Girl's Night

So Lana was having a birthday... a SECOND 21st birthday. Which might mean that she is now 22, or it might not :) 

Anyway, for this special occasion, we gathered on an atypically rainy evening in Ohio City for dinner. The original plan was to wear our old prom dresses, but we realized soon that very few of us would have held on to things like that, so Lana requested that we wear sequins. Apparently we don't have those either, because most people borrowed sequiny things.

We met at 8, with plans for dinner. Only the restaurant we chose doesn't take reservations on Saturday night so for a group of 9, it was an hour wait. So we went across the street to another place where the wait was 30 minutes. It was a very busy Saturday and we didn't eat until 10:30pm, but all that waiting gave us time to talk. All of these girls are part of our church; most are in our community group, so we know each other, but we don't hang out all the time (but we're working on that). Anyway, the time to talk was great. 

And then we finally sat and we waited some more. Which of course meant that we should take pictures on our phones (and with my camera)

Polly, Danielle, Lana, Deanna

Jen, Danielle, Claire, Malea, me. I missed the lipstick memo.

Cheers to Lana! (and to finally eating)

And a group picture to remember the evening.

  Happy 21st birthday, Lana! 

Funfetti Dip

Out of all the dip recipes I've tried (it sounds like I'm talking about tobacco here, but don't worry, never tried that), this one was probably the biggest hit, and it was really simple too!

I've had a similar recipe pinned for awhile, and I made this one because someone in our community group was having a birthday. I was going to make a cake, but I didn't have all the ingredients and the snow was really piled up and the car was sort of stuck in the driveway so I had Carson run to the store when he got off work and made this instead. I'm glad, because this was a huge hit. I made the pea "guac" the same night so we had a contrast of really healthy... and this. But this was amazing.

You'll Need:
1/2 C melted and cooled butter (that's one stick. told you it wasn't healthy. You could probably get away with less)
8oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 C powdered sugar
1 C Funfetti cake mix
1 tsp vanilla (I always add more than recipes say)
1 T sprinkles

Melt butter and set aside to cool. Beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, funfetti with electric mixer (I used my hand mixer). Add vanilla and butter slowly. Beat for two more minutes. Stir in sprinkles. Put in fridge.
Top with sprinkles before serving. Enjoy with Nilla Wafer Cookies!
(this was such a hit that all the cookies were gone by the end, but there were 21 people at our house, so it serves quite a few people)

Pea "Guacamole"

Pea... Guac? 

I know it sounds strange, but this dip is actually quite good. I served it to our community group and had them guess what was inside - most people guessed avocados, no one guessed peas! 

Like you, I had second thoughts about mixing peas into a dip, but they were cheap (83 cents for a bag) and there are LOTS of recipes using them in this way so I went for it. 

You'll Need:
10-12 oz frozen peas, defrosted (I just ran under warm water for a few seconds)
garlic
cilantro
lime juice
pinch of cayenne
olive oil
salt and pepper
(red onion would be good too, and I thought about adding a little pesto instead of cilantro but someone in our group has a peanut allergy and I didn't know if the pine nuts in pesto acted the same way as peanuts!)

Mix up in a food processor, put in the fridge until ready to serve. Everything I put in was to taste, and I added the cayenne at the end for a slight kick. Since the flavor of peas is surprisingly strong, taste as you go. I served with tortilla chips.

The nice thing about this, other than how cheap it is, is that unlike guac, it doesn't brown. It is VERY green which can be a little alarming, but it's good!

Getting the Most Out of Cleveland

Over the last few months, I've been really convicted and challenged to be intentional in our time here in Cleveland. Whether it's getting out of the house and exploring the things the greater Cleveland area has to offer or putting myself out there to get to know the ladies at our church better, I'm feeling the need to dig as deep as I can while we are still here. We don't know what the future holds, but it seems that our time here could very well be quite short, so the absence of time is pressing this intentionality more than it would if this was the place we thought we'd be living forever. So I'm praying that I will be more thoughtful with my time. I don't think it's good to be gone every night of the week and to ALWAYS ALWAYS have plans, but I know that I'll regret not getting the most out of friendships here if I just stay in and watch a movie.

Deanna and Lana, friends of mine, are helping me with this by introducing me to places I've wanted to go and haven't. At Community Group one week they noticed that I'd said "Oh, I've never been/eaten there!" one too many times, so Deanna took it upon herself to enforce my getting out there and I'm thankful! We've made trips to a few Cleveland places already and have plans to continue.

Happy Dog
The first weekend, we went to Happy Dog, which is a hot dog place with SO MANY options. I've heard good things but hadn't experienced it and finally did! You get a paper with a bunch of topping options and just check off what you want on your hot dog, paying a flat $5. My hot dog had garlic aioli, bacon, a fried egg, caramelized onions, a pickle and feta cheese - and mine wasn't even unique! Happy Dog had Froot Loops, macaroni and cheese, spaghetti-o's and other crazy options. Carson didn't go, but it was only $5, so I think I'll have to introduce him.

West Side Market
The following week, we went to the West Side Market, which I've heard SO many things about in our time here. It's similar to Pike's Place Market in Seattle, but only open a few days a week. It's huge and there are vendors selling fresh produce, meat, popcorn, cheese, bread and all kinds of other great things. I spent $15 and came home with SO MUCH STUFF. It was fun to look around and be surrounded by crowds of people. We will be back!

Playhouse Square
AND did you know that Cleveland has the second largest theatre district in the world (second to New York)? I certainly didn't, but since we learned that, we've been wanting to go to plays here. Friends in our community group work for the Cleveland Playhouse so they offered free tickets to the group. Lana and I decided to go down there on a Wednesday night to see Yentl, a play about a Jewish girl who wants to study Jewish law but can't because she's a girl, so she pretends she's a boy and goes anyway. It was really interesting!

(I took this before the show - before they said not to take pictures)

It was a beautiful building and I wish I'd brought my good camera.

So pretty at night!

Painted Knife Block

I was once browsing Pinterest one day and saw an idea I loved. Someone had painted their knife block and put a vinyl monogram decal on it. It looked easy enough so I went for it. The tutorial I saw was hand painted, but to make it even easier, I used a can of spray paint (that I already had from painting a lamp). I wiped down my knife block with soap and water, dried it off and took it into the basement for a few coats of paint.

Hours later, I put the knives back in (carefully, since I didn't let it sit for 24 hours like I probably should have) and admired the easiest thing I'd ever done. I didn't use a vinyl decal because I A) Didn't have one and B) The metal logo plate serves as a visual interest like the monogram would have done.

It's holding up really well (it's been a week), but if it decides not to, I'll just attack it with another coat of paint! 

Stream of Consciousness: Life

January and February feel very long to me. I think it's the endless cold and snow and the fact that few events happen in our lives in these two months. We have a few things with friends and Superbowl plans but other than that it's life and nothing else, which isn't bad at all.

It was so refreshing to have Carson around over Christmas break that now feels bittersweet having him back to the grind. For awhile there he was dropping me off at work (and I was enjoying having my own personal chauffeur and windshield scraper) and picking me up and that was nice because even though he'd hit the books or take the car to his office to study, it was nice to see each other several times during the day. We've spent lots of time apart in our relationship and since Carson's been in grad school it feels normal to have just one night a week together. One thing that is new is that we are having a consistent night together for date night, which has never happened. We have Community Group on Mondays, Carson has class till 9:30pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then he works at night on Friday, Saturday and sometimes Sunday. Guess how often I make dinner? That's right, not often.

I have Poison Oak again, which is just very strange and mysterious. My time outside has been limited to hurrying from the car to the house to work to Target or the grocery store. I haven't been pulling weeds or so much as touching a tool outside. I wore the Tshirt I wore when I first got Poison Oak in September, but I've washed and worn it probably five or six times since with no problems. And the weirdest part to me is that the Poison Oak is on my ribcage, which is not usually a place that gets such things unless you're doing yard work in a sports bra, which I wasn't. So that's been the most exciting thing lately. It was a flare up and has been healing really fast (about a week and a half in and it's mostly faded, while last time it took over two months to finally go away) with the application of calamine and super hot showers.

Because it's been cold, and so cold that our heater is overworking itself and still won't get past 63 degrees (which feels downright cold in our poor drafty house), I've been spending 90% of my time huddled under or on top of the electric blanket on our bed. Once again, that thing is the best thing that ever happened to a cold weather hater like me.

I've been trying to keep myself busy on these chilly days, so I've organized the upstairs landing (aka my craft area), moved the DVDs up there and done a load of laundry a day to give myself something to actually do. It's far to cold to think about running (my lungs feel like they'll explode when it's cold) so I've been running up and down our stairs and doing exercise DVDs. Carson on the other hand ran home the other night wearing shorts in NEGATIVE FOUR DEGREE weather.

I went through my old backup CDs from high school last week and found some serious blackmail... mostly blackmail for myself, since my braces days were long and unattractive. But it was fun to relive memories and to see how my friends and I dressed and even to look through the pictures and realize that there is a lot that I don't remember, which is saying a lot if you know me.

One thing I've been doing this year and hope I'll continue doing is to organize birthday cards for the month a few weeks before the month starts and have them addressed and ready to send out ON TIME. There's a post office at John Carroll so I just send them with Carson and he mails them for me. So far my plan is going well and it's January 23rd so that's 23/365 days of success.

Homemade Thin Mints

I'll admit: I was as skeptical as you are about this treat. Regardless, the ingredients were simple and I had most of them, so I decided to go for it. 

I had a cookie exchange for work and didn't feel like making sugar cookies again, so I decided that I would do these for that and hope for the best. It turns out: these taste like thin mints! They are the right size, have the right taste and the right texture. I was astonished. Carson is in love with them. 

I got the recipe from here originally.

Makes... well, that's hard to say. The recipe I followed said 18. But she used more chocolate than I did, so it depends on that. 

You're going to need:

box of Ritz crackers 

3/4 tsp Peppermint extract 

cup of semisweet chocolate chips

a bit of shortening (for melting chocolate)

First, line a baking sheet with wax paper. Then, melt your chocolate. I thought the shortening added a better texture, so I used it. Add your extract carefully and mix.

I then tried to carefully dip the cracker in the chocolate without making a mess and it proved impossible, so instead of using a fork, I used my fingers to coat the crackers. It was a huge mess, but it was also the only way I could do this. Perhaps if I had used more shortening it would have thinned the chocolate and been better, so try that.

Put them on the cookie sheet and then put that in the refrigerator until you're ready to enjoy. I really was surprised by how good these are, and they aren't $5 for a tiny box or seasonal! (Additionally, other pictures I've seen were much prettier. Mine weren't.)