Big 'ol Announcement

Wow, so it's been about two months since my last entry. And I have a very good explanation for that. Jim and I are happy to announce that we are expecting!! We found out in early September but wanted to just feel things out, get a doc appointment or two under the belt and make sure everything was going well before we spread the happy news!

So as of now I am about 12 weeks along and feeling.....well I won't lie, I feel kinda blah! Tired, a bit of nauseousness and indigestion/bloating from hell! But it's all worth it. I really don't want to complain much :)

Here is the little bean at our first ultrasound (6 weeks):




So the last two months have been remotely uneventful. I have just been relaxing and taking it easy. Looking back through the calendar, here are the highlights:

Renaissance festival: Went with a few close friends and had fun as usual. People watching never fails to entertain....it definitely attracts an interesting crowd.

Garage Sale: Made $150! Not too bad. And Salvation Army picked up anything that we didn't sell, so it was nice to finally get rid of the accumulating pile of stuff that we had stacked up in the basement.

On a somber note, my Grandfather passed away on October 21st. The whole family just sat at his bedside waiting for him to pass. It was a very sad experience. He was 86 yrs old and was a WW2 Marine veteran. Him and my Grandma had been married for 61 1/2 years. 5 children, 6 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren. He was very loved and will be missed.

Birthday: Came and went, especially due to the circumstances with my grandfather. Jim took me out to a nice dinner at one of our favorite restaurants: Kruse and Muer. I got some awesome crab cakes and we had some great artichoke dip for an appetizer. I love that place!

Halloween: Pretty laid back day as well. We carved pumpkins and passed out candy. Here are some pics:


Waiting for trick or treaters


Jim was waiting too! Check out that awesome Mickey inflatable pumpkin!


Kitties wanted to come out and play!


My scary pumpkin


Jim's very creative pumpkin

Anniversary: 1 year! We made it! We had a wonderful weekend that involved a nice dinner out to Macaroni Grill, Sharing our wonderful anniversary cake (we got a fresh cake from our bakery for free), went to church at the place we were married, watched our wedding video, and cuddled up and relaxed the rest of the time. It was a wonderful weekend!



It was such a wonderful day (11-01-08)


And there we have it. It will be pretty low key until the holidays kick in....which is right around the corner! I'll admit, I'm not one who likes to start thinking about Christmas so early, but for some reason I'm getting that itch to start decorating all ready. Even Jim (who just LOVES Christmas) isn't ready to bust out the decor yet. I'll have to at least wait until after Thanksgiving.

Here we go....

Not updating again. Really hasn't been all that eventful since Labor Day. We had a good time with the family, it was a beautiful weekend. Brought home something with us that we didn't want however.....a cold. Jim and I were held up in the house for a week or so with a cold. I still have a mild cough that nags at me a bit. Luckily it wasn't too bad and it didn't last too long. We are finally back to normal again.

This weekend should be interesting. We are having a garage sale. I have personally never held my own garage sale, so I'm not sure what to expect. We priced everything out, which was difficult since I really had no idea what they were worth. We really don't care if we make any money, we just want to get rid of the crap. It's a sub-wide garage sale, so hopefully we will get a lot of foot traffic!

That's about it. Jim put up some more curtains and hung up some more art work around the house. Still tons more to do!

Almost the weekend!

And I am ready for it! Not too much planned. Just going to try to see the families at some point this weekend. The weather is supposed to be nice, so It is shaping up to be a fun and relaxing one.

Hope you all have a good holiday weekend too!

We've been keeping busy!

Time for the well needed house update! We took a couple trips to Ikea and Bed Bath and Beyond over the past two weeks and have finally gotten some things together. The family room still isn't at 100%, but it's looking better and better:

Here is our new curtains. We still need to put up our celing fan.


Here is our new entertainment center. We plan to add two shelves in the middle area above the TV.


The Kitchen is complete. We put up blinds and well, since I never posted it when we painted, here's our new paint job.

The dining room is still a mess, but I wanted to show off our new china cabinets. There is one on each side of the window. This one holds my collection of polish pottery, the other one is our wedding china. We also got new chairs for our table. We have curtains to put up still.


Little by little we are getting things done. Next up on the agenda:

Paint half bath on main floor
Paint small part of master bath (toilet is in a separate area)
Remove wall paper from Guest room and paint
Paint other spare room
Hang art work throughout house


That has been keeping us pretty busy the last two weekends. This weekend we are planning to kick back and relax with the family. Supposed to be a good weekend, I'm looking forward to it!

It's consuming...

Those darn books are just consuming my time now. Luckily I am almost done with Book 3. Only one more to go after that. I am almost ashamed to admit it. Hi my name is Andrea and I am addicted to Twilight. What am I....sixteen? Ah well, I know I'm not the only one, so that helps. What doesn't help is the hot actors they got to play in the movie. Woo, someone hand me a fan. They are some good looking fellows for sure (don't worry, I still love you sweetie).

They are quick reads. I started Twilight last Friday I think and a week later I am nearly completed with Eclipse. I don't have a copy of Breaking Dawn yet. I need to get it from my "dealer". Yep, my dear friend who got me hooked in the first place.

It all started with a friendly girls day. I don't see her enough as it is, so when we were both free one afternoon, we took up the opportunity to hang out. She asked if I had seen Twilight. I said no, and honestly I didn't have a ton of interest. Looked good, but really could care less. It was a good movie! And then she sent me home with the first 3 books. The rest is history. I now have a crush on a vampire and a werewolf.....fabulous.

All is well though. I least I am reading. I haven't sat down and read a book in its entirety since probably early college! Not that I haven't wanted to, just haven't done it. So perhaps this will start a new trend and I will start reading more again. I have a few books in mind that I would like to read and the library is just a few minutes away. This could be a good thing.

Woman Problems

No, not those kind of problems! Just sometimes I feel like it's a problem to do the things I want to do just because I am a woman. One particular incident got me thinking. It wasn't really an incident actually, more of just a paranoia and what if?

I was running, alone, on a trail in a kind of wooded, unpopulated area. It's close to my house and about 2 miles long one way. There were a few runners and bikers passing by, but overall, it was pretty secluded. A biker passed by me, I gave my generic wave and smile and kept moving. He passed by me a second time and again I wave and keep moving. Well, then he stopped on the trail ahead and had his bike on the ground and was just kinda standing there. Not really in a spot you would think to stop and take a break or anything. I passed by once again, nodded and moved on.
That's when my brain started to wander.......What if he (or anyone else for that matter) came up behind me and attacked? I am alone, I am running (therefore pretty much out of energy), and overall kind of helpless. If I was a man, I wouldn't be having this problem. I know men can get attacked too, blah blah blah, but really....what's the probability of something happening to a male runner along a trail compared to a female runner?
So the remainder of my run consisted of me looking over my shoulder every two seconds. It was kind of freaky. So I'll probably stay away from that trail for awhile. I have others to go to that are busier and there is more chance of running to someone's house in case of emergency or something instead of being stuck in the middle of the woods.
I might invest in some pocket pepper spray too...

Busy Month: A Visual Guide

So instead of typing out everything that has gone on since the last time i've updated, I thought just a brief visual tour would do the trick!! So here we go..

For our "dating" anniversary we picked up a new game:
It pretty much just monitors your steps for each day. We each have a goal of 6,000 steps which is approximately 3 miles. Over one month later, we have reached our goal every day except for one! It has definitely kept us motivated to stay active. I highly recommend it!
So yes, I have been getting into running more! It is a great workout and fun to get outside and clear your mind during a nice run. I run about 3-5 miles every other day or so (been slacking the last week though).

To help me out on my longer runs, I got this nifty hydration belt. It holds two 10 oz containers of water and has a pouch just big enough to fit my key and cell phone. It straps around my waist and surprisingly isn't bothersome at all. I really have enjoyed having water readily available when I need it and not having to run without my cell phone on me.

July 11th we headed to a graduation party for my church sponsor son.

Down to Hamtramack for some awesome polish food to celebrate my grandma's birthday.

Mmmm.....Dill pickle soup, my favorite!

We headed off to the family cottage the following weekend. The weather was actually quite cold and the bugs were just insane. So we shacked up and watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Interesting movie....it was nice to have a little getaway, even though we were doing the same thing we would probably do at home!

Since the cottage was so buggy, we left early on Sunday and decide to go to the zoo! We hadn't been there in years. I will post pictures as soon as I load them onto the computer!

We decide we would try to do a ton of geocaching for a week. We made it out for two evenings and found 20 or so. Not too bad :)

I met my MIL for lunch one afternoon. We had some great sandwiches and then headed over to the local gourmet grocery store and had some wine samples. You can actually drink wine while you shop....I totally want to go back!

We headed over to a cute local bar for a friend's birthday Friday, July 24th. It was busy and loud, but we had a good time.

Another day of geocaching, however, this time we turned into a road trip. We hit Grand Ledge which was a cool place for the geocaches, then proceeded to Grand Rapids for the bet hot dogs EVER!!

Yesterdog. Seriously. Best. Hotdog. Ever.

MIL birthday was that weekend, so we went over to celebrate on Sunday. Had a wonderful dinner and for dessert and amazing torte.....we got to take home the leftovers too. I'm sure it all went straight to my thighs.

Back to the cottage! This time the weather was great. We did some tubing. No that is not a picture of anyone in particular up there, just something I pulled off the web, lol. We all attempted to stand on the tube whilst moving. It was really hard. My legs were killing me for the next two days. We had a lot of fun and ate a LOT of food. A few favorites....

Grilled Chicken

Avacodoes!

Here we are to today! I spent most of the day trying to work on our landscaping. I was doing a lot of shoveling and moving around of dirt. I am basically trying to reconfigure the whole orientation of the existing landscaping in our front yard. I am still dirty and frankly I'm pooped.

August 22nd, Jim and I are running an 8K (5 mile) race. I really need to get back into my running routine. It's hard when we have been working on the house so much. I don't really have time for both it seems!

We finally picked up curtains and other random things for the house. Hopefully we will whip it into shape before the winter hits. I hope to have the front yard landscaping done and have this house decorated more by then. We plan on painting two of the bathrooms and our "activity room" as we like to call it is turning disney themed room since we have so much disney stuff! It'll be a fun, even though I hate painting.....

I am here

Still alive, with tons of things to blog about, just haven't sat down and done it!! Tonight, I promise!!!

Weekend Update: When life gives you lemons....

You are supposed to make lemonade right? I would rather squirted lemon juice in someone's eyes. I had someone in mind too, but I won't go there. Instead, I made the proverbial lemonade a salvaged what could of been a miserable weekend.
On the way home from work Friday, Jim got a phone call and was told he had to travel 5 hours down into Ohio to deliver some material and work on a job site Saturday.....4th of July. Fantastic! We, of course, had holiday plans to spend with family and have a good time out at the cottage, oh and can't forget to mention we were supposed to have an awesome Frankenmuth chicken lunch with his family as well! I was so looking forward to that!! But instead, I piled into the car with Jim Friday night and we trekked down to Blanchester, OH. Blanchester....it just sounds fun doesn't it? We booked a room just outside of Dayton, about 45 min from Blanchester since there no place much closer to stay. Jim headed to work 7am and I proceeded to hang out in a hotel room for most of the day. But, alas, I made the best of it. Slept in, hung out at the pool for a while and walked across the street to the Dayton Mall. Not much of a mall, but I got a good walk out of it.
I also had brought a vase of flowers that Jim had bought me earlier that week and took a few photos of them. I was inspired to do so by another blog I was following here. She took a few pictures of flowers to decorate the house. I already have some of my photos hanging on the walls, so why not a few more. Here are a few of them:









So, Jim ended up getting out of work and back to the hotel pretty early. We had originally planned to spend Saturday night as well and do some geocaching on Sunday. A quick check of the weather changed our minds. It was supposed to be rainy and cloudy. But home sweet home on Sunday was supposed to bright and sunny. So we decided to drive on home. We got back around 7:00pm, watched a movie and hit the hay!

Sunday, we got up and went to church (it had been awhile, it felt good to be back!). We then had arranged to meet up with my dad and join him and his wife for a day out on the lake in his boat. We headed out to Orchard Lake and spent the day cruising the waters and lounging in the sun. We had a lot of fun and ended up having a pretty darn good weekend!

The week has gone by kinda fast so far, despite the fact that I have a bit of cold that is preventing me from getting a good night sleep. It's been rather annoying. I am pretty much just fine all day, but as soon as I lay down and try to sleep, I start hacking up a lung. I am pretty much just exhausted now. I can't wait to get a good night sleep again.

Happy (dating) Anniversary!

Today and tomorrow (yes two days) is Jim and I's anniversary! We never could agree what day was considered our anniversary. For those who don't know the story, here it goes....

We met on an internet dating site. Yahoo! Personals to be exact. I remember it pretty well. I had a horrible day and I think even a double shift at the banquet hall I was working at. The night before I kind of got "dumped" by a guy I was seeing. And the fact that he dumped me was just so absurd and strange since, to be perfectly honest, I was way too good for him. That is whole other can of worms though.
So I come home at around midnight and give my profile a look. This was the first day it was actually posted, I had just filled out all the info the day before. I already had about 4 or 5 messages. Wow, this was inspiring! I checked all the guys out and to my dismay most were divorced with children and in their 40's. Not really what I was looking for. The last one I looked at however, was very promising. Mid twenties, enjoys the arts and music. Non-smoker, non-drinker cute blonde haired blue eyed boy. I was sold at first glance.
I immediately signed up for my "free trial" since you have to pay for a full fledged account. I was then able to email him back and give him my real email address. We sent little messages back and forth for a day or two and then started chatting on AIM. That lasted for a day or two and then we had a phone conversation. We decided to meet in person the following Friday (so less than a week from when we first connected.)
8pm Friday, On the Border. It was in a part of time I was totally not familar with. And of course, I was a tad late. I gave him a quick ring to let him know I was almost there. I walked up to the restaurant and saw him there. Definite cutie in my book. Nice black shirt, khaki pants. We were seated and proceeded to have a bit of awkward conversation at first, but soon enough we both felt a tad more comfortable and overall had a lovely dinner. Near the end of dinner he pulled out a present for me.....two CD's that he thought I might enjoy! Now this was totally impressive! Funny thing is, I had burned him a few copies of some of my favorite CD's to give him as well. We were pretty weirded out for a moment that we both gave eachother CD's on our first date. Too cute.
When dinner ended we headed over to play some putt-putt golf. That was fun, and a bit of a challenge being that I was wearing a jean skirt and black heeled sandals. Finally we were done with that and looked at the time. It was only 10pm. What were we going to do now? We really didn't want the date to end, but we knew we didn't want to go hang out at a bar or club or anything like that. Well, he suggested we head back to his place, after all, he only lived right across the street.
Perhaps the red flag should of went up, probably not the greatest idea. We went in his car to his apartment. Single woman with a man she hardly knows going back to his apartment without her car......well, at least I had my stun gun in my purse. If he was going to try anything, he would get a nice zap to his nuts to say the least, haha.
Well, we went back to his apartment. It was very clean and well put together. Nice. I had happened to have my camera with me with all my pictures from my recent trip to Poland, so we sat as his computer and looked at all those. He then showed me pictures that he had from various trips and family events. We talked, listened to music, shared stories of our friends and family and really just got to know eachother better.
The hours just flew by....1pm, 3pm, 5pm, finally around 8pm we were still up and talking. I fancied the idea of breakfast to him and we head out to the local Big Boy. We had omelets and he finally took me back to my car. I thought, okay, time to go...I've definitey stayed long enough. Well, he asked me if I wanted to come back. Most definitely I did!! I was totally in love with this stranger. Head over heels for sure. We went back and watched dvd's and started to get a little cuddly. We just layed on the couch talking and cuddling for a few more hours. Finally at around 2pm or so, he kissed me. Sheesh, it was about time. It was totally sweet and romantic. At 3pm, I had to go....or else I was going to be late for work.
That was it, we have been together ever since. We actually saw each other every single day without fail for an entire year and half. Finally, the day came when he had to go out of town for a couple days and I didn't see him. We were pretty impressed we had made it that long.

So what day is it? June 30th or July 1st? Sure, I met him on June 30th, but I don't think our relationship became official until July 1st, the day we cuddled all day and he kissed me. He says the 30th because that is when the date started. So it's our two day long dating anniversary.

We commemorated the event by visiting the same restaurant we met at: On the Border. 3 years later, we are now husband and wife, and I am more in love with him than ever.....

Long story I know, thanks to anyone who read all the way through it :)

Warning: it ain't pretty!

But you know it's a good workout when you are dripping with sweat!

30 min on treadmill, 2.1 miles.

I'm not a quilter....

But I play one on television...

I am part of an online quilting group. This is only my second attempt
at making squares. Hope they go to good use. They definitely aren't
perfect, but they were crafted with love <insert cheesy smile here>

An apple a day...

Does it really keep the doctor away? I hope so cuz I've been eating an apple a day for the last few weeks.

I'm a little grumpy and bored this evening....oh and lazy too. There are plenty of things I should be doing (cleaning, exercising, other misc. chores), but instead I don't want to do anything. Jim is away at some class all evening, so I am left to my own devices. All I really want to do is jump into a nice swimming pool and relax. I'll just keep dreaming....

Holy Heck

It's hot. Too hot. I wish I had a swimming pool right now, that would be amazing! Just got back from a horrid walk/jog. I think I walked most of it this time. It was just really hot. That, and I was listening to really fast music so I think I didn't pace myself very well. I started out too fast I think, so by the time I got 1/3 in I was pooped. I still made it a little over 3 miles though, so for that, I am proud!

Still running....

Skipped a couple days, but was back again on Monday and Tuesday. My wonderful hubby went with me those two days. It is nice to have a workout buddy on occassion! Off Wed and Thurs, back again today. Today I used the treadmill though instead going outside. This was my first treadmill experience if you can believe that! I am more of an elliptical kind of girl, but I figured I would give it a go. Not too bad, more of a mental challenge than anything since it is so easy to just stop and go upstairs. I made it 2.55 miles. Not too shabby. I was going for 3, but just couldn't make it. Being that I actually jogged the whole time, and did so faster than I would if I were outside, I say it evens out. I think a good mixture of both outside running and treadmill running will be a good thing. I am totally sweating my arse off more so than when I run outside, that's for sure. I need to whip this body into shape....it's definitely a work in progress.

The Rolling Hills on Rolling Hills are Rolling

Huh?

Went for my run like I said I would, fancy that? And come to the realization that my sub has a lot of hills. Not noticeable hills, I wouldn't notice them while driving. But you sure start to notice them when you are running. All of a sudden I look up and there is this steady incline that seems to go on for-ev-er. I found myself walking off an on a lot, especially towards the end. But I made it.
3.23 Miles.....take that! It was a forced 3 miles. How so you ask? Well, the way I ran through the sub, if I wanted to get home, I had to run/walk the 3rd mile to get there! See the map below:

It's a little blurry, but you get the gist. I ran up and down the two sides streets that led to the main road first. Then headed towards the big 'ol loop. By the time I hit mile two I was getting tired. I started getting really thirsty and to top it off my batteries died on my i-pod. Craptastic! I started avidly running through peoples sprinklers wondering....would anyone mind if I just bent down and drank out of one of them.....eh, better not. Well, since the only way back to the little green arrow was around the loop and then over the river and through the woods, that's how I accomplished 3 miles! This will be my new official route for awhile. Until 3 miles gets easy (hopefully sooner than later), then it's off to find a new one.

I feel good!

Ho-Hum

Yet again, I am taking too long between updates. But I have come to the conclusion that my life is just rather boring right now! Not in a bad way, but it's just the same 'ol, same 'ol. Work, clean, hang with friends every now and then, lather, rinse, repeat.

We are having a lot of fun, but again, it's nothing that makes me want to run to the computer to update the blog about! I mean, we went to the bar last weekend to watch the Wings pummel the Penguins. Then again, last night we had friends over to watch the Wings get their arse handed to them in a basket......it all comes down to Friday....Game 7....we will head out to the bar again I'm sure!

Other than that, I FINALLY did some working out yesterday. Decided to go for a jog/walk around the subdivision. Made it about 2.38 miles. Not too shabby! I'm hopefully going to kick it gear and go for another round shortly. It was kind of fun. Just a slow jogging pace for now with an occasional power walk in between when I got winded. I just feel disgusted with myself, I really need to get into shape.

Things will start to pick up soon. We have a wedding next weekend, a graduation party the weekend after that and a trip to Cedar Point in the works at some point. That, and plenty of geocaching will take up our free time. So heres to summer! Glad it is finally here!!

Burn baby burn

That's what I did to my friggin' hand the other day. Excruciating pain. I do NOT recommend grabbing a 450 degree pot handle after it has been taken out of the oven. My poor hand was throbbing so badly on Wednesday night. I didn't get to sleep until about 3:00 am. Totally missed work Thurs. morning. Made up a couple hours at home. Today is better...popped a massive blister on the bottom of my middle finger...gross. Now I am slathered in neosporin for awhile and hoping I don't get any kind of infection. Ah, the joys of cooking. Next time I'll try to not be so stupid!

Amazing Bread

Shawna from Daily Deliciousness recommended this bread to me after I made the first bread that was posted on her blog. She had said this one was much better, and boy was she right. This bread is the simplest no-knead bread ever and was so good! I am setting up another loaf as we type. Although it is super easy.....it is also super time consuming. It's all about patience with this one. The recipe comes from Mark Bittman of the NY Times who got it from Sullivan Street Bakery. I got the detailed instructions from here.


Ingredients:

3 cups bread flour
1/4 tsp. of active yeast
1 tsp. salt (3/4 tsp. kosher salt)
1 1/2 cups very warm water

Mix ingredients together in a large bowl. Dough will be very loose. Cover and let sit for 12-20 hours (see...time consuming!)

Dough should roughly double in size. It will still be sticky. Poor dough onto floured surface. Form into a ball shaped loaf. Place back into a small greased bowl. The other recipe recommends putting dough ball into a floured towl. This did NOT work for me, I ended up with a dough covered towel after trying to get the dough into the pot. Let dough sit for 2 hours.

1/2 before the time is up for the dough to rest, place a 5 or 6 qt. oven safe pot with lid into the oven. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Be sure your pot or container can withstand this heat. After 30 minutes of your pot in the oven and two hours of your dough rising, you are finally ready to bake! Pull out the hot pan from the oven. Plop the dough into the bottom of the pan. Shake the pan to even out the dough blob. Bake in oven with lid on for 30 minutes. Remove lid and bake for an additional 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Memorial Day Weekend

I just loooovvvveee 3 day weekends. And this weekend was no exception. We really had an awesome time the whole weekend. Friday we hit up St. Mary's of Orchard Lake Polish festival. It's just a glorified high school carnival with really good Polish food! We each got a polish combo platter. It consisted of 3 pierogi, stuffed cabbage roll, polish sausage and sauer kraut. The pierogi are deep fried making them super delicous. We then walked through the carnival and of course had to get an elephant ear with cinnamon and sugar. Yum!

Saturday we got up super early. It was going to be a busy day! I proceeded to get up and bake an amazing loaf of bread. I will post the recipe after this. It was really easy and really really good. Much better than the first bread! I then set up a corned beef in the crock pot to have for dinner. That is one of our favorites, and the crock pot makes it so easy!

We then were interviewed for a Geocaching podcast: Cache-A-Maniacs. We met up with Darryl and Drie while were leaving a geocache in Troy. They contacted us a day or so later asking if we wanted to do an interview for their podcast. We thought it would be fun! They called us up Saturday morning and asked us a handful of geocaching questions. Why not :)

We then loaded up our geo-gear and headed out for the day. Their was a whole series of geocaches scattered around the cities of Troy, Sterling Heights and Warren. They had just been placed early in the week so we were like the third or fourth to find a lot of them. We ran into other geocachers that were out and about and we just had a great time. We found 28 of them which is the most we have found in one trip. Here is the map of the area of the caches. The ones we found are smiley faces. There are still a TON in the area!

Here we are at the final cache. We had to get several codes from the preceding caches to figure out the coordinates for this one. It was known as a "puzzle" cache. We are such dorks!! hehe



There were tons of bugs, so hence the hooded shirts, haha. I'm sure we didn't looked suspicious crawling out the forest in hooded sweatshirts and sunglasses!

Sunday we headed out to the family cottage. We of course had to stop for another geocache. But this one was special. We found our 100th cache!


Yep, we've now got 101 geocaches under our belt. Still a drop in the bucket compared to the seasoned cachers (they have thousands!). But we are working on it!

We spent a lazy afternoon at the cottage enjoying the sunny day, building a campfire and making s'mores. Later in the evening we took a pontoon ride. Monday rolled around and we spent the afternoon again on the boat with Jim's family. Overall, it was a practically perfect weekend!

Frankenmuth!

We took a great trip to Frankemuth about a week and a half ago. It was the World Expo of Beer. We headed up early on Saturday morning and did some geocaching. We got all of the Geocaches we were comfortable with (we do not like going to find them on private property like in someone's backyard!) in the Birch Run area and stopped at Tony's for a huge sandwich (we split). For those who don't know about Tony's....basically their portions are ridiculous. A BLT contains 1 full pound of bacon. A banana split consists of a whole half gallon of ice cream. Seriously! Check it out!

The beer fest was fun as expected. Tons of people watching and lots of good beer. My favorite was a Kuhnhenn Creme Brulee Java Stout. Tasted like a coffee drink kind of. It was very tasty. I was wasted by 5:00 (it started at 3:00). We headed back to the room and had dinner. Then popped our heads back into the festival and decided we had had enough. The place was packed and we were out of tickets anyways.

Sunday morning, we hit up the local catholic church for mass. We then walked around town and of course had to stop at the Cheese Haus for some cheese! We got some awesome Jalapeno Cheddar cheese spread. This stuff was great. The Horseradish cheese spread was also very good, but we passed on that one. We walked through town and found most of the Frakenmuth area geocaches as well. This one was from the Veteran's Memorial right in town. We had never knew this even existed until the geocache!

After a nice morning stroll through the town, it was time for the famous Frankemuth chicken dinner. OH MI GOSH....Best.....chicken....ever. We slipped into a food coma soon after and headed home and vegged out the rest of the day. It was a great weekend!

Banana Chocolate Hazelnut Crepe Heaven

Banana Chocolate Hazelnut Crepes

Adapted from a couple crepe recipes found here and here.

Crepe batter:
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups milk
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 pinch salt

Sift together flour and cocoa powder. Create a well in the middle. In a smaller bowl, combine milk, eggs, sugar, oil and salt. Whisk together and then add to flour and cocoa mixture. Mix until smooth. Lightly oil a small fry pan with butter. Pour about 1/4 cup crepe mixture into the pan and make sure it coats the bottom evenly. When edges start to bubble, flip with a spatula. Placed cooked crepes onto wax or parchment paper.


Banana and Hazelnut Filling:
2 bananas sliced
3 TBS butter
3 TBS brown sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
Nutella Hazelnut Spread

Heat bananas in butter. Add brown sugar and cinnamon. Stir until sugar is melted.

Lay out crepe flat. Spread Nutella spread down the center. Spoon a serving of bananas on top. Fold up crepe on both sides. Sprinkle with powder sugar or top with whipped cream....or both!

Artisan Bread and Daily Ramblings

It kind of looks like a heart shape doesn't it?

Artisan Bread

I came across this recipe on one of my "net" friend's blog: Daily Deliciousness. It was pretty easy to make and tastes really good. She actually ended up giving a different bread recipe that is similar but she said tastes a lot better. So, once I use up this dough, I will go ahead and try this better recipe. And well, if it's better than this bread, that it must be amazing, because both the hubby and I thought this was really good.

As for the rest of daily living.....last night both Jim and I were awoken from a dead sleep by a huge crash of thunder. I was in the middle of a dream actually and just bolted awake. Scared the living daylights out of me! That was about 3:30 am. And about 10 minutes later while Jim snoozed away, I was still tossing and turning....until about 5:00 am or so. Not cool. So I'm a little sleepy today nonetheless.

It is super windy today, and it's garbage day. Never a good combination. I lugged all the trash out this morning and about 10 bags of yard waste, yuck. When I got home from work this afternoon, all our cans were strewn in the middle of the road. We still have a lid to one of the cans that is MIA. I looked all around for it, it's probably chillin' in someones yard halfway down the street. I sent a small note to the association, so we will see if I get it back!

This damn cold still hasn't fully gone away yet either. I am still dealing with a runny nose and a phlemmy (sp?) throat. So I am irked by this and want this to GO AWAY! I'm hoping by next Monday I can finally get my butt exercising again. I really want to go out for a couple of runs before our 5K coming up at the end of the month. Wish me luck.

It's pretty much a blur....

Last week that is. Here's the rundown:

Monday: All is well, Monday's suck, but other than that, ready for the week.
Tuesday: Funny feeling in my throat...uh oh.....Jim comes home from work and we opt for a dinner of soup and hit the sack early
Wednesday: Yep, we're sick. I am so not going to work. Jim comes back home from work after only working for an hour.
Thursday: Still not going to work. Jim managed to make it through the day. Yuck.
Friday: Managed to get to work. Felt like crap most of the day still.
Saturday: Feeling a little better. Still ended up spending the day inside and watching tv and playing video games.
Sunday: Hmm...think I'm getting better! Mother's day went well. Had a great brunch with Jim's family in the morning, then headed to my mom's house to visit. By the time we got home, we were both exhausted. Watched some tv and hit the hay a little early.

Now today comes and I feel worse than I did yesterday! Ugh! This thing needs to go away! Jim said he is feeling better, so hopefully I will too soon.