Saturday, September 10, 2011

Eating and Drinking

Oh Pinterest, how I love you.

Through Pinterest, I ran into this recipe for something called 'crack sauce' that my friend from college pinned.  Today, I made it to dip green beans in, and although I do not feel though I am addicted to it, it was certainly plenty tasty.  I am hoping it will be better tomorrow after it sits a while and the garlic melds in.  Also, if I had it to do over again, I would add more smoked paprika.  Smoked paprika is basically a special gift from the heavens.  I am going to try to invent some sort of grilled cheese sandwich with the crack sauce and some pepper jack and maybe some roasted red peppers.  yum!

While wandering around the grocery store, I ran into this stuff. (Also, this picture is really pretty!  Thanks random flickr person who marked your picture as OK to use!)

via
The San Pellegrino orange is super awesome fantastic, and I was making fake chicken with this orange glaze, and I thought "hey, this looks interesting.  i'm totally getting this to have with my crack sauce bean/orange glazed chixen dinner".  (We also had baked potatoes.)

Do Not Want.  It was totally weird tasting.  Did not taste like oranges at all.  I'm not sure what kind of orange-like citrus fruit a chinotto is, but it is not for me.  I asked Jeff to get me some water, since I was not going to drink it.  He took a sip, promptly gagged and requested I give him some bleach to gargle with. Apparently my (Italian) friend loves it and does not understand why non-Italian people think it's weird.  Your mileage may vary, whether or not you are Italian.

I don't know why I can't rotate this.
Speaking of Italian, I took this picture at the grocery store of a pasta salad kit 'Caesar' flavor.

Why is it "Suddenly" a salad?  Is it going to run up behind me when I'm not expecting it?  Did I think I was getting a spaghetti dinner and got pasta salad again?  Also, wasn't Caesar assassinated?  I am not really interested in Caesar suddenly surprising me with some kind of death salad. I'm a little afraid.  Anyone know what's in these things?  Worth buying?  Pasta and a bottle of salad dressing seems like a better deal.  Just saying.



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Friday, September 2, 2011

Can I use vacation pics as art?

We have not been on a real vacation in a while.
Last May, we went to New Orleans on a vacation without Thomas for the first time.  It was terrifying but also awesome.  Today, I am supposed to be laying on the couch, relaxing and doing as little as possible.

August is a hard month where I work, so a little R&R is totally in order.  I am pathologically incapable of sitting in my PJs doing nothing, however.  On top of that, I have been freaking out about how I can not find any of our pictures from Paris, so I went on a scouring mission of all the random websites one could put photographs on until I assembled something I consider a reasonable collection of pictures of our travels.  Aieeeeeeeee happiness!  Jeff believes he has all of them somewhere on a hard drive, but we have like four hard drives, and I can never find anything on them, so scour away.

To be honest, we are not going anywhere far for a while, since we spent basically all our savings on the kitchen reno.  I am not complaining, the kitchen is completely fabulous.  But I can at least check out my pics and feel nostalgic about our past.

The Caribbean

They are totally not in the order that we went to these places, and they took place over the course of the last ten years.  Still, they make me happy.  I am putting one or two here, and the rest at the end of the post so you don't have to scroll through ten vacation pictures, which I realize are not always exciting for the person not on the vacation.

I am working on figuring out what art to put in the new ikea frames i bought for over the new TV stand (pics coming later, I promise).  

It's a city!  Pittsburgh!  You can tell, right?



I am doing samples of this water color technique to see if that's worth doing for the frames, but if not, perhaps I will pick two of my travel pics and frame them.

Cancun, Mexico

Curacao

Scotland, Glenfiddich

Dublin!

Stonehenge

Paris

Hawaii

Bath, England

Scottish Highlands


I hope you all have some awesome, relaxing plans for the long weekend.  Happy Friday!


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Thursday, September 1, 2011

Shower Ideas: Help!

You guys, my sister in law is having a baby and she is letting me plan and throw her shower!!!! ZOMG I am going to be an aunt!!!!  I am super excited about this.  We have a place and a list of people, so we're on our way.

Here is my problem:
I am trying to match the feel of the shower to her bedding, which she loves, and which is adorable.
bedding from Target
Dots!  I love it!
The baker we are getting our cupcakes at has this awesome thing where the put these little sugar dots on top of their cupcakes, so I am hoping we can custom order something with the right colors of dots.
Vanilla Pastry Studio
And I think I found some invitations on etsy I could buy that would be really awesome and in theme.

Sugar Doodle Designs
But I need favors, you guys!  Something Mod and dot-having and something that's not totally lame and that you'd like to take home from a shower.  Help!  I'm not awesome at the favors stuff.

I would also love to hear ideas for DIY centerpieces we could do with lots of awesome dots.  I was wondering if a cookie bouquet of different sized circle sugar cookies with brown/blue/green colored icing would be nifty or a little overmuch on the sweets.   I think it could work.

Help!
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