to be on a TV set. They do a good job of making fake things look real on the show. So now I have fulfilled my lifelong dream of touring a tv set so I can move on. (But if anyone wants to get me on the set of PRec or The Office, I will still accept the invite.)

parking lot outside the studio

Have you ever been on the One Tree Hill set tour or on any other TV show set?
Are you going to watch the final season of One Tree Hill this year?

Half Full Friday-9/2/11

2011-09-02T07:56:00.001-04:00

-Fridays=Half Days at work, this is pretty much always going to be a plus
-Three Day weekend, Holla.
-I'm on kitchen cleaning duty at work for the next 2 months. Still trying to figure out a glass half full approach to this.
-I've decided to become more organized at work. Starting with taking my random stacks of ripped up notes and copying them on to unripped sheets of paper and putting them in a binder.

-The other night I made a batch of cookies. They sucked and stuck to the foil they were on (glass half empty). My always half-full husband was very willing to eat the failed cookies (a mushy dough type thing) directly off the foil. Thanks for helping me not waste stuff, B. I decided not to just accept defeat and cry on the floor while trying to figure out something else to make. Instead I just went ahead and started over and made a second batch (and cooked them longer which was the original problem). At my boss's retirement party yesterday, they were the first dessert to completely disappear (glass half full). Woot!
-Hobie and B looked so cute sleeping in bed the other night when I was still up doing some crafting that I decided to write a cool new song about them called 'Hobie and B, best friends forever'. They loved* it when I sang it to them as they were trying to fall asleep. It's a catchy tune all about 2 boy best friends who sort of like the girl that lives with them but mostly just like hanging out with each other.

-I got a close spot at work one day this week. The rest of the week was still about about my morning fitness walk.
-I may or may not attempt to visit the semi-local set of a famous CW tv show this weekend. You will just have to wait until next week to see if it happens.

What is making your Friday half full?

*and/or where semi annoyed at me

Wine and Cheese....

2011-08-29T08:15:00.001-04:00

are really awesome....
and we had a lot of both at our wine and cheese party the other night.

Veggies and dips (my mom made me the dips cause she's cool like that)....

The artistic fruit platter (the berries are "wine" and the pineapple and melon are "cheese", get it?)...

Cheese (and nuts, honey, mustard, jelly, etc)...

Meat and Cheese....

Wine (well wine charms)...

In conclusion, I recommend that you all have a wine (or beer, or Shirley Temple) and cheese party. Have your friends bring over some cheese and wine of their choosing and then get someone to make something chocolate (like the awesome chocolate fondue we had which I don't have a picture of). Then add in fruit, veggies, bread, crackers, etc. Good stuff. In all we had about 6 types of cheese, a goat cheese ball with basil oil, goat cheese corn cakes, a fruit platter, veggie platter, fondue with strawberries and pound cake, cheese straws, salami, and a ton of crackers and bread. Luckily we had those veggies and fruit to balance out all the other stuff. But as always, the best part was the friendships (which I forgot to capture with my camera).

Have you ever hosted a wine and cheese party?

Half Full Friday

2011-08-26T07:40:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I'm a little bit "glass half empty" as in I tend to see the negatives before the positives in situations so I've decided to be a little more positive instead, at least on Fridays......

Glass Half Full List for 8/26/11....

-Since college is back in session, the parking lot is about 20 times more crowded at work so I get to park near the back of the parking lot and get my early morning fitness on at 7 AM every morning now by walking half a mile to my building. Yay, go fitness.
-It's friday, my half day. I get to leave work at 11.
-Wine and cheese party tonight! (Good thing I've got my added early morning fitness going on.)
-Cheese also just happens to be on sale at Harris Teeter this week!
-Out of the goodness or her heart, my mom offered to make me some dip for the Wine/Cheese event, which I will be picking up after work today.
-I have a callous on my finger but it's because I am almost finished with my biggest Etsy order to date.
-As of this week, I'm officially an earthquake survivor. It was actually probably the most confused I've ever been while sitting on the couch in my house. My first thought was that a murderer was in my garage opening the garage door causing the house to shake. I called my husband to tell him about the shaking and he convinced me it was just the AC turning on which I believed for some reason. Then I turned on the news and realized what I'd just experienced. Fortunately it was just a minor earthquake.
-It's L-Fab's birthday tomorrow and I got her a pretty cool present.
-I have a new episode of the Good Wife (that I haven't seen) to watch this weekend.

Yeah, you like my new positive attitude?
What's making your glass half full today?

The "You Go Gurl" Party....

2011-08-22T07:54:00.001-04:00

My mom finished her chemo/radiation treatments for breast cancer a few weeks ago. My sister came home from college for a couple weeks for the summer and wanted to do something special for her. My mom is pretty much always onto me and my sister (especially) if we are trying to do something sneaky so we knew it would be hard to pull off a surprise. We also knew that she wouldn't like us to do something huge and make a big deal over her. So we decided to try something simple. We had a surprise luncheon at my house with my cousin and aunt. And she was actually surprised. She thought they were coming to pick me up so we could go shopping.

We decorated.....(well L-Fab decorated. I paid for the balloons.)

We got a cake...and yes I asked them to spell 'girl' with a 'u'.

The ladies...(and Hobie, the only boy allowed)...

Not really sure what this is about...

We also had lunch from a restaurant she likes. Then we went to see The Help (which was really good). Overall it was excellent and my sister did a fairly good job of organizing it. Yay L-Fab. Yay Mom. You Go Gurl! And/or 'Get It Gurl!' (which was the alternate slogan for the cake).

Handmade Birthday Presents Continued...Inspired by Pinterest

2011-08-17T08:26:00.001-04:00

I accomplished 2 goals this past weekend.

1-I finally finished Mo Yo's birthday present and

2-I made something inspired by Pinterest.

(ok well this was one thing but it accomplished 2 different goals. Multi-tasking)

(Oddly enough my Pinterest insipration came from something I repinned from Mo Yo's sister.)

When I was visiting Mo in Las Vegas last month, I was reminded of the lovely bar/pool table area in their home and I decided I wanted to make something for that. I found a coaster tutorial on Pinterest and went with that. It seemed easy enough.

How to Make Easy Coasters from Tiles and Scrapbook Paper.....
Needs-Tiles (from Home Depot or Lowes), Scrapbook paper, Modge Podge or other glue, paper cutter or scissors, clear spray paint.
1-Get your husband or man friend (well or yourself) to buy you some tiles (4.25 x 4.24 inch is a standard size) from Home Depot. I'm not sure what section, I just know they have them there and my husband has to go to Home Depot a lot for work. They are really cheap.
2-Buy some pretty scrapbooking paper from Michaels or another craft store. The 12x12 paper works well for this.
3-Use a paper cutter (you can get these for cheap at a craft store) or scissors or an exacto knife to cut out 4x4 inch squares from the paper. The 12x12 works well to make exactly 9 even 4x4 squares.
4-Then glue the paper square to a tile with Modge Podge. I only put Modge Podge on the backside but i think next time I might do a coat on top too. Let this dry.
5-Once this is dry, spray a coat or 2 of clear spray paint (follow instructions on can) onto each tile. This seals the tile and makes it water resistant.

I think these came out really well. Plus they are very cheap to make. I can just picture myself making millions of these for Christmas presents in December.

Yay, Pinterest success!

Do you use Pinterest to come up with craft ideas?
Are coasters an acceptable birthday present?

McRosen Wedding-Take 2

2011-08-15T07:58:00.000-04:00

Since Mo Young (and husband J) missed the McRosen wedding the first time around, we decided to recreate it for them when they were in NC this weekend.

The Officiants....

The Guests....

The Bridesmaids, Usher and Ring Bearer...

The Bride and Groom...

The Ceremony....

The Cake Cutting...

The Photographer (he gave up his position as Usher to photograph the wedding)...

This was at least 50% as good as their first wedding. At least.

The Best Food I Made This Weekend-Shrimp, Avocado and Tomato Salad with Quinoa

2011-08-11T07:31:00.000-04:00

I made several food items this weekend but my favorite was the Shrimp, Avocado, Tomato and Quinoa Salad that I made Sunday. I got the inspiration from this salad I found on Pinterest then I made some changes and additions.

I forgot to upload the photos I took so here is a photo of my inspiration
salad from here. Mine had quinoa though.

Shrimp, Avocado and Tomato Salad with Quinoa and Lime Vinaigrette
1/2 pound of shrimp (I like easy peel)
cumin
chili powder
garlic salt
olive oil-for cooking shrimp
1/2 cup quinoa
1 small lime
2 tablespoons olive oil (can vary depending on how you like your vinaigrette)
sugar
2 small avocado's (or 1 large), cut into small bite sized pieces
a cup of cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 small red onion, chopped

1-Peel shrimp and sprinkle with a little cumin, chili powder and garlic salt. Cook these in the olive oil and set aside to cool. Once cooled, cut the shrimp into smaller pieces.
2-Cook quinoa per directions and let cool
3-Make a vinaigrette by whisking together the juice of one lime, the olive oil, a couple sprinkles of cumin, chili powder and garlic salt. Add a small sprinkle of sugar. You can adjust this all to your own taste and preference. I mix it and taste it and add more as I go.
4-Add veggies to the vinaigrette and then add in the shrimp and quinoa once they've cooled some. Mix everything together and refrigerate before serving.

This is a very refreshing and healthy summer salad!

What's your favorite summer salad/dish?

TV Talk Tuesday-Summer Edition

2011-08-09T08:25:00.002-04:00

I have recently discovered that I hate channel surfing. I pretty much always watch a specific tv show whether it's live, dvr'd, a dvd or netflix streaming for the iPad. The only time I will just watch something that's on is maybe the Food Network on the weekend. I also pretty much refuse to watch any reality TV at this point. I know this will make some of you really sad but I just have too many billions of other scripted tv shows I want to watch. Although I do read people.com and many blogs that discuss reality TV so I'm a little bit in the know.

During the summer I like to catch up on TV shows that I never watched when they were on the air or didn't have time to watch. So this summer I've been watching a few different things.....

The Good Wife-Season 1-My friend, Shanzie has been suggesting this show to me for awhile and I fell in love with it after the 1st episode. I had to strongly stop myself from purchasing the 2nd season on iTunes as soon as a I finished the 1st season Netflix DVDs. I'm trying to hold out until it gets to Netflix. I'm definitely going to watch this show live this year. I love it.

Weeds-Season 6-or the one that aired on Showtime last summer-I am always a year behind on this show and I inevitably accidentally read spoilers online before I watch the season. But I still like this show a lot although Nancy seems to get in deeper and deeper every season. I miss the suburbs of seasons 1 and 2.

Party Down-Since Adam Scott has joined Parks and Recreation, I have become mildly obsessed with him. So I knew I'd have to watch Party Down, plus it's streaming on Netflix. It also stars and guest starts a bunch of people I like (Jane Lynch, Megan Mullally, Lizzy Caplan, Kristen Bell, Ken Jeong). I just finished the last episode this weekend and I loved it all. It's a very good show for only 20 episodes.

The West Wing-I heard this show was good. Plus Jim and Pam watched it together via phone when Pam was in art school. I'm only on season 2 of 7 so we will be watching this for a long time but so far both my husband and I are really liking it.

Psych-I just stumbled upon this when I was looking for a new show to watch on my iPad while running (aka slow jogging or walking) on the treadmill. Netflix recommended it to me (maybe because it has Dule Hill from the West Wing in it) so I went with it. It's a good treadmill watch as each episode is mildly funny and self contained. It's not the most amazing tv show I've ever seen, but it is entertaining. I don't even know what channel it comes on on real tv.

Cougar Town-Season 1-This show is actually really good. I started accidentally watching it in season 2 because it came on after Modern Family and now I'm hooked so I've gone back to watch season 1. Give it a shot.

Do you watch any of these shows?
Isn't The Good Wife awesome?
Do you heart Adam Scott?
Do you have any respect left for Nancy Botwin?
Did you know that Rob Lowe has been in a lot of tv shows?
Is Corteney Cox still Monica or is she starting to be Jules in your mind?
What am I missing by not channel surfing?

I feel like I'm missing out on some design shows and stuff on HGTV and probably some things on Bravo and such. Oh, well.

What do you watch in the summer?

Vegetarian Fare

2011-08-08T07:50:00.000-04:00

B has decided to cut out the red meat and chicken for a bit so this has given me the perfect opportunity to experiment with some vegetables. Plus people at work keep bringing tons of veggies in for me to have.

Jumbo green peppers were on sale at Harris Teeter last week so I decided to attempt some stuffed peppers. I have only ever made stuffed peppers with ground beef in them so I decided to try something different. I have been using Pinterest a lot lately and used it as an inspiration for my peppers. I went for a Mexican theme and they ended up pretty good.

Mexican Style Stuffed Peppers
3 jumbo green peppers (or 4 regular)
1 cup instant brown rice
1 can tomatoes with green chillies
1 can black beans
1 envelope of taco seasoning
pepper jack cheese
salsa-optional

Preheat oven to 400. Cook rice per directions. Cut peppers in half and seed them and then microwave them for about 5 minutes. Then in a sauce pan add rice, tomatoes, black beans and taco seasoning and cook until heated. Put peppers cut side up in a baking pan and stuff each pepper with rice mixture. Top each pepper with a slice of pepper jack cheese. Then cover the whole pan with foil and cook for 15 minutes. Take the foil off and cook for 5 more minutes.

These came out pretty good. I would have liked my peppers to be a little softer (maybe microwave them more) but B really enjoyed them. The next day I microwaved one of the leftover peppers with some salsa and extra cheese. It was really good.

Yesterday Harris Teeter had lemon artichoke pesto on sale so I decided to make some pasta salad out of that.

Lemon Artichoke Pasta Salad with Veggies

1/2 box of shell pasta

1 medium zucchini

1 medium yellow squash

sun dried tomatoes

Parmesan cheese

lemon artichoke pesto

Cook pasta. Slice and seed the zucchini and squash and then blanch them for a couple minutes. Mix pasta, squashes, chopped sun dried tomatoes, some fresh Parmesan cheese and some of the pesto. I also added in garlic salt, pepper and some red pepper flakes. My vegetarian sister approved this recipe.

Do you use Pinterest?

What is your favorite vegetarian dish?

Wordless Wednesday-The Cotton Anniversary

2011-08-03T07:50:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia told me that the traditional gift for the 2nd year anniversary is cotton so I picked this up from Etsy for B.

Can't you tell how much he loves it?
(I also got him some shoes and regular shirts).

Happy Anniversary (to me)

2011-08-01T08:20:00.000-04:00

Today is my two year wedding anniversary. So for your enjoyment, here is a brief photo history of B and I. Feel free to skip this if you don't care. Happy Anniversary B.

2005-2006

One of our 1st pics together

The first wedding we attended together

2007

The year we lived in Maryland together.

2008
aka the year of the bangs

I'm not flipping off the camera. I am attempting to show of my
newly acquired engagement ring.

2009
It's always nice to find an excuse to show off your 20 billion wedding pics...

2010

Dressed to impress in our Acorn Wedding attire.

Harry Potter Land

2011

We pulled through despite my dramatic haircut.

Family Pic!

Las Vegas

Wordless Wednesday....A 6 AM Phone Call Lead To This....

2011-07-27T07:34:00.005-04:00

So my co-worker called me at 6:21 the other morning requesting that I pick up some balloons on the way to work. A mere 1.5 hours later we had completed this project for our co-worker whose birthday was last week and who is leaving this job at the end of this week.

You wouldn't imagine how many people actually came up to her and said "oh is it your birthday or something?"

Craft Hour at the Beach

2011-07-25T08:39:00.000-04:00

I went to the beach this weekend with a few friends and I decided it would be nice to have a good wholesome girl bonding activity to do. So I came up with craft hour. It was actually supposed to be 'craft 20 minutes' where I showed everyone how to make an easy pair of earring. For some people, making stuff was fun, while for others making stuff was hard. Apparently not everyone is in to crafting. I won't name names.

Beezus5 gets the gold star in crafting as she finished hers first and with the least help. Plus they were pretty cute. Hers are the big ones in the front. (Everyone else did great too, for the most part.)

Even though some people had a little trouble (mostly with selecting the beads they wanted to use), everyone did end up with a pair of nice fashion earrings to wear out to dinner. (Although B5 didn't put hers on until after the photo.)

The boys did not participate.

Would you be mad if your friend made you have craft time at the beach?

Fill In The Blank Friday

2011-07-22T07:45:00.004-04:00

Fill in the Blank Friday is courtesy of Lauren at the little things we do.

1. One of my happiest moments ever was when my husband proposed to me. I knew what was coming but as soon as it happened I was just filled with happiness and such. Sorry for that cheesiness.

2. Summer is wedding season and weddings usually fun and awesome especially when there is dancing and good food and free drinks and love and stuff.

3. This summer the weather has been ok until the last few weeks which have been insanely hot and humid. I do not like walking outside and wiping sweat off my face after only 3 seconds.

4. My summer food of choice has been guacamole. I have been making a lot of guacamole. I've also been going to the Farmer's Market more and enjoying things like corn, tomatoes, blackberries, etc. I also love making smoothies.

5. My summer uniform is pretty much the same as my all the time uniform (black pants or jeans) but I've been throwing in a few tank tops and skirts and dresses. I even wore shorts in Las Vegas which I'm usually against. And of course flip flops, I love flip flops.

6. If I could spend the entire summer in one location I would choose my parents' beach house. I have always wanted to stay there for a whole month instead of just a long weekend here and there. It's so clean and nice and there is a deck with rocking chairs. I'd get up every morning and take Hobie for a walk/jog on the beach and then read a bunch of books and stuff. Ahhh the beach.

7. My summer anthem is Summer Time by Will Smith. Summma summma summma time. Ok, just kidding but that was the first song about summer that came to my head.

Happy Weekend!

The Latest In T-Shirt Making...Vegas Style

2011-07-20T08:57:00.001-04:00

When we decided to go to Vegas, I was obviously put in charge of T-shirt design. I thought tank tops would be more Vegas-y and good to wear to the pool, so I picked up a few cheap ones from Old Navy.

When I lived with Mo back in college, she had a copy of a poem that her mom wrote called 'Lucky Sevens'. It was about Mo, who was born on 7/7. It was kind of an inside joke after that. (There was also an interesting poem about a tootsie roll pop in there.) So I thought that would be a a good slogan for the shirts.

I have tried to make my own stencils before without much success but I came up with a new idea that I thought might work. I decided to cut the stencil out of contact paper so I could stick it directly on the shirt.

Here's what I did.....
1-Print out a Word Document in the size and font you like of whatever you want to go on the shirt. I printed out a page that said Lucky 7's.
2-Tape contact paper over the paper with the word doc on it.
3-Tape this to cardboard and then cut out your stencil with an Exacto knife by tracing/cutting over the word doc/contact paper. (The cardboard keeps you from cutting in to a table or something.)

4-Stick the stencil directly on the shirt and paint it. I used a stencil paint brush (which you can get at Michaels, a normal brush would probably work too) and fabric paint. I think I'm going to try spray fabric paint at some point.
5-Peel off the contact paper and you should have a nice design/word on your t-shirt.

Do these instructions make sense? No, probably not. But you should do it anyways. Give it your all.

If so, you will end up with this wonderful set of personalized tank tops (which we did actually wear to the pool)...

And here is a photo of us looking slightly more fashionable later on...

Yay Vegas!
And that concludes my Vegas posts. B5 you can come back to reading my blog now.

Las Vegas-The M...I Kind of Want to Live Here...

2011-07-15T07:49:00.000-04:00

Mr. J. Yo, husband of Mo Yo scored us some high class Las Vegas lodging at The M Resort/Spa/Casino. It's not on the main strip but there was a shuttle that took us there if we wanted to leave. Although I didn't really want to leave because it was awesome. I want to live there.

J got us a triangular suite (and attaching room so we all didn't have to sleep in one bed).

My favorite thing in the suite was definitely the triangular couch that sat in the corner of the room and had 270 degree view of Las Vegas.

We spent most of the day on Friday in our very own pool cabana.....

...which featured it's own baby hot tub which we all decided would make an excellent photo op.

We also ate at many of the restaurants in the hotel which were all really good.

We had sushi at Veloce (like seriously awesome, best I've had in a long time, maybe ever, sushi), Italian food at Marinelli's (braised beef with sweet potatoes over rigatoni) and an amazing chicken and waffle tower my husband ordered from Hash House A Go Go. It was seriously giant.

pic from Hash House a go go

So yeah, basically I wouldn't mind living at the M...for at least a few months.

Not Wordless Wednesday at All...Surprise! We're in Vegas.

2011-07-13T08:30:00.001-04:00

It all started with an email...

I was slightly sad (ok a lot sad) when my friend Mo (of Las Vegas) was unable to come (at the last minute) to Curly J's wedding (in NC) due to some extenuating circumstances.

Mrs. Acorn and I decided to take NC to Vegas. We emailed Mo's husband, J to see if there was any way he thought a surprise birthday trip could happen and he said yes and that she would love it. That was all we needed to hear.

So this weekend, B, Curly J, Mr. Curly J, Mrs. Acorn and I went on a secret mission to surprise Mo for her 30th birthday in Las Vegas.

Thursday evening started out with our flight being delayed. I tend to have airport problems when flying to Vegas. Fortunately our flights could be rerouted and due to the trouble, they upgraded us to first class. I've never been seated in first class before so I was pretty excited. I expected glitter and champagne to pour from the ceiling of the plane upon my arrival but in reality it was just more spacious, had free drinks and snacks, and the flight attendants were more attentive. Still, pretty awesome.

My travel companion mini Beezus5 because real Beezus5
was unable to attend this trip due to other commitments.

We arrived an hour and half later than we were supposed to, so our surprise plan was slightly altered. Mrs. Acorn (who took a different flight) surprised Mo first but convinced her that she was the only one who came. (She also told her that she was only staying for 12 hours and had brought only her purse and the clothes on her back. It was then that we learned how easy it is to trick Mo Yo.)

Anyways, our flight arrived. I made everyone sprint out of the airport to a cab and to the hotel. Then we headed to the Bellagio to surprise Mo. I had (obviously) made us matching tank tops so we instructed Curly J's husband to go up to Mo and hand her the tank top. She has only met him one time so she didn't really notice him for a second. Then she looked up and freaked out as Curly J and I jumped out at her. There may have been some jazz hands.

That's Mo in the middle, possibly shouting out some sort
of expletive.

These are blurry due to the sheer surprise and excitement.

Mo was crazy surprised. We had been emailing her husband, J for the past month to try and work this out and miraculously she was not on to us. I even sent her a really long email on Thursday wishing her happy birthday and apologizing for not sending her a birthday present yet. She responded by telling me she was planning a low key birthday including dinner with another couple and buying herself the new Britney Spears CD (she's cool like that). She never suspected anything.

Matching tank tops seems more "Vegas" than matching T's.

That was our first night in Vegas. After being up for almost 24 hours straight (minus a small airplane nap) we needed a rest before moving on to more excitement.

Secret Note to Beezus5-I'm just playing this up for the blog. It was actually the worst trip ever and no one had any fun b/c we were all focused on missing you. Mini B has since relocated full time to Las Vegas.

Sleepzies.......

2011-07-12T07:57:00.000-04:00

I took a mini blog vacation while I was on a secret mission this past weekend.

More on that when I get less tired...

Here is a random teaser photo of me and my 2nd favorite thing from this past weekend....

Making Stuff is Hard-The Pizza Stone

2011-07-06T07:45:00.000-04:00

I know what you are thinking. Wow I am an amazing chef to get that pizza in the shape of a triangle. How neat.

No, not neat.

I finally attempted to use the pizza stone my mom bought for me. What I did not realize was just how hard it is to transfer your pizza onto the stone once the stone is already in the oven (heating up). I do not have one of those paddle things so I literally sat/stared/attempted to move my pizza dough (which was round and very pretty) onto the stone in the oven for about 20 minutes. I almost cried. Once I finally got it on, it was in this sort of triangular blob with sauce and cheese falling off the sides instead of the beautiful round pizza I had before I moved it.

It still tasted ok though. (I mean who doesn't like the taste of fresh melted mozzarella? Plus pizza is definitely one of my top 3 favorite foods.)

Have you ever used a pizza stone?

PS-Mo, this was not the craft fail attempt of your bday present. I had many fails this weekend.

Happy 4th of July

2011-07-04T13:13:00.000-04:00

I made a couple dishes to celebrate the 4th of July for a pre-4th of July cookout last night.

My standard Red, White and Blue Cookie Cake....

To make this....
-shape some slice and bake sugar cookie dough into a rectangle and cook it (it will take longer to cook since it's one big cookie)
-mix together a brick of cream cheese with some powdered sugar (1/2-1 cups)
-then mix in a half a small tub of whipped topping
-spread it over the cooled cookie and then top with red and blue berries

Caprese Salad Skewers...

To make-
-marinate cherry tomatoes and mini mozzarella balls (bocconcini) in a little bit of olive oil, garlic salt and red pepper flakes (for a couple hours)
-then thread halved tomatoes, mozzarella balls, and fresh basil leaves onto wooden skewers
-drizzle with sea salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar

Happy 4th of July!

Taste Test-McCafe Edition

2011-06-29T08:12:00.001-04:00

This weekend on the way back from our mini road trip to the beach, B and I decided we wanted something icy and refreshing to drink so we went to Dunkin Donuts to get some iced coffee. There was a line out the door (which I found to be really weird) so we didn't stop. An hour or so later we still wanted a nice icy drink so we pulled into the drive-thru of a McDonald's (the only place around that we knew sold icy drinks). Neither of us could decide if we wanted an iced coffee drink or the new iced strawberry lemonade so we went ahead and decided to split one of each.

Taste Test Time!

First off....The Strawberry Lemonade...

I had high hopes for this because I really enjoy a nice refreshing strawberry lemonade. This was OK. It was pretty refreshing but also really sweet. I like my lemonade a little more on the tart side. And the strawberry stuff was all globbed into one spot near the bottom. Also the strawberry stuff seemed to be some sort of strawberry syrup which I was not really a fan of.

On to the Iced Mocha...

I really enjoyed this. It was chocolaty, coffee-ey, creamy, etc. I think this might have to do with the fact that I normally get skinny (skim milk) coffee drinks with no whip cream. So this was like a special treat, almost like a milk shake.

Action shot....

In Conclusion, the clear winner of this taste test was the Iced Mocha. I'm not factoring in any kind of nutrition info as we were on vacation. This is based solely on taste.

Hobie had no opinion as he hates both chocolate (well hopefully he's never actually had any) and lemons.

Have you had any McCafe Drinks?
What's your favorite summer drink?
PS-Here's another lovely post about summer drinks by Amanda at It's Blogworthy.

***McDonald's did not sponsor or know about this post. It's all just my very fascinating opinion.

Movie Madness...

2011-06-27T09:29:00.001-04:00

I hardly ever go to the movie theater (unless it's something really important like Harry Potter) and I usually don't rent movies because of my extremely full TV schedule but lately I've seen several movies . So let's talk about them......

There are no spoilers down here, just my thoughts so if you haven't seen the movies you won't be spoiled but you also will have no idea what I'm talking about.

Movies I rented....featuring my high school boyfriends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon...plus some of my favorite TV stars...

The Town-Overall I would say I kind of liked this movie. I love movies featuring Ben Affleck in track suits and I really liked the girl who played the lead female in this movie. I don't, however, enjoy watching (and/or participating in) violence so that kind of made me not love everything about this movie.
The Adjustment Bureau-I really liked Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in this movie. Parts of it reminded me of Inception a little bit but I liked this movie a lot more than Inception. Sometimes when I watch movies (like Inception) with a weird concept I feel like the movie makers are just trying to confuse me and make me feel dumb with a high concept that never fully makes sense. I did not feel that way with this movie.

Away We Go-I loved this movie. Even though John K wears glasses the whole time (even when he sleeps) and has weird hair, I thought it was awesome. It also really made me like Maya Rudolph a lot. My favorite scene is the trampoline scene. I watched it about 4 times.
HappyThankYouMorePlease-Josh Radnor aka Ted Mosby wrote, directed and starred in this movie.. It's about 6 upper 20 year olds (and one under 10 year old) so I can kind of relate. I really enjoyed it as well. The main character of the movie was not Ted Mosby but he looked a lot like him.

Theater-
Super Eight-I heard this movie was supposed to be really good. I like the beginning but I thought the ending was weird and cheesy. I feel like I was supposed to be crying at the end but instead I was thinking...the movie people are just trying to make me cry but instead I just feel like this is cheesy and not fully explained. I thought all the kid actors did a really good job though.

Bridesmaids-This was very funny and good and at times a bit gross. Kristen Wiig is awesome. It was what you expect it to be and if you have been a bridesmaid/bride you will be able to relate at least a little (but maybe not on such a crazy level). Sookie from Gilmore Girls was both hilarious and disturbing.

Have you seen any of these movies?
What did you think?
What should I see/rent next?

Less Words Wednesday-Farmer's Market Finds

2011-06-22T07:38:00.000-04:00

I went to the big Farmer's Market this weekend and it was slightly overwhelming. I did manage to come away with some good stuff.

I combined the granola from above and some blackberries plus some yogurt from the regular grocery store to make this awesome breakfast.

That granola was really awesome by the way.

Do you go to the Farmer's Market?

Making Stuff is Hard-Vegan Cupcakes

2011-06-20T08:41:00.001-04:00

And for another installment of how baking is hard.....

This weekend my mother-in-law and sister in-law were in town and staying with us. Well my MIL is a vegan and her birthday was a couple weeks ago so I decided to make her some vegan cupcakes. My mom recently bought me the Southern Living Big Book of Cupcakes and there was a vegan recipe in there so I decided to give it a try.
The cupcake part turned out well, actually much better than I expected.
Then we got to the icing. That is when the above mishap occurred. This icing involved something called vegan shortening. Vegan shortening looks kind of gross and does not blend at all. I paused the mixer for a few minutes and left the bowl on the counter and as you can see, it fell on the floor and on me. Good times.

So then I pulled out the big guns for my second attempt..........
Mr. Green Kitchenaid Mixer.

I was finally able to get something that resembled icing.

I think my finished product ended up looking pretty good. I added some blackberries.

They tasted decent. I could tell the difference from normal cupcakes but B's mom seemed to really enjoy them. And they are all gone now so I think that's a good sign.

Here is the recipe if you are interested....

1 tbsp cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups vanilla soymilk
2 cups all purpose soft wheat flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
paper baking cups
vegetable cooking spray

Vegan frosting
8 tbsp vegan butter or shortening
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup vanilla soymilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 16oz package powdered sugar

For the cakes....mix the vinegar and soymilk together and let it sit for five minutes. Then mix the flour and next four (all the dry) ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the oil and extracts to the soymilk mixture and then mix that into the flour mixture. Bake in a mini cupcake pan at 350 for about 12 minutes.

For the icing....mix the first four ingredients until combined (the hardest part) and then add in the sugar until you get icing.

Best daughter-in-law ever?

Have you ever done any vegan baking?

Or attempted to make your mother-in-law like you by making her cupcakes?

Fill In The Blank Friday

2011-06-17T07:26:00.002-04:00

I am in a lazy blogging mood this week so I'm getting help from Lauren's blanks over at the little things we do.

1. The last movie I saw was Bridesmaids last weekend with a bunch of my girlfriends. It was awesome. I will never look at Sookie from Gilmore Girls the same way.

2. I want to go back home and go to sleep for a little longer.

3. Surprises are fun to plan but sad if they go awry. I was thrown a surprise birthday party a few years ago. That was pretty awesome.

4. The best accessory is earrings probably. Maybe necklaces. Maybe hair. I'm not that good at accessorizing sometimes.

5. My favorite warm drink is hmmm, let's see. I used to love skinnamon dulce lattes from Starbucks but I haven't had one lately. I like regular Dunkin Donuts coffee. I enjoy a nice hot chocolate now and then and I like hot apple cider when I'm decorating the Christmas Tree. Warm drinks are good but I'm pretty hot right now so it's hard to decide.

6. My favorite cold drink is also hard to decide. I like a nice really cold bottle of water. I also really enjoy the diet lemonade from Chick-fil-A. Oh and sweet iced tea with lemon. I like both iced tea and hot tea.

7. Currently loving The Help, which I am reading now. I am also really into the idea of watching that show Party Down. I just looked it up on instant Netflix and feel like it's going to be something I like. Also Hobie. And B. And the summer. And vacation planning.

I'm so lazy this week that I'm not even going to put a photo in here.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Stuff Other People Made-My Latest Etsy Purchase-The Gold and Silver Necklace

2011-06-15T08:15:00.002-04:00

I pretty much always wear silver jewelry but lately I have been seeing some gold things that I like. I wasn't ready to go full on gold but this gold and silver necklace caught my eye when I was perusing Etsy one day.

Picture from Popsicledrum's Etsy Shop

It's pretty awesome. It came in a cute little box. It's simple and I can wear it everyday if I want (which is probably good for me because I'm a little lazy with things like changing my jewelry everyday).

And for your viewing pleasure here is a picture of me and the necklace at 7 in the morning.....

I know. Scary right? But that was literally the best I could make myself look.

So check out the Popsicledrum Etsy shop. (I don't actually know that person or anything, I just liked her necklaces).

Do you like gold jewelry?
Silver jewelry?
Wooden bead jewelry?
A mix?

Having Stuff Made for Me is Fun-Husband Style

2011-06-13T07:47:00.000-04:00

Sometimes making stuff is not fun.
Like when you are having a rough week at work.
Apparently I may have sent my husband some complainy-ish emails last week from work. I was having some work strife but we won't get into that.

However, sometimes complainy emails get you flowers and dinner.

I like when my husband makes dinner because.....
1-I don't have to make dinner.
2-He usually makes something that I don't typically make (like pork chops).
3-There is usually an appetizer and probably a dessert.

So last Thursday my husband made us pork chops, spinach (with bacon) and green beans. And there was an appetizer (jalapeno pimento cheese spread on bread) and a dessert (skinny cow ice cream sandwiches). It really improved my day.

Thanks B!

Have you ever surprised or been surprised by someone with dinner and flowers?

Should I complain more often? (no, I know the answer to that is probably no, I don't want this to backfire)

My Biggest Haircut since that Bowl Cut in Kindergarten.....

2011-06-10T07:45:00.000-04:00

Did you take my Pop Quiz?

Well I know you are on pins and needles so I'll just go ahead and let you know.........
I
Got
My
Hair
Cut.......

It's the most I've gotten my hair cut at one time since my Kindergarten bowl cut.

My hair is really thick so the stylist had to put my hair in 5 mini ponytails and razor them off. I was slightly scared when I saw the first 9 inch ponytail come off. Then I remembered that my mom had to have her whole head shaved so I figured I could power through this.

So now I have short hair and can cross of #20 on my 30 for 30 list which I changed to 'do something daring with my hair'. I think that getting a foot (she had to cut more to even it all up after the ponytails came off) of hair cut off is pretty daring. At least for me.

I got my hair cut 9 inches so that I could donate it to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program. This program is similar to Locks of Love but gives wigs to the American Cancer Society wig bank for people who cannot afford wigs. I figured that now was as good a time as any for me to donate as my hair is slowly but surely turning gray and you have to have less than 5% gray hair to donate to this program. So hopefully someday someone will get to give my hair a second chance.

There was a fundraiser at my church and 38 people donated their ponytails, so that should make at least a few wigs.

I'm still trying to adapt to life as a short haired person. My hair is too short for a ponytail at this point which is my go-to style. Today I have attempted a headband.

Have you ever donated your hair....

Or done something daring with it?

Less Words Wednesday.....Pop Quiz-A Hairy (or Harry) Situation

2011-06-08T07:24:00.000-04:00

What has happened?

A-Hobie caught me this creature in the backyard.

B-I needed supplies (aka, hair) to make the 7 JM's with a nice batch of Polyjuice potion (Harry Potter reference, anyone? no, ok, moving on)

C-I cut my hair. A lot. For a good cause.

Come back on Friday for the answer!

My Homemade Birthday Present Streak Continues...

2011-06-06T08:02:00.000-04:00

Curly J was back from her honeymoon just in time to celebrate her 30th birthday this weekend. Of course I had to attempt to make her present since I made that goal of making all birthday presents this year. Plus I wrote about that goal on my blog and she reads my blog.

I kind of took the easy way out and made some earrings. It's just too hot for any more t-shirt scarves at this time and I was drawing blanks on everything else. I also gave her a bunch of photos from her wedding shower, bachelorette party and wedding and an album. I had big plans to make an album but they fell through. So, earrings it is.

Plus I made her a birthday cake. It's my go-to chocolate chip poundcake which I have finally mastered over the years. And by mastered, I mean it actually came all the way out of the pan instead of getting stuck in there and ripping apart. Yay me!

The evening started with dinner at her favorite Mexican restaurant followed by game night at her house. B and I were victorious at a game of LCR and scored $7 in prize money. Have you ever played LCR (left, center, right)? I was pretty skeptical at first but it ended up being pretty fun.

So in conclusion, Mexican food and cake are good, LCR is fun, and I'm still doing ok on my handmade presents.

Gwyneth Teaches me to Make Salsa and Other Beach Things....

2011-06-03T08:25:00.000-04:00

It's been 90 degrees all week and I feel as though it's officially summer so let's talk about my last beach trip.

Last weekend I went to the beach with my parents and I coerced my mom into attempting a recipe from Bon Appetit. I bought a year long subscription to Bon Appetit for $4 a few months ago that I learned about from Hip2Save, a cool couponing/saving website. My first issue arrived last week and it had Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover. Apparently she has written a new cookbook. She is taking multi-tasking to a new level.

We decided to make Grilled Halibut with Mango Avocado Salsa. We pretty much dropped the ball on the fish as we decided to bake it instead of grill it and also to get some cod instead of all halibut. So the fish was not my fave. But the salsa was awesome. I loved it. I was a little worried about the mango but apparently we ended up getting one that was perfectly ripe and sweet. The sweetness of the mango was good mixed with the other veggies and such. Seriously, it was good. I ate a bunch of the leftover salsa the next day on some chips. I think the fish would have been much better if we grilled it. I also added a few onions to the salsa the next day when I used it on chips. It was delightful and a great summer dish.

So in conclusion, I trust Gwyneth with my food needs.

Now here are some pictures.....

Hobie, I'm sorry for showing you in all your glory.

Good Salsa!

Hobie's favorite beach activity=staring out the window
in the car.

JM's Book Corner...

2011-06-01T08:11:00.001-04:00

One of my 30 for 30 goals this year was to read more books. I have been doing semi-Ok in my goal to read more books. Not great, but ok. So here is what I've read......

The Hunger Games Trilogy-That's THREE books yall-Yes I waited a couple months after reading the first one. I know some of you can't beleive that, but it's true. Sometimes I like to delay joy. (For example I read Harry Potter 1-6 and then re-read them all before reading the 7th book even though they were all available at the time). I think the 2nd book was my favorite and I'm excited about the movies. Everyone on the Internet who recommended these books is right. They are good. And now, everyone that I've recommended them to also likes them. Sidebar-who thinks Amazon should let you loan a book more than one time?

The Backup Plan by Sherryl Woods-This was the first book I bought to read on my iPad. It was cheaper than a bunch of the other books and by an author I'd heard others mention. It was ok. It's a quick chick lit beach type read. Nothing ground breaking but not bad.

Romantically Challenged by Beth Orsoff-Another quick read. My girl, Curly J loaned it to me and I read it at the beach this weekend. I liked it better than The Backup Plan.

Bossy Pants by Tina Fey-My mom bought me this as a surprise. I really enjoyed it. Very quick read and a lot of laugh out loud moments. My husband looked at me weird while I was reading it when I kept busting out laughing. If you like Tina Fey, you will like this book.

One Day by David Nicholls-Hutch wrote about this on her blog one day and a mere 6 months later I read it. I really really liked it. The book spans 20 years but each chapter is the same day of the year but a different year. It's pretty cool. You should read it. But you will probably yell out loud at one part of the book, just warning you. Plus they are making a movie of it and it's always cool to read the book before the movie comes out.

I have also read many cookbooks as well as many articles on people.com and a few magazines. Ok I might need to read a little bit more quality stuff. More suggestions? I think Shanzie (who is legitimate member of a monthly book club) is bringing me The Help and Water for Elephants next week.

Curly J's Wedding-My Faves (and it's her birthday)

2011-05-30T08:19:00.000-04:00

In honor of Curly J's birthday, which is today, I will go ahead and list some of my favorite moments from her wedding.

The Food.... I was elated to learn that I had been seated directly beside the shrimp and grits and prime rib station. Location is everything, right? There were also mini chicken cordon blue bites, salad, a pasta station, etc. Everyone mentioned some delicious stuffed mushrooms during cocktail hour but I must have missed those while doing pictures.

The Cake...Cake is always awesome at weddings. But this one was made by the girlfriend of the brother of the bride (got it?). I thought it tasted awesome and looked good and I thought it was sweet of the bride to trust her brother's girlfriend with such a huge task. She did a really good job.

Bride, MOH, and
Flower Girl

The Speeches....You could tell that the people giving the speeches (sister of the bride, college BFF of the groom) really knew the bride and groom well. They were very heartfelt and funny speeches, including some serenading by the Best Man to the Groom. I may have teared up a bit during the speech by Curly J's sister.

The Dancing....As you know, I was really passionate about my dancing at this wedding. One of my favorite moments ever in the history of weddings (that I have been to) occurred when the DJ played "Forever" by Chris Brown (no, I do not like Chris Brown, but I do like his song). If you are familiar with Pam and Jim's wedding from The Office, then you know that everyone danced down the aisle to that song (copying the original YouTube video). Well somehow when the DJ played this song everyone formed two lines and we all danced down it. Awesome. I then yelled for everyone to "bring it in" to the center of the dance floor. B apparently thought this was the most hilarious thing I'd ever done. PS-I swear, I am actually normally really shy in situations where I don't know people.

The Friendships....I love getting together with lots of my friends at one time (we missed you Mo, passionately).....

Plus my parents were there and they are my friends too.

The After-After Party....-The After-Party was going well until everyone decided they wanted to go to sleep (well that is, the people who actually made it to the after-party). B and I did not want to go to sleep so we made our own after-after party by walking to the local Cook-Out down the street. If you aren't from NC you probably aren't familiar with Cook-Out, but it is awesome. Just check out that menu. I also may have looked like a crazy girl coming from prom as I was still wearing my bridesmaid dress and flip flops. We took our food back to the hotel and spread it out in one of the nice lobby couch areas to eat. I was elated to discover that they'd given us a free corn dog. After that we were ready for bed. (PS-Mo I know you would have totally stayed up late with me and walked to Cook-Out, right?)

So that was the wedding weekend. I will leave you with this one last picture of me dancing. If you are a fan of the hit TV show How I Met Your Mother, please note that in this scene I was trying to copy one of Marshall's dance moves from the season one episode 'OK Awesome'.

...and all those dance moves are why it was perfectly fine for me to eat that extra corn dog at 2 am.

Happy Birthday Curly J!
You had a great wedding and I'm sorry you have to go back to work tomorrow!

Wordless Wednesday-Dance Moves!

2011-05-25T07:39:00.000-04:00

My homies and I have mad dance skillz as you can tell from these photos. (Ok well we try at least.) (Ok well it was mostly me and B dancing for much of the time but still, I caught some photos of some other people.)

apparently this is the hot new dance

such intense moves the camera can't take a clear pic

my signature one hand in the air move

Dancing is definitely one of my favorite things about weddings (even though I just make up my moves as I go). I'm scared of the pictures the real photographer took. I kind of felt like she was following me around at times because of all my hot moves. At least it helps to burn calories from all the free food and drinks.

Rehearsal Dinner-FOOD Baby Alert!

2011-05-24T07:39:00.000-04:00

My friends and I all had big plans to after-party back at our hotel after the rehearsal dinner. The problem was that we ate an insane amount of food at the rehearsal dinner and were unable to do anything other than just pass out in our beds.

But let's back up to the rehearsal.
Here is some good rehearsing action.....

I'm specifically including this pic from the rehearsal because the groom took it. Right after he took it, he said something like "perfect shot". He must not have noticed that his fiance's eyes were mostly closed in the shot.

My hair is wayyyyyy tooo long. Luckily I only have a few more weeks before I'm getting it cut.

After we rehearsed, we met up with our boyfriend/husbands back at this really tall building in Durham, The University Club. We were up on the 17th floor so it was a really neat view.

picture from here

We had some appetizers and drinks including skewers with cheese, tomato and pesto shrimp. Awesome. I want to recreate them.

Then it was time for the feast.

I really wish I had pictures of the buffet but sadly I was way too focused on eating. It's definitely one of the best buffet style dinners I have ever had. It featured..........normal salad, black bean salad, grilled veggies, cauliflower and broccoli, fingerling potatoes (that were awesome), mashed potatoes, prime rib (or some kind of meat) with gravy, sea bass with a citrus sauce, turkey and cranberry sauce, rolls, etc. Seriously it was awesome. We all agreed that the turkey was some of the best we had ever had. Plus we had a girl at our table who went to culinary school and I think she agreed that the food was awesome.

So basically we ate tons of food and that was before dessert which included a buffet of pies (key lime!) and cakes (cheesecake!) and cookies (chocolate chip!) which of course I also ate.

At this time we finally decided to stop eating since we were all stuffed and feeling as though our dresses no longer fit. Lucky for us Curly J and Non-Curly M decided to give us gifts!

Our gift bags included some really cute bags (see below), some super awesome bridesmaid jewelry, a pashmina and a lovely hand written note. Very awesome gifts. I think she got the bags from Etsy but I will have to check when she gets back from the honeymoon.

So basically we ate a bunch and decided to save the after-party for the next day so we could rest up for the main event....

Are you jealous you missed one of the best buffets ever?

Do you like my cool new bag?

Bridesmaid Jewelry aka Will Work for Nut Butter

2011-05-23T08:01:00.000-04:00

This weekend I went to the awesome wedding of Curly J. I will give you some more details about the wedding later this week. But first, let's talk about my big project...

J decided she wanted some "fun" jewelry for the bridesmaids to wear. She showed me some pictures of things that I didn't really know how to make but I said if she picked out all the beads, I would string them together for us. She had some flower beads made by a seller on Etsy (whose name I cannot remember right now). Then we selected other beads that we thought would go well with them and then I attached everything together. I though they ended up looking pretty good.

Each necklace was little different which I thought was nice.

As my reward for being a jewelry consultant, Curly J got me this awesome gift basket filled with some locally made nut butters and accompaniments (crackers, apples, chocolate, etc). The nut butter was made by Big Spoon which is a local roaster and nut butter company in Durham. This stuff was good. We had cashew, almond and peanut. I enjoyed the peanut the best. It was just a little sweet and had a great nutty texture. I liked putting some of the peanut butter and some honey on a graham cracker as a snack.

I'm still recovering from all the food and dancing this weekend, so I will get back with you on more details of the wedding soon.

What do you think of the bridesmaid jewelry?

Have you ever had fresh nut butter?

Brief TV Talk....

2011-05-20T07:50:00.001-04:00

It's a busy day. Work for 4 hours followed by travel to Durham to start the festivities for Curly J's wedding so here are my brief thoughts on TV...........

How I Met Your Mother-So Barney will eventually settle down. I saw that coming. Do we want him to be with Robin or not? That is the question. I'm still a little torn. Also I totally called that Lily was pregnant as soon as we first saw her throw up. I'm so smart.

Glee-Wow. That episode got deep. I really liked it though. But I fast forwarded through a few of the solo performances. Does that make me dumb? Sometimes I get annoyed when they power sing songs that I have never heard before. Jane Lynch was great in this episode though.

One Tree Hill-This was definitely meant to be a series finale. Now they are going to have to stir up some drama to keep things going next season (perhaps Nanny Mary-twin sister of psycho Nanny Carrie comes back for revenge). I hear they are trying to get Lucas and Peyton to come back. Do people like them? I was honestly never a fan of Lucas but that might because cause I just never really liked CMM.

Modern Family-I thought this was a great ep and I'm looking forward to the finale. Very good physical comedy in this episode with Cameron in the baby pool and banging into the glass door. Plus I loved Phil cheerleader tossing Clair over the wall and then them riding the tandem bike and tumbling down the hill. Plus it was nice to see Haley and Alex bond. Good stuff.

The Office-I do not like all these guest stars. I think they just need to focus on the funny people they already have now that Steve Carell is gone. I did enjoy Pam trying to thwart Creed. Plus Ryan had some good lines (like when he mumbled to Stanley that he'd live forever). The Jim/Dwight interaction was good as always.
"What's your daughter's name? PeePee."
"No, it's PeePa."

Parks and Recreation-I LITERALLY enjoyed this. I loved Ron's circle desk, Donna's spaceship keyboard and April's mobile station. I busted out laughing when I saw Ron's face after his incident with the torch.
"I have cried twice in my life. Once when I was seven and I was hit by a school bus. And then again when I heard that Li'l Sebastian had passed." RIP Li'l Sebastian.

OK, so what did you think of all the finales this week?
How as the Grey's Anatomy finale? I'm really hoping it's not as intense as last year. I don't think I can take that again.

Wordless Wednesday-Hobie Pop Quiz

2011-05-18T07:21:00.001-04:00

Pop Quiz...

What is going on with Hobie????????

A-He purchased a royal wedding style hat in hope of attending Curly J's wedding this weekend.

B-He is trying to camouflage himself as a lamp so that we don't notice him eating our dinner and socks.

C-He has seasonal allergies (like his mom) and was attempting to eat his tail off so the vet made him wear this contraption for a few days to let it heal up.

Go ahead and submit your answers!