The Perfect Gifts

Some of my favorite things in life are cooking food, eating food, and spending time with friends, family, and my Hubbie.  So to receive two big gifts this Christmas that involved all those things was amazing.  My family bought us an incredible grill (which comes with an insertable pizza stone!!)

and Russ got me a fire pit!

I'd also like to give a little shout out to the spice rack and the bbq sauce gifts

I may not have pictures of you but you are also awesome.

I couldn't wait to start making some memories with these awesome gifts!  Christmas evening Russ built up a fire and we had hotdogs with cheese (of course) on a "bun" of my homemade herb bread.  The best hotdogs I've ever eaten! Seriously! 

Then SMOREs!! I forgot how rich smores can be.  Russ and I had one each, thats all we could handle.  Clearly we wont be entering any eating competitions any time soon.  I did find a little tummy space to eat a couple burnt marshmallows after though MmmMmmm.

This week we had over two old friends of mine Josh and Jason, and we tested out the grill.  It was Amazing! I love grilling!  We had bbq chicken (with the delicious bbq sauce my little brother got me), asparagus, and my favorite: grilled zucchini!  It tasted so good we had no leftovers.

I can't wait to try some pizza on the grill!!

  

Birthday Surprise!!!

A Lovely Birthday Trip to St. Augustine

My husband is wonderful.  I’m lucky because he truly listens and remembers when I say I like something.  He is a master at making my gifts very personal, he knows me well.  He makes me feel like I am the only important person in the world, that I am something special.

He loves surprises, so of course that would be an element to his birthday gift to me.  To make an elaborate plan short, for the sake of this post, I’ll give you the abridged version:

He planned a wonderful trip to St. Augustine for my Birthday.  I got off work early the day before my birthday. I originally thought he may have something planned, but we did nothing when I got home, sat around and watched King of Queens.  I’m sure this was to add to the element of surprise, so sneaky he is.  He made up some excuse (lie) that his sister was sending us a gift, that he saw the mailman, and to go check to see if the package came.  I’m gullible so I believed him of course.  I went to the mailbox and he had placed a letter to me inviting me to a bed and breakfast in St. Augustine for a Birthday trip! I LOVE Bed and Breakfasts!

I came back inside and he had bought my favorite flavor cupcakes, from my favorite cupcake shop.  I blew out the candles, ate a few bites... and he informed me that I had 20 min to pack!

(of course I forgot my toothbrush, classic)

On to St. Augustine and a cute little B&B

  

Dinner reservations, the bread with pesto and balsamic was amazing, almost equally amazing were the light up menus.

..and on to the lights.  St. Augustine has Incredible lights everywhere.  I loved it so much.  We just walked around for an hour taking it all in.

  

 

  

On the way back we stopped at an Irish Pub.  Lucky for us it was open mic night.  We stayed for a bit and listened to the guys play, they were awesome.  A perfect end to the day!

 

 

 

The next day, after a lovely B&B breakfast, we did some more site seeing and toured the fort.  After walking around a bit another surprise, we were just about to head home when I bumped into my family.  Russ arranged for them to meet up with us early in St. Augustine, what a thoughtful husband.  They were originally supposed to drive from Virginia to our house in Jacksonville later that day, but they left at midnight so that they could come surprise me and share the St. Augustine experience.  It was wonderful to see them and walk around, then we ate Pizza, awesome pizza!  A great way to wrap up the trip!

Tacky Christmas.. if there was a winner.. we WON

Go BIG or go Home

thats how Russ and I felt about gearing up for our friend's Tacky Christmas Party.

A trip to the thrift store... Walmart.. Target.. and Michaels

...and 2 battery powered Christmas light sets later. we were all set.

Santa would be proud!

I caught the Craft Bug... Thank you Pinterest

I am OBSESSED with Pinterest!

If you aren't on it you are missing out, big time.  There are such great ideas and do it yourself projects.  My current mini project was to make a weekly menu and grocery list board for the fridge.  So easy and so cute.  If there is one thing I really enjoy doing, other than cooking, its organizing!  This project was right up my alley.

The Menu template I created and a Picture Frame from Michael's

(thank you buy one get one free sale)

  

Added some magnetic strips to the back

Easy Peezy.  Our Menu on the fridge.

Now all I needed to do was take out the dry erase markers and get organizing.

The Lemon Tree: We have Fruit!!!

One of my favorite things about the house were in now is the Lemon Tree that came with it.   This tiny little tree had little tiny lemons just forming when we first moved in. 

Were those lemons content being tiny and green? NO SIR! not my Lemons.  These lemons are destined for greatness, to be the size of grapefruits, to weight down the limbs of that tiny little tree and later turn into delicious lemon cookies, lemon bars, lemon meringue pie... and who knows, maybe, some lemonade.

The Little Tree

 

My First Lemon Crop

 Yes, I too might not believe this was a lemon, its just too big.  Its the same size as a grapefruit!  In fact I didn't believe they were lemons the first time I picked one off the tree.  I cut it open and Yes, 100% Lemon and 100% Delicious.