busygirl

miscellany monday: adam's golf club is famous.

1. Top of the morning to you!  The alarm went off much too early today.

2. We had a semi-relaxed weekend complete with boating yesterday.  My brother and FSILcame along for a gorgeous day out on the lake.  I'm a wee bit sunburned though - didn't realize that I've been inside so much lately.

3. Did you watch the Emmys?  What were your favorite/least favorite looks?  My votes for best dressed include Lea Michele in Oscar de la Renta...navy?  Swoon.  And Jenna Fischer in Versace, I LOVE the color of this dress and how effortless her hair looks.

 

Worst dressed?  Defintely Mindy Kaling who was stuck in an 80's prom dream and Anna Paquin who will be replacing Russell Crowe as the next Gladiator.

 

4. I mentioned that Adam played in Rover's Morning Glory golf outing on Friday.  Which was an experience itself.  He attended the pig roast following the outing and was sitting down to eat with his buddies when none other than Rover himself, along with Charlie and Dumb, came to eat with them.  I'll spare you the details, but will mention that Dumb tried to spoon feed Adam during dinner.  And they ripped on Dumb for it this morning on the radio.  Talk about your 10 seconds of anonymous fame.

5. I just received a rmg update from Adam.  Apparently Duji tweeted a photo that has Charlie hitting the ball with Adam's golf club.  Who knew his club would get so famous.  See proof below.

 

6. I'm ready for fall but did September have to come so fast?  I feel like I missed out on half my summer because of wedding planning.  Don't I get any make-up months?

fashion friday: coveting for fall.

1) Rimini cardi from JCrew  2) Jacobitz suede mid-calf boots from Aldo 3) Tea Accessories Sailor Knot Headband 4) Jeweled Purple tights from WeLoveColors 5) White Noise Skirt from Anthropologie  6) Stevie Cords from Anthropologie 7) Kimchi Blue Cutaway Cardi from Urban Outfitters  8) Muddled Dream Scarf from Anthropologie

coffee break.

It's a venti black coffee from Starbucks kind of morning.  I haven't slept in days.  Thank you early edition of ragweed.  You can leave now.  As I was walking back to my desk, I was remembering the last time I ever splurged on the venti.  A gray, mid-morning Starbucks run during college.  My roommate and I hadn't gone to bed the night before and were spending the day in our room, pouring over books.  Yes, I did study once in a while.  Normally right before tests so these all-nighters were not uncommon.  It's odd how something as normal as buying coffee can bring up a random memory of such an ordinary moment.

This week went by so quickly but so slowly at the same time.  Feeling sick from allergies definitely put a damper on things for me.  But we did (almost) have some exciting news!  Someone we know has some adorable eight week old kittens that need a home.  Of course we jumped on the chance to see if we could adopt one of these furballs.  I took Ricki over to the owner's house last night to meet the kitties and he did okay.  Didn't growl but didn't quite warm up to them.  I expected as much.  So the next step was to bring one of the kittens over to our house this weekend to see how they interacted on Ricki's territory.  But when we got home and Ricki went straight to his bean bag chair, I could tell that he was feeling very territorial.  How could we bring another animal into the house when he is so clearly king-of-the-castle?  So the kitten idea has been put on the back burner for a few years.  Eventually we'd like to have a dog and cat at the same time, but right now snuggles from Ricki are all we need.

Adam's taking the day off today to play in Rover's Morning Glory golf outing.  I can't even imagine what it's going to be like.  I just hope he makes it home in one piece!

That's all I've got for this week.  In a coffee bean: Adam is snoozing till 9, Ricki is commandeering the couch and I'm googling caffeine IVs.

you capture: get outside.

I didn't get to spend much time outside this week, other than a few games of volleyball and some quick jaunts with the dog.  It's been a whirlwind week with lots of exciting things going on!  But while playing around with some settings on my camera the other day I snagged this photo.  The neighbors were peering at me wondering if I had lost my mind as I crawled around on my hands and knees in our modest backyard.  But I couldn't resist shooting the unkept grass with the last rays of sunshine peeking through.  I took this at 6:30pm.  I'm not ready for it to be dark early again. 

And that pile of rocks?  The culprit of many klumsy moments.  I always forget they are there and promptly go flying when I walk around the corner.  They really do not serve a purpose, except cover up some dead spots in the lawn.

And if you're wondering what Ricki was doing while I was out acting like I was on one major bug hunt, here you go:

I really like how you can see the house siding in this picture for some reason.

What did you capture?

wedding photos: the reception!

We danced the night away...with some questionable dance moves of course.

This was to 'Jump On It'.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Ladies man! (his goddaughter and my two nieces)

Our best man is a phenomenal dancer.
 

The bubbles made an appearance.

My grandparents won the Anniversary Dance - 60 years!

And of course my best friend and FSIL caught the bouquet (might have something to do with me turning and chucking it at her head)

 
   
Next Up : Photobooth Funnies - the final installation of wedding photos!

 

All photos in previous wedding posts done by Ken Cavanaugh of Cavanaugh Photography.

try this: city chicken.

After spotting some city chicken during our market adventure on Saturday, Adam decided he wanted to relive his childhood by making this dish.  Of course, realizing that neither of us know how to make this dish, we called in the big guns.  My mother-in-law came over last night to make dinner with us and although I'd love to share her recipe, it was from memory and I wasn't playing close enough attention to how much of each ingredient she used.  But I found a recipe that seems comparable.  It's much more of a fall/winter meal.  One, it uses the oven.  Two, it's filling.  But so good that we didn't mind firing up the oven in the summer.

Ingredients

2 lbs boneless pork and veal, cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes and placed on soaked skewers

black pepper

seasoned salt

thyme

4 eggs

3 tbsp milk

2 cups Italian seasoned bread crumbs

2 cups chicken stock

2 tbsp butter

Directions

Remember to soak wood skewers in water before placing pork on them.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Season pork skewers with salt, pepper and thyme (to your liking).  In one bowl, whisk together eggs and milk.  Place bread crumbs in another bowl.

Heat 2 tbsp of butter in a saucepan.  Dip each skewer in the egg mixture, then in the bread crumbs.  Lay skewer in the pan, gently turning until all sides are golden brown.  Remove from heat and place in a 9x13 pan.

Pour chicken stock in the saucepan to mix with remaining liquid from browning the meat.  Pour mixture over the skewers in the 9x13 pan.  Cover pan with aluminum foil.

Bake until pork is hot and no longer pink in the center.  Then remove foil and bake for another 10 minutes to dry out bread coating.

Also excuse the stock photo, in all my excitement last night I forgot to take a photo before eating!  And there were no leftovers :)

what's in your laundry room?

For anyone who's been to our house lately, you may have noticed that there is an odd accessory in our laundry room/bathroom.  A somewhat small contraption perched on top of the dryer, that might just catch your eye as you're passing by to grab a tissue.  Oh yes, that hunk of metal is none other than the EdgeCraft 610 Chef's Choice Premium Electric Food Slicer that I snagged for Adam to thank him for his help with wedding planning.  What a nice wife I am.  Considering he has wanted one of these FOR YEARS and I've been refusing to get him one FOR YEARS.

I kept telling him that we wouldn't use it all that much.

He kept telling me we'd use it ALL the time.

It has been sitting on the dryer since July 2nd.

Who do you think was right in this case?  Just saying.

Anywho, the meat slicer isn't going anywhere, so finally we decided to give it a go.  London Broil was on the cheap at the market this week so we snatched some up.  I threw together a quick marinade and Adam fired up the grill.

While he was cooking, I relocated the meat slicer to the kitchen thinking that slicing meat in the laundry room can't be all that sanitary.  A quick wipe down and we were good to go.  Adam scanned through the instructions, grabbed a piece of meat and started the blade up.  It was surprisingly quiet for a sharp, fast moving blade.  I expected it to sound more like a circular saw.

There were a few issues at first, but once Adam got the hang of swiping the meat across the blade, things progressed pretty quickly.  I'd love to tell you there's a trick to slicing, but I have a feeling that the motion and how hard you need to press varies based on the type of meat you're slicing.  I'm sure we'll be experimenting with everything.  We did manage to create a large pile of ready-to-be-made-in-a-sandwich meat from our London Broil.  And have been feasting on it for the last few days.  This definitely beats deli meat by a mile!

Being Adam's 'toy', I refused to clean the meat slicer (and knowing in the back of my head that this was one of the main complaints about owning one).  However, clean up was relatively quick.  The slicer came apart easily.  Thank goodness.  A quick scrub and back to the laundry room it went.  I mean, we wouldn't want our laundry room missing its main piece of decor, right?

shop for a cause!

Did someone say 30% off??  You're welcome ;) 

 (thanks Jax& Chelsea !)

wedding photos: let there be cake!

 Looking all nice and innocent...

Proof that you can snort cake.

S'ok, I still love him.

First dance - Wonderwall by Oasis

Dancing with my brother - It's 5 o'clock somewhere

And Adam dancing with his mom to Forever Young

Next up: more reception fun! (bad dance moves included)

try this: give a dog a bone.

Not quite a recipe, but as I mentioned before, we headed out to the west side market on Saturday.  Most of the time was spent perusing all the meat counters and dreaming of everything we could make with the cuts of beef and pork.  We managed to practice some self-restraint and saved our pennies for staples like veggies and bread.  But we just couldn't pass up the chance to spend $0.93 on a little treat for Ricki.

To prepare his very first dog bone, I boiled it in some water until the meat pieces turned brown.  And then set it on a plate to cool - didn't want the pup to burn his mouth!  After half an hour of patiently waiting (and wagging), Ricki finally got to try hs bone out!

Of course this little treat ended with Ricki getting a bath and me washing the entire kitchen floor.  Real bones may be tasty but they make a terrible mess!