Dinner Party – Friday, January 27th

My BFF Cher and her sister Laura hosted a dinner party, and did an amazing job. Appetizers were cucumbers and chips and guacamole with choice of either berry mojito or regular mojito. Dinner started off with Tortilla soup, then a medly salad, and the main course was a stuffed pepper with a grain and corn mix served over roasted red pepper sauce. YUM. And to top it all off, she made a Red Velvet cake and served with coffee. Everything was set with beautiful china, and the mix of friends created a fun environment. DJ loved the food, and to everyone’s surprise, it was all vegan. I wasn’t surprised of course because I know true flavor comes from veggies anyways. I stole a picture with two of my besties since we were dressed for the occasion. Topics of discussion: Trophy Wife Tiers, Liz’s wedding, and Cher’s AMAZING cooking. I am so proud of my dear friend, and can’t wait till she hosts another one!

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Chick-fil-A 5K Fun Run – Benefitting The 100 Mile Club

Benefitting The 100 Mile ClubI ran my first official 5K! The race took place on Saturday, January 21st at 8am at the Dos Lagos mall. It was raining the entire time, but luckily the temperature was only around 55 degrees, and the rain was light. We were both surprised that DJ came in Top 6 or so, and I made Top 20 (out of over 200 participants). This race had many family and children participants, so their focus wasn’t as competitive as ours. I had so much fun that we are looking for another one to signup for next month.      Gotta Love the Runner’s High!                    

Race Time: DJ 24:22    Maddie 26:24

 

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Mexican Pizza

This is a completely original recipe! I used Amy’s refried beans as a base, black bean salad for my side (contains corn, black beans, red onion) and chicken, cheese and red onion on DJ’s side, and after cooked I added canned crushed tomatos and fresh cilantro. This was pretty tasty, though the middle was a bit soggy. Need to drain tomatos to help this issue. Added salt and pepper. Next time I would add fried tortilla strips or shredded lettuce to add crunch.

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BBQ Pizza – 1/2 Sweet Potato, 1/2 Chicken

This is a combo of the CPK BBQ Chicken recipe and sweet potato pizza recipe. I used Trader Joe’s whole wheat crust, bottled BBQ sauce for the base, cooked sweet potato for my side and chicken and mozzarella for DJ’s side, and topped with red onion. After removed from the oven added fresh cilantro. This pizza is a major hit for both of us, and very filling.

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Cuban Black Bean Soup

From my favorite cookbook, The Vegan Table, the Cuban Black Bean soup is ‘souper’ yummy. It contains coconut milk and bananas which gives it a tropical island flare. The image shows the soup before it is pureed. I left out the hot pepper sauce to appeal to a softer crowd. I recommend serving the soup with tortilla chips or bread.

√ DJ Approved

√ Healthy Vegan

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Ireland Planning

Finally, Mom and I decided that 2012 is the year to go to Ireland. Our family is growing by the minute and we can continue to make excuses forever as to why ‘next year’ might be better. May 2012, we are heading to Ireland for 15 days. We have a hotel in Dublin for all 15 days and we will take mini trips from there. We have yet to plan out all the trip details, but the hotel and airfare are paid for, so it’s a done deal! We go to the Irish Fair every year, so this is an image from the green fountain at Pomona fairgrounds. This year the fair will be even more exciting since our trip is planned.

 

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Beginning Knitting

I took up knitting this Christmas. I made this simple hat that just uses the knit stitch. I hid the sewn part of the hat (not so good at sewing yet). I have crocheted many scarfs in the last few years, but knitting is completely different. Thank goodness for the Michael’s classes that got me started. I have a goal of making the Patons Canadiana Simple Stripe Stocking pattern that a few women from the church have made. It is considered a medium level pattern though, so I figured I would start easy and work up to the medium patterns. Goal: Have completed two simple stripe stockings by Christmas 2012!

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Starting Over

I’m re-designing the whole site and blog… hopefully I’ll have some more time to work on both.  In the meantime here is a link back to our site: DanielMaddie.com

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Quick Update

The last time I wrote on this blog was when we were three months away from getting married and now we have been married for 10 months! In that time a lot has happened. Maddie got a new job at WM. Wrigley Jr. Company as a Regional Territory Sales Manager and I got a job at Unlimited Innovations Software Solutions Developer. We also decided to move in with Maddie’s parents to save money for a house and thats where we have been living since the end of May. Other than that we have just been enjoying marriage and living life. I know this is a small post for so much time between and with such big things going on (like the wedding, honeymoon, new jobs, apartments/houses) but it beats a post 10 pages long with all the little details to explain. I’ll try to keep this up to date more often so that there won’t be posts as lame as this. Actually as soon as I get some photos organized from our honeymoon/wedding and maybe a video I’ll post that next. We’ll see.

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3 Months Away!

I know we aren’t exactly 3-months away but close enough and the title “3 months and 8 days away” sounds funny.  A lot has gotten done since I last blogged (we aren’t exactly bloggers quite yet :) ).  So far: we have the location of the ceremony, location for the reception, Maddie has her dress, bridesmaids have their dresses, as I write this Maddie is finalizing the list, we got the tuxes picked out, we have been to some food tastings for the wedding dinner but still haven’t decided on one and we have our photographer, videographer, flowers and D.J. all picked out.  We still have yet to do cake tasting (I am so looking forward to this), a photo session with Billy, and the marriage counseling. Oh and we registered at a few places which was kind of fun.  To be honest it was fun but sort of difficult to do.  We wanted to keep things within a reasonable price-range (which I think we did a decent job of) but somethings are just plain expensive.  like the knives for instance: cheap knives are crappy and the best knives are too expensive.  So we picked the in-between knives, which still aren’t exactly cheap. Besides all that, everything is going great and as far as I know, smoothly.

Website update: there is a new photo album, new video (the actual proposal), and I implemented a way to tell if a user has been on the main site page since the last time I updated the photos or videos.  You should have cookies enabled for it to work, don’t worry I just check the date the last time that browser has been the site. It should work but it doesn’t look pretty just yet, it will just say “there are new photos” and/or “there are new videos” near the top.  I also completely ditched the idea of having a log-in for wedding info since I didn’t have that done before the save-the-date postcards went out (some are still going out).  So soon that section will be updated too.

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