Scenes from Sunday

Sunday happened to be one of those days where my camera(phone) was in full force...so here are some scenes from Sunday...... I've mentioned it before, but if you haven't been to take the cake in Northside for brunch...you are missing out on one of the best brunches in town.
Whether you are a sweet or savory bruncher..you will love this place.

Steak & Egg with black beans, chimichurri, guacamole, feta & cabbage slaw

Cuban biscuit with a poached egg, swiss cheese, local ham,
pork tenderloin, mustard aioli, onion and cucumber

After brunch there was some porch sittin with some of my favorites...

 This baby loves her Great Oma :)

 and mirrors

 .....and this activity mat. Oh man does she love this activity mat. I feel like the toys are old friends that every time she gets down there she is like "ooooh it's you! How've you been since I've been away?"

and this dog...she watches her everywhere she goes recently. I can't wait for them to be best friends.

There is our happy little Sunday in a nutshell.

The weekends go by way too fast around here!

Monthly Photo - 4 Months

This weekend this little lady turned four months old.

Here is a fun peek at the last 4 month photo shoots

.....and here are a couple of the other pictures...she makes this face of shock and surprise all day every day. It is hilarious and adorable...like she is seeing everything for the first time...which, I guess sometimes is true. haha.

Of course her (and our) favorite pup had to get in on the photo shoot action

And here is one with my favorite childhood stuffed animals for scale later :)

Those little blurry feet never stop moving!!

Everyone said how fast it would go by and they sure were right. I barely remember that little lump in the month 1 photo. She is such a little person with such a little personality.   I don't want to say too much because once you say it out loud too many times I'm sure it all changes, but she is pretty much the most easy going baby of all time. We feel like the luckiest parents in the world...

Boy or Girl Themed Baby Shower for Katie

Katie and I have been friends since the first 5 minutes of the first day of our freshman year of high school. We were assigned desks next to each other in homeroom. She came from a giant elementary school (unlike my 8th grade graduating class of 19) and I felt like she knew everyone.. Her hair was always in perfect curls...and her uniform pants were the exact right length - seriously don't ask my why I noticed/remembered this...but I always thought uniform pants looked so nerdy on me and so stylish on her. She will of course deny all of this but I thought she was so cool.

Much to our parent's dismay (since we lived almost 40 minutes apart!) we spent tons of time together in high school..our parents shuttling us back and forth....so you can imagine how happy everyone was when we got our licenses. She is one of those people I was and am always able to be 100% myself around and I am so happy/lucky that we have been friends ever since....

Now we are all grown up and our husbands are friends (that share a love of all things craft beer and home brewing) and she is due with a baby in 2 weeks! Which will make him/her only a little over 4 months younger than Hannah! It's been so fun to be going through all of this together and I can't wait until their baby arrives. We call it "Pat" since we don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet... and this weekend I threw Pat and Katie a little "boy or girl?" themed baby shower!

Sorry these pictures aren't great... I didn't take the time to get the lighting right...and it totally shows...anyway.. I ran with the whole pink or blue theme in the decor with some pink and blue
tablecloths & bunting:.

 And of course with the desserts...

 These are chocolate cupcakes with homemade vanilla buttercream icing. And then some pink and blue chocolate covered pretzels. Katie and I get together to make these every Christmas...so I had to throw those in :)

I made all the ladies "wear their guess" of whether they thought "Pat" would be a boy or a girl by making buttons with mustaches and bows on them :)

In this photo Nicole is clearly winning the clothespin game..where you had to catch people saying words like "baby, cute and June".....she clinched the win by tricking a 6 year old into saying cute and stealing her clothespin :)

People hung out:

Gifts were opened:

And people took home some packaged chocolate covered pretzels as a thank you for coming:

I am so excited to meet this baby! Let the Pat countdown begin.

Palomino & Sister Act!

Last night Rob and I had a little night out. Last time we were at the Aronoff Center to see West Side Story... I saw some posters for coming attractions, one of them being Sister Act. It was a year and a half away but I was already so excited and marked my calendar for when the tickets would go on sale (seriously, I'm obsessed) This November we bought our tickets and I waited patiently for months to go see it. We kissed this little lady goodbye to spend some quality time with the grandparents and headed downtown!

First stop, Palomino...
We settled into a small booth overlooking fountain square where everything was being set up for the pig....

......and ordered some appetizers. We decided on the truffled deviled eggs with peppered bacon. These were pretty tasty (if you like truffle oil, which I do) but it almost tasted like they came RIGHT out of a freezing cold refrigerator. I think they would have been a much nicer texture if they were a little less cold...and I would have loved for the bacon to be incorporated into the filling rather than a tiny piece on top...but I think I might make these sometime! A fun little twist on deviled eggs...

We both ordered specials, so I don't have the exact menu description for our meals, but I will try to remember. I ordered (from the waitress's recommendation) the pistachio encrusted cod with a beurre blanc sauce and pomegranate reduction drizzle. It was served with green beans and fingerling potatoes.

The green beans and potatoes were cooked perfectly. I like my green beans left with a lot of bite and these were exactly that way. The buerre blanc and pomegranate was good but the pistachio crust and the fish had VERY little flavor....and there wasn't really enough flavor in the sauce to make up for the missing flavor in the fish. I think even just a little salt in the crust could have made a big difference in the flavor...it was just very very bland. But cooked nicely and the crust was nice and crispy... it was just definitely missing something in the seasoning department.

Rob ordered Pork Saltimbocca that game with some angel hair pasta and a pile of just wilted enough spinach.

He really liked the grilled lemon that came with it for squeezing to cut the richness of the sauce and thought there was a good amount of sauce on the dish. He also loved the crispy pancetta on top. His only complaint was that he thought the pork could have been cooked a little less, but overall he was a fan of his meal.

Afterwards we walked through the square to the Aronoff center. I was out wearing a short sleeve dress at night...very exciting! The square was HOPPING. There were people everywhere and every outdoor dining patio was packed to the gills. Live music was playing...love to see this city so alive like that lately!

We found our seats...we had bought the seats so long ago that I forgot how good they were :) and settled in for the show. It wasn't exactly like the movie...the story was the same(ish) but it was all original songs, which I thought I wouldn't like nearly enough (no hail holy queen enthroned above Whoa oh oh oh Maaarrriiiaa!)- but the songs were really cute.... my personal favorite was the one where they all sang about their favorite thing about being a nun...hysterical... We really really enjoyed this show.

All in all it was a great night! This season is bringing some pretty good shows. I am interested in the Book of Mormon and perhaps Flashdance...and let's be honest I could always see Wicked again.

Bread Maker

In my ongoing effort to rid our diets of overly processed food as much as possible....I borrowed my grandparent's old bread maker and started making our own bread. Since I'm home for 6 months and am lucky enough to have a husband that works 3 miles away and comes home and has lunch with us almost every day, I figured it was worth a try.

Many years ago (this bread maker is OLD) I remember my grandpa making bread ALL the time and their house always smelled like delicious warm freshly baked deliciousness. Eventually he stopped doing it so last time I was visiting I asked to borrow it and came home and made a loaf with the easiest recipe I could find with ingredients I already had and we've been obsessed every since.

Now making bread is kind of a pain in the a$$. It's like an exact science of mixing and kneading and temperatures and rising....fun if you're into that sort of thing, but I am more of a cook than a baker/scientist and this bread maker LITERALLY does everything for us. You dump it all in and it lets it sit, then stirs it....lets it rise, kneads it, bakes it and beeps when it's done. It's about a 4.5 hour process....but the results are sooo soo worth it.

Our first recipe was a plain old white bread using ingredients I already had...then we went for a rye with caraway seeds...

yummmm crusty outside and soft warm inside. Is there anything better than warm bread?

The rye was good, but a little too dense for sandwiches so our most recent favorite is this wheat bread with a little honey in it.....here is its beauty shot toasted and enjoyed with eggs straight from the farm of one of Rob's co-workers and a (virgin) bloody mary on the most beautiful morning we've had so far this year...

Anyone else out there have a bread maker and a favorite recipe to share?

I'm obsessed with the the thing, but I have to admit I wish it wasn't so BIG.....I refuse to leave it out and lugging it in and out of the cabinet 1-2x a week is getting old. My next kitchen will have an appliance garage!

Easter 2013

This year we hosted Easter at our house again.. (here is the post from last year's Easter) and while the weather wasn't as nice as we've had the past couple of years....I'll take it considering there was snow the weekend before. (stupid lying groundhog)

Anywhoooo...let's re-cap.

I wanted to make some crafty kitschy Eastery stuff.... I feel like now that I have a little one I can hang the felt bunny on the door and all that other cheesy stuff..... (I'm almost scared of what I'll do this year at Christmas time)....so that's exactly what I did..bought the first of my cheesy holiday decor and hung it right on the front door.

I also bought some peeps and used them for both decoration and deliciousness....

peep & jellybean bouquet centerpiece!

chocolate covered peep pops with marshmallow tails... yes, they are as delicious and rich as they look.

And of course a beautiful veggie tray to curb the sugar a little :)

Food was enjoyed:

March Madness was watched:

can you tell who the brothers are?

And the baby was introduced to everyone and passed around all day!

And even though the weather wasn't quite as nice as year's past, we were still able to get out and spend a little time outside.

And Hannah got her first visit from a certain bunny!

Baby tights... I die!

All in all it was a great day with our family.

Happy Easter everyone!!

Fwends

We've been trying to get pictures of Hannah together with the people who are sure to be her friends in the future so we can bust the pictures out in the future with a "look how long you've known each other!" and whatnot....but I'm finding taking pictures with toddlers and newborns is even harder than you would think....

Here are some attempts...

Morgan, Hannah's future college roommate at OU:

How cute is she?

Maggie photobomb

Best of the lot... I'll take it.

Ian:

I literally turned my camera on fast shots and took about 50 photos and THESE were the best I got of the two of them. If these were the best, you can imagine what else was captured haha.

Doesn't this picture just scream "friends forever!"?

this is as close as he would get

I did get this super cute shot of Ian and his mama :)

Alexa- cousins!

sooo I'm pretty sure holding babies is the way to go :)

Hannah is having so much fun meeting all of her future friends (if you can't tell her obvious excitement from the pictures)- we can't wait for this weather to break so we can get out and spend more time with all of her future besties :)