Merry Christmas!

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.  Isaiah 7:14

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Christmas and you are enjoying your holiday break from work/school! Our Christmas eve dinner was a HUGE success!! I am beyond happy with the results! Of course there were a few hiccups along the way, but nothing that would ruin the night! All the dishes we made turned out great: 

 Caprese Salad Bites as an appetizer. I also made the infamous artichoke dip (a KY family favorite) and Pub Cheese fondue- which aren't pictured.

 Pull apart garlic Parmesan cheese bread. Made from scratch! With yeast and all!

 Easy Cheesy Zucchini Squash Bake

 My mother-in-law's (famous, according to Hubby) sweet potato casserole. It turned out great! That was really the only thing I was worried about since it was legendary and all.

 Balsamic Green Beans with mushrooms. It was adapted slightly to fit my tastes- thanks to the practice rounds over the last few weeks!

 Roasted brussel sprouts- which were AH-mazing. I could have just eaten these and been happy. seriously- they were that good.

 Hubby deep fried a turkey for our main course. And for his first time- it was really good! Extra extra crispy but good!

How many brothers does it take to carve a turkey?

Overall it was a good time! Christmas morning we got up and headed over to my brother in-law's to open presents and nosh on a supremo spread cooked by my fabulous sister in-law! I'm not going to lie though, I missed my family terribly and it was tough not being able to hang out with them. =(

Later, Hubby and I exchanged gifts with each other and watched Kane open his gifts... It was a memorable first Christmas for sure!
Hope you all had a great Christmas too and we wish you a wonderful new year!
XOXO
-Melissa =)

Practice makes perfect

Whew! This is the time of year when I feel like I am constantly running all day long and yet I still never seem to get anything done! This week has been exactly that. I had to print out one of these adorable free printables, Peek at the Week from Jen at one of my favorite blogs: I heart organizing (love her) just to keep our crazy week straight!

One of the things on my to do list this week was to practice our recipes for the Christmas Eve dinner were hosting at our house. Last week I made an Easy Cheesy Zucchini Bake from a recipe I found on pinterest:

This is Kalyn's picture, I didn't take a picture of our dish because we devoured it too fast. It was delish!

That went so well that I decided to try another recipe from the same blog, (which I also found on pinterest- I am addicted, seriously) Roasted Green Beans with Mushrooms, Balsamic, and Parmesan. Also, very yummy and very easy, next time I think I will add a little bit more Balsamic vinegar to it though. This is why we test them out right!? This picture is also from Kalyn's blog because again, we devoured it too fast to remember to take a picture!

Tonight I am planning on trying two new recipes (again from pinterest, maybe I should change the title of this post to I love pinterest, sheesh) One is a crock pot taco soup recipe of sorts that I modified slightly for my veggie preferences and the other is a vegetarian southwest baked egg roll recipe. I am pumped! This time i'll remember to take pictures- promise!

Other big news this week- the Club has been retired folks! Hubby's Club was upgraded to this fancy shmancy splint. He has a lot more finger movement now so he can finally grasp things. Yay!
On a funny side note, we went to one of my new favorite restaurants in East Atlanta called Across the Street. Their decorating style is a little on the eclectic side. They had an enormous blow up Santa outside their restaurant, complete with a Corona in his hand. Hilarious!

Seriously though, you all should check the restaurant out, its has a tex mex style that i am totally digging with some unique ingredients. But make sure to order whatever you do with a side of Diablo hot sauce. it is PHENOMENAL! They also have a spicy margarita that is soooo good. I want one right now in fact. There is a deal on Scout Mob right now for 50% of your entire check- alcohol included. So, you have no excuse to try them out!

Well, wish me luck with my pinterest recipe attempts tonight! Hopefully i'll get all my Christmas shopping done this weekend too! eh, I can hope can't I?
Have a fantastic weekend!
xoxo
Melissa =)

Happy Birthday Sister!

Today, 26 years ago, my beautiful little sister was born!!

She's busily studying for her doctorate up in Pittsburgh and is soon going to be super successful in about 3 years or so! Yay sister! So send her some birthday love today, and maybe a bottle of whiskey just to take the edge off. ;)

Tis the Season!

We've been diligently decorating for Christmas this year and we finally finished decorating our very first Christmas tree! Yay! Thanks to Hubby's incapacitated right arm, I got to put every single light up this year and my fingers are not thanking me for it! But its well worth it i think...

I've been learning to use the extra features of my point and shoot camera a little bit better. I love how it looks like the lights are really glowing in this picture! I think I'm almost ready to graduate to a bigger camera!

We also decorated the outside of our house =)
Nothin' fancy, but it's some bling to brighten up the street a little!

Even Kane is getting geared up for the holidays!

We are staying here in Atlanta this year and Hubby's side of the family is coming over for Christmas Eve dinner. So, my very first married Christmas, we'll be hosting dinner for 8 people! If anyone has any fantastic recipes, let me know because we are still developing the menu! In fact, we are in the recipe testing phase currently. Since i have zero experience hosting dinners, i have turned to the world wide web for help and have been gathering recipes that look good for a Christmas eve dinner. Its not going to be very formal, more of a buffet-like serving because we don't have enough chairs around our table for everyone. Ideas, anyone?

We actually were throwing around the idea of fondue as an appetizer- but it can get pretty messy. I found out that Hubby has NEVER had fondue! can you believe that?? So we busted out our fondue pot last night and made some cheddar cheese "pub fondue" (Big thanks to my awesome friend, Stephanie for our super cool fondue pot wedding present!)

It was delicious! I can't wait to try more fondue recipes in it! I had no idea it was so versatile too! you can make tempura in it and everything! Its a powerful little pot and not nearly as hard to clean as i thought it was going to be. Yay fondue! Anyone have any experience with fondue appetizers- or even fondue desserts for that matter!? I have no idea what to serve! Help!
We'll keep you posted on the progress! Hope your holidays are just as fun as our have been so far!
-Melissa =)

Wow! What a week! ...of laziness

So here we are again, another whole week since I blogged! I have put, "blog" on my list of things to do every day since Friday. Actually, I have put A LOT of things on my to do list over the last week, that are also still on the list. Ha. All that aside, I wanted to update you on Hubby's status post surgery. He's doing great! Frustrated, but great! The doctor put a humongous splint/cast thingy on his wrist after surgery last Friday. We have affectionately dubbed it "The Club" because that is exactly what it is.

Hubby has "clubbed" a few things this week including a ceramic diffuser that we had in our sunroom. No tears were shed over that one- promise. Only one more week till he gets the splint off, but we're not counting.

With Hubby only having one functional arm (aside from the accidental clubbing) chores and most household duties have become my responsibility. I haven't done well with these responsibilities so you will not be seeing a picture of our newly decorated house until I have time to pick up (yikes!) haha like the title of this post says, I have been L-A-Z-Y. I didn't get my mom's birthday present out until 2 days AFTER her birthday. (sorry mom) And my poor sister's birthday present will end up being late too since I haven't mailed it out yet and her birthday is Saturday. Slacker City! My name is not Johnny on the Spot this week. My plan is to be super productive today and get everything on our chore list done as well as finish decorating and snap a few pictures for your enjoyment to blog tomorrow! So until then, I'll leave you with this delightful picture... Please note the super sexy no slip bright yellow socks. Oh yeah.

Wish me luck! over and out!
Love, Melissa =)

Say Goodbye to the 3rd Thumb

Well, tomorrow is the day! Surgery day for Hubby. He has a ganglion cyst on the underside of his right wrist that has gotten HUGE. He joked the other day in small group that it looked like a 3rd thumb; funny and gross all at the same time. Sorry for the mental picture, it's really not that big! It doesn't hurt him much but it does restrict his wrist movement a little and if he does too much activity (mostly exercising, lifting weights, etc) it will start to ache. So, off it comes! 

For your educational purposes, here is a diagram of a ganglion cyst. Hubby's is on the underside of his wrist though.

Usually cysts aren't a big deal but because of where this one is on his wrist, they are going to have to surgically remove it to avoid risking a slashed artery or something terrible. He's going to have to wear a splint on his wrist for a while, but other than that he should be back to normal in no time!

I think I am more nervous for him than he is! It reminds me of when I had my foot surgeries. I know this isn't nearly as bad as those but I still get nervous thinking about it! If everyone doesn't mind saying  a little prayer for him, that would be awesome! We'll keep you posted on the recovery process. Hope you all have a GREAT weekend! =)

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

Wow. I can't believe it's been over a week since I last posted!! I'm such a slacker! A lot has happened so i am going to apologize in advance for the long post, I promise I'll break it up in the future!

We had an amazing Thanksgiving holiday and I hope you all did too! We have so much to be thankful for! Hubby rolled his eyes everytime I pulled out my camera this week and yelled, "time to document for the blog!!" That being said, I have a plethera of pictures to post! We drove up to my hometown, Lexington, Kentucky last wednesday to stay with my parents for the holiday. I thought we were going to have a relaxing, do nothing, read-my-book, catch-up-on-all-that-missing-sleep kind of week. Boy, was I wrong! My mom had all sorts of activities planned for us and I loved every minute of it! My mom made a fantastic vegetarian dinner for us on wednesday:


I am going to have to get the recipe from her- its THAT good- i swear.
Then Thursday morning Hubby and I ran the 2011 Thoroughbred Classic 5K at Keeneland race track with my fantasticly awesome friend, Leila.

I haven't ran 3 miles straight in quite a while actually. I have problems with my knees; I think I need new shoes. But, it felt great to run! I'm going to sign us up for more races soon... =)

After a fantastic turkey day of pool lessons from my dad, stuffing myself with thanksgiving goodness (my mom made food for seriously, 12 people, again), a little pre- black Friday shopping at Michael's and a board game of Life, we called it a day!
 
Friday, I wasn't that impressed with the black friday deals so I decided to sleep in this year. Plus, my sister wasn't here (sad!) =( so it just wasnt the same without her. Hubby and I ventured out around 10 am hoping the crowds had dispersed by then. It wasn't bad- we got a few deals but nothing to write home about.

Later My mom took Hubby and I to see a visiting exhibit at the Lexington Center called Bodies Revealed. It was a ton of real human bodies stripped of their skin and preserved to show the muscles and organs of our bodies!
We weren't allowed to take pictures and you should be thankful for that. It was incredibly interesting though, I am really glad we went.

After the exhibit, we walked downtown to see the anual lighting ot the Christmas tree in triangle park. They just built a little ice skating rink right in the middle of the park, kind of like NYC in rockefeller center. I can't believe how much downtown Lexington has changed! After our birds-eye view of the lighting, we headed to Chuy's- a new Tex-Mex place, which was awesome! And if that wasn't enough for one day, my dad planned a double feature movie extravaganza when we got home which included a giant tub of microwave popcorn. Needless to say, I slept well that night!

Saturday morning, We gave Kane a bath at my favorite local pet store (it was Local Business Saturday)

And then headed with my parents to a local restaurant owned by our old neighbors called Windy Corner. It was AMAZING! They serve all local food and even had some vegetarian options for me! Yay! I highly recommend it!

After lunch, we drove to a local winery to take advantage of a great groupon deal my mom got: Wine tasting of 6 diffiernt wines, a bottle of wine to take home and two free wine glasses. It was SO fun!

Yay for local businesses!

After all that fun, we came home to watch the UK Wildcats beat Portland with two of my bestest friends in the world =)
Sunday, we ate breakfast at Doodles, another local food restaurant and made the should be 6 hour trip home to Atlanta, only this time it took us 8 hours thanks to the rain and traffic.

WHEW! What a great week! But now its back to the grind! Hope everyone had as good of a holiday as we did. Oh, and Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

Well, here we go!

SO, I did it.
I finally started a blog of my very own after months of wishing for it and talking about it and weeks of deliberating over the name. I can't promise I will blog consistently and definitely not every day, but I wanted to set up a place where our families and friends can keep tabs on the happenings of our life! I am still green when it comes to this blogging stuff but we'll learn together =) I do promise to keep things exciting! There may also be some guest bloggers to keep you on your toes... So, follow me!! and comment often! Until then, i'll leave you with some pictures of my family!
-Melissa