Saturday, March 24, 2012

Weekend with the Family

John's family came in from Orlando last weekend. I kind of forgot that it was St. Patrick's day and that we would be dealing with the craziness that brings. Luckily we were able to stay out of most of it. I made sure we weren't going to be any where near the parade or so I thought, apparently there was a little mini parade on our street!
I was really concerned with taking the family around the city because pretty much everyone starts drinking at 9am on St. Patrick's day. We didn't see anything too bad but just to let you know how nuts the city gets for St. Patrick's day, there was a guy walking around with a goat!
We had a jam packed weekend which is always fun! Saturday we went to the Tenement museum which is a guided tour that takes you through what it would have been like to live in the late 1800's and early 1900's in NYC. They have several different tours and John and I have done quite a few of them, they are always really neat.

Saturday night we all went to see Broadway shows. Some of us saw "Death of a Salesman" with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and then the others saw "How to Succeed in Business" with Nick Jonas. The shows were great and I think everyone enjoyed what they saw :)

We had beautiful weather all weekend so on Sunday we got sandwiches from Eisenberg's, one of the famous delis in NY and took them to the High Line park for a picnic.
John and I are big fans of the High Line but we hadn't been in a while. It was a little barren since most of the plants get cut back for the winter but they were starting to come back, can't wait to go back again this summer :)
The last night everyone was in town we went to try S'mac which is a restaurant that only serves macaroni and cheese! Anna, John's sister saw it on the travel channel or food network and so we had to try it. Glad we did because it was awesome!!! John and I shared the sampler which was eight different kinds of mac-n-cheese. They ranged from the standard 4-cheese to Cajun to one that even had figs!
Its always fun to host friends and family and play tour guide, it gives us a chance to show off our favorite places and even learn about new ones :)

Friday, March 16, 2012

The Orchid Show

Last weekend John and I went to the orchid show at the NY Botanical Garden and it was so much fun! It was a special event on Saturday night so they had music and drinks in the conservatory for the show.
The gardens are in the Bronx so it was a bit of an adventure to get up there, but totally worth it, there were flowers everywhere!
The orchids were gorgeous and there were tons of varieties, lots of which I had never seen before.
 Off topic there was a gardenia tree. I've never seen a gardenia so big and it smelled amazing!!!
Hanging out with John and surrounded by flowers, I was a happy girl :)
 We even took an orchid home. John picked this one out, its called a "Dancing Lady" orchid because the flowers look like ladies with big skirts.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Valentine's Day Recap

For Valentine's Day I threw my annual cookie decorating party. This is the third year I've done this and even though its a lot of work to make so many cookies it is always lots of fun! I wanted to change up my usual party food and try some new things so I made deviled eggs and caprese skewers. The deviled eggs you've seen before, they're a favorite for John and I, but they're new to the party rotation. My usual party food consists of very southern style appetizers, you know, anything made with Rotel :)
 I also did something new with the cookie dough this year, I dyed some of it pink :)
The infamous cake pops also made an appearance at the party. A friend of mine was dying to make these so we gave it another shot, we made them previously for a baby shower and they weren't so successful. I'm not sure they were so successful this time either, I think I'm ready to give up on cake pops, just not my thing.
Unfortunately cupcakes didn't seem to be my thing this year either! I make strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese icing all the time, they are my absolute favorite. I have been baking for probably the better part of my life and I have NEVER seen frosting melt off a cupcake! Apparently my apartment was so hot and or humid that the frosting would not stay on the cupcakes :(
Here's what my kitchen looked like after the party, also a bit of disaster but fortunately Rosie was happy to help clean up :)
 For the actual day, John and I had a very nice dinner at home :)
I made pesto for the first time, it was pretty simple but I'm not sure I'm the biggest fan, I think I like my pasta a little saucier :) We also had strawberry salad, deviled eggs, bread and John's newest fave, dill butter. We ended the evening with chocolate covered strawberries, so yummy!

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Catching Up

Ok, so I guess I took a break for Christmas and never really came back. Part of my absence is because I got an Ipad for Christmas and haven't been using my laptop since. The drawback there is that I can't get pictures directly from my camera on to my Ipad to blog. Anyway, here are some of the highlights from the past couple of months...

Before Christmas we took John's brother and sister-in-law to Carnegie Hall to see Handel's Messiah, it was a really neat experience!
For Christmas we went down to AR for probably the longest we've been since we moved to NY, I think it was almost two weeks!
Rosie even got to go down with us since we were going for such a long time. She did really great on the flight and loved getting to play with all of her cousins :)
John got an antique gun for Christmas from his grandfather and we got to do a little shooting!
After the excitement of Christmas there hasn't been much going on but I've been loving my latest knitting project :)