Nathalia Turns 2!

My sweet niece, Nathalia, turns TWO today!! I can't believe how fast she's growing up!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Nathalia!!

Valentine's Day

David and I aren't big on celebrating Valentine's Day. We don't do anything in particular each year, but this year, I wanted to go to dinner at Brio in Southlake on Sunday. We hadn't been back since we had our rehearsal dinner there, so I thought it would be fun to go! Before dinner, we stopped in at Three Dog Bakery. Have you ever been? I love it! We celebrated Casey's first birthday there.  And since it was Valentine's Day, I couldn't resist buying our sweet pup a treat! She got a cookie and a pupcake.

Dinner at Brio was delicious, as usual. Everything there is so good!

Earlier that day, I made strawberry cupcakes to bring to work. The recipe I found called for fresh strawberries, so I couldn't wait to try them. They turned out pretty good! Here's the recipe.

1 package (18 1/4 oz) white cake mix
1 package (3 oz) strawberry jello
1 cup finely chopped, fresh strawberries, with juice
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the cake mix, gelatin, strawberries and juice, milk, oil and eggs in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Increase mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping down sides again if needed. Spoon about 1/3 cup batter into each lined cupcake cup, filling it 3/4 full. Bake until cupcakes are lightly golden and spring back when pressed gently with a finger, 20 to 25 minutes*. Remove from oven, place pans on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes, then remove cupcakes to wire racks to cool for another 15 minutes.

*I baked mine for 16-18 minutes, so it really depends on your oven.

For the frosting, I just made a basic cream cheese frosting.
1 package (8 oz) cream cheese
1 stick regular, salted butter
1 pound powdered sugar

Combine with a mixer and frost your cupcakes after they've cooled. Enjoy!

Problem No. 1 Solved

Well today is day 4 of being at home. But I guess it technically doesn't count as a "stay at home from work" day, since today is our flex Friday, so we wouldn't be working anyway. It did, however, mark the fourth day that the plumber couldn't make it back to our house.  Because it snowed last night. It snowed a lot last night.

So, being the impatient resourceful person that I am, I started googling "how to replace an O ring on a single handle kitchen faucet". Surely it couldn't be that hard. And the plumber was going to charge us $125 to help us out. After about 10 minutes on the Internet, I somehow talked my unconvinced loving husband into trekking out in the snow to Home Depot. Surely someone there could help us. And based on my research, O rings would only cost us about $2.

Driving conditions were actually better than yesterday. The snow provided adequate traction and we made it to Home Depot. We found a guy to help us, but since we didn't bring the busted O ring with us, we didn't know what size we needed. Off to the faucet section we went to see if Home Depot sold our sink - negative. But standing in the faucet aisle, we I realized that it would be cheaper to just replace the whole faucet than to pay the plumber to fix our O ring.  Long story short, we agreed to purchase a new faucet and attempt to replace our old one. It can't be that hard to install, right? David wasn't entirely convinced.

Fast forward one hour and....we have a new faucet! 

It would have only taken 20 minutes to replace the thing, but the old one was such a pain to get out. We're pretty sure that the builder attached the faucet to the sink before putting the sink in the counter. There's no way they did it any other way. So, we're back in business!!! I think I'll bake some cookies tonight to celebrate! Now if we could just get the front door unlocked...

Binge & Purge

I love food. I like going out to eat, I like cooking, and I like going to the grocery store. It drives me nuts when there's nothing in the house to eat. This sometimes happens since I don't cook if David's out of town.  And we usually don't go to the grocery store if one of us is going to be gone. When we do go, we try to buy only what we're going to eat, but every now and again, purchased items are forgotten in the pantry and fresh produce goes bad.

I've been wanting to empty out the pantry, throw away expired items, and organize everything. David doesn't quite understand my strict adherence to all expiration dates. I hate stale chips, I don't like smelling the milk to see if it's bad, and I can't ever remember the little trick you can do with eggs to see if they're still good. Therefore, if it's one day past its posted expiration date, in the trash it goes. 

Since we've been cooped up for the last three days, I tackled my pantry project. Here's how the pantry looked before:

Admittedly, it wasn't horrible. I knew where everything was. But I didn't know exactly what we had. So I emptied the entire pantry and put everything on the kitchen counter.

I wiped down the shelves in the pantry and threw out all the expired goodies. Here's what I threw out:

• Jar of apricot preserves - expired March 2010
• Bottle of apple cider vinegar - expired March 2010
• Bottle of balsamic vinegar - no expiration date, but I'm 99% certain that this is the same bottle that my sister bought when we shared an apartment in Austin, so it has to be circa 2006. Gross.
• Box of Shake N Bake - expired April 2010
• Bag of pinto beans - expired September 2010 (who knew dry beans expired?)
• Can of clam chowder soup - expired October 2010 (When David saw me throw this in the trash, he said, soup doesn't expire! Oh, yes it does - it says so on the can!)
• Can of condensed milk - expired December 2009
• Pop Secret popcorn - expired December 2010
• Three individual serving size packets of Justin's honey nut butter - expired March 2010

All in all, not too bad. Most things expired sometime last year. And I don't feel like I had to throw away $100 in groceries.

I did, however, find things in the pantry that I didn't even know remember we had.

• Electric tea kettle - wedding present
• Belgian waffle maker - wedding present
• Hot dog toaster (you put the hot dog in one slot and the bun in another and the toaster cooks them for you) - wedding present
• French press coffee maker - wedding present

I guess I did go overboard on the wedding registry since I didn't know remember that we had these things. But in my defense, we didn't register for any of these things. But then again, my underlying intent in cleaning out the pantry was to (hopefully) make room for all my kitchen things. I have a trifle dish and other miscellaneous holiday platters in the hall linen closet. Well, here's the after picture.

Not much difference.  You'll notice that there isn't a trifle dish in the pantry. It's still in the hall closet. Oh well. At least the pantry is nice and organized for now. Mission accomplished.

Ice Ice Baby

At work on Monday, I think everyone was hoping for a snow/ice day for Tuesday. Well you know what they say...be careful what you wish for...

We woke up on Monday to a busted kitchen faucet. Water spraying everywhere. The plumber came out later in the morning and found two problems, but didn't have the parts to fix it. He promised to return first thing on Tuesday. Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans and sent the freezing rain/sleet storm our way a little early. Tuesday morning, the roads were completely iced. The plumber couldn't come. You never know how much you rely on something until you can't use it. And the kitchen sink is one of those things. Luckily for us, we had frozen dinners and leftovers in the fridge, plus a sufficient supply of paper plates. Unluckily for us, the temperatures were forecasted to remain below freezing for the next couple of days, which means...no plumber. Great. 

Meanwhile, David attempted to get the mail. Naturally, he planned to go out the front door. Unbeknownst to us, the deadbolt was frozen. He turned the lock, and nothing. He turned it back and tried to unlock the door again, and...nothing. Perfect. My uncle, who lives in Michigan, said our lock was frozen and we should try graphite. We're from Texas. I don't even know what graphite is, or where to get it. We're hoping that when it finally gets above freezing, the lock will thaw and self-correct. At least the lock is frozen in the locked position. Silver lining.

We "worked from home" Tuesday and Wednesday. Today, we got notice that we should leave our homes at 8:30 and head to our respective working locations. David is working in the office and I'm working at a bank in north Dallas. David left at about 8:10 this morning and started his 10 mile commute to the office. 15 minutes later, he called me to tell me he's heading back home. Camp Wisdom is a mess and 360 completely stopped, with the on ramp closed. Not worth it, he said. I was completely showered, dressed, made up, hair done, just about to walk out the door. But if David can't even make the 10 mile commute to the office, there's no way I would have been able to drive the 45 miles to the bank I was working at! Not worth it. I'll take my 7 hours of vacation and stay home. 

I'd like to say that we've been super productive around the house, since we've been cooped up for the last two days. But that would be a lie. I've watched seasons 1, 2, and 3 of Weeds on Netflix. David updated his iPod and purchased some CD's off iTunes.  We've done lots of lounging around in our pajamas, and we've watched a ton of TV.  I told David that we are going to clean the bathroom and clean out and tidy the pantry today. Both are in desperate need of attention.

It's 19 degrees outside right now. And it's supposed to snow tonight. Dishes are piling up in our sink because I refuse to do them in the bathroom. There's just something about washing kitchen dishes in the bathroom that makes my stomach turn.  But I might have to suck it up and just do it. When we called the plumber yesterday, he said something about being inundated with calls about frozen pipes. I'm sure we're at the very bottom of his to-do list now. But I guess it's not like we'd be able to let him in the front door, even if he did show up.

Forecast: FOG

Last week, we went to San Francisco to visit my sister. We had so much fun and did so much, but I'll try to give you the short version! We did touristy things - went to Alcatraz, walked around Golden Gate Park, Chinatown, and Fisherman's Wharf.  We also ate our way through the city - but luckily with all the walking, we balanced everything out! I did a pretty poor job of photographing our trip, but here's what I do have.

On Sunday, we went to Sonoma and visited a few wineries. First, we had brunch at The Girl and The Fig in downtown Sonoma. Absolutely delicious!  We actually did our tastings in Glen Ellen, which is just north of Sonoma.  We bought a case of Merlot at Kunde and also got a few bottles from Benzinger, BR Cohn, and Imagery. I think our favorite wineries were Kunde and Benzinger. BR Cohn was neat since it is owned by the guy who manages the Doobie Brothers, but their wine wasn't particularly spectacular. Imagery is the sister winery of Benzinger, but their wines were not really to our liking.  Sidenote: if you ever fly somewhere and buy a case of wine, it's cheapest to check the box of wine with your luggage and pay the $25. Plus, it flies back with you and doesn't have to spend a lot of time in transit!

On Monday we had lunch at the Crab House at Pier 39 and took the cruise out to Alcatraz - it was so foggy that day! In that first picture, that's Alcatraz from Fisherman's Wharf. You can barely see it! In the last picture, that's the clearest it got for us - that's the view of SF from Alcatraz. All in all, the tour was pretty neat, but Alcatraz is a lot smaller than we thought!

We drove out to Berkeley one day and toured the Pyramid brewery. The tour was free and included a tasting flight! It was such a neat place, but we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the plant.

Towards the end of the trip, the weather started cooperating, so David and I got to picnic in Mission-Dolores park by my sister's apartment. We got sandwiches at Ike's Place (YUM) and hung out and enjoyed the beautiful weather! Mission-Dolores park is so neat - there were a ton of dogs and their owners just let them run around and play! Casey would have been in heaven!

My sister lives in the Mission district and one day we found all this graffiti art in one of the alleys. Turns out it was the Clarion Alley Mural Project.

On our last night in the city, my sister had a work party to attend, so David and I got a date night! We had pre-dinner drinks at Range and dinner at Bar Tartine. Everything was so, so good! I even convinced David to try bone marrow...!

We had so much fun in San Francisco, but we sure are glad to be home! Here are three things I learned about San Francisco:

1. California is EXPENSIVE. Very, very expensive (compared to Texas at least);
2. The fog in San Francisco is no joke. Also, the temperature can vary pretty drastically between the Mission district (the sunniest area) and any other area of the city; and,
3. San Francisco may only be 7 miles long and 7 miles wide, but when you're walking around the city, it feels like it's 70 miles long and 70 miles wide. My legs might still be sore.

Late to the Party

Well, I did it. I finally gave in and bought a pair of Uggs. 

I even saved a little money by buying the kid's size!  David hates "furry boots"...he might divorce me.  But at least I'll be wearing some cute boots!