Valentine’s Day for us is starting to become synonymous with an amazing homemade meal, enjoyed in the comforts of our kitchen, where we don’t have to deal with crowded restaurants and jacked up prices. We recently (beginning of February) started following a (somewhat-modified) paleo diet, based on a book I read called “It Starts With Food.” I won’t go into detail about it here, because this ain’t a food and diet blog, but the basic idea is to eliminate all the fake junk from your diet… so, generically speaking, we’re trying month of no dairy, bread, alcohol, or sugar. Only tons of veggies, high quality meats, quality fats, and a limited amount of fruit and nuts. Oh and coffee and tea are allowed (without additives).
It’s been surprisingly easy, after the first couple days of feeling deprived. My only complaints are 1) missing cheese and 2) it costs A LOT to buy quality meat and veggies. It’s been an adjustment for sure, but we’re both sleeping a lot better it seems, and I think my energy levels feel higher overall. I’ve been documenting my meals here if you care to follow along… Anyways, none of this has anything to do with Valentine’s Day, except that we were extra choosy with our meal last night… forgoing the usual cheese and wine spread I usually would have clamored for and went with asparagus wrapped in proscuitto, New York strip steaks (from Harvey’s Market) topped with sauteed onions and mushrooms, and a bosch pear with cinnamon for dessert. WE BE FANCY.
We spent Christmas weekend in Maryland and Delaware: window shopping, eating family meals, drinking wine and talking, watching a light snow fall outside, catching up with friends we haven’t seen in forever, exchanging gifts, posing the doggies for pictures, scarfing down cookies and fudge, and playing team Scrabble. Just perfect.
Happy Halloween everyone! I am pretty excited for treak-or-treaters to start showing up in a few hours — I’m hoping that people actually decide to come out this year, despite the recent bad weather. I have high hopes that there are some little kiddos in our neighborhood who are probably tired of being cooped up and ready for some candy! We have Peppermint Patties and Caramel-Apple lollipops!
Luckily all of our pumpkin carving is out of the way and our jack-o-lanterns are ready to go, thanks to our friends Mike and Lindsey, who hosted an awesome pumpkin party last weekend at their house. Not only did it provide the chance to watch the Skins, carve a pumpkin, AND eat fried chicken all at the same time (so awesome), but it also saved me the yearly task of trying to force Matt to carve a pumpkin. Apparently when we are in a group of friends, it’s ok. But home alone with just me, not happening. In fact, this year I had trouble even talking him into getting a pumpkin while we were standing at the fruit and veggie stand in Union Market. I already picked out my little guy, and asked Matt which one he wanted. I think we just need one pumpkin. Eventually I got him to walk out with the fattest, squattest, most mangled one they had available. It’s the little things. I LOVE Halloween!
We had our annual Halloween costume party on Friday night, and I think it was a great success all around, but especially if you judge it by the amount of beer and candy we all consumed, and/or the amount of dogs in costumes in our house at any given time (5 dogs, 4 of them costumed), and/or the number of times the MJ Thriller dance was performed in our living room. I managed to rig up a makeshift photo booth on my laptop too, so we got some pictures to prove it this year. We went with a Hollywood theme and I was totally blown away by all of our friends clever and creative costumes. Of course, we put a prize on the line this year, a bottle of DC’s own gin, so I’m thinking that’s why everyone stepped it up. Good times!! Happy Halloween!
Yehaw indeed!! It’s almost the weekend. We have plans for carbo-loading tonight, a long, 8 mile run tomorrow morning at Centennial Park in HoCo, fireworks show down at The Wharf tomorrow night, Easter brunch with family on Sunday morning, and the second annual liquor-egg hunt at our friend Jen’s place on Sunday. Action! Packed!
I’ve noticed tons of Easter decorations up around the neighborhood recently, and I realized that we don’t actually have any. And then I realized that they’re kinda creepy-looking, and that’s why we don’t have any, and I’m ok with that. Gigantic bunnies and chickens just make me think of a combination of Donnie Darko and the few times I did costume jobs for Easter (see below) a few years ago. It’s just offsetting to me. The way some people are nervous around clowns, I don’t really like oversized Easter-themed things.
Here I was as Shelly the Chick a few years back. Yeah, I have pics of me with the head off to prove it, but there’s no way way I was posting those. JJ and I were reminiscing about this costume job last weekend while we were on the train up to CT. I can’t remember if she was that lady duck in the apron or if it was someone else? It was cold as hell that weekend, even inside the costumes, and there were no kids anywhere to be found around that shopping center. Not one of the better days to be an Easter costume.
Happy Valentine’s Day! I painted a bunch of these heart cards over the past week or so, a little at a time. I spend a lot of time sitting at my desk waiting for things to render, and watercolors are a pretty nice way to pass the time here and there. I had every intention of sending them out to friends and family, and then I never got around to it. So, I figured I’d still share them on here. Hope everyone is feelin’ the love today!
Matt and I are planning to cook dinner for ourselves tonight – on the menu are potstickers, crab cakes (for a Maryland girl, I have surprisingly never tried to make crabcakes. going to rely on lots of Old Bay so I don’t see how this could go wrong), sweet potato fries, and S’mores for dessert. Going to have to fire up the fireplace for the last part and try to find some skewers of some sort. We also have plans to start putting together all the Ikea shelves that are going in the new office room. Furniture assembly is romantic, people.
Woweeezowweee, I can’t believe that the new year is almost here, and I only managed to post twice before now in the month of December. We are still alive! We’ve been crazy busy, but in a good way. Finishing up the semester always feels like it rolls right into the holidays without much time for a breather, and with family visits, home projects, and all the rest in between, this last month has really flown by with lots of happy times. Matt and I each put two more grad classes behind us and are now a 1.5 years (Matt) and 1 year (me) away from our Masters Degrees. Woo hoo! Will life go back to normal after that?
In early Decemeber, David and Kristy flew home from Alaska to visit until Christmas Eve. We got to see them a bunch of times, and Kristy even came up to Delaware for the day with us ladies for the annual Christmas tea. A few nights before Christmas, we had the whole family over for dinner. We exchanged gifts, ate sweet-potato-chicken chili for dinner, and played Bananagrams (best game ever). Oh, and we all ate lots of cookies and drank chocolate falvored wine. Kristy and I came up with the idea that maybe we should line the rims of our wine glasses with Nutella. Kind of like the same idea as a salt rim for a margarita. Though we didn’t actually execute our plan, I still think we were onto something brilliant that night.
cookies, fudge, and bananagrams!
our stockings
please note the awesome tuxedo shirt that Kristy is wearing while playing Quordy so quickly that her fingers are blurry.
