Slow Cooker Sundays

Since the weather is finally cooling down, I have been very eager to start cooking in the crock pot. I love the smell of food cooking all day as the leaves outside are changing colors and falling. I am going to make this a Sunday tradition. Last week, I made a Chicken Posole soup; it was delicious! It had diced tomatoes, hominy, chicken, and onions in it. Even though these one pot meals make so much food, it is great to have the leftovers for the following week. There is currently a vegetable and tortellini soup in the slow cooker right now. I am just waiting for my date, Greg, to come over and enjoy the meal with me. I bought some cornbread from Whole Foods that we are going to eat with it. I have never eaten it from there before, but it looks delicious.

Dinner for tonight. Yum!

We'll see what I come up with next Sunday! :)

I'm Back to the Blogging World..For Now!

We'll see how long my return to blogging lasts. Hopefully I will be a little better at updating this site. A lot has gone on since the last time I was on here. I won't go into every detail, but I will touch on a few of the bigger things. I went to St. Augustine at the end of July with Greg, Lisa, and a few other people. We had a blast! I went deep-sea fishing for the first time, and I loved it! Greg caught a shark; scary!


Lemon Shark

 The month of July was pretty relaxed, which was nice. Greg's sister got married during the last weekend of July. She looked beautiful!  I got to meet a lot of Greg's extended family. They reminded me a lot of my aunts and uncles. School is back in session. It took me a while to get used to working a full-time job again. It's crazy to think we are going to start our 4th week already! I feel like school started yesterday.

The craziest thing that has happened since my last post is the car I got when I was 16 died! The transmission decided it didn't really want to work anymore. It was kind of scary driving it to the shop. Even though I was very stressed and upset about saying bye to the car I had for nine years, I was very lucky to get a wonderful new car out of a crappy situation! Who knew I would be driving a different car to work this week than last week. Unfortunately, it has to go back to Carmax tomorrow because there is water seeping in and onto the fabric on the upper left corner near the windshield. It's frustrating because all I want to do is drive it, and now I have to wait a day or two while it's getting fixed. I'm going to have to be very patient!

2008 Nissan Altima. I'm just a little obsessed!

This week is pretty exciting because I turn 25 on Thursday! I'm officially getting old; it actually excites me, which might sound a little crazy. I'm super excited for the weekend because I am going shopping for new work clothes with my mom as a birthday gift; can't wait! I'm also looking forward for next weekend because Greg and I are going to Nashville. I hope these next two weeks go by fast! Hopefully I will be back sooner rather than later! Peace.

Warrior Dash, a Wedding, and more!

The past few weekends have been extremely busy, to say the least. This is the first weekend in about a month that I have been in town. Greg, some of his friends, and I went up to Mountain City, Ga. during the second week of May and participated in Warrior Dash. This is a 3 mile race complete with about 10 different obstacles. These obstacles range from swimming in a lake, to crawling through a mud pit under barbed wire and finishing the race jumping over fire. After the race, you get a complimentary beer and banana, and live music! It's pretty much a huge party with thousands of people dressed in crazy costumes. Greg and I shared a smoked turkey leg; it was awesome! Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera to the race, so I don't have any pictures. The weekend after that, Greg and I stayed in Atlanta. Greg's company sponsors the Special Olympics, so we volunteered at the Summer Games at Emory. I am very lucky to be able to have that experience, all thanks to Greg's work!  The next weekend was Memorial Day and I had the fortunate opportunity to go to Lake Weiss in northeast Alabama. A couple who ran the Warrior Dash with us have a lake house there. We (including Duncan) had such a good time! Duncan ran around SO much on Saturday he could barely walk on Sunday because he had blisters on his feet. Poor baby!

Greg took this picture of the sunrise. Beautiful!

Last weekend, Greg's friends from Berry got married in Kentucky. Even though I was not really looking forward to traveling again, it was an awesome weekend! We stayed in this historic inn right in the center of a small town about an hour outside of Lexington called Berea. The rehearsal dinner was two doors down and all we had to do was walk out our hotel and we were there! The next day we awoke early, had breakfast with some friends, and then drove to Lexington for the wedding and reception. The wedding was during the day and it was very nice. Great food, delicious beer selection, and fun people! When we got back to our hotel we took a 15 minute power nap and got ready for the farm party. Bryce (the groom) owns a farm that sits on 480 amazing acres. The party was a lot of fun!

At the wedding

You don't really get to experience land and sunsets like this in Atlanta.

As fun as the past month has been, I am very excited that we stayed in Atlanta this weekend! Yesterday, Greg and I checked out Dekalb Farmers Market. I had never been before. It is huge! There is every fruit and veggie imaginable. It was quite crowded, but I actually surprised myself at how well I handled the crowd.

Farmers Market

Welp, tonight Greg and my friend Lisa and her boyfriend, Nathan, and myself are headed to the Fox Theatre to see Mumford and Sons! I am so excited. I will do a separate post on how that is! Have a wonderful Sunday!

Another Change

Whenever I update my blog with a new background it always takes me AT LEAST 30 minutes to get the background and colors just right! My sister, Courtney, has a blog and I am always checking it to see updates to either her posts or her background. The other day I looked at her page and realized she had changed her background. Well, when I went to change mine I found a background template and got the colors to match with it. I loved it! I stayed up way too late to get everything right. Just before I started writing this post I checked Court's blog out again and realized I had changed my background to hers!! I can't believe I didn't even realize it, especially since I had looked at her blog that same day I changed mine. We sure do have good taste.  I decided to change mine again because I don't want ours to be the same! Surprisingly, it only took me about 10 minutes to be satisfied with it. I'd say it looks pretty nice! That's all. Have a super night! :)

A wonderful Dinner

Last night I faced my fear of cooking something a little unfamiliar and I just went for it! I cooked salmon with green beans, lemon peel, capers and olive oil in parchment paper. It was surprisingly super easy! The recipe is as follows (this makes enough for two people):
2 salmon fillets
1/2 lb. green beans washed and trimmed
2 teaspoons capers drained and rinsed
4 wide strips of lemon peel OR about 5-6 small pieces lemon peel
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

All you need to do is preheat the oven to 400 and lay out two pieces of parchment paper (about 16 inch pieces). Place the fish in the center of the parchment paper and then top it with the remainder of the ingredients, putting two strips lemon peel on each piece. You can fold the paper in any which way but I took the two sides and met them together at the top then folded them down to the fish. I tucked the sides underneath the fish and placed it on a cookie sheet. The fish I used was pretty thick, so I cooked it for 20 minutes and it was perfect! Greg bought some Israeli couscous with baby garbanzo beans, quinoa, and orzo to eat on the side. It was pretty good, but I recommend regular couscous; just my preference!

I cannot figure out how to rotate this picture! It is saved facing the right way, but will not paste on here correctly. Anywho, this is the fish before the oven.

Clearly this one won't paste correctly either. This is the cooked meal. D-lish!

**April**

Wow! It is so much harder to keep up with this blog than I ever expected! Rather than doing 5 posts about things that went on last month, I figured I'd just include everything at once. The first week of April marked my Spring Break. I didn't go out of town or anything, but I actually had a really good time! Two of my good girlfriends, Lisa and Jessica, came over to my apartment one day to lounge at the pool. We made some delicious fruity cocktails and bronzed ourselves. In the middle of the week I met Greg and some of his coworkers for lunch at Fox Brother's BBQ. Oh my gosh! What a fattening amazing meal. Three of us all got the same thing: a brisket "burger" with pimento cheese, bacon, tomato, etc I highly recommend it! One evening while I was hanging out at Greg's he showed me this Almond Filling Sweet Bread mix his mom had given him for Christmas. I looked at the directions on the back of the box and realized that it was a full on baking process. I had never baked anything before (no, cookies that you cut off a roll and 'bake' in the oven don't count). Greg thought it would be a good idea for me to do it one day while he was at work, and I was up for a little challenge in the kitchen. The box came with four ingredients: the bread mix, the almond filling, the glaze, and the yeast packet. I open the box and pull out ingredients 1, 2, and 3. Where is ingredient 4? No yeast packet?! My first baking experience was off to a bad start. Well, I ended up waiting a whole day to get the yeast from the store because I had just come from the store and really didn't feel like going back. I got the yeast and crossed my fingers that the measurement was accurate. I made the dough, let it rise, rolled it out, filled it, and put it in the oven. Lisa had the joy of being at my place when it came out of the oven, and I must say it was actually pretty good! 


This is the finished product! Mmmmm

Let's see, what else happened in April? Greg and I went a Braves game the last weekend of my Spring Break and saw the Avett Brothers afterwards. It was so much fun! Oh yeah, the night before the Braves game we went to Rome for one of Greg's friend's wedding showers. It was on Berry's campus and it was a pretty perfect night. There was delicious food, refreshing drinks, and horseshoes. During Easter weekend I went to Columbus to meet Greg's parents. Unfortunately, I was feeling a little under the weather, but I just pushed that to the side and enjoyed my weekend. On Saturday, we went over to Christi's (Greg's sister) boyfriend's house and went out on Lake Harding in his boat. We had a blast!


Lake Harding

 Needless to say April was a very good month. May (this month) is going to be busy and very fun! Hopefully I will do a post sooner rather than later! 

Happy Birthday, Duncan!!

Once again, this post should have been done about a week ago! March 20th marked Duncan's FIRST birthday!! I cannot believe it has been a year since I knew about him. Crazy story- I knew I was getting Duncan before he was even born, so March 20th of last year was a very exciting day! Duncan enjoyed a day of going to the Dog park and eating delicious treats. If he isn't spoiled enough, he sure was on this day! I am going to let the following pictures do most of the talking for this post! 

The day I picked him up!! He was only 10 weeks old!



Baby boy!! About 3 months old!

4 months old- growing fast!



About 7 months old, I think!



9 months!!



11 months!



Enjoying a very special bone on his birthday!

I can't wait to celebrate many more of Duncan's birthdays! He sure has made this past year a happier one for me! :)