Happy Anniversary Pa & Nana!!

Over the weekend we also celebrated my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. We started out the celebration with a Mass in which they received a special blessing. After Mass we had dinner and cocktails at a nearby supper club. My aunts & mom arranged to have the centerpieces with yellow roses, which were their wedding flowers. They still had their cake topper so a mini cake was made with that too! My sister and I enjoyed looking through their wedding album and we wished that hats and gloves were still the style.

Then it was picture time -
Here are my siblings with Nana & Pa and our Great Grandpa T.


My necklace was from Forever 21. However, I jazzed it up a bit with an old clip on earring that was in the box of jewelry my sister & I purchased from my great grandpa's auction back in September. I'm not sure if the earring belonged to my great grandmother or another family member but it is very sparkly and I like it. I had thought about changing the back so that it would be a brooch but the clip on earring back works well to clip onto necklaces and headbands, which I have also done.

Here is a family picture - My niece was very excited to wear loads of pink tulle


All in all the celebration was very nice. I hope that I am lucky to make it 50 years as well!

And the holidays ensue...

The past four days have been crazy fun.

We had our first Thanksgiving dinner with my in-laws on Thanksgiving. I made Martha's cranberry sauce from the November 2009 issue of Living and a citrus fruit dish from Better Homes & Gardens. I recommend making the cranberry sauce (it's also delicious with brie) and pass on the citrus. As is custom, we went through all of the black friday ads after dinner. We also learned how to play hand and foot, which is a version of canasta. I love card games!

And now a confession.

I indignantly proclaimed that we would NEVER...I repeat NEVER...have a television in our bedroom. Nate didn't see what the big deal was but I said that we didn't need a television in our bedroom and that we would become lazy buffoons if we had one.

Ladies and Gentleman, I am ready to eat my words and become a lazy buffoon.

It started with me saying, "well, it might be sort of nice to have a tv in our room so that I could watch shows and not fall asleep on the couch". This happens a lot because i love laying down while watching tv and then I start dozing off. Finally, I said, "I think we should get a tv for the room". I think it was a joyous occassion in my husband's life.

As our Christmas present to each other, we bought a small television for our bedroom on a Best Buy Black Friday deal. I didn't wake up early, I didn't stand in line, I just went over to the Best Buy and figured if they still had them, then I would get it, and if not, we weren't destined to have one. I guess we were destined to have one. The cable company is coming tomorrow to hook it up.

Two years and 2 months into marriage, I'm throwing away all the magic for a 19" flat screen with a remote. ha ha ha.

Enchiladas Suiza

We made the Cempazuchi's Enchiladas Suiza for dinner last night. The recipe was featured in the MKE Journal a few weeks back. They are very yummy and good leftover the next day too (as I am eating my lunch right now).

Click here for the recipe.

What can I say, I happen to be an aficionado of the dive bar.”

That's right - yet another blog post dedicated to Anthony Bourdain. I can't help it - I love the guy!

Last night was a lazy sort of night. We got in two episodes of No Reservations - one where he was touring around Chile and one where he has Zamir (from the Romania episode!) come to the USA and go with him to Baltimore, Detroit and Buffalo. We knew we were in for a good episode when Zamir came on the screen! While in Baltimore, Bourdain met up with not one but two stars from The Wire, which he called, "the greatest show on television". Given that we just finished season 1 a couple of weeks ago and season 2 is almost here via the library, we loved that comment.

While in Buffalo, which we thought was very similar to MKE, we started strategizing how we could get Bourdain to come to Wisconsin. He could even stay in our guestroom, ha ha ha.

During commercial breaks, I finished Kitchen Confidential! I really enjoyed it. I felt like I was reading an episode of No Reservations - his personality is all over the book. Part of the book also took place in Les Halles, which of course we visited in NYC so that was fun to read and think back to my meal there (even though Bourdain isn't there anymore).

Now that was a lovely weekend

The weekend went by in a flash, although we didn't really do all that much, which was SO wonderful. I caught up on reading all of my magazines that were delivered post-vacation, we cooked, we cleaned. We had a surprise birthday party for a friend (she was surprised - yay!).

Yesterday was an amazingly nice late November day. I ran outside in shorts & a tshirt! I had just turned onto the bike path while running and heard this loud rustling behind me. I turned around and a deer was running straight at me while his 2 friends ran to the right of me! They paused and then kept running. A bike rider coming the opposite direction rode past and commented, "Well, now that was lovely". And it was.

I also started on these alphabet letters. I have about 6 of the 26 done. My assessment thus far is that these are really putzy and maybe not that cool. We'll see what the kiddos think. I'm planning on having Toni test them out on Friday. Why i decided to make these and not start on my long DIY Christmas list, I have no idea. Thanks to Nate-O who took over cutting when my hand refused to cut anymore letters out.

We also made Mark Bittman's Cassoulet from a recent issue of Runner's World. It was really really good and easy. Click here for the recipe. We used a combo of Italian sausage and bone-in pork chops for the meat.

We kinda sorta watched the AMA's as well. I have a soft spot in my heart for these awards as my sister (whose name begins with an A), my brother (whose name begins with a M) and I (also an A) used to VIDEO our own AMA awards. They are so awkward and so funny. This year's AMAs were ok. I have to publicly confess my love of Lady Gaga.

It's not whatcha got, it's a-what you give

I have been very lucky to feel the generosity of people lately in a fun way. Example #1: Last weekend, my friend JC, used her $200 spa gift card that she won to treat the four of us to pedicures. I don't think i would have been that giving - i would have hoarded that thing for sure.

Example #2: Then last night I was lucky to get this fabric in the mail, which my friend AH won in a contest and decided to pass along to me:

It is from this fun etsy shop and is so incredibly soft!

Thank you ladies!

Thank you Tesla for the Title of this Post. ha ha ha. BLK that's for you.

My latest love: Bvlgari Soap

It is hardly a secret that I love free samples. I have posted before about them and I maintain a daily email "free sample of the day" list. Given this, I LOVE going to hotels for all of the mini products. We were lucky to have gotten a motherload of Korres products at our first hotel in NYC:

Nate asked for more lotion because, "my wife has dry skin" and they UNLOADED stuff on us! The scent of basil lemon body milk is a constant reminder of NYC.

Our second hotel had L'Occitane and Lather products. Both of which were very nice but those maids were not as forthcoming with dropping some extras off. :)

Our hotel in Philly did not have the greatest products. However, our friend BCK was staying at The Ritz and that dollface got us extras of her Bvlgari products. SCORE!

We just opened the bar of Bvlgari soap the other day and since then we have been raving about the it, particularly it's nice scent. Our whole bathroom smells wonderful because of that soap. I went online to check out how much it would be to purchase: $15.99 for a 1.5 oz bar! Looks like I will be savoring that soap until it's gone and then hitting up more people that stay at the Ritz!