Making Pasta and more Carbs!

Dan made pasta in early April.

This was the first time he had made homemade ravioli.

It's a process.

First he makes the dough and then we (yes, I help crank it through) feed it through the pasta machine.

We roll it through twice for each setting.

All ready to be filled.

This time we had some Japanese Yams in our kitchen so Dan filled it with yam and bacon.

Dan takes the other side and folds it over on top of the filling.

He cuts the ravioli out with some little gadget.

Ready to be dropped in the boiling water.

It's served with a sage butter sauce. Yum!

My new favorite pizza.
Carb on Carb. ;)
Potato and Rosemary. Oh.my.God talk about delicious!

Dan made these hot cross buns awhile back.

My friend Amanda's grandmother's recipe. It was good.
Blackberry Cake w/blackberry sauce

Happy Birthday to my "kids"!

I can't believe that they are 13 today. They still seem so young at heart and like babies to me. :) They are our world and they bring so much love, happiness, and laughter to our lives. Our lives would not be the same without them.


Happy 13th Birthday, Sissy and Baby Dan!!!

According to dogster, our "kids" are 79 today. And according to pedigree they are 68.
I don't know who to trust. Oh well. I guess they are somewhere between 68 and 79 in human years. :)


Sissy is lying on Baby Dan in this pic. :) Weena looks so happy and so proud.


We Love You Bubba & Roonies!!!

Garden Update

We have some good & bad news about our garden.


We put some lady bugs out a few weeks ago.

They feel so weird when they are all over your arms.

Lady bugs on our tomatoes

The Bad News

Out of the 10 lemons we had on our tree, we now only have 1. :( I don't know if the birds are knocking them off or if they are just falling off. We've lost about 3 limes, but have about 5 on there right now.


We found this yesterday.
We don't know if it was a squirrel or bird that got to our yellow tomato. I was so bummed. :(

The reason we released the ladybugs...
The broccoli leaves were being eaten by some sort of icky bug.

My radish leaves have been eaten too.

A lot of our veg and strawberries have been affected by this bug. Dan has used everything he can think of and nothing is working. :( We were hoping the lady bugs would work, but there doesn't seem to be any left.


The Good News!

We have a new, expanded flower box. Dan is jealous. It's the biggest box in the yard and it's for flowers, not vegetables. :) I promised him that if my peonies don't bud then I'd let him make it into another veg box.

We now have a raspberry box

And a blackberry box

Check out our first blackberry!

The corn stalks have grown so much in a month.

We also have a new decorative addition to the garden.
Our water pail piggy. :)

I love it!

Want to win a free collar for your pup?!

Check out my friend April Ziegler's blog for a chance to win a free collar from Etsy seller Big Doggy Bling.


I love these three for Sissy:




And I only saw one that fit my baby boy's style, isn't it cute?!

If I win I will definitely have to buy another one for Baby Dan or Sissy. Heck, if I don't win I'm thinking about buying a couple. Baby Dan's harness has been getting a little tight. :)

Our new favorite thing in the house

We FINALLY bought our new kitchen faucet and my dad installed it.

This is identical to the faucet we had in our kitchen before.
The builder put the same one in our powder room. Weird.

This is our new, lovely faucet!

It's perfect and just want we wanted.

Dan and me playing with our new toy. :)
It's the little things that make us happy.

Best of all we got a great deal from Costco. I love that place!

How we spent our Anniversary

First, my hubby surprised me with a huge, gorgeous bouquet of flowers.

He's the best!

Then, he made me a delicious homemade italian dinner. The dishes were the same as what we had at our wedding, minus the lemon chicken.

Homemade pappardelle pasta

Pappardelle Pasta with sausage, cherry tomatoes and sweet red and yellow bell peppers
Yum!

The Eggplant Parmigiano was delicious!

This plate is from a set that we ate off of on our wedding day.
We were thinking about buying a few plates to keep as mementos.
My parents gave us one for our anniversary. :)
My parents are the best!
I love it.
We're still thinking about ordering more.

Dan and I made the lemon cake together.
It was perfect and delicious!

I just love my flowers!

Luckily, we had a big enough vase for them.

It was a perfect, beautiful day.
Happy Anniversary to us!

Thank you to everyone who left wonderful messages on here, Geni or FB. Love y'all!

It's our Anniversary!

Today, Dan and I are celebrating our 1 year wedding anniversary! I can't believe a year has gone by. I also can't believe that 13 years ago Dan and I started dating.

Meist-

You have made me the happiest woman and I could not imagine my life without you. Every day is simply lovely. Every day is full of laughs. Every day I wonder how I got so damn lucky.

Thank you for loving me the way you do.

I love you ster!

I made a slideshow of our photos that captures our beautiful wedding day.

It's pretty long because I didn't want to cut too many photos out, so please watch when you have time. :)

Fresh-cut Dahlias

Fresh-cut flowers from the garden can always put a smile on my face.
I can get used to this!

Baking Cake

Yes, I can bake! Even though Dan does most... okay all of the cooking and baking in our house, I enjoy baking and will occasionally bake something yummy.

I've been craving Carrot Cake for awhile, so I decided to attempt Alton Brown's recipe. I'm someone who hates raisins and I tend to pick out all of the raisins from other carrot cakes, so this was the perfect carrot cake recipe! It was delicious!

But anything I can do, Dan can do better! :) Dan made flan a few weeks ago. It was also delicious! It was definitely the best we've had since we last had it at an El Torito restaurant in SoCal.