And just because I think it's a cute picture - here is one of Cali and I. Pickles wouldn't cooperate for the photo shoot.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Happy Halloween!
Last night Jason and I dressed up for Halloween and went out with some friends to Broad Ripple. I was a kitty and Jason was his typical zombie character. He did such an awesome job with the makeup and got compliments all night.
And just because I think it's a cute picture - here is one of Cali and I. Pickles wouldn't cooperate for the photo shoot.
And just because I think it's a cute picture - here is one of Cali and I. Pickles wouldn't cooperate for the photo shoot.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Black Bean and Salsa Soup
I don't have a picture of this recipe, but it was so good that I had to share. We had mom and Karen over for dinner one night and made this. We had it with tortilla chips and a salad. It's super easy to make and also very healthy!
INGREDIENTS
2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup chunky salsa
1 teaspoon ground cumin
4 Tbsp sour cream (or to taste)
2 Tbsp thinly sliced green onion (or to taste)
In an electric food processor or blender, combine beans, broth, salsa, and cumin. Blend until fairly smooth.
Fall decorations!
I love fall! Our house is decorated in fall colors the rest of the year anyways, and I love being able to pull out more of the colors!
The finished "glitterfied" pumpkins - I love how they turned out!
Where they are sitting - everything else sitting out there is there all year long - see, I told you I love fall colors!
This is in the middle of our dining room table. Anne had her mom make it for me as a gift for cohosting her shower. Isn't it beautiful?!? The other side of the pumpkin is actually a jack-o-lantern! I'm going to keep that side facing the main area until Halloween and then turn it around.
This is in our living room, in front of the big windows that are next to our front door.
Our mantle. We've always just left the picture leaning against the wall - not actually hanging. I'm told that's "in" now - what do you think? Should I leave it that way or hang it? (And I've fixed the centering on everything now.)
The living room, taken from the dining room.
Our Halloween tree. It's on a little table near the front door.
The finished "glitterfied" pumpkins - I love how they turned out!
Where they are sitting - everything else sitting out there is there all year long - see, I told you I love fall colors!
This is in the middle of our dining room table. Anne had her mom make it for me as a gift for cohosting her shower. Isn't it beautiful?!? The other side of the pumpkin is actually a jack-o-lantern! I'm going to keep that side facing the main area until Halloween and then turn it around.
This is in our living room, in front of the big windows that are next to our front door.
Our mantle. We've always just left the picture leaning against the wall - not actually hanging. I'm told that's "in" now - what do you think? Should I leave it that way or hang it? (And I've fixed the centering on everything now.)
The living room, taken from the dining room.
Our Halloween tree. It's on a little table near the front door.
Anne's shower
Anne and Kyle Hultgren are also expecting a girl! She should arrive around the first of December. We had her shower today at Kay Hultgren's house. It was another beautiful day!
Here are the invitations that I made! There were actually four different ones - the differences were the stickers at the top.
This is the front cover of a book that we made, where people wrote out advice for the parents-to-be. The finished project had silver rings at the top that held the book together.
Part of my gift to them was a diaper cake that I made (with help from Jen!) On the front is the book, "The little mouse, the red ripe strawberry, and the big hungry bear." In the invitation we requested that everyone bring a book instead of card. They got about 30 books, and NO duplicates!
Cake that we had Taylor's Bakery make:
The punch in my punch bowl that I got from Grandma! It had pink lemonade, sprite, and raspberry sherbert. To help dress it up, and keep in line with the pink and yellow theme - I floated raspberries and lemons in it.
Some of the decor. The little stuffed animals are holding the favors - little bottles filled with pink and yellow jelly beans.
And my favorite part- the food!! We had veggie pizza, spinach dip, blt bites, cucumber sandwiches, stuffed strawberries, white chocolate covered strawberries, chicken salad sandwiches, baked brie, and crab dip. I think I may have gained 10 lbs in one afternoon!
To see the rest of the pictures, go to:
Anne's Shower
Here are the invitations that I made! There were actually four different ones - the differences were the stickers at the top.
This is the front cover of a book that we made, where people wrote out advice for the parents-to-be. The finished project had silver rings at the top that held the book together.
Part of my gift to them was a diaper cake that I made (with help from Jen!) On the front is the book, "The little mouse, the red ripe strawberry, and the big hungry bear." In the invitation we requested that everyone bring a book instead of card. They got about 30 books, and NO duplicates!
Cake that we had Taylor's Bakery make:
The punch in my punch bowl that I got from Grandma! It had pink lemonade, sprite, and raspberry sherbert. To help dress it up, and keep in line with the pink and yellow theme - I floated raspberries and lemons in it.
Some of the decor. The little stuffed animals are holding the favors - little bottles filled with pink and yellow jelly beans.
And my favorite part- the food!! We had veggie pizza, spinach dip, blt bites, cucumber sandwiches, stuffed strawberries, white chocolate covered strawberries, chicken salad sandwiches, baked brie, and crab dip. I think I may have gained 10 lbs in one afternoon!
To see the rest of the pictures, go to:
Anne's Shower
Anna's shower
Anna and Ryan Dilger are expecting a little girl around the end of November. We had a shower for her on October 14th, at Anne's house. It went great and everything was so beautiful!
Anna grew up on a sheep farm, so of course we needed a little lamb on her invitations! Anne and Jen came over one night and we made these:
The food at the shower was fantastic - Nate (Anna's older brother) does some catering on the side, so he provided all of the food. Chicken salad sandwiches, mini salads, sliced french bread with a cream cheese type spread and a piece of meat on it, and petit fors. So good!
The biggest hit of the shower were the onsies. Most of us aren't really into games anymore, but we still wanted something to do, so we had onsies for everyone to decorate. I won't lie, I was a little nervous about how they'd turn out, but some of them you could buy in a store!
I'm hoping someone got better pictures of the food and decor (a few little lamb things and lots of pink!), because mine didn't turn out. You can see other pictures of the onsie decorating and finished products at:
Anna's Shower
Anna grew up on a sheep farm, so of course we needed a little lamb on her invitations! Anne and Jen came over one night and we made these:
The food at the shower was fantastic - Nate (Anna's older brother) does some catering on the side, so he provided all of the food. Chicken salad sandwiches, mini salads, sliced french bread with a cream cheese type spread and a piece of meat on it, and petit fors. So good!
The biggest hit of the shower were the onsies. Most of us aren't really into games anymore, but we still wanted something to do, so we had onsies for everyone to decorate. I won't lie, I was a little nervous about how they'd turn out, but some of them you could buy in a store!
I'm hoping someone got better pictures of the food and decor (a few little lamb things and lots of pink!), because mine didn't turn out. You can see other pictures of the onsie decorating and finished products at:
Anna's Shower
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Monday, October 08, 2007
Keeneland weekend
On Friday we decided that this would be a good weekend to go visit my Uncle Mike and go to Keeneland for the horse races. The rest of the family is going next weekend, but due to work schedules Jason and I couldn't make it then.
We left early Sunday morning and got to Lexington around 10:30am. We were at Keeneland by noon and Mike gave us a tour before the first race. He also taught us how to read the program and the information about the horses in each race. Then it came to place our first bets! Jason and I each decided that we'd spend $20 total for the day, so that first bet we each spent $4. Jason made back $3 of it, but sadly I choked. The rest of day sort of went like that and we were fairly discouraged. We tried picking our horses based on stats, on odds, on names, on look, and even by a weird alphabet rule. It seemed that the way we chose was always off by one race. We had a system for the way we did things - we always tried to see the horses as the jockeys mounted them and then we'd go place our bets, and then watch the race from either down right by the track, up in the stands, or somewhere else there on a tv.
The last race made our day! Earlier in the day we saw that race 9 had a horse called Panty Raid and we knew we wanted to bet on that one. We also knew that Lady Joanne was favored to win. We felt good about Panty Raid so we bet $6 for her to win, and also $4 for her to show (3rd place.) Then we bet $2 for Lady Joanne to place (2nd.)
You can see the race here:
Keeneland Race #9
If you watch the numbers at the bottom, Lady Joanne is 8 and Panty Raid is 2. You can see that for at least the first half Panty Raid is about halfway back. It was so excited as she came back and won! Lady Joanne came in 2nd - so we got both of our bets right! We ended up winning $35 on that bet - which made our entire day only a loss of $2. Not bad for a day of entertainment!
After Keeneland we went to the Kentucky Horse Park, where we got to see the statue of Secretariat and the plaque that Uncle Mike had done in my dad's name. Basically where it is located is exactly what Secretariat is looking down at.
This a statue of Man O' War - he's actually buried under it.
That brings me to a question - for those of you that read this (whoever you are!) would you rather I post the pictures on here, or is doing it in a link to Picasa ok? Sometimes if there are more than a few pictures it can be time consuming to post them all.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Just call me Martha Stewart
The latest "fad" in fall decorating are glitterfied pumpkins. I've seen them in stores and on Martha Stewart's website so decided to try them myself today. I used fake pumpkins so that I can use them year after year.
Before:
And after! I'm going to do some smaller ones in a brown/purplish color.
Before:
And after! I'm going to do some smaller ones in a brown/purplish color.
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