Thanksgiving 2009

I know I am a little behind in posting this, considering it's almost Christmas, but I'm trying to catch you up...This was the year that we decided to have Thanksgiving at our place. You know with the whole renovation we wanted show off what all we had accomplished as well as utilize the space we had retro-fitted. My mom and I spent a whole Saturday planning and shopping which was a lot of fun, who knew all of the little secrets to get things done and on the table. We took out all of our dishes and silverware which was super fun, at least for me. We’d only used it once before and that was on Valentine’s Day this year.

We ended up having my parents, my Nan, Chris’ parents and their friend Christine come over for Thanksgiving lunch. My mom and dad came over early in the morning to help start out the day and the morning just progressed without a hitch. Everything was on the table ready to be eaten at 1:15. Hey only 15 minutes late, not bad for my first time. So as Chris was carving the turkey like a great host he found that I actually didn’t get all of the “goodies” for lack of a better term out of the bird. Oops, but thank goodness it didn’t ruin the turkey.

We enjoyed our time with family and friends and had a lot to be thankful for this year, we are truly blessed. It was also fun to explain everything to Christine who is from China and over here at seminary for Christian counseling. For example, my favorite: Why do you call a turkey a bird? Response: "Because it’s a bird."

Ace of Cakes

I always helped my mom and dad cook in the kitchen when I was little. I would pull myself up onto the counter and be my parent's little sous chef, especially when it came to baking chocolate chip cookies. I was a pro at licking the bowl that's for sure; but I had no idea that one day cooking would become one of my favorite hobbies.

Okay, for starters I must admit that I am a little obsessed with the Food Network and have been for the past 8 years or so... one of the ladies at Schumacher my summer internship was always on the website and watching demos, etc. So throughout college I always watched the shows and tried to cook different things when I could. Being in the sorority house didn't really allow that to happen a lot, but when I got my apartment I sure tested out the kitchen.

Chris and I enjoy fun and tasteful food. I find so much enjoyment in serving others great tasting food and the conversations that arise over dinner, lunch, or even brunch. I can't wait to share our new kitchen with our little ones someday and open their eyes to all of the fun food out there. It's always fun to read about other people's experiences with food. When I read blogs there are always a lot dealing with baking cakes or cupcakes; which brings me to the point of this blog.

So the other week Chris and I headed to DFW to pick his parent's up from a 2 week stint in China. We hadn't heard from them since the 2 weeks before when we said our goodbyes dropping them off. This was their second trip over to be a part of a Youth Camp that ministers to the native kids over there. So we run in expecting them to be there, and their baggage claim and gate changed, so we ran over to the other baggage claim area. So we were just standing there waiting and waiting for their bags to pass by and Chris noticed a familiar face, and lo and behold it was Duff Goldman the chef/owner at Charm City Cakes in Baltimore. They do amazing, life like, gorgeous cakes for anyone and everyone. Sadly they cost a pretty penny, but that's besides the point... Chris and I always enjoy watching this show on the Food Network, the personalities of all of the staff are hilarious. Anyways, when I was in Baltimore last year I made my co-worker Leigh Anne drive around Baltimore trying to find their bakery so I could take a picture in front of it. Well let's just say a few too many one way roads and we got lost in a not so good part of town and never found it. Well it was him alright just super content and quiet. You could tell he didn't want to attract a lot of attention. Chris and I were wondering what he had going on in Dallas and we wondered if it was something for the show. We didn't want to run up to him claiming we were his biggest fans, but it was a lot of fun to see another foodie in person. Guess we will just have to see on this upcoming season of Ace of Cakes.

Renovation Update

Well we took the other week off to knock out a lot of work on our house. Overall it was a great experience, Chris and I survived and so did our marriage. We really enjoyed taking the week off and enjoyed the time together in making our house our own. Although there were many late nights we were well rested come Monday morning when we both returned to work.

Friday night was the start of it all, our friends the Ormesher's came over and helped demolish our kitchen cabinets and Jonathan even helped build a little bit of our island. Bedtime: 1:30am.

Saturday we woke up, our attic was exposed a little so it was freezing in our house. We had a quick breakfast and got to work. Today our friends the O'Dowds came by to help finish demolishing the cabinets and work a little on the wall placement. We continued to rip down all of the drywall basically throughout our entire living space since the builder in the 70's did such a hatchet job on it. Bedtime: Unknown... I've slept since then...

Sunday we took a break in the morning time and went over to have breakfast with our small group. Once we got home we moved a lot of the demolished stuff out to the curb. Thank the Lord for bulk pick-up, that's a post for another day. We continued to rip out the cabinets and worked on framing some of the new walls. Our friends the Heltons came over and helped put up some drywall and work on our annoying kitchen laminate. Bedtime: 1-2ish

Monday some of the guys came over to work on stuff with Chris like plumbing and lighting and stuff. Once everyone ended up leaving we started the never ending drywall extravaganza. I guess whoever built our house didn't place the studs at the typical spacing, so we basically had to cut every piece down. We both had carple tunnel since we couldn't move our hands the next day. I am just thankful we finally got the fire place covered up. Bedtime: 2:30ish

Tuesday we had more work being done on the house, we had to kind of just sit around and make sure everything was getting done the way we wanted it to. We continued to work on drywall into the wee hours of the night, like around 4:30.Jonathan came over to help, which was a big help. We were supposed to have the texture people in on Wednesday but Chris and I were so exhausted that we stopped at 4:30 and called it a night. Little did we know that we would not have hot water to wash up after a long days work. It was miserable, but I just wanted to hop into bed at that point in time.

Wednesday Chris woke up early to call the painter and cancel, he wasn't too happy with us. But we can only do so much, you know. Anyways so we basically worked on the drywall for the entire day and Lauren and Brice even came over before small group to help out. We didn't go to bed until around 3:00. There was absolutely no way we could have gotten the drywall done Tuesday night if it took us an entire day to get where we needed to be. We worked like a team and got through it all.

Thursday the texture crew showed up and did their thing. And our space finally took shape. We stayed out of their way, mostly back in our bedroom just reading and catching up on Chuck and the Office. After they left we worked on a few odds and ends. We rented a floor scraper to get up the 30 year linoleum. We were able to get it up in about 30 minutes... I would highly recommend it if you are in the predicament we were in. It was just impossible to get up with hand scrapers.

Friday the texture crew showed up for the morning and we continued to work on small things, mostly making trips to and from Home Depot. After the stuff in the kitchen dried we began to lay out the cabinets and get some of that started. Our friends the Forte's came over to help. They brought their boxer Tiki and she played/wore out Ty. Then our friends the O'Dowds came over and helped with the cabinets and scrape the floors. Bedtime: Midnight-thirty

Saturday we were held captive in our bedroom for most of the afternoon since our texture guys were retexturing basically half of our house. We finally took a little time off to go out to eat and relax.

Sunday we continued to install some cabinets and we were done for the week.

That being said here's some pictures of our semi-finished product. We definitely have more work to do, but we are taking it one step at a time. Our next goals are to install the flooring, and cabinet hardware and paint along with a HUGE list of little things.

Peace Offering

So with all of the work we have been doing to our house we have had a lot of trash on our curb lately. The other week when we were at home we actually got the chance to witness the men picking up all of our cabinets, wood, trash, etc. They didn't look too happy with us. Knowing all the trash they had already picked up and all that we had stashed in our backyard we decided to make a peace offering. I bought some of those amazing sugar cookies from Tom Thumb and decided to share them with the bulk trash men. I left them a little note letting them know how much we appreciate all of their hard work. We left them our last big load today, I hope they weren't looking for more cookies.

Renovation Update

We have been working hard on the house for the past couple of weekends. We have sucessfully pulled up all of the carpet throughout our living, dining, and hallway. Ty is not too happy that we have taken away his comfy carpet. Soon enough we will be replacing it. I've made him a little palette with some of our old blankets. We have knocked down a few walls which you should be able to see in the pictures. The guys from small group came over and helped Chris reconfigure all of the roof/ceiling supports. And our friends Brice and Lauren have been a HUGE help spending most of their weekends at our place. (they're in the pics below)

Let's see what else have we accomplished... We tore out the marble entry (yuck) and put in some new concrete to level things out. I helped Chris do this on my birthday and I definitely got my work out, that's for sure. We have removed our brick from our fire place, it was kind of old and dirty and with what we are planning on doing to the rest of the house it would stick out like a sore thumb. We de-popcorned the ceilings, and yes that's a technical term, what a glorious task. You can see Chris below with his huge scraper. It's crazy how much old lady smell left the house that weekend.

Here are some pictures of how things look now...We are working hard, even though you might not be able to tell from these pictures.Things should start to look different in the next couple of days. More updates to follow.

We're Foodies...

Chris and I really enjoy being in the kitchen together, not just in the room but actually cooking/baking together. I am so happy that we share this common love for Food. We are hooked on all of the fun cooking/chef shows out there. We love watching Top Chef New York, Chopped, Iron Chef America and so many of the other food shows that are on T.V. these days. We have tried to create our own recipes as we cook throughout the week, which is always fun and inventive. We really like to try new dishes all the time as well as trying out new ingrediants that we find at the local market. We love all food has to offer, a quote from a recent gourmet column says it all, " some of us cook, some of us grow, all of us eat." We love entertaining and enjoy all of the great conversations that occur at the dinner table. I am going to try to post some of our new recipes, our favorite recipes, and our own recipes. Look for that coming soon...

Design Inspiration

So in the next couple of months we will be starting to renovate our house and making it our own. Usually on my lunch breaks I will brainstorm on what I want our house to look like and try to figure out my design taste. Being a designer it's hard to narrow what you like to one specific design type; ie. modern, contemporary, traditional, transitional, country cottage, french country the list goes on and on. I want our house to be cohesive in design and I just want it to fit Chris and my personalities. No more mauve paint, palm tree wallpaper, rooster light fixtures, and old lady draperies, etc. I happen to love simple and classic designs, so it will be polar opposite of what we have lived with for the past couple of years. I guess you could say that we tend to like things somewhere in between comfortable and modern. So I thought I would share with you some of our inspiration photos... and what we're hoping to achieve with this renovation overhaul. We love to entertains so we ultimately want all who come into our home to feel welcome and comfortable. Be looking for a kitchen inspiration post... that's for another lunch hour.

Christmas...Recap

Our Christmas was amazing this year, we got to spend it with my family. My sister and brother-in-law and nephew came into town which was such a fun experience. We didn’t do a whole lot which was nice to just relax and enjoy family. Christmas Eve we both got off from work early which was a nice treat, although there  was no traffic going to and from work since everyone else in the world seemed to have Christmas Eve off. We decided to open our presents to each other on Christmas eve since we were going to my parents Christmas morning. Giving gifts is one of our favorite things to do. We just relaxed the rest of the afternoon and finished up any last minute gift wrapping, then we headed off to our church Christmas Eve service. The Village only had three services and we were going to the last one at 7:00, and we barely made it in. They had to turn people away which is always hard to do especially on Christmas Eve. The service was great, I love hearing all of the Christmas music especially at our church where they like to mix things up a little bit. The message was short and sweet and then we of course did the whole candle lighting, which is always such a pretty sight. We then headed back home and hung out for a bit.

Christmas morning we woke up early in order to get over to my parents by the time Grant woke up. We didn’t want them waiting on us, so we packed up the pups and all the gifts and headed over to my parents. We got there and settled in, Justin and Val are starting the tradition to read the story of the birth of Jesus Christmas morning before opening gifts. I thought this was a great idea and a great reminder of the reason for the season. We enjoyed the gift giving and getting and the chance to see and hold Grant. He is a big boy now he was 4 months old on Christmas Day. Our entertainment was his tummy time and watching him role over and seeing his smiles. He is a very happy camper most of the time. My Aunt, Uncle, and cousins ended up coming over for a late lunch, we had a great Ham dinner and it was super tasty. We then proceeded to play games and we watched Wall-E apparently I missed that bus, but everyone in my family except for Chris and I got this movie for Christmas this year. It was a cute movie, but I didn’t get to see it all since I volunteer to help Val with Grant’s bath time. He was such a great little guy in the bath tub so happy all the time. I will have to post some pictures of him soon. He is getting quite the personality.

The day after Christmas I had the day off so I slept in as long as the dogs would let me and then I made my way to the 70% off sale at Crate and Barrel. It was pure chaos in there, let me tell you. I think I will wait and go the day after the day after Christmas from now on. They had the exact same stuff the following day. Then I just went home and relaxed. It was a great day off, and all I could think about was our upcoming renovation to our house. I tried to get everything in order since we were having 10 people over for dinner Saturday. My grandparents were flying in for the week, so we had them over along with my parents and Valerie, Justin, & Grant as well as the Shacks came over too. It was a great dinner and we just enjoyed being with family and spending time catching up on life over a couple of games.

Christmas was great, we enjoyed this year and can’t wait to see what next year brings.

Thanksgiving in 528 words...

Thanksgiving started off with a bang, I got to leave the office early which is always a nice treat! We had to wait around the house until Meghan and Dan’s flight got in. So we packed up our things and loaded it all including the pups into the rental car (which isn’t allowed supposedly) and headed to the airport. It’s always so fun to see Meghan and Dan so we were excited to get to see them this Holiday. So pups and all we headed out to Sulphur Springs for Thanksgiving at the Shacks. We didn’t get there until 11:00 or so but we stayed up catching up for a bit.

Every morning Chris or I would have to get up to let the pups out early in the morning. They get really excited when we are there for some reason.  But most mornings consisted of sleeping in and enjoying a great filling breakfast and great conversations. Then we all just lounged around waiting for someone to get motivated to do something. Thursday of course we just lounged around and cooked our Thanksgiving lunch. It was quite the feast, let me tell you. After everything digested we went to the Sulphur Springs movie theater to see Four Christmases. It was okay, not my favorite but still funny at parts. Chris’ parents have a Wii so that was a lot of our entertainment for the week, not only Wii but Wii fit so it was really fun and active all at the same time. It was funny to watch Chris and his Dad ski, play soccer, and do the ski jump.

Friday we ended up making a trip out to Rockwall to do some shopping, no 4 am wake up call for use though.  We divided and conquered, the girls ran to Ulta and the girly shops as the men made their way to Best Buy and Dicks Sporting Goods. We even took all took a picture with Santa Claus and ate lunch along the lake. We made it out of there around 4.00 or so.

We got back to the Shacks’ and began the College football extravaganza!  We ended up watching the A&M/TX game, the Kansas/Mizzou game, the Tech/Baylor game and of course last but NOT least the nail bitter the OU/OSU game. The game was full of nail biting plays, scary acrobatics, and much celebration. We are so pumped that we won, since that nailed us the #2 spot in the BCS polls. Off to the Big 12 Championship and hopefully the National Championship. Yeah for Sooner Football!!

We really enjoyed our Thanksgiving with the Shack’s this year; it was a great time with family and friends. We made our trek back to Dallas to get Meghan and Dan back to Denver in time for their church service. Chris and I enjoyed relaxing the entire afternoon; the pups were zonked from having toddlers all over them this past weekend. They did really good with having kids hanging all over them and playing with them all day Saturday. Once we got home we got our Christmas tree down and started to decorate for the holidays. Oh and I finally got the chance to bake some cookies… I love the Holidays!

Thanksgiving Lunch

My office has an annual Thanksgiving lunch in November to celebrate Thanksgiving and of course eat. (one of our favorite things to do) Everyone brings one of their favorite dishes and we end up with a potluck lunch. I brought Chris’ mom’s green bean bundles since they are always a hit. It totally got me in the mood for Thanksgiving.

We invited a couple of the Dallas Police Officers that typically work our area to come by for lunch and give us a quick overview of some safety tips for the holidays. The officer that sat by us used to rock climb so we had a lot to talk about which was nice.  I can’t wait until next year’s lunch. Yum-O

Chop Chop

Well, this past weekend Chris and I went to a Knife Skills class at Central Market in Dallas and it was a blast. We managed to leave without any injuries. Hopefully we will be able to keep that up at home. It was a fun experience to learn how to chop, dice, julienne, mince etc. like the pros. At the end we got to eat lunch (a great pasta dish, salad, and dessert) made from everything we cut up. We both enjoy cooking and being in the kitchen, so hopefully this will make us (Chris) a little safer in the kitchen.