Post Thanksgiving quiet

Sadly, Thanksgiving is over. My favorite holiday of the year, gone again. We had a wonderful day though, so that's good. Little Keiko came over to spend the day with us. We haven't seen her in such a long time and it was nice to catch up. She even helped us cook our dinner since I'm not really awesome at cooking meat. Or at least trouble-shooting it. It's entirely possible that I made too much food for two people. We had Matt's 10lb turkey breast, a large pyrex of mashed potatoes, another of sweet potatoes, and a large pyrex casserole of stuffing. I also may have made pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, mini apple pies, and salted caramel. Oops. Everything was fantastic and we paired it with a nice wine that we'd been holding onto for a special occasion. We had thought that we might make it to a showing of The Muppets. Haha, that didn't happen. It was hard enough to get off the couch to go to bed.

My lovely new in-laws were sweet enough to come visit for the rest of the weekend and bring us a bunch of things we had left in Michigan. They even took us to Ikea to get a new dresser. Suzanne and I rearranged the kitchen while the men put together the dresser. On Saturday the four of us went to the Home Depot and picked out our Christmas tree. It's so pretty. After setting the tree up we went and has lunch with some of the Snee cousins. They were a riot and helpful to boot. It turns out that they attend one of the churches that Matt and I were seriously considering. We also managed to get them to divulge the names of their favorite area restaurants. I'm so excited to go check them out. Dan and Caroline and the pups stopped by on their way back to North Carolina, which was awesome. I love having family come visit. Zelda got to meet her new cousin and they got along quite well until he wanted to play. Then Zelda got all huffy. It was a very tiring but fun weekend. We're getting back on schedule an beginning to count down the days until Christmas. Our first married Christmas. Teehee

Getting messy

I am not sure why, but things always seem to get horribly messy when I organize them. Sure, eventually they get straightened out, but the halfway point always makes me want to run and hide. Matt and I used some of our gift cards this weekend to buy plastic drawers for the closet of spare'oom. Now I'm going about and organizing my craft things. Hopefully I can get it all put away in a way that makes sense and is usable. Plus, once they're all hidden in the closet we can make it look man cave-y.

We have been shopping around the area for a new church. There weren't a whole lot of choices back in NC but there are quite a few within a short distance of our new place. We've been to three so far. I think we're going to go back to the first and third a couple of more times before we settle down and pick one. The second was kind of scary. Not scary scary, but it was really dour and nobody seemed happy to be there. We're definitely not going back there.

I'm back (and married!)

It's been so very long since either of us posted. I do not understand how some brides start blogs while planning their weddings. This is a short post, and it's unlikely that any will see it. I thought it might be good to get back in the habit of posting.

I am diligently working on getting our new little home in order and usable. It's a little slow going but I'm chopping away at it. We need to get some new furniture, shelves mostly, and some lamps. I think our new dining room may fit our table at full size. I have to get some more things organized before we test my theory though. Matt and I have been like real adults and have been eating all our meals at our table instead of on the couch with tv trays. Pretty fancy. My goal for today is finish unpacking spare 'oom. Not necessarily having it completely organized, but at least all the boxes should be gone.

I have to start planning Thanksgiving dinner too. It's only going to be Matt and I for dinner but I'm still going to make some very tasty, tasty food. Plus lil sis Keiko is going to come visit on Thanksgiving day to hang out and chat for a while. I promised to make her a cheesecake. I think I'll go with a pumpkin cheesecake with graham cracker crust. I just have to find a good recipe. I also need a good stuffing recipe. Once I make out the menu I can write up a shopping list and look around and figure what stores we'll get things at.

The boxes are calling me, I must start actual work.


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Wiener Dog Fest 2010

Today was the annual Wiener Dog Fest at Weaver St. Getting that many dachshunds together at one time is always a site to see. Zelda met up with her good friends Baxter, Kreuza, and Zero. I think her visit's with the Steins' Montana and Wally are really paying off. Not only does Zelda have a puppy crush on Wally but she's been learning to play like a dog with him. Today went really well with our little girl. There was lots of sniffing, being sniffed, and absolutely no hiding from the other dogs. Zelda normally receives a lot of attention just because she's a dachshund. I'm not just saying this because I'm her mom but, even amongst a sea of doxies people are drawn to her. Today we can probably chalk it up to the fact that she was wearing an adorable costume. We lost the musical sit contest in the last round but we'll get them next year. On the plus side, we did win one of the raffle prizes that includes a new brown leather travel carrier.



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Location:Weaver St, Carrboro

Church is fun!

I'm blogging whilst Matt shops. It's a good system, when I "help" do the shopping we end up being here for two hours versus the forty-five minutes that it takes Matt alone. Anyways, a couple of things happened this morning during church that tickled me and I thought I'd share. Our church is chock full of kids, a lot of them are gingers, but that's another story. There are benches along the perimeter of the church which are often taken by parents with small children who can make a quick exit if they start to cry. Today there was a young family sitting near our pew on one of the benches. Matt and I are pretty sure that the parents had a conversation this mooring that went something like this:
"Did you see what she's wearing?"
"Yes but I'm tired, her brothers are fussy and it'll keep her quiet so I'm not going to fight her about it."
That little girl is definitely a kindred spirit. She was wearing a brown dress with blue polka dots and a tiara. Yes, a tiara. I wanted to hug her. Even better, every time the congregation sang, she twirled. It was so fantastic. Sadly, Matt says that I'm not allowed to wear my tiara.

The other thing that happened was that Matt and I got the giggles. This is not the first time this has happened to me in church and somehow I doubt it will be the last. I really blame Matt though, he started it. He always jokes with me that I should sing the Spanish lyrics whenever they have them. Today I did. I wasn't trying to be funny but the combo of my singing and the odd lyrics of the song struck Matt's funny bone and once he started I caught it. Don't worry, we didn't disturb anyone, we weren't making any noise and we got it under control by the end of the song so we didn't miss any of the mass.

Location:Target

A winner is me

The Chapel Hill Public Library has an adult summer reading program going on. Matt pointed it out to me on one of our frequent trips to enrich our minds. I have fond memories of doing them as a kid so I made sure we wasted no time in signing up. I've been on a bit if a reading kick lately so it seemed like a good idea. It works like this: you read a book, write a little review on one of their forms and turn it in, every Friday they pull a couple of the forms and the people who wrote them win a gift. The third week I won! Yay! It wasn't very expensive-- a notepad and some magnetic poetry, but that's not really the point. I won!


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More food

I have continued my cooking quest from earlier by blowing through several food blogs in search of great recipes. I'm really it itching to try them out. I made a so-so spinach and cheese strata on last Tuesday that left me a little sad. It had sounded so delicious, instead it was kind of bland. You know when Matt says it's bland, it must be pretty bad *wink*. I think if I were to make it again I would cut the recipe in half, add a lot of basil and something more substantial like mushrooms and onions. Spinach just didn't really give off any flavor. I also made some really tasty chocolate chip cookies. I wasn't big on the texture, these were a little too flat and crispy for me, but the flavor was wonderful. The recipe called for a lot more vanilla than I'm used to seeing in a chocolate chip cookie recipe and I used dark chocolate chips instead of regular ones. I continued my new adventures in food with candied grapefruit peel. Surprisingly Matt really like them. I had to cut the peel very thin to get as much of the pith off as possible since that's where a lot of the bitterness comes from. I can tell I've gotten Matt caught up in the cooking too. After he finished cleaning the kitchen he started trying to figure out if we could do the same with orange peels(we can). He now also really wants me to do some lemon peels.
That stuff was all last week (week before?) and vie done some more cooking since then. My friend Sarah gave me a recipe for a panzanella caprese salad. Can I just say that caprese salad is one of my most favorite things as it is but adding toasted bread to it just makes it divine. I made it for Matt's coworker's going away party and it was a big hit. I also made the most disappointing cheesecake of my life. Before this I thought that I had a really amazing recipe, and I do but that is only half the story. When I cook my cheesecake I usually put the pan in a roasting pan of water. I learned the trick from Alton Brown which makes up for the worst cookie recipe I've ever used that is also his. It helps the cheesecake cook more evenly and allows it too heat up/cool off much more slowly. I've never made one without doing that and I decided that I was going to forgo it this time. Big mistake. The darn thing was burn-y around the edges, fell in the middle, and the texture was off. It still tasted fine but, it was not the divine thing I'm used to. Ah well, you live you learn. It also brings me to my next subject.
The reason that I didn't want to do the roasting pan of water is that it would be a huge pain to try and lift it would have been an awful idea. I fell about two weeks ago while stepping over the the doggy door at the top of the stairs. Not graceful but then I rarely am. We were pretty sure that I sprained my wrist but it wasn't really feeling better so Matt made me tell the doctor about it. She made me get an x-ray which didn't show any break. However, she tells me that it's quite possible that my wrist is broken because the bone that she was trying to look at is hard to see breaks in. So I'm too keep wrist wrapped and if it still hurts in two-ish weeks it still hurts I have to go to a bone doctor. At this point the pain keeps getting worse so Matt and I are pretty sure it's broken. So, as my dear friend Linda said, perhaps I should not try making bread by hand until we know for sure.

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