Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween!

Hope you are all having a wonderful Halloween Monday!  Nick and I carved our first pumpkins together to celebrate our first married holiday together!  Here are some pictures of the fun:





I got the joy of cleaning out the goo and seeds and Nick did the artistic work of actually carving the pumpkins.  Here is how they turned out:




I also decided that it would be a waste to throw out the goo and the seeds so I made pureed pumpkin and toasted the seeds.  Most of the puree is going to my niece in the form of baby food, but I have a few recipes I am going to try with the rest of it.





Here are the 2 recipies I used for toasting the seeds (http://caseyincalifornia.com/2011/10/05/toasted-pumpkin-seeds/ and http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spiced-Pumpkin-Seeds/Detail.aspx).  I will try and remember to share when I use the rest of the puree.

Happy Halloween!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Wedding Wednesday: The Begining

Wow it is hard to believe the wedding was 8 weeks ago this Saturday.  Lots of people told me that time flies after the wedding and they are not kidding.  It probably doesn't help that we jumped right back into reality after the wedding, bought a house, and had house guests for 3 weeks, but it has been a fun 8 weeks.  I think I have finally found the time to write wedding posts and share all the fun of the weekend.  I am going to attempt to post one a week on Wednesdays, cause who doesn't like a little something to look forward to in the middle of the week?

I am going to start at the beginning of the festivities and work my way through the weekend.


So here goes!


Thursday evening we had dinner out our house with my parents, brother and Nick's parents.  We had a great time just relaxing and visiting.  After dinner we met some friends at a local karaoke bar, including our first out of town guest to arrive, my bridesmaid Katie.  Here is the only picture I have from Thursday:


Not the most flattering picture, but Thanks Katie for remembering to document the event!

Friday morning I woke up early and drove to the airport to pick up another bridesmaid, Jenni and her boyfriend Tyrone.  After dropping them off at the hotel to nap and shower I picked up Katie.  Katie and I ran downtown to pick up the flowers for the reception centerpieces and then hurried back to the hotel to meet everyone for lunch.  

Lunch was sort of an unplanned kick off to the weekend.  All of the bridesmaids and their dates as well as all of our family who had already made it to town met at Five Guys for lunch before the girls were off to get our nails done.  It was a great, relaxing way for everyone to begin to get acquainted and as unplanned as it was it turned out perfect.  

After lunch the girls were off to the nail salon.  This turned out to be a bit of an adventure.  I had been to the salon more than once but had always come from my house not the hotel.  I ended up getting all turned around and we drove past the salon before I realized we were lost.  Pretty sure everyone thought I was crazy but I am blaming bride brain.  We finally made it to the salon and had a lovely time getting pampered and enjoying each other's company.   Again I failed at getting any pictures, but Katie came through and got a couple of Emily, my niece/the flower girl, getting her first manicure:




She was a great sport!  After we left the salon it was back to the hotel to begin setting up the reception site.  We met one of the groomsmen, Nick and his family to set up tables and put on chair covers.  It went pretty quickly with everyone helping.  Then it was time to part ways and get ready for the rehearsal but I will save that for next week's post.  

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Warrior Dash


Last weekend marked the 1 month anniversary of being home owners.  All of our wonderful house guests were still in town and my friend Katie was also visiting for the weekend.  It was a fun relaxed weekend for the most part, but there was one big event on Saturday afternoon.  Nick and Brandon participated in The Warrior Dash, a 5k race with 12 obstacles mixed in.  The obstacles range from jumping over fire to swimming through a mud pit, to climbing a cargo net wall.  Katie and I could only see a couple of the obstacles from where we stood, but it looked like it was a pretty touch race and the boys were pretty gross at the end.  I will let the pictures tell the story:


Brandon and Nick before the race

Jans, Joe, Brandon and Nick before the race
And they are off
Nick in the Yellow shirt going into the last obstacle- The Mud Pit
Nick Crossing the finishline-covered in Mud

Nick and Brandon and a very manly hug!

Joe, Nick, Brandon and Jans after the finish


Nick and Brandon-gross!

Nick and Brandon after being hosed off
The mud part was pretty gross but all in all it was a good day.  Because the boys were so exhausted after the race we decided to just have people over to our house for a fire that night.  Nick and Brandon had to show off their "Viking Helmets" but the other boys didn't want to be left out:

Brandon, Austin, Nick and Justin
It was a great weekend and a great way to send our guests off to their next adventures!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

When Life gets in the way of Blogging

Wow where does the time go?  We have officially been married for a month now and been homeowners for 2 weeks and I have not been a very good blogger about either.  We have been busy little bees, sadly not with house stuff just life in general.  It has been a busy Fall already and there is no end in sight to the craziness.    We have also had lots of wonderful visitors at our house since we moved in which has made it difficult to find time to take pictures of what the house looks like now that we have most of the boxes unpacked.  (I tried to take another video the other day but it didn't turn out well at all so I will work on that and hopefully get pictures at the very least up soon).  In the mean time I will leave you with pictures from our first Cubs/Cards game as a married couple:

Nick wondering why it matters if we take a picture to commemorate the moment

yikes that is a bad picture but it was the best I could get out of Mr. Uncooperative!
And the good news is the Cubs won that game.  They then proceeded to give away the next two games to the Cards but at least we got to be there for the W!

I can't tell you when but I promise soon I will post either wedding pictures or house pictures.