Friday Favorites!!!

Woohoo! So glad it's Friday!!!

1) Wednesday weather - Wednesday was absolutely GORGEOUS! It was the kind of day where you don't want to go outside because you're afraid  you won't come back in for work. I don't think 77 degrees ever felt so nice! All this ice and gloom has not been amazing, so a warm, sunny day was very welcome. Josh and I had planned to grill steaks since it was supposed to be warm. We were going to attempt to be productive other than that.The Martins asked us if we wanted to hang out, so of course we said yes! We didn't know when we would get another day so nice, so we decided to take advantage of it and worry about being productive later. That was a great decision and it was definitely a top down kind of day!

Sorry for stealing you pic, Anna! I didn't take any of my own!

2) Peru!!! - We've been saving for, talking about and planning a trip to South America for quite some time. We were originally planning on going in April, but then we bought a house. Of course, that changes things. We threw around lots of other ideas to see if we could still make the trip work. We considered going over Christmas break (which is definitely NOT the best time to go due to the weather), next Spring, then this summer. We looked to see when we could hike the Inca Trail (passes are limited and sell out months in advance). We just paid our deposit and we'll be hiking the Inca Trail this Fall!!!

This was originally going to be a 3 week trip to Peru and Ecuador, but with Josh's job change, we wouldn't be able to pull a trip that long off for quite a while. This one will be just over a week, so we're considering another trip later in the year (possibly over Christmas break since we'll both be off work around that time). 

3) Free Pallets - I've found a ton of pallet projects I'm interested in and we've decided to incorporate them into our new bar design. My parents picked up a bunch for us and they'll be bringing them to us within the next few weekends. Woohoo! I love free stuff!

4) Sling TV - We're always looking for ways to save money, and cutting out cable is a great way to do that. We heard about Sling TV a couple months back and we decided to look into it rather than jumping into a contract with a cable or satellite company. It's only $20 a month and we get the majority of the channels we really enjoy. You can add on extra channel packages for $5 a month and since there's no contract, you can drop those packages (or Sling in general) whenever you want. We just got it this week and we were able to take advantage of a promotion to get a free Amazon Fire TV Stick. It's still a new service, so there is definitely room for improvement, but for $20 a month, I'm really impressed and I don't think we'll have any desire to pick up a big cable bill in the near future. 

5) Hatchery - Hatchery is a subscription service that allows you to sample really cool cooking ingredients. You get a box with about 5 ingredients in it. Mine just came in over the weekend and I'm really excited about it. My box will probably get its own post once I get a chance to try some of the ingredients, but here's a teaser for now. Isn't it cute?!? 

 I really like that most of the ingredients aren't something you would see in a typical grocery store, so they're likely things I wouldn't have discovered on my own!

6) Atlanta - Josh has a class in Atlanta the last week of March. Since I work from home, I decided to ask my boss if it was OK for me to work extra remote from Atlanta the week he's away. She said yes! I love her for being so flexible with me! It really means a lot to have a boss who is so big on work-life balance! We're going to stay the weekend after so we can visit some friends! We went to Atlanta with the Martins a few years back for a football game and I've wanted to go back since then. The hotel is booked and we've decided to drive down, so now we just wait. We have just over 2 weeks, so I know it will be here quickly!

Picking out our new Home!

I said I would post the long story about how we ended up back in NC, so here goes!

Around Josh's birthday last year, we were talking about when we would like to move back home. We decided within a year, so by Josh's birthday this year. That seemed reasonable enough and very doable. We were OK if we weren't home by August 2015, but it was a time frame to shoot for. 

We decided around September to start looking at our budget. Of course I started looking at houses (this is something I did every single time I got homesick, so it wasn't a big deal and we knew it wouldn't amount to anything). The Martins told us they were still building in their neighborhood in Garner - we already knew we wanted to live in Johnston County, so this was an area we were interested in. I e-mailed the realtor who sells all of these houses and asked what the plans were for the neighborhood in the coming year. He said they hope to be finished developing within 6 months and he explained the remaining lots a little. There was a house that was set to be finished in December on a cul-del-sac. John had sent us a picture of the front of the house and we both really liked the way it looked. We didn't have any weekend plans, so we decided to drive down to see this house on the cul-de-sac and check out a few surrounding neighborhoods. We knew it was only .25 acres and we were really hoping for a bigger yard, so we didn't think we were going to buy it - but it was under budget, so we were considering it. If nothing else, we could check out some other neighborhoods in the area so we would know where to focus our search when we were actually ready to move. So we talked about it, prayed about it, listed our must haves and what we were willing to sacrifices, talked about job changes...you know...all the things you do before you go buy a house in a different state. We basically decided that everything except the yard had to blow us away for us to buy this house. The yard was smaller and it was going to be ready well before the time frame we had in mind. We didn't want to move again for a very long time, so this wasn't meant to be a short term house.  We wanted to make sure we were going to be happy.

After a long night of driving and just a few hours of sleep, we went to meet the only realtors who were available at the last minute on a Saturday (I highly recommend NOT doing this. If they're free at the last minute on a Saturday, there may be a reason - just our experience). Anyway, the drywall had just been put in the house the previous week, so it was kind of hard to picture what it would look like. Luckily, I grew up seeing houses in this state, then later seeing how beautiful they turned out - I had also been in Anna and John's house, so I knew I liked the builder's finishes. Aside from the cabinets being picked out already (lucky us, the cabinets were a color we loved), this house was a blank canvas. 

We walked in through the garage (2 cars - check!) and we see a spacious half bath and another random little room. What's this random little room? Oh, that's the walk in pantry (ding ding ding! Winner!). Next, we walk outside onto the deck. Most of it is covered, then there's an uncovered grilling deck. It backs to woods that belong to a school, so there's not going to be another house behind us in a year. There's a pond to the side of the house. There's a house on one side of us, but there won't be a house on the other side of us, which makes the house feel more private. Awesome! Josh and I both loved it! 

These are all the covered porch and grilling deck. The covered porch (the part with the steps going down) is screened in now. This will be perfect for keeping mosquitoes out this summer!

Looking inside the covered porch from the grilling deck.

Back inside, there was the breakfast nook, kitchen, dining room and living room. The kitchen was smaller than our old house, but not too small to work with. The pantry gave me the storage space that the lack of cabinets wouldn't, so I was ok with this. The dining room was a good size and the living room was too. Nothing super spectacular (except the fireplace I didn't even know I wanted). Moving upstairs...there are 3 bedrooms. We weren't sure about this, because we really wanted 4. There was a bonus room though, so we decided this was ok. The laundry room was nothing to write home about, but it was a laundry room - not a closet, which is what we had at our house in MD. The guest bathroom was exactly what you would expect a guest bathroom to be in terms of size. The 2 smaller bedrooms were about the size we were hoping for. 

On to the master...WOW! It was huge! And it had a sitting room! Very nice! The bathroom was huge! There were no sinks, cabinets, no shower/tub, etc. The markings were all on the floor, so we had a basic idea of where things would go. I was excited about the big tub. We had a big tub in the last house and I wanted it to stay that way. The shower...not so much. It's small, but it's fine. There was a separate water closet, which we both like. And the best part...a huge walk in closet.

Here's the master with the sitting room.

 This is inside the bonus room.

This is the breakfast nook, part of the kitchen and the living room.

This is the kitchen. The door at the other end leads to the dining room.

So...our thoughts on the house at first...

- 2 car garage - check!

- 2 common areas - check!

- walk in pantry (this was not a requirement, but it was WAY high on my priority list)

- Privacy - double check!
- 4 bedrooms - not a check, but it has the bonus that can be a bedroom if we need it

- .5 acre lot - not a check, but we loved the lot - so we made it a check anyway

At this point, we were basically ready to buy the house. We had looked at other houses (online) that had everything on our wishlist. This house was missing a couple of them, but between the price and the amazing lot, it more than made up for those few things. Obviously, you can't do that. You have to go look at the other houses you were considering. We did that. If the house blew us away, the yard was ruined by the view of another house right behind it. None of them held a candle to "our" house. The prices on them were WAY higher too. After looking at several other houses, we decided to go for it and put an offer in on the house!

 This is the outside of the house on the day we looked at it.

Sure, this was a lot sooner than we planned on moving, but the house was also a lot less than we planned on spending, so we didn't need the extra time to save. The area we wanted to be in is growing very quickly, so the houses aren't going to get any cheaper and the land definitely isn't getting more plentiful. After a bit of back and forth, we were under contract by the following Monday and things started moving like crazy!

Next, it was time to get our house on the market and start searching for jobs ASAP, because we were closing in 2 months! Those things didn't happen as quickly as we had hoped, so we ended up paying 2 mortgages for a short time. We wouldn't trade our extra time in MD for a thing, so it's better that it worked out that way. :-)

Potroast Mac-n-Cheese

I have 3 favorite comfort foods...Potroast (specifically, Beef Bourguignon, but potroast is so much easier to say and it's basically the French version of potroast on steroids, so I call it potroast anyway), Chicken and Pastry and Mac-n-Cheese...usually in that order. Sometimes Chicken and Pastry loses to Mac-n-Cheese, but a good potroast is always on top. 

A while back, I was at Houlihan's and they had Potroast Mac-n-Cheese as a special. My thoughts were that it could either be amazing or horrible. I decided to give it a shot. Ummmmm...amazing for sure!!!

I made Beef Bourguignon late last week and I had some leftovers. I decided to give the Potroast Mac-n-Cheese a shot at home. I don't regret it one bit. We had it for dinner last night and I probably just had a little bit more for lunch. 

Anyway, I like this meal so much because you really can make it your own. Use your favorite of each recipes and just marry them. Here's what I do...

For the Beef Bourguignon, the only difference I make is I leave the frozen pearl onions out and I add more regular onions. I made it with the pearl onions the first time I ever tried this recipe. While I will admit that it was prettier, I did not enjoy biting into the pearl onions. This recipe is a little labor intensive, but you get to catch stuff on fire, so it's totally worth all the effort. It makes a fair amount, so you'll probably have leftovers anyway. It does freeze well, so you can always freeze half for later!

For the mac-n-cheese, I don't really use a recipe. I have a recipe in mind, but I don't measure the cheese. I just keep adding until it tastes the way I want it. This is the recipe I keep in mind. The mustard adds a little extra tang that I love. 

When I'm making potroast mac-n-cheese, I do things slightly different. I like to warm the potroast in the microwave then add it to the cheese sauce. I add that to the pasta and stir it all in. You can top it with panko and bake it, but last night I was lazy and hungry, so after I mixed it all in, we ate it as is. It was still amazing. 

*** Note - One thing I do keep consistent with mac-n-cheese - I use Rotini. I love how the cheese oozes inside the little corkscrews. I'm not hating on elbows, they're just fine...they just don't hoard the cheese like rotini does. ***

Master Bathroom

Eventually, I'll post more pictures of our house, but right now, the master bath is the most complete room. Maybe it's not so exciting, but it's a room we use every day and it's pretty cheap to decorate, so it happened first.

One of the first things we decided to do is replace the incandescent bulbs with 40w equivalent LED bulbs. We love them! We got whatever brand was cheapest at Lowe's, then we found out about Cree. They're local and I'll jump on the opportunity to support a fellow Wolfpack alum! We bought Cree bulbs for other areas in our house

 We had the two small oval mirrors put in rather than the massive one that came with the house. I love these things. When we were house shopping the first time around, one of the houses I fell in love with had 2 oval mirrors and I've loved them since. They're less glass to keep clean too!

This is our bath tub. I love bubble baths, so I plan on hanging out here quite a bit.

This is a close up of the basket in the tub...

I decided to go with yellow and brown in the bathroom, so I snagged the lemon soap, sponge, bath salts and basket at TJ Maxx. I got the scoop from Amazon. The washcloths are from Kohl's. We got these bath mats in Dark Brown to match the towels. They are so soft!

This is looking into the water closet and closet (which is a hot mess right now. I'll eventually get around to sharing it) from the bath tub. The door to the far right leads to our master bedroom.

Our shower is ordinary. Smaller than I thought we would have in our next house, but it gets the job done.

We both didn't like the shower head that the house came with. I had gotten used to having one with a handle for cleaning the shower, so we decided to replace it. We got this one from Amazon. We like it, but we don't love it. I thought it would be great for washing Bailey because it has a pause feature on it. That part is great, but the hose isn't long enough. Overall, we like it better than what we started with, but this one may eventually find its way into the guest shower. 

 This is my orchid! Let's see how long I can keep this one going!

This is looking inside the tub. I saw some vases at TJ Maxx that would look great in that window! I want to go back and get those and maybe some candles to go on the window sill. I want to add some sort of decor on the wall to the right of the window. After that, I think we'll be pretty much finished with the master bath!

Corn Waffles Smothered in Chili Scrambled Eggs

This morning afternoon, I was trying to figure out what to cook for brunch. I started with just scrambled eggs, then I was going to put some chili and onions in the scrambled eggs because it seemed like the right thing to do. Next, I thought about putting those chili scrambled eggs over some french bread. Then it hit me that it would be much better over cornbread than french bread. Duh. 

I grabbed a box of Jiffy and noticed a recipe for pancakes or waffles on the side. Cornbread waffles smothered in chili scrambled eggs, salsa, sour cream and avacados? Ummmm...where have you been all my life?!?

First, I sauteed the onions for the scrambled eggs. Then I decided to put half of those (and some cheese) in the corn waffles themselves. Jalapenos would have been amazing as well, but I obviously didn't plan this meal ahead, so I didn't have any. 

Next, I added the scrambled eggs (I used 3 - next time I would probably either use 2 or add some additional seasoning), some cilantro and a can of no bean Hormel chili.

While the scrambled eggs were cooking, I made the waffles. 

On a side note, I've had my waffle maker for probably 6 or 7 years and I've recently gotten addicted to it. It probably has something to do with the fact that Josh JUST realized waffles are delicious. SO glad!

Back to the waffles. SO easy:

- 1 box of Jiffy cornbread mix

- 1/2 cup milk

- 1 egg

- 2 tablespoons butter or shortening (I used butter flavored Crisco)

This made 3 waffles for me.

To top the waffles off, I added pepperjack cheese, the chili scrambled eggs, salsa, sour cream, avacado and cilantro. It was SO good! I will absolutely be making these again...with some peppers added to the waffles!

Friday Favorites...A Day Late OF COURSE

This is my first Friday Favorites in a LONG time!

1) Car stuff - DONE! - It may have taken a LOT of money to get there, but our cars are officially registered in NC and we have NC drivers license! Woohoo! SO glad to have this checked off our to-do list!

2) Shopping Day - I took Monday off to go to the DMV and run a few other errands. I went grocery shopping and stocked up on some things AND I went shopping for some things around the house. The big items I got that I've been looking forward to getting were our new comforter set and coffee table. I LOVE them both! I'll be posting pictures soon!

3) Our job situations - Josh and I are both incredibly blessed! I'm SO glad he's able to work from home when he needs to and there's no pressure to get out and drive on bad roads. I get to work from home all the time and it's been really great so far. We both love our jobs and our bosses. You can't really ask for more than that.

4) Bailey pup! - Yesterday was Bailey's 4th birthday!!! I can't believe our little girl is already 4! She's changed so much since we first got her! We were hoping for lots of snow for her to play in, but that didn't happen. I baked a dog friendly birthday cake for her and the Martins brought Carter over for a play date. They both had a blast as always and of course the devoured the cake!

She was only about 4 months old in this picture!

5) Snow - We may not have gotten several inches like many places around us did, but we did get some snow. I'll take what I can get!

Silly Bailey

 Cute Bailey

 Asian Bailey

6) Brew Day - This past Sunday, we had our first brew day since moving to NC!!! We invited a few other friends and homebrewers over and had a great time! We couldn't have asked for better weather for it! I didn't take any pictures, but we're pretty excited about our new brew setup. We have several improvements to make, but we'll get there!

Major Catching UP!

Ummm...wow! Has it actually been almost 4 months since I've posted?!? How did that happen?!?

Well, for starters, life has been absolutely crazy for the past few months, but in a really good way. 

I'll put the short version here and I'll write a more detailed post later for anyone who cares...and for me to look back on in a few years! 

Since I last posted in October...

We bought a new home in December. We are beyond excited to live in the same neighborhood as our best friends. We love our new house and we've already made some great memories here! Things are coming together slowly, but they'll get there!


Sold our old home a week after we bought our new house. This was a bagillion times harder than I thought it would be. I cried a little when we left the house. It was our first house. It was the house we had planned to have our kids in. It was the house we hosted friends and family at when they came to visit and the house we had lazy date nights on the couch for almost 4 years. It was also the longest either of us had lived in one place for a LONG time. It was a good house and I will always cherish the times we had there.

You can see part of our journey in our townhome through the links below.

House Shopping
Finally Deciding
Updating
And more updating

We went to NY and visited Brooklyn Brewery







We crashed with Dave for over a month. Dave was a great roommate and this was easier than I thought it would be. The hardest part was doubling our commute to work. It still wasn't bad...25ish minutes, except for one horrendous snow day that took 2 hours!!! Aside from that, our time at Dave's was great. We started Taco Tuesday with him there and we're never stopping.

We went to Philly and waited in this line for a cheesesteak at Dalessando's.

It was delicious and 100% worth it! I never thought cheese whiz would be delicious on a cheesesteak...or anything really, but it has its place and it is on a Philly Cheesesteak! We also went to Sonny's and got a cheesesteak with provolone. We preferred the cheesesteak from Dalessandro's, hands down. I want one in my belly...right now!

We toured Victory while we were in Philly. 

We went to Texas!

We got to visit with Charleen and meet her boyfriend! We haven't seen her in almost 3 years, so it was awesome to catch up!!! This was a great trip and we both loved Texas. We definitely want to make it back to visit Austin and San Antonio!


Then, we moved! This was probably the hardest thing we've done as a married couple. We were moving both cars, so we had to drive down separate. I cried a little when we left our house, I cried a lot when we left MD. It's a place I never thought I would consider home. We always planned on leaving and I thought it would be easy. It was incredibly hard. I cried several times on the way down. Not a tear or two like when we left the house - I full-out ugly cried. It was much harder than when we left NC. We always knew we would end up back here. It's different, we're not moving back to MD in a few years. It's where we started our married life and figured out who WE wanted to be on our own. We learned to rely on each other in a way we never had, because we literally didn't have anyone else. It took us forever to make more than 1 friend...to the point that I didn't think we ever would. Once we did, they were all amazing friends and 100% worth the wait. MD will always hold a special place in my heart and I will always consider it my second home.

With the move came its own changes of course!

Josh got a new job!

He absolutely loves it. The work environment is completely different than the one he's been in since we moved to MD.

I was fortunate enough to keep my old job and I work from home now. Once I get my office in a presentable state, I'll be sure to post pictures of it!

We're now SO close to family and friends that we've been so far away from for almost 5 years!

TGIT is even more exciting because I get to share Olivia Pope with my best friend! When we first got married and moved to MD, we were 18 hours away!!! 18 hours! Now we're like a 10 minute walk away!

I got to have lunch with my Daddy...during the week! With just the two of us! I don't even know if this has EVER happened.

So, yea...lots of changes. Hopefully I'll stop neglecting my blog now that we're kind of sort of getting settled...very very slowly. More pictures and posts to come!