busygirl

wordless wednesday: can i go back now?

try this: pizza calzones.

Going along with the comfort food theme...our version of homemade calzones!  These are a staple in our house, especially on nights when none of us want to cook a full meal or don't have a ton of time. 

Ingredients: 

1 pkg of Pillsbury refrigerated pizza dough

2 cups of your favorite pizza or spaghetti sauce

2 cups of mozzerella cheese

All the toppings you love...pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, onions, sausage...my favorite is leftover chicken and spinach!

Seasonings - oregano, basil, pepper, salt, garlic powder

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and spray with PAM.  Lay out pizza dough flat and cut in half.  Place sauce in a line, cover with cheese.  Add your toppings and any seasoning.  Fold the two halves into a two burrito shapes, making sure to overlap the dough.  I like to sprinkle garlic powder on the dough after folding as well.

Place in the oven for 13-17 minutes or until the tops of the calzones are golden brown.  Remove and enjoy!

my head is going to explode.

Ugh.  I have the headache of the century.  We're going on 36 hours of straight pain and it doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.  I haven't done anything today except sleep on the couch in between eating bowls of Adam's world famous, top secret beef soup.

Thank goodness I have a fiance that can cook, cause Ramen just isn't going to cut it this weekend.

I've tried everything to get rid of this headache though.  Taken out my contacts, tylenol, water, caffiene, cold washclothes, nothing seems to work or even ease the pain.  Any ideas?  Any home remedies?

foggy.

That's how my head feels.  I actually did make it into work today after spending yesterday bonding with my couch and DVR.  The dog was thrilled.  I was not.  He kept trying to lay on my head.  I suppose it was his feeble attempt to keep me warm during my case of the chills.

And today isn't going much better.  But it's Friday so I'm attempting to make it through this last day.  My head is killing and I'm obviously not being as productive as I should.  My greatest accomplishment this morning was an hour long conversation with my friend in Switzerland about nothing.  My to-do list hasn't even been touched.

Ugh, I really despise flu season.

you capture: still life.

I'm home sick so needless to say, my you capture was quickly taken today.  The flu has somewhat killed my creativity today.  I'll do better next week.

Books piled on my nightstand.

Pictures lined up on the mantel.

For more you capture head over here!

try this: chicken'n'stuffing.

A favorite around our house...the definition of comfort food.

Ingredients

3 chicken breasts

1 can of cream of chicken soup

1 box of Stove-top stuffing

1/2 cup milk

Instant or homemade mashed potatoes

*Frozen veggies, optional

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a 9x13 pan and place chicken breasts in pan.  Mix together milk and cream of chicken soup.  Spread over chicken.  Prepare stuffing as directed on the box (if adding in frozen veggies, defrost and mix into stuffing).  Spread on top of chicken and soup.

Bake 30-45 minutes until chicken is cooked through.  Serve over mashed potatoes.

We tend to use two boxes of stuffing when we make this because we all LOVE stuffing.  I made this last Sunday with homemade mashed potatoes, it was the perfect Sunday lunch for a chilly day.

surprise! it's a...

GIRL!  Check out the adorable way my friend Colleen at work told us all to expect an beautiful baby girl come February:

She slaved all yesterday baking a cake for us as part of her announcement.  And we all waited on pins and needles this morning just waiting for her to come back to work after her appointment.  She walked into work and we all hounded her to find out if she was having a boy or a girl but she just pointed at the covered cake carrier.  We all clammered around her to lift the lid, saw the pink frosting and of course started cheering!

Props to Colleen for coming up with a creative way to announce the news :)

Sorry the picture looks dingy, I took it with my phone.  The cake is seriously NEON pink!

progress.

I made the trip up north this weekend for other reasons, but ended up getting a lot of wedding things done instead.

I have all of my bridesmaids accounted for!  Thank goodness.  It never really was a question of who was going to be in the wedding, that was obvious.  But going around asking everyone is nerve-racking.  Especially since you know that flashes of hideous bridesmaid dresses are going through their heads as you ask.  After promises of cute, fun and completely wearable dresses, I have them all committed to be at my beck and call for the next few months.  Or at least committed to stand up there and smile :)

I finally got Adam to agree on the save the dates.  It's like pulling teeth somedays.

I think, THINK we have our first dance song.  It's down to two.

I found photos of how I want to do my hair.  Yatzee.

And every guy who just read this post really wishes he could have those two minutes of his life back.

what i learned this week: my dog knows what a blackberry is.

No, I'm not kidding.  And he kind of knows how it works too!

Both Adam and I use our phones as our alarms.  Mine is usually on the nightstand with the sound on, which Ricki has learned means 'GET UP RIGHT NOW AND ANNOY THE CRAP OUT OF MOMMY UNTIL SHE FEEDS ME'.  Adam keeps his under his pillow on vibrate, which Ricki has learned means 'GET UP RIGHT NOW AND ANNOY THE CRAP OUT OF DADDY UNTIL HE FEEDS ME'.

So the other day Ricki was snoozing with Adam in bed.  His alarm wasn't set to go off for about 30 more minutes, but his pillow was shaking.  Opening his eyes he saw that Ricki was pawing at the corner of the pillow trying to move it out of the way.  After some success the dog located the blackberry and began pawing the keyboard.  Adam was about to yell at the Ricki for attacking his phone when the phone screen lit up as a result of Ricki pawing the keys.  The dog froze, turned and looked at Adam (who pretended to be asleep to see what Ricki would do).  Seeing no response from the human and noticing that the phone screen was dark again, Ricki turned back to the blackberry and began pawing again.

Lather, rinse and repeat.

This went on for about five minutes.  Apparently Ricki has made the connection that if the blackberry is lit up (like when the alarm goes off) then the humans should get up and feed him.

Smart puppy.

We need an alarm clock. 

For more 'what I learned this week', click here!

euro-trip recap.

Ahhh the long-awaited post.  i apologize for putting it off, it's been a bit of a hectic week here with trying to get caught up on work.  The trip was wonderful though!  My friend Megan and I flew over to visit some of our friends that are living there temporarily for a work project.  And it conveniently happened to be on a weekend when Oktoberfest was going on in Munich, Germany!

The flight over was uneventful, other than birds flying around the airport.  Odd.  We landed at 8am Zurich time (2am Ohio time) and headed to our friend Travis's apartment in Oerlikon without too much trouble.  The train system in Zurich is amazing, it's so easy to go anywhere around the city.  I really think that's what creates a lot of allure about a city.  Having to drive to get anywhere in Columbus is not only an annoyance, but parking is expensive and hard to find.  If only Columbus would use its tax dollars for something as productive as a train system...

Anyway, after a quick shower we took the train to work to see all our friends for lunch and then spent the rest of the day exploring downtown Zurich, Switzerland.  Dinner was at our friend Jason's favorite restaurant, Rolli's and then we all crammed into Travis's apartment for some beers and what else?  ROCK BAND!

The next morning came early as we all piled on a train to Munich at 7am.  The ride was gorgeous through the Swiss countryside, parts of Austria and Germany.

As soon as we arrived in Munich we checked into our fabulous hotel.  Seriously, FIVE STAR hotel, we were stoked.  And then headed to get lunch at one of the beer gardens.  And a beer.  Because, we're in Germany, what else is there to do?  My lunch consisted of sausage, liverwurst and vinegar-potato salad, yum.  After lunch we went on a tour of the city with a tour guide who was over-the-top excited about Munich.  I'd love to tell you all the stories about the places we saw, but for some reason they all have to do with beer so I'm sure how accurate they are.

We did get to stop by the wave, a natural surfing spot in the river.

And then had dinner a restaurant called the Augustine that serves over 5,000 people!  The place was HUGE.  I had chicken and pork knuckle, along with beer of course.  We ended up staying for a while, to have a few more beers and some funny conversations.

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed to head to OKTOBERFEST!!!  It was like nothing I have ever seen before.  It's the Ohio State Fair and an OSU tailgate rolled into one and multiplied by 100.  It. was. insane. and SO MUCH fun!  The tents were unbelievable.  Apparently they begin construction in July, Oktoberfest lasts for 3 weeks and then they spend 5 weeks taking everything down.  They look like permanent structures since they have full-working kitchens, bathrooms and are full of tables, band-stands and people.  We lined up outside one of the tents to get a table at 9am.  The rules of Oktoberfest are that you have to be sitting to be served, you have to be sitting to be drinking and if you puke, you're out.

It really was a melting pot event.  There were dutch to our left, italians to our right, australians shouting in the corner, and americans answering our O-H-I-O cheers in the back.  We met so many people, prosted to everything possible (including trees at one point...), spent the day drinking and laughing and eating pretzels.

We had a great time.  Maybe too much fun.  We all did make it back to the hotel.  Eventually.  And with stories to tell.

The next morning we went back to Oktoberfest for a more sober good time.  Since it was Sunday and less crowded we were able to walk around and see in some of the tents which were all decorated differently. 

And then we had a few beers.  Oops.  And stumbled back to the train station to catch our ride back to Zurich.

The next day day Megan and I caught a train to Luzern and took a cable car up 7,000 feet to the top of Pilatus.  Now, I am not scared of heights, but I wasn't too keen on the whole dangling from a string 7,000 above the ground.  But, I made it and boy was it worth it.  We were so high up we were above the clouds and the view was gorgeous!  We ate lunch at the top and then made our way down on the world's steepest train.

We spent the rest of the day exploring Luzern by just wandering around aimlessly.  It's a beautiful city, full of life and history.  In the center there's a wooden covered bridge that's been around since the 1400's.  On many of the buildings there are original paintings of family trees and crests.  And the flags...were...everywhere.  We wandered in a few buildings, got some gelato then made it back to Zurich in time for our friend Ryan to make us a delicious dinner.

The last day we went to lunch with some of our friends and then Megan/I spent the afternoon hanging out with downtown Zurich.  We walked around, sat by the water, people-watched and drank coffee.  It was the perfect relaxing last day.

The next morning we hopped on the train, headed to the airport and flew back to the states.  It was a short trip but worth it for the little bit of site-seeing we got in, Oktoberfest and getting to see our friends!

I have tons more stories and pictures, but the abbreviated version of this trip was a long enough post.  Maybe more stories later.  And I'm sure the photos will make an appearance at some point.