Friday, August 27, 2010

Almost all about Rachel :)

I promised it wouldn't be 2 weeks since my last post...this time it's only 1 week - guess I'm slowly getting better at this blogging thing. Once again it's been a very busy week...I feel like this is the way all of my posts are going to start for the next couple months!! We're now at less than 2 months until the wedding...so hard to believe!! My to-do list keeps getting longer and my time keeps getting shorter so I really need to crack down. This past weekend was my bridal shower in Houston. My mom's friend Diana graciously opened up her house for the party. The food was Mexican themed and was SO yummy!! The best part was probably the fact that Lauren brought a GALLON of salsa for 16ish people...it was an accident but still SO funny!

SOO much salsa :)
 In case you don't know - Rachel is obsessed with babies and wants everyone around her to have them. I've already informed her that will not happen ANY time soon. Also, in case you don't know - at bridal showers - the number of bows you break when you open presents equals how many kids you are going to have. Needless to say when I didn't break any bows at the Austin shower Rachel was not too happy. So she brought me this lovely gift to this shower. But don't worry - I opened it like a champ without breaking any bows...in about 20 seconds :)

Nice try Rachel
 All in all it was a WONDERFUL weekends and Justin and I got so many nice gifts from friends! It's funny how anytime someone gives me kitchen stuff there's comments about how it won't get used or that I don't cook. My mom even defends me because that is not true!! I love to cook...I just have a long way to go to be as wonderful of a cook as my mom!!


On a completely unrelated note - I did not take the two pictures above - those were taken by the lovely Rachel Barde and her new camera - which was a graduation present from my parents, and Justin and I. I was probably foolish to get her a camera that has a fish-eye setting built in. If you have seen her facebook albums you will know why.

hahaha
 This weekend won't be filled with as much fun as last weekend :( Sad day :( I have to work tomorrow all day but do get to go to Michael's birthday dinner (hopefully)!!! We should be done with wedding invitations this weekend and ready to send out by Monday!


Next Thursday we are going to New England to visit my grandparents. Justin hasn't met them and they won't be able to come to the wedding so we decided to make a quick trip up there. We're leaving Thursday evening and flying into Maine to visit Mimi & Bampy. On Saturday we're going to Boston (since Justin's never been there) and do some fun stuff there. Sunday we're going to Connecticut to visit Gee! On Monday my mom's family is having a Labor Day picnic so the family can meet Justin. And then we're coming home Tuesday. It will be a very quick/tiring/FUN trip so I'm excited!! I'm SUPER excited about the weather forecast - high's in the low 70's and lows in the 50's. It's going to be hard to come back to this Texas heat (which we've had a little releif from in the past couple of days). Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and a fantastic Labor Day weekend!!

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Reunions, Graduations, and Ice Cream...Oh my!


k so I am LONG overdue for a post, I apologize! It feels like forever since I wrote but it was really only 2 weeks ago from today, wow. So 2 weekends ago we took a trip to Schulenburg for the Schulenburg festival and Justin's 5 year class reunion. Justin, Lexie, Hunter and I went on Friday after work and my parents came Saturday morning. My parents had never been to Schulenburg so I think it was an experience for them. The experience started out with us having to go pick up Justin's mom from work within 5 minutes of my parents getting there because there was a crazy man outside the clinic where she works. So see, Austin doesn't house ALL the crazy people! Then right after we got to Justin's house we realized Lexie had escaped and was loose in the field. Her little head kept popping up in the grass that was taller than her. It was scary that she was loose but pretty funny that she kept popping up in the field. We finally caught her - Justin said he'd never seen me run that fast!! haha So after that we went to the festival for a while where it was scorching hot, as you can imagine outside in August in Texas. Then Justin and I went to his reunion for a bit. That night back at his house I was finally able to get out my camera and take some pictures. I took a ton of pictures and got to play with different settings I hadn't had a chance to use. Here are a few of my favorites:


This past weekend was a blast! Miss Rachel Barde graduated on Friday and we had the pleasure of celebrating with her on Friday night with her family and again on Saturday with everyone! I don't have many pictures from Friday because my parents and I got Rachel a new camera for graduation which happens to have a fish-eye setting so that pretty much occupied us all night. Check her facebook albums if you need more detail. Saturday morning Justin, Christine, Michael and I went to the Austin Ice Cream Festival at Waterloo Park. There wasn't much to do but there was a TON of food/ice cream choices - so who can complain?? I ended up getting a scoop of banana pudding gelato - DELICIOUS and a mini ice cream sandwich that had ginger snap cookies and lemon peel ice cream - also VERY yummy! Justin, Michael, and Christine opted for some dippin' dots.

Justin, Michael, & Christine with their dippin' dots!


Me with my gelato & Justin with his dippin' dots!

Fun Ice Cream Festival van!!


After the adventure downtown the 4 of us made our way out to Carlos and Charlies on Lake Travis for Hotschedules (Justin and Michael's company) 10 year reunion. Ok that made it sound like Michael and Justin own it - they just work for Hotschedules but how cool would that be if they owned it?? Anyways, the boys were sweating their butts off in the volleyball tournament and Christine and I were sweating our butts off watching. It was a fun afternoon but we had to cut it short at 3:30 when my parents picked us up to go to Rachel's graduation party on large marge the party barge! I must say marge was large and was definitely a party barge!! We had SO much fun!! Captain Dave took us out to "the cove" or something like that and we got to swim and eat and watch the sunset. Who could ask for a better Saturday than that?? And to top it off Hunter turned 2 years old!! He got some glow necklace action when we got home! We celebrated his birthday the weekend before in Schulenburg with his doggie cousins! He had a birthday cake and everything :)

My handsome birthday boy!!

It's been a crazy past 2 weeks with everything going on and doesn't look like it's going to slow down anytime soon. This weekend we're off to Houston for my second bridal shower - I'm so excited!

In other news I had my first product launch last Friday...go check it out - it's the Dell Streak. I could have a whole blog post about that but I'm not going to bore anybody :) I promise it won't be 2 weeks until my next blog post!! I'll leave you with one last picture...a sky picture of course!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

My Go-To Dessert Recipe!

So I really like cooking and baking, even though I usually end up frustrated. My past 2 baking attempts have been successful, however! Last Wednesday for our neighbor dinner I made some fun low fat - low calorie dirt cups! They actually came out really well. I took pictures of them but most didn't come out because I foolishly used the wrong settings on my camera (it happens!), sometimes you just can't tell it's a bad picture when you look at it on the camera screen. So anyways, I did get a good one of the dirt cups but my memory card decided to somehow RUIN the picture when transferring it to my computer :( Sad day. This isn't the first picture that's been ruined in transferring so I really need to get that figured out. Anyways, Tuesday we had a going away "grazing day," as we call it here, for one of the managers in our department. It's when everyone brings in food and puts it in a conference room and we basically "graze" on it all day. My mom always ends up making my stuff to bring because I'm so busy. I am definitely grateful for her help but I'm pretty sure everyone at work thinks I can't cook. So this time I decided I needed to make something myself. Background info on this recipe: last year Justin and I found this macaroon recipe that's wonderful and somehow - fool proof!! Because every time I've made them, even the first time, they came out wonderful! I think these macaroons are my "go-to" recipe. I know that if I need to make something to take somewhere these will be a hit. They even look like they take me all day to bake - so that's a plus! So Monday afternoon I got to baking and here's how they turned out! Everybody seemed to like them, the first question asked when I set them down "Oh did your mom make these??" This time I got to answer no! So maybe I'll slowly turn around my cooking reputation :) haha



Covered in coconut, mixed nuts & my favorite...

SPRINKLES!

We're road tripping to Schulenburg this weekend for the Schulenburg Festival and Justin's 5 year class reunion. It's my parent's first trip to Schulenburg so this should be fun!!

Monday, August 2, 2010

How is it already August??

How is it already August?? We started out our fun and BUSY month(s) of august (september and october-duh) with a great weekend!! Friday night we went to a family friends house for dinner. They wanted to give us our wedding present early - how sweet! They got us the Calphalon knife set we registered for and we are SO excited! Let's just hope there's no post about me cutting myself soon :) Saturday was a busy day filled with working out, cleaning the house, running errands and finally going to the movies. We went to see Dinner for Schmucks with our neighbors, Ashley and Cory. It was SO funny - Steve Carell is ridiculous as usual. Yesterday we went on a party boat for a friends birthday and had a BLAST! Justin had never been to the lake with us before (how is that possible??) but he had a great time. Somehow I didn't get a sunburn - must be a miracle! Sadly I do not have any pictures from this weekend but the lovely Rachel Barde took a few yesterday so I'll have to steal them from her. This is the month of party boats for us - in 2 weekends we're going on one for Justin's work and then 2 hours later for Rachel's graduation party! Don't worry there will be a whole post dedicated to a day of partying on the lake! I was exhausted last night and fell asleep on the couch - felt like I took a benadryl - I guess that's what the sun can do to you.


Hopefully I will get some wedding projects done this week since I have no more photography class and no more dance lessons (sad day!) I really enjoyed taking dance lessons - I've missed dancing so much, I didn't realize how much I missed it until we started a couple of weeks ago. But yes back to wedding projects, I've created a list of to-do's since our countdown is under 100 days!


I'm making macaroon cookies tonight, so look for a yummy post tomorrow :)


Party boat :)