cruisin'

before we all get carried away into the excitement of butler making it to the final four (go dawgs!), i thought i would post some photos from the cruise - including the most anticipated photo of the bunkbeds!


as it turns out, the top bed was locked "up" - so we never actually had to battle bunk beds as much as sharing a twin bed and avoiding turning on the light with the switch directly on the wall of the bed. and despite a few of the photos below with towel animals, we spent most of our time out in the sun, drinking, eating and exploring nassau.


so uncle steve, if you are still out there, no, we didn't just dress up and take pictures on this vacation...though i did make my own towel swan so the one they made us had a friend!

now that our tans have faded and we are working to sweat off the lbs gained from the mass amounts of food (i saw brandt eat more chocolate desserts than ever before on this trip) - it is time to officially focus on the fun week of basketball! stay tuned...

the kids we don't have

my husband has this thing for plastic storage tubs. and when i say thing i really mean obsession.

he is a man that spends his money well and accounts for every last penny. but whenever he passes one of those colorful tubs at the store he just can't control himself. if he could, he would fill up the car and drive home with 20 of them and then proceed to package up our basement items for "safe and dry keeping". don't tell him i know, but he is very proud of himself when he does this.

that is great and all, until i noticed that it isn't really important to him what goes in them, just as long as nothing is outside of them. i discovered this last night when i convinced him to join me in a little basement spring cleaning.

out of boxes i pulled a comforter from his apt - the apt he had right after he graduated college (ahem and that wasn't yesterday!), decorative old pillows, old sheets, an entire tub of towels he has accumulated since leaving home and an assortment of old dorm decor (you know, a rickity clock, cheap wall art we'll never use, etc - pretty much all but a lava lamp). we also came across a tub of all our old kitchen items (pots, pans, dishes, cups that we no longer need once we got married).

so i told him "let's give this to goodwill, where someone can use them". he immediately said "no, our kids will use these when they go to college!"

excuse me? is he saving things for our yet-to-be-born children in hopes that in TWENTY years they will want to take mom and dad's old grubby dishes and lamps?

i promptly told him in twenty years we will be buying new dishes and our kids can have our old ones. we're taking everything to goodwill this weekend.

elliot

this photo doesn't quite capture my photography skills but it does capture the crazy personality of my niece. the only reliable (and focused) thing in this photo was the stationary chair...but i have humbled myself as the pic was too great to not post. or maybe i am just really artsy...

one for my mother...

this weekend we are taking a three day cruise to the bahamas for our one-year anniversary!

as a tribute to the three days we will be on the boat, i am listing three facts about our upcoming trip:
1. we will be in the sun drinking coconut flavored drinks and eating fabulous food i won't have to prepare myself (or we won't have to pay for).
2. we will have bunkbeds. yes, that's right. my husband booked us a room with bunkbeds. i call top bed!
3. my mother had a dream. and to be fair since my last post was about my mother-in-law, i want to make sure my mom gets a shout out too (even though she doesn't know how to read a blog...). so here is her dream, per an e-mail she sent me this morning:

last night i dreamed i went on vacation with you and brandt and got lost. i couldn't find my hotel then i fell in a big swimming pool and got all wet. then some guy was trying to steal my purse but i didnt have any money in it. all i had was a big bottle of some kind of rum because i had a free ticket for that. then i fell in the ocean and when i got out, i was stinky and covered in seaweed. we were vacationing with your younger sister...??but i didnt catch her name. in fact we couldnt find her (of course i couldnt find you guys either).

she ended it with a "anyway i am convinced you guys will have a great time on the cruise without me...hahahha".

anyone want what she's having before bed?!

my mother-in-law's recipe

yesterday morning, i woke up a little early to make a "quick and easy" slow cooker recipe from my mother-in-law.

i pretty much betty crockered it before leaving for work - mixing honey, curry, mustard and some other ingredients for a honey mustard chicken dish and thought about it several times throughout the day, thinking "wow, this is great...dinner will be ready when i get home". to be honest, i had planned the whole flow of our evening around the awesomeness of the dish.

the only problem was that when i got home, the two little chicken breasts were charred to death and the house did not smell of sweet curry or honey mustard delight.

when i asked my husband if he had checked on it his reply was "yeah, i did around 2 and it looked like that".  when asked why he didn't turn it off, he said "it smelled familiar...i'm pretty sure my mom has made this dish before".

i really pray she didn't make him eat it :)

almost perfect

so we finally tied up some of our remaining loose ends around the house - purchased two more dining room chairs (so now we can have FOUR people over at a time instead of just two!), got some bedroom curtains ordered, delivered, ironed and hung (and i'm pretty excited about the sleeping in that will happen this saturday in our very dark room!) and had our table top replaced due to some cracking.


the house was rockin with awesomeness. it was great. it was perfect.


that is until we had spaghetti last night for dinner and some of it slid off of someone's plate and onto the cream seat cushion leaving what appears to be a stubborn stain! rut-roh. oh well, guess this gives us the opportunity to continue building our relationship with our furniture company!


perhaps i should see if they want to replace our rug too...

sugar on top

i thought i would give you a sneak peek into my latest obsession, which may or may not be a success down the road, but is something i think is exciting, fun and encourages me to continue dreaming big. 


the idea was suggested by one of my girlfriends to create a blog specifically for my baking - with the intent to show off my baking and the creative ideas i have for party planning and hosting. so with that, i am making a dedicated effort to practice and learn more about the details of baking - and to hopefully someday make cakes, cupcakes and desserts for parties, showers, etc. for friends - at a low cost!  

with that, i prematurely introduce you to the new venture, only because you are such valued readers - sugar on top. otherwise, i am going to wait another month or so to get some more baking under my belt before i ask my friends to let me bake for them!

queen of sheba

i promise this isn't turning into a baking blog, but lately we have had a lot of fun, foodie occasions that have offered the opportunity to try some new recipes and of course play around with the new camera.

this weekend we celebrated our friend sonja's birth. she and her husband are also fellow blog/food/photography lovers and hosted a "julia child" dinner party for the occasion.

each guest was to bring a french course to share, and the food, wine and company was fantastic! to be honest, it was just what i have been needing lately - some quality time with quality people (and fancy pants food never hurts the cause!) it really made me covet what the europeans have going on over there...days and nights full of a slower paced life, enjoying the company of loved ones and food cooked with care. and i think things like this need to happen more often. perhaps we can host once we get some more dining room chairs (ahem, this is where's the husband's coworkers should remind him of this!)

appetizers began at 7pm and i'm pretty sure we wrapped up with eclairs at almost 11. i feel like we really had time to savor the great conversation with new friends. make sure to check back to sonja and alex's blog link above for their post (hint, hint to them!) for a more complete documentation of the evening! 

behold below, the "reine de saba avec glaçage au chocolat", or translated to the "queen of sheba cake with chocolate glaze"...not sure why the french didn't mention the almonds used in the recipe, but that too.

hello, cupcake

as promised, irish car bomb cupcakes i made for the husband's birthday - chocolate guiness cupcake with an irish cream frosting and ganache - and yes, they were as awesome as they sound!!

dishes

my husband put this cup away last night and actually considered it clean! no, really.

i'll admit...i have been spoiled because he has been the one doing the dishes since we got married. i thought "wow, lucky me, i snagged a good one!" because he really doesn't mind doing it (in fact, he is the kind of person that can't stand them sitting in the sink). however, i am now second guessing my faith in his abilities.

last night, i noticed that what he used to pass off as "hard water stains" is now just plan food remnants. i hand-washed (really scrubbed) half our dishes last night. and they needed it.

the debate is now whether the jumbo, mega-deal dish soap he picked out at sam's club is the problem or if we flat out need a new dishwasher...