King Cakes, Hearts and Babies

This weekend has gone way too fast, even with it being 3 days and all. Saturday night we drive out to the burbs to visit our friends Shay and Bianca. They cooked up an amazing southern style dinner, fried catfish, greens, blackeye peas, fried okra and cornbread. It was delicious!! We also got to meet their new little bean, two month old Amelie Maeve. She was so good, and very cute. Mike and I brought a King Cake for dessert in celebration of Mardi Gras. As luck would have it, I got the baby, which contrary to what my friends believe it means, actually means a year of good luck. Yay for me!

Sunday was Vday and also the 2 year anniversary of our engagement, awwww. We spent the day relaxing, got in a good workout at the gym. Busted out the champagne around 530 and headed out the dinner at Red Light, one of my fav restaurants.

We started with cocktails and lobster rolls, then ordered our entrees. I had the pan seared diver scallops with porcini mushroom polenta and jakarta coconut sauce. Mike had the asian paella, chinese sausage, mussels, clams, jumbo prawns, with basmati rice and lobster tamarind sauce. A little different than they do it out East.

After dinner we ordered dessert. I really came for Jackie's Chocolate Bag, it is a must whenever dining at Red Light. It is literally a milk chocolate bag filled with Belgian white chocolate mousse, with berries and raspberry sauce. We skipped the coffee and ordered champagne to go along side. So good!

After, we made our way home and sang a little karaoke lol, it was quite a site. Tomorrow I am off to Texas for work until Friday :( I am dreading being away from my sweetie after a great weekend.

Hope everyone else had a fabulous Valentine's Day! xoxo

love is in the air

It's hard to believe that 2 years ago this Valentine's Day Mike and I were engaged. It's not so hard to believe that it's been two years, but rather how much we did in two years! Phew, talk about the fast track. We both laughed a little about this the other night. When we were married we had only been together just over a year! Seems so crazy to think about now, but when you know, you know! And lucky for us things are better than ever!

A couple great friends of ours have also recently taken the plunge into engagement.





If you attended our wedding I'm sure you remember Bret and Christine, they tore up the dance floor. And many of you know my bff since my freshman year of college Julie and her wife-to-be Trish!(I even got to help Julie pick out the ring, which is gorgeous) I am so happy for my friends, I know the ups and downs of being single and it's so great to see them finally meet their match!

I also am very excited to attend their weddings since they are at amazing venues in Chicago. I really wish I knew the industry in the city better because I would love to be a day of planner. Maybe their weddings will inspire me to take the leap.

Mike and I have some special plans for vday. I'll share next week!

an anniversary gift

A few days ago we received a box in the mail from Mike's Grandma Mashl. We had a nice vist with her when we were out East and talked a lot about the recession and how it's affected Mike and myself. Mike's Grandma is 96 and was in her twenties during the Great Depression, she made some interesting comparisons to then and now. At any rate, Mike is a student and I am unemployed so we've had to adjust our life styles during these tough times.

When I opened the box I was very surprised at its contents! I thought, wow, Grandma Mashl must think we are really struggling, and then I thought, well this stuff will sure come in handy.



It wasn't until later that Mike explained to me that for your first anniversary you are to receive paper! Ooooooooo, now it makes since. How cute of his Grandma!

I did a quick google search to refresh my memory on what each year of marriage stands for and I found this!

I must say that I am really looking forward to our 55th and our 75th!

Birthday Boy Gets 31 Spankings

Last night we celebrated Mike's 31st birthday. I think 31 is a pretty big deal because it proves that life does not stop at 30 which is both good and bad.

We decided to try Hibachi for dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant Osaka. The sushi at Osaka is so great that we usually pass over the Hibachi without giving it much thought. Feeling adventurous and wanting to try something different we decided to go for it and the rest of the fam was down for it too.

For those of you who don't know what Hibachi is, it's when a chef prepares an array of steak, chicken, seafood, tofu and veggies along side some fried rice all your table on a flat top grill.



Our Hibachi guru's name was Tai Mai Shu, hahah get it? He was very skilled with his knife throwing skills, torching flames and sneaky tricks. I appreciated all of these except for the egg catching game. Tai Mai Shu went around the table and made everyone catch fried egg with their mouth straight off the flat top! I should add that I have a huge phobia of burning my mouth, and also a huge phobia of other people burning their mouths. I usually start of every meal with an obligatory, "Don't burn your mouth!" So I caught the egg with my hand, and asked everyone else who attempted to catch the egg if they burnt their mouth. I am happy to say no injuries were reported.



The dinner was great, and aside from the sodium, it leaned towards the side of healthy.



If you who live in the Quad Cites area the Osaka in Moline, IL has an awesome special Sun - Thursday. Steak or chicken Hibachi are 2 for $22. What a deal! The meal is also served with soup and salad.

Earlier in the day I stopped at a new bakery in downtown Davenport called Cupcakes, Muffins and More. I picked up a half dozen of these tasty treats. They were delicious and an insane bargain. One cupcake is only .75 cents! I was expecting them to be more in the $2-$3 range. A half dozen was only $3.99 and a dozen, $6.99, what a steal! We all managed to squeeze one of these in, more or less.




All in all we had a fun time celebrating my hubs birthday. Happy birthday sweetie! XOXO

It's tough being two people

My poor sweetie was infected with the plague Friday after we worked out. We came home, had some dinner and within about a hour Mike was out. His tempeture sky-rocketed, body aches kicked in, headache, chest and cough. We went to bed pretty early and I hoped that he'd kick it by morning so we could enjoy the beautiful weather and our St. Patty's day celebration we'd planned all week. Well, I realize how wishful thinking that was now on Day 3 of the plague. Mike is pretty delirious, his fever is fluctuating from 100 - 102 and he's been talking to himself a bit today.

I keep disinfecting but I'm pretty sure that I infected myself today when I chugged a bottle of water...only to discover it was the bottle he'd been refilling since Friday...ugh.

Anyways, it's Sunday night and I am beat. Mike does so much around the house that it's been hard keeping up with it all myself. Mike does the dishes, takes care of the dogs for the most part, helps out with Kira's feedings, takes out the trash, gets me stuff (LOL) It's just been a lot for me to do all by myself.

I'm going to round up all the animals, tidy up a bit and get everyone to bed, hopefully catch up on some sleep and hope I get my sweetie back tomorrow.

I love a Man Who Can Cook

Before we enjoyed the cake I made, Mike made a wonderful dinner


Mike made a Mixed Green salad with strawberries, avocado, and pecans. He made a delicious honey citrus dressing to go with it.



Yummy whole gran bread..




For the entree he made a gorgonzola cheese, asparagus and sweet pea angel hair pasta served with shrimp and scallops. YUM!!!

A Vday treat for my sweetie

For Valentine's Day this year Mike made dinner and I took on dessert. I knew right away what I wanted to make. I'd been waiting for the right occasion to try my hand at an Italian Cream Cake, the cake flavor we chose for our wedding cake.

I spent some time researching online and chose a recipe I found on foodnetwork.com posted by Emeril Lagasse.

After buying three new 9" cake pans and gathering all the ingredients needed, I began making my first, not out of a box, cake.

After mixing everything on the correct order I divided my batter into three pans.



While the cake was baking I worked on my own variation. Our wedding cake had a cherry filling, so I picked up some raspberry preserves and boiled them in an amateur attempt to strain the seeds. I then realized the seeds would slip right through a pasta strainer. O, well. It removed a few of the seeds. I figured it would still work.



I let the cakes cool for 10 minutes in the pan....



Success!



After cooling I started frosting my layers.



I only added the preserves on one layer, I didn't want the raspberry to be too overwhelming. I added a frosting layer on top of the preserves too.




I threw on the top layer.



And frosted sparingly. A few of the reviewers said they doubled the frosting recipe but I didn't find it necessary. Double would have been too much. I did use every last drop though!



Finally we went for it! An excellent Valentine's Day treat!

i love my sweetie

mike and i have so much fun dancing together, we are really no good but definitely enjoy ourselves. this past weekend, while dancing at the lodge, my advice to mike was "just spin me a lot and we'll look great!" i doubt that is truly the case, but hey, it works for us! this afternoon Simple Minds, Alive and Kicking, was on my Internet radio. this was the last song played at our wedding. whenever i hear it it reminds me of how happy and lucky i am to have found mike.

Coincidence, I think fate

I was just reading a profile on my astrological sign, Taurus. I learned that my lucky numbers are 2 and 8..... hmmmm

08.02.2008