Easter

With photos!

So this Easter was unlike any other for a few reasons:
1. Now that I've fortunately/unfortunately graduated college and work for a non-corporate company, I had to work on Good Friday for the first time in my entire life. Tragic? Very.
2. I also had to work Easter Monday for the first time in my long 23 years of living.
3. That meant it was a normal weekend and, therefore, short for a holiday weekend, so Brian's family graced us with their presence to share the holiday with us down here!

As this was my first time hosting a holiday at our place, I was a bit out of my element. I'm not particularly fond of holiday meals...you know: turkey, stuffing, gravy, the whole shabang...and it is for this very reason that I have learned to hate where my birthday lies, smack dab over Thanksgiving! But that's for another post when the time comes.

Anyway, Brian's work gave him a Turkey as his Christmas "bonus" and seeing how I was more than super duper excited about that, it's been sitting in the bottom of our deep freeze ever since. Deep down I was hoping we'd forget about it and it'd get incredibly freezer burned and we'd have to throw it away, but since we were hosting Easter, it came in handy to help keep costs down. So the search began for a yummy in our tummies turkey-on-the-grill recipe. I found one through my beloved site www.allrecipes.com that I gave the a-ok for since it had 5 stars, lots of reviews and over 52,000 people saved the recipe! So we made the turkey and I everyone loved it (even our friend Jeremy who enjoyed some leftovers!) and I thought it was just ok.

Here was the Easter "Dinner" (we ate at about 3pm on Saturday afternoon) meal:

• Turkey - stuffed with all its goodies and drenched in a white wine
• Garlic Mashed Potatoes with skin on and real garlic
• Gravy - Brian was persistent about having gravy & Janet (Brian's mom) miraculously pulled it off by making it with the leftover turkey juices (we didn't think they'd be good since there was a lot of white wine)
• Green Bean Casserole - that has no cream of mushroom soup (I hate mushrooms!!)
• Spinach and Strawberry Salad - which was soooooo yummy!!! except when I make this again, I will use about half the liquids.
• Grape and Cream Cheese Salad - we made up a recipe and also added strawberries to it and sprinkled it with turbinado sugar and it was sooooo yummy! I had something very similar to it at a wild game feed through church that I was in love with!
• Pink Salad? - not sure what Alan (Brian's brother calls it) but it's just basically whipped cream with jello or strawberries or other fruit? I'm not sure since I didn't get a chance to eat any of it.
• A Blush wine
• Cheesecake Easter Baskets - Janet made these for dessert. In a cupcake liner: wafer, cheesecake recipe and bake. Then top with coconut died green as grass (1 drop of green food coloring in a bag and shake around) with jelly beans on top and licorice as the basket's handle!
• Carmel and Cinnamon Rolls (Easter Sunday morning)-  my grandma's famous caramel rolls that we ALWAYS have at her house and I finally got her to give me the recipe! She made up the caramel recipe for them and it AMAZING! Thanks again grandma! I also use her rolls recipes to make cinnamon rolls that I then use a dear friend's mom's Christmas cookie's buttercream frosting recipe as the frosting for the cinnamon rolls....sooooo yummy!

The Easter Bunny came!

The wreath I made used as a centerpiece!

Brian's first turkey! and his dad, Jim, helping to pour out the juices for gravy.

Limited view of the spread

Dessert - cheesecake baskets! (minus the licorice handles)

Grandma's super yummy caramel rolls recipe (she made up the caramel recipe! soooooo sinfully delicious!)

Unproductive

WARNING: this is long, but it does have a picture :)

So this whole least week I've been, well, lazy and selfish...except I prefer to call it unproductive. Seriously though, it's been bad. I blame it on the funk I've been in, which I blame on the weather because I'm being selfish and nothing is my fault :) These cloudy, rainy, sun-don't-shine days are terrible. How can people stand living in places where the sun doesn't shine for weeks at a time?? It was only a couple days since I last saw the sun and I was going CrAzY (yup, bringing back the ol' 5th-grade-make-every-other-letter-a-different-size cRaZE!!)

Ok, all silliness aside, I've also been a bad wife :S Not mean, just a little snippy and highly unhelpful. I don't want to cook, I don't want to clean, I don't want to think and I haven't even wanted to talk these last few days, which is soooooo not like me!! Aahh! I was driving myself crazy, and I can't imagine how poor Brian was feeling. So needless to say, we had breakfast for supper last night (that Brian took 100% care of, which happens often since we split meals about 50/50 because he thankfully likes to cook!) and Monday night we had some super awesome oven-baked tilapia (not) - that I will talk about in a minute. And just to give you an idea of my snippiness (totally not a word, which will happen often so don't get hung up on them), I'll tell you this little story: this morning Brian had to go to work at 7:30, which is 30 minutes earlier than normal and I never even bothered to ask why he was going into work early. I absolutely didn't care why he was going in earlier than normal. When 6:50 rolled around, I made him get out of bed (by pretty being annoying (some would call it nagging)) because I told him I didn't want him to fall back asleep and be late for work, but secretly my intentions were I wanted him to get up NOW so I could get a solid 40 minutes of sleep in before I had to wake up (see how selfish that was?) He got up and showered and came back into the room to get dressed like he always does, except this time I swear he was making exceptionally more noise than normal. Whether or not he was, doesn't matter, I proceeded to be rude. In a very groggy and irritable tone I said, "Why are you making so much noise?!" and I said with a lot of edge and annoyance in my voice, "why on earth are you going to work this early anyway?!" However, I didn't really care why he was going into work early and I immediately fell back asleep to the soothing sound of his voice telling me why he was going to work. I only said the last remark as rudely as possible to let him know I didn't appreciate him being up this early nor did I appreciate his noise. I was just being selfish. See my husband is so gracious and considerate that he gets ready every single morning in the complete dark as to not wake me (I don't have to be to work until 9 so I sleep in later than him). I should have been nicer to him this morning. He is a far better person than me.

Anyhow this day ended with the sun finally breaking through the clouds late afternoon to make for a b-e-a-utiful day! I came home and made leftovers, washed dishes, cleaned the kitchen, made a menu for our Easter meal (Brian's family is coming and this is my first time having to make a holiday meal...eeek!), made a shopping list so I can get groceries and other supplies tomorrow, cleaned the dinning room/living room and finished a graduation announcement for the most amazing, kind-hearted graduating senior ever (one of my best friend's cousins)! What a night! I sure accomplished a lot!

On to our tilapia. We had some thawed tilapia in the fridge that we needed to do something with before it spoiled. We had the brilliant idea of coating it and baking so we could enjoy some healthy, crispy fish. So we rolled it in eggs and coated it in crushed crackers with seafood seasoning, lemon pepper and pepper and we topped it off with chunks of freshly chopped garlic and a dash of lemon juice. The meal was made complete by steamed vegetables and glass of wine...mmm! It smelled and looked amazing so one would think it tasted amazing...wrong! It was not so yummy at all! The fish was waaaaaaaay too salty and the only "salt" on it was garlic! We've made this plenty of times before and it never tasted nasty, and the only difference was the seafood seasoning so I'm blaming that. We'll have to test that seasoning out again before chucking it, but seriously, it was salty!

Anyway, I had more for tonight, but since it's so late, I'm saving that for another day (hopefully tomorrow!) Good night world :)

'Tis the Season for...

Easter!! Yup, it's Easter time and I'm pretty excited about one specific aspect of it, but before I get into that I should probably share a little about this blog. Big news: I'm dabbling into the blogging world full-speed with complete hesitance. I'm not sure how this is going to go and honestly don't know what to expect of it, so for the few (if any) followers, please don't expect much :) Hopefully this blog is going to be a conglomeration of the trials and tribulations (okay, so maybe not quite that dramatic!), joys and day to day happenings of our lives – probably mainly only mine! I also feel it's important to note that I will not be proof-reading these posts, because that's just how I am, so hopefully they make sense. If not, it's up to you to interpret! Anyhow, enough of me trying to justify this blog, on to the post...

So the object of my affection right now is my wreath! That's right. I made an Easter wreath. Full of purply goodness with hints of green and white to balance it out perfectly. Yup. It's perfect. Now obviously our Savior's death and resurrection is THE MOST important part of Easter; we wouldn't even have Easter if it wasn't for Him! Not to belittle any of that by this post, but I am just super duper excited about my wreath. Two things made me decide to make it: 

1. Our near and dear (that's my affectionate term for them lately) friends Rachel and Jeremy had a LOVELY holiday wreath that Rachel made hanging up in their apartment during the Christmas season. I was in love with it and was in aw at the simplicity of it. I had often thought about making one, but had hesitations until I saw hers. It was beautiful!

2. Our neighbors (who consequently happen to be our friend's parents!) have a wreath hanging on their front door that I am in love with. I am not sure if Jo made it, had someone make it for her or bought it. Regardless, it's fabulous and I wanted one. Have to keep up with the Joneses, right?

I feel like it's important to note that the viney wreath was purchased for $3 at Wal-Mart and the flowers were $9 at Dollar Tree. So simple :) 

Enjoy my beloved new prized possession and I hope you feel a little inspired as well!

The whole wreath

Up-close details

Hanging up outside our house...I love it!