She strikes again!

My coworker is amazing at decorating cookies, you can see her other work here. This morning she gave this strawberry themed birthday gift to another coworker. I thought the idea was just too cute not to share.

A pot to grow strawberries in with adorable strawberry cookies baked by her.

Bringing in the New Year in Style

CHEERS TO 2011!

It was the day before New Years Eve and I got a voicemail from my good friend Ashley with two suggestions on what we should do for New Years, option 1 was to come over to our house and make dinner and option 2 was to research going out somewhere, and at the end of the VM she said, but I like option 1 better... and how could I turn her down since she offered to do most of the cooking.

Since I wasn't going to be cooking I used my time to pull out my china and crystal. I haven't used it in a while and I was getting the itch to pull it out, and why not it was New Years Eve after all!!

It was a small intimate group, just the 4 of us and Virginia. It's hard to see but Virginia helped her dad pick out the yellow flowers from Whole Foods when he went to go buy the craft brew, I love having a daughter!

While picking up the beer Chris picked up a dozen oysters and shucked them himself, I made him crush the ice in the blender to make it look pretty, he wasn't too happy about that extra step.

As the main course Ashley wanted to make Lobster potpies from a recipe she found in her Cosmo magazine. The only thing Ashley asked me to make was a salad but I wanted to make it a 4 course meal so I also added a soup.

For the first course Chris picked up clam chowder pre made from the deli section, it was very tasty and so easy, just heat and serve!

For the second course I made a pear and brie salad with candied pecans with a white balsamic dressing.

The yummy finished product! In Ashley style she monogramed them, only the "H's" turned out, the W's were unrecognizable.

For the finale of the night Ashley saw these desserts on Oprah and really wanted to make them, champagne cupcakes with champagne frosting and strawberries soaked in champagne. YUM!

Surprise in the Kitchen

My co-worker strikes again. I think people are too afraid to cut into it, but I'm sure I'll be grabbing a piece once someone make the first move.

Happy Christmas Eve!

Yep, I'm at work today along a few other brave souls. One very talented co-worker brought in today these cookies. I'm so envious because I've always wanted to make snowflake cookies just like this but never found the time. She said she had to wait 6 hours for the frosting to dry before she could put the detail on it. I can't wait to see how yumming it tastes!

Good Times-a month late

I know I know it's now Christmas and I'm WAY behind but I've been meaning to share my Thanksgiving with you all but I just haven't had the energy to even download my photos. This morning I forced myself to download them so I could post a few things at lunch today. Above you will see the lovely floral arrangement I put together using a new rose called Combo.

My mother always uses her China for Thanksgiving because I think she feels it doesn't "go" with any other season, and it doesn't help that the name of the pattern is called Autumn. I love the pattern because I think it's bold and very different than what brides are picking out these days. I hope as a family we continue to use this China for many more Thanksgivings. She also pulls out her Silver which is something I don't own and am very jealous of. However the serving spoons shown above is not her pattern, but my Grandmother's on my Dad's side. My grandparents were artistic people and I think this modern pattern reflects their style perfectly.

My sister has started two traditions: 1. Tutti Frutti Fruit Salad and 2. Brie wrapped in puff pastry. #1 was started when she was in pre-school and they were learning the letter T, I guess they made this salad and as a family we fell in love with it. I couldn't really tell you how it's made but I'm sure there is not much nutritional value in it even though it has the word Fruit. #2 is something she learned while living in Germany. You basically just cover a wheel of brie in "pop can" pastry dough and top the brie with fruit before covering it completely. I was very upset I could not enjoy the brie, since I am 3 months pregnant I can no longer eat unpasteurized cheese :(

On to the Meat... Meat is a man's job in my family, before I could take a photos of our gorgeous turkey my Dad had it all carved and ready to serve. Now normally my mom doesn't serve ham but this Thanksgiving we celebrated it 3 days late due to my dad getting the swine flue, so for those that were sick of Turkey, you could have ham instead, my husband was in HEAVEN, his two favorite things!

To end a wonderful meal we had pumpkin and apple pie complements of ME. YUM!

Why?

My coworkers had this link up on her gmail chat today and I just have to ask, why would someone attempt this?.... anyway check out more of the interesting meals you can make from fast food.

BEFORE

AFTER

Grilling Time

Every Sunday Chris and I BBQ on our condo roof deck, we have a little group that is always up there and it has become somewhat expected now that we show up.  Tonight the cart is loaded up with a cheese board, BBQ Chicken Breast, Caprese salad, crescent rolls and of course a good bottle of FlyingDog beer.  I hope everyone else is enjoying the last few days of summer.  

BBQ Season

We are full swing into BBQ season and Chris and I have been enjoying grilling on the roof of our condo. A couple of weekends ago we had A&A over for an impromptu BBQ, although I thought I kept it incredibly low key, Chris thought otherwise.

While shopping at Crate and Barrel for a new dresser I picked up these adorable napkins on sale of course.

I picked up some fresh mint and some rum to make refreshing mojitos.

And of course we brought up our now famous cart, every time we bring it up to the roof people say "where did you get that, it's perfect". Yes it is perfect and we love it because it folds in half and slides right under the couch.

I had some left over prosciutto from making homemade pizza so I bought a cantaloupe and made this very simple appetizer.

I wish I had taken more photos of the food to show you, but it got dark soon after we got up there.

Resolution #2

# 2 Cook healthier meals 

I love to cook and I think I do a pretty good job of cooking almost every night.  What I don't do well is cook healthy, most of my recipes come from French cook books or from my favorite cook, Bare Foot Contessa, we all know these recipes call for lots and lots of butter and cream. On Oprah this week she's been having a week long special called your Best Life. Her site has great healthy recipes that mostly link to the biggest loser family cook book.  I'm thinking I may need to pick this one up asap.  

Christmas

This year Chris and I will be celebrating Christmas down in Florida with my parents.  We went back and forth on if we should decorate and in the end we decided not to.  I feel like I am missing out on something, I really want to decorate, so when my father showed me these cool stained-glass cookie cutters he saw at Williams-Sonoma I got excited.  He thought it would be fun to make them down in Florida and hang them on the the tree.  My parents don't live down there so last year they made a make shift tree with golf balls and sea shells.  I think this year it will be fun to make these using blue and green sugar to keep with the ocean theme.

 

Happy Thankgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I am very thankful for a lot things but especially my loving and supportive husband who let me destroy the kitchen while baking lots of fun pies.  Have a great day and eat lots of turkey!

  

  

A sweet Thanksgiving

This year Chris and I will be at his families house for Thanksgiving and I have been assigned desserts.  I've been doing a lot of searching on what we should have and although I love the traditional pumpkin and apple pie and I want to give it a twist.  We are only 7 people so I was thinking of giving this Pumpkin Chiffon Pie a try. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Help, I'm turning into a Housewife

Loving these oven mitts from Williams Sonoma.  

Ghosts!

I love these brownie pops from Williams-Sonoma but at $4.33 a piece I don't think so.  I've thought about making my own but still not sure how do it.  As a compromise I was thinking of stealing the idea below from Godiva, chocolate covered strawberries are so much easer to make.   

Canning is making a come back!

Or at least for me. Last weekend I made applesauce and apple butter, I think this is going to now become an annual thing for me, I made it last year for the first time but didn't know how to can it. This year I made sure to be prepared and bought a canning kit from Target. It's also important you have a food fill to grind the apples, if you are interested in making your own here is the recipe I used, making the applesauce is easy, the apple butter takes a bit more time so give your self plenty of time. Have fun!

A Beautiful Night

One thing I miss about living in the city are my dinners with Architect Design. Last night he had me over for a wonderful night of catching up and talking about anything and everything including the features of blogger we hate. Here are better photos from the night. Thanks again AD!

Hello Cupcake!!!!

OMG, I'm in love with the new Dupont Hello Cupcake.

Last Friday Chris and I had the perfect date night, we first went to the Brickskeller for beer and overheard some people talking about the new cupcake place, I turned to Chris and said we HAD to go. So after finishing our beers we put our name in at Pizza Paradiso and then headed over to grab some cupcakes, and good thing we did because by 7 30 they only had 2 flavors left. After chowing down on our FAVORITE pizza we dug into our cupcakes, yummmmmm.

Sigh.... Beer, Pizza and cupcakes... it couldn't have been more perfect.

The owner can thank her very talented Architect husband Bill Bonstra for the very hip design. This sketch of the shop was featured in Architecture DC, I'm loving the pink chandelier.

Picnic tonight

I'm loving the idea of this hip picnic basket. Tonight Chris and I are going to Wolf Trap to see G. Love & Special Sauce perform. We will be sitting on the lawn and having a picnic, I'm afraid though we our food won't be served out of a cute box but instead a Harris Teeter bag.

Wedding Gifts

So what do you get the bride and groom that has no registry? 

That was the big question today when I was wondering around Crate and Barrel. In the end I think I put a really cute wine and cheese gift theme together. The idea started last night when we had a few couples over for a BBQ and cards.  We used one of our favorite wedding gifts, a cheese board and cheese knives from CB. While wondering CB I found this really cool one with hammered metal handles and matching knives. To complete the gift I threw in some fun things and something very practical, a wine cooler. 

Our cheese board after many hours of eating and drinking.  

Pizza Party

My sister had a bunch of her friends over for a pizza party tonight, she invited me as well and I thought it was a great idea.  We all helped making multiple varieties of pizza,  Most of the supplies came from my favorite grocery store, Trader Joe's.   Not only does TJ's have cool stuff but I think the prices are very reasonable.  

My creation had half mushrooms, onions, prosciutto and cheese and half margarita.

 

Prosciutto, yummmm

I love the fancy water and lemonades that they carry.  

99 cent per bag!!!!!!