FROM ME TO YOU...

2012-01-31T22:05:00.003-06:00

Seriously, how cool is this site? I had been hearing about Pinterest for a while now and I vaguely recall my friend, Christy, talking about it while we were both in the midst of wedding planning last year. However, it wasn't until today that I decided to jump on this bandwagon and give it a try. I think I was bored at work waiting for a program to compile, and decided it was the prime moment to do some pinning. Yes, that must have been it. After all, I would never be randomly searching the web or reading facebook at work unless it was for a good reason. ;)

So I signed up for Pinterest and was told I'd have to wait a few days for my invitation. Wait?!? What is this "waiting." No no, my Type-A personality just wouldn't stand for that. So I jumped on Facebook, while still waiting for my program to compile, of course, and requested that one of my friends (aka - 30 friends, and 70 people who I knew at one time or another) send me an invitation.

And this is what I love about Facebook. BAM! Within 15 minutes I had a nice invitation sitting in my inbox from Tracy. Thanks Tracy!

Before long I was pinning away. This site is awesome! I've already gotten a bunch of great food ideas for everything from desserts to dinners to appetizers. And the best part about Pinterest is that everything has a picture associated with it! I very rarely will use a recipe from a book that doesn't have a picture with it. What can I say, I eat with my eyes first.

I also love that I can add the "pin it" icon to my bookmark bar and pin from whatever website I happen to be on. It's especially great for sites like Tastespotting, because I can just link those links all to one of my Pinterest boards.

Finally, I love that you can select which boards of your friends that you want to see. Most of the people who I follow I go in and selectively "unfollow" any board that I'm just not that interested in. This especially helps to narrow down the pins that you see when you go to the "people I follow" section.

I hope that you get a chance to join Pinterest soon, and when you do, follow me so I can follow you!

Making Palmiers

2012-01-30T18:52:00.010-06:00

A few weeks back I decided to make puff pastry from scratch. It went well and tasted great, but I couldn't help but think to myself this one thought: "This is really good, but how does it compare to frozen puff pastry?" After all, if it tasted only 'as good' or 'mildly better,' then why spend the 8 hours it takes to make your own puff pastry?

So two weeks ago my parents were in town and I decided to make Palimers using frozen puff pastry sheets. The recipe I used came from one of my mom's cooking magazines and was as follows:

2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 sheet puff pastry
2 tbsp melted butter

Okay, so really, 4 ingredients, can't be that difficult... right?

Wrong.

I pulled the puff pastry out of the freezer and set it on the counter to thaw. About 5 minutes laster it was ready. I floured the surface and started to roll out the dough. One word for you: STICKY! Yea, it was super sticky; not at all what my home made puff pastry was like. As I start rolling out the dough I realize that it is so much harder to work with than mine was. I suppose this was because when you are making the puff pastry you are constantly working it in your hands. The frozen stuff hadn't been worked at all.

I finally got my dough rolled out to about 12" x 18"

Painted with melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar

And rolled up like a scroll

And cut into tiny 1/4" pieces

They seemed a bit small to me, but having just done some puff pastry work, I was sure they would puff up to a nice size. So I stuck them in the oven at 375 deg. for 15 minutes.

When I pulled them out, I was a little shocked. They were so tiny!

I thought for a little while and decided it must have been because I rolled them too tightly. After all, they had no where to "puff." So out came another package of puff pastry and again I repeated the above process. Only this time, I didn't roll them so tightly.

Again I waited my 15 minutes and pulled them out. They were a little better, but still tiny! What the hell. As you can see below, they got to only about 1.5x the size of the other ones.

Well, at this point in the story I'm sure you are all expecting me to tell you some grand revelation that I had to making these things puff up to the size of an elephant. Well I'm sorry to tell you, I didn't have that revelation. I still have no idea why they didn't puff up. I can guess that it had something to do with the amount of butter being spread onto the dough, but I think that is only half the story. I am planning on trying again some day with my own from-scratch puff pastry, but for now I will just have to be satisfied with this fact: they may not have looked right, but you can't beat the taste of cinnamon, sugar, and butter!

Scary Clown

2012-01-20T21:24:00.003-06:00

Music courtesy of DC3

Scary clown found off the side of 290 in Brennam

Enjoy

Christmas Weekend Baking - Puff Pastry from Scratch

2012-01-03T19:15:00.014-06:00

The day after Christmas I really wanted to just relax at home and bake. We spent the morning working out and then after a quick shower I was ready to start baking something yummy. I decided to try my hand at Puff Pastry from scratch!

I browsed all around the internet and found one that I liked. A recipe from Emeril that seemed pretty reasonable but also authentic. I didn't want any shortcuts but I also didn't want anything crazy that would require me to go to the grocery store.

5 hours! Did you know that it takes over 5 hours to make a puff pastry from scratch! And that's just the "resting" time. Yep, it took the whole day. Fortunately its mostly resting and as long as you can stand to have a dirty counter for a few hours, there's really not much to making the actual dough. I've copied the recipe below from the food network, but before I get to that, I'll show you some pictures.

First, the base. It's not hard to make the base and I pretty much just followed the recipe below. I did have a large bowl, so it made mixing the dough base much nicer than if I would have tried on the counter. I used ice water (but not the ice, of course). And I also used a hand. Using a fork just seemed like it would be so much more work.

After being in the fridge for an hour, came the part that even disgusted me a little. The butter block.

OMG. A 5" x 5" block of BUTTER. Yep, just butter. I pulled some butter out of the fridge and just pounded it down with the rolling pin and the palms of my hands. You don't want to over work it and you want to make sure it is about the same temperature as the dough you are pulling out of the fridge. After you've got your 5" x 5" block, you wrap the dough around it and roll it out. Smooshing all the delicious butter into the dough, and folding over and over again.

Before I get into the pictures, I should put a disclaimer. Yes, I own an awesome camera, and yes, my husband just bought me an equally awesome flash, but it's just so much easier to post pictures from the iphone. Sorry, it's true. I'll work on that more in the future.

Butter Block in the dough

Dough wrapped around the butter block

Rolled and folded the first time.

After the first rolling and folding (or second, cause you have to do it more than once) I put it in the fridge and waited one hour. Then I repeated the process. Here is the second (or 4th or 8th) rolling. After a while I couldn't keep track.

You can see it looks much better

So you repeat this process of resting and rolling and folding about 6 times and after 5 hours of resting, you finally have puff pastry dough, from scratch, that is ready to use!

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with the dough once I had it, so I started experimenting. I made some pastries with apples and then I had this great idea to make a raspberry compote. I took some raspberries and sugar and brandy and cooked them together. Mmmmm it was so tasty. See

Here are some pictures of the final products. These I really should have posted with the good camera, but again, I'm feeling lazy tonight and the good camera with the good pictures is just so far away. So deal.

The first ones out. The chocolate is a chocolate pastry filling that I made but I wasn't super impressed with, so I'll spare you the details.

Just out of the oven. Glazed with a powdered sugar/milk/vanilla mixture.

Ta Da! The final product all presented on a festive holiday tray. And they were delicious! Though I sit here and wonder how much better they were (or weren't) than if I had just used frozen puff pastry out of the freezer section of HEB. I mean, they were good, but man, 6 hours for home made puff pastry. That's just a lot of time.

So much time in fact, that I decided to make some macaroons while I was waiting for the dough. Here are the macaroons. All vanilla bean cookies filled with chocolate raspberry, salted caramel, and lemon curd. The salted caramel ones turned out AMAZING.

And here is the recipe that I promised for the puff pastries. Actually, I was going to copy it below, but since it's so long, I figure I'll just link it to you. HERE. I didn't make the apple tart tatin that is in the first half of the recipe, so I'm not sure how good it would have turned out, but I bet it would be pretty tasty!

2 months later, I feel like its over

2011-12-28T21:46:00.003-06:00

Wow, I can't believe its been two months already. There is so much 'after wedding' stuff to be done, I just now feel like the whirl wind is over. Photos are printed and hung, the album is done, and we got some of the videos from the videographer last week. With the help of this awesome website called MisstoMrs.com I officially changed my last name to Rea, and I also finished laying out both photo books from our honeymoon to Hawaii and just ordered them through Shutterfly. Heck, at this point I almost feel bored. Well, except that there are like 20+ more boxes to unpack from the move to Houston.

Before I take this time to start blogging about recipes again (like the from-scratch puff pastry I made last weekend, or the homemade macarons), I'm going to first share with you the two albums that I made in Shutterfly. If you're thinking about taking a trip to Hawaii I hope my posts and these pictures help you plan your vacation. If you come across this blog and have any questions about anything that we did, feel free to ask!

Link to Book I - Ohau & The Big Island

Link to Book II - Kauai & Maui

Hawaii Part 4 - Maui

2011-12-12T20:19:00.016-06:00

Our last week of our honeymoon we spent in Maui. It was beautiful.

We stayed at Lokelani Condominiums in A205. We weren't too impressed with the room, it was pretty outdated and the bed was rock hard, but the view was awesome. The management was really nice about getting us a memory foam mattress topper which made the bed okay, so I would recommend the Lokelani just not A205.

Our first night in Maui we went down to Ka'anapali beach and Black Rock to watch the torch lighting ceremony. We also had some drinks at the Hula Grill.
Our first day in Maui we slept in and spent the late morning walking around Old Lahania Town. Front street is lined with lots of little shops, although we were a bit disappointed to realize most of them are chain stores at this point. It also has this HUGE Banyan Tree that covers an entire park. It takes you a while to realize it's one big tree. For lunch we walked down the street and grabbed a bite at Aloha Mixed Plate. You can guess what we had to eat. :) It was pretty tasty, but the coolest part was that Jeremy had been waiting to take me here ever since he was here 3 years ago. It was nice that we finally got to eat here together. The rest of the day we spent in the water somewhere and just relaxing on the beach. We also did some grocery shopping for our week here and spent $7 on a half gallon of milk. Yep $7, insane! That night we ate dinner at the Maui Brewing Company. We sampled almost all their beers, but none were that spectacular.

Over the next few days we did so many awesome things on Maui. One day we took a SNUBA trip with Friendly Charters. We were supposed to go out to Molokai, but the winds were really bad and the waves pretty rough, so instead they took us to a different location. We were pretty bummed that we couldn't go to Molokai, but at our new location we did see lots of turtles. SNUBA is kinda like SCUBA but without having the tank on your back and without having to be certified. The take floats on a raft above your head, and you get to go down about 15 to 20 feet. Jeremy and I did really well and it was a pretty cool experience that I would recommend. Though I don't think I'm likely to SCUBA anytime soon.

That afternoon we spent some time at Big Beach. It really is a huge beautiful beach on the south side of Maui. Because we were staying on the west coast, the drive back to the condo was about an hour or more, but it was worth the drive over there to check out a different part of the island. If there is one thing I realized about Maui, it's that Maui is big, and it takes a while to drive anywhere. We also realized that it is not as warm as everyone says. In general the weather was beautiful, but not so hot that it made you want to jump into the fairly chilly water.

On Tuesday night we went to the Westin Luau. It was a tough choice but we chose this one because they had table service instead of a buffet and they had 5 fire dancers. The show did not disappoint. The food was good, drinks plenty, and we had front row seats. Jeremy called way in advance and booked reserved seating for us. He also told them it was our honeymoon and that we wanted front row seats. It must have worked because we had the best seats in the house! The most awkward part of the luau was when they did the wedding dance. They told everyone in the audience who was newly married or celebrating an anniversary to get up and dance. Jeremy really really wanted to dance, so we did, but we were the only ones! I know people say some luau's are cheezy and touristy, but we had such a good time. After the show we walked along the beach. It was perfect.
Our next day on Maui we woke up early and did the Road to Hana. It took us about 9 hours round trip. This may horrify some, but we stopped a lot along the way and really enjoyed ourselves. If you are going to do this drive, make sure you have a whole day, or more! The first hike we tried to do was the Mile 6 hike to the four waterfalls. However, the water was raging so much that we couldn't even make it across the first creek. The hike down that way was nice though, and we are looking forward to doing the hike next time we go to Maui. Along the road we followed the sights listed in the Maui Revealed guidebook starting on page 80. As you read how many stops there are, you can understand why the drive took us so long. We saw some awesome waterfalls and took some great hikes. The first one we did was up the Punalau stream to Punalau falls (page 83). The rocks were pretty slippery because the water was flowing a bit, but the hike was fun and the waterfall at the end was beautiful.

We continued along the way and stopped for the most amazing banana bread at the "Halfway to Hana" roadside stand. I know the book says there is better banana bread on the west coast, but it is wrong! This banana bread is the best. Do not miss it. Between mile 22 and 23 we stopped at Pua'a Ka'a State Park. On the advice of the guide book we took the small awkward trail on the right side of the falls. It was super muddy but really really cool. After walking up and around the first falls, we walked along the water diversion ditch (which was pretty high off the ground) and along what looked like it could be a log flume ride at disneyland. We finally came to the upper falls. It was really pretty and a short careful walk down you could get right to the pond that lead to the diversion ditch system. The reason this falls is so nice is because the water hasn't yet been diverted. At this point I was feeling a little bummed that we hadn't swam in a waterfall, like we had done when we were in costa rica. I felt the water with my toe, freezing. But I looked at Jeremy and said, hold the camera. I stripped down to my bathing suit and dove it. It was exhilarating. We both jumped in a few more times before heading back down the trail. Along the way back down it started to pour. We took cover under a tunneled section of the trail and waited out the rain. By the time we got back to the car we were covered in mud, but it was well worth it. And we were able to wash off at the lower pond.

We continued along the drive stopping for lunch at one of the road side areas. After lunch we decided to check out Maui Cave Adventures and take a walk through a lava tube. This tube was much bigger and longer than the Thurston Lava Tube on Hawaii and is very cool. The owner had known about the lava tube for some time and as soon as the property came up for sale, he jumped on the opportunity to buy the property and open up the cave to visitors. It's a $12 self guided tour and they provide the flashlights. Not only is the cave very interesting, but the information along the cave is very informative. The pictures I have don't do it justice but if you are in the area, I highly recommend stopping here. And yes, they do take credit card.

At this point we were pretty much to Hana and decided that next time we come back we want to spend at least one night here. There are so many things to do in the area. Around now it was close to 3pm and we made the decision to visit the Maui Winery and skip the Seven Sacred Pools. We also had to skip the black and red sand beaches, and lots more waterfalls. Like I said, lots to do up here. So we continued our drive around the other side of the island. The rental car company tells you that they are not responsible if you drive over here, but the roads really aren't that bad at all and we had a standard compact car. In fact, the roads we were on in costa rica were much worse. We did arrive at the Maui Winery just before it closed, but it was so packed with tour buses that it really wasn't that exciting. Visit the one on Hawaii, skip this one.

The next day we had scheduled a bike tour with Haleakela Bike Company. Because it is a sunrise tour at the top of Haleakela we had to be at the bike company at 3am. Yes am. And it was on the east side of the island, where we currently were. So that night we made the decision to get a hotel room in Wailuku which is north center of the island. If we would have gone back to our condo we would have spent an addition al 3 hours driving back and forth. Just didn't seem worth it to us. So we grabbed a room and ate dinner at this cute italian restaurant across the street.

The next morning we woke up early, so early that I'm pretty sure it was still considered the night before. We drove over to Pa'ia and met up with the Haleakela Bike Company. They fitted us with bikes, helmets, backpacks, and rain gear and we started the drive up the volcano. It's about and hour up to the top. Because the moon was just right we were fortunate enough to see a moonbow. Yes a moonbow, and no, before this trip too hadn't heard of such a thing. But they are real and pretty neat. We got up to the top around 5am, about 45 minutes before sunrise. It was freezing! Fortunately we had carried around our winter coats with us the entire trip just for this moment. We took the small trail to the right off the parking lot and found a great spot to watch sunrise. As the sun started to illuminate the sky, it was really awesome to watch the island unfold below us.

The most beautiful sight was just as the disk of the sun pierced through the clouds. The most beautiful sunrise ever. I was so memorized I tried convincing Jeremy that we should go back the next day. It was really a perfect moment that I will forever remember.

After watching sunrise we hopped back into the truck and started down the mountain just until we were outside the park gates. The park won't allow the companies to ride bikes inside the park, so they drop you off just below the 7,000 foot mark. They gave us a map and we were off. I really like this bike company because it is a self guided tour and you just have to be back by 4pm. Considering it was only 6am, we had a lot of time on the bikes. Turns out even with stopping for breakfast we still were back to the shop by 11am, but it was an awesome ride. I highly highly recommend doing the sunrise bike combo.

Before we headed back to the condo we stopped at a lavendar farm and the surfing goat cheese farm. Both were pretty interesting little side trips.

That night we went back to Old Lahania Town and had dinner at a small hole in the wall place called Mala. The inside wasn't much but the outside tables were nice and the food was delicious! I don't know if it would have been worth the price if we were sitting inside, but the outside atmosphere and the amazing food made the cost doable. Plus, we just used the excuse "well, we are on our honeymoon." That night we walked back down Front Street for a while and came across these wood carvers. We watched them for a few moments and then we decided to pick out something for ourselves. They had these little unfinished turtles that you could choose from and then they would finish carving them in front of you. It was really special to watch this guy carve this turtleish shaped piece of wood into a turtle. If we wouldn't have watched him with our own eyes, we would have swore it was made in China.

Our final full day in Maui we took a drive around the west coast. We followed the guide book again and stopped at a few interesting sites, but by far the most interesting was the Nakalele Blowhole. To get to the blowhole we stopped about 1/2 a mile before the main parking lot and walked there along the "Acid Warzone Hike." (p. 192) This was very cool. Because the ocean spray is so dramatic here the volcanic landscape has been literally pulverized and blown away. Everything looks like it is covered in a gray ash and you can clearly see the toll the sea has taken on the boulders. After walking through the war zone we came to the Nakalele Blowhole. The path through this way drops you off right next to the blowhole. As we found out, sometimes it doesn't blow much, and other times it can blow up to 50 feet in the air. But it's not the spray from the blowhole that will get you soaked, it's the waves lingering off the coast waiting until you aren't paying attention to surprise you with their power. We were soaked by the time we left. Here is a video I made of the blowhole. The sudden darkness is me quickly covering the camera to protect it from the sea spray coming from the left of us.

After the blowhole we continued around the coast stopping for some banana bread at Julia's. It was pretty good, but nowhere near as good as "half way to hana" bread. Though they do have this oddly addicting candied coconut and this lilikoi butter which we brought back with us.

On our way back to our condo, we stopped at the Iao Valley. What is so neat about Hawaii is that all of the islands exhibit so many different climates all within minutes of each other. The Iao Valley is so lush and green and yet just on the other side of Hana it looks like a desert. Crazy.

As we woke on our last day in Maui, and the last day of our honeymoon, we spent some time to reflect on the wonderful time we had here. We packed up our stuff and headed out to do one last hike before we left. Unfortunately the hike we wanted to do, the Waihe'e Valley Trail (hanging bridges hike), was closed and it had been for the last few months (since September 2011) due to a disagreement between land owners. The hike looks beautiful and I hope that they all resolve their differences soon so it can be reopened. Instead we did part of the Waihe'e Ridge Trail where there are some beautiful views about 1/2 a mile in. Since we were about to catch our flight home we could only do about 1.5 miles, but next time we will finish the 4 mile loop.

What an amazing honeymoon. We are so lucky that we were able to take a full 3 weeks off work to experience this wonderful place and spend the first weeks of our marriage in Hawaii. We will be back!

Hawaii Part 3 - Kauai

2011-11-25T20:36:00.008-06:00

It's a hard choice between Maui and Kauai, but I think Kauai was our favorite island. So green, so lush, so beautiful.

We flew into Kauai in the afternoon and checked into our condo at Kuhio Shores #314 in Poipu. The condo was amazing. I know, I'm using that word a lot, but it had a huge lani (balcony) and it was right on the ocean. We fell asleep each night to the sound of the waves crashing into the shore and the windows wide open. If you're going to Kauai, you should definitely stay here.

Our first day in Kauai we went up to Waimea Canyon. They call it the Grand Canyon of Hawaii and it's pretty spectacular. Not quite as massive as the real Grand Canyon, but still pretty awesome. Everyday we were on Kauai it rained for some period of time then the sun came out; today was no different. We slowly took the long road up to the top, stopping every few miles for some photos. Jeremy picked out a 4 mile hike for us to do through the rain forest on the ocean side of the canyon. It is only in the Ultimate Kauai Guidebook "Kauai Revealed" and it's called the Honopu Ridge Trail on page 196. You'll definitely want to wear long pants that you can roll up into shorts or zip off. We went to the end of the marked trail, and then a bit more, but while we were out there we saw some serious hikers hike all the way to the end of the cliff. It's a gorgeous hike through a forest, dense with ferns and bamboo and culminates with some awe inspiring views of the Napali coast. I highly recommend this hike. That night we went to dinner at a restaurant right next to our condo called The Beach House. It was very romantic and the best part was that we could walk home. Okay, the best part was the food and Mai Tai's but the walk home was a nice bonus.

Our second day we spent the morning going on an ATV tour with Kauai ATV. My parents did this when they were in Hawaii a few years ago and they highly recommended it. The best part about the tour is that they encourage you to hit every mud puddle. We were covered in mud by the end of the adventure; it was so much fun! Though I don't think it would be as much fun during the dry season without any mud puddles. We took turns driving the mud buggie (you have a choice between mud buggie and ATV), to the right is a picture of Jeremy driving while I hold on tight.

After getting all cleaned up, we spent the afternoon snorkeling at Poipu Beach Park and boggie boarding at Brennecke Beach. The waves at Brennecke Beach were huge and we got beat up pretty badly. We were exhausted when we got back to the room, so we stayed in and made some pasta.

Because we were in Hawaii for so long, all the days are starting to blur together, so I'll just tell you about some of the other stuff we did on Kauai, in no particular order.

One day we spent doing the first half of the Napali Coast hike on the Kalalau Trail. This is also a 4 mile round trip hike, well the first part, and it is very popular. The day we did the hike it was again raining on and off, so the trail was very muddy, and the stream crossing at the 2 mile mark was raging. We couldn't cross to get to the beach, and if one were to hike the full trail, I don't know how they would have continued on this day. The full trail is 22 miles round trip, with a camp ground at the far end at mile 11. I've been told by friends that it is a beautiful hike. We enjoyed the first part and hope to do the full hike next time we go back.

A few days later we went for a hike on the east shore on a trail called "Sleeping Giant" (Nounou Mountain). The trail is called this because it traverses up the mountain that is said to look like a giant sleeping on its back. Legend says that in the case of an impending attack, the Kauai people would light fires behind the giant to illuminate his profile. If you squint hard and really really pretent, you can kind of see a giant... maybe.

There are three trails up the mountain; we took the east trail which is about 4 miles long and rises 1000 feet. This is a beautiful hike and one that we will always remember. There are so many amazing views of the Wailua Valley. Once you get past the picnic tables there is a trail that continues out to the chin and forehead of the giant. The hike is well worth it as you can see vast amounts of the island from up here. We spent a good hour at the top hanging out and having lunch. Jeremy also surprised me up there with a necklace that I had been looking at for a while. It was very special.

Besides hiking, we spent a lot of time snorkeling outside our condo, walking around Poipu, and just relaxing. It was so nice.

Our last day on Kauai we went for a doors off (of course) helicopter tour with Jack Harter. The tour was amazing and our pilot was very informative. Of the two helicopter tours we did, this one had the best views, though I did quite enjoy seeing the lava from the sky on the big island. We were mesmerized at how many waterfalls there were on Kauai. Every direction there is a waterfall, and because it had been raining the day before, the sights were even better. Our pilot took us around the whole island, darted in and out of the canyon walls in Waimea Canyon, got up close to the waterfalls, and even spotted a wild hog from the air. If you'd like to do a helicopter tour on Kauai, I would recommend this one for sure.

With so much fun stuff to do on Kauai, it was hard to leave. But we were so excited to get to Maui.

Hawaii Part 2 - The Big Island

2011-11-25T09:31:00.010-06:00

After Ohau we jetted off to Hawaii, aka The Big Island. Because the island is so big, we flew into Hilo, drove across to Kona and flew out of Kona. This time we tried to rent an SUV, but much to our surprise rental SUV's don't seem to come with a trunk cover! Not that we were storing lots of stuff in the trunk, but it's nice to have somewhere to keep your snorkel gear and towels or an extra change of clothes. Fortunately we were able to switch into a ford mustang convertible again. Sweet!

In Hilo we stayed at the Volcano Village Lodge on the recommendation of my parents. This place was awesome! Truly beautiful. We spent one night in the Hale Kilauea room and one night in the Haleakala Lodge. Both rooms were so beautiful. I photos and descriptions don't do them justice, but I'll try with a photo. First Hale Kilauea second Haleakala Lodge.

After checking in we headed to Kiawe Kitchen for lunch and then off to Volcano National Park. Kiawe Kitchen was pretty good. We stopped there one day for lunch and then for dinner. Lunch was some pretty good pizzas with amazing homemade pesto, but dinner was pretty slow and terrible. Go for lunch, skip dinner.

When we arrived at the park I was so excited to see lava. I wanted to view it from anywhere and everywhere I could. Unfortunately, since the new eruption in August of 2011 there isn't much lava flowing on the surface anymore. The normal viewing points are mostly cooled off and the only thing you can really see from those is a faint glow. Also because of the latest eruption in August, 2011, over half of the crater rim drive and all of the extension off the Thurston lava tube are closed due to toxic gasses and unstable rock. So we decided to first start by walking the Thurston lava tube. Even though the part we really wanted to do was closed, we were still amazed by it. We even walked it twice. Right across the street from the lava tube is a trail that wanders around a rain forest and then down through the Kilauea Iki crater and back up. It's about 3 miles and took us around 2.5 hours. Really an awesome hike, highly recommended. The details are on page 194 "Kilauea Iki Hike" in the Big Island Revealed book. We spent a lot of time on the floor of the crater walking around and feeling the heat coming out of the steam vents. Around 4:30 we headed up to the Jagger Museum to watch the sun set over the Halema'uma'u Crater and catch one of our very few changes to see lava coming out of the Pu'u'O'o vent. It was pretty cold up there, but we came prepared. As the sun set you could slowly start to see the glow from the lava light up the area around the crater. It wasn't the flowing lava that I had hoped for, but it was still beautiful.

The next morning we woke early and drove up to Hilo to take a helicopter ride over Hilo and the Volcano National Park. We flew with Paradise (aka Tropical) Helicopters and flew with no doors! It was awesome. Only 4 people plus the pilot and everyone gets a great seat. The only person in the middle is in the front. We loved it so much that we took a second, no doors, flight on Kauai, but more on that later. Our helicopter pilot flew right over the Pu'u'O'o vent and over the huge lava field. We got to see some lava flowing on the surface and then some waterfalls over near Hilo. It's pretty amazing to see the lava destruction from the air; where the flow stops and the tree line begins.

After the helicopter tour we drove around to some waterfalls and took a drive on a 4 mile scenic route on the old highway. We headed to Akaka Falls, a 400 foot waterfall, and spent about and hour walking around the small park. After grabbing some ice cream in the small town near the falls, we drove back toward Hilo and stopped at the Hawai'i Tropical Botanical Garden. I'm really glad that we picked this one, because it was beautiful. So many different flowers and plants and orchids, plus it meets right up with the ocean. Also interesting is the story of how it became a botanical garden. There is too much to tell here, but lets just say you should read about it HERE. That night we had dinner back in Volcano (yes, it's the name of the town) at the Kilauea Lodge & Restaurant. It was so good, I wish I was there right now eating. Highly recommended, but you better go early or make reservations.

On Saturday, I think, we headed out of Volcano and over to the drier side of the island: Kona. Along the way we stopped at the Volcano Winery. Although Hawaii isn't exactly a wine producing mecca, they had some pretty decent wines. We bought a bottle of their macadamia nut wine and some other little goodies. We also stopped at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach on the way. This beach is very accessible and pretty awesome. The sand is really really black, and genuine. That is to say, it is created when the chunky 'a'a lava flow meets the ocean and shatters into small pieces. Overtime those pieces are tossed by the ocean so much that they form sand. And guess what else we saw there... a turtle! Just chillin on the beach, getting slightly annoyed every time the water came in to soak him. Guess he should have moved up beach a little more.

After passing several "farmers markets" that were more like crap markets, we arrived in Kona. The next two nights we stayed at the Sea Village #3214. The view was nice, but we weren't too impressed with the rest of the place. It seemed really dirty and just dingy. Fortunately we were there for only 2 nights. Oh yea, and the other guests were weird. Every morning we woke up to a new sign in the parking lot claiming one of the parking spots for a particular unit. I think there was a little infighting between some of the units while we were there. There was also a coffee shop just outside the complex called Green Flash Coffee. The first two days I couldn't figure out why I never saw this place open. The last day I got my answer. When we drove back to the condo to get our stuff to leave, we saw the coffee shop wrapped in plastic being fumigated! Not just sprayed, I mean the whole thing was covered in plastic wrap. I'm so glad we never went there.

After checking in we decided to do some snorkeling and relaxing on the beach. But first, food. We stopped at this place Jeremy found on Yelp called 'Da Poke Shack'. AMAZING. So so good. If you don't know what poke is, well look at the picture to the right. Think tuna tar tar but with bigger cube like pieces and different types of sauce. I liked the simple sesame myself. They also serve it as a plate with rice and a side, or you can get ahi tacos which were also pretty good. We stopped here every day we were in Kona.

After lunch we headed to Kahalu'u Beach Park for some snorkeling and then over to White Sands Beach (aka La'aloa Bay, Magic Sands, etc.) for some relaxation. The snorkeling was pretty good, but the waves at White Sands were awesome. We didn't bring boogie boards this day, but we did come back the next day with them in hand. We had so much fun boogie boarding on this beach. It was also our first experience swimming with a turtle! The "little" guy just floated up right behind us and nearly made us jump. How cool is that, swimming with turtles! That night we headed to the first place Jeremy wanted to eat dinner, Kona Brewery of course. They have so many brews on tap, probably 20 or more, and I think we sampled over half of them. I wish they bottled more of their brews so we could enjoy them in the states. BTW, did you know that Kona beer that you get in the states isn't made in or by Kona at all? They are apparently part of a coop with Craft Brewers Alliance and have all their beer bottled, packaged, and distributed in California; though they claim that it is still their beer since it is their recipe.

The next day we took a kayak trip out to the Captain Cook Monument and had some of the best snorkeling that we did all trip. The waters are so blue and so pristine around the monument. It really is some of the best snorkeling in Hawaii. However, it gets really really crowded by big boats, so get there early if you go. Also, it's protected land, so if you want to go you'll have to get a permit from Hilo to land your kayak, or go with a large boat, or pick one of the two or three companies out of kona that have a permit to land there. We went with Adventures in Paradise. Our kayak guide was really fun and we got there super early so we had the place to ourselves for a while. They also supplied us a nice snack. After kayaking we were craving a burger, bad. So we stopped at Annie's Island Fresh Burgers. Amazing! You have to go here if you are in kona.

The rest of our time in Kona we spent walking around, relaxing, and boogie boarding, of course. We had dinner at Jackie Rey's Ohana Grill one night, which was pretty tasty, and also stopped by Island Lava Java for breakfast, though the food is good, the servers weren't the nicest, or maybe it was just ours. We also took the brewery tour at the Kona Brewery, limited to 15 so go early if it's the weekend. That tour was very informative, and I appreciated that they limited the tour to 15 to make it easier to walk around and listen. While in Kona we bought some clay orchids from CC Whisper Gallery. We had them shipped back to the US and they should be here Tuesday! While the hours on the shop aren't very reliable and the shipping slow, the products are so beautiful and realistic it makes up for the hassle.

After 3 days in Hilo and 2 1/2 in Kona we jetted off to Kauai!

Hawaii Part 1 - Ohau

2011-11-24T07:09:00.004-06:00

Our honeymoon was a blast! I can't wait to go back already. We spent 3 weeks in paradise and hit all four major islands: Ohau, Hawaii, Kauai, Maui. Since there is so much to write about I'll split it up into four different blogs. I should also note that for each island we had the Revealed books by Andrew Doughty. You can find them on Amazon, and if you decide to take a trip to Hawaii I definitely recommend getting them. Now, all about Ohau.

From Houston we got a direct flight into Honolulu, Hawaii. My mom and Jeremy arranged for someone to be waiting at the airport for us with beautiful fresh flower leis. They were made of pink bom orchids and were gorgeous (and huge!). I tried to dry them and bring them home with us, but about half way into our time on Kauai they really started to smell bad. On Ohau we rented a Ford Mustang convertible and stayed at the Outrigger Reef Hotel on Waikiki. It was a nice hotel and I would recommended staying here for anyone traveling to Ohau. Because our room wasn't ready when we arrived, we dropped our luggage with the bellman and headed to the bar for some Mai Tai's. Happy hour special, $3.50 each. How can you go wrong. It was the perfect way to start our honeymoon; mai tai's on the beach. After we checked into the room we walked around Waikiki. We checked out the Duke Hahanamoku statue and watched sunset on the beach. We then headed back to the hotel and had dinner at their fancy restaurant, The Ocean House. The fish was amazing and the entries were heavy, but well crafted.

The next day we got up early, which wasn't hard to do because of the time change, and went to Pearl Harbor. If you decide to visit Pearl Harbor, I recommend getting there by 8am to get reasonable tickets out to the USS Arizona Memorial. We got there around 7:45am and our tickets were for 8:30am. While at Pearl Harbor we toured the USS Arizona Memorial, the Battleship Missouri (where the second World War officially ended with the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945), and the USS Bowfin submarine. I learned I would not do well on a submarine, those things are tiny! We also spent an hour or so walking around the grounds and looking at the other memorials. I would leave yourself a good 4 hours to do Pearl Harbor, and more if you wanted to visit the museums.

After Pearl Harbor we headed back to the hotel for some lunch at their third restaurant, the Kani Ka Pila Grill. This is the one that is right out front by the pool, and we liked it the best. The portions are large and the Mai Tai's delicious. The coconut shrimp is very tasty. After staying here for 3 nights we started to understand why people opt to stay in resorts so often. The convenience is just so nice. That evening we took a drive around the island and along Tantalus and Round Top Road (see directions in Ohau Revealed). The 10 mile curvy road is lined with beautiful lush trees and plants and gives you some great vantage points of Honolulu. On our way up the 1600 foot climb we saw some long boarders flying down the road. Along the way you'll come to Pu'u Ualaka'a State Wayside Park. We watched sunset over Honolulu from here. It was beautiful.

Wednesday was our last full day in Ohau. We woke up early and had breakfast at Bogart's Cafe. Then we headed to Hanauma Bay for some snorkeling. The parking lot fills up quick, so get there early. We arrived around 8am and were down to the beach by 8:45. When you first get there, you have to watch a 10 minute presentation about the marine life and not harming the bay. I think this is a really good idea, though I'm not sure how effective it is. I guess it must be somewhat because the bay still looks beautiful and pristine. I just love looking at the beautiful blue waters off Hawaii, I never once got tired of it. The water was pretty cold, but we spent about 2 hours in the bay and a little more time just relaxing. We forgot how much further south we were than Texas, because in Texas you don't burn at 10am, but in Hawaii, you do. We spent the next two days with a bottle of Aloe close by.

That afternoon we took a drive around the north shore. Stopping every once in a while to check out the scenery, we decided to eat lunch at a small BBQ joint called Uncle BoBo's. They had plate lunches, which was perfect for Jeremy because he couldn't wait to get one. What is a plate lunch you ask? Well it's a traditional Hawaiian meal consisting of a meat, a side of macaroni salad, and a side of rice. Meat and starch, my favorite. This place is terrific and if you are in the area you should stop by. I highly recommend the pulled pork, and the people working here are super friendly. After lunch we continued our treck around the island until we came up to Turtle Bay. It had been 3 days and I still had not seen a turtle, so we had to stop. As we walked toward the beach, there were a bunch of people crowded around the water. Much to my delight... a turtle! I was so excited and enamored with this turtle swimming in the water that I failed to see the other huge one beached just 30 feet from me. Jeremy looked at me and pointed over to the left saying "hey, what's that rock over there?" Oh man, I thought my head was going to explode. 300 pictures later, Jeremy finally pulled me away and back to the car.

Our last stop in Ohau was the Dole Pineapple Plantation. We didn't take a tour or anything, but it was pretty neat to see the pineapples growing out of the ground and the different stages of the growth. Do you know each plant lasts for two harvesting cycles before being replaced. While there we had to get some pineapple dole whip with fresh pineapples... of course! Okay, maybe it was a little too much pineapple, or so my stomach was trying to convince me. I should note one important thing, if you leave the Dole plantation at 5pm when they close, you will hit rush hour traffic on the way back to Waikiki. With my stomach full of pineapple and Jeremy driving, there was nothing left for me to do but sleep the whole way home.

The next morning we jetted off to Hawaii, aka The Big Island.

Wedding Vendor Review - Austin, TX

2011-11-16T08:27:00.016-06:00

I promised that I would write up a summary of all my vendors that I used for my wedding which was in Austin, TX, so here you go. I hope you find it useful. If you have used some of these vendors before, feel free to leave your own comments too!

Hair - Jennifer with A'Salon on Jollyville Road - Jennifer is my regular hair stylist, but when I was looking to get my hair done for the wedding I had this weird preconceived notion that I needed to use a "wedding" specialist. I did two trials with different girls, and eventually decided on Bella's Ball. However after she arrived late to my bridal shoot, and my curls fell out an hour into the shoot, I knew I needed someone else. One day Jennifer finished off my hair cut by giving me a curly look using just a straitening iron. It was amazing and it held all day. I immediately booked her to do my hair and my moms and my girls. Oh yea, and because she doesn't bill out just as a "wedding" specialist, her prices are ridiculously reasonable. My dad was shocked when he saw the bill, he said it was too low! Jennifer is amazing and I would highly recommend her to anyone. My curls stayed in all night and my hair usually never holds a curl.

Makeup - Rhea McCarter - Rhea is wonderful. I did a trial makeup session with two girls and Rhea was by far the best. I would highly recommend doing a trial because she really needs to get a feeling for what you want and you need to decide what you like too. We did my trial and we did a trial for my mom. I was really glad because it meant that my bridal shoot makeup and especially my day of makeup was perfect! I was really happy with the natural look that she gave me. And she's so much fun to work with. Really sweet and really talented.

Limo - Cynthia's Manhattan Limo - Clean and on time. What else can you say. The driver was good and picked everyone up either early or on time and when we left something in the limo, he came back to give it to us. I used them to take us from the house to the salon and then to the ceremony/reception.

Getaway Car - Enchanted Antique Limos - My husband didn't want to use a limo as our getaway car, so we rented a Rolls Royce from Enchanted Antique Limos. The car was beautiful and clean and the driver was very nice. He took us from south Austin up to the Driskill and took all back roads to make the drive nicer. He also drove us straight up congress toward the capitol and asked if we wanted to drive up to the capitol to take some more shots. We were too tired at that point, but it was a nice offer.

Venue - The Hummingbird House - Oh my god this place is amazing. I must have looked at 30+ venues before I found this place. The grounds are perfect and in the middle of a drought you would never expect for a place like this to exist. The reason why it is so beautiful is because the owner also owns The Great Outdoors nursery on South Congress. The ceremony is outside and the reception is held under a beautiful white fabric draped tent. All the trees are wrapped in LED lights to make for an enchanted evening. The grooms suite is a little small, but the bridal suite is in the main house and is 3 rooms. They also went out of their way to help my mom out who is handicapped. Guest bathrooms will surprise you.

Day of Coordinator - Lauren & Danny @ The Hummingbird House - I wasn't sure if I should put this above or give it its own section. Lauren and Danny run The Hummingbird House, but if you ask, they will act as your day of coordinator for a small up-charge. I paid this and it was sooooo worth it. First of all, at the time that I got married the fee for their day of services was very very affordable, especially compare to other day-of coordinators. Lauren is amazing. This girl is just as organized as I am, and that's saying something. She truly will go out of her way to make your day exactly as you want it. And she will email you back in a timely fashion, which is so important. I was very grateful to have her and Danny coordinating everything on my big day. If you get married at The Hummingbird House, use them!

Flowers - Trisha from Visual Lyrics Floral Art in Cedar Park, TX - This is a hard one to review. First the end product - The flowers were amazing. Just beautiful. I did a large bouquet of roses for my bouquet (40-50), and I used roses, white calla lilies, and pink bom orchids for the girls and the mothers bracelets, pink bom orchids for the guys, white roses for the dads, a long greenery piece with small spray roses for the front of my moms electric scooter, 4-5 roses for the toss bouquet, 1 orchid and 1 rose floating in tall vases with lights and black beads for the cocktails, and roses, lilies and orchids for the big tables. She also put together a huge red rose display for the center of the food tables. She was on time dropping everything off and she picked up the vases afterward. The reason I say it is hard to review her is because she is terrible at getting back to you. At one point I must have called and left 3 messages and 3 emails for her. I couldn't even get a hold of her to pay my balance until it was like a week late. I guess you could say she is laid back, but as a bride, I would have liked a little more interaction and response. Her prices are reasonable compare to others. In the end I would probably recommend her because the work was flawless, just be prepared to have some communication issues.

Cakes - Heidi at Envy Pastries - These cakes were amazing. Heidi made two cakes for my big day, one traditional and one grooms cake. The traditional cake was covered in white fondant and decorated in white lace icing. It was huge! The 5 layers from top to bottom were: 6" White Godiva Chocolate with strawberries and cream filling, 9" Carrot Cake, 12" Vanilla Bean with lemon mascarpone filling, 15" Chocolate with peanut butter moose filling and mini Reeses peanut butter cups, 18" White Godiva Chocolate with strawberries and cream filling. The cake was gorgeous! The grooms cake was a 1:1 replica of my husbands guitar and it was chocolate cake with raspberry filling. Again, just amazing. Each layer was 4 layers of cake an 3 layers of filling. While the vanilla cake was a bit dry, I loved the chocolate and I highly recommend working with Heidi. But get on her schedule early, because she only does one cake a day.

String Quartet - Musical Discovery Chamber Players - These four musicians are wonderful. They played from 30 minutes before the wedding through the cocktail hour. You can find many of their pieces on you tube and I highly highly recommend them if you are looking for a quartet to play during your ceremony. The only thing I wish was that we would have put them closer to the ceremony site or hooked them up with a microphone. Probably just putting them 5-8 feet closer would have been nice. They did a very nice job with Canon in D as well as our exit song, The Wedding March. Jill, the coordinator of the group, is very nice and so easy to work with. The first time she played Canon in D for my parents was when we met them at a bridal show, and I knew right away that we were about to hand them a check to guarantee our spot on their calendar.

Band - The Matchmaker Band - These guys are awesome. They are a 10 piece band and they really made our night excellent. They are so much fun and do a great job getting people onto the dance floor. Two weeks before the wedding we sent them a list of songs that were sorted into tiers: must play, 1st choices, 2nd choices, and a 'do not play' list. This really helped them put together a set list that we would like and that we felt our guests would enjoy. Their sound guy, Alex, is great. He really worked with us and the Hummingbird House to keep the music at a perfect level for dancing while not being too loud. I highly recommend these guys. Also, they tend to play at the Highball in Austin on Monday nights if you want to check them out.

Photographer - Beverly Demafiles - Beverly and her husband, David, are awesome. I've used her three times now, to do my engagement photos, my bridal shots, and my wedding photography. Her style is journalistic, in that she works to tell the story of the day through her shots. I love that her photos are full of color (or some black and white) and aren't overly artistic or styled with Photoshop. They are what I think of as true photos. Both her and David do a really great job of capturing the moment. There were so many great action shots from the wedding that we are having trouble narrowing them down. I love that they both come ready to do whatever is necessary to get the shot. There were several times that I saw Bev on the ground shooting up just to capture the moment. She's not afraid to get right into the action and her eye for great unique shots is unmatched. The other thing that struck me was this. The week before the wedding I sent her a list of my "must have shots." Right after the ceremony when we were taking pictures, I saw David standing there with the list in his hand making sure we got all the shots that I wanted, and they did! It made me feel instantly at ease because I knew nothing would get overlooked. They captured so many details from the day, I love them!

Videographer - Wes Shepard of New Road Productions - We met Wes at a bridal show the January before our October wedding. We hadn't thought much about having a videographer at the wedding, but when I saw his videos, I knew we had to hire him right away. Him and his assistant worked great with Beverly and David to make sure no one was in each others way the day of the wedding. And they both came out to the Hummingbird House the weekend before to plan out the day, which was nice. I didn't even notice Wes was around videoing until the last few dances when the night got really dark and the light on his camera started to be ever-so-slightly annoying. But it was so dark he had to have a light on somewhere if he wanted to capture the moment, and it wasn't that bright. For the ceremony he hooked Jeremy up with a lapel mic to record the vows and the pastor, but you could hardly see it as he placed it right behind the flower. He also worked with me to create a video package that was just what I wanted. I highly recommend that you try to get a videographer if you can afford it, and I recommend Wes.

Linens - Premiere Party Central, Manchaca Road. - They have a great selection of linens and other necessities for your day, especially helpful if you need to provide these things for your event. If you go here just make sure you work with Kelly and only Kelly. I found most of the other staff to be less than helpful and often making my life a headache. They have a huge sale in January/February where you can get linens half off if you reserve them during their sale period. (note, my wedding was in October, but I was able to take advantage of this sale)

Caterer - An Affair to Remember Catering (AATR) - This one is also hard for me to review. Let me start with the good. The food is amazing. Hands down better than Pink Avocado or Sterling (of these two I'd pick Sterling for food). The other reason why I initially chose these guys was because they seemed like a smaller operation than Sterling. That is to say, they seemed a bit more local and not quite so much of a large corporation. I worked mainly with Matthew, and this is really where my impression of the company started to go downhill. Matthew likes to talk, a lot. But that also means that he is not listening to you and what you want. He spends more time explaining why he hasn't gotten something done than just doing it, and more likely than not you will have to hound him down the weeks before your wedding. AATR does some of their glass and plate rentals through Premiere (above) and then they send you the inventory list for you to double check, even though you always go through AATR. Matthew kept blaming Premiere for why the order was wrong, but it took me 10 minutes and one phone call to Kelly to get it all straightened out. In my mind, I shouldn't have to do my caterers job. Matthew kept telling me what he wanted to do for the table arrangement on the day of my wedding, and it took me more than 3 occasions to finally explain to him that it was my wedding and we were doing what I wanted. I should have known then to fire him. Oh and two weeks before the wedding I sent him a text message asking why I didn't have my final invoice yet. His response was "which bride is this?" To which I replied "Oh, I see I'm not the only one waiting for you to get back to them." This is consistently Matthew. The day of the wedding the food was great, but there wasn't enough! Not because I didn't order enough, but because they couldn't produce it fast enough. My dad went back to the kitchen when the food ran out and the response he got was "people are eating too fast" Are you kidding me! You know 100 people are going to rush a tent, you need that food ready, or you need to bring more help. At one point the water station was empty and my dad again had to go back and find someone to fill it. Horrible! And then I found out through a guest that they ran out of lime juice. Why? Because the bartenders were making the wrong ratio of lime juice to tequila for the margarita drinks so they ran out of juice. But Matthew didn't come tell me this, so I, the bride, had to go to the kitchen and bitch him out. I *think* they eventually got more. My parents and I are now in the process of trying to get the company to refund the money that we are due because of all these disasters. Oh yea, and the pasta bar was to have 4 burner stations, but one didn't work and they didn't bring any backups, so they only had 3. Why would a reputable caterer not bring backups? Oh and although we went over the wine/margarita glass order about 20 times, they were still wrong. Which means I paid for something I didn't get. Unless this company shapes up and fires Matthew, for all the headaches that I had, I can't recommend them. Yes, their food is the best, but I can't imagine telling any other bride to go through what I went through with Matthew. Oh and their "chef's station" is a joke, avoid that. I'm happy that my guests got food and didn't realize too much what a disaster this caterer was. If you're set on using this company just make sure that you get a different planner than Matthew, and perhaps you'll be okay.

Some wedding hints, for all you brides

2011-11-15T20:24:00.002-06:00

Since the wedding a few of my friends have asked me what I learned and what pointers I could give them for their weddings. Here are a few things that I realized at the wedding that I didn't think too much about before hand. If you're getting married soon, you may want to take notes.

1. flip flops are a must! I had 4 water blisters on my feet from my shoes. Of course I didn't realize it that night, but the next morning they hurt. And if you do get water blisters, just pop them with a pin and squeeze out the water, it's painless cause the skin is dead already. Then put on a bandaid. That should take most of the pain away.

2. make sure your emergency kit is well stocked with large and small safety pins (large ones were key for me), bandaids, straws, razor, straight pins, powder, lipstick, crochet hooks, etc. I won't go fully into mine right now, but take a look at the many examples online.

3. make sure they put plenty of tacks in your dress for bustling. The seamstress will tell you only "x" number are needed, but that's for a typical wedding, where people aren't dancing their ass off. Granted, my dress was lace, but the first time someone stepped on the dress the lace got pulled out of the buttons and the bustle fell out in no time. I would ask for at least 3 more than what she recommends and/or make sure she really really re-enforces the tacks. When all else fails use large safety pins (see point 2)

4. also regarding the bustle, make sure none of is dragging on the ground. when she did mine, she left some dragging so it still looked like a mini-train. This looks nice but is terrible for dancing. I tripped on my own dress a few times and the bottom was completely black by the end of the night. You want it all off the ground if you plan on dancing a lot.

5. something will go wrong, and it will be okay. the two big things that went wrong on my wedding day were, 1 - the caterer didn't get all the food out fast enough. and 2 - they ran out of lime juice. This was the most problematic because they started serving straight tequila. Even though I went and yelled at the caterer, there was nothing that could be done until more juice got there. Oh yea, and I also lost a side diamond out of my engagement ring 2 hours before the wedding. But my dad got it fixed! Like I said, something will go wrong. Try to laugh it off.... Try.

6. make sure there is one person who is responsible for getting the groom to the wedding and that person is not responsible for anyone else. Because my soon-to-be husbands family was sharing cars, his brother had to take him and his cousin and one of his other groomsmen to the wedding. Of course running around and getting everyone coordinated meant that he got there later than he wanted and missed having the photographer get more than like one or two pictures of him getting ready. Plus, you don't need that stress!

7. if you think your dress may fall down in the front, use Curvana tape. it may leave a slight rash on your skin by the end of the night, but my rash went away in like 2 days. That stuff is sticky! If you do use it, put it on the dress the night before and create yourself a peel tab to quickly pull the back off to stick it to yourself. In fact, just try it before hand and you'll see its kinda a pain to use, but it works really well. You can get it at Michaels and yes they have it, so don't let them tell you that they don't, because I found that the people there just didn't know what it was. It's in a red tape dispenser.

8. make sure you eat! I went to the grocery store the day before and got a finger sandwiches plate and a fruit plate to take in the limo and to the hair stylist. Just before I got my makeup done I brushed my teeth and stopped eating (though I did have some cucumbers and water at the venue). Also, bring a straw for once your lipstick is done and you want some water. You can bring touchup makeup if you want, but I found that I just forgot to us it! And the lipstick really stayed well the whole time I cared about. Really after pictures you stop caring anyway. The only thing that I used a few time was this white powder to take the sweat glare away. I had my dad hold that for me since he had pockets. I also used it on him! :)

9. Relax! I think we started about 15 minutes late, and it was okay! I was even ready before that. Take your time to really take it all in. I took some time to peer out the window and watch people sign the guest book. It was fun.

10. Even though I had a copy of the photos that I wanted, I was instantly relaxed to see my photographers assistant holding his copy that I had emailed them earlier in the week. Make sure your photographer has a "must take" list and give it to a friend if you don't see them carrying it around. It was nice to have all the pictures that I wanted written down, because you will forget. And at some point you'll just be so pre occupied that you'll say "oh I don't care." I did that once and the photographer looked at me and said "really?!?!?" and then I was like "yea, you're right, lets take that one."

11. speaking of photos, take the time to take the ones that you want. at the end of the night the photographer grabbed us and said "lets do some tree shots" We didn't want to leave the party but we did and they are some of the best shots of the night. We were really happy that we took them. When we got back to the dance floor, my friend who is recently married said to me "I wish we would have taken more pictures, you'll be happy you did that" And I am! I think it took us about 1 hour after the ceremony for pictures and then maybe another 20 minutes during the reception. You won't miss much but you'll be happy to have that time just the two of you (well and the photographer/videographer). We missed the cocktail hour, but I think most brides do.

12. have a list of everything that needs to leave and possible people who can take it. it's hard to have a list of exactly who should have what, so I would just be simple. Here are the 20 things that have to leave, here are 5 people who can take them.

13. have a good 'day of person' who can make sure everything is running smoothly. Lauren, my coordinator, was great. She didn't interrupt anything but she found lulls to make sure we did the cake and the bouquet toss. We also did the toasts first to get them out of the way. Even though I'm sure 1/2 the people didn't even hear, but that's okay.

14. Have fun. Make sure to say quick "hello" to people but then let them come to you on the dance floor, they will! Everyone says "oh you wont get to eat, you won't get to dance." Well I ate, and I danced and I let people come to me. I remember the whole night because I was on my schedule and didn't feel like I was under pressure to say "hi" to everyone right away. People understand that it is your wedding. Also, having a sweetheart table to put your food and drinks and purse and bouquet on is nice.

Hope this helps you brides out there have the most awesome wedding ever... just like I did!

You can call me Mrs. Rea

2011-11-14T19:50:00.013-06:00

10.22.11 - What a day!

photo credit: Merrick Ales

I was planning on using this post to tell you all about my fabulous day, but I don't even know where to begin. First, the days before...

Actually first a disclaimer: There is only one picture in this post. It is above. The rest will come later when I can narrow down the 624 that my photographer took into something more manageable. The one above is from a friend who has his own other photography business.

Now, about the wedding...

The days before the wedding were spent hanging out with family and cousins and friends. It was nice to spend time with family before the festivities really got started.

Important Note #1 - If you are getting married, try to spend time with your family BEFORE the wedding, as the day before, of, and after are CRAZY!

The day before the wedding we did the rehearsal at The Hummingbird House and then I took my bridesmaids for lunch and my mom treated us all to 90 minute massages! And boy did I need it! Then we got all dressed up and went to the rehearsal dinner at Sullivans in Austin. It was fabulous and they did a great job. Jeremy's dad did the first toast HERE and my dad followed up with the second HERE. Sullivans was even nice enough to make up unique menu's for us with our name and occasion on them. I would highly recommend using Sullivans in Austin for any private party you may be having. Pictures are HERE.

Important Note #2: If your camera does video, set it up on a wine glass (I literally did this) to record the parents toasts if they aren't doing them in front of your videographer. You'll be happy you did!

The morning of the wedding I was totally anxious. I went for a run and then took a walk with my flower girls. At 10:30 am the limo arrived to pick us up and take us to the salon to get our hair ready. It was great seeing the look on Kylea's (one of my flower girls) face when the limo showed up. She kept asking if we would ride in a limo and I told her "no." hehe, tricky :)

Side note: Because there are so many vendors, I'll use a different post to tell you about the vendors and such that I used for the wedding and give you a little review about each of them.

It was nice to have my girls at the salon with me and to have my mom and dad there. My mom looked wonderful and my dad was even treated to a hairdo complements of my hairstylist. Just as we were about to leave, I put on my engagement ring and found one of the stones to be missing! Yes gone! I quickly called the jewelry store and told them the situation. Fortunately they were right up the road and my parents, along with my wonderful bridesmaid Kristen Tan, were able to get it fixed in under 5 minutes. Thank you to all of you for dealing with this situation... 2 hours before the wedding!

We arrived down at the Hummingbird House around 3:30 and started to get ready. I organized a few things while my girls got ready, then my bridesmaid Kristen Shehab, helped me into my dress. I was standing there completely naked with my mom watching, my photographer watching (but not snapping pictures of course) and the videographer with his back turned, and in walks Jeremy's mom. I freaked out a little, but only because it was just unfortunate timing and I was naked! Sorry Sue, if the timing was just 2 minutes later that would have gone better!

Important Note #3: If you have a dress with buttons in the back, go to a craft store and buy a crochet hook. Actually buy two. One for your bridesmaids to put it on you, and one for your groom to take it off! It makes life go MUCH easier.

After doing the "first look" with my dad, not Jeremy, we snapped a few pictures and went back inside to relax a minute. Throughout the day I made sure to have food and water everywhere, so that I wouldn't forget to eat. I had veggies in the bridal suite and mini sandwiches from HEB at the salon. This helped a lot.

Pretty soon it was time. I wasn't nervous, in fact I was most nervous about my hair! I had to pull back some of the front ones because the wind picked up a little and I didn't want them blowing in my face. After all we were having an outdoor wedding. As we walked outside to get in position I remember telling my dad "it's just a walk, it's just a walk, don't make me cry my makeup will run!" haha. Of course it wasn't just a walk, it was one of the biggest days of my life! (I say one of, because I think there are many big moments in our lives).

My dad and I walked down the isle arm in arm to "Canon in D". I remember wanting to look at the crowd, but all I could focus on was Jeremy's eyes. My dad gave me away beautifully. During the ceremony I do remember taking a moment to "remember" it all and just be happy. We composed our own vows out of three that my Pastor had given us to look over. I'm not sure how much the microphone that Jeremy was wearing picked up, because I do distinctly remember choking up while repeating them. I'm also sure everyone in the back row didn't hear what we were saying, but that's okay. I mean really, you know the guests only show up for the cake anyway. :)

Karen and Tim did a great job with the readings and Pastor Lyn was excellent! I'm so happy he made it down from Pennsylvania to officiate our big day. It really meant a lot to me. After our first (and second) kiss, we exited to "The Wedding March". It was awesome.

After many pictures, the details of which I won't bore you with, we started the PARTY! My dad rode in on the back of my moms scooter which was pretty amusing. The parents and the bridal party were introduced to DC3 - "Saturday Night" and Jeremy and I were introduced to Mingo Fishtrap - "Bitta Honey," one of our favorite songs.

After the Best Man, Jeremy's brother Matt, and the Matron of Honor, my best friend Karen, did their toasts (on video, but I do not yet have), Jeremy and I did our first dance. We danced to a song called "I do" written by Jeremy and recorded by our friend, Alvero. It was so sweet. We even choreographed the dance. And although my dress bustle was too long (note about that in another post), it went great. The photographer got an awesome dip picture that you will just have to wait to see :) Okay okay, I give, here is a sneak peak. After our dance, my dad and I danced to Ray Allure's "My Daughter is a Bride." HERE is the slideshow that we played during our dance. Then Jeremy and his mom, Sue, danced to Elvis's "Loving You." HERE is their slideshow. There was some panic that the sound guy couldn't hook up to the computer, but we worked it out quickly by downloading the songs from iTunes and having someone hit play on the sound and the computer together. Isn't technology great.

The rest of the night we partied to the Matchmaker Band, a 10 piece band that did an awesome job. Our cake was amazing and the food tasted great. We had so much fun with our friends, and thank you to those who had to deal with some of the caterer issues (ahem, slow food & lack of lime juice for a few hours - though I didn't hear too many complaining about the straight tequila during that time). We are so happy that you all were able to join us and you made our evening spectacular! At the end of the night we did a sparkler exit and it was so much fun! Thank you to the Hummingbird House for letting us. Interestingly enough I had people come up to me the next day and tell me that drunks with sparklers isn't the *best* idea. Though they never told me it was the worst! We left the wedding in a Rolls Royce that Jeremy picked out and our photographer got an awesome 'Robin Hood' picture of us (see above sneak peek). After the wedding Jeremy and I went to the Driskill Downtown to spend our first night as husband and wife. (Apparently we left in just enough time to avoid some of the shenanigans afterwards, ahem Jake & Brandon).

Sunday morning we met about 30 people for brunch at The Salt Lick (and more cake!) and then we jetted off Monday to Hawaii... for 3 weeks! Man it's hard to be back, but I sure enjoy being Jeremy's Wife!

What to do when you're selling a house and the buyers inspector is an idiot

2011-10-17T16:15:00.002-05:00

So we are selling the Austin house. It just doesn't seem like much sense to keep it at this point, considering we could spend every night at the Driskill for the amount we are paying for a "weekend house."

After some time on the market, and finding a good selling price (at first we were way too high), we found a buyer. Negotiations took longer than I'd hope, but we finally settled on a price that we could both live with. Then the fun started.

We signed the contract on a Friday and by Saturday she had her inspector out there. Excellent. Let me first start by telling you it was Jerry Schmidt with SunView Inspections. That's important to know, as I don't want any of you all to fall into this trap with him.

So guy shows up Saturday morning and starts the inspection. I get a call shortly after from my realtor. He's locked himself out of the garage and can't get in, so he is leaving without completing the inspection. What genius did was short the GFCI outlets on the outside of the house to "test" them. This caused all the breakers to trip including the garage door. Since the breaker was tripped the remote didn't work. Now, I only have one access into the garage, and it's from the outside of the house. Therefore, if you cannot use the remote to get in the house, you need a key, which he did not have. My puzzlement came when he 1) did not make sure he could get into the garage after tripping said breakers and 2) what he said to me next. Which was, "well there is usually a latch that you can flip to get into the garage, and you don't have that." Well of course I don't! If I did, that means that anyone could get into the garage simply by shorting the outlets. Why would that make sense?!?!

So I was in DC and told my realtor that I had said garage keys but if he wanted in before the week was out he would have to get a locksmith out there. And that's just what he did. Now, if the inspector wanted to do this test, he should have told me in advance that he would need the keys. Or 2, and probably smarter, would have been to realize that he couldn't do the test because he didn't have keys to get into the garage. Ugh. Idiot.

So a few days later her gets back into the garage and the house and submits the report to the buyer.
Apparently he found a "live" wire under the house that was "spliced" and "missing plate covers." This was odd considering the wiring in the house was completely redone and there were no active wires left. But I called the electrician and had him go out there. He saw some wires and said "no, they are not active." So now we have a he said, she said. The buyer believes her inspector even though I have a real electrician and a city inspector (from when the fire occurred) saying that these wires are not live. Keep in mind, said inspector provides no pictures or locations as to where this wire is. Just a short 2 sentence note to make my life hell.

So my realtor meets with her inspector this morning and they both look at the "live" wire. The inspector says that he gets a "weird" reading when he measures it one way, but then no reading when it is measured the other way. He's "not sure." So now he's created a firestorm with his "I'm not sure" measuring.

5 hours later my realtor meets with the electrician... again. They find the wire and measure it. Yep, NOT active. They decide to remove it just to appease the inspector who appeases the buyer. The electrician says "your inspector either has an old tool, the batteries are dying, or he doesn't know what he is doing" I'm going with the third.

Oh, and one final note. When I showed up on Friday the two back doors were completely unlocked. Yep, the inspector didn't lock them! If you are in my house, I expect a level of professionalism and respect. You did not respect my house or my stuff enough to lock up after you left. And to that, I am most appalled.

I just finished my second Army Ten Miler... And I'm getting married in 13 days!

2011-10-09T12:10:00.002-05:00

This was a rough year, with the wedding only 13 days away, I haven't trained that much at all. In fact I've only done one 5 mile run all season. So I knew this was going to be a difficult run.

We started off by getting dropped off 2 miles from the start. We wanted to get closer, obviousy, but the roads closed at 7 instead of 7:30 like they told us. Plus, we were running late so we had to "jog" part of the way there. I say "jog," because the boys were jogging, but I was at my running pace. We got to the start at 7:45 and took a quick bathroom break before getting in line by 7:50. This year Jeremy and I were able to start together, but that only lasted for about 1/100th of a mile. He took off quickly, while I just tried to catch my breath.

Here is a breakdown of my miles. The first two were awesome for me, but then I started to hurt. Around mile 4 I started to hurt bad. My left hip and knee started to hurt and I didn't want push it. Even so I was pretty happy just to finish.

Mile 1 : 9:02 (8:06 max)
Mile 2 : 9:22
Mile 3 : 10:45
Mile 4 : 11:02
Mile 5 : 12:32
Mile 6 : 14:18
Mile 7 : 12:53
Mile 8 : 13:34
Mile 9 : 13:21
Mile 10 : 13:15

Overall : 10.18 miles in 2:02:19

Last year I did 1:45, but I also trained a LOT more. So I'm proud that I can still walk!

Now just 13 more days and it's wedding day!

47 days and counting...

2011-09-05T12:34:00.002-05:00

Well the wedding is almost here and there is still LOTS to be done. The programs were finished up today with some help from Ami and Jeremy (thank you both), and the 'out-of-state' bags are being filled. Yep, you special people get a little treat when you arrive... IF you send me your hotel information, that is. I'm also finalizing the dinner menu, cake design, and tons of other little details. I've chosen to upgrade some of the flowers, but we'll see what the final cost comes out to on that. I *might* have gone a little overboard. I'm also looking into something fun for the morning of my wedding, but that's a secret until I figure out if I can afford it or not.

Besides the wedding plans, our Hawaii honeymoon is shaping up nicely. Jeremy is narrowing down the last hotel in Kauai (oceanfront), and we booked all the rental cars this morning. While Jeremy is okay with getting a convertible on Ohau I haven't convinced him into a convertible on Maui yet. Someone help me! Bombard him with texts telling him how awesome it will be to have a convertible on Maui! Has anyone done the road to Hana in a convertible before?

Something Old

2011-08-18T20:46:00.014-05:00

Today we got a package from Jeremy's mom, and in it was a nice little surprise for our wedding.

When Jeremy was a baby, his Aunt Gracie sewed him this bonnet...

And along with the bonnet came this note...

I'm just a little handkerchief,
Quite square as you can see.
But with a stitch or two,
They made a bonnet out of me.

I'll be worn home from the hospital,
Or on the Christening day.
Then neatly pressed and folded,
I'll be carefully packed away.

On her wedding day, a bride must have.
Traditionally something old.
Good luck, good health, and happiness,
It brings her, so its told.

Then what could be more pleasant,
Than to unpack little me.
To snip a stitch or two and find,
Her handkerchief I'll be.

And if I'm first word by a boy,
He'll surely someday wed.
Then he can give his lovely bride,
The hankey once wore on his head.

Now I have my something old, something new (earrings my parents bought me (along with many other things)), and something blue (my garter). I still have to find my something borrowed. I'll have to think about that for a while.

Wedding plans are now in full swing. Last weekend I took my bridal portraits with my photographer, Bev, and my friend, Kristen. We had a lot of fun, and I can't wait to see them. But don't ask to see them yourself, cause I'm keeping them under lock and key until after the wedding. We are also starting to get some RSVP's back from the invitations that went out a few weeks ago. It's really exciting to come home every day and find 3-4 more in the mailbox. We like to look at the postage stamp to see what city it came from and then try to guess who sent it.

Now it's all about doing programs, gifts, songs, and finalizing menues... oh yea, and picking hotels for our 19 day honeymoon in Hawaii!!!

Just 65 more days!

Ohio Wedding Shower

2011-07-05T20:56:00.002-05:00

Last weekend Jeremy and I traveled up to Ohio for a Wedding shower thrown by his parents, Paul and Sue. However, since I was about to start my new job at NASA (side note: I got a new job), I decided to spend some time with my parents and Matron of Honor, Karen.

After spending a day with my two flower girls and Karen, my parents and I got on the road. A 7 hour drive to Ohio soon turned into a 13 hour road trip. Including a stop at Roadside America and a 4 hour jaunt to Penn State. I miss college. Wouldn’t it be great to go back? Well, except for the classes part.

Sunday was our wedding shower. Jeremy and I had a awesome time. His mom did a great job preparing everything and there were about 80 people that showed up. Yes 80! Not only did Sue take over Paul’s garage and have the event catered, but she even had an Elvis impersonator come and sing. Oh yea, and not only did he sing, but Sue and Angela, Jeremy’s cousin, made us do a mock rehearsal in front of Elvis. Complete with a veil hat and bride/groom shirts. Angela also made this wonderful bow bouquet for me from the bows from my wedding shower gifts. Thanks Angela and Sue! And Paul too! I was so glad that my parents, Bonnie and Jeff, were able to make it out for the event.

Now it’s just about finishing the actual wedding planning and I’ll be all set! I really need to clean up this house so I can start working on the invitations.

Here are some pictures showing the full event and the road trip over to Ohio.

Lemon Cream Pie Cookies

2011-06-23T15:09:00.006-05:00

I realize I've spent a lot of time talking about the house and not posting recipes, so today I'm going to talk about these Lemon Cream Pie Cookies that I made on Wednesday. They were a big hit at work and people on Facebook seems to enjoy the picture so much, I just had to share it with ya'll. Plus, they are soooooo tasty! Each batch only makes about 20 cookies (or less) so make sure you double or triple the recipe! I will definitely be making these again soon.

A lemon shortbread cookie with cream cheese base filling in the center. YUM!

I first found this recipe on foodnetwork.com but I modified it to give it more of a lemon kick and to add more filling to each cookie.

Ingredients

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
2 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, divided (1 cup and 1 1/2 cups), plus more for garnish
3 lemons for zesting and juicing
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

Directions

Beat the butter and 1 cup of the powdered sugar until smooth. Add 2 lemons worth of juice and 1 and 1/2 lemons worth of zest. On a low speed, add the flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until just incorporated. Turn the cookie dough out onto a board and roll it into a log. Will be very sticky. Try to wrap in plastic wrap and mold from there, or use wax paper to mold it. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours. I left it in the fridge for 2 days and it was fine (and easier to cut)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Remove log from the refrigerator and cut it into thin 1/4-inch thick discs. (I used a bread knife to do this). Arrange the discs on baking sheets, 1-inch apart, and bake until the edges are just golden, about 20 minutes. You may have to rotate them in the oven. Remove the cookies from the oven and transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Meanwhile, using stand mixer or hand mixer, mix cream cheese with the remaining 1 and 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar and 1/2 a lemon worth of juice and 1 lemon worth of zest.

Top half of the cookies with the cream cheese mixture and cover with another cookie to make a sandwich. Dust the top of the cookie sandwiches with confectioners' sugar and serve.

ENJOY!

Contractors are DONE

2011-06-17T14:03:00.003-05:00

Yesterday the contractor dropped off the last of my contents once the garage floor was finished. They spent the last two days fixing cracks and then finally just deciding to cover it with an epoxy coating. If they would have done that from the start it would have gone a lot quicker, but whatever, it's done now and I don't care.

I am just so glad to have them out of my house and hopefully soon, out of my life. Man, who takes 8 months to refurbish a house? I seriously question their logic of hiring on this new guy from Houston. There were some things that he did, even up to the end, which made me question if he was even able to function in normal life by himself. I just imagine that his wife has to remind him to put on pants in the morning before he leaves the house.

But, instead of going into another rant filled with tons of examples, I am just gonna finish this here and move on with my life.

Speaking of moving on with my life, I just put the house up for sale! YAY. It's very exciting. Anyone want a 2/1 in South Austin right near Zilker park and minutes from downtown? If so, let me know, and I'll hook you up with the listing. Here's hoping it sells in a reasonable amount of time.

Oh and for those of you who are interested in checking out the final pictures, here is the house, all redone.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

2011-06-10T15:45:00.003-05:00

One woman’s story of what its like to go through a house fire by yourself.

Some of you may have heard bits of this story or have kept up with my blog over the months, but for those who haven’t, here’s the whole thing. I’m writing this partly as a remembrance and partly to give those who are in the industry an idea of what I went through. It’s just a free thought letter written to anyone who wants to read it. Yes, it’s long. But hey, I lived it, you just are reading it, cut me some slack. I encourage you to laugh, cry, aww, and smack your head against the table from time to time. It’s pretty much what got me through this ordeal.

On October 28th, 2011 around 8pm my dryer vent hose got so hot from being clogged with lint that it combusted. Within minutes the garage was engulfed in flames. What started at the back of the garage was now spewing flames half way out the driveway. I was fortunate enough to have noticed the fire early, having been watching TV on the couch, so I was able to get the car out of the driveway and the cat out of the house in time. I count my blessings that I didn’t fall asleep on the couch and that Malachi didn’t run and hide under a bed somewhere. I’m also grateful the fire department got there quickly and was kind enough to bring my Wedding binder out to me before spraying down the house with water. Oh man, could you imagine if I would have lost that. They were even nice enough to remove pictures from the walls, move the couch, and cover everything up with plastic before hitting the wall with water. Thank you Austin Fire Department.

The next day was filled with contractors and insurance agents. Nationwide was very responsive and a specialist was on the phone with me most of the morning. They arranged for a cleaning crew, CRDN, and a restoration crew, Benjamin Moore, to come out to the house. But here’s where it gets interesting.

When I arrived at the house on Friday morning I found CRDN and John from Paul Davis Restoration (PDR) waiting for me. CRDN quickly started taking my clothing out of the house and getting all “fabric” stuff into boxes, bags, and hangers. I had set aside an “I need tomorrow” pile for them and the rest they would keep until I moved back into the house. (yea, more on that later). The crew at Paul Davis introduced themselves and talked to me about the work that they would do. I was impressed that they brought a full crew with them and they were ready to work.

Perhaps you caught that I mentioned Paul Davis Restoration (PDR) showed up but Nationwide was sending Benjamin Moore (BM). Yea. So about an hour into the morning this guy from BM shows up. He says he was sent by Nationwide to do restoration. Huh?

Apparently in all my confusion, I failed to realize that PDR was not the contractors sent by Nationwide. Turns out they were fire chasers. So I thought and contemplated this for a little while. On one hand I felt dooped because they never told me that was how they were there. They made me believe that Nationwide had sent them. On the other hand, they were still part of Nationwide’s Blue Ribbon Claim service, so I knew they were guaranteed, and they showed up with a full crew, ready to work. The BM guy just showed up by himself. Thinking on it for a while, I decided to stick with PDR, mostly because I was impressed that they had a full crew just ready to go. Who knows how this would have turned out had I gone with BM. I’ll never know.

After the weekend, and one bad hotel, I finally settled into my new home for 6 months: The Homewood Suites in north Austin. Nationwide had given me the option of staying in an apartment, but I worked out a deal with the staff at Homewood and got a good rate for the room, and I just preferred to stay there. I didn’t like the idea of schlepping my stuff between an apartment and the house, and I knew if I stayed in a hotel (suite) then I would be less likely to acquire a bunch of crap that I would then have to move again. Plus I was told that I should be back into the house by Christmas and once the contract with Nationwide was worked out the job would go quickly. (Hah). Anyway, I liked the hotel, it was convenient, but there were definitely times that I was ready to get out. You can’t really just relax anywhere and cooking on a small two range burner is hard. I looked at it as a challenge. Before I move off the hotel thing, I will say, the people at the Homewood were very nice and always helpful. I would recommend staying here.

By Monday all my stuff had been packed out by Garrett and Rich at PDR. They had sent me a list by the end of that week with all the contents except for my fridge contents. For some reason it took from 11.7.10 to 1.18.11 and about 6 emails/phone calls of asking to finally get those pictures. I don’t know why. The only other real interaction with the contents people over at PDR over the next 6 months was when I needed to grab something that was in the storage vault. Garret was pretty good about getting stuff pulled for me in a timely manner.

Also, Josh, from Restoration Cleaners did a great job taking out all my electronics and getting those cleaned. He even met me a few weeks later to return my small DVD player and TV so I could use them. Take note, these Restoration Cleaners people seem to know what’s going on. I really wish they had been the ones dealing with my clothes.

And now a bit of advice. If you ever have to leave your contents for someone else to do restoration, take pictures. LOTS of pictures. Take pictures of the house, take measurements, and document everything. This day, this time, just after the fire, was the right time to do this. As far as I could tell PDR took very little pictures, so when it came time to putting everything back, well, that was a bit of a problem. You’ll see.

About a week into the fire, I got my “emergency” clothing back from CRDN. This was the stuff that I requested they clean right away so I could have clothes to wear. I got the boxes from them and quickly noticed, “hey, some of these are not my clothes.” And it was done. They had lost all my confidence. If you can give me something that belongs to someone else, then what of mine did you give to them? Not only that, but I noticed some of my clothes seemed not right. My jeans were starched! Isn’t that weird to anyone else? I decided at that point there was no way I was letting them hang onto the rest of my stuff for months. I wanted it back, now. That would take about another week, and I’ll get to that more later.

By now it was 11.11.10 and Bill, my adjuster from Nationwide, and John, from PDR, are trying to hammer out an agreement for the scope of the work. It would take them until 12.21.10 to come to an agreement; 54 days after the fire occurred, not that I was counting or anything. Seriously, why did it take this long? Yep, I got the emails to prove it, so don’t try denying. So much for that “We should be done by Christmas” line. During this time, the only work being done on the house was some cleanup and floor drying. Thankfully my wonderful neighbor let me borrow her electricity for a few days to power the fans that ran 24/7 trying to dry out the hardwood floors so they could be saved. Thank you Lara!

About two weeks after the fire I told CRDN that I wanted all my stuff back. There was no way that I trusted them to keep everything. It took about 3 trips to get everything back. Not because there was so much clothing, but because they kept forgetting to give me stuff or they “lost” something, only to find it after I enquired about it several times. Even after all that they still managed to damage several items. The worst part was that they wouldn’t initially fess up to it.

For instance, they damaged the rubber on my climbing shoes. This is most likely because they didn’t know how to clean hard rubber and used too much ozone on them. Then they had the nerve to mark them “damaged before cleaning.” Oh no no no. I have been climbing for over 10 years, I can tell you for a fact that climbing rubber does not just magically split like this. It was cracked all over the soles. But it wasn’t only the climbing shoes, it was my leather jacket (reeked of cleaning fluid), my pea coat (shrunk, yes shrunk), oh and my thermarest. You know, that inflatable air pad you use when camping, yea, they stuck a number tag right through it. What do you think happens to an air mattress when you stick a hole in it? Useless. Then of course there was the belts that they lost, the hand made wool hat they shrunk, a pair of boots and sandals they damaged, a few missing pillows, a tent (yea, a $400 tent) that they “lost,” and other shirts that they either lost or damaged.

Okay, I understand that mistakes happen, but when there are 22 issues, those are no longer mistakes. Something fishy is going on. You don’t just loose a $400 tent. Someone steals it. And if you are a cleaning company, then you should know that you can’t dry wool or it will shrink. And you should know how to handle rubbers soled shoes, and if you don’t then you should fess up to it. I will NEVER recommend CRDN to anyone, ever.

Moving on.

On 12.6.10 I mailed Bill my first contents list. It included everything that I could remember from the garage and the totaled list from PDR. It also included a whole list of clothes that CRDN messed up. It took him about 2 weeks to get me my first check for the contents minus depreciation. It took a few phone calls to his supervisor and my insurance agent, but he finally got on it. I’m a bit upset that it took over 50 days to finally get a contract and a contents check. In fairness, Nationwide does offer to give you a initial supplement check to cover expenses, but at the time I said “no thanks” because I did not think it would take almost 2 months to get this stuff hashed out.

A point about insurance and contents and deprecation; the way insurance works is interesting. If an item costs $100 and has an expected life of 10 years (ie – tools) and you’ve had that item for 3 years, then you get .7*100 = $70 initially. If you have a replacement cost policy, like I do, that means that you will eventually get the full value of the replacement item. But only after you buy the item and submit the receipt, do you get the difference (or depreciation) back. So Nationwide sends a check for $70. You purchase it for $100. Submit the receipt. Wait two weeks or more. Then get $30 back.

Okay, I get why they do this. However, do we really need to be doing depreciation on items that are less than, say, $50? I mean come on, I have items on my list that are $3.00 and there is $0.40 of depreciation on there. So if I want that 40 cents back, I have submit a receipt and wait 2 weeks. I know what you’re thinking, why would you do that for only 40 cents, why not just let it go? Well I’ll tell you why. Because there are about 800 items on the list, and that 40 cents adds up quick. For my contents alone, there is over $6,000 of depreciation. But the thing I don’t get is, why an insurance company thinks they are saving money by taking such little amounts out of depreciation. Maybe it’s because most people won’t sit and save their receipts for the next year, so insurance makes out in the end? But what about the people like me that want their money back? I can just imagine how long it takes him to enter this stuff into the computer system and I can guess at what he is paid. I’m thinking that for him to enter 30 minutes worth of contents that only add up to $15 or less in deprecation, they are probably loosing money. But that’s just my thought.

So where was I? Oh yes, PDR and the restoration to the house. After Bill and John finalized their contracts, John and I sat down and negotiated our contract. I had PDR do a little extra work for me, some stainable pine trim instead of standard trim, and upgrade all the plumbing supply lines in the house to copper. It took a while, but we finally worked out an estimate for $70,000 for all the work. (this was actually fairly close to the $69,000 that Nationwide had specked. The hardest part about this was that John kept giving me a 20 page document outlining each thing they had to do and how much it cost. For example, one line item might say “detach and remove blinds $x” There are like 1000 of these things. This is the part of the process that I hated and the part that screwed me a little in the end.

Personally, I like to ask a contractor how much something costs and be done with it. If I’m doing landscaping, I don’t care how much each plant costs, I just want to know the total cost. I assumed, maybe foolishly, that when I agreed with John at PDR to a $70,000 price it was for everything. Little did I know, he had left things off his estimate that Bill had put on his, so he then charged me for these in the end. Perhaps I could have made a case that I never contracted them to do those things since it wasn’t on the signed contract, but more on that later. The point is you have to be very careful working with a contractor. You have to read every line item and make sure their items correspond to what the insurance says. When I was hashing out my upgrades with John at PDR there were so many mistakes that I found where they were overcharging me. And yet, in the end there were still mistakes that slipped through the cracks. Ugh.

As the weeks went on, work went on… slowly. I got so many emails that I can’t count, that went something like this “Another delay” “Hopefully done by this week” “I think this is the last problem.” I stopped reading them after a while. On March 18th we were still dealing with framing and gas lines and HVAC systems. No drywall was even started yet. That was also the day I noticed huge divots out of my concrete floor in the garage. Apparently the heat from the fire made the top coat brittle. Now I’m not saying who is at fault here, but I am saying that floor was in one piece just after the fire, and then not in one piece after the contractors put the new stack in. Just sayin. That was March 18th, today is June 9th. Today they finally finished the concrete floor after telling me on the 18th that they would check on the garage floor issue. But at this point, it doesn’t surprise me much. Why? Because way back before March, I learned that the PDR contractors cannot multitask. If they are working on the garage framing and it rains, they won’t move to the inside. If I give them a list, they will do 1 thing and call it done, and I have to hold their hand through it. Do you know I told PDR about 15 times to fix the front door, because it was coming off the hinges, and the contractors weren’t fixing it, so it was getting worse and worse. It took over a dozen phone calls and months, literally months, to get that front door fixed to where it would open and close properly. And don’t be giving me warping excuses. Sure, maybe there was some of that, but this started right after those hinges got loose and no one would fix them.

Each week, and then each day, I would go home and find what they were supposed to do, then find what they didn’t do, and then find what they didn’t do right. During all of April and May it was a constant battle telling them what they had to redo because they didn’t do it right in the beginning. From day 1 there was a complete lack of supervision on this project. Then, when they fired the first supervisor, Gary, and brought on a new guy, David, things didn’t get better. (btw – for those confused, John, is the office manager and Gary and David were the site supervisors. Mark, is the Austin manager, from what I can tell). Why have a supervisor if I’m the one that’s doing the supervising? I should have gotten paid for that.

Before I get too ahead of myself, I must go back a few months and tell you about the kitchen debacle. Yes, this one is quite funny and although it happened over a few months time, I’m going to just group it here into one mini story.

Because the fire was directly behind the kitchen wall they had to pull out all the kitchen cabinets. Fortunately, when I redid the kitchen 3 years ago, I had that exact same wall pulled down and re-drywalled. What’s fortunate is at that time I decided it would be a good idea to put insulation in the wall before I put the drywall back up. It was that insulation that saved the kitchen and my cabinets. Phew. None-the-less they had to come down. So PDR took out the cabinets and the granite and the oven and dishwasher and put them all in the center of the living room. Then the plumber came and took out the plumbing and the electrician took out all the electrical. The kitchen was now gutted. Oh wait, remember how I mentioned earlier that no one ever bothered to take pictures or measurements? Yep, here’s where the problems started. The electrician put back the outlets but in completely different places. Annoying, but not a huge deal. Though some did have to be moved because there was one right behind the faucet of the sink. Speaking of the sink. The plumber came back to re-pipe the kitchen and decided that I didn’t need my sink where it was before, instead he moved the plumbing 2 feet to the right! Yea, it wasn’t even in the same cabinet anymore. I walked in and instantly was like WTF?!? Why would you feel that it was okay to just move someone’s sink connections? It’s not like I can move the sink! So I told the plumber and he moved them back… or did he? Again I come home from work and I look at the new plumbing and say to David, from PDR, this still isn’t right. These are not in the same place as they were before. At least they were in the same cabinet, but still not right. This became very obvious when they put the cabinets back in and the holes in the back of the sink cabinet did not match up to the pipes. (I knew they wouldn’t). So what did the contractors do? They just cut new holes. So the back of my cabinet looked like swiss cheese. Ugh! This is not okay. First you don’t take pictures, then you don’t measure, then you have the cabinets right in the living room and you still don’t measure. Yea, they had to fix that one. Oh and then they installed the garbage disposal on the wrong side of the sink, and had the nerve to ask me “are you sure it was on the left?” Oh no, I’ve just been living here for over 3 years, all this time I must have been confused. Jerk. Then he tried to tell me that my garbage disposal was leaking into its casing and that I would have to replace it. Funny considering they didn’t say anything about this problem when they pulled it out, and if this problem did in fact exist before they touched it, then they would have found water in it at that time. And it’s funny that they mentioned this to me just after they got finished saying that it was very difficult for them to remove from the sink and they had to yank on it pretty hard to get it off. Hum, that doesn’t sound fishy at all. Then there was the matter of the wall cabinets. When they reattached them (with no picture reference) they attached them to the ceiling. I encourage you to go home and measure your cabinets from countertop to bottom, and you’ll notice they are probably 18”. No, these geniuses put them on the ceiling so now my cabinets were 3 feet over my countertops and I couldn’t reach the handles. Again WTF? Oh yea, and then there is the island issue. They had no idea how to put this back together. In the end I just gave up on that one because it was close enough. But they had boards sticking out 3” on one side, other areas not lined up, it was a disaster. And then there’s the issue of the granite next to the oven. Here they centered the granite over the little cabinet and didn’t even fix it to the floor, so the whole thing was wobbly. It should have been flush on the oven side, just like the other side of the oven. When I asked PDR why they didn’t hire a cabinet person to reinstall the kitchen they assured me that they did. Well then that guy needs to be fired. Oh, one more thing, they never installed the water line to the refrigerator (which was there before), so that had to be drilled into the cabinets to get it over there from the sink.

So that was the great kitchen saga, but there were other issues with PDR. And some of these are little issues, but they add up. The plumber was paid to remove all the galvanized supply line in the house, but I had to ask 3 times for him to do the shower line, which he kept forgetting to do. The construction crew kept using my toilet and then not flushing (because the water to the house was turned off), even after being asked to stop, ew. They constantly wore black-soled shoes on the floor, so there were always scuff marks. Oh yea, in the kitchen, they lost half the shoe molding and had to make it from scratch. The painters did a decent job on the walls, but when they stained the trim they only did one coat of stain, so it wasn’t as dark as it should have been. I called him out on it that day and he said “yea, we only do one coat” but then when the guys at PDR asked he said “oh, we did 2-3 coats.” Liar. When they put the new A/C box outside the house they didn’t use a pilot hole first, so when they drilled into the siding, it split. I’m not a contractor and I know enough that brittle things need pilot holes. They put a cracked piece of siding up on the front of the house and took months to finally replace it. The roofing guys, hired through PDR, broke my skylight then didn’t tell me about it until I walked in to see the damage. It took 6 weeks to get the new one in and even then it was installed wrong. Then PDR tried to tell me that’s just the way it was done (with 1” of flashing overhanging the glass that you could see when you looked up). When I proved to him that was incorrect it took another 2 tries to fix it right. They lost all the bedroom curtain hardware and the bathroom hardware, then asked me if I knew where they put it. It took them 3 tries to get the crawlspace door correct. Yes, they made me a door that had ½” gap and then after painting it, they pained the lock in the open position so you couldn’t even close it. They scuffed up the sink and the toilet. They clogged the toilet so it wouldn’t flush (see above). After the drywall guys were done, the contractors who put the range hood back in, put a hole in the wall next that then had to be patched. And these are just the things that I can think of off hand.

By the end of April work still was not finished on the house. Heck there were walls but no paint and no trim. My parents were coming down in the beginning of May, which I assumed would be far enough away from the fire (in October) that the house would be done, but of course it wasn’t and we had to stay in a hotel. My dad was pissed. Every week I would still get an email saying “were almost done” or “we should be done this week” or “this should be the last problem.” Ugh, I was so tired of hearing those words.

When I moved back into the house, I was surprised to see the pack-in crew did a good job at putting everything back in place. They did unpack my kitchen for me, but that’s the one part I wish they wouldn’t have done. I truly have no idea where half my dishes are and I need to go back and do a full inventory. They did manage to loose the small pieces to my statue that I bought in Mexico, but at the time, that was the only pack-in problem that I found. Since that date (now 6.10.11), I have discovered that they scratched up my dining room table and nicked divots into the sides. I am currently with holding the rest of their money until they agree to replace the table or fix it. But really, how do you fix divots? You can’t just add material. The funny thing was they said to me “we will look at our “before” pictures and determine when the scratches happened.” Okay, you do that. First of all, I know you did it, so I’m not worried. And second, the only picture that I’m accepting is one of the table in the house before you moved it. And third, I’ll be checking that picture for photoshop touches; so don’t try to fool me. But again, I’m not concerned, because I know these scratches came from moving and I know they did it.

The first night back in the house, May 13th (yes, that would be 166 days since the fire), I discovered something very interesting. Besides a whole list of wrongs, I noticed that 1) the shower didn’t work and 2) the toilet didn’t work! Are you kidding me! First of all, what city inspector passed the plumbing inspection with the only toilet and shower in the house not working. Someone wasn’t doing their job. And secondly, what contractor tells you that it is okay to move back into your house without making sure the plumbing, toilet, and shower work! I was so beyond pissed at this point. Although I’m sure the shower not working didn’t matter that much, because they took down my shower rod and never put it back up, so taking a shower without getting the whole bathroom wet would have been difficult. And to top it off, the guy didn’t show up to fix the plumbing until 5pm the next evening. When in the process of fixing it he scraped up the toilet and the bathtub more.

Since moving back into the house about a month ago, it has been a constant battle with PDR getting things fixed. I would leave for the weekend and give David, the ‘supervisor’ a list of things that still needed to be addressed, then I would come back only to find about ¼ of the list done and of what had been done ½ was done incorrectly. The most annoying part was that David would call me and say “okay, I only have one thing left to do.” Seriously, how can you be more explicit with someone. I gave you a list, just follow it! At this point we were in the middle of May and some of the things on the list included the garage floor (still not even addressed even though they knew about it since March 18th ), there were still no blinds in the house, kitchen blinds were missing, curtain rods were missing, siding and paint issues outside, floor was scuffed up, pieces of glass were missing from the bathroom cabinet, hardware was missing from the bathroom, and the list goes on and on. Oh yea, and the pine trim they had put around the windows were separating from the wall. Apparently they decided to caulk between the window and the trim and then paint the caulk. The only problem was they didn’t do a great job, so when it dried it cracked the paint and the board started to separate from the wall. It looked really ugly and like a child had done the work. Even though it was on the list, I had to tell David over 3 times to fix it and I had to mark all the spots with blue tape, because apparently he was too lazy to go around and look with his own eyes. Then there was the matter that in some spots the painters actually got the paint ½ way onto the wood trim. There are spots where the line isn’t even close, and yet there are other spots that are perfect. This told me that either there were two guys doing the job, and one guy needs to be fired, or there was one guy who just got sloppy at the end. If I wanted it sloppy I would have done it myself, not paid someone else to do it. Then there was the issue of the back window. The window had been opened, then not closed all the way, then painted shut. So the window was painted shut and instead of the lock being locked, it was painted with the lock in the open position. Again, it took 3+ requests to get that fixed. Then there was the great kitchen blind debacle. Let me enlighten you.

When I moved back into the house, there were no blinds in the kitchen windows. After asking a few times, the contractor finally found them and determined that they smelled like smoke (duh). So he cleaned them, or tried to clean them. But they still smelled like smoke and they were stained. Okay, so we need to replace them. That would have been nice to know 166 days ago, as there would have been plenty of time to do this, but now I’m living in my house, and my neighbor can just look through the windows and see me walking around. I told David that I needed new ones ASAP. So he went to Bed Bath and Beyond (BBB) and looked for some. He texted me some different options and said that they had no roller shades, but would I mind getting Roman shades instead. Okay, no problem. I picked a color and he purchased them. Later that weekend he texted me “The blinds for the kitchen cannot be cut down to fit inside the window. I can put the larger size on the face of the window or special order the size to fit inside the window. Which would you want me to do?” To which I replied “Inside the window. Don’t block the pine trim. You should have measured.” And he said “I did. They didn’t have the inside size in stock.” Ugh. Why would you buy blinds that you know don’t fit, just because they don’t have the ones that you need. I learned that the ones he bought were 31,” and my windows are 30” wide. So he orders new ones and tells me that they should be in within 3 days. A week later (a week!) he brings the blinds over and puts one up. It’s too narrow! There is ½” gap on either side and it looks terrible. Imagine an adult wearing a child size t-shirt. That’s what it looked like. I was so mad. I’m like “David, these don’t fit.” To which he said “well, this was the only size they had. It was either 29” or 31” and you didn’t want the 31” blinds.” Well I don’t want blinds that are too small either! Why would you even suggest that I get these blinds if you know that they do not come in the 30” size that I need for my window!?! He told me “well, I don’t know, I don’t really do blinds.” Ugh, then ask! Ask someone who does know if you don’t. I was so beyond mad I told him to take down his blinds and get out, now. I assumed when he was ordering a custom size that he was getting the correct custom size. I was wrong. To this day new blinds have supposedly been ordered but have not yet arrived.

And you know what’s funny. About ½ way through May, John asked me if I would sign the certificate of completion so they could start the process of the mortgage company paying out the rest of the project because it would take them a few weeks and “they were almost done” at the house. After all there were just “a few quick fixes” left to do, and they didn’t want to have to wait a few more weeks for their money. What nerve! No way am I saying this house is complete before it is actually done. And no way am I giving you money when, at that time, you hadn’t even started fixing the garage yet. How stupid do they think that I am? Maybe they can bully around most of their clients, but not this girl, no way. I told him “maybe if you would have had this project done 2 months ago, you would have your money by now.” Yes, I really did say that.

So now we are at June 10, 2011 and I’ve been living in the house almost a month now. I’d like to say that everything is completed, but it isn’t. SweetWater Landscaping did do the landscaping yesterday, and they did a beautiful job. It really looks amazing. For those wondering, the half the front yard had to be redone because the heat from the fire and the flames and then all the debris killed the front yard and the flower beds. Only the parsley survived, somehow. Oh and as an interesting side note, the only thing in the garage that survived was the silicon bakeware that my parents got me for Christmas a few years back. My garage fire should be a commercial for that company. It was in perfect shape. Amazing.

What are not done yet are the kitchen blinds, the front door, and now the dining room table. The front door has to be repainted because they matched the front door step to a different shade of red than the front door and it would be really nice if they actually matched. Don’t ask me how that happened. The kitchen blinds are supposedly on order, but who knows. At least I still have about $40,000 that I’m holding back from PDR until they take care of these last issues.

194 days later and I’m exhausted.

As this process finishes up, I can only hope that I can get PDR out of my life by the end of the month. Lately it’s been a pain working with them and also working with my insurance adjuster, Bill, who apparently only responds to one email a day and usually with a one or two word answer. Today I got a long email from him but it only answered one of the 4 that I had sent him yesterday. I think I need to call him now.

PDR has been trying to slip in additional charges onto my bill for work that they said they did but they forgot to put into our contract. For example, reinstall of the appliances. When PDR made their contract, they copied Nationwides scope of work. Only they did it by hand and left off some items “by accident.” Now they say that I owe them $300 for reinstalling the appliances. I accused them of shady practices because they “accidently” left several things off their contract. But they said that since they did the work I should pay them. Both of us have points and if I really wanted to be an ass I could, and probably should after all this grief, tell them that the install of appliances wasn’t in the original contract that we had together, their fault, so technically I didn’t approve them to do that and they shouldn’t have done it. Since it wasn’t in what I approved then I’m not responsible. Of course, that being said, I’m really trying not to be an ass and I know that karma is a b*tch. So I will pay them what I see is fair… only after they fix my front door, kitchen blinds, and dining room table of course.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little story and I hope that perhaps you’ve gained some insight into the world of restoration and insurance.

All in all, Nationwide was good about helping me out, helping with PDR claims, allowing me to live where I wanted, and paying back my claims. Bill, although it takes him what I would consider too long to get back to emails and such, is very fair. He has only questioned PDR stuff that I would have questioned myself, and he has never once questioned my claims for my personal contents. That is probably because I have always been up front and honest with him and I deliver stuff to him in a nice excel spreadsheet with all receipts in order and number coordinated. I wish Nationwide would have a better depreciation policy, but that’s more of a pain in the butt thing than anything else. They have also been understanding that I can’t possibly remember everything that was lost in the fire and there will be “oh yea, what happened to that” moments where I remember something else that I was lost or I had stored in the garage. Or when I finally move in only to realize that my bed sheets where destroyed by CRDN and no longer fit the bed.

Paul Davis Restoration has gone through quite the changes over the last 8 months. There have been several people to be let go and several more to be hired new onto my project. I think they have a long way to go. I believe they need to fire most of their crew and get new workers (okay, keep the electrician, he seemed to be the only good contractor). With unemployment so high, there are plenty of people who are looking for work and who would surely jump at the chance to have a job. There were way too many mistakes on this project and a complete lack of supervision. Even the “supervisor” needed a better supervisor and unfortunately then fell on me. At this point, I would have to say that I would NOT recommend them to anyone. As nice as they seem in person, they are just too sloppy and unorganized to be a good company.

So close...

2011-06-08T22:09:00.002-05:00

Okay, so the cat is out of the bag, and for those who don't yet know at work, well, none of you actually read this anyway, so who cares.

I'M MOVING!

Yep, I'll be moving to Houston in July and I'll be putting my house up for sale sometime in the next two weeks. Just getting all the little stuff finished now. Then I get to restart the project all over again with Jeremy's house. hehe. Just kidding.

Okay, maybe not. But at least I know what colors I want to repaint. He has these awful brown walls, that just have to go. Don't worry, the red kitchen is staying.

Speaking of getting stuff done. I'm hoping that I can convince my insurance agent to make me and my contractor his number one priority for the rest of the week. I really just want to be done with them. They still owe me blinds. Perhaps you read all about that debacle (see below if you haven't) and they need to repaint my front door (yea, lets just say they matched the step to a different color red than the front door). But otherwise we are done! Which means they just have to argue over supplements yet and we are home free. I think I'm going to get a procedure done where I permanently erase them from my memory.

Is that possible?

Besides spending my nights dealing with all their crap, I have managed to find some time to finalize wedding invitation proofs. The invite place sent me the final draft tonight and once I print them out tomorrow to make sure all the sizes are correct, then they will be sent off to the printer. Hopefully I'll get those back next week sometime. And with luck there will be no issues. I'm having them designed at The Paper Place in Austin. So far I've been happy with their work. Some little issues, but they seem to be pretty quick at fixing any mistakes they make or other things I want to try (different fonts etc.) At this stage, I'd recommend them to others.

Yesterday I got to do something VERY fun. I had my first dress fitting! Thanks Kristen and Christy for coming with me. Yep, that's all I'm gonna say about that!

Well Malachi is very disappointed that she hasn't gotten on my lap yet tonight and I need to pack for some Mt. Biking tomorrow. Good night everyone

Exhausted

2011-06-06T21:36:00.003-05:00

I am exhausted. Every day I think I'm going to come home and work on something fun, secret, but fun. (yea yea, you won't get to find out until after October). Anyway. Everyday I come home to have 'me' time, and every day there's something the contractor has screwed up that I have to deal with.

We're down to three unresolved items yet. Garage floor - needs to be refinished, Kitchen blinds - that's a whole story in itself, Crawl Space Door.

The crawlspace door is finally fixed, but not yet fully painted. This isn't a big task, but something that should get done.

The garage floor was refinished Friday, but the constant 100+ temperatures here in Austin have made the drying a little weird, and they need to add a finishing coat to the top. That will be done tomorrow. Okay, I can't really blame them for this, except that it should have been handled weeks ago.

Then there are the kitchen blinds. ugh. For some reason in the last 6 months, PDR (paul davis restoration) failed to mention that the roller blinds were tarnished in the fire. Okay, makes sense, but would have been much less of a pain in the ass had I known about it 6 months ago. Instead I just found out two weeks ago. So David, my new supervisor on the job, told me he was going to replace them.

He couldn't find the roller shades, so he asked me if this other kind was okay. Sure, they looked fine. So he buys them and sends me a message while I'm in Houston that weekend.

David - "The blinds for the kitchen cannot be cut down to fit inside the window. I can put the larger size on the face of the window or special order the size to fit inside the window. Which do you want me to do?"

Me - "Inside the window. Don't block the pine trim. You should have measured. ;)"

David - "I did. They didn't have the inside size in stock."

Okay, seriously, WTF? Fixing something wrong is not fixing it at all.

So he orders the size that will fit... or so I think.

Today he stops by with the new blinds and hangs one of them in the kitchen. An event that took him over 30 minutes. When I look at the blind I realize that it's too narrow. So I tell him. "David, these don't fit" At which point he tells me that my windows are 30" and they only make this blind in 29" and 31".

"It looks okay." He tells me.

UGH!

At this point I tell him he needs to take them down, return them, and then leave. I'm uber frustrated. Seriously, why did you recommend a blind to me that didn't come in the size window that I had? Why would you pick a blind that will either be 1" too wide or 1" too narrow?

This is what I have to come home to. I'd rather be at work for 16 hours a day.

Don't even get me started about how the front door step and the front door are different shades of red, even though they were supposed to be the same color. It makes my head hurt.

Oh yes, then there's my insurance agent, who told me on Friday that he would review my landscaping bid Monday morning and get back to me ASAP. Yea, it's 9:48 monday evening. You think he'll still call sometime before midnight? So much for getting on the landscapers schedule this week.

Very sad face. :(

So yes, now I am exhausted. But tomorrow will be a big day (not contractor or house or work related). So I'm going to sleep now. Good night.

Gelatin Bow and Butterfly

2011-06-03T13:34:00.013-05:00

A few weeks ago I took this awesome gelatin class from my wedding cake designer, Heidi, over at Envy Pastries. During the class she taught us how to make these beautiful, fully editable, gelatin bows with butterflies on top. Now, I wouldn't really recommend eating these little guys, but you COULD if you really desired. It kinda tastes like plastic.

This is the finished product

And here is a small one that I made using some leftover material

The awesome thing about these is that they are SO easy to make! There is a little prep time, but it's not too bad.

So the first step is to make the gelatin. This is your prep work. You'll want to mix 2 1/2 parts water to 1 part gelatin. If you want your product to be a little stiffer, add more gelatin, a little more flexible, use this ratio. VERY IMPORTANT: gelatin is NOT Jello. If you want to use the jello from the store, you MUST use sugar-free jello or buy the small packs of gelatin. The sugar in regular jello will not allow it to setup properly.

In a microwave safe bowl, mix the gelatin and water together and allow it to sit for a minute or two. Then in 10 second increments heat it up slowly in the microwave until it has a nice runny consistency. You want to heat the gelatin evenly and not burn it, so find some patience and do this in 10 second increments, stirring between each one.

Once you have a nice "clear" runny consistancy (it took me about 6-7 turns in the microwave), then you'll want to let it sit for 5-10 minutes and allow the scum to raise to the top. This is the part that you don't want. After it has formed you'll want to take a spoon and scrape as much of it off as possible.

At this point add in any food coloring and/or glitter that you want. Yep, glitter, looks really pretty in these. But if you are going to say this is editable, make sure you get editable glitter (disco dust works great).

At this point you are ready to make your sheets. Take a texture sheet and a cheap but decent soft paintbrush. I get mine from home depot, the kind that is white on the bristles.

Dip the brush into the gelatin, and working quickly and sloppy, just go lightly over the texture sheet (or butterfly sheet, or whatever). If you make it too thick, it will be hard to bend and work with. We're talking a very light coating here. And don't worry about getting it on the counter, if you do, just let it dry and it will peel right up.

Now pick up the sheet and move it somewhere it can lay flat. If you don't move it, it will stick to that spot on your counter.

And wait... and wait... and wait.

Don't touch it!

When the gelatin is setup, it will come completely off the texture sheet all by itself. If you have to peel it off, then its not ready. This could take 6-8 hours. So if you're planning on making a lot of these things, you better plan ahead.

If you only have 1 texture sheet, but you need to make several gelatin sheets, you can let your gelatin mixture settle on the counter, just cover it. (and this is true when you're working too, if you feel its getting too sticky and not runny enough). When you need it again, just pop it back in the microwave or 10 seconds at a time to make it runny again. You can skip the skimming step here because you've already done that. The gelatin mix should hold and be reheat-able for 1-2 days before you should toss it and make new stuff.

Once dry you can do pretty much anything with this stuff. It is very flexible, not really delicate, and lasts forever. You can cut it with a paper cutter, scissors, scrapbooking scissors, whatever you'd like.

For the bow, the strips were cut into 1/2" strips, and 1/2 the length of the sheet (about 1/2" x 6"). Each piece was then curled over and affixed with a small amount of liquid gelatin. Use a paperclip to hold the ends together until the gelatin drys.

Once the gelatin is dry (a few seconds) you can then decorate the edges with disco dust. Instead of using gelatin for this, use piping gel as your 'glue'. Spread a little out onto a plate then dip the edges of the bow into the gel and then into some glitter.

Once they've had a few moments to sit and dry, cut the bottom corners off each loop to form a point. Don't make your point too sharp, or you'll cut off all the 'glue' you used to hold the loop together.

To assemble the bow, put about a quarter size glob of liquid gelatin on a plate. Assemble the bottom row of loops using 6 or 8 to do this. Make sure each tip gets into the gelatin, so it all stays together. Next, add a bit more gelatin, if necessary, and do the next layer of loops. Remember, bows are random, so don't worry about making this perfect. Continue with layers until you fill it all out.

Ta-da

If you've made butterflies, cut them out of the gelatin (making sure not to separate the wings) and decorate them with piping gel and glitter or editable markers. You can make the body out of fondant that is colored black (or whatever your heart desires).

Finally, use some piping gel to affix the butterfly to the bow and hold there for a few seconds while it dries.

Congratulations, you've now made a bow and beautiful butterfly! See, wasn't that easy?

To find out more about making other gelatin items, check out a few other pages that I found.

Sugarcraft.com
CakeCentral.com
Country Kitchen

Visiting the Lillards

2011-05-23T12:11:00.015-05:00

Jeremy and I took a trip out to California this past weekend to visit our friends who are currently living out near LA. Not only did we want to see Ami, Randy and Resse again, but we couldn't wait to meet their new baby girl, Avery.

After waiting in the airport for 4 hours, we were finally on our way, and landed in LA around 11pm. Fortunately, the traffic is not bad this late, so it didn't take us long to get the car and make it up to their place.

Night 1: bedtime at 12am

Around 6:30am the next morning I heard the pitter patter of little feet running around upstairs and a cute little voice yelling "it's orange, it's orange!"

Let me explain.

In an effort to keep Reese from getting up at 5am each morning, Ami bought this cool little nightlight. It stays blue until a certain time, and then turns orange. So for Reese, Ami set the time at 6:30am and he is not allowed to get out of bed until the nightlight turns orange. Hense the "it's orange, it's orange" call at 6:30.

On Friday we packed up the cars and headed to Disneyland. Not only was this my first trip to Disneyland, but it was my first time at Disney with two little kids. Both Reese and Avery did so well. They made it from 10 am to 11 pm without any trouble.

We went on the rockets, space mountain, small world, mr. toads wild ride, peter pan, haunted house, and a few others. We missed out on pirates, but that's just because none of us felt like waiting in the long line. I was surprised how long the lines were for a friday. Seriously, do they not have school in CA?

Around 5pm we headed over to California Adventure. Think of this as the MGM/Animal Kingdom of Disney World. Just as we were leaving Disneyland we saw Goofy. Of course there were pictures to be taken and knuckles to be given.

Oh, and Jeremy and I had to take our picture outside Disneyland.

Since it was already 5, we didn't do too many rides, just Monsters Inc and Tower of Terror. We mostly just walked around and grabbed dinner before the evening water show, which we learned, you need a fastpass for. Unfortunately by the time we found this out, the 9:00 show was already out, so we got tickets for the 10:15 show.

I will say, the show was fairly entertaining, but no where close to the shows that Disney World puts on. I think that we all thought it was 'okay,' but we probably would have enjoyed the fireworks show at Disneyland better.

Night 2: bedtime 12:30am (note - that's 2:30am CDT)

Saturday we just hung out and relaxed. We checked out 2 farmers markets, went to Trader Jos, and stopped by this awesome little bakery near their house. Okay, it's not so little, and it's very well known. It was packed and you could barely move. The nice man at the counter gave me a free sample of their cheese pastry. Randy asked for 2 to go, but after one bite of that, I knew we'd need at least 4. Mmmm, delicious.

At night Ami and I went to go see Bridesmaids. It's was pretty good, definitely has its funny parts, but its a little long in my opinion. I think this movie would have been much better if it was only 1 1/2 hrs long instead of 2 hours. There was a lot that really didn't need to be in the movie.

Night 3: bedtime 12:30am.

After 3 nights of staying up WAY too late, and getting up WAY too early, we were exhausted. Sunday morning we went for a run in Griffin Park and saw what we could of the Hollywood sign through the fog. Ami and I ran together while the boys took the stroller. The trails were REALLY hilly and I bet they had a tough time pushing the stroller back up to the top. I had a tough time just walking back up. Oh, and check it out, Ami and I have the same shoes.

After brunch, Jeremy and I went to Venice Beach for a few hours before heading to the airport.

Venice beach is, um, interesting. I was happy to go and see it, and now I'll be happy to never go back. The beach itself was surprisingly clean, but the "strand" was super dirty. I felt like I needed a shower after visiting.

Thanks Ami, Randy, Reese, and Avery for having us out for the weekend! We had so much fun!

1 week later... and a wedding.

2011-05-16T13:32:00.009-05:00

First, A wedding!

This past weekend one of my good friends from college, Kristen Shehab, got married! Her wedding was like a mini college reunion. It was great seeing everyone again and catching up. The wedding was a lot of fun and we even managed to squeeze in a walk around the Yale campus during our very short 36 hour stay in Connecticut. It's a pretty nice campus. I mean, it's no Penn State, but the buildings are really old and beautiful.

Congratulations Kristen and Donny!

Next, the house update:

I received an email this morning from my head contractor letting me know that my house was the #1 priority this week and that they would be finished by Wednesday. Of course, this was before I sent them my "to do" list, so I'm going to give them until Friday. We'll see what happens.

After getting back from Connecticut this weekend, I did notice a few things had changed. All the doors in the house now close (yay), but some of them are still on the wrong hinges. This after having told them, no less than 3 times, that the closet door and the bathroom door had to be switched. I know this for a fact, since the bathroom door should have the hooks that are currently residing in the closet. Not a big deal, yes I can go buy some more hooks at home depot, but now it's just a matter of principle.

I was also given permission by my insurance to replace the refrigerator and the dishwasher. The dishwasher still smells like smoke, and the fridge seals are all jacked up from the heat of the fire. They do still seal, but they are so bent up that you have to open the left door in order to open the right. It's annoying. And, apparently, it's just as cheap to buy a new refrigerator as it is to replace the doors. Go figure.

Today is Monday 5.16.11. When I get home, I will assess their progress, and hopefully, they have more of the items in the house fixed by the time I get home.

The pains of working with contractors

2011-05-12T08:14:00.000-05:00

It has been 6 1/2 months, 195 days to be exact, since the lint built up in the back of my dryer and my garage caught on fire. 195 days since the folks at Paul Davis Restoration showed up on my doorstep and said "Hi, we are hear to help you and to make this transition easier." 195 days ago, they lied.

For the first 2 months, there were constant problems between the contractor and the insurance agent. My Nationwide agent, also not the brightest bulb in the pack, and Paul Davis were both working off separate systems and it took them over a month to figure this out which explained why their numbers were not matching up. This coupled with the fact that it took over a week for my agent to respond to any emails or calls. Okay, fine. End of December rolls around and we finally have a clear plan and a check from Nationwide to start the reconstruction.

Demo goes fairly smoothly except for one thing. The contractors never once took pictures of anything before the tore it out. You can imagine how this would be a problem later in the reconstruction phase.

Over the next few months, I realize that my contractors lack the ability to multi-task. They just can't seem to do more than one thing at a time, and about 80% of the time, when they complete one task they wind up breaking something else. Here are some examples. When they redid the wiring on the A/C unit outside, they moved the box and broke a piece of the siding. They claim it's because the siding is so brittle, which it is, but it's really because they just screwed it in without drilling a small pilot hole first. If I, not a contractor, can screw something to the side of my house without breaking a panel, I would think they could. Also when they installed the range hood, they put a hole in the wall that then had to be fixed. When they took out the interior drywall, they put a hole in the siding on the front of the house. When they hired their roofing contractor to replace the roof, they broke the skylight and it took over 6 weeks to get replaced and even now, it looks like a 6 year old installed it and it needs to be redone. And these are just a few tidbits that I can think of off hand.

I also realize that the contractor's contractors seem to be fairly inept. They really need a full time supervisor, which I have become. Funny, because I thought that's why I hired Paul Davis. Apparently not.

Remember how I said that they never took pictures? Yea, about two months ago, that became a problem. First, the plumber. When he re-plumbed the kitchen he put the sink connections back IN A DIFFERENT PLACE! Seriously. Apparently he thought I could just move that however I wanted. No matter that the granite only has a hole in one spot to put the sink in. Also the electrical in the kitchen was rewired completely differently. So much so, that they had to redo the whole back panel of the cabinets under the sink because the holes didn't line up anymore. Again, pictures would have been helpful. Or measuring. Huh, what a concept. I mean, the cabinets were always in the house, if you really didn't know where something went, just measure the cabinets and you would have figured it out. Idiots. Oh and when they put the upper cabinets back into the house, they didn't put them the normal 18" up from the countertop, they put them on the ceiling. I walked in and I couldn't even touch the cabinet nobs to open them. Pictures.

Just before move-in the paint job was completed on the walls and the trim was stained. First thing I noticed was that the trim color was the wrong color. Well not "wrong" per-say, just not right. They did use the cherry minwax stain, however, they only did one coat of stain instead of two. Then the put the finish on and so now there's pretty much nothing one can do about it. The annoying part was how they lied to the head contractor about what they did. The painter was there the day I walked in and saw the trim. I asked him why the color was different and then I asked him how many coats of stain they put on. He said "one, that's all we do." However, after I pointed out to my head contractor (the "supervisor") that the color was wrong because they didn't do the typical two coats of stain, the painter then said to the contractor "oh, well we did 2 coats on the baseboards and 3 coats on the trim." LIAR. Listen, you made a mistake, you admitted to me your mistake, there's nothing you can do about it now, so just admit it. Don't lie to cover your ass. I know the truth, you told it to me a week ago. The trim turned out okay, just not as dark or the color that I wanted it. The interesting part is that they had a sample of what it was supposed to look like, and when they stained next to the sample, and realized it wasn't right, they just continued to put the finish on the wood instead of calling someone and saying "hey, this doesn't seem right to me, are you sure you want me to do this."

So yesterday I moved back into my house. It was a very exciting day for me and very stressful. Fortunately I have some awesome friends who helped me make the move a little easier. Thanks Mark, Christen, and Merrick.

First thing I noticed were the blinds. They were missing. So was the shower curtain rod, the closet rods, the closet shelves, the curtain rods for the master bedroom. Apparently instead of putting all that hardware into a bag and marking it "needed for move in," they just threw all that away and thought "oh well, we'll just buy new ones." Seriously I can't imagine how much all these little mistakes are costing the contractor.

The next things that I noticed, in progressive order, with the last being noticed at 11pm were 1) the refrigerator doors don't seal properly, 2) the front door is a pain to open and close (which I've been telling them about for the last 4 months) 3) the garbage disposal is on the wrong side of the sink (even after I told the plumber what side to put it on) 4) the shower doesn't work 5) all the doors are on the wrong frames so none of them close anymore 6) the toilet doesn't work.

You can imagine how I feel today about all of this. I also had words with the city inspector asking him why he didn't do his job, because the plumbing inspection, which was done on monday, should have NEVER passed with the shower and the toilet not working. Also, interestingly, I was told that the garbage disposal is about to fail and I should consider replacing it. Um, yea, that worked fine before you touched it, and funny, you admitted to me that you had trouble disconnecting it in the first place, so you had to pull at it hard to get it off. Any chance you broke something in the process? Hum, I think likely.

Lesson - don't let your house burn down.

A New Blog

2011-04-22T14:26:00.002-05:00

I created a side blog to display my pictures. Check it out at:

http://sworldpictures.blogspot.com

These are some I took this past week at Mayfield Park in Austin. It was a pretty cloudy day, but I still got off a few great shots.

Truffles - Part 2

2011-04-20T13:14:00.011-05:00

It's been a crazy week, but here's part 2 of truffles. Sorry I didn't around to writing it sooner, but I haven't had much free time to write. Also, it's quite long, but I wanted to tell you all what I learned from my class!

So, once you've read Part 1 (below), you are ready to move onto Part 2. Coating the truffles.

You can coat the truffles using one of two types of chocolate. First, the easy type... coating chocolate. Coating chocolate isn't real chocolate (read part 1), so it's much more workable and still gives you a decent 'snap.' And unless you're super picky about your chocolate, it will do a good job. Coating chocolate you can buy at a local craft store, or you can get at a local bake shop. I've heard that Guittard's A'peels are very tasty.

To work with coating chocolate, simply use a double boiler or the microwave (watch this so the chocolate doesn't burn) and melt your chocolate. Using the methods described below, coat your truffles. That's it. There is no tempering required for coating chocolate. Yea, much easier.

But if you want that true chocolate truffle, then you'll have to use true chocolate, and you'll have to temper it. Tempering chocolate means melting it down above 115 degF and then slowly brining the chocolate back to 89 deg using seeding chocolate. This process of tempering allows the chocolate to get to a glossy and streak-free form. If done properly, it turns out very beautiful and glossy and has a great 'snap.'

First, melt your chocolate. My instructor suggests doing this in the oven. Yes, the oven. The place your chocolate (reserving some for seeding) into a heat proof bowl and stick it in the oven at about 300 deg. Every few minutes check on it and stir it around. Once you've hit 115 deg, and you're melted, pull it out... with hot mits. You don't want to burn your chocolate. If you are using white chocolate, only bring it up to 110 degF max.

At this point you need to temper your chocolate.

Without getting into too much chemistry, I'll explain it like this. When you melt chocolate, you remove the crystal structure in the cocoa butter. When the chocoalte returns to a solid, this structure in the cocoa butter reforms. The temperature and speed at which the chocolate cools to its melting point (89 deg), determines how the crystalline structure reforms. If the chocolate is allowed to cool on its own, the crystals of fat will be loose, resulting in a chocolate that is dull in appearance, soft & malleable, and greasy to the touch. However, if you bring the chocolate slowly down to 89 deg with a process known as seeding, the cocoa butter will form dense crystals and the chocolate will cool to a very stable hard chocolate with a slight sheen, and nice snap when broken.

The seeding process uses unmelted pieces of chocolate to bring the temperature of the melted chocolate down to 100 deg in the beginning of the tempering process. The crystal structure in the unmelted chocolate act like magnets, attracting the other loose crystals of fatty acids to begin the crystallization process that results in well-tempered chocolate.

Okay enough chemistry, here's how you do it. Take your melted chocolate and slowly start stirring starting in the middle. Add about 1/2 cup of unmelted chocolate pieces (at room temperature) to the center and press them down to the bottom of your bowl with a spatula. Make sure they fully melt in the center. Then work your spatula around to the outside of the bowl, slowing moving the chocolate out from the center, up the sides, and then scraping it down. Check your temperature. If you're still above 100 deg. repeat the process. This could, and will, take a while.

Once you've reached about 100 degF, your chocolate is no longer hot enough to melt new unmelted pieces. Keep stirring slowly, bringing the chocolate up the sides, and scraping it back down again, until you've reached 89 deg. If you happen to go below this, you can reheat the chocolate in the microwave, however, if it gets above 90 degF, you'll have to re-temper it and start all over again at step 1.

To maintain a nice shine and prevent streaks, make sure you continuously stir your chocolate, especially as you work.

Now the fun part, coating the truffles. Don't forget to take your truffles out of the fridge and let them set to room temperature about 5-10 minutes first. Otherwise you're chocolate shell will crack as the hot chocolate cools and the cold truffle warms up.

To coat the truffles you can find the best method that works for you. If you want a rough look to your truffles, then go with the easy, hand way. Use some plastic kitchen gloves and place a little bit of chocolate into your hand. Using your other hand, roll the truffle into the chocolate and place on a piece of parchment. You can also use a fork to fish your truffles out of your chocolate bath and place them onto parchment. Either way, you'll just have to see what works best for you.

As the chocolate is cooling, you'll notice that it looks nice, but is a little dull. That's because the chocolate is going to take on the sheen of its environment. Using a candy mold and making filled truffles will give the chocolate the "super shine" that you're looking for. Either way, you'll still get a nice snap and a smooth coating.

To make a candy filled truffle, you'll want to make a slightly more liquid ganache and you'll need a candy mold. Fill each candy in the mold to the top with the tempered chocolate. Now, let it sit for about 2-3 minutes. After this time, move your mold over your big bowl of chocolate, and turn it upside down. Using a spatula, tap the outside of the mold to allow the still melted chocolate to pour out. Continue tapping until nothing else runs out. Flip the mold back over, and ta da, you have a candy shell.

Fill your shell with desired ganache filling, leaving room for a "bottom" layer of chocolate. Finish off the mold with a chocolate coating to seal in the ganache. Pop in the fridge for a few minutes. When they are setup, bring the mold over the table, flip it over, and tap it gently on the table, so the little chocolate pieces fall out. Now, oooooooh and ahhhhhhhhh, over your beautiful chocolate pieces.

Feel free to experiment with your truffles. Try skipping the chocolate coating, and instead roll them in jimmy's or sprinkles, or cocoa powder, or coconut. If you're rolling them in one of these coatings remember these steps... coat, roll in your hands, coat, roll in your hands, coat again. This will ensure an even coating onto the truffle.

I hope you enjoy making these as much as I did. I know it's hard to explain some things over a blog without a video, but this should get you started or maybe just answer some of your questions about truffles.

Also, check out this site, for some great recipes: http://www.countrykitchensa.com/ckideas/miniideas.aspx?Occ1Id=49&ideaId=210

And lastly, if you're tempering something other than dark chocolate, the temperature of the melting point will be lower, and the tempered temperature will be lower as well.
Dark (no milk content) 88-90°F
Milk 86-88°F
White 80-82°F

MS150 2011

2011-04-19T21:22:00.009-05:00

Before I continue with Truffles Part2, I'm gonna take a slight deviation and talk about my amazing friends and fellow cyclists.

This past weekend was the 2011 MS150. 170 miles from Houston to Austin on my bicycle.

I have to be honest. It was difficult getting motivated for this years ride. I've been spending a lot of time planning a wedding, and then bam, in October, the fire hit. So my whole winter was spent either doing wedding planning (which I love) or rebuilding my house with a bunch of contractors (not so much fun).

I tried to take time out each weekend to ride, but it was difficult. There was always something to do or somewhere to go. My mind was preoccupied.

But that's no excuse. After all, I was riding to help people. For my fourth year in a row, come April, I would saddle up and ride for my mom, Bonnie, and for everyone with MS. And this year was no different.

On Friday April 15th, my awesome friends and co-workers helped to push my fundraising over $1000 for the year... AND push me over my four year $10,000 mark! Thank you so much to everyone!

On Saturday morning, Jeremy drove me from Clear Lake down to the start area and I saddled up around 6:30. It was cold. Not as cold as my first year, but still, by the end of the first mile, I couldn't feel my fingers, ears, knees, or face. Fortunately I made the last minute decision to wear my arm warmers. I was happy about that. I kept them on until past mile 40.

The first half of the ride was great. I was riding by myself this year, so I jumped on a few pacelines and just cranked on the pedals. Around mile 35 I met up with one of my fellow Saint Arnolds team members and we rode together for a while. Eventually I told him he could just leave me, because this year I was in a hurry to go nowhere. I took my time slugging up the hills, babying my left knee (thank you Tough Mudder), and just enjoying the ride. I was actually enjoying riding by myself. I could go as fast or as slow as I wanted without feeling like I was holding anyone back. Plus, I met a bunch of people along the way.

I decided to skip lunch and hit rest stops 3, 5, and 7 on the first day. Usually I hit 2, lunch, 6 and 8... so it was nice seeing what the other stops had to offer. I actually enjoyed skipping lunch. I had a builder bar on me, and that seemed to do much better than a ham and cheese sandwich would have done.

After turning the corner around mile 90, something happened. The wind. The wind was at our back. First time all day. It was awesome. And just in time too, those last few miles are always the worst and with such a strong tailwind... well, lets just say, had it been a headwind, ugh. I flew up the next 6 miles with more energy than I had all day. I came into La Grange at 1pm and I felt pretty good. And to make it better, after crossing the finish line there was a nice Saint Arnolds volunteer waiting to hand me a beer even before I got to the tent!

Day 2 I started around 6:30am again, this time slightly warmer than Saturday. I got to mile 20 (still before Buscher State Park) and started the long slightly inclined climb. I was moving pretty slow and knew the park was gonna hurt this year. I was hoping my knee would hold up and at least get me up the hills.

I came down the hill before the park doing my usual pulse breaking at about 30mph while people screamed past me around 40mph. I'm sorry, that's just a little too fast for comfort when I'm sitting on two skinny tires with very little protecting my body should I take a crash.

I hit Bastrop and Buscher state park around 8am, warmed up a little at rest stop 2, and got on my way. I just took my time and enjoyed the scenery. I took every hill as it came and conquered them all. Not nearly as easily as years before, but that's what you get for not training very well. It was my own fault.

After the park I took a break at the gas station for my day 2 lunch, another Builder Bar, and got back on the bike. I skipped lunch again and stopped at the next, and last for me, break point. My shoulders were killing me, so the lovely volunteers were nice enough to rub bio-freeze on them. Man, that felt better.

The hills coming into Austin didn't seem as bad this year, maybe because we were blessed with a mostly tail/slightly cross wind until the last 3 miles or so. I hit the finish line around 11:30am and took my hands off the handlebars for a picture. Okay, not that far off, but at least up enough to say "yay" and then quickly grab the bars again. Man, how embarrassing would that be to crash at the finish line.

My lovely fiance brought beautiful roses to the finish line for me, and we both relaxed a little and chatted up with some fellow teammates. Oh, and we drank Saint Arnolds... of course! Unfortunately Brock wasn't there to meet us this year, but we hope he turns up next year!

Overall a great ride and of course I'm happy that I rode. See you again in 2012... probably.

Truffles - Part 1

2011-04-14T10:18:00.008-05:00

A few months ago, a friend asked me if I'd ever made truffles or if I knew how to temper chocolate. The answer to both of these questions was no. I've played with molding chocolate before (read the little fake chocolate morsels you get at the craft store), but I've never really worked with real chocolate.

To clarify, to be classified as real chocolate, the chocolate must contain cocoa butter. Those little candy morsels that come in 20 different colors, aren't real chocolate. Don't get me wrong, they still taste great, but if we're getting technical, they are not technically "chocolate." Instead the cocoa butter has been removed and replaced with other types of fats. This allows the chocolate to be much more workable, and still gives you that "snap" without having to temper it. Which is pretty sweet, especially considering that you can't taste much of a difference unless you're a chocolate snob.

Back to truffles. The thing is, I love baking, I love chocolate, I love making little treats for people, and I love knowing stuff. And since I didn't know how to properly temper chocolate, I knew I needed to take a class.

Truffles 101.

Last night we made 4 different types of truffles, learned to temper chocolate, and also discovered why these little buggers are so expensive.

First, the insides.

The inside of a truffle is made with some type of ganache. A ganache is simply a type of filling/icing/chocolate coating that is made with cream and chocolate. (read: includes cocoa butter). The density of the ganache depends on the ratio of cream to chocolate. A 1:1 ratio will give you more of a coating ganache, where as a 1:2 ratio will make the ganache more dense and thus moldable. The ganache can also be flavored by adding different things into the cream. ie - adding orange zest to the cream while it is boiling will give the ganache a hint of orange.

To make the ganache first bring your heavy cream to a boil. If you're adding a flavoring like orange zest, do it now. Watch your heavy cream. It will boil over if you are not careful. Meanwhile get your chocolate cut up into small pieces and place into a metal bowl. Once the heavy cream is hot and just at boiling, strain it through a small sieve (if you've added any type of zest or herbs) to remove all the particles. Then pour it over the room temperature chocolate pieces. Using a spatula, just push the chocolate down into the cream, so it is all covered.

Now, resist the urge to stir. Stop. Don't do it.

Let the cream sit over the chocolate for 2-3 minutes to allow the heat of the cream to melt the chocolate. If you start stirring you will release the heat and the chocolate will not melt.

After 3 minutes, put your spatula, or wooden spoon, into center of the chocolate and start working it together. Start from the center keeping the spatula down. Try to prevent getting air bubbles in the chocolate, it's just bad form. Slowly work the cream and chocolate together, moving out to the sides, until incorporated.

Line a 8x8 or 10x10 pan with saran wrap, then pour the ganache into the pan. Gently place another piece of saran wrap over the top and let it sit on the counter for 10-12 hours.

Yep, that's the hard part. Don't touch it!

This will allow the ganache to firm up and become workable. If it is still super soft, toss it in the fridge for a little while. But you should be good.

When you are ready, use a tablespoon to scoop out evenly proportioned amounts of chocolate. The tablespoon will keep all your truffles the same size.

Place each rolled ball onto parchment paper and read Part 2. If the truffles were getting soft when you were rolling them, you can toss them in the fridge for a bit while you start melting your chocolate. (if the chocolate is super soft, which it may be depending on your liquid to chocolate ratio, I'd recommend using rubber gloves to roll them). Remember to bring the truffles out of the fridge about 5 minutes before dipping, to bring them back to a slightly cool room temperature. If they are too cold, the chocolate coating will crack, as you'll see in part 2.

Note: To find some great ganache truffle recipes just use google. There are plenty out there.

2011 MS150 - The Year to 10,000

2011-04-11T17:00:00.003-05:00

Between the house and the wedding, I haven't posted much about the MS150. And since I'm on my way out the door, down to deal with the house, I'm gonna have to make this short.

This will be my 4th year riding the BP MS150 from Houston to Austin. Over the past 3 years, I've raised over $9,000 in the fight against MS. This year, my goal is to raise $1000 and push my four year total OVER $10,000.

If you'd like to help contribute to my ride, please visit my page at:

THE YEAR TO 10,000

To all those who have contributed in the past, and who have contributed this year, thank you so much for your support.

~Shelley

Fondant Project

2011-04-06T22:20:00.007-05:00

A few weeks ago it occurred to me, although I don't like to eat fondant, a good cake designer should know how to work with both buttercream and fondant. Not to mention that you can do some pretty cool things with fondant that you just can't do with buttercream.

So last night I took a fondant project class. My biggest fear about fondant is cracking and folds. So I was pretty nervous about icing the cake. But I learned a few techniques and I think it turned out pretty well.

Now I will take you on a tour of my cake and impart onto you some of the wisdom that I learned.

(It wasn't until after I layered the cake that I thought to take pictures, sorry)

Step 1: Prep the fondant.

The thing about fondant is that it dries out quickly, so you've got to work quickly. Always make sure your fondant is sealed in a plastic bag and only take out what you need. About 2 fist fulls or less is a good amount

Working the fondant exercises the elasticity of the fondant and makes it much easier to work with. Add a little shortening to your hands to help keep the fondant moist. Once you can pull it 4-6" appart without breaking, you're ready to move on. (Think silly putty)

Step 0: Frosting the Cake

Yes, I just went backwards. Perhaps you should read the whole blog before you get started.

Step 0, is frosting the cake. Make sure that your cake is nice and level and is frosted evenly around the top and sides. Don't worry if crumbs are showing because the fondant will cover it all. You want to use enough frosting that the cake tastes good (mask the fondant taste) but not too much that it makes it too soft to hold the fondant. (or too much that it oozes out the bottom, but more on that later)

Step 2: Roll out the fondant.

To make the awesome swirly look that I did below, you want to roll out a few different colors of fondant into even length snakes. Stack them above one another on the table and then roll them up like a snail (or like one of those horrible tasting large rainbow lollypops). Now, kneed the dough in your hands ever so gently. It will over mix very quickly and you won't get those swirly marks.

Using a rolling pin (silicon), roll the fondant out onto the table. Important note: make sure to lightly dust the table with corn starch before starting. This will prevent the fondant from sticking to the table and allow it to stretch more easily. Roll in one direction only (top to bottom) then lift and turn the fondant 90 degrees and roll out again. By continually turning the fondant you ensure a relatively round shape and you'll keep the fondant from sticking. Make sure you roll your fondant out big enough so you have a bit to overlap on each side of your cake. You don't want to come up short.

Another helpful hint: You're hand fully spread out, is about 8" from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your pinky. This comes in handy when a ruler is not available.

Step 3: Fondant onto Cake

Lightly dust the top of the fondant with corn starch, then, starting from the top, roll the fondant back onto the rolling pin towards you. The dusting of corn starch will prevent it from sticking to itself, and the rolling pin will allow you to pick it up.

Quickly move toward the cake, then, start from the back of the cake. Look down and ensure there is enough overhang, then slowly roll the fondant away from you and onto the cake. Ta Da!

Okay, that was the easy part

Now, using the palm of your hand, smooth out the top of the cake. Then, starting at twelve o'clock and working toward three, use one hand to pull the fondant outward, while the other hand presses IN using a circular motion to smooth the top 1/4 of fondant onto the cake. Notice how I emphasize the pressing in and NOT downward. If you press down, you will move the icing out from under the fondant, and it will all ooze out the bottom. Trust me.

Next move to the other side of the cake and work from nine o'clock to six o'clock. Again only doing the top 1/4 of the cake. Carefully pressing the fondant in, toward the cake with the palm of your hand.

Continue around the top of the cake, then work down the cake, doing a little on each side, until you reach the bottom. Don't forget to pull the fondant OUT and not down, and to press IN and not down.

Once you're all done, use a cutter to run along the bottom of the cake and remove the excess fondant. If you used too much icing or pressed down, you've most likely squeezed it out and it will be a puddle around the bottom of the cake. No worries, just wipe that up. (Notice, in my cake, I had this problem and from the side you can see a slight concave nature to the cake. Fortunately, that's what they make decorations for... to cover these mistakes)

If you've gotten to this point, congratulations, you've completed the hardest part. The next part is to decorate.

There were many things going on with this cake, and the first was to put on the sea floor bottom as well as the leaves. The sea band was done using a blue and green fondant mixed together and rolled out to about 3 wide hands length. An impression mat was then laid over the fondant and rolled on to make the pattern you see. Now, you can use just about anything to make these impressions, so use your imagination. By adding texture to the fondant you add just a little more detail to the cake, and it really makes it pop. The leaves were done using green fondant and a leaf shaped cookie cutter. They were then cut in half length wise and flourished with a few details using an impression tool.

To adhere any fondant to other fondant, simply use a wet paintbrush to wipe a small amount of water to the back of the fondant. This will act as a glue and it will "bond" within a few seconds.

Next we made the fish, flowers, and octopus.

To make the fish, use a candy mold. Don't forget to dust your fondant with a light cornstarch before putting it in the mold, otherwise it will be hard to remove. Another trick to removing the fondant from the mold is to hold the mold perpendicular to the table. Next, take a small piece of fondant and make it very tacky by working with it a lot. Then start at the top of the fish and stick the tacky fondant to the fish fondant and pull back. This will help work the fish of of its mold. We also used a dry paintbrush to "paint" on some blue luster dust to the fish, to really give them depth and bring out their scales. But be careful, that stuff gets everywhere!

To make the flowers, we simply used a small flower cutter and then brought the petals together to make it look like they were being swept by the water. The octopus was made using blue, pink, and black fondant. Make his head about the size of a small golf ball, and don't forget octopus have 8 legs. Also don't forget to use a small amount of water to adhere your pieces to your cake.

Finally, add some white bubbles to your fish and dust the cake with some white shimmer powder. The bubbles were made by rolling out white fondant about 1/4" thick and placing a sheet of plastic wrap over the fondant. Use a #12 (I think) tip and press down into the plastic wrap to create a circle cutout in the fondant. The plastic wrap pulls the fondant down a bit, giving it that bubble look. Otherwise, you'll just get more of a circle look. Tricky tricky.

And Ta Da... The final product.

Jeremy & I are ENGAGED!

2011-03-27T19:37:00.022-05:00

Oh wait, have I used that title before?

It's true, we are engaged, and have been since July 2010, however, we now have the pictures to prove it!

Earlier this month, Jeremy and I, and our awesome photographer, Beverly DeMafiles, got up at the crack of dawn and drove around downtown Austin to take some photos. Technically they're called our Engagement Photos even though we got engaged 8 months ago.

The full set is up on the wedding website, but I'm gonna take you a short tour of Austin with some select photos now.

First stop, Greetings From Austin! At the corner of South 1st and Anne lies this iconic mural. I love it. It's so fun, and says so much about Austin.

Next, take a walk around the corner and down the street.

After walking around South 1st for a while, we headed over to South Congress. I love South Congress Street. First, the shops and boutiques are awesome. Second the food, is great. Magnolia, Home Slice Pizza, South Congress Cafe... mmmm! Some of my favorite in all of Austin. Oh, and did I mention, HEY CUPCAKE!

After playing around South Congress, we took a few more shots at the park and then headed home for a while. Bev was nice enough to come out and meet us again at sunset to take some pictures overlooking downtown. We had to wait a while for the optimal sun, but in the end it was worth it. Here are a few shots at the Long Center overlooking downtown.

Two in one day...

2011-03-27T19:11:00.005-05:00

I'm trying to catch up on my blog posting. I know it's been a long while. See, the thing is that I've been busy. Really busy.

The House

The house is coming along... slowly. When you have a 1950's house that is being restored there are TONS of issues. Turns out, if the fire had completely destroyed the house it would have been done being rebuilt by now. Crazy huh?

The latest delay involves leaky gas pipes. I guess I'm not too surprised. I mean, they were put in, what, 61 years ago? And I guess I'm grateful that they discovered the issue now, before the house blew up. But still, it's frustrating.

I've learned a lot of things through this process, one of which, is that a $5000 code upgrade limit is fairly worthless when you own a really old house. And the bitch of it is that you can't even pay to have this ceiling higher. Nope, $5000 is all the insurance company will give you. And it's not just Nationwide, but a bunch of them out there.

So right about now, we're at $8000 in code upgrades, $3000 of which the insurance won't cover, and that's not including fixing the gas pipes. Why are the gas pipes not covered, you ask? Well, because they weren't technically effected by the fire. But, they have to pass inspection before they'll let you put up the insulation and drywall.

Oh well, I guess I can't complain too much about getting a brand new house for only $3000+.

The Wedding

The wedding, unlike the house, is coming along nicely. Venue - check, Photographer - check, Videographer - check, Caterer - check, Florist, Makeup, Hair - check, check, check.

I'm really starting to feel good about everything and where we are. The colors are chosen, as are all the dresses, and hopefully by May I'll have the invitations picked out. But that's no biggie, cause they won't have to go out until like August or something.

I'm so excited about the wedding, that I'm even willing to give you a sneak peek at one of the food items!

Cucumber with Salmon Moose

Don't forget to check out the wedding website and sign the guestbook!

My Sandwich

2011-02-07T11:11:00.005-06:00

Today I'd like to tell you about the most awesome sandwich that I made this weekend: My Sandwich.

I specifically call it My Sandwich because it is in fact my sandwich, not yours.

Over the last week I've spent a lot of time with 2 year olds. Not my own, of course, but when you have a lot of friends with children, you tend to be around them quite often. I find that it is around this age that children start to grasp the understanding of possessive pronouns, specifically My/Mine.

Without having children of my own, I can only draw the following conclusions by observation. But I suppose children pick up this sense of ownership from their parents. If your child wants some water from your glass, you say no. Why? Becuase it is "mine," or "it is mommy's/daddy's." Or if the child wants some of your pizza you say "no, it is mine, that is yours (pointing to their own piece.)" Or the child tries to play with something sitting out that you do not want them to play with: "that is not your toy, it is mine."

Now I perfectly understand this. After all, there are probably very few people who would choose to have their child's (or any child's) drool and spit all over their pizza or floating as a little island in their water cup. And sometimes young children just don't understand a long complicated explanation, even if they have the patience to sit through a 6 word sentence.

"You can't play with that knife, it is sharp and you may stab yourself, and then we have to go to the hospital and you may die" is just such a long explanation for "don't touch that." Usually followed by "why" and then "because it is mine." or "it is my toy."

So at some point children have a desire to also feel this sense of ownership. And thus everything becomes "Mine." And so, today I will tell you about "MY sandwich."

This weekend I started a two week trial of eating more healthy. I know, it's very noncommittal.

But I am going to try, for the next two weeks, to avoid anything that tends to make my stomach hurt. Namely, heavy cream sauces and deep fried things, also foods with a lot of butter (cookies excluded).

So instead of grabbing whatever randomness looked tasty in the fridge, I set out to make a healthy sandwich. See exhibit A.

Exhibit A:

This is my sandwich.

I started out doing a light saute on some red onions and green pepper. I used a slight amount of olive oil and turned the heat up to about 7. I wanted to get them a little brown, warm, and only slightly soft. I had no intention of caramelizing them.

I then removed them from the pan and added a slice of whole grain bread schlepped on one side with some garlic hummus. Hummus side up, of course. And heat turned down to 3.

I will caution you, do not add too much hummus. Especially if you are putting some on the other slice of bread as well. Otherwise you could end up with a very mushy sandwich... ick.

I added my onions and peppers to the bread, followed by some spinach, tomato, and a little cheese. (The cheese is more of a slight binding agent than a dominant flavor). I topped this off with another slice of whole grain bread with garlic hummus. (hummus side down this time)

I then pressed the sandwich, flipped the sandwich, and covered the pan with a plastic cover of sort. This allowed the heat to be trapped in to help melt the cheese while the bottom side finished getting crispy.

Transfer to plate, and ta-da. It was fantastic. Nice and light, and very refreshing. And, healthy!

Texas Tough Mudder - 1/29/2011 - Part 4

2011-02-05T18:40:00.002-06:00

This is Part 4 of the Tough Mudder series. If you haven't read Part 1, 2, or 3 yet, go down and start from there.

Part 4 - After the Tough Mudder

Now, I know what you're thinking. After everything we've been through, what more could there possibly be to tell.

Well, let me tell you.

After we had gotten our victory beers, shirts, bars, and headbands, we headed back to the car. And by that, I mean, Jeremy walked and I limped. Up until this point, I had only been cold in the water, but once I hit land I was fine. Only now, the challenge was over, the clouds were coming in, and I was getting cold.

So we hurried back to the car, and I handed Jeremy the running belt that I was wearing. It's basically a belt with an expandable pouch in the back to hold stuff, such as food... and a car key.

Ah ha. And now you understand why there needs to be a Part 4 to this story.

So Jeremy opens the pouch then looks at me point blank and says "there's no key in here." At first I thought it was some sort of sick joke. There's no way he could be serious.

He was.

At this point we started going through all the possible options. How we'd get back to Austin. How we'd get the spare key from his house in Houston. And what we were going to do about the fact we were cold, hungry, and wet. After all, everything we owned was in the car, and the key was... well, it was somewhere between mile 5 (first food stop) and mile 10.

Well, at this point, there was only one option, and that was to walk back to the three spots where we had taken a food break. I mentally prepared myself for the hobble. Both my knees were screaming.

Fortunately, the course is very spectator friendly. So, although it is 3 course miles between the smoke house and the monkey bars, it's only about 1/8th mile walk for spectators.

We started at the monkey bars. In my mind, this is where the key would have gotten lost. It was almost the end of the run and I was so tired at that point, I knew that I probably grabbed the shot blocks out of the pouch without thinking about the key. So we searched for a while, looking all over the muddy, muddy ground, but to no avail.

So we headed back to the smokehouse. If it wasn't there, then someone else would have to walk to the mile 5 rest stop, because that was pretty far away. On the way to the smokehouse we found $2 lying on the ground. It wasn't exactly a key, but hey, still not a bad find.

At the smokehouse water station we looked around the ground, then Jeremy went over and asked the volunteer if anyone had found a key. She said that yes, in fact someone did find one at the monkey bar area and it was now at Lost and Found.

Ah! I was so sure at this point that it was our key, that I hadn't really considered what we would do if it wasn't our key. Surely two idiots wouldn't have dropped keys on the course. Don't ask me why we didn't try going to the information desk before we started our jaunt around the course, I don't know. In retrospect, that would have been a good starting place.

We got to information and the woman held up the key. It was ours! I handed her my $2. I told her I found it on the course and I was turning it into Lost and Found. She said "no, you found that, it's yours." I said "No, karma is a bitch, you keep it."

Texas Tough Mudder - 1/29/2011 - Part 3

2011-02-05T18:03:00.017-06:00

This is Part 3 of the Tough Mudder series. If you haven't read Part 1 or Part 2 yet, go down and start from there. Sorry, I guess I could have done these in reverse order... or you can just scroll down :)

After running through about 8 miles of course, we started to hit the harder obstacles. Okay, probably not 'harder,' but we were just so exhausted at this point, they seemed pretty hard. One was the rope bridges or 'The Ball Shrinker'. A series of bridges across cold muddy water. Two ropes, one high and one low. Walk your way across the lower one, while holding onto the upper one. Our rope figured out the best way to do this was by facing alternate directions. This way there was equal pull on both sides of the rope. Doing it this way made it not too bad. Still slippery, but doable without falling in the water.

We rounded the corner after the log carry, and saw the sight that almost made me cry... another lake. I stopped on the bank to just prepare myself for what was about to happen. I even questioned whether I could even make it across at this point. The sun was going behind the clouds, and I just knew (from plenty of experience up to this point) how cold that water was going to be. It would take all my energy to get across.

I jumped in and started swimming out to the middle, where, waiting for us, were a series of three underwater tunnels. They weren't really tunnels, but large blue barrels making three barricades across the water that you had to swim under. Yep under. At this point you were in up to your head, but at least you weren't holding your breath.

I got out to the first barricade and grabbed on. I had to prep myself again. All of a sudden some guy came up next to me and said "1,2,3." Without thinking I just pushed myself under the water and swam until I knew I cleared the barrels. Unfortunately, I almost went too far, and came up just in front of the next set. I came up and gasped for breath. But I only had a second until I heard someone else yell "go." Without thinking I was back under the water.

It was probably better this way, as the longer you stay in the water, the colder you get... obviously. I can honestly say that I don't remember much about going under the barrels, but I do remember just swimming my heart out trying to get back to the other side of the shore. I got out and turned back to see Jeremy just finishing the third barricade. He took a minute to also catch his breath then swam over to me. We were both so cold...

After the water crossing, we went straight into Twinkle Toes. You had to make your way across two bridges that were made of 2 - 2x6's standing upright. So you had about 4" to walk across. With muddy shoes, while people were falling off in front and behind you. Both Jeremy and I did pretty good on this one, only falling once.

Next came the monkey bars. I knew from the start of the event that I would have trouble with this one. Jeremy was smart and took his time to dry off his hands first. I just jumped onto them.

My first attempt I only made it two bars, then I fell into the freezing cold muddy water and swam the rest of the way out. However, after feeling that I didn't really try that hard, I decided to go back and try again. I made it 5 bars the second time, and I was pretty happy with that.

Jeremy, however, did awesome. Not only did he make it across, but he had to keep stopping and waiting for the guy in front of him to keep moving. Oh, did I mention that the bars went up and then down? Like the pitch on a roof? Yea, hard.

After the monkey bars, we grabbed the last of the shot blocks to eat, then headed for the last 1 mile run. At this point it was definitely more of a walk, but I was doing a limping run when I could. After all, this was the Tough Mudder. I'd deal with the pain later.

The second to last obstacle was another water crossing (go figure). You had to wade out to the middle of the pond, scale up a vertical cargo net, climb down a wood ladder, of sorts, then wade back out. At least you finished somewhat clean, but man, I so did not want to get in that cold water.

The very last obstacle was Electroshock Therapy: sprint through a field of live wires, some of which carry a 10,000 volt shock. This was actually not as bad as it sounds. I got shocked twice, and its more of a large involuntary twitch. Oh yea, and you have to run through a thick mud pit, so you can't go that fast, otherwise you'll just get stuck or fall down.

Jeremy and I finished the event in 2:50. Not great, but not bad. I'm glad we broke the 3 hour mark. We had so much fun. I don't know if I'd chance doing it again in January, but I would definitely sign up if it was in the summer. Here's a link to the full course map.

All photos are courtesy of brightroom photography.

Texas Tough Mudder - 1/29/2011 - Part 2

2011-02-05T17:41:00.011-06:00

This is Part 2 of the Tough Mudder series. If you haven't read Part 1 yet, go down and start from there.

After mile 5 my right knee was really starting to bother me. For some stupid reason I had decided to take a ballet class the Thursday before the event, I don't know what I was thinking. Between that class and just not being in great running shape, I really started to mess up my knee. Not to mention, it's really hard to run when your shoes are caked in mud. Form just goes to hell.

So between mile 5 and about mile 7, it was mostly trail running. There were a few obstacles, such as the Boa Constrictor: a series of small tubes that you had to army crawl through. Then there was the creek run. Yep, you guessed it. More running through cold ass water trying to make it across before your feet froze off. And the Log Bog Jog: run through a swamp while hopping over a series of downed trees.

Jeremy was really good about walking with me when I needed and fake running with me when I felt that I could. My run was more of a very slow jog at that point.

As we made our way back into the main area of the course we were met with the Texas Smoke House. At this point they would have normally had a large fire that you had to run through, but because of the burn ban in effect, they switched over to a smoke house. The idea: jump through the window of the house, then make your way out through the thick smoke. Be careful... there may be hidden obstacles.

So here's where things got interesting. First we stop to grab a few shot blocks. Then Jeremy goes first. He jumps through the window then turns around to help me in. As he turns around, he doesn't realize that the ground drops off behind him, and he goes sliding down the mud slope into the huge mud pit at the bottom. I was laughing so hard, I could hardly crawl into the house. "Jeremy down!"

Again, you needed help getting out of the mud pit, because the little mud hill on the other side (still in the smoky house) was too steep to be able to get your footing to get out on your own.

I can't really remember the order of the next few obstacles, but I know they included the Mud Mile. A series of huge mud pits lined up for about a quarter mile. These were fun... and really muddy! See...

After the mud run we hit the next obstacle: Hold Your Wood. Run up and over a series of hills carrying large tree logs. Cause at this point, you were only carrying your own weight up and over all the hills, walls and streams.

But the worst obstacle was still to come...

Texas Tough Mudder - 1/29/2011 - Part 1

2011-02-05T17:11:00.008-06:00

It all started last April, when I bought Jeremy (and myself) an entry into the Texas Tough Mudder for his 35th birthday. Back then it seemed like a great idea. Run 10 miles though mud, water, and obstacles all for the fun of it. However, what I did not consider, was that the challenge was in January. Now, I know some of you northern folks think it is balmy in Texas all year round, but I can assure you that it can get very cold. Today it is 37 degrees. That's cold.

Fortunately, we got lucky. The weather had forecasted a front moving into the area with rain and cold winds, however, that seemed to hold off until the next week, and it was 65 degrees the day of the race. Perfect.

We arrived at the event just in time to see our friend, Mark, and his team, Sic-Fit, start the course. We followed behind them 2 waves later, around 10:40. But before we started we made sure to brand ourselves with our bib, and bib number written in permanent marker across our arms, legs, and forehead. Yep, they wanted to make sure you were visible from all angles... and when covered with a ton of mud. (side note - if you are planning to do this event, bring your own marker and avoid the long branding line)

First things first. They make sure to stress to you that the Tough Mudder is not a race, it's a challenge. It's about having fun and helping each other out. And man are they right. There were more than a few obstacles that you could not have conquered on your own.

Our event was held at the Cross Creek Cyclecross track in Paige, TX (about an hour east of Austin). The first mile or more is running around the cyclecross track. Up and down the many hills they have built up. Then you hit the first obstacle...

Kiss Of Mud

I was able to get under this by crawling on my hands and knees, Jeremy had to get down a bit lower and army crawl through it. Just for kicks they made us do this obstacle twice.

Run around the track a bit more, and you come to the mystery obstacle. This one we also had to do twice. Obstacle two: Ice Bath. Yep. It was a pit of mud water about waist deep that you had to jump into... and it was filled with ice. Brrrr. You definitely needed help getting out of this one.

After running about another quater mile, you hit obstacle 3: Creek Crusade. Slosh your way through waist deep freezing cold muddy water. This was the second introduction to the freezing cold water. This "creek" was pretty wide, and by the time we got to the other side, my feet were frozen. I guess this was their way of "easing" you into the cold water that was waiting for you ahead.

Just as you exited the creek and turned the corner, there you were faced with the first real tough obstacle... Walk the Plank. Okay, so here you had to jump off what they say is a 15 foot platform into freezing cold water. (I think it was more like 20' myself). But first you have to get up to the platform by scaling up this flat wooden incline (about 80 deg) using a rope. Of course it was so muddy that was almost impossible, so someone helped push you from the bottom, while the guy at the top grabbed your arm and yanked you up. Now the platform at the top was only about 5' x 10' most, so you didn't have much of a chance to think before someone started screaming at you "jump, jump."

I don't really recall falling into the water, as much as I remember the cold zapping all the energy out of my body the instant I hit the water. Whew... that was cold. But that wasn't the end of it. You still had to swim across the lake. Yes, lake. This wasn't just a pond, it was FAR. All I could think was "swim, swim, swim." Half way across you can't feel anything anymore, and all you can do is try to focus on making it to shore. When you finally made it, they had emergency blankets for those who needed them, but we found that we warmed up quite quickly. After all, the water was probably about 55 degrees, max. Way colder than the pool at Barton Springs in Austin.

The next few obstacles included Devil's Beard: a series of three cargo nets that you had to climb under.... some while going up a muddy hill. Then there was the Hay Bails. Not just little square ones, large round ones. First stacked one high, then stacked in a pyramid 2-3 high. The pyramid was another obstacle where you definitely needed the help of others to get up and over.

There was also the Berlin Walls: A series of 3 - 12' high walls that you had to get up and over. And of course the Mud Hill: try your best to make it to the top without slipping back down... then slide down the other side.

I should mention here that all these obstacles were somewhat spaced out and between each one was some running and a lot of trekking through small ponds of freezing water and/or mud. You know, at some point, you just don't even notice that you can't feel your feet.

By this time we finally reached mile 5. Time for a short water break and some clif shots.

Recipe and a Ring

2011-02-01T08:52:00.011-06:00

I've been feeling bad lately about not posting more recipes and food related stuff. Although, in my defense, I still don't have a kitchen or a house, so, you know, that's kinda been slowing me down. Because I don't have any new food items to blog about, I thought I'd pull out an old recipe for you. I can't recall if I've blogged about this before, but if I did it was so long ago that most of you probably forgot. This is one of my all time favorites and people go crazy for them: Butterscotch Bars.

Ingredients
12 oz butterscotch morsels
2 cups gram cracker crumbs
1/3 cup of butter (look for the 1/3 measurement on the stick)
1/2 (ish) cup of ground/chopped walnuts (if you like nuts, use more, if not, use less)
1 egg
1 tsp (ish) vanilla
8 oz cream cheese (1 pack)
1 can (14oz) sweet and condensed milk

Directions

melt butter and butterscotch morsels together in a bowl. If using the microwave make sure you do this slowly so as to not burn the butterscotch. once melted, mix in the gram cracker crumbs and the nuts. This will make the bottom and top of the bars. Press 1/2 the mixture into a 13x9 pan.

filling: cream together the cream cheese, egg, vanilla, and sweet and condensed milk

pour the filling on top of the base layer of butterscotch crumb

sprinkle the remaining butterscotch crumb mixture on top of the filling, to form the top of the bars.

bake 25-30 min at 350 deg. (i usually do 25 min)

let cool to the touch. I'd recommend cutting them at this point. They are difficult to cut when they are very cold. Once cut, place in fridge to cool. It's a cream cheese mix, so you don't wanna have this out for super long (ie - 5 hours). But you can take them out 30-60 min a head of serving to warm up a bit. Though I prefer to eat them cold.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

The Ring

Now onto something super exciting. When Jeremy and I got engaged last July he gave me a beautiful diamond set in a placeholder band and allowed me to take the time to design my own engagement and wedding bands. This way he could surprise me with the proposal yet still give me the ability to personalize my ring. For the last few months we were looking at tons of different rings and coming up with a design that was a combination of the things that we both liked.

We had the ring done at C. Kirk Root Design here in Austin, and last weekend after the Tough Mudder, we were finally able to go pick up the ring. It is GORGEOUS! I've posted a few pictures below. Obviously I'm not allowed to wear the wedding band yet, but I included it in the pics so you could see them together.

Restaurant Reviews

2011-01-17T07:40:00.012-06:00

Since my parents were in town this weekend, we spent plenty of time eating out. I decided to write a quick blog post about a few of these restaurants because I was pleasantly surprised by some, and oddly disappointed in others. First, the disappointments.

Trudy's

We went to Trudy's on Sunday morning for their breakfast buffet. Only now, it is barely a breakfast buffet at all. It is now considered a "brunch" buffet, and if you haven't been there in a while, I think you will be greatly disappointed. On the buffet we found about 5 breakfast items, about 5 more "Tex-Mex" items, and then the most random selection of food ever. For example, meatballs. Meatballs... really? You're putting meatballs on your breakfast buffet at a Tex-Mex restaurant? The whole thing is really just a disaster. While this used to be one of my favorite weekend breakfast stops, it is now off the list!

Maudies

Many of you know, Maudies is my favorite Tex-Mex comfort food restaurant. I always want to go to Maudies. At some point, within the last week, Maudies decided to roll out their new menus with a few new "rules." First, the menu. It seriously looks like a 5 year old designed this thing. It's so confusing, big bold words everywhere, and very difficult to follow. I eventually found all my favorites, so at least it appears that they have not changed the food at all. Sometimes I really wonder what makes people take something that's working and change it up. Change for the sake of change is a stupid idea. Maudies, your old menu was just fine, why did you re-design it to look like a childs menu?

Unfortunately, the menu wasn't the only change. Apparently there are new "rules" now. For example, I was told that I probably could not substitute zucchini for my rice and beans, as most menu items "No longer allowed substitutions." Seriously? WTF. Okay, I understand if you want to tell me that you can't substitute guac for rice, as there is a major cost difference there, but the least you could do is offer me the chance to pay the difference. I don't think it would be difficult to say "Sure, we can do that, but there may be a slight upcharge." We're not talking about a fancy restaurant here, we're talking about Maudies.

Now, to end on a happier note, here's a review of my experience at The Carillon.

The Carillon is housed in the AT&T Conference Center on the UT Campus. Parking is just below for about $9 for 3 hours. Since it was pouring rain, we choose this option. Heck it was going to be an expensive dinner, so what's another $9 at that point. I should mention here that we choose to check this place out because my boss raves about the chef and I had a Groupon for $50. I knew since it was the 4 of us going, this would probably only make a dent in the bill, but that's okay, I love checking out fancy restaurants.

We each choose the 3 course tasting menu; you get 2 appetizers and 1 entree. Below are some pictures of the food that we got. The presentation was great and the food was amazing. For appetizers we had:

BABY ICEBERG SALAD apple smoked bacon | smokey blue cheese | chervil ranch | red pepper syrup

BEEF TARTARE parmesan | truffle | potato | whole grain mustard

SEARED HUDSON VALLEY FOIE GRAS vanilla french toast | macadamia butter | balsamic figs (AMAZING!)

CRISP PORK BELLY diablo glaze | asian pear salad | fried mint

And for dinner, I got:

BRIOCHE CRUSTED RACK OF LAMB english pea risotto | whole grain mustard | tomato confit

All the food was just so amazing, including the olive oil poached prime beef tenderloin that my parents got and the braised beef short ribs that Jeremy ordered... oh and the prince edward island mussels that my dad got (though I can't seem to upload the picture correctly). I would highly recommend checking this place out. It's the perfect date night... just be willing to put up the bucks around $70/pp for a three course meal, a glass of wine, tax & tip.

A New Year

2011-01-03T15:51:00.004-06:00

Happy New Year!

I would start off this post by telling you all about my New Year's resolutions. However, I have decided not to make any this year. I mean, hell, I could tell you that I'm going to "eat healthier" this year, but as I sit here munching on Christmas cutout cookies, I know that's a lie. And really, it's just a bad idea to start off the year lying to ourselves. Makes me wonder why so many people make New Years resolutions in the first place. Lies.

But I am excited today. I'm excited because I made one more wedding decision. I bought my garter. You know, it's funny. Some decisions are so difficult for me (the dress, the venue, the photographer), but this one was so easy. Maybe because it's really a teeny tiny decision in the grand scheme of things, but I saw this one and I was like, that is awesome. You want to see a picture? Okay. I really have no idea what the rules are on showing off your garter, and I figure most you will forget (or not care) by the time the big day arrives, so here ya go.

Blue is not actually on of my wedding colors, but I just liked this one so much, I went for it. I'll be excited to see what it looks like when it arrives in a few weeks.

We also started going through old photographs of ourselves and our parents. Here's a teaser for you.

I'M GETTING MARRIED THIS YEAR!

Happy Holidays

2010-12-21T10:34:00.002-06:00

Just a quick note to say Happy Holidays to you all and to give you a quick update on the house.

We are now at 7 1/2 weeks since the house first caught fire. I can tell you, it doesn't look much different than it did 7 weeks ago.

All of the drywall has been removed, the studs have been cleaned, and have been sprayed down with this white dusty chemical to lock in the smoke smell. It works pretty well because the house doesn't smell as much like smoke anymore... now it's more of a chemical, kill you in your sleep, kinda smell. Hum... not sure about that tradeoff.

I do have updated pictures that I took with my fancy new camera, however, I have yet to upload them. I'll work on that over Christmas holiday.

I finally got my initial estimate from the insurance for the base of the contents. What that means, is that the initial list covers everything I could remember at the time but there's still lots more to be put on there. I'm happy to be finally getting an initial check and getting that process started.

On the other hand, I have yet to receive a check to get the house rebuilding started. I'm lucky to have contractors who are willing to start without having a check in hand, but my insurance adjuster is just very very slow. I think he's close to retirement and just doesn't care anymore. For those of you that are curious the process for payout goes like this:

1. Get check from insurance for initial amount (of course it may need to be adjusted as the process continues).
2. Sign check and send to mortgage company (they own most of my house, so their name is on it also). Must also submit lots of other paperwork (go figure).
3. Mortgage company pays out 1/3 to contractor to start rebuilding.
4. Inspector goes out, looks at work, approves next 1/3 to be released to contractor.
5. Inspector goes out, looks at work, approves last amount to be released to contractor and/or me.

It is an understandable process, but it just takes a while. Ugh. Hopefully after the new year this can start moving faster.

So that's the update. Fortunately I'll be spending the holidays in PA and won't even have to think about the house. :)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Shutterfly vs. Blurb

2010-12-15T14:38:00.002-06:00

I recently made a recipe book of all the recipes my mom has collected over the years. Since I'd used Shutterfly twice before, I was inclined to use them for this project. However, I'd heard about Blurb and decided this was a great project to give them a try.

First what I love about Blurb.

When you use blurb you actually download a program called Booksmart. Thus, you do not need to be connected to the internet all the time, and it eliminates the need to upload photos to a server. Once you are done then upload your book when you are ready to place your order. Booksmart is great. You have full control over customization of layouts, which is the biggest perk to Blurb. Plus it is really easy to use. The other nice thing is that you have full color customization over the backgrounds. You see a background you like, but it's in blue and white, well, you can change both those colors to be exactly what you want. There are infinite color options.

What I don't like about Blurb.

First, while I do like their background selection and color choice options, you don't have quite as many to choose from as Shutterfly. Second, while I love their layout and design flexibility they do have more limited book cover choices. (only 3). And then third, and probably the biggest, I don't think their quality compares to Shutterfly.

When I got my recipe book back from them I noticed the front cover wasn't as nice as the Shutterfly covers. I also noticed the book construction wasn't as good and the pages just weren't as nice. Now, for the pages, you do have the option to upgrade to "premium paper" which I had not done on this book. The other thing I noticed was that the last few pages in my book were not bound correctly. One of the pages was even ripping out of the book. So I emailed their customer support with some pictures that I had taken on my iphone and within 3 hours they responded to me saying they would replace the book at no cost. That was nice. I was even able to upgrade to their "premium paper" so I'll know in a few days what that looks like. It was a little annoying not to have a phone number to call, but they seemed to respond to the email quite quickly.

So my overall assessment is that Blurb allows for much more design flexibility, though the overall quality of book is just not as nice as the Shutterfly books. If you are okay with the limited layout options, I would recommend Shutterfly for your book needs. Especially photo books. However, if you have a project that needs full customization of layouts, then you're stuck with Blurb... for now.

Cool People

2010-12-07T17:19:00.003-06:00

It's the holiday season, and you know what that means. Crowded malls, lots of music, packages coming and going, and usually rude people. Okay, maybe not usually, but more often than not, the holidays (or at least the days leading up to them) seem to bring out the worst in people. Everyone is stressing.

Well I'd like to take a moment to write about 3 different people/companies that I've encountered recently that have made my day just a little better.

First, English Retreads. This company is awesome. First, they have awesome stuff. Second, the person or persons that work there are just super friendly. I recently purchased one of the seat belts only to realize that i'm not as small as I thought I was. Oh great, I was going to have to send it back, this would be a process. You know, first you send it back, wait 5 days, then they send you something back, but maybe you have to call to check up on it, ugh, a hassle, right? Wrong.

When I called to ask about the return policy, I spoke with Kate, the business manager. She was super nice and better yet, the return policy was the easiest I've ever encountered. She said not to worry about the return shipping or the shipping for the replacement item. She would send out the replacement, plus she would electronically send UPS a return shipping label. So bam, UPS shows up at my house the next day, with said return label, I hand him the old package, and away he goes. New belt is already on the way, and no delays! Awesome.

Second, my new wedding photographer, Beverly. I recently undertook the task of choosing my wedding photographer. For those of you that know me well, you know that I'm an engineer, and not just at work, in all aspects of my life. I like to gather data, ask questions, know all the little details, then make an informed decision. I'm really trying to do all this now, so when my wedding day comes I can just have a good time, or at least try not to stress. I'm working on it. Anyway, sometimes when you know people, it's hard to ask them tons of questions without feeling like a pain in the butt. But Bev has been really great about answering all my questions and still wanting me as a client. Thanks Bev!

Third, my fiance, Jeremy. Yea, he's pretty awesome. And he's been amazing these last few weeks. Between the house and the wedding and Christmas, he's been pretty understanding that I've been a complete stressball. I love you babe!

House Update - 1 Month Later

2010-12-03T01:43:00.004-06:00

Well it's been one month since my dryer caught fire and my house burnt to a crisp.

You'd think by now they have a good start on the place, but since we are dealing with insurance here, clearly that's not the case.

Last Wednesday (11.30.10) the more-or-less final estimate was agreed to by myself, my insurance adjuster, and my contractor. Some interesting points:

1. They are going to give me a full new roof (yay!)
2. They are going to put insulation in all my exterior walls as part of a code upgrade (yay!)
3. They are going to rewire my whole house as part of a code upgrade (yay!)

Besides those three points, they are basically stripping the house down to bare wood, removing all (or mostly all) they drywall, tearing down the garage, and then rebuilding it all. Currently they have removed most of the drywall in the house and have started the slow cleanup from that. They will next clean the studs and seal them with "anti-smell" stuff.

Before they put the drywall back up, I'll have to decide what cables I may want to run throughout the house and what type of exterminators I may want to have come in and spray. I guess that will be on my to-do list for next week.

I also get to take this chance to do a different type of roof if I want, metal maybe? And change up the lighting around the house. I'm thinking can lighting in the living room and new ceiling fans in the other rooms. Probably add a ceiling fan to the guest bedroom and a bathroom vent to the, well bathroom.

Also at some point in the near future, I'm going to have to pick out paint colors for the rooms. That's such a daunting task.

Total cost of rebuilding the house (excluding contents clean/replace): $70,000

Thank goodness for insurance and low deductibles!

Warrior Dash Pictures!

2010-11-30T14:30:00.021-06:00

Here are some of the pictures that Brightroom Photography got of us during the Warrior Dash. I only screen captured them off the website, so sorry if the quality is a bit bad. You get what you pay for, and I paid nothing :)

Happy Thanksgiving...

2010-11-27T22:01:00.002-06:00

Phew, what a weekend. And it's not even over yet!

This Thanksgiving I did something that I've never done before. Okay well I did many things that I've never done before, but the impressive, and probably most shocking, was that it was the first time ever that I've cooked a turkey. I know, I know. How have I gone 28 years without doing this? Well, I'll tell you. I don't like turkey. Yep, I said it. And it's not even that I'm not fond of it, I mean, I really don't like it. It's funny, because my parents insist that I love turkey and used to eat it ever thanksgiving. But I don't think they've ever realized that I only put a tiny piece on my plate and then take one bite and push the rest around a bit.

Now I realize this seems very un-American, but it's just the way it is.

So, my turkey. I brined it the night before using a salt water mix and turkey herbs (rosemary, sage, thyme). I cut back on the salt a bit and used about 3/4 cup for ~1 gallon of water. The next day I rubbed herb butter under the skin (where I could get it) and let it sit in the fridge for another 2 hours to dry out the skin. I'm told the turkey came out plenty juicy and was very tasty, though I wasn't overly impressed. But maybe that's just my lack of turkey liking. Either way, I'd like to give it one more try because I think I can do better.... I think. I'll need some turkey tasters again. Volunteers?

Thanksgiving day Jeremy and I went to New Orleans with some friends. Man, even that place is dead on Thanksgiving Day. Of course Bourbon street was still open, but half the bars were closed. Go figure.

What I love about New Orleans is the wonderful food and the great music. There's a restaurant called Desire on Bourbon Street and I highly recommend it. Everything on their menu is great. I can say this with confidence since the 4 of us tried almost everything throughout the weekend. We also found a grocery store on Royal street that's a perfect place to get breakfast if you just want some yogurt and fruit.

Friday night we stopped by Fritzels (on Bourbon) to listen to the Jumbo Shrimp Band. We'd heard them last time we were down and this time they did not disappoint. We picked up a CD. We also hit up Frenchman Street on Saturday night. This time we heard two guys sitting on the sidewalk jamming. They were great. I believe they were "19th Street Red." We got another CD.

I love collecting jazz music from New Orleans. It makes great background party music.

On the way back from Frenchman Street, we happened upon this band "Blues 4 Sale." They don't have a CD out yet, but once it comes out, I highly recommend getting it. They were fantastic.

Before we left N.O. this morning Jeremy took me on a carriage ride through the French Quarter. It was super romantic and really neat. I loved it.

And... after we got home from N.O., Jeremy continued his romanticism (is that a word?) by taking me ice skating at Discovery Green. I'm so lucky.

Now after stuffing my face for the last 3 days with more food than I eat in a month, I think I'm going to stop eating for a while. I'm going to bed tonight and not eating until Tuesday...

well, maybe just one kieful that I make tomorrow.... and maybe one jumbo raisin cookie.... maybe some corn chowder.

But really, no eating

unless I do.

Warrior Dash 2010

2010-11-22T11:07:00.012-06:00

ARE YOU A WARRIOR?

I AM!

This years 3.2 mile Warrior Dash in Bastrop was so much fun. Jeremy and I, along with 4 of our friends, ran the 10:30 wave on Saturday. We couldn't have asked for better weather.

The 'race' was fun, but we didn't actually run it for time. We just went out and had a good time, stopping to take pictures as we desired, and staying together.

While I was prepared to run the 3.2 miles, I was not ready for the uneven terrain. I haven't really done trail running at all, so I wasn't ready for how much up and down there would be. Also, I wasn't used to having to constantly look at my feet and make sure I wasn't about to turn my ankle or something.

Here are a few of the obstacles that we encountered. Thanks to Mark for bringing along his camera. They were pretty fun, but I'm looking forward to the Tough Mudder where the obstacles are hopefully a lot harder and bigger.

1 Week Later... And some exciting news!

2010-11-05T14:37:00.003-05:00

First, the exciting news. Jeremy and I have chosen a date and a venue! Yes, we are very excited. What is that date and venue you ask? We'll, you'll just have to wait to find out! Unless of course you are one of the few who are lucky enough to be privy to that information this early. But now that we have a date picked, I feel like a giant stop watch has started and is counting down the days, hours, seconds! So much to do, so little time! Next goal: pick a photographer and a band!

And now, a fire update...

It's been a week since my house first caught fire. Within two days of the fire, my wonderful contractors, Paul Davis Restoration, already had the house gutted. All the furniture, clothing, etc out. They were wonderful. There were no less than 10-15 people there each day working on the house.

On Monday my insurance claim agent was out to look at the damage and write up his initial report and to get things started.

First goal, get the ceilings ripped down in each room to assess the damage to the roof. The initial feeling is that 50-60% of the roof is damaged. I don't yet know if they'll be replacing the whole roof, or just half the roof, but I should know in a few days.

The garage and its contents are pretty much totaled, so that part of the house will be torn down to the ground and rebuilt.

The siding is destroyed on two sides of the house, so we have yet to determine if they will replace all the siding or just those two sides. It seems odd to me that they would only replace two sides of my house, but if it looks bad, I'll fight back.

My housing situation seems to be getting worked out. I convinced my claims agent to let me stay in an extended stay place for 3 months instead of moving to an apartment. I'm happy about this because I dont' have to deal with moving crap around a lot and I don't have to sign an apartment lease, deal with utilities, cable, etc.

So that's about where I stand. Hopefully the work order from the contractor will be completed by Monday and they'll get approval for destruction by early next week.

I'm hoping to move back into the house by the end of January, but we'll see.

So my house caught on fire last night…

2010-10-29T17:01:00.005-05:00

… no really, FIRE. And not just a little fire. BIG flames shooting out of the garage. See...

I know you all are dying to hear the story, so here it goes.

The fire started Thursday night around 9:00pm. I was laying on the couch waiting for the clothes in the dryer to finish before going to bed. I’m so glad that I did not go to bed with the dryer running!

As I walked into the kitchen I heard what sounded like the dryer banging against the wall. At that point I smelled electrical burning and I knew.

I ran out of the house as fast as I could, opening the garage door and fully knowing what I was about to see. It was already bad. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and hit the flames but they were too big and the extinguisher too small.

I ran back inside, grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911. I also grabbed Malachi and threw her in the car. Thank God that she was still laying on the back of the couch and not hiding under a bed or on the fridge. She was more perplexed why I was grabbing her and running. I also managed to grab the laptop, camera, and my purse and a few pictures.

After what seemed like forever, the fire department finally got there. Though I was more than annoyed when they ‘charged’ up the hose, and there was no pressure in the line. Seriously WTF.

At this point I realized I should take some pictures, so I snapped some with my phone. As you can see the flames were HUGE!

The cause of the fire is definitely related to the dryer, though there are conflicting reports. The fire marshal says that it was caused by a faulty three way plug behind the dryer. However, the Nationwide investigator says that it was caused by lint build up in the hose running from the dryer out of the side of the house. I’m starting to believe the second cause over the first, because I can see the fire origin on the back of the dryer and the direction of the flames.

Note to all you out there. Make sure your lint line coming out of your dryer is clear. My line had a 90 deg bend it in and that’s where the buildup occurred.

Damage:

The garage is pretty much gone, as are most of its contents. The mountain bike, fixi, and the old beater bike are all destroyed/melted/etc. All the power tools are gone, gardening stuff, etc. The bike tools are gone. However, I did say that “most” everything was gone. What was not destroyed was my silicon baking stuff that my mom got me a while ago. I hardly ever use the stuff, but there it was, in good condition, not even damaged. I little dirty, but not burnt or melted. I was amazed. My house should be a commercial for that place.

So that’s the update. I’m tired now and I’m going to take a nap. I will be homeless for a while, but the insurance will be putting me up at a hotel (woo hoo).

Thank you for all your concerns and well wishes. Sorry if I have not gotten back to you yet.

The Army 10 Miler - Part 2 - The Weekend

2010-10-26T17:10:00.006-05:00

I had to split this post up into two parts, otherwise it would have been way too long.

While my main purpose for going to DC this past weekend was to visit Jeremy's cousins and to run the Army 10 Miler, I also wanted to take some time to visit some college friends and to see the city.

On Friday morning, Jeremy and I took a short tour of the Capitol then walked down the Mall. I love walking down the National Mall on a beautiful fall day. It was gorgeous out. Although we had walked the Mall before, it was nice to do it again, and a great way to spend the morning.

Mid-afternoon we met up with Jeremy's cousins to pick up our race packets and then head down to Granville Moore's for dinner. I LOVE this place! I discovered it while watching the Food Network two years ago, and come here each time I'm in DC. Okay, it's only been twice so far, but their mussels and fries are soooooo good. Not to mention their huge selection of Belgium beers. My favorite was the La Chouefe.

Thanks to our friends Albert and Shawna for hooking us up with a great table. It's so hard to go to a small restaurant with 8 1/2 people and try to get a table together.

Saturday was a great day. I had told a friend that I would be in town and mobile (that is, with car) and he organized a bunch of people to come watch the PSU game at a local bar. I was so surprised to see so many of my college friends there! Kenz, KB, Heslin, Cory, Janine... it was so great seeing all of you. I felt like I was back up at Penn State again.

Not only did I get to hang out with the gang above, but on Sunday, my friend Jesse, made a special trip down to Silver Spring to hang out with me at Jeremy's cousins place after the race was over. Thanks for making the drive Jesse! I can't wait to hang out with you and Erin in May.

Sunday night we had a large cookout at the house, thanks Angela and John, and then Monday morning we took a quick trip downtown to check out the view from the top of the old post office. If you haven't gone, I'd suggest taking a few minutes to stop by. The view is great and I really love the architecture of the building.

Thanks to everyone for making this a great weekend getaway. Can't wait to see you all again next year!

The Army 10 Miler - Part 1 - The Race

2010-10-26T16:32:00.008-05:00

I just got back from an amazing weekend in Washington DC.

The main reason for this trip was to visit Jeremy's cousins and to run the Army 10 Miler. Of course if I was dragging my butt up to DC for the weekend, I was gonna make sure that I also had a chance to visit some other friends from way back in the day. But that's a different post.

First, the Army 10 Miler.

For the last 4 months I've been training to run this race. When I started 'running' back in May, I could do about 3 miles in 34 minutes. Since then I've been out on the trail 2-3 times a week at distances varying from 3-8 miles. I even did two 5K runs to see what it was like running in a big group. By the time race day came along, I felt confident that I could at least finish in the required time (15 minute/mile pace). My goal: finish somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 hours.

I was fortunate to be in the first wave so I had a little more time to make it to the 5 mile marker by 9:30 (cutoff time). Turns out that I didn't need this extra time, but you know, it's always nice to have. As a pleasant surprise I found out that my friend from college, KB, and his wife, Janine, were also running the race and were also in the blue group. Surprisingly out of 3,000 people in our blue group, I managed to find them! It was great starting off with them and passing back and forth for the first few miles.

The first few miles went by quickly. Mile 1 approached before I knew it, then mile 2, then mile 3. Somewhere between mile 2 and 3, I tore off my long sleeve shirt and wrapped it around my waist. It was fairly chilly in the early morning but it had warmed up nicely and was around 55 deg for the race. Perfect weather. I hit mile 3 around 28 minutes and mile 5 around 48 minutes. My best 5 mile time yet. During mile 5 you run past the runners coming back toward you during their mile 8. I looked up just in time to see Jeremy toward me. He was doing great. At the mile 6 water station I slowed down to a fast walk and took a bit of water and a Clif shot packet. Since I knew mile 7 and 8 would be a bit uphill I kept running and saved my "fast walking" for then.

I was surprised how little I really had to "fast walk." Every time I slowed down I found myself wanting to keep running. I was a bit concerned at this, as I wasn't sure this ability to keep running constantly would last another 3 miles. At mile 8 the bridge begins. This is seriously the longest bridge ever. Okay, maybe not ever, but when you're running across it, it feels long. I mean, it just keeps going! A bit of the way onto the bridge there was a guy dressed as Michael Jackson handing out beer. The smell of it almost made me puke. Around mile 9 I knew that I'd make the 2 hour mark and decided to try to beat 1 hour 45 minutes. My feet had started hurting but I was still surprised how good I felt. As we came into the home stretch I slowed down a bit to look for Jeremy and was happy to see him cheering me on. I sprinted toward the finish and raised my hands in joy. I had finished my first 10 mile race and I felt pretty good... for now.

My official results were:
10 miles
10:17 min/mile pace
1:42:51 total
top 66% overall
top 52% of females

Now I say that I felt good after the race... for a while. It took me about 10 minutes to manage my way through the crowd and back to Jeremy. When I got to him, I felt my stomach start to turn. For the next 3 hours my stomach was terribly upset. I have no idea why, but I'm suspecting it had something to do with those 10 miles I just finished. Damn you running! And that was just the worst part. It's 2 days later and my stomach still isn't right. Though I had a good run, so I guess you gotta take the good with the bad.

Besides the stomach pains for a few days, I also noticed that I had a very tough time getting out of bed the next day. And by tough I mean I could barely move. Wow. Even after riding my bike 170 miles, I never feel as sore as I did the day after running this race. I miss my bike.

All in all it was a fun race, and I'm sure by the time sign-ups come around next April I will have forgotten about the pain, and sign up again.

An Open Letter to Website Designers

2010-10-05T16:23:00.007-05:00

Dear Website Designers, Photographers, Event Sites, and anyone who owns a website,

I cannot possibly express to you in words, how much it pains me to visit a bad website.

As a future bride, I spend quite a few hours each day looking at websites. Everything from photographers, videographers, vendors, reception halls; if you've got a website, I'm looking at it.

First, lets discuss my number 1 (and by far number one) pet peeve... music. Ugh. Come on people, some of us are at work here! I HATE visiting websites that automatically play music. This isn't myspace... turn it off. Not only is the music annoying, but it's usually set to play at max volume. If I can't find your "off" switch within 5 seconds, I'm gone. Done. Not coming back.

Secondly, how easy are your photos to view? And this is really a #2 and #3 complaint here. If I'm looking at your event center for my ceremony or reception the first thing I want to see are your photos. I should be able to flip through them quickly on ONE page. Not a separate pop-up each time I click a new image. Not a new tab or new window. All in the same window. And what's with the annoying scroll bars that scroll either way too fast or way too slow. Here are some classic bad photo websites:

Example A:. go ahead, click on "home."
Example B: "for more photos click on snapfish, to which you must be a member to view photos."
Example C: scroll bar at 1000x per second.

And while we are on the subject of photos. Events centers, pay attention here. I could care less about a closeup of the brides face. I could care less about a closeup of the wedding cake or the flowers, or anything else not related to your venue. As a perspective customer, I want to see the VENUE! I want to see a nice shot of the ceremony site as well as the reception hall. I want to see how big it is, how big your dance floor is, if you have 1970's carpeting. And if you're making me use your catering, show me pictures of the food you make, and your presentation style.

I really don't understand why these concepts are so hard for people to understand. If you're a web page designer you've gotta talk your client out of these traps people fall into. "Oh would it be cool if we did this awesome flash thing on our home page that takes 10 minutes to load, but looks really neat?" NO. No it would not be, is not, and will never be "cool." It's annoying.

Thank you for your time. Now, please go fix your website.

Sincerely,
Me.

Crazy Crazy Weekend

2010-10-04T08:28:00.011-05:00

Jeremy's brother, Matt, and his cousin, Jake, came down from Ohio this weekend. Wow, I don't think I've had such a go-go weekend in a long time.

Of course we hit up all the best eateries: Hula Hut, Daily Juice, Fliphappy Crepes, Saltlick, and one still TBD (but most likely Guero's or Maria's). After the Saltlick binge last night, I don't think I'll be eating meat for a while. We went through 4 plates of all-you-can-eat family style. I can't believe we ate all that meat.

Saturday morning we took Jake trapezing at Trapeze Experience. He loved it. Jeremy and I also went again. Check out some of the video's below and the rest of the pictures HERE.

Jake on the Trapeze

Jeremy on the Trapeze

Shelley on the Trapeze

After the trapeze I took them all down to Seismic to go climbing. It was at this moment in my life that I finally discovered that I officially am no longer a climber. Okay, I may climb, but I can't consider myself a climber any longer. Why, you ask?

Well, up until this point I may have lost my endurance, but I did not loose my technique or a degree of strength. Sure, I couldn't do 10 climbs in a day anymore, but I could still manage my way up climbs like Prototype, Bolt Talk and Unnatural fairly well. However, yesterday was my first day back to Seismic in about 2 years. My favorite climb at Seismic has always been Diving for Rocks. It took me a while to master the dynamic move in the middle, but since then I've always hit it, and the stick has always been solid. Yesterday, while we were waiting for some of the 7's to open up, I decided to give Diving a go. There was not a doubt in my mind that i couldn't do this climb. After all, I'd done it like 1000 times in the past.

Lucky for me, I had Jini there to belay me. First time up, I set myself up for the jump. Left hand in the bowling ball hold, right hand in the pocket. Left foot up, right foot up, butt down, prep and jump... and... fall. Fall?!?! WTF? I couldn't believe what just happened. In fact I was in a state of confusion. It was almost a little surreal. Okay, I thought, that was weird.

So I setup again and went for it. A little more "umf" this time. Bam. Stuck. Excellent. Then... fall. Fall? Again WTF? The contact point was not as solid as I once remembered and I could tell it was very polished and my hands were very slimy.

I went up for the third time, again sticking the move, but this time just not having the strength to hold on to make the clip. I couldn't figure out where to place my feet and my arms were hurting so much that I knew I couldn't hang on with one hand to make the clip. I also knew I didn't want to throw a heal up there, as my chance of successfully clipping was about 10% and I didn't want to land on my head.

At this point my arm strength was shot (which I'm sure the trapeze didn't help with), so I accepted my failure and decided to go put up some climbs for Jeremy and Jake. I need to get back out to seismic sometime soon to regain my strength and to work on that climb again. I will not accept defeat :)

Jeremy and Jake did great climbing and they both had a lot of fun. Check out the pictures in the set above.

Before my little climbing tirade, I was talking about this awesome weekend that we had. After running around trapezing and climbing, we took a little break had some dinner and headed downtown for the night. It's been a while since I've been out downtown and around midnight I had my second epiphany of the day: I am not the same person I was in college.

I know, shocking.

Around midnight I realized that I would be much happier at home, sleeping in bed, then staying up drinking for the rest of the night. And it's not that I don't enjoy being out with friends and listening to music. It's that I didn't want to stay up drinking until 2am, cause I knew the next day it would hurt... bad.

At what point in life do we start thinking of the consequences of our actions and letting those dictate our current decisions?

I must admit, I felt a bit lame. But I was happy to leave the boys to have their boys night out and to come home and relax a little. I think they had a great time, because they came home at 3:30am laughing hysterically.

Sunday we chilled out, walked around south congress, gorged on meat at Saltlick, and took a run around town lake. I did my best time ever at 29:14 for 3.1 miles, which was quite surprising considering my abs were killing me from trapeze.

It was a great weekend, and I think I'm going to need to spend Monday night recovering. Oh, and in addition to all this, I made a Mickey cake this weekend :) I think it turned out quite well.

Happy 60th Birthday

2010-09-22T14:58:00.003-05:00

A birthday shout out to my Dad. Happy 60th Birthday!!!

Videos from Italy

2010-09-21T06:15:00.010-05:00

UPDATE: a very nice reader just posted a comment letting me know where I could purchase a pirun (or porron in Spanish). Thank you so much Eric for the link. If you'd like to order one of these for yourself or a friend, GO HERE or type "glass porron" into amazon.com!

Here are a few videos I took while we were in Italy. Enjoy!

View from the Train (Venice -> La Spezia)

Jeremy drinking from the Pirun.

Shelley drinking from the Pirun. (I tried to do it fast so I could get the pirun higher, but that didn't work out too well for me)

By the way, if anyone knows where I can get a pirun, please send me a link or let me know! I'm trying to find one that I can buy.

Stairs down from our apartment in Vernazza (Camere Rosa)

Italy Photo Book and PHOTOS!

2010-09-20T15:48:00.004-05:00

I compiled a photobook for our Italy trip. Check it out below or use this link HERE to view it in shutterfly (don't forget to click on "full-screen" in the top right corner). I've also posted the "reduced" photo group on FLICKR.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Italy, Part 6 - Rome

2010-09-17T07:19:00.016-05:00

Wow, we sure did a lot of sight seeing while we were in Italy. Up to this point, my favorite part of Italy was the Cinque Terre. However, now that I've been to Rome, it would be a hard choice.

I loved Rome. From the first night we were there, I thought this was an awesome city.

We arrived around 6pm and after a bit of confusion we finally got the rental car dropped off and got the metro to our hotel. For those of you renting a car (or dropping one off) at the train station in Rome, the rental car places are all in the parking garage on the north side of the train station. And the signs are about as big as the numbers on my front door. Also, the train station is HUGE. I think we walked about a half a mile to get to the Metro A platform.

In Rome we stayed at Domus Cavour B&B. It is located due east of Piazza del Popolo, about 2 blocks on the other side of the river. The location was perfect and we walked everywhere, with the exception of the catacombs out on the Appian Way. The room we had was very nice and they came in each day to clean, the breakfast was also nice, amazing pastries. Christiano, the owner, was always available and very helpful when it came to booking our ride back to the airport.

Our first night we took Rick Steve's night walk of Rome. Following his guidebook we walked around the city from the Campo de' Fiori, through Piazza Navona, past the Pantheon, around some other monuments (some of which we never found), to the amazing Trevi Fountain, and then up to the Spanish Steps. We actually stayed out until 1am that night. Who knew we still had the ability to stay up that late.

This night walk of Rome was the perfect way to be introduced to the city. It was just so beautiful. Hands down my favorite area is the Trevi Fountain. Before you even round the corner, you can hear the rush of water. Never had I imagined it to be so large. Definitely not your typical fountain, or even your typical Roman fountain. We stayed there for about 30 minutes and would return for a stop at least once a day over the next 3 days. I can't think of anything we have in the states that compares to this fountain. Not just for its magnitude, but also for the people that it brings. Steps surround half the fountain and there are just hundreds of people there at any given hour.

The next day we decided to do Ancient Rome: the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and Palatine Hill. Since the lines at the Colosseum can get very long, we started our day at the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill (really one area). The ticket costs you 12E and is good at all three locations, so may as well start at the place with the shortest ticket line. The line for tickets was only 4 people long at Palatine Hill, whereas the line for the Colosseum was around an hour or more.

While there's not much to Palatine Hill, where the emperors used to build their palaces, we did spend quite a bit of time in the Roman Forum. It was very interesting to get an idea how people used to live at the height of the Roman Empire. For this, and the Colosseum, we listened to Rick Steve's audioguides that we had downloaded before we left. These were great and really interesting. Inside the Roman Forum we saw the Arch of Titus (commemorating the Roman victory over Isreal in 70 AD), the Basilica of Constantine (the large meeting place and courthouse), the Temple of Julius Caesar (where Julius Caesar was burned after his assignation in 44 BC), the Temple of Vesta (Rome's most sacred spot where a fire burned symbolizing the family of Rome), the Vestal Virgins' House (the house of the 6 vestal virgins who served a 30 year term tending the flame in the temple), and of course the Temple of Saturn.

After the Roman Forum and the Pantheon we headed over to the Colosseum. Along the way we walked by the Arch of Constantine. This arch marks the military coo that made Christianity mainstream. In 312 AD Emperor Constantine defeated his rival for control of Rome. The night before the battle he saw a cross in the sky, and attributed his victory to this vision. After he became sole emperor of Rome, he legalized Christianity and built Saint Mark's Basilica. Before this, you could be killed for being a Christian, after this, you could be killed for not being a Christian.

Finally we headed to the Colosseum. A lot of the aw and wonder of the Colosseum is just being there. This structure is huge! We walked around the inside for a while and listened to the audioguide. The floor of the Colosseum has been removed so you can see all the pathways and channels below. There were over 80 elevators that could be used to raise animals, people or stage sets into the arena. This allowed the gladiator to be surprised, since he didn't know where the beast would pop up. In general the games were very barbaric and often involved animals fighting animals, people fighting animals, or people fighting people... to the death.

After the Colosseum we took some time to walk around to some of the smaller sites. We saw Saint Peter-in-Chains Church, walked around Capitol Hill square, and just enjoyed Rome. We tried to see the Mamertine Prison where Saint Peter was held captive, but they've turned it into some type of 3D freak show, and we didn't feel like spending the 10E each to get in. That night we met up with Jeremy's aunt and uncle from the UAE who just happened to be in Rome the same time we were. We had dinner at Pummarola, a good pizza place near the Pantheon.

The next day we headed to the Vatican. Two pieces of advice: first, buy your tickets ahead of time. We did this and it saved us at least an hour. Second, bring a snack. The Vatican is huge, and we were there from 8:30 to 3pm. By the time we left, we were starving and delusional. Also, at least 2 months before you go, book at tour into the Necropolis below Saint Peter's. We did this and it was amazing! Thanks to Dan and Amber for the great advice.

We chose to do the Vatican Museum on our own instead of doing a tour. I think if you were to do a tour, you should leave yourself a full day. After spending about 2 hours in the museum, we headed to the Sistine Chapel. It was beautiful. I thought there was a rule against taking pictures, but no one seemed to care and everyone had their cameras out, so I snapped a few as well. From here we headed to Saint Peter's Basilica.

This really is the grandest church of them all. Wow. This church is actually the second Saint Peter's. The first one is under the floor, where the popes are now buried. This new Saint Peter's was built after the old one was deteriorating and needed major renovation. Instead of doing these renovations, they just built a new one. Though that would never happen today. The altar in Saint Peter's is really the 6th altar that is built on Peter's tomb, each built around or on top of the other one.

From here, our last stop in the Vatican was the Necropolis. The tour lasted about an hour and was really interesting. We walked down under the new Saint Peter's, under the old Saint Peter's, down into the necropolis. The necropolis was built on the hill, now known as the Vatican, long before Christianity was legalized. Here the remains of Saint Peter were buried after he was crucified upside down on the cross. Also buried here are hundreds of families, who were all buried together as one family regardless of religious belief. Just on top of Saint Peter's tomb is a small altar saying "Peter is here." After Constantine became Emperor and decided to build his basilica, he knew he wanted to use this spot. However, since it was a holy ground, he could not destroy it. So he buried the necropolis under dirt and leveled off the hill. He removed the top of Saint Peter's altar and expanded it. This expansion of Saint Peter's tomb continued for generations of building around and over, making it more and more extravagant. On the tour you can see a few of the altars as well as the tomb of Saint Peter and the place where bones were found. These bones may or may not belong to Saint Peter.

After our exhausting day at the Vatican we just relaxed. We had dinner right after the tour, around 5pm, and then walked around town until we couldn't stay awake any longer.

Our last day in Rome we caught a few more of the sites that we had not yet visited. Piazza del Popolo, Spanish Steps (again), Trevi Fountain (again), the Pantheon (awesome), Cappuccin Crypt (highly recommended) and Bocca della Verita (the legendary "Mouth of Truth"). Did you know that the walls at the base of the Pantheon are 20 feet wide? The dome is 142 feet high and wide and is made of volcanic pumice so it is light enough to be supported by that massive base. It is also the most preserved monument from the Roman Empire because it was dedicated to the martyers just after the fall of Rome and has been used ever since then as a place of prayer. From the outside you can see the huge 60 foot tall solid granite columns. You also notice how the Pantheon is sunk below current street level. This is because Rome was built in layers and the original streets were much lower than they are today.

After the Pantheon we headed out of town to the Appian Way and the Catacombs of San Callisto. It was strictly forbidden to bury Christians inside the walls of Rome, so the catacombs were built just outside the city walls and are home to thousands of early Christians. These catacombs are huge, very tall and very long. Without a guide it would be very easy to get lost in here. We also saw a mummified body, which was pretty cool.

We spent our last evening having this amazing dinner at Casa Coppelle, just near the Pantheon.

The next morning we had a driver come pick us up and take us to the airport. This was a nice special treat for us, as we usually would take the train. But I could get used to it.

Italy was amazing. I can't wait to go back and spend a little more time in each city. It would be wonderful to spend a week in Tuscany biking around.

Italy, Part 5 - Pompeii

2010-09-17T06:51:00.004-05:00

After Sorrento we headed to Pompeii. We only planed to spend 3-4 hours there, which is what the guide book recommended, however we were there for almost 5 hours and really could have stayed the whole day.

Pompeii was once a thriving commercial port of 20,000 people, and quickly became an important Roman city. Then, around noon on August 24, 79 AD everything changed. Mount Vesuvius blew its top, sending a mushroom cloud of ash, dust, and debris 12 miles into the air. It spewed for 18 hours straight; by the end the city was buried under 30 feet of hot volcanic ash. While most people escaped in time, 2,000 people were frozen in their tracks, and never made it out. Because Pompeii was covered in so much volcanic ash, it was overlooked for centuries, and therefore escaped most of the pilfering that the other Roman cities experienced. In the 1600's Pompeii was rediscovered and excavation work on this massive city continues to this day.

As soon as we entered Pompeii, we were impressed. While nearly all the buildings don't have roofs anymore, a lot of the side walls and columns are still standing. Ironically, the parts that are most ruined are those that were in dismay even before the volcano exploded. They were the areas of town still being rebuilt after an earthquake struck a few years earlier.

While we walked around Pompeii we listened to Rick Steve's audio guide. I would highly recommend downloading this before you go. It was very informative and meant that we didn't have to walk along in a large tour group to learn about the sites.

Some of the most interesting parts were the large forum, the bakeries, the bath houses, and of course, the brothels. Yep, those "pornographic" images you'll see in my photo album later were taken right from the walls of the brothel house. Do you know they had almost as many brothels as bakeries?

It was also interesting to see the chariot tracks that had been worn into the cobblestone streets, and some of the old houses. But the most impressive part was certainly the forum. The forum was Pompeii's commercial, religious, and political center, and typical of most Roman forums of the day. The courthouse was off to one side. When Catholicism was legalized in Rome, many catholic churches were modeled after the courthouse, or basilica.

There's so much more I could write about Pompeii, but in an interest not to bore you, I suggest if you're interested that you pick up a book, or better yet... go visit :) My only disappointment is that we didn't stay longer or get time to go visit the city of Herculaneum, also devastated by this volcano.

After our time in Pompeii we headed up to Rome for our last few days in Italy.

Italy, Part 4 - Spoleto & Sorrento

2010-09-16T09:56:00.006-05:00

After our time in Tuscany, it was time to head south. The drive from Montalcino to Sorrento was about 5 1/2 hours so I decided we would split it up with a stop in Spoleto to take a look at the massive aquaduct there.

As we drove into Spoleto I could see Jeremy getting nervous. I had him driving through the city, which really is more of a village town with tiny cobblestone streets. He kept wanting to turn around and go a different way, but I explained to him that the only way to the parking area nearest the aquaduct was up this way and he was just going to have to suck it up. He did and the drive through the town was an exciting adventure... at least for one of us. I will say, his driving got quite a bit more daring after that experience.

The massive aquaduct was impressive to view. Since it has a pedestrian bridge on one side, you can cross and reach a bunch of hiking trails on the other side. We didn't know about them before hand, so we weren't prepared to do a long hike, but we did take the main trail around the mountain side. The trail is clearly an exercise trail and they have exercise spots every 100 yards or so. Each spot has a chart of exercises and the necessary equipment. For example, one area is a slalom course (i think it's the trail warmup). So there are 5 or 6 large posts for you to run around and between. I think it's nice and a great way to keep people in shape. It was also really neat to see the aquaduct from the other side of the mountain.

Around 2pm we headed the rest of the way to Sorrento. Unfortunately this put us right into rush hour traffic and apparently high shopping time. As soon as the highway ended we were on more small roads with shops lining either side. Like everywhere else in Italy, people don't care much about the cars, and it's a long slow process to get through the area. Also we noticed a ridiculous amount of people on scooters. Apparently this is the most popular way of getting around. And I can understand why. Cause these little babies just zigzag through traffic, choosing whichever laws they decide apply to them (usually none). So between the people and the scooters, you are always on the defensive. It took about an hour to get through an area that the gps said would take 10 minutes. But we made it and arrived at our hotel (La Vue D' Or) way up on the hill side. The view from our balcony was amazing. I'm really glad we decided to stay off the town. Plus the hotel had a shuttle that ran on a pretty exact schedule, so it was easy to catch the shuttle into town in the morning for the boat to Capri and then grab the shuttle home again that night.

The next morning we decided to head to the Isle of Capri. I really wanted to take a small boat into the blue grotto, however, much to my dismay, it was raining that day and the seas were pretty rough. Even if it is sunny out, rough seas will stop the boats from entering this tiny little cave on the side of the cliff. The opening is so small that you have to lay down in the boat to get through. But since we were hear we figured we would at least take the big boat from Sorrento over to the Isle of Capri and walk around a while. Even though the small boats weren't running we could hike around the island and take the bus down to the entrance of the blue grotto.

I had decided before we arrived in Italy that I was going to try to swim into the blue grotto. I read that you could swim in anytime the boats weren't running (usually early morning or late afternoon). I also knew that while swimming into the grotto was "strictly forbidden," it was generally accepted and often done by the locals. I informed Jeremy of my plans, but he was none to thrilled with this idea. When we got to the grotto the waves were crashing pretty hard against the entrance. I knew at this point going in would be a bad idea, but I so desperately wanted to go. I also knew that it wouldn't be nearly that amazing on this particluar day becuase of the clouds and the light rain. The awe of the grotto comes from the sun hitting the water on the outside of the cave, and reflecting down into the water and up from below. From inside the grotto the water looks iridescent blue, the brightest blue you've ever seen. So I knew even if I entered the grotto I wouldn't see what I had come to see. As I was finally accepting my disappointment I saw what I considered to be the last straw... jellyfish. Yep, that was it. No way in hell was I getting in that water.

After seeing the grotto and walking along the water for a while, we headed up to the other side of the island to Villa Jovis. Emperor Tiberius spent a decade here, 26-37 A.D., because he was terrified of being assassinated in Rome. This ruined villa is pretty neat to explore and also makes for a lovely hike around the island.

Since the last boat back to Sorrento was at 5:20, we headed back down to the dock and returned to Sorrento for dinner. The next day we headed off to Pompeii and Rome.

Italy, Part 3 - Pisa & Tuscany

2010-09-15T08:10:00.010-05:00

After our stay in the Cinque Terre, it was time to rent a car and head to the Tuscany region... with a quick 2 hour stop in Pisa. Renting the car was easy enough (through AutoEurope), however getting said car was a bit more difficult.

To get from Vernazza to the Hertz rental car agency, we first had to get to La Spezia via train, then take the city bus to the Hertz office. At this point we had mastered the trains quite well, so that was easy. However, once we arrived in La Spezia things got interesting. I had a vague idea that we needed to take the L or S bus from the train station toward Lerici, but I had no idea which direction that was. As we were checking out the bus signs on our side of the street, the L bus came, so we quickly hopped on in a frenzy before the bus took off again. There is no time to decide if you want to get on, it stops for about 20 seconds. We tried to explain to the driver in English that we needed to buy a ticket, and he kept saying something in Italian about a ticket, but after a short period of confusion between both of us, he just threw his hands up like "whatever," and speed away.

So we're driving along, not sure at all where the hell we are, but hoping that we will eventually arrive somewhere that looks like something on the map I was holding. About 5 minutes into the journey it was time for the bus driver to take his smoke break. At this point everyone had gotten off the bus except us and the driver was just chillin outside. Hum.. what now. Fortunately at this point, the driver saw us looking at our map and between some combination of hand gestures, broken English, and no Italian, we managed to show him where we wanted to go and he said "I will take you." Perfect, he will take us!

So we sat on the bus, and watched more people get on, and it get more and more crowded. We also watched as we came back around to the front of the train station again, only this time going the opposite direction. Okay, so now we were definitely going the right way, only problem was, we were now squished between lots of people and could barely even see the driver. What if he forgot about us? Well after getting off the bus a few stops too early, and getting yelled at by the driver to get back on the bus, we finally made it to the rental car office. Renting a car in La Spezia sure is an interesting adventure.

Once we had the car we headed to Pisa. Since we were only staying in Pisa for a few hours, I had booked our tower tickets in advance. I'm glad I did, since there was a 4 hour wait for tickets when we got there. I had also read that it is best to park just outside downtown and take the bus into the city, getting off at the Field of Miracles stop. Of course this involved another bus adventure, similar to the one described above, so I'll spare you the details. Just know, if you do this, pay attention to your surroundings so you know when to get off.

Pisa was interesting. I hadn't realized that the field of miracles was just that, a football sized field of green grass with three white buildings on it, surrounded by a wall on one side and a ton of souvenir tents on the other. We didn't go into the other two buildings, the duomo or the baptistery, but we did climb the tower. It was pretty neat to see how the steps have worn down so much on one side depending where you are in the tower. And you can definitely feel the lean of the tower everywhere you are. Since it was a bright sunny day, we got a good view of Pisa from the top. We also took the obligatory pisa pictures "pushing" the tower straight again.

After Pisa we headed to Tuscany. For two nights we stayed at this little farm house called Poggio Asciutto in the region known as the Chianti Classico Region. The owners were the sweetest people, the room was nice, and the view was amazing. We also had dinner with them the first night at the house. It was great, and probably the only time we had the "full Italian meal" : bread, appetizer, pasta, meat, dessert, wine. During our stay in the Chianti region we visited two wineries, Casaloste & Castello di Verrazzano. I would highly recommend visiting Castello di Verrazzano and scheduling a tour with them. It was very informative, fun, and tasty. Besides the wine cellar, we got to see the place where they make their own prosciutto, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. Casaloste was also nice, but much smaller, and I didn't care for their wines quite as much.

We also spent time visiting San Galgano, Volopia, and Greve in Chianti. San Galgano was interesting; it is the place of the legendary sword in the stone. The story is that Galgano Guidotti was a knight born to rich parents in 1148. He wanted to renounce the material would and the arts of war, so as a sign to renounce violence, Galgano thrust the sword into the stone, adoring it as the Cross. You can walk up to the abby and see the hilt of the sword in the stone, now protected by glass. Volopia was a cute little town with a few restaurants and a wine tasting room... we bought two bottles. Greve is the town closest to where we stayed, so we decided to head there for dinner one night. Turns out it was the same day as the annual festival celebrated by the town. Each section of town dresses up, chooses a theme, and performs a skit. It was fairly amusing.

After Chianti we headed down to Montalcino. Montalcino is home to the very expensive Brunello wine. As soon as we got there we headed for Enoteca la Foretzza. It's a small enoteca in the downstairs of the fortress at the edge of town. Of course we did a wine tasting, and we also sampled some of the local honey and had this amazing caprese salad. We also climbed the tower and walked around the top of the fortress for a while. The views were quite nice. We spent the rest of the day and part of the next walking around the town and enjoying a little more down time. The funny story from this city came around dinner time.

We had read that there were a bunch of great restaurants in Montalcino, so we took time to check them all out. We finally decided on eating at our hotel Il Giglio. Well as soon as we walked in, we could tell that we didn't really "fit in." First, everything was decorated like a grandmothers house. And after a little while we realized that not only was everything really expensive, but the portions were very small as well. So we ordered our pasta, at the 4 ravioli that came with the dish (at least I can say they were delicious), paid our bill, and then headed to another restaurant. I needed some more food, cause those four little bites just weren't going to cut it. So we found this outdoor cafe and sat down. I ironically the ravioli plate that I got there was almost just as good, and was way bigger. I could barely finish it. For a drink I decided I was going to order this orange cocktail that I had seen people drinking for the last few days. I didn't know the name of it, but I asked the waitress what was the name of the orange drink that was popular. She pointed to the menu, so I said "I'll have that." Yea, turns out what she thought I wanted was orange juice, and that's what she brought me. haha.

After Jeremy explained to me that orange juice would not go well with my ravioli in rabbit sauce, I decided to try again. This time I went to the bar to ask the bartender. Much to my luck there was one sitting there. Perfect. Yea, apparently it's called a "spritz," and lets just say that it's super bitter and not very good. I preferred the orange juice. Oh well, live and learn.

Before leaving for Sorrento the next morning, we stopped by the Sant’Antimo Abbey to hear the monks chant. I highly recommend you do this if you are in the area. There is a schedule of the hours that they chant and when you can go into the church to hear them. It was very moving and a nice 15 minute pause in our otherwise busy day.

Next, off to Sorrento with a stop first in Spoleto.

Italy, Part 2 - Cinque Terre

2010-09-14T13:04:00.016-05:00

After starting our trip in Venice, we headed off to the Cinque Terre. For those of you that don't know, the Cinque Terre is a series of five villages along the western cost of Italy just above Pisa. These villages are Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore (from north to south), and are all part of the Cinque Terre National Park and are connected by ferry, train, or trail. The whole trail is about 10km long and takes about 5 hours to walk from one end to the other. The most difficult parts are the section from Monterosso al Mar to Vernazza and from Vernazza to Corniglia. The section of the trail connecting Manarola and Riomaggiore is called the Via Dell'Amore (Trail of Love). But more on this later.

We left Venice around noon on Wednesday and took the train to into Vernazza, arriving around 5:30pm. We chose to stay in Vernazza because it is the most beautiful of all the villages, though they each have their own charm. Plus it is centrally located and has lots of options when it comes to finding a place to say.

Before we left, we did some research and chose to stay at Camere Rosa. Rosa owns two apartments right on the main street in the village. One on the third floor and a beautiful one on the fourth floor with a balcony. That's where we stayed, on the fourth floor. Since the weather was amazing while we were there, we really enjoyed the balcony, and the apartment was very spacious... just as long as you didn't mind the 46 very steep and narrow steps leading up to the fourth floor. But hey, if you are visiting the Cinque Terre and planning to hike the trail, then the steps into the apartment really isn't a big deal.

It is really hard to understand the Cinque Terre without looking at some pictures, but understand that each village isn't very big (usually only one main street and a few side streets leading up the hillsides with many steps) and at this point it caters a lot to tourists, though it is not overly "touristy," like Rome or Venice. The first night we ate in Vernazza at a waterfront restaurant called Il Gambero Rosso. The food was delicious especially the troffie al pesto and the mixed seafood appetizer, which consisted of squid, scallops, tuna, and accuighe (anchovies). We finished the dinner off with torta della nonna (a dry cake) and some Sciacchetrà, the sweet wine of the area. The idea is that you dip the dried cake into the wine and then eat it. It wasn't bad, but I didn't care for the Sciacchetrà that much.

Now, I know what you're thinking... and yes, I really did eat anchovies. But they are nothing like they are here in the states. Here in the states anchovies are these gross salt covered smelly little fish. But over in the Cinque Terre, they are basically just fresh little fish served the day they are caught and covered with a little lemon. I'm starting to surprise myself at what I'll eat these days.

That night Jeremy bought some wine and candles and we had a nice evening on the balcony overlooking the lights from the town below and the stars above.

The next morning we walked up to Il Pirata, a wonderful bakery (and evening restaurant) just north of the train station. Two brothers own the restaurant and are both super friendly and very proud of their long writeup in the Rick Steves guidebook. We wound up having breakfast here each morning. Their Sicilian style pastries are so delicious, I really want to learn how to make them.

After stuffing our face with one of everything, we headed to the trail. Of the two trails that connect the villages of the Cinque Terre, the most popular is the lower trail along the water. The upper trail is much more difficult and is much longer. Also know that the trails are protected by the National Park and require a daily pass to use them. It cost us about 5 Euro for a two day pass, and they can be purchased at the first booth that you come to along the trail.

The first village we explored was Corniglia. Corniglia is the only village not "on the water." That is to say that they have no marine access and no beach... and about 400 steps leading up from the train station to the high village. It's also probably the smallest of the five villages. We only spent a limited time here, but we did check out a small enoteca called Il Pirun. I had read about this place online and was excited to have fun drinking from the pirun. At this point I should mention that the Cinque Terre is known for its white wine and the hillsides are littered with vineyards. We had several glasses during our time there and in my opinion the wine is okay, and though I'm not a huge white wine fan, it was nice to have a wine that was locally produced.

You're probably wondering what a pirun is. Well it's basically a small decanter that you fill with a glass of wine (I'd recommend white), hold above your head, tilt, and pour. Notice I recommended white wine, cause if you aren't careful it will go everywhere and you'll be left with red wine stains on your clothing. As the wine comes out of the pirun it aerates and releases the flavors. Basically you'll have so much fun with it that you'll wind up "bonging" your glass of wine. Before you know it, it's 5 minutes later and you've already finished two glasses of wine. Yea, dangerously fun. After this we grabbed a focaccia sandwich with mozzarella, prosciutto, and tomato to share and help balance out all that wine.

After Corniglia we hiked over to Manarola. This hike is pretty easy and the view of the water is incredible. The water is so blue and so clear! Manarola has a lot of deep water access for swimming, although we never did find time to get in the water. We did, however, take time to walk around the village and to do the Manarola Vineyard Walk which runs just above the town. Really beautiful views up here. It also drops you off into the local cemetery. It was really interesting to see the different burial methods based on family wealth. For lunch we grabbed some farinata from Il Discovolo Pizzeria and Focacceria. Farinata is a fried bread snack, made from chickpea meal, water, oil, and pepper, and baked on a copper tray in a wood-burning stove. Ours came with mozzarella and S&P. Not bad.

We then walked to Riomaggiore along the Via Dell'Amore (about 20 minute walk on a paved and lite section of trail). To me this was the most disappointing part of the Cinque Terre trail. Yea, I know it's the "trail of love," and if it weren't for all the graffiti all over the rocks, benches, sidewalk, it would be quite lovely. But somehow that just killed it for me. It is also the easiest part of the trail, so don't be fooled into thinking the whole Cinque Terre trail is just like this tiny little section.

Riomaggiore is a nice village, but very steeply built into the hillside. The only way to move around is by means of steep roads or stairs. We spent some time here this day and the next walking around and seeing the village from the highest points and sicking our feet in the water down by the rocky beach... oh and sampling some of the regions Limoncelo, mmmmm tasty. We also started to hike this trail that runs high along the cliff by the water with a not so reliable hand railing. It runs quite far and we wanted to spend some more time in the other villages so we didn't finish it, but we will next time we come back. We also took a few moments and had a nice break at Encoteca & Ristorante Dau Cila; a small hideaway down by the water with some mellow jazz. It was quite lovely.

To get back to Vernazza we took the ferry. I would recommend doing this at least once. It was really cool to see the towns from the sea.

At this point it was about 7pm and we knew we wanted to go over to Monterosso al Mare for dinner. This is where story 1 of 2 from that night begins...

I convinced Jeremy that we should hike to Monterosso from Vernazza so we could say that we did the whole Cinque Terre trail in one day. Of course he was a bit nervous because this was the hardest section of trail, 1.5 hours long, and it was already getting dusk. Somehow I managed to convince him to do this and we took off, starting around 7:15. Well about 10 minutes up the north side towards Monterosso you get the most wonderful view of Vernazza. It's just beautiful at dusk and easy to see why it is considered the most picturesque village. So of course I wanted to spend about 10 minutes there taking pictures, to which Jeremy, somewhat unwillingly, agreed to. So really by the time we started our journey it was 7:30.

It probably doesn't take much for you to realize that a 1.5 hour hike would put you at your destination at 9pm, and that 9pm is pretty late in the beginning of September, and that it probably isn't very light at 9pm in the beginning of September. Well you'd be right. Around 8:30 it got pretty darn dark on that hillside. And this trail is deceiving, because after about 30 minutes you can see Monterosso pretty clearly, but yet it is still really far away due to the curvature of the mountain. It is also the most challenging (and awesome) section of trail. The last 30 minutes we did in darkness guided only occasionally by the little key chain light Jeremy was carrying. It was an awesome adventure and we decided right then that we had to go back and do the hike again the next day... in the light.

That night we had a wonderful dinner in Monterosso at Ristorante Moretto (lemon anchovies, seafood ravioli, tiramisu), walked around the old part of the town a bit, then decided to head back. The next day we would explore the rest of the village, which is divided into two sections, the new and the old. Monterosso al Mare is the most touristy of all the villages and it has really become a resort town. There are high end boutique shops and expensive hotels (not rooms like the other towns, but hotels). They also have a large beach which the white sand is trekked in for each season. But the old town is pretty cute and the hike makes it worth coming here. Interestingly enough, the next day we hiked the opposite direction (from Monterosso back to Vernazza) and we saw a man who had fallen on one of the 1200 steps and cracked his head open. When we got there the medics were already there and the man was in a c-collar but apparently had refused to get on the backboard. So he was just up, walking around, talking on his cell phone, wearing the neck brace. Also flying around was life flight. Since the trail is difficult to get to (and in and out of) the only way to get him out was life flight, which it appeared he wanted no part of. We were stuck there for about 30 minutes, but it was cool to watch life flight drop the rescuers and equipment down. We never found out what happened with that, because they finally let us pass by.

But I'm getting way ahead of myself. Back to that night. After dinner it was about midnight and we decided the only way we were getting back was by train. So we walked up to the train station and went to purchase some train tickets. Obviously the window was closed at this point but we'd been told there was an automatic machine that we could use to get our tickets. This was only a partial lie. There was a machine, but it was broken and the insides were missing. Why on earth would you steal the inside of a ticket machine? Seems so silly. Maybe they needed tickets really badly. Anyway, there we were, wondering what the heck we were gonna do. Really the only choice was to get on the train. There was only one more coming that night and I was determined to get on it. So Jeremy and I came up with a plan to ride the train "outlaw" style and to outrun the conductor should we see him. It was only a 3 minute ride between the stations, but I think it was the longest 3 minutes of Jeremy's life. I was amused to see him so stressed out. In the end we did not meet a conductor that night, but we did the next day... when we fortunately had our tickets. We learned that it is always good to have a ticket handy, especially when they only cost 1,40 Euro each.

That was our exciting trip to the Cinque Terre. I highly recommend that everyone go here at some point in their life. It is beautiful, and one of my favorite "cities" in Italy!

Next, off to Pisa and Tuscany.

Italy, Part 1 - Venice

2010-09-14T11:49:00.013-05:00

16 days : 5 flights : 800+ car miles : 6 bus trips : 5 train rides : 3 ferries : 7 cities : 2170 photos

Italy was Awesome!

Jeremy and I just returned from our vacation to Italy. The planning started much like it had last year. "How many days should we go for?" "10 should be good." "Maybe 12" "Okay, 14 at the most." "Yep, 16 sounds good." 16 it was.

Why 16? Well besides there being enough there to do for several years, I figured out that taking the trip over labor day and including the weekends on both sides, it would only cost me 9 vacation days on a 16 day trip. I liked that math.

We started the trip in Venice. Since the trip to Venice was tacked on at the end, we only had about one and a half days to spend there. Better some time than none, and we got to see and do almost everything we wanted.

After flying from Houston -> Chicago -> Dusseldorf -> Venice, we landed around noon the "next day." Surprisingly we even managed to keep ourselves up until 10pm that night, so we weren't too effected by jetlag. There are several ways to get onto the island of Venice, but for simplicity (and time savings) we chose to use the ATVO bus. The boat would have been nice, but it was fairly overcast when we landed and we were already tired of travel and just wanted to get to the hotel. The most important thing we learned about travel in Italy is to "stamp and validate." Whatever mode of transportation you are using, you almost always have to get a ticket and then stamp and validate it. I think this is because you can buy as many tickets as you want and just hold onto them until you are ready to use them. Then you have usually around an hour or more on that ticket once validated.

In Venice we stayed at the Carlton Capri Hotel. It was just on the other side of the canal from the train station and the bus terminal, and the walk across the island to Piazza San Marco was only about 30 minutes. It was nice because we didn't have to schlep our luggage across the island and over all the bridges. The hotel itself was also very nice and there was always a doorman. The room was small, but standard size for Venice, and the breakfast was actually quite wonderful. The only time on our trip when we had a hot breakfast. I would recommend staying here.

Our time in Venice was spent walking around and just enjoying the city. We had our first meal at a nice outdoor cafe on a small side street called Trattoria Pizzeria Antico Gafaro. The pizza was so delicious that we wound up going back there the next night for dinner. Both times I ordered a pizza with prosciutto and sweet corn. It was delicious. We also took the advice from a friend of ours and ordered the house wine mostly everywhere we went. It is always good and almost always the cheapest wine on the menu.

While Venice has a lot of beautiful "tourist sites" to visit, the most amazing part about Venice for me is just walking along the streets and allowing yourself to get lost. The island isn't that big and eventually you'll figure out where you are. We spent most of our day on Tuesday doing this. We also hopped on the water taxi and took it all the way down the Grand Canal. While doing this we listened to an audio guide by Rick Steves that we had downloaded (for free) before leaving for Italy.

As a side note here, I'll mention the Rick Steve's Italy Book as well as his free downloadable audio guides. These were great and we used them for everything from a tour of Venice, to Pompeii, to sites in Rome. They are perfect 45 minute tours and very informative. Did I mention they are free? Ah, at last, something to do in Italy that doesn't cost money. Oh wait, it did cost 6 Euro each to ride the water taxi. Damn.

Also in Venice we spent some time picking out our halloween costumes for this year, awing over Murano glass, listening to music at night in Piazza San Marco, taking pictures on the Rialto Bridge, and checking out the fresh fish market. Yea, that was interesting. We also took a gondola ride. Okay, well sort of. Since there are only a few bridges crossing the Grand Canal, there are several spots where you can take a traghetto (gondola) ride from one side to the other. The cost is only 0,50 Euros and it's only about 1 minute long. But it was pretty cool, and if you want to act like a local then you'd best stand, as only the tourists sit down. Plus, it is way cheaper than the 100 Euro real gondola rides.

After Venice it was time to head off to the Cinque Terre.

An Engagement Party

2010-08-26T12:24:00.022-05:00

Last weekend Jeremy and I had our engagement party in Houston. Of course I spent all day getting ready and of course I went overboard on the food. Not so much on the quantity of food, but the preparation effort. Which is fine, because I LOVE cooking, especially for other people.

The week before the party I started to think about what I wanted to prepare. Cakeballs, of course, and some tuxedo strawberries, oh and some caprese salad, and some mango salsa, oooh and meatballs, oh and...

Yea, you can see how it quickly escalated out of control. Thank goodness Jeremy is very understanding of my ambitiousness and he's such a wonderful help in the kitchen, especially the last few hours before the party when there's still like 4 dishes to make.

But I did finally settle on a menu, and now I will share it with you. (click on each photo to see a larger version)

1. Caprese Salad

I loved the presentation here, but when I do it again, I will use roma tomatoes instead of vine tomatoes. I think they'll fit better on the pieces of bread. I'd also like to make my own bread and mozzarella so I have full control over the sizes.

2. Chipotle Cornbread Cups with Southwest Chicken

These were a party favorite and went pretty quick. The chipotle in the cornbread was a really nice touch.

3. Mango Salsa Tortilla Cups

To make these I brushed a tortilla on both sides with olive oil. I then cut it in quarters and placed each one in a mini-muffin tin. Bake for 10+ minutes at 400 until they get crisp and golden. The mango salsa is a recipe that I got from a cooking class at whole foods. It includes mango, pineapple, cilantro, jalapeno, red onion, red pepper, tomato, and lime juice.

4. Cucumber Sandwiches

This was my first attempt at these and they turned out pretty well. The only thing I would do different next time is to add more cucumber and less other "stuff." They were a tad runny. Oh yea, and Jeremy says that he'd use wheat bread instead of white bread.

5. Swedish Meatballs

Okay, I failed to take a picture of these, but they're super easy, and if you cut the meatballs in half they make great one-bite snacks. Plus I got to serve them in my newish Le Creuset bake pan. Oooh fancy.

6. Roasted Eggplant Dip

No pictures of this one either, but it also was a new recipe for me. Jeremy actually handled this one and besides the massive amount of garlic it turned out quite tasty. Kinda like hummus but without the gritty texture. I really enjoy the roasted eggplant flavor, and now that we're growing eggplants in the garden (2 have started to grow!), we can make this dip again sometime in the near future. I will point out that this recipe uses the long skinny eggplants, Japanese eggplant, instead of the large fat ones. The large fat eggplants tend to be a little more bitter.

7. Tuxedo Strawberries

This was my first time making these guys, and I will admit that I was a little rushed at the end. But they turned out better than I though they would. I think with a little more time, the detail on the buttons/bowtie could be much cleaner. To make them you dip them first in white chocolate, let cool, then dip each side in milk (or dark) chocolate. Then, using a piping bag and small tip ("0" worked best for me), pipe on the buttons and bowtie.

8. Cakeballs

I wanted to something very special and elegant with these for this party. So I went down to Michael's crafts and picked up some white ribbon to make bows. While I was there, I found these little heart charms in the wedding isle. I formed each bow out of ribbon and attached the charms using hot glue. I suppose you could use pre-made bows, but I hadn't thought of that until I got home and was halfway through this process. I also affixed the bows to the sticks before sticking them in the cakeball. You don't want any chance of getting hot glue in your chocolate or cake, so all this prep was done the night before. The cakeball was made from banana cake and honey/cinnamon icing and was then dipped in white chocolate. I used just a touch of vegetable shortening to thin down the white chocolate, and then sprinkled each one with cake glitter (click to enlarge second picture). While you can't see it much in the picture, it gave it a nice elegant feel. I'm so happy with the way these turned out, and people really loved them. I even made them wait until then of the night to eat them. Yea, I'm mean.

Finally here are two pictures of the full spread. And the rest you can check out HERE if you so desire.

Honey... A Natural Aphrodisiac

2010-08-08T21:41:00.019-05:00

"From the Kama Sutra to the Perfumed Garden to the Bible, honey has been connected with love, sex, and sensuality extraordinaire since the beginning of time. In the fifth century B.C. Hippocrates prescribed it for sexual vigor, and tradition in India calls for a bridegroom to receive honey on his wedding day. Newlyweds typically go on a honeymoon, a practice that stems from an ancient tradition of couples going into seclusion and drinking a honey concoction until the first new moon of their marriage. Psychologically, honey encompasses sensuality. The very word, honey, conjures up golden images of the dripping, sticky, viscous substance, of honeybees, honeysuckle, and all things sweet." - The New Intercourses

I know what you're thinking, this blog just got a lot more interesting. Well maybe. The quote above comes from a cookbook that I received last year for Christmas from Jeremy. As far as cookbooks go, it's about 3 stars, missing one of my most important criteria for a cookbook... pictures. However, as a book, it's quite interesting. And it does have a few good recipes, including the one I'm about to tell you about... Honey-Almond Delight.

This is my second time making this snack, and it was a huge hit at work last time I made it. In fact, I was sure that I already blogged about this, but I couldn't find the post, so here's hoping this isn't a repeat. Below you'll find the recipe for this tasty snack. It also goes great with some ice cream.

HONEY ALMOND DELIGHT

The Prep:
Line a 15x10 inch jelly roll pan with aluminum foil.
Make room in your fridge for said pan.

Set out the following ingredients:
2 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 sticks unsalted butter (1/2 lb), chilled, cut into small chunks
1 large egg
3/4 tsp almond extract

In a food processor combine the flour, sugar, and salt. (If you don't have a food processor you can still do this in a bowl with a pastry cutter, or, if your food processor is small like mine, do this in two batches then combine together). Next add the butter and pulse until the mixture is combine and resembles coarse meal.

Whisk the egg and almond extract together in a small bowl, then add to the food processor. Pulse until the dough starts to come together.

Next you'll spread the dough mixture onto the lined pan. The best way I found to do this, and ensure an even layer, is to rip it into little pieces and place it on the tray.

Then use your hands to pat down the dough flat.

Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour, or until you are ready to use.

Once ready, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Remove the dough from the fridge and, using a fork, prick the dough. This will help prevent air bubbles from forming, so don't be afraid to make too many holes.

Bake for 10 minutes, or until it turns a light golden brown.

Meanwhile, prepare the topping:
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup honey
2 sticks unsalted butter (1/2 lb)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 pound sliced almonds (I use the sliced blanched almonds from the bulk foods section at the grocery store)

In a medium sauce pan, combine the brown sugar, sugar, honey, and butter over medium heat.

Once the butter is fully disolved, turn up the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Cook for 3 minutes without stirring. You are making a carmel sauce.

Remove the mixture from the heat and add the heavy cream and the almonds. At this point the mixture will become very thick.

Spread the topping over the crust with a spatula. Then bake for 10-15 minutes more, or until bubbly and a nice golden color.

Let the dessert cool, then cut into triangles. Be sure to use a sharp knife when doing this and to press the knife down instead of dragging it. Otherwise you'll pull the almond top right off the shortbread.
You can store these in an airtight container for up to 4 days. If you can wait that long.

(sorry, I just couldn't get a nice picture of this final piece. The lighting was all wrong)

Jeremy & I are ENGAGED!

2010-08-04T15:56:00.007-05:00

On Saturday July 31, 2010 around 4:30pm Jeremy and I got engaged at Flat Creek Estate. It was amazing and no matter how much you think you know it's coming, that moment just takes your breath away.

So I could tell you the whole story now, but then what reason would you have for visiting our wedding page? (which isn't up yet btw) So I'm not going to tell you all the details, but just know it was perfect and amazing and wonderful. And yes, he did get down on one knee, but at that point it's all a blur. I think I remember him saying "will you marry me?" or maybe it was "will you be my wife?" I was too excited to listen.

So after the hugging and kissing and crying, we took some photos.

These three were taken and sent to our parents via email when we got back to the house. Note at this point we had not told them anything. And in the email all I said was "here are some more photos from Flat Creek."

So we sent off the photos and waited for their call... and waited... and waited. Okay this was going to take a while. So we got ready for dinner and headed to Carmelo's. I've always wanted to go there and Jeremy remembered!

On the way over I called my parents to tell my mom that I sent her a card via email and she should look at it with dad (total lie), and we texted his mom saying there were some pictures in her email to look at. At this point I was so sure that my dad would pick out the ring right away and my mom would totally miss it. Boy was I wrong.

Turns out we had to tell both our parents to "look harder" at the pictures and ask them if they "noticed anything special" about them. :)

Needless to say, they were both very excited. As are we!

No we don't have a date yet or a place, but here is a picture of the wonderfully beautiful ring that Jeremy got me. It's soooooo gorgeous and sparkly!