As I said in my last post, we recently asked our friends and family to stand up for us on our big day. My baby brother will be standing up for us and we Skyped with him to ask since he was at school in Missouri at that time, though he is now home in Oskaloosa for the summer. He has his own personal musings blog and this is what he wrote our upcoming nuptials:

"Today, I got asked to be a groomsman at my sisters wedding! I am super pumped that she is getting married to a great guy! November 10th, remind me to mark that day down, as it is when the wedding will take place!"

My family is not great at communicating our feelings with one another, though as us kids have become adults we've gotten better. Charlie was also super psyched for us when I called to tell him Vince proposed and then when I read his post it just made me smile. Love you, brother. And congrats on finishing your first year of college! 

Why hello there!

It has been forever since my last post, almost a month! but boy oh boy have I been busy! My <i>fiance</i> and I have been busy dreaming up our wedding day and to be honest I pretty much have the wedding on my mind 24/7. Is this normal? I even wake up from dreams at 3am about wedding planning. We have set our date: November 10, 2012 aka we have 6 months to plan this shindig! Some people look at me like I'm nuts when I tell them. I have never been great at waiting for what I want though.
We will be having our reception at Laurel Manor and tasted their food this week and it is delish. Not to mention that the place is gorgeous and elegant and wonderfully priced!
I got all (SEVEN) of my bridesmaids officially asked and Vince is almost there! Our colors are charcoal grey, mustard yellow and cran/raspberry.
It is a but challenging planning ky wedding with my mom in Iowa, my sister aka Maid of Honor in LA and we are in Detroit. However my mom is coming up in a couple weeks so we can play dress up and send inspiration pictures to Kaitlyn so she can get to sketching as she's ddoing me the great honor of making my dress. How lucky am I? The answer is extremely, incredibly, and wonderfully!
I'm going to try to post more wedding info here, you know I will be doing at least a few projects. We will also link up to our wedding website once it gets a little more info on it!

How's that for rambling? And that's just the tip of the iceberg here folks!

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it!

Tonight has been unexpected and exciting and that's all I'm going to say about it. Not that anyone regularly reads this (of you do, leave me a comment so I know please) but I want to remember today. This night. This moment of happiness forever. I don't journal except on here so this is how I can record it. Happy. Surprised. Content. But most of all excited!

(written on March 26, 2012 after going RING SHOPPING!)

Kayln's Balsamic Pot Roast + a Remix

Well it's been a while since I've posted anything too creative! This recipe I cooked months ago and took some pictures while doing so but never got around to posting. I first saw this on Pinterest (follow me here) and pinned it to try 10 weeks ago according to my boards. We have experimented with crock pot, pot roasts a couple of times and while we love our mother's recipe (at least I do!) I though, why the heck not?

So I clicked on through to find Kalyn's Kitchen and her very detailed recipe tutorial. Click on that link for all the nitty-gritty ingredients and directions and such. Now, when I find a recipe I seldom stick directly too it. Or actually sometimes I do if it seems tricky. But pot roast, you can change up a pot roast recipe pretty easy, right?

So I made some changes. I started out following Kalyn's instructions: Season and sear all edges of the roast. Check!

Next I chopped up (actually Vince did the onions, bless his heart. I love the things but I cry every time!) Here's where I veered from Kalyn's prescribed recipe. I'm not on the South Beach diet. I love me some potatoes and carrots so in they went!

Notice the lime green? Thanks MOM for the new bendable, colorful, awesome cutting mats!! 

Those puppies all went into the crock pot first to create a little platform for the roast to cook on top of. After searing the roast it went on top. Followed by this sauce which I also didn't follow to a T. I didn't cook it down as long, and I certainly didn't drain and cook it down into a thicker sauce to pour over the roast. I'm fine with all the fat and grease that remained after cooking, though I probably shouldn't be. Plus I wouldn't have been able to do the remix I talk about later if I had.

The sauce was STRONG to the nose as well. I forgot how strong vinegar smells and took a big, burning whiff of the stuff. At that point I had a moment of panic thinking this was going to be overpowering and disgusting, however, I had no choice and faith that this highly pinned recipe had to be good so onward we went.

I popped the lid on the pot, set it to low and headed off to gallivant around town on my day off. I didn't want to do this on a work day when I couldn't check in periodically on my meal. Turns out it cooked just fine without intervention so feel free to set it and go.

I forgot to take after pictures. So sue me. But I will tell you that the onions cooked down into tender lovelies, the potatoes and carrots were deliciously tender, and the roast? It was tender, like fall-apart-while-attempting-to-cut tender.

In full disclosure, Vince's mom tried the recipe as well and they all ate it but said it's not a recipe they'd repeat. We have made it a couple of times and really enjoyed it so perhaps I'm a better cook than her (j/k Terri, love you!) or perhaps our tastes are just different.

We have also used the tasty sauce leftover as a base for french onion soup. For that we simply caramelize another onion, add it to the pot along with some seasoning and cook it all for a bit. This isn't really a science, more of a taste experiment. We then use the broiler to toast up slices of french bread, add the soup to some over sized coffee mugs or to our new hand-me-down soup crocks, put the two toasted slices of bread, and top with a combo of Swiss and Mozzarella cheese and popped them back into the oven on a cookie sheet to cook up the cheese. Woo, that was a LOOONNG sentence! Sorry to all of my English teachers.

Before broiling (left), In all of it's cooked-cheese goodness (right).

This stuff is seriously good. And a fab way to use up all of the leftovers and make two delicious meals (or three or four) all from easy as can be crock pot recipes. We will be making this one again for sure.

Thanks, Kalyn, for a great recipe! Check out her site, there are TONS of good recipes there.

21 life suggestions.

Stumbled on this article full of wise nuggets. Nothing life-changing, nevertheless a good reminder.

hfeist11 sent you this page: Success: 21 Suggestions - Global One TV

En Route

Well it has officially been forever since my last post, if anyone reads this regularly I apologize. I have been working on some projects, namely a DIY huge poster frame from trim and getting art for all of my frames for the gallery wall. Alas, I am merely en route to completion on these things. Tends to be the way I function, especially when life gets busy with work and just generally living well.

I am also more literally en route currently. To FLORIDA! Vince and I along with his family (minus Trev & Michelle, miss you guys!) are headed.to Davenport just outside of Orlando for glorius weeklong vacation. The pictures below are of the blanket I'm smuggling with on this loooonnnggg drive. My Nana made it in the 90's for me and it folds into a pocket to become a pillow. I love it. The other picture is from mid-tennessee, so only a few more hours (12ish) to go. Also the mountains are pretty but they don't play well with my sinuses so I will anxiously waiting for stable grounds.

More vacation pics to come. We will be seeing the Detroit Tigers spring training game Monday, swimming with manatees bright and early Tuesday, and then doing Universal Studios and a trip over to visit my grandparents in Ockeechobee for a night. All that plus good food, pool and beach time, and some good old fashioned family bondig around the board games!

Visualizing Characters

You know how when you read a book you form a picture in your brain about how each character looks?

And the movie always ruins it.

Well I do this with bloggers.

No offense. You are all lovely. Truly. But when I'm reading a blog that doesn't have your picture on the header I often find that I create a completely made-up mental image of you. And I am almost always wrong. So maybe the movies don't ruin it.

 Maybe they are right and I am wrong?