Yay for Weekends!

This weekend was so awesome! Probably one of the best I've had in a while. Saturday started with a delicious breakfast! I love making omelets & we happened to have some left over London Broil. I cut it into really thin pieces & sauteed it with onions, bell peppers & ancho peppers from our garden.

I added diced meat to the egg mixture

Here is the finished product. It was slightly more brown that most people like them but I don't mind them this way & I wanted to make sure the cheese was nice & melted. I made a smoothie to go with it. It's frozen pineapple, strawberries, orange juice & banana flavored yogurt. SO yummy! I think the only thing that would have made it better is a little bit of mango.

My friend Kelsy came to visit & stayed with us Saturday night. Shortly after she got here we went to Baltimore to show her around a little bit. We found out there's a cruise port in Baltimore! We've seen another cruise ship there before but there's also a ship repair shop so I thought it might be getting repaired. If I remember correctly, this is a Royal Caribbean ship. I barely got this pic.

There was an Italian festival going on in Little Italy but we had already made plans to visit a winery before the baseball game so we didn't go. The ride to the winery was about 25-30 minutes from Baltimore. It was almost all country roads with beautiful houses. It was a very peaceful ride. It is a small, family owned vineyard. The tour was short & sweet & we got to taste about 14 different wines. They also made DELICIOUS sangria! It was a lot of fun.

This in the wine cellar. It's not a good picture but this is the first wine the owner ever made, 35 years ago!

. The upright barrels are empty, the ones laying down are fermenting.

These are some super old wine bottles. I'm not sure if they're from this vineyard or not but I thought they looked nice.

Josh and I outside the tasting room.

After we went to the vineyard we went to a minor league baseball game. It was a function for Josh's company. We had a free buffet & box seats. It was a lot of fun even though I'm not a big baseball fan. It was really nice to sit in the box seats, especially since it started raining.

This is Kelsy & I making our evil faces at Josh, although Kelsy just looks like a creeper in the background :-)

Too bad this weekend passed by so fast!

I Took the Job!

I start on August 30th. That way I can have the week that Bryan & Chris are here off. I'm not sure how to feel about it. I'm going to refer to this job as my "other" job. haha. I'm still a housewife at heart. It will be hard, I'll have to prep for meals a few days in advance when the schedule isn't so nice & I'll have to spend a lot of the weekend keeping the house in order instead of relaxing as much as I do now. It's going to be OK though.

For the first week the hours are great. I'll be working 8-4. I wish I could work these hours all the time! It would work perfectly with Josh's schedule. Then I will start my normal schedule after labor day. Our schedules rotate by the month. I work the late schedule for my first month :-/ I will work either 11:30-8 or 12:00-8:30 Mon-Wed. & 9:30-6 or 10-6:30 Thurs & Fri. At least I have Saturdays off though. I'm assuming that you work Saturdays if you work the early shifts. In that case I might prefer the late shift.

I guess I'm excited but more nervous than anything. I hope I've made the right decision. I applied for a USDA position that I would love to have a while back, but I won't hear anything about that for another month or so. If I didn't get that & I passed up this opportunity, I would feel horrible. I think I might feel more horrible if I do hear back from them & they want to interview me. I don't think I could say no. I think it would be a loose loose situation. Anyway...there's no reason to worry about that now. I have job, I'll get some experience & I'll be making money & interacting with people. This job will be a challenge & it will really test my patience. I just hope I can do it.

It has absolutely nothing to do with what I went to school for & I think that kind of bugs me. I want to State for 5 years, got a food science degree & I'm going to be a receptionist. I didn't think I cared because I was so sick of my major by the time I graduated...I was starting to dislike it very much actually. I guess I feel like I should at least give it a try since I've already invested so much time in it. Eventually I will get to where I want to be. I just have to be patient. haha

London Broil

I made a London Broil for dinner last night & it was delicious! I am usually really bad for overcooking cuts of meat like this. If I don't overcook it I stab it with the meat thermometer so many times trying not to overcook it that the juices all run out & it's dry anyway. Yesterday I tried a different approach, the finger test. It worked like a charm! I've always heard about it but I didn't know how to tell when the meat was as done as I wanted. I could only tell if it was basically raw or overdone. The link above explains it really well (with pictures) but I'll do it in a nutshell. You feel the piece of meat below your thumb & compare it to the way the meat feels. If you feel it with your hand completely open, that's the way raw meat feels. I wanted to cook the London Broil medium rare, to do this you touch your middle finger to your thumb. When your meat feels that way, it's medium rare. :-) You use different fingers for different levels of doneness.

Marinating

I marinated the meat for about 3 hours in the fridge. I used equal parts balsamic vinegar & Worcestershire sauce then I rubbed on minced garlic & steak seasoning (I like McCormick but Mrs. Dash is good too). I flipped it over every 30 minutes or so to make sure both sides were nice & marinated. About an hour & a half before I was ready to cook it I took it out to bring it to room temperature. I seared both sides (about 3 minutes each) then I put it in the toaster oven at 325 for about 15-20 minutes to finish. I checked it about every 5 minutes because I really didn't want to overcook it. The time will depend on how thick your meat is though. While it was cooking in the toaster oven I put it back in the sauce it marinated in (I let just the marinade cook by itself for a few minutes to make sure the bacteria from the raw meat was cooked off since I didn't know how long the meat would take to finish cooking.)

I sauted some onions with the meat & threw it in the marindade while it was cooking. So yummy!

I know the lighting in the dining room sucks :-/ but I actually had some pink!

Success :-)

We have quite a bit left over. I'm thinking about using some of it to make cheese steaks. Should be delicious!

I Got an Offer!

I've been looking for a job since a few weeks after we got up here. I've had some interviews but that's about it. I got an offer yesterday. It's for a receptionist at a Veterinary specialist. It's not like any veterinarian I've ever been to. They're literally an orthopedic hospital for dogs & cats. There are only 3 in the country. As a result people come from far far away & it's very busy, demanding & stressful. I hope I can handle it. I have to let them know if I'm accepting the position by tomorrow.

I've been hoping for a position with the FDA or USDA since we're in a great area for that & that's what I really want to do. It's just not smart to wait around for 1 of 2 companies to have an entry level position. I've been looking since I knew we would be coming to this area & all the positions that have opened are super advance. I love being a housewife but I'm really starting to feel like I need to contribute financially. Josh is more than supportive but I just keep thinking about how much sooner we could buy a house if we had 2 incomes. This will be a challenge but it will be good for us & it will help us pay off all our debt so much faster. We'll be increasing our vacation fund a little bit but essentially all of my income will go to our debt. Before we know it all those college loans & credit card bills will be behind us! I know it will be worth it :-)

Yummy Potato Bake

I had some of those packaged simply potato rounds that were about to go bad so I needed to cook them last night. I decided to kind of try to make a loaded baked potato casserole. It turned out really good but there are definitely some changes I would make. Here's the way I made it last night.

1 package simply potato rounds (you could cut your own, just make sure they're really thin & you would probably want to cook them a little longer)

about 1 1/2 cup grated cheese (I used colby-jack)

about 1/2 cup bacon pieces

1 small onion, diced super small

butter

I basically mixed everything together & saved a little bacon & cheese for topping. I put little pieces of butter on top so it would melt over everything else. I baked it for 30 minutes or so, covered. I would probably increase that to 45 minutes because some of the larger potatoes were not as tender as the small ones. I topped it with sour cream. It was really good but it tasted more like potato skins than a loaded baked potato. It definitely needed more cheese. I would maybe try some of the Campbells cheddar cheese soup. It needed more moisture & the cheddar cheese soup would take care of the extra cheese & moisture. Cream of potato soup would probably be good in it too. I might add a little more bacon, but I LOVE bacon. It was really good for a first try :-)

This Week So Far

This week has been pretty interesting. Monday was crap, not sure why, it was just one of those days. Yesterday was the exact opposite! I was in an awesome mood. I got a lot done so that's always nice. Josh had an intern lunch for work at TGIF because the interns are leaving this week. I LOVE that place so I was really excited to go. I got to meet his boss, who is really nice. He started off working for the company in Melbourne, which is where we are planning on relocating to eventually. It was nice to talk to him about that.

I sold a lot of our stuff on Ebay so I had to make a trip to the post office...we're slowly seeing some of the closet space free up! Hopefully we can get rid of some more stuff before too long.

After Josh got off work we went to the batting cages. He's playing in a softball game tomorrow for work so he wanted to practice. I decided to hit a few rounds with him. I finally found something I'm worse at than golf...& that's pretty bad. I still had a lot of fun though. The place we went to isn't too far from us & they have mini golf & a driving range too. I think we'll probably be going there some more in the near future. After that we had to go to Costco to pick up a few things & I think we found a recliner we want to buy. Unless we find something we like better we'll probably be getting it in the next few weeks :-)

Today we'll be getting our new phones. We've decided to switch from Verizon to T-Mobile. I just can't wait to get a new phone. Mine has been driving me insane lately.

Monday we bought tickets to a few football games. We got our tickets for the NCSU vs MD game in November. That will be State's last football game of the regular season so I'm really excited about going. We also bought tickets to the Raven's preseason game against the Giants. We were looking into going to the preseason game against the Panthers game & I was that the Giants game was on Josh's birthday. We decided that would probably be a better game to go to anyway :-) Our tickets are probably the worse in the entire stadium but we're going with a group of 6 & we wanted everyone to be able to sit together. Regular season games are way too expensive for our budget right now so this was a good option for us. I'm excited because I've never been to an NFL game before.

Candied Carrots

I LOVE candied carrots & I had a real craving for them last night. Josh was in the mood for BBQ chicken so that's what I chose for our meat. Here's the recipe for the candied carrots.

2 c Carrots, cut into 2 in. sections then quartered (I just halved the thinner pieces), boiled

1/4 c. brown sugar

1 T butter

Once the carrots are boiled, drain the water from them & return them to your saucepan. Add the butter & let melt, add brown sugar & let simmer for a few minutes.

I'm not huge on recipes. I kind of add as I please unless I'm baking. The BBQ sauce I used for the chicken was delicious. Of course I just added what I felt like adding & I didn't write down how much. I started with Sweet Baby Ray's (my favorite prepared BBQ sauce) then I added Italian dressing, about equal parts of honey mustard, ketchup & brown sugar (maybe 1/4 c each). I added about half as much spicy mustard & It was SO yummy! I let the cooked chicken simmer in this for about 5 mins. I would normally let it simmer for a little longer for a better flavor but I started dinner late & we were both starving. It still turned out really good :-)

New Favorite Coaster!

This past Saturday Josh and I went to King's Dominion in VA. It was the first time I had ever been & the first time Josh has been since he was really young. We went with Josh's brother & his friend & we met up with some family. It was a lot of fun & it was good to catch up.

I LOVE roller coasters. We've spent a lot of time at Disney over the past few years so it's been a while since I've been to a theme park with awesome roller coasters. My previous favorite was Millenium Force at Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH. My new favorite is The Intimidator (it's still pretty close though)! It has a 4G turn which is awesome! When the guys were telling me about it, I was like..."so what". I actually sort of grayed out during that first turn. Everything started to lose color & kind of go fuzzy. Apparently it happens to some people & they had to slow the ride down from its original speed because people were actually blacking out. We packed our lunches & I'm so glad! Food prices at theme parks are even more ridiculous than they used to be. We would have spent about $30 on a less than mediocre lunch. We packed ours for about $3 total. Pretty nice :-)

I didn't take my camera in because I didn't want to have to worry about keeping up with it or breaking it. I'm also not so cute after getting off roller coasters so I didn't have to worry about a ton of bad hair pictures ;-)

Stuffed Bell Peppers

These are really easy to make & you can pretty much stuff them with whatever you want. I made these Sunday night for dinner (along with sloppy joe sliders...I forgot to take pics of those & they were so cute!) We had some rice & beans left over from On the Border so I just used that rather than cooking my own rice. I added some ground beef & cheese. It was delicious! I made another one for Josh to take with him to lunch yesterday. I had some left over manwich (I added bell pepper, onion & carrots so it would feel a little more healthy) that I mixed in with white rice & cheese. Josh said he liked it better than the ones I made Sunday with the On the Border leftovers :-)

So...here's what you do:

Cut the tops off your bell pepper & remove the seeds & veins. (I saved the tops to use in the Manwich).

Fill the pepper with your desired ingredients (I think rice, beans, cheese, tomatoes or other veggies all work great)

Bake at 350 until tender, about 30-45 minutes...Enjoy!

They smelled delicious! I was so hungry when they finished, I forgot to take a picture of the final product. I've heard that Pablano peppers work better than bell peppers for stuffing but I haven't tried them. We have some in the garden but they aren't big enough yet and they're not growing very well :-(

Mmmm...Spinach Lasagna

12 oz package oven ready lasagna noodles

Olive Oil

Onion, garlic, green pepper, mushrooms (I use carrots & roasted red pepper too)

1.5 Jar Spaghetti Sauce

15 oz Ricotta Cheese

10 oz. package frozen, chopped spinach, thawed & drained

1 lb shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 c grated parmesan cheese

2 eggs, beaten

Sauté veggies in olive oil then add spaghetti sauce. Simmer for about 15 mins.

Mix ricotta, spinach, 1/2 c mozzarella, eggs & parmesan.

Layer in baking dish: sauce, lasagna, sauce, spinach filling, mozzarella, sauce, lasagna, sauce & mozzarella.

Bake at 350 for 45-60 mins.

I switched up a few things. I cooked the lasagna most of the way through (with no cheese on top)...about 30 mins or so...then added the pepperoni. I cooked it for about 10 minutes more & added the cheese. If you put the cheese on before cooking it's way too brown for me after 45 minutes!

I got this recipe from a food science club member when I was at State. I make it every once in a while & switch it up each time I make it. This time I added pepperoni to the top. It was really good but I wish I would have added a little more (I love pepperoni!). I used Classico sauce (a mixture of 4 cheese & tomato & basil) but I've made it with all types of sauce. You can add different veggies or you could add meat. When ground turkey is prepared in dishes like this it's hard to tell the difference between that & ground beef. It's a nice healthy option. I prepared 2 & only cooked one. We have guests coming for the next 3 weekends so I'll pull it out during one of the visits for an easy dinner. I've never frozen a lasagna so I'm not sure how it will work out. I'll post if it's a disaster. If you never hear back, it means it worked :-)

Just Keep Swimming!

Dory knows what she's talking about! I found out yesterday morning that I didn't get the FDA position I applied for. I knew I was very under-qualified for it when I applied but I did it with high hopes anyway. I was hoping to at least get an interview for a lower position. I shed my tears (yes, I cried over a job I never had) but I'm over it now. I'm taking Dory's advice. Luckily, I have a wonderful hubby with a wonderful job to keep us afloat until I find the job for me.

But...I've been applying for other jobs in the meantime...just in case. I got a call back from one of them today. We had a short phone interview & he's supposed to be checking back with his manager. I should be hearing back from him tomorrow. It is for a quality assurance technician position. The pay is good but the hours may not be ideal. Hopefully I'll get more info & get a real interview!

A Very Short Weekend!

Josh & I have this thing where whoever gets out of bed last gets to make up the bed. He gets up pretty early for work & I usually stay in bed until I hear him get out of the shower...I obviously get to make up the bed during the week. Well, last weekend he came in the living room after I had been up for about 2 hours (for some reason I can't sleep past 8 or so on the weekends) to tell me that something felt weird on his side of the bed. Our mattress is pretty crappy so I didn't think anything of it. He asked me to lay on his side of the bed to see if it felt ok to me. I did & he started laughing & yelled "You're the last one out of bed!" He looked like the big kid he is so I couldn't do anything but laugh. This morning he felt me get out of bed & he said he would share his body pillow with me if I would lay with him for a few more minutes. I crawled back in bed because he doesn't initiate cuddling very often. As soon as I got back in bed he jumped out...& I was stuck making up the bed again. Next weekend...it's war!

Yesterday we went looking at recliners because La-Z-Boy had one on sale for super cheap. We decided not to get it but we looked around there & at The Room Store. Josh found one that had a "beer cooler" in one of the arms & that has become a standard now. We can't consider any recliner that doesn't have one ;-) It is pretty sweet.

We planned on going to church this morning since we haven't found one up here yet. We got up, got ready & left for church...we never found it. The address on Google maps matched the address in Garmin but it was just a residential area with no church in sight. We've decided that we'll find the church & actually find out where it is before next Sunday morning so we can make it.

We had planned on going to lunch after church so we went a little later anyway. We went to On the Border. We have an awesome Tex-Mex place here that we didn't have back home but On the Border is closer & they had a build your own combo for $6.99. I just wanted Enchiladas so I was fine with that...I could live off those things! After lunch we went to a park that's really close to our apartment. I've been wanting to check out a trail so we walked it. It was really short & it wasn't so peaceful since it's right next to 175. We could hear cars almost the whole time. It was still nice to get outside since the weather was so nice though. We saw a huge butterfly about halfway through but it flew past us before I could get my camera out. We came to an area near the end where we saw a ton of butterflies! Here are a few pictures I got of them.

I like to play around with the camera. I'm still figuring out all the functions & shooting modes but I'm really happy with it so far. I'm glad we went with the Nikon vs. the Canon I was looking at. The zoom is WAY better & it's really fast. I mostly wanted the Canon because it had the color accent function. Josh laughed at me when I told him that then we decided it wasn't really a good reason to pick a camera, it's something that can easily be done with editing software :-)

365 Project

I've just started the 365Project. Basically, you're supposed to take a picture every day & it all gets put together in a calendar. I thought this would be a really good way to document our first year being married, living in MD, etc. (along with the blog of course!). I've been wanting to do this for a while & I wish I could have started it right after our wedding day but we had so much going on then we lost the old camera. It's fine though. I have tons of interests & I'm a very random person so it won't be focused on any particular subject. There will be lots of food, probably some flowers & animals...who knows what else will make it on there. Another reason I like this is because I think it will help me appreciate the little simple things in life. I obviously won't have something super exciting to add every day but it will be a little something that defines my life at this point. Anyway, if you want to follow my project, here's the link :-)

Wine Box

If you were at our wedding you got to see our love letter/wine box ceremony. If not, I'll give a little background. Josh & I wanted to do something a little different from the traditional unity candle ceremony. I found this idea online & I absolutely fell in love with it. My dad had a box built for us out of cherry wood. We put a bottle of wine & 2 wine glasses in the box. We each had to write a letter to each other explaining how/why we fell in love with each other. We also had guests write notes to us before the ceremony & at the rehearsal dinner. We will get to open this box on our 10th anniversary. If we have troubles at any point before our 10th anniversary we'll open the box, share the wine & read the letters before we do anything crazy.

My dad wanted to get the box engraved with our name but he didn't have time to do it before the wedding. He had it done after the ceremony & he brought it to us when he visited a couple weekends ago. I'm really happy with how it turned out & I'm so glad we got our last name engraved in it.

This is a close up of our name :-)

The whole box...so pretty!

I love this idea because it's unique & it's something we can display in our home. It's also something we can pass down to our kids some day. After our 10th anniversary, we'll re-fill the box with new letters & wine to open on our 25th anniversary. I've never seen this at any other ceremony & we got tons of compliments on it. I'm really glad we did this. I think this ceremony, writing our own vows & getting a videographer were likely the best wedding related decisions we made.

Giant Cookie

This didn't turn out how it was supposed to...but that's probably because I didn't make it how I was supposed to. It's supposed to be a skillet cookie recipe but I decided to prepare it a little differently. The original recipe can be found here. I wanted to bake a brownie on top of the cookie. I used a 8in. glass baking dish (I wanted to see the sides of the cookie-brownie) instead of a 10in skillet because I thought it would be big enough...it wasn't! The cookie rose way more than I though so I didn't have room for the brownie. I am determined to make my monster cookie-brownie hybrid. Next time I'll use a large spring form pan or a larger glass dish so I can still see the sides of it after it finishes.

I'll be the first to you, my cookie was UGLY! But...it tasted delicious.

I prefer my cookies barely cooked. I had this one with Double Fudge Brownie ice cream & it was SO good!

Last Night's Dinner...Economical Surf n Turf

Since our camera just came in I'll probably have several posts over the next few days to catch up. I'll start with dinner from last night. We had steak, crab cake stuffed potatoes, green beans, rolls with some yummy garlic & herb butter spread & a delicious dessert!

Since we've moved to MD and I've tried it a few times, I've kind of become obsessed with crab. Blue crabs around the Chesapeake are kind of like chowder in Boston. I found the recipe from another knottie, thanks Malea! She has some amazing looking recipes & I'll be trying some more!

Crab Cake Stuffed Baked Potatoes

**Serving size 4**

4 Small-Medium Sized Baking Potatoes
1 can crab meat, drained
1/2 cup fat free sour cream
2 T spicy brown mustard
2 dashes lemon juice
1/4 t garlic powder
1/2 t Old Bay Seasoning
dash salt & pepper
2 T Smart Balance Tub Style Butter
1/4 cup Panko Bread Crumbs

1. Scrub potatoes and bake in microwave until completely cooked. Remove and let cool for a moment
2. Meanwhile mix sour cream, mustard, lemon juice, garlic, old bay, salt, pepper and crab together. Mixing well
3. Cut slit in top of potato and scoop out insides of potato combining well with the crab mixture. Try to leave around a 1/4th-inch next to skin to create a nice shell.
4. Combine potato/crab mixture well
5. Melt 2 T butter and stir into mixture
6. Spoon mixture into potato shells
7. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top
8. Bake at 350 for about 10-15 minutes

I added little salad shrimp...probably about 1/4 cup & they were really good in it. I would probably add a little more & reduce the spicy mustard to 1T if I made it again.

Garlic & Herb Butter Spread

3 cloves garlic-minced

4T butter-room temp

3T herbs

Mix it all up & enjoy! I just used fresh herbs from our little garden. I used Basil, Thyme (my fave!), Oregano & Rosemary. I added a little dry Parsley & it was perfect!

Wedding Blues

I miss our wedding day! I even miss planning for it, no matter how chaotic it got in the end. June 5, 2010 was by far the happiest day of my life. Josh & I dated for a long time before we got married & we shared tons of moments during the 9+ years we dated before our wedding...none of them come close to our wedding day. I wish we could re-live it sometimes. It was perfect. Sure, things went wrong...things got lost, people got forgotten (hmmhmm...Matt ;-) ), things that were supposed to happen never did...& those are just the things I know about. There's no telling what I never found out about. Still...it was perfect. This is a picture that was taken right after the ceremony :-D I love it!

Delicious Banana Bread

We had some bananas that were getting a little too ripe so I decided to make something with them. I found a recipe for Banana Sour Cream Bread & it was delicious! It's not even close to healthy but it's SO good. I didn't have any walnuts around the house but it was just fine without them. It wasn't done after cooking it at 300 for an hour. I think my loaf pan is a little deeper than a standard one so that could be the problem. The next time I make it I'll probably increase the temperature a little bit. That's really the only thing I would change.

Banana Sour Cream Bread

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 eggs
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 (16 ounce) container sour cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup and 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Grease four 7x3 inch loaf pans. In a small bowl, stir together 1/4 cup white sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Dust pans lightly with cinnamon and sugar mixture.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and 3 cups sugar. Mix in eggs, mashed bananas, sour cream, vanilla and cinnamon. Mix in salt, baking soda and flour. Stir in nuts. Divide into prepared pans.
3. Bake for 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Calories: 263 | Total Fat: 10.5g | Cholesterol: 38mg

To reduce the calories you could use Splenda (which I hate!) or reduced fat sour cream. A few of the reviewers mentioned that they used fat free sour cream but it turned out a little dry. I used full fat because that's what I had in the fridge.

We'll have a new camera soon!

I finally talked the hubby into getting a new camera! Of course I had to make some sacrifices. Paying off our debt is really high on our priority list so we wanted to make sure the money wasn't taking away from debt payments. In order to fit it in the budget I had to take away from furniture money. This means we will only have 1 couch for a while. We eventually want to get a recliner or reclining loveseat. It's not such a huge deal anyway because we have no way to move it. After doing a ton of research we decided to get a Nikon Coolopix. I was stuck between Canon & Nikon for a good week but we decided on Nikon because the zoom on most of the Canons I liked were crap. 3x shouldn't even qualify as a zoom! The Nikon also has a few features that interested Josh more. I just ordered it and it should be here in a few days! I can't wait. I can't stand not having a camera, especially since we're in a new place.

Awesome Weekend!

I LOVE long weekends! Friday we finally got our MD license & tags after spending a few hours at the MVA. Luckily, it was a little cheaper than we expected (that rarely happens up here). My plan was to do a LOT of work on Friday & relax all day Saturday. On the way back from the MVA Josh decided he wanted to go somewhere to get a crab cake for lunch. I gave in & we went to Kooper's Tavern at Fell's Point. Fell's point is a historic area of downtown Baltimore. It's probably my favorite part of downtown, I still love the inner harbor though :-) They had a deep fried soft shell crap sandwich on special so we both decided to try it. It was soooo yummy! I also accomplished something I've been trying to do for a LONG time. We got Josh a new body pillow so we could throw out his old one. He's had it for longer than I care to share & I'm so glad I don't have to share the bed with it anymore! That night we watched The Shawshank Redemption. It's one of Josh's favorite movies & he's been trying to get me to watch it for years. I've always walked in at the part where they just got to prison & are getting yelled at so I've never wanted to watch it. It's actually a really good movie.

I made some awesome stuffed french toast for breakfast Saturday. We were lazy most of the day but we got a few things done around the apartment. I also finally got a desk! Now I can be organized when I work on our budget & other fun stuff :-) I talked Josh into watching Remember Me with me. It was good but it has a sad ending :-(

Yesterday we did some gardening & lots of organizing. We FINALLY picked out our paint color for the living room accent wall. We've been trying to decide for about 3 weeks now. It's a little ridiculous. I started going through some of our things so I can take them to the Salvation Army tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to freeing up some closet space!

Today I'll hopefully be ordering our new camera so we can take pictures again! I have LOTS of organizing to do still :-/