lord have mercy on my next thirty years

Photo courtesy of Flickr user josche

Happy 30th Birthday to my darling husband.

*Blog post title is a lyric from the song “My Next Thirty Years” by Tim McGraw

start spreading the news

At the end of August my husband and I, along with my mom, went to New York to visit with Lisa and Branden. We planned an engagement party for them and it was also my sister’s 30th birthday. I know – 30? Geez! I can’t believe my sister is 30.

First we spent a little time walking around Brooklyn and looking at the venues they’ve chosen for their wedding. We stopped by the Brooklyn Historical Society where they’ll have their ceremony in the library. Very fitting for my sister who works in publishing and loves books. The library has beautiful wooden shelves and an open balcony surrounding the study tables (which is where the ceremony will be set up.)

We also stopped by Bubby’s, a local restaurant where they’ll have their reception. Both the Brooklyn Historical Society and Bubby’s are in their neighborhood. Bubby’s is where Lisa and Branden go for brunch quite often and they love their photobooth (which will be fun for the guests during the reception.) What’s probably best about Bubby’s (besides their mimosas) is the view of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges through the large windows. It will be a beautiful view that night.

We walked through Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is where we’ll probably have a lot of wedding pictures taken. I’ve walked around this area everytime I’ve visited the past few years and I think I have enough pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge by now, but I can’t stop myself from taking more. The city has turned a few of the piers on the Brooklyn side into green parks and playgrounds.

Brooklyn Bridge Park is actually where Branden proposed to Lisa back in May. Lisa showed us exactly where he took her – some steps overlooking the Manhattan skyline. What a backdrop huh? Who could say no?

Later we went to the Brooklyn Art Museum where we saw Abdi Farah’s exhibit from Work of Art/Next Great Artist and Warhol’s art from his last decade. This is perhaps my favorite Warhol – a piece from the “Yarn” collection.

That night, Lisa opened her birthday gifts and we watched a little photo slideshow I made in honor of her birthday.

Lisa and Branden’s engagement party was a fun way to cap off our trip. We met for dinner at City Winery in Manhattan, not too far from where Lisa works. It’s a big, open restaurant and winery – sort of looks like it used to be a warehouse. She had a lot of friends come out for drinks that night. We had fun meeting everyone and watching Lisa and Branden enjoy time with their friends.

We’re really looking forward to their wedding next May. Until then, I’ll be busy designing their website (brandenandlisa.com) and doing some arts & crafts for the wedding!

See the rest of my pictures from our weekend in New York and Lisa and Branden’s engagement party.

*Blog post title is a lyric from the song “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra

the springtime is the season where everyone’s a friend

Fortunately for those living in northern IL, we had quite a lovely Easter weekend. It was warm enough to go for a jog outside – which is usually unexpected in early April. The hubby and I spent the weekend in Rockford visiting our mom’s and siblings. And of course, Ollie was there.

We belatedly celebrated our soon-to-be-brother-in-law’s birthday.

We also visited our friends Michelle and James and their new baby Ethan, born just a week before.

Mommy and Ethan

Daddy and Ethan

I don’t think Drew has held a newborn baby (maybe since his brother was born twenty some years ago.) He looks like a natural, no?

See the rest of my pictures from the weekend.

*Blog post title is a lyric from the song “Springtime Is The Season” by Of Montreal

wax is dripping from the frosting on the cake

Last Monday I celebrated yet another birthday. And I’m pretty sure that’s the last time I will celebrate it. Although I’ve been saying that for a few years now.

This year my husband decided to bake me a cake. It was the first cake he has ever baked all by himself. And it was my favorite kind – funfetti!!

He did an awesome job. He even did the double layers with frosting in the middle! Dude – that there made turning a year older totally worth it.

Wait – you mean I turned another year older?

Who cares – did you see all that frosting?

We went to dinner at Cafe Lucci. It’s been right down the street all these years, but we’d never tried it. Great Italian place. When we got home we cracked open a bottle of Chardonnay that we brought back from Napa.

And I got a new iPod Nano!! These Nano’s are awesome! They take video. They shuffle to the next song when you shake it! The screen changes orientation when you turn it! But it’s still nice and small. And blue’s my favorite color.

It was a great night to cap off a fun day I spent downtown for lunch and wine tasting with a few girlfriends. All in all, the weekend wasn’t too shabby. Except for the whole year-older thing. I’ll try not think about that part.

*Blog post title is a lyric from the song “Birthday Gal” by The Replacements

a heart in new york, a rose on the street

I’ve been waiting for months to post this one folks. Actually, I’d been waiting for months for last weekend to roll around because it meant I was enacting a plan that I’d kept secret since earlier this year. Well, it was only a secret to my sister. Pretty much everyone else knew of my “secret” plan to fly to New York to surprise my sister for her birthday.

My mom plans her trip to New York around the end of August every year to be with Lisa on her birthday. This year, I decided to tag along. After landing at La Guardia, we grabbed a cab to Brooklyn and stood outside Lisa’s building around the corner. My mom had Lisa come down to help with her luggage and as they greeted each other – guess who strolled up from around the corner? HA! Me! Lisa was shocked and thrilled!

Inevitably, Lisa’s well-laid plans for the weekend had to change a bit. We got tickets to see “9 to 5″ on Broadway. We got great seats and Allison Janney was starring in it!

The weather wasn’t too cooperative the next day, so we walked through Chelsea Market (one of my mom’s favorite spots) and saw “Julie and Julia”. We met a bunch of Lisa’s knitting friends (the Spiders) at her usual knitting venue and then we all went out to eat at Alma, a Mexican restaurant. Ahem – a Mexican restaurant with an incredible view.

Margarita’s and Guacamole!

Then we went down the street to Sugar Lounge for some drinks. And some Nintendo? Look closely and you’ll see Wii Bowling at the end of the bar.

On the last night we were there we went out to eat at Lure Fishbar, then to City Winery for a wine and cheese flight, and finally back home to play a little Sing Star on PS3. So fun!

We ended the trip with brunch at their favorite place, Bubby’s, down by the Brooklyn Bridge.

I don’t know how she can stand living near such a view. I just don’t.

Happy Birthday Sister!

*Blog post title is a lyric from the song “A Heart In New York” by Art Garfunkel

together, forever, that’s how it should be

The 3rd of July marked two special occasions. First, my husband’s birthday. I took him to breakfast that morning and then we played tennis (and he let me beat him in one game.) Then we headed to Wheaton for our friends Stefanie and Adam’s wedding rehearsal.

I was her Bride’s Assistant. I was put in charge of corralling the ring bearer and flower girl and handing out all the boutonnieres and corsages. Plus I got to skip around and snap photos, which I would have done anyways. Except for the skipping part. Drew hates when I skip. (Inside joke…)

We rehearsed at the Klein Golf Club for a planned outdoor ceremony, weather permitting.

The bride and her bridesmaids

After working up an appetite, we went to Gino’s East for the rehearsal dinner.

The bride’s assistant and the bride

Well, the weather did not permit. It rained on her wedding day. But that’s good luck right? (Personally, I just think that’s something made up to make the bride feel better.) The morning of the wedding, they decided to move the ceremony inside the tent where the reception was set up. Most guests sat at their dinner tables, but the VIP’s sat in chairs on the dance floor. I think it turned out beautifully and I must say, the bride handled the change of plans superbly.

The wedding was a success. And I think their marriage will be too.

I can just tell these things.

Who needs fireworks on the 4th of July when you get to spend the evening watching sparks fly for two dear friends on their wedding day?

See the rest of my pictures from the rehearsal and wedding day.

*Blog post title is a lyric from the song “I Say A Little Prayer For You” by Dionne Warwick

you can crush the flowers but you can’t stop the spring

This year for Easter we traveled home to Rockford to celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday early. We were so excited to give Barb her presents that we made her open one on Friday night. Kari had bought her a bunch of cat accessories. The first thing she opened was some fuzzy mouse toys. “What?” She was really confused and of course we were all laughing. “No. no. no. no.” she said. “YES!” We were taking her to the animal shelter the next morning to pick out her very own kitten! I love how we didn’t give her a choice. HA! Of course, she warmed up to the idea. And of course, I was there with my camera, eager to snap pics of the new kitty. But first, the cake!

I had been reading a great foodie blog – Dinnercakes (I know the author personally through my sister-in-law!) and saw that she made a rainbow colored cake and I thought that’d be perfect for an Eastery-birthday cake for Barb. So I did my version with pastels. (The cake wasn’t homemade, so no recipe to post.) I made it two layers with white frosting. I poured green in first, and then right on top I poured the remaining colors one by one. Then, I dragged a skewer through a couple times to get the colors to move a bit.

I kept the decorating simple (because I’m so not good at that part.) But I wanted it to have the flower theme for Easter – and to go with the little birthday plate I painted for her at Color-Me-Mine. The plate looks like it was painted by a kindergartener (no offense to kindergarteners) – we’ll just say I mean it to be that way (instead of confessing my poor painting skills.) She loved it nonetheless.

The colors of the cake didn’t get as marbly-mixed as I thought they would – you could see the half-circle shapes and that’s still cool! It tasted great too!

Now for the kitty! We went to Winnebago County Animal Services and spent some time with all the kitties there. It broke my heart to see them in their little cages – meowing and pawing to get out. That was tough. But we found a perfect match for Barb! Meet Oliver.

He was a little shy when he arrived at his new home, but it didn’t take him long to start exploring. By the end of the day, he was jumping up onto tables and being held by everyone. He and Barb are gonna be best buds I can just tell! I get first dibs on cat-sitting!

You may notice that he looks a lot like a certain little kitty who’s appeared here before – but there is no relation. Nanaa is from Africa! I hope to chronicle the highly-anticipated first meeting of Ollie and Nans.

Ollie & Nans

After celebrating with Barb and getting Ollie acquainted in his new home, we headed to my Mom’s for a delicious Easter lunch. She had a turkey she wanted to “experiment” with (although all her recipes are experiments.) She did three or four different treatments on parts of it—braised, marinated, jerk-style. It was all yummy!

See more pictures from the weekend on Flickr.

gonna take your mama out all night

For my mom’s birthday, I surprised her by taking her downtown to The Wooden Spoon for a cooking class. As if the woman needs any instruction in the kitchen. But we love to cook together and this was a fun reason to go downtown on a nice spring day. There were 12 people in the class and together we created a meal of crab fritters with curry dipping sauce, goat cheese salad with roasted beets and fig-balsamic vinaigrette, pork medallions with arugula cream sauce, roasted potatoes, and a lemon custard fruit tart with raspberries. And we brought our own bottle of wine to sip on while we cooked.

Yes – those are onion goggles. Both stylish and functional.

Check out the rest of the pictures on Flickr.

The best part of the class? You got to eat what you made! It was all muy delicioso!

i survived that’s good enough for now

I am finally back with a long overdue post for my anxious readers! j/k. Now that we’re almost a quarter of the way through the year, here’s my first real post of 2009. Sheesh.

A lot of things contributed to my digital silence: school and homework (lots of it), a frizzled-out computer, and the general non-excitement that is Chicago in the winter. This is really the best you can hope for during the winter months—just surviving another one. My car seemed to handle the ice a bit better this year tho.

This birdy perched on my balcony was enjoying the winter about as much as I was.

This week was spring break and while it wasn’t very springy, I’ve had a week without night classes or homework—and it felt wonderful. The winter quarter consisted of 11 weeks of 3 classes a week with lots of assignments and group projects. But now I’m on the home stretch. Just 2 more classes and I’ll graduate in June with a shiny new piece of paper to hang on the wall.

Of course we chose this week to replace our old desktop computer with a new HP Elite. It’s taken the better part of 4 evenings to get the thing up and running. Now that it’s all done, I can finally breathe. For a minute. So here’s what’s been up for the last few months.

Back in December, we picked out bamboo flooring to replace our carpet and, after a lot of false starts, finally got it installed in mid-February. It looks gorg and really warms up the place. The hardest part (besides the wait) was relocating all of our furniture and books to other rooms. Because we were expecting installation in early Jan, our living room was pretty bare for over a month. Our bathtub became a catchall of picture frames and candles and our kitchen table became a library.

This was just half of Drew’s book collection.

 

The finished product is well worth the effort.

In February, we had some extended family pay a visit to Chicago and we enjoyed a couple dinners out with them.

Oh yeah, and in the middle of all that, I turned a year older. We can gloss over this point real quickly.

mmmm cake

We finally planned a trip to Flagstaff, AZ to visit my dad in June. We’re looking forward to driving through Sedona, seeing the red rocks and the Grand Canyon. And, of course, getting lots of smooches from this guy.

Milo

try to set the night on fire

To celebrate Drew’s birthday, we tailgated at the Chicago Fire game vs. Toronto this past weekend. The rain held off for our cookout of burgers, dogs, and brats – and of course my mother-in-law’s famous homemade birthday cake! It was Blanco bobble-head night – even though the bobble-head looks nothing like him. Luckily, for the first time spectators, the Fire didn’t disappoint! Rolfe scored early in the game and then Thorrington scored in bonus time through the goalie’s legs to win it 2-1! GOOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!!

Lined up in our second row seats ready for the game!


Blanco decides where to put his corner kick.


Mapp holds off his opponent.