Happy Spring!

I don’t think I’ve ever been so anxious for spring and warm weather. When stopping at Harris Teeter to pick up a few things for dinner, I decided to celebrate the day with a few bunches of fresh flowers…tulips and Gerber daisies! Let’s hope the weather continues to improve and stay gorgeous.

A Little Work...A Little Play!

As usual with the New Year, I'm in an organizing mood after the dreaded thought of de-Christmasing the house. Plus, we've been in our house for 8 months and are finding out how our routine works with where things are placed. I've already sorted through my closet, so this weekend we organized the garage. Everything finally has a place and there are different zones on our built in shelves for each specific task...grilling, yard/gardening, tools and sports equipment. While everything was drug out, we swept and used the blower in every nook and cranny to get it really clean. Let's see how long this lasts!

Once the garage was complete, we pulled down all the boxes for the Christmas decor from the attic. We collected all the decorations and organized them as well. We decided not to take down our tree since it's still perfectly fresh and we are still enjoying it so much. We'll officially finish de-decorating next weekend once we take down the tree...but for now we're those people!

Of course the weekend wasn't complete without a little play, especially with some of our new things we received for Christmas. Saturday, Ben's friend Chris, who was just accepted for a Beer Master program in Chicago and Munich, came over for a little celebration of helping Ben brew his next beer. My parents gave Ben a turkey fryer to use for brewing, so it was quite interesting to see the new process. I very much enjoyed my house not smelling of wort! If you're interested in his process, check out his blog: Jamm'n Brews. His next batch is a Double Scottish Ale!!



After a much need grocery shopping trip, I spent most of Saturday engrossed in Twilight...falling in love with Edward Cullen. And today we started off the rainy morning by making pancakes on our new griddle.

I also used my Williams-Sonoma Chopper and my Dutch Oven to make a big pot of chili. It's sitting on the stove cooking now, but it smells wonderful. Since Christmas Day, when we missed a chili dinner at Ben parents, he's been craving chili. We found a 5-star recipe from Cooking Light that includes a bottle of beer. We used Ben's home brewed Cinnamon Oatmeal Stout! I hope it tastes as delicious as it smells.

Smoke's Chili (adapted from Cooking Light)

2 teaspoons vegetable oil, divided
2 pounds lean, ground beef
3 cups chopped green bell pepper
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes, undrained and chopped
1 (12-ounce) can tomato paste
1 (12-ounce) bottle beer
2 (15-ounce) cans kidney beans, drained
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained
3/4 cup low-fat sour cream
3/4 cup (3 ounces) shredded reduced-fat Monterey Jack cheese

Heat 1/2 teaspoon oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat; add half of meat. Cook 10 minutes or until browned; remove from heat, and drain. Repeat procedure with 1/2 teaspoon oil and remaining meat; set aside.

Heat 1 teaspoon oil in pan over medium heat. Add bell pepper, onion, red pepper, and garlic; saute 8 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Add chili powder and cumin; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add meat, sugar, and next 5 ingredients (sugar through beer); bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 45 minutes. Add beans, and simmer, uncovered, an additional 40 minutes or until meat is tender. Serve with sour cream and cheese.

Note: To freeze, cool chili, and place in an airtight freezer container or a heavy-duty zip-top plastic bag. Freeze chili up to 3 months.

UPDATE!! The Chili was a success in our new DK Clay pasta blows from my parents! It had an interesting flavor that was very complex...lots of spice and a little sweet from the brown sugar. You couldn't really tell it was made with beer, but I guess knowing it's in there is good enough. It was very very filling and I'm going to freeze half of what we have left for dinner in a few weeks. I'm pretty sure this will become our standard chili recipe with a few modifications.

I'm off to spend the rest of the evening with Edward Cullen!

It's Almost Done...

Another project is almost complete. We finished painting the living room today and other than finding dark brown curtains and a rod, we're practicaly done. Eventually we'll add crown moulding, but first we need to finishing painting the rest of our rooms downstairs and let our checking account recover from all the Lowe's purchases in the past few months!

We started our day off with a bang...we ran 6.25 miles! It was so long, we needed a map to keep track of all of our turns through the neighborhoods and I found a great site...Google Pedometer. It's similar to MapMyRun, but allows you to print out your map with the distance and elevations. I ran one loop twice...the second time around I thought things looked familar and finally found my way. So, I tweaked my route again and my 6th mile came faster than I thought. It was a great run and I feel good for the 10k next Sunday. I finished today in 1:04:32 with an average pace of 10:14/mile and I burned almost 800 calories!! In just 6 months I've shaved off over 10 minutes on my 10k....yeah I'm feeling pretty awesome!

Other than running and painting we've been pretty lazy today. Watching football, cleaning up the house a little and working through the massive pile of laundry. One day I'll learn to do laundry on a regular basis...doing 3 weeks at a time is not fun!

Pictures of our almost complete living room: We're also getting rid of the large entertainment center...as soon as we can sell it on Craigslist! I love how it all came out. Ben definitely pushed me out of comfort zone with brighter colors and I'm so glad we took the plunge with the colors we chose.

Today I'm grateful for:

~Ben: being my running partner, helping me keep my pace and keeping me going through those tough hills.

~Our decor: I love decorating and I'm so thankful we have the means to make our home exactly how we want it.

~Popcorn: We had a bag for the perfect afternoon snack...so filling and easy. My dad makes a huge bowl almost every weekend for an afternoon snack, so a great memory!

A Frosty Fall Weekend!

Our weekends are always jam-packed and this weekend was no different! We definitely could have used an extra day to fit it all in and catch up on our sleep. Friday it finally turned chilly. I snuck away from work a few hours early...Ben fixed homemade pizza with sun-dried tomato chicken sausage, bell peppers and onions. We enjoyed pizza in front of the fire...our gas logs quickly heated up the downstairs so it was nice and cozy.

I was actually delighted to start Saturday morning's run being cold. It was a very nice break from the sweat-drenched runs for the past few months. I'm sure I'll be hating it in a few weeks. My run was fantastic...not my fastest, but a nice relaxed 5.16 miles at a 10:00 pace!

Saturday also included finally picking up our coffee table and end tables. We rushed home and unpacked them before heading to Kim & Jeff's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding in North Raleigh and we couldn't be happier for them. After an unfortunate event of losing their reception site one week before the wedding, they found a wonderful site in Wake Forest. Despite being a little chilly, we had a fabulous time. Dinner and the cake was amazing...the cake barely looked like cake!

Sunday we continued our hectic weekend heading to Charlotte for the Panther's game. It was me and the boys this time as we celebrated Shane's birthday. What a great game...we were so excited to see Jake and Company pull out an awesome win. With this crowd...good beer is always plenty. Fun fact: Carolina Beer introduced the Red, Wheat and Blue beer this year at the Panther's game and they haven't lost a home game yet. You know we helped continue that tradition at the game!

Happy Fall Ya'll

This past few days have a been a perfect fall weekend...minus my nasty cold! I hate being sick on the weekends, but I guess it's better than suffering at work. And taking a few days off right now is not an option! I just wish I could have enjoyed the beautiful weekend more...there was no running this weekend.

Before I started feeling so bad, my mom and I enjoyed an evening being serenade'd by Michael Buble. I had no idea how funny and charming he was! She spent the night with us and after a few cups of coffee to get us going, we headed out to Lowe's. She offered to help me paint our new adirondack chairs from Kim & Stephen. We decided on "Piano Brown" for the color and the paint went on pretty fast. I'm so pleased with the color and how it complements the front porch.



While we were busy painting, Ben aerated the lawn and applied some weed and feed. Hopefully this will get our lack of a yard off in the right direction.

Since I was a little under the weather, we spent the rest of the weekend being lazy and watching football in between mulitple naps. Late Sunday afternoon I was itching to get off the couch, so we ran a few errands (mainly to get more cold medicine and Shower Soothers) and picked out our pumpkins. Ben wants to carve them, but I'd love to keep them as our front porch decor through Thanksgiving. We'll probably end up carving them and buying more!

The Master Bedroom

While almost all of our boxes are unpacked (over 2 months later), we've slowing been completing decorating. Getting rid of the college look, we've finally almost finished our master bedroom. Two of the last items on our list to purchase were pictures for over the bed and something for the corner near the dresser and nightstand. After months of hunting we finally found the pictures. I never knew shopping for pictures would be so difficult, but finding the right color, frame, size and overall look was pretty challenging.

At first we thought we were going for a beach/seashell theme. After buying to pictures today it seems to more nature with shells, trees, flowers, etc. We've yet to find something for the corner, but have finally narrowed our search to a vase with some woodsy branches for height. Either way we enjoy it and it's by far our best decorated room.

We put our pictures on Rate My Space, so we'll see how well we fair with the critics over there. I guess all that matters is we enjoy our bedroom and are proud of it.