It's About Time I Show Back Up!

Wow. I am failing miserably on consistently posting lately, huh? I am so sorry for all you faithful readers who keep checking up on the blog to find nothing new!! I will try to work on this:)

A few weekends ago Andrew and I flew home to Florida for a childhood friend's wedding and a nice visit with friends and family. Here's a recap of the weekend:

Coffee date with Courtney, obviously. Lunch date with Becka, of course. Play some games with the little sister, couldn't skip that. Chat with Dad. Shop with Mom. Visit the big bro's abode to see what new changes have been made since my previous visit. Catch some rays (UV, not TBay DRays--I know, they're not the Devil Rays anymore). Bike ride to grandma's. Visit with extended family. Visit a lake to find an alligator for Andrew--success rate: 3 for 3 (Welcome to Florida). Go out to eat with family. Stop by TI to see Erin. Then rush back to work Monday morning and say goodbye to vacation.

So on this trip my dad and I planned to go out to eat. He loves sushi. I love Indian. Andrew, the tie breaker, loves sushi, tolerates Indian. Sushi it was!

This was my first time eating sushi. And by eating, I really mean cringing my nose and being really weirded out by it. My dad loves sushi and always suggests we get it, I finally caved.

This is me before tasting it. I was remarkably optimistic.














This is me after dissecting it a bit and taking a small bite. I mutilated it so much I had to switch to a fork.















Lastly, this is me trying to convince myself to eat the rest of it. I don't think I'm a sushi gal. Too much stuff going on. Keep it simple. I don't do condiments. I don't do multi-textures. Basically, I don't do sushi. Needless to say, it'll be a while before I muster up the courage to delve back into the luxurious world of sushi, but nevertheless, I tried something new!















Andrew and Dad loved it. Andrew said it was probably the best sushi he'd ever had! So I guess if I was going to try sushi, it's a good thing it was at least 1st rate sushi!:)













This is my little sister Kendall. She is growing so fast! Sadly for me she's only 11 and almost as tall as me!! I guess she'll be able to call me "Shrimp" or "Shorty" some day soon:)




















Speaking of growing up. Getting older is so funny. Not only do I find myself meeting teenagers and thinking that dreaded phrase I hated hearing as a kid, "I remember when you were a baby!" But friends I met in middle school are now friends I've had for over 12 years.

One of these friends, Nick, got married last weekend. It's funny how you reflect on past "chapters" of life when someone opens a new one. My mom and I talked about remembering when I used to go bowling with him in 7th grade and she would drop me off at his old house. Or when he and I took a road trip in college to Alabama and I ran over an armadillo with his car. Or when he sent me a care package in college with toothpaste, deodorant, and a chocolate eclair donut that arrived looking more like roadkill than a chocolate treat (let alone anything edible)!

Or the year we dressed up like farmers for Halloween at youth group. Nick hid in the back of the picture because the pants he got from the thrift store (we all got our outfits there) were so tight that he never wanted a photo like that to show up and haunt him.













Or when we would meet up at Applebees on Christmas breaks when everyone would come home from college.















And now he's married! Time sure flies!















It was a beautiful wedding and reception at the Tradewinds Resort in St. Pete.















Amazingly, I grew up in Florida and attended many weddings in Florida, yet this was my first beach wedding!















Since Nick is a neighbor my mom was also invited to the wedding. It was so fun having her there.














Andrew and I before the reception. Or should I call him Rico Suave? At one point in the night we were in the reception tent and sitting at our table. My mom pointed out that it was really raining hard outside and you could hear it pounding on the tent roof. Rico Suave leaned towards me and whispered softly, "Oh, is that what that is? I thought it was just my heart racing." To which my mom, who overheard and I, who couldn't take him seriously looked at each other and died laughing. It was a classic Andrew moment.



Lastly, the late night rave in Ybor City. Okay, we were just at the reception. But those lights do look pretty psychedelic in this pic.

A Princess' Tale

Hello Friends. Sorry I've gone MIA again. I have had a big deadline at work and then I scooted on home to Florida for the weekend. I'm home hanging out with family and attending a friend's wedding. More details to come on my adventures in Florida, but here's a little thought for the day:

My weekend sorta feels like I'm in a movie with a similar premise to Princess Diary, but more extreme. Now don't get me wrong, I really like my apartment and stuff in Providence, but we'll Studio 23 just can't compare with a real grown up's place (like my mom's). I feel as though I just found out that I'm not actually a homeless orphan, but the daughter of the queen. I am currently living the life of luxury: Amazing water pressure. Opening a fridge with lots of food. Sleeping on the most comfy bed fit for a queen. Walking on soft cushioned carpet under my toes. Driving on leather seats with power door locks. Watching cable TV on a huge plasma, no less. Air conditioning in the house and the car. 10 ESPNs (for Andrew, of course). Everything is amazing! I feel so spoiled by simple luxuries I used to take for granted.

But before I waste too much of my pampering time on the computer, I've got to go and enjoy the riches awaiting me in the carpeted living room with palm trees and 90 degree weather peeking in the windows:)

Adios friends! I'll be back soon.

Our Nation's Capitol

Andrew and I made a little trip to D.C. a couple weekends ago to visit friends of mine from college and get out of Rhode Island for a weekend. Andrew hadn't been to D.C. since he was a kid so he was really excited to see the sights, the tourist attractions, and the urban neighborhoods. Here is a brief review of the weekend shenanigans:

The U.S. Capitol, a few blocks from Kelli's 'hood. Did I mention that Kelli lives in one of the most adorable neighborhoods in the U.S.? "The Hill" is absolutely gorgeous! Andrew and I loved it.





















Washington Monument. The mall is pretty amazing, albeit a bit too touristy for me.





















Me & the Prez. No we didn't actually get to see the president, but we did get to see two motorcades of important people! That's right, we were feet away from important people, we assume, twice!














We're not sure who they were because it all happens in a blur. Motorcycles fly down the street, wave their arms to get all traffic to stop, zoom forward to the next intersection and continue. A few more motorcycles or police cars come through, blaring their sirens and causing a diversion. Next, a string of about 5 black and gray SUVs fly by and then it's all over and you're left spinning around in a cloud of dust.
Exhibit A. Two black SUVs blowing by us. Andrew got a very nasty glare for snapping this photo. It must be understood that you don't photograph this event. Don't know. We were tourists 0:)














Next we ate lunch at a local place, The Breadline, that I had found on the Internet with great reviews. It was not a touristy place so we ate lunch with lots of local DC workers in suits! We felt pretty urban and proud. Well, minus the whole plaid shorts and polo get ups that made us stand out and scream, tourists!

After a brief refresher, we headed down the mall toward the monuments and memorials. I love seeing veterans at the memorials. The picture below is of a family with three generations--grandchildren, parents, and grandpa. They were pushing their grandfather in a wheelchair, decked out in WWII veteran gear, and posing for pictures with the WWII memorial in the background. I can only imagine the stories he's shared with them and the significance the memorial holds in his heart. How cool.













Next stop: Jefferson Memorial.






















On our way we stopped at a park to watch the plans land at Reagan Airport. Every time we saw a green helicopter fly by we were convinced it was Marine One. Below is a brief clip of our siesta:


For some reason, Andrew and I made an ambitious plan to do DC in a day. This was our walking route:

View Larger Map

This was us at the end of the day, bleeding blisters and all. It wasn't until we got back to Rhode Island that we mapped it out and realized that we walked 10.3 miles that day!! Ouch, ouch on the feet!
















No time to rest, the party will go on! Next stop, dinner with friends! We went out to dinner on Friday night with Kelli and her fiance Ken, Caroline and her boyfriend Shane, and Andrew and I in downtown D.C. Have I mentioned yet that D.C. is a pretty rockin' town?! It is. It's just great. Fun tourist attractions, national monuments, important people, the hope diamond, Abe, beautiful neighborhoods, great restaurants, and a pretty hip downtown. Dinner was great, although a Friday night dinner after everyone has worked all week was a little rough. I think we were already ready to fall asleep at the table:( BUT it's okay. We will take a rain check, rest up, and get ready for a party in June at Kelli's wedding.


Day #2: Neighborhood day. Visit Georgetown, Dupont Circle, and Kalorama. I really didn't think my body would be able to walk 5 more steps that day.

We started the day by taking the metro from one great neighborhood (The Hill) to another (Georgetown). Metro destination: Foggy Bottom. Yep, that's right, the metro stop is named, Foggy Bottom. It never gets old. It kicks me back to 3rd grade every time I read it or say it.

First stop, an amazing place I ate at before in Georgetown, La Madeleine. I don't do too well on an empty stomach so starting with a little food was imperative. And sitting. That was imperative as well.

Next stop, walk up and down M Street. What incredible facade!


















Andrew got a Passport to National Parks as a kid, so we couldn't resist stopping at the Old Stone House to get a NPS stamp for his sweet little passport. Fortunately for us the Old Stone House gave us much more than we bargained for. We got to wander around the 18th Century dwelling and see period relics of furniture, kitchenware, etc. Furthermore, there was a cute little garden in back with many people lounging around relaxing. The perfect invitation for our beat up feet and sore legs! In this garden were amazing, beautiful white flowers the size of your head!














Did I mention that spring hadn't arrived yet in Rhode Island and that DC was an absolute treat?! Andrew seen below enjoying a break for his feet, the sweet scent of pollen, the luxury of UV rays, and the proximity to the giant white flowers.




















Next stop--JFK's house. We saw a website that listed all of his prior residences, many of which were in Georgetown. This was the one he lived in last before the white house. For those of you who don't know, for some unknown reason, he is my absolute favorite past president. By a lot.





















On our way out of dodge and in search of water (the temp was in the 90s) we saw a little league game in a field. Being exhausted, with sad little feet we welcomed another opportunity to sit. We lay in the grass, further increasing our sunburns from the previous day and watched the little kids play ball. It was cute, we weren't sure how the structure was set up, but one team definitely had less kids so some kids from one team played in the field for both teams. It's so nice at that stage before sports become too territorial or competitive.














Further down our walk we past this beautiful home. Tulips, a red door, and a poodle flag. What more could you want for the American Dream?




















Unfortunately our brief stint with D.C. had to come to end. We went to church at Capitol Hill Baptist and then hit the road.

Little did we know the 7-hour drive would be 11 treacherous hours. Andrew would not be as happy if he knew the gloom that awaited us. This picture was taken to confirm our long sought after goal of taste-testing Starbucks vs. Dunkin' Donuts. That may sound crazy to some of you, but it's true. People in Rhode Island are obsessed with Dunkin' Donuts. I'd say there are probably 2 people for every one DD. They are everywhere!! Needless to say they love their DD fiercely. It's the only place to get coffee.

I've also noticed a slight shift in my allegiance. DD is less bitter, I believe. So we put them to the test. We have talked about this test for months trying to figure out when we'd be in the same town and when we could find a DD near a Starbucks. We found a corner in Shane's (Caroline's man) neighborhood and got in line at both!

Well, as was the theme of this day, both coffees let us down. They were both gross. Neither of which we'd recommend getting again. I think the people were just in a hurry and we couldn't figure out if they were comparable or not. Is an ice mocha the same thing as a ice latte mocha swirl? Who knows. All we know is that we have to do a re-do. Next time with plain coffee, plus cream and sugar to decide which coffee--the main base of these fru-fru drinks--is best.

That about sums up the weekend. A lot of walking, 90 degree temps, beautiful sights, great friends, touristy trips, lots of sitting! Oh, and don't believe AAA or Google maps that tell you it's between 6.5 and 7.5 hours from Providence to DC. Wrong! It took over 8 to get down and 11 to get back. Yuck!

Donut Day

A co-worker of mine had a birthday party this weekend with a Betty Crocker theme. She is anything but ordinary and her party proved to be so as well. Some of you may or may not be aware of the 1971 Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library--avocado green box, 610+ recipe cards, 90% disgusting recipes (i.e. chicken in gelatin) with a fabulous presentation, etc. Prior to Saturday night I was unaware of the ugly food of 1971 aka the horror of the 1960s and 70s cooking influences.

I received an invite in the mail which included an invitation, a recipe card, a return envelope and instructions explaining what to do and urging that if I cannot attend to return the recipe. I now understand why Ellen wanted all of the recipe cards back, these things are psycho vintage cards not to be lost. The goal was for each person to make the item on their card and make it look as close to the picture as possible. Recipes would be tested and voted on for "Best Tasting," "Worst Tasting," and "Most like the Photo." Interestingly, this party idea was a common usage of the card library as outlined in the NY Times.

I received the "Happy Traveller Sing Along" card...aka donuts. At first I panicked when I read the words "deep fry." I don't have a deep fryer, I don't know anyone with a deep fryer, I didn't want my entire apartment to smell like grease, and I didn't want to burn the place down with a grease fire. I toyed back and forth between baking donuts and buying a box of plain Entenmann's Donuts and just decorating those.

Well, Andrew convinced me that it would be a fun activity to do together so we should make them. I found a no-fry recipe from my favorite cooking source, Taste of Home, and we went to work preparing and baking donuts. And by we, I of course mean, Andrew. I wasn't feeling well Saturday, the big day, so I laid in bed dictating the recipe to the chef.

A thousand apologies for opening my mouth and speaking. I have the worst camera voice. Andrew didn't know I was filming--I was using my regular camera--he thought I was just waiting for a good pose to take a picture. Since I was being sneaky my playful voice kicked in which is unfortunately about 12 octaves higher than the average 6-year old, but unfortunately not pitched high enough so that we cannot hear it at all. Anyway, Andrew is too entertaining to not post these, so putting my pride aside I am putting them up:D






After waiting an hour for the dough to double, which it didn't, we moved on to step two. "Punch the dough." A difficult task when it didn't rise. Next, get the dough out of the bowl and roll it. Easier said than done. This was where the prep got interesting.
1) Use enough flour so that he dough doesn't stick to the counter: Failed. This is the look of a disgruntled chef.



















2) Use a rolling pin to roll dough to 1/2 inch thickness. What rolling pin? Luckily, my Andrew gets to watch the Today Show every day and he saw last week that you don't actually need a rolling pin, just something round, like a wine bottle. Well, when you're not classy enough to have wine...you use Svedka.



















3) Cut with a 2 3/4 inch donut cutter. Not surprisingly, I didn't have one laying around, so we worked with what we had: a wide mouth cup and a water bottle cap:D



Making-do with what you have: priceless!




The donuts were "brushed" aka drowned, since I don't have a brush, with butter and ready to go into the oven.



















We then began the task of making the glaze and frosting. Interestingly, donuts themselves have very little sugar in the cake part, it's all in the topping. I think it's the first time I've ever made frosting from scratch so I was pretty disturbed to know that it's made up entirely of confectioner's sugar and butter! Yikes. Not a healthy breakfast.

Our instructions were to make the recipe look exactly like the picture on the recipe card. Unfortunately, the Happy Traveler Sing Along donut picture had chocolate, butterscotch, yellow and white frosting; glaze, sprinkles, shaved coconut, shaved almonds, etc. Too much for me to buy to only use once. Needless to say, the doughnuts didn't look too close to the picture:(



















This was our best attempt and our final product. Not terrible, not great.


We also ran out of frosting and had a batch of lame rejects to be left at home!! Luckily, they taste okay so they'll get eaten eventually:D

At first I was pretty stressed that it wasn't going to look exactly like the picture. I had to stop and realize that I'm not in school anymore, it's not for a grade, I don't need a 100%, I wouldn't get kicked out of the party for it not being perfect, and and life got a lot easier. This was the realization when we agreed to no-fry, use only two frostings, and only one topping. Apparently, I'm not the only perfectionist out there and more interestingly most people emulated the picture to a T. Here are some of the other dishes. I believe if you click on it, you will see an enlarged version and can probably see the recipe card photo for comparison.

This had to be the most disgusting, yet it didn't win that category. Chicken in gelatin!!! Gross.






A couple of the tuna recipes. It seemed like everything contained tuna...yuck!



Our sad little donuts sitting next to some pretty good replicas.



















If you're curious to check out some of the ridiculous recipes and photos, check out this site. Click on a category at the right and then click "begin" and click through the many recipes for each category. It's all about the presentation. Complicated and impressive, yet inedible!

Most deceiving. Looks like a layered cake. Wrong!! The layers are salmon, chicken salad, and olive...with a cream cheese spread.

These are some of the recipes that were seen at the party, some you'll even see in the pictures I took, posted above--pretty impressive dishes!:

A Tribute to Best Friends

Some friends are the forever kind of friends. Months can pass without talking, but you can pick right up where you left off. Ask hard questions. Talk about important things. Talk about nothing. And leave knowing that you somehow feel as though you love this person more than the last time you saw them; and you're surprised that is even possible. They are the kind of friends who randomly drop you emails or cards or packages. The kind of friend every girl needs and the kind to aspire to be for others.

I am so blessed to have many friends like this and I cherish them (More shout outs to come, so don't feel left out. I'll start a weekly column or something honoring my friends and family!). One of them is Courtney. Courtney and I grew up in the same neighborhood in Seminole. We spent many summer days in middle school cooking Hamburger Helper and hanging out at the pool. We participated in all sorts of extracurricular activities together in high school. She went to UF for college and I went to Rollins. We ended up studying abroad in London the same semester in college and spent many Friday nights in my flat cooking dinner and eating incredibly oversized bowls of ice cream. She is currently in law school at Stetson and I'm a 1,000 miles away working at a non-profit in New England, but we make sure to meet up for a coffee at Starbucks whenever I come back into town.

I had gotten home last night from a long and draining day (and week) at work. I'm on a lull between projects, waiting for some decisions so I can move forward, and slow days make for very long days. Well I walk up the stairs and find an orange Nike shoe box on my door step with a note from my neighbor that says: "Kim, This was at the back door. -Mike" A package? YES! What a treat!

I hurried inside to open the box and found a present full of all my favorites: gummy bears, Alfredo pasta, hot chocolate, pink pens, adorable hair ties, chapstick, lip gloss, pink earrings, Ice Breakers Restore mints, nutrient enhanced drink mixes, an adorable Halloween cup, pictures, and an incredibly sweet card. My wonderful friend Courtney, whom I've known since 7th grade, sent me the package as a holiday treat just to remind me how much she loved me and valued our friendship. How thoughtful and amazing! The timing couldn't have been better either. It was the exact pick me up I needed after a long week. Also, ironically, I had been reminiscing about high school earlier that day at work. I had heard a lot of old school songs on my Pandora Radio and had been recalling the high school and early college years when everything was so easy, carefree, fun, and filled with many friends.

So here's to good friends, great memories, endless laughter, and a lifetime of companionship!

Courtney & I through the years:
High School Days















Sophomore Powder Puff















Scotland










Lion Bars-one of the greatest things the UK has to offer









Scottie Hotties