Snow Day with a side of ice

Friday brought ice and snow to our little island. Chris and I both worked from home, and watched the white stuff fall all day.

This little guy spent most of the day perched on our balcony hiding out from the precipitation. He was pretty cute. We figured he might have come from a nest in the bush across the street because he would fly back down to it every once in a while.

I celebrated with hot chocolate. And, I wore my athletic wear with reflectors just in case someone needed to find me or reflect light off of me.

Chris was home too!

Look at all the snow! Real live snow.

Pretty neighborhood.
Grace spent most of her day like this.

But Chris took her out for a while, and I braved the cold too.

Friday was a nice little winter treat. That evening we braved the snow with our neighbors, and traveled to the pizza joint on the island. It was trivia night and we won 2nd place!

They're Here!

After much ado, about nothing, they are here. And we are very happy. We (I) searched and searched for bedside tables, as illustrated here and here. I had an idea that I wanted mirrored pieces; however, I don't know if I ever convinced Chris.

Yesterday we went shopping for him to look at some I had found. We bought the first ones! We were so fortunate that my grandparents had given us some spending money as a housewarming present, and we ear-marked it for bedside tables.

When we decided to buy the first ones I showed him, it happened that we were driving my car...whoops! AND, the Pier 1 we went to only had one of them. The Pier 1 about 20 miles away had another one. Whoops!

So after Chris maneuvering some boxes, removing some packaging and a few grunts, we (he) managed to get two bedsides tables into to Big V.  I did help him get them up the stairs.

And here they are! The photos are not the best because the room doesn't allow me to get far enough for a straight-on shot. But you can get the feeling. 

What's nice is that although they look shiny in this next photo, they actually have an antiqued finish so they don't look that shiny.

This is Chris' side, and yes, I promise that little bitty gold lamp is TEMPORARY. Because of course, now we needs lamps! It's never ending ;)

 

This is the view from the hallway. I think another reason the mirrored finish works is because you never really see both side tables at the same time, so it's not overwhelming.

We are very happy, and I have some place to put my glass of water, phone and magazines...and now on to the lamps!!

Porter got a little jealous I wasn't taking pictures of him, and he stretched up on my leg to say hello.

Hello!

Do you have a favorite beef recipe?

Everybody seems to have a favorite way to cook beef. And is there any way that's really bad? But do you know THE BEST way? Begin with entirely grass-fed beef. Not grass-fed-for-a-little-bit-until-we-put-them-on-corn, but entirely grass-fed beef.

If you have a beef recipe that you want to share, enter in the marxfood.com contest. I am very excited that I am one of the judges, and although you will not hold favor because you read my blog, you could win a 10-pound sampler with the winning recipe. Share, share, share! We will all benefit.

Beach time!

We are so lucky that each year we travel to SeaSide, FL,  the week after Christmas with my family. It's so needed after the holiday rush. We usually take more beach photos, but the weather was a pretty darn cold. We got one good beach day, so here are a few shots.

We are always good at the self portrait. It's kind of our thing.

Katie and me at sunset.

This is my cold smile, but we look cute!

This is the best one of us, and I love the sky and color!

The fam.

It's Christmas!!

On Christmas, we woke up early, ate sausage and cream cheese rolls and opened presents. Yeah!

Opening presents:

Every year on Christmas, we give Grace one of those fabric squeaking toys. We are fully prepared for the fact that she will and always tears the squeaker out in 10 minutes, if that, and pulls all of the stuffing out, just minutes later.

Here's a video of this year's toy. Unfortunately, we caught her on tape a little bit after she ran circles in the backyard as fast as she could filled with the joy of the hunt.

At Home Christmas Eve

So this was our first Christmas in our new house, and we hosted Chris' family, including his folks, sister and her son Bryce. Here are some photos from our extravaganza. Please make it noted that I made a sweet potato soufflé, a vegetable casserole, and a chocolate pecan pie. I had some professional help with the crescent rolls and Honey Baked Ham. I thought everything was great, and I really enjoyed Christmas in our new house.

Here I am on Christmas Eve cooking. I really enjoyed getting most of it done beforehand, and so I could really enjoy Christmas.

Please forgive that neither of us has on our makeup, but we were in cooking mode. Here is my mother-in-law and me.

After I had cooked on Christmas Eve, and we were all hanging out, the lights went out. All the lights. On the entire island. Ummmm, not good. I checked with MLGW and 18 areas were affected, including something like 1800 customers. Oh dear. Thankfully, we pulled out the candelabra and had a very nice, romantic evening!

The Ghost Chili Vodka experiment

I am still working through my great box of goodies from Marx Foods Blog that I won, and one of the packets included Ghost Chilies. I capitalize it because they are the hottest chilies in THE WORLD. Seriously, in the entire world!

So I looked back on MarxFoods.com, and they made vodka with their ghost chilies. I thought, why not? And even better, I will give it as gifts in case it's totally toxic or gross tasting. At least it's unique!

You can see the original recipe here.

Here are my instruments:

The packet of THE HOTTEST CHILIES IN THE WORLD!

Here I am preparing for battle. Yes, I wore gloves. They are THE HOTTEST CHILIES IN THE WORLD, PEOPLE!

I was having a little reservations.

It's so little to be so hot. Kind of like me.

Okay, I'm ready and excited about it. Let's do it!

There it is. Floating in the bottle. It take one ghost chili per liter of vodka.

I'm sorry to say that I didn't even remember to take a photo of the final product, but it was pretty. The pepper gave the vodka a nice red color, and I took the pepper out after 2 days, per the recipe.

Thanks again, MarxFood.com!