Broiled Steak and Roasted Parmesan Green Beans

"Let's make dinner for date night!" we said. 

"I can make chicken in the crockpot!" said she.

"That sounds great" said he. 

"Oops, I forgot" said she. 

"We're already out so let's go to the store", said we.

"Hm, red meat sounds good. We have green beans at home... let's figure out how to make a steak without using the grill"

And so they did, and it was the most wonderful dinner ever. The end. 

We've never made steak at home before. Both of us like red meat, but we don't make it often because of price. We do however have a weekly date night budget, so we spent money from that budget for our steak (we had no idea what we were doing in the meat section so we hoped for the best).

We set the table (sparkling grape juice leftover from NYE - we're fancy)

Played the Louis Armstrong Pandora channel.

For our steak: Carson coated it in garlic, rosemary, steak sauce, pepper and Worcestershire sauce and threw it in a bag to marinate for a couple minute. Then we put it in the broiler on a roasting pan for 3.5 minutes on either side. We like our steak pink in the middle, and this was perfect. Carson claims he's never had a better steak and I'm going to agree with him - it was good! I've heard good things about putting butter on top with some garlic so that might be our next recipe.

And for the green beans. We chopped off the ends, chopped up some mushrooms to go with, threw some Parmesan on there, drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and threw them in the oven at 375 for ten minutes. I left them in there a bit longer so they would be slightly overdone. We've discovered that we LOVE our veggies roasted. Better flavor... I hate boiled vegetables.

End result. YUM. This could be a meal all it's own.

Date night success. A great meal for probably 1/4 of the price of a restaurant.

Christmas Weekend

Our weekend turned out to be very Christmassy, which was wonderful. 

As you know (maybe) Carson and I work very different schedules, so although we see each other every day, it's often in passing. Dinners together are incredibly rare, since evenings are spent at work or in the library for Carson. It's fine because it's the season we're in, but the point is that we really look forward to those times when we both have free schedules.

Last weekend was such a weekend. I was randomly given Friday, Saturday, Sunday AND Monday off without asking, which was SO GREAT. 

Carson didn't have to work Friday evening, so we made plans to have a Christmas movie marathon. I went out to buy him a gift, and when I returned, he was putting lights on the house... in his new bacon PJs from his mom. PJs outside? We keep things klassy here. 

This was our little set-up.

We watched Home Alone, Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, The Christmas Shoes and Elf.
I planned out the evening, with activities (we were going to bake cookies but the couch proved super cozy so we didn't) and snacks and a yummy soup in the crock-pot.

For the soup, I used this recipe, but tweaked it quite a bit. Carson LOVED it.

I also roasted asparagus, which was excellent.

During a break between movies, Carson washed the dishes and I took pictures of the lights on the house.
Oh, for those of you who don't live in snow, this is how light it is in the sky at 10pm when it's snowing. It's an eerie sort of light, but seriously quite bright.

And this is our house. We bought icicle lights, but they refused to unfurl and look like icicle lights. Still pretty though. I love how it looks with the snow. Cozy.

And here's the view from the hallway into the living room, for a little more random coziness. Twinkle lights everywhere. Carson stated this year that they are prettier than colorful lights which is big news because he usually says the opposite (and when he reads this he will likely deny that he said it, BUT HE DID.)

Later that weekend, we made Christmas cookies, but I took a lot of pictures of that, so they'll live in their own post.

Dinner, Dancing, Dessert

We got ready for date night a few weeks ago (this is noteworthy, because most of the time we have a plan to go out and forego it to sit around in our PJs and eat frozen pizza). 

Once we were ready, we had a silly photo shoot. 

Then we had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. 

We ate too much,

Then we danced it off as we learned how to follow a ballroom dancing YouTube video. We tried the waltz and got pretty darn good at it (although we look like we're square dancing in the pictures).

Then we played Scattergories (Carson won the first round, then I creamed him in round two). 

We finished off the night with a piece of cheesecake we'd taken home. 

We didn't finish the cheesecake so I had it for breakfast the next morning. 

All in all, a solid effort for date night from Team Bay.

The Drive-In

We saw a triple feature at the drive-in a few weeks ago: Monsters University, Percy Jackson and the something or rather and Despicable Me: 2. The first of the movies began at around 9pm so it was an exceptionally late night. We'd decided early on that we had no desire to see the second movie (it really looked ridiculous) so we set an alarm and tried to take a nap in that time. It turns out that it's difficult to sleep, curled up in the backseat of a Civic (me) and in the driver's seat (Carson). The little cat-nap we did get let us power through the third film. We got home at 3:45 in the morning. Yikes! It took an entire week to recover, but we would both definitely go to the drive-in again. It was a fun experience!

Chagrin Falls

One of the places we were told to go before we ever moved to the area was Chagrin Falls. It's a little village about 20 minutes away. It's cute and touristy and they have waterfalls, so there's fun for the whole family. You've seen our adventures there in the winter with Brooke and Levi, and there's one other time we went (we had just moved here), but one afternoon, we decided to drive out there for a little date night. It was after 5 when we arrived, so many of the little shops were closed (except for a used bookstore, where Carson of course found a treasure). Still, it was nice to be outdoors in nice weather and enjoy warmth, waterfalls and snacks (popcorn for me, ice cream for Carson).

Spa Day

So here's the thing. These pictures should possibly not be on the internet because they are embarrassing. Not so much for me, of course, but I'm still in some of them. 

A couple of months ago, I got a pedicure. I was talking about how nice it was to have those massaging chairs and such and we started talking about how nice it would be to go to a spa. We don't exactly plan on going to a real spa because we are cheap and because leaving the privacy of our home for something like that is not Carson's cup of tea. But anyway, we talked about how nice it would be to be pampered. "Let's do something like that at home!" we said. 

A couple things to note about this conversation: I was the one who said this, and I agreed with myself. Carson did not seem to disagree with the statement, so I count him as agreeing (although it's likely he was reading an interesting segment of his book and nodding at that).

So that "conversation" led to this. Spa Day 2013... which we were actually really excited about (I had told Carson about face masks and he was excited to peel one off because he thought it would be like a snake shedding skin). I worked that day and Carson had class, but we decided to meet at the house at a certain time before a lecture he was attending - to squeeze our spa adventure into three hours. 

Here were our supplies: 

Thankful for Date Nights

Date nights with Carson are things that I am thankful for. We try to have a date night every week, and they vary from free meals at home and game nights to dinners out and exploring the area. They're a fun thing to look forward to each week, and more recently, I've made a jar with slips of paper for date night activity ideas, just in case our creative juices aren't flowing. 

Here's a recent one. We went to Chipotle for dinner, which is right around the corner (it shares a shopping plaza with my job). It was tasty as always. We both got burrito bowls, which we agreed offer more food than an actual burrito, which means food to take home for lunch the next day or the option of sharing one. 

We noticed that Petsmart had opened nearby, so we walked over to see if there were any animals to look at. We didn't see any cute ones, so we went to the back and watched them feed the lizards (it was disgusting, but slightly fascinating). A whole store dedicated to animals is a little crazy, but we enjoyed mocking the dog apparel, pricing goldfish (we're not sure if we're ready for a $0.13 commitment) and finally finding the cats up for "adoption". They were cute and we were tempted although I'm an anti-cat person, but our landlord doesn't allow animals, so we just enjoyed their cuteness through the glass.

After that, we made oreo balls and nutter butter balls. We enjoyed incorporating making something together, plus they were really tasty. We watched "The Amazing Spiderman" as we enjoyed these.

Loving the Season

Saturday was relaxing: 

we slept in

 read in bed for awhile

ate brunch (it was really too late to call it breakfast) in bed

and lazily started our day. 

We found a thrift store, where we walked out with things we didn't need

(things to hang on our walls)

And on the way to find a different park, we stumbled upon this one.

We saw bees (first picture), ducks, egrets, and other wildlife

Carson put a feather in my hair

We found a leaf that was bigger than our faces

And took way too many pictures of lovely leaves and things

Enjoy.