Vegetables galore!

McGee and I have actually been eating pretty healthily lately! Well, until tonight when we had Dominos... whoops. BUT, prior to tonight, we've been doing pretty good! We went to an organic market over the weekend, because I'd purchased a $15 Groupon that entitled us to $30 worth of groceries there! So we purchased a TON of vegetables and some fruits. We bought some heirloom tomatoes which I THOROUGHLY enjoyed!! They were such beautiful colors, and so very tasty. We also bought some kale, and they had multiple varieties of kale, so we went for the weirdest-looking kind (we assumed that meant it was the healthiest). I can't remember what it was called, but wow was it strange-looking. We also bought a beet, because I do not enjoy beets but I've heard they're SUPER healthy for you, so I thought it would maybe work well with my juicer and I wouldn't taste it if I combined it with other stuff! So, a few days later, McGee and I fired up my juicer and put in the WHOLE beet, and quite a bit of kale, and a ton of carrots, and a few apples. It looked pretty disgusting, but it was actually quite delicious!! It didn't taste healthy at all. McGee and I both had a pretty large glass of the juice, and felt quite healthy afterwards!

Now, I don't know how many of you have had beet juice, or have eaten a large quantity of beets... But let's just say that they can have some after-effects that can be quite scary if you don't remember that you had beets. Just think about the intense red color of beets... and... yeah. I thought I was dying for a quick second, until I remembered the beet juice. 

Away from that topic as quickly as possible:  We had also purchased some rainbow chard from that organic market, because for some reason I've always really wanted to try chard. I sauteed it up last night with some olive oil and garlic and a little splash of balsamic vinegar at the end (I read that you should do that with chard... I don't know why), and it was DELICIOUS! It looked kinda weird after it was cooked, and it really reduced down to nothing, but it was quite tasty! We had a big bunch of the fresh rainbow chard, and by the time it was done cooking it was really just a few bites for each of us. We will definitely buy chard again though! And I loved all of the colors in the rainbow chard. 

Oh, and we also bought a big ol' pineapple, and McGee grilled some of it for me on our super awesome grill, because I loooooove grilled pineapple! I also love grilled peaches and plums.... so we'll have to work on making that happen this summer sometime.

The Pros and Cons of Living in a House

So, I feel that this weekend we fully enjoyed the benefits of living in a house. On Friday evening, we were able to have some of Kevin's friends over, and we all enjoyed playing in the yard with Guinness, and we enjoyed hanging out by the BBQ drinking some beers... And we didn't have to worry about talking too loudly, because we don't share walls with neighbors anymore...  It was pretty great. The BBQ turned out pretty fun, and the burgers and hot dogs were sooooo tasty. The pasta salad turned out great too, and the dessert was pretty good. I made something called "The Next Best Thing to Robert Redford", and I thought the name was hilarious, and I also thought it sounded really easy, and it was something I could make-ahead and keep in the fridge until we were ready for it. I liked it, but it was nothing amazing... I don't think I'll add it to my "Recipes I LOVE" board on Pinterest.  Oh, and McGee's friend's girlfriend was over, and she doesn't enjoy drinking beer, so I found an easy cocktail called a "Dirty Shirley" that we both enjoyed (it's really just a Shirley Temple with some vodka in it).  I meant to take lots of pictures of the BBQ fun, but I was having too much fun and forgot... Whoops!

Today, we have done a LOT of yardwork, because that was getting pretty necessary... Our lawn was getting out of control, and we had tons of leaves everywhere that were starting to get gross and decompose from all of the rain we've had. McGee did the mowing, and we both did a lot of gathering leaves and battling ivy. Remind me to NEVER plant ivy whenever I own a house... The ivy was quite obnoxious, and was growing everywhere. I did get some pictures of our yard! McGee was oh-so-happy that I was taking his picture while he was trying to work...

McGee is standing in the driveway we share with our neighbor (so that's our neighbor's house that you can see). 

You can see our fenced yard in the back... Along with the busted fence (the first tree guys did that... Luckily Guinness doesn't try to escape or anything). We park on the paved area between the house and the fenced yard.

I think he was trying to ignore me... 

Here are McGee's gnomes that our on our patio... We definitely need some Chargers representation. 

 Here is a gross mushroom that McGee noticed when he was mowing the lawn (at the bottom of the tree). It is so huge and disgusting. It looks like a creature. I think we just leave it alone though, right? And halfway up the tree you can see more mushrooms. 

Here's a close-up of the weird/gross mushroom.

Here are the other mushrooms growing towards the middle of the tree trunk.

Here's the side of our yard, after we'd spent a long time battling ivy and picking up decomposing leaves. It looks so much better than it did when we started!

 And here's another angle! You can see our patio area. I think I want to get some colorful potted plants for the patio. 

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!! 

And the rain, rain, rain came down, down down...

Wow, we are getting an INSANE amount of rain! Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are supposed to be super crazy with rain and wind. I'm looking out my office window right now, and it's just pouring buckets. And then I got the song from Winnie-the-Pooh stuck in my head, thus the title of this post.

I haven't posted in awhile because McGee and I have been BUSY! Last weekend was incredibly busy, but it was also very productive. We had a lot of errands and chores that had been needing to get done for quite awhile, and we finally did most of them last weekend. One of those errands was that we went to the mall to get a new laptop for me! My laptop has been dying for a looooong time, so I've been researching new laptops for awhile, and I actually decided on a MacBook Air.  So, I'm officially a Mac user (insert shocked face here). I still have to get comfortable with it, but it's beautiful and I'm really excited about it. And OH-MY-GOSH is it thin and lightweight! I really can't get over how thin it is.

This week is also shaping up to be incredibly busy, because work has been NUTS and stressful for both of us, and we have a vet appointment for Guinness on Thursday (just time for vaccine booster shots), plus we're having our first official guests at our house on Friday. Three of McGee's friends are coming over for dinner (and I'm guessing one of them will be staying the night), so we're trying to make sure that our house is nice and clean and in good shape. We had lots of people stop by when we first moved-in, but then it's understandable to have boxes everywhere and have the place be a bit of a mess... But now (months later) there's just no excuse. Also, we will be prepping dinner for guests, which is something we don't really ever do... so I'm a bit nervous about that. So, we're going to try to keep it REALLY easy so we (hopefully) can't mess it up. We're going to grill some burgers and hot dogs and corn-on-the-cob, and I'm going to make a pasta salad and dessert. Fingers crossed it turns out ok!

I hope you're all doing well!!

Happy Easter!!

I hope everyone is having a great Easter weekend!! On Friday, I met up with my friend Colleen for dinner down in Delaware, and we did a lot of catching up and exchanged birthday presents (it's pretty much right between our two birthdays right now). That was a really fun evening.

And Saturday morning we left to pick up Kevin's sister, and then drive to the New Jersey shore! It was so beautiful there, and aside from it being a little chilly it was a LOT better than during the summertime there, because it was empty! There were barely any people down the shore, so we had the beach almost to ourselves. Kevin and I walked all along the promenade as soon as we got there, so that was about 3 miles of walking along the gorgeous beach. After we got back to the beach house (it had amazing views of the beach!), Kevin and his sisters and cousins all played frisbee, and I was a lazy bum and sat in a beach chair because I'd kinda rolled my ankle towards the end of our 3 mile walk. I'm totally fine now, but it was just sore at the time, so I didn't think running around the beach was a good idea. I was able to get some good pictures of the frisbee fun though!

Oh here are some cookies I made for the weekend! They were sooo rich. And they had Easter M&Ms and chocolate chips in them.

Ryan (McGee's cousin) looks like he's directing an orchestra or something...

We left the shore at about noon to head back to PA, and we picked up Guinness from the boarding place at about 2pm. The boarding place was NOT a pleasant experience... So we won't be going back to that one, and we will be complaining. I think poor Guinness is a little traumatized from that place.... but he's napping a lot, so hopefully he'll be better once he gets some rest. All 3 of us are exhausted, so we're probably going to be in bed right after Game of Thrones is over tonight (oh my gosh, this season is SO good already!!). Here's some pictures from different times today... This is pretty much all Guinness has been doing since we got home: 

This one cracks me up... I'm not sure how well you can see his smooshed face, so I tried to take a close-up (but that turned out kinda blurry)

Here's the close-up... He was SO passed out that he like smooshed his face into his paw... It was really cute.

And here's about an hour later... Our poor goober is so exhausted.

I hope everyone is having a really fun and/or relaxing Easter!! 

We've had Guinness for a whole year!

We figured out last week that we've officially had our crazy boy for a whole year!  It's hard to believe it's been a year. We didn't do anything at all to celebrate, except McGee and I high-fived each other for making it through the year (there were a few rough days!), and we gave Guinness a few extra treats.

He's full-grown now we think, and he's about 55 pounds. One of McGee's friends said that he looks like a small German Shepherd Dog with a curly tail... and I think that description is pretty perfect! He looks so much like a GSD, but he definitely isn't anywhere near as big as they usually are... and his tail looks nothing at all like a GSD. He definitely still has his crazy puppy-level amount of energy, and it is pretty impossible to give him enough playtime. We try really hard to exhaust him in the yard (Kevin ending up taking care of the most dangerous tree limbs in the yard so it's safe-ish again... We got tired of waiting for our landlord to fix the trees after 2 months of bugging him about it...), and Guinness loves to fetch tennis balls in the yard. Here are some very recent pictures of our big guy!

Isn't he handsome?

His nose looks enormous. And you can kinda see his Nylabone ring that he loves to chew on. 

He's super happy to have the yard back! Tennis balls everywhere.

This is him looking exhausted after TONS of running around the yard this weekend. 

Here was a small basketball we got for him this weekend... and wow did he love it. We thought it would be tough, and he couldn't get his mouth around it so we thought it would last forever... but he popped it within about an hour. We're going to try a full-size basketball, and fingers crossed that holds up a bit better!!

My birthday weekend

I had a wonderful birthday and birthday weekend! It was so fun, and so relaxing. On Friday night, McGee took me to an absolutely amazing restaurant called Garces Trading Company. For an appetizer, we ordered the fresh House Made Mozzarella, which was amazing. For dinner we both ordered the Steak Frites, which includes ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT STEAK!!!  Yes, you read that right: all the steak that you can eat. It was served in a cast iron skillet, and there was a huge portion of awesome fries that were fried in duck fat (SO delicious).  You also got to pick from 3 sauces, and I picked a Bearnaise sauce, and McGee picked a Bordelaise sauce. It was beyond amazing, and it was seriously the most delicious steak I've ever had. I tried to take a few pictures, but I didn't want to use a flash in the restaurant, and there was very dim lighting... so they didn't turn out great.

Here's some of the fresh mozzarella after we'd already eaten most of it

Here's my steak frites with the bearnaise sauce! I can't even explain how delicious the steak was. 

Here's the outside of the restaurant. It was in a very cool part of Philly. 

After dinner we were going to walk around a bit, but it ended up being a very cold and rainy evening so we decided to just head home. McGee decorated one of those large slices of cake that grocery stores sell, and it was soooo cute. He wrote a "H", "B", and "E" (Happy Birthday Erin). He's going to kill me for sharing this picture, but I thought it was adorable. 

On Saturday we had a pretty relaxing yet productive day at home, and on Sunday we met up with McGee's parents for brunch. McGee's dad had just had shoulder surgery a few days prior, so he badly wanted to get out of the house for a bit. And Sunday night we watched the season premiere of Game of Thrones!!!  I'm so glad it's back, and I'm so excited to find out what happens this season. I hope everyone's doing well, and thank you all so much for all of the birthday love!! 

Spring has sprung!

It is sooooo Spring now, and I'm sooooo excited. The temperature has been feeling really great, and we've been getting tons of rain (SO much better than snow!). Our stupid backyard is still not in good enough shape for us to use it and let Guinness run around, but we get weekly email from our landlord telling us not to worry, and that he's "on it". Yeah... We're annoyed. We have so many trees (and these are enormous trees) with limbs falling down - it's ridiculous.

Anyways, back to good stuff. Yesterday evening we had a nice break in the rain, so we decided it would be a great time to use our new grill for the first time! We made some delicious grilled burgers with a recipe I found on Pinterest. It has BBQ sauce and shredded cheese in it - SO good!  They turned out really great. We also grilled up some zucchini to have as a side dish. It was quite an amazing dinner, and I'm so excited for the many grilled meals in our future! Here's what the burgers look like before they're grilled, but I forgot to take a picture so I'm borrowing this picture from the website that had the recipe!

Tonight we're going to a historical movie theater not too far from our house to see The Grand Budapest Hotel. The movie theater looks really cool, and it's 100 years old! And Wes Anderson's movies always crack me up, so I'm excited to see The Grand Budapest Hotel! It should be a fun evening. Here's the movie theater:

And tomorrow night, McGee is taking me to a nice dinner for my birthday! We're going to one of Jose Garces' restaurants (he's an Iron Chef, in case you haven't heard of him). I'm so excited! McGee also already gave me a birthday present: some new running shoes! They were waiting for me this morning, so I already wore them on my walk with Guinness today, and I'm going to wear them for my run later today! Speaking of running, I've been doing pretty good at sticking with it! I run 3 times per week. I suppose "run" is a very loose term considering how slow I am, but it still feels good, and I'm noticing small improvements every week in what I'm capable of doing. One thing though: I desperately need some suggestions for running music for my Ipod! If any of you have any suggestions for songs I should download, please let me know. 

I hope everyone is having a great week so far! We've almost made it to the weekend!!