New Orleans

Last weekend we went to New Orleans!! 

Day 1: Verrrrry early on Saturday morning Kevin and I caught a flight to New Orleans, and were there until Tuesday!  It was the perfect amount of time to see the sights.  We arrived at like 8:30am (I told you our flight was early!), and we dropped our stuff at our AirBnB and then immediately went to Cafe du Monde to get beignets and cafe au lait. That revived us, so we then walked over to the World War II museum. It was a really great museum, but OH MY GOODNESS it was crowded!  We hung out there for a few hours, but then we started getting soooo tired, so we went back to our AirBnB to take a little nap. We slept for a bit, and then we were ready to party!  We went out to dinner at the great place called Napoleon House, and afterwards we went to Preservation Hall to catch some amazing live jazz music!  It was so awesome, and definitely one of the highlights of our trip. After that, we went to Pat O'Briens to have some cocktails and hang out by the amazing fountain in their courtyard!  After that, we wandered around Bourbon Street to witness the madness!!  It was insane and super fun.

WWII museum! 

The sign outside Preservation Hall!!  This place is a MUST if you go to New Orleans!

This was the small room where they performed!  You weren't allowed to have phones/cameras out during the performance, so this was the only picture I got from inside the venue!  

The fountain at Pat O'Briens!  Another must-see. 

McGee's first (and only) hurricane at Pat O'Briens!  They are STRONG drinks (and way too sweet!), but it's another must-do experience. 

The view from our courtyard table!  Pat's was fun and crazy! 

Day 2: On our 2nd day we wandered around the French Quarter, and then took a VERY old and awesome trolley over to the Garden District to check out the cool houses there!  We did a little self-guided walking tour of some of the more famous houses in the area.  We also went in one of the cemeteries, because that's a must-do while in New Orleans to see all of the above-ground tombs!  They have a high water table in New Orleans, so they solved the possible burial issues (floating caskets, etc) by placing their dead above ground in tombs. It's very interesting to walk around one of the cemeteries!  We went to dinner at Commander's Palace, which was DELICIOUS but the vibe was a little too fancy for us!  We really enjoyed ourselves though, and afterwards we went back to our AirBnB to change into something more comfortable, and then we wandered around Frenchmen Street to listen a bunch of amazing jazz music!

This was in the French Quarter!

French Quarter! 

The super old amazing trolley we took!  If you take this trolley, be sure to sit up front so you can watch the driver!!  It is SO cool how they drive these but I really don't understand how it works.

Cemetery! 

This was the house that Disney used as the inspiration for the Haunted Mansion ride!  It's in the Garden District. 

This is the gate outside of Anne Rice's house.  Some people see skeletons and some people see roses!  I definitely see skeletons. 

Hopitoulas!!  This beer was delicious.  And it was SO fun to be able to walk around the streets with drinks!! 

This was just down the street from our AirBnB!  It was an amazing band performing on the corner, and people just gathered to listen and party.  This happens all over New Orleans and it's so fun!  Amazing live jazz music is EVERYWHERE!!  

This was a very cool club, and the band was awesome!  

Day 3:  We just did a lot of relaxing/wandering for the first part of the day, and we had a very early lunch at this awesome little po-boy sandwich shop as soon as it opened (because the lines get craazy later!), and then afterwards we went over to the Carousel Bar!  It is literally an old carousel that rotates as you sit at it!!  It's so cool, and it was definitely another highlight of the trip!  After we had a few cocktails there, we wandered around some more, and then we found an amazing jazz club with a super cool band!  We hung out there for a bit, and then went to get changed for dinner.  Dinner was at K-Paul, which was THE BEST food experience in New Orleans!  Everything was so delicious. The chicken and andouille gumbo was AMAZING.

Beautiful! 

The carousel bar! 

My Pimm's Cup!  Delicious. 

It's so pretty!  And fun!!  And it ROTATES!!  

Another view so you can see the cool chairs. 

Kevin and I in Jackson Square! 

The Spotted Cat club!  The band was playing on the stage over to the left of the pic. 

The tablecloth at K-Paul was adorable!  It had these cute little drawings of their recipes.

Bread Pudding!

Our trip was soooo fun, and I think everyone should go to New Orleans!!  It's such a cool city, and there are a MILLION things to see/do!  I'd be happy to give you a list of must-sees and some tips, etc if you are planning a trip at any time! 

April starts tomorrow!!  Crazy!  I hope March has gone great for all of you!! 

Spring has Sprung!

Wow, it's officially Spring you guys!!  Our neighborhood isn't really looking like Spring yet, but I think it'll start happening very soon!!  

Kevin bought me daffodils because he knows they're my favorite!! :)  

I hope you all had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day!  Kevin and I had a pretty relaxing weekend at home, but I made some Irish soda bread and this amaaaazing Irish chicken stew from the cookbook that Lizzy and Claighton got us for Christmas!  It was my first time trying that Irish soda bread recipe, and it was a MILLION times better than my other Irish soda bread recipe!  So, that old recipe is getting dumped, and I'm only making this new recipe from now on!!  I also decorated the house for St. Patrick's Day at the beginning of March, so we got to enjoy it for a few weeks!!  

Some of the awesome St. Pats cards we got this year! 

My parents bought this for me years ago! 

Guinness is definitely loving the slightly warmer weather!  He's had fun playing in the yard, and he's been loving our walks around the neighborhood too!  A few weeks ago we saw a deer on our walk and it was REALLY close to us!  Guinness didn't seem too impressed by it, and the deer didn't seem too worried about Guinness either... he just stood there and watched us for a minute, and then went back to eating. I was LOVING it, but neither of them seemed too impressed by the encounter!  I was still very glad that Guinness was on a leash though.  Haha :)  

Our silly pup looooves chewing on sticks and running around with them

There's the deer!  It was in our neighbor's yard. 

And I'm going to try to do another post very soon about our trip we just back from yesterday (that apparently I didn't tell anyone about)!!  We just went to New Orleans for about 4 days, but I suck because it seems I didn't tell anyone at all about this!!  Whoops, my bad!!  The beginning of this year has just been insane at work, so I think I haven't been doing a good job of communicating!  We have had a lot of people at work quit recently, and actually juuuust last week another person put in their notice and their last day is on my birthday.  So... when you only have a department with 10 people and 3 people have quit... It is NOT good for those 7 remaining people.  Things are getting stressful and insane.  

But, enough about me!  I really hope everything is going great for you guys, and I hope Spring has started off really great!  I will do the New Orleans post very soon!!  Love you and miss you!!  

Recap of late February and early March

Hey guys!  Wow, I am NOT doing a good job of posting on here often!  I will improve, I swear!  Since I've been so awful about posting regularly, I figured I'll just do a recap of everything I missed posting about! 

First thing is Valentine's Day!  We had a lovely Valentine's Day.  We made homemade pasta and homemade alfredo sauce, and we also watched a BUNCH of the Haunting of Hill House on Netflix!  That show is amazing - I really loved it!!  I have a few Valentine's decorations, so I've posted pictures of those below! 

Snoopy and a pig I've had since I was a kid!  And a sweet card from my parents.

These 6 are these cute little Merry Miniatures figurines from Hallmark that my parents used to get me when I was little!  I've saved them all, and I also have some of Brad's old ones because he didn't want them :)  Sadly, I don't think Hallmark makes them anymore. 

I can't remember where I got this, but it's all vintage-y looking and I love it! 

We've gone to a few breweries around us that we'd never been to!  That's always fun.  And we also went to Yards Brewery in the city even though we've been to that one already, because that's probably our favorite around here. 

Levante had the cutest glasses!  Their selection was almost overwhelming though.  It was a tiny brewery with like 25 beers. We just stopped in for a quick pint, so it was hard picking one!

Love City Brewing!  This one was really fun - I liked the vibe here, and the beers were good! 

Yards!  Our favorite. 

This is the view from the upstairs bar at Yards!  

Other than that, we've really just been hanging out with Guinness a lot and riding out this weird winter weather!  We've had a few snows, but the snowy days are immediately followed up by 60 degree weather so everything just melts and becomes muddy.  This is seriously the weirdest winter we've ever had!  One day you need your warmest clothing and snow jackets and boots, and then the next day you're fine in a light sweater and Converse shoes. 

Guinness cuddling Kevin!

Guinness at the dog park!  The grass was very frosty that morning! 

One of the snowy days!  Guinness had a blast playing frisbee.

Snow! 

Here's a deer in our yard one snowy evening!  There were a bunch of deer, but this is the only one I got a picture of. 

And this was on a walk with Guinness today!  It was foggy like that allll day long today, because the snow is rapidly evaporating!  It's almost 60 degrees today, so the snow is rapidly melting.

Here's another view of it!  It was very eery all day with that fog! 

This coming weekend is St. Patrick's Day!  I'm excited!  We haven't decided what fun things we're going to cook to celebrate, but we'll make something Irish-y and delicious!  Our friends Lizzy and Claighton got us an awesome Irish cookbook, so I think we're going to pick something from there!  And maybe we'll watch some Irish movies or something too!  I'm not sure yet :)  

I hope everything is going really great for all of you!  And I hope you all have a wonderful St. Patrick's Day!  

The Oscars!

The Oscars are tonight!  I'm excited.  We just finished watching the last of the Best Picture nominees that we're going to watch (we watched all but one!), and I really loved a lot of the movies this year!  Two of them I did not enjoy, but for very different reasons. I'll give you my thoughts on each movie!

1.  BlacKkKlansman - I really loved this movie.  I definitely would be happy if this got Best Picture, but this one isn't MY pick for Best Picture.  It also isn't the one that I think will get it.  This one dealt with some very difficult subject matter, but it was SO well done, and there were funny parts and serious parts, and it was just great.  There were also LOTS of parallels throughout the movie between what was happening during that time period and what is happening now, and juuuust in case the viewer wasn't understanding the parallels, they really put it right in your face at the end of the movie, which I thought was amazing.  I loved this movie.  I am pulling for Adam Driver as Best Supporting Actor!  He's an awesome actor.

2.  Black Panther - I thought this movie was VERY enjoyable, and I think it's very awesome that a Marvel movie was finally nominated, but this definitely isn't my pick for Best Picture.  Fun movie though!  And I think it's nominated for Best Costumes and Best Production Design, so I hope it wins for those categories.  Everything looked beautiful in this movie.

3. Bohemian Rhapsody - I loooooved this movie!!  I'm kinda hoping this wins, but I don't think it will. And I DEFINITELY think Rami Malek needs to win for Best Actor!  He was awesome.  Really great movie.  It made me laugh, it made me cry, it was just really great. 

4.  The Favourite - We did not see this one!  It was kinda our last priority, and we ran out of time.  It doesn't look great to me, but I'll probably watch it sometime.

5.  Green Book - Oh my goodness, loved this movie so much.  I loved Viggo Mortensen in it and also Mahershala Ali. This was SO well done, and I really loved it.  This is my pick for Best Picture!!  I really hope it wins.  I think it has a good shot!  Everyone should see this movie - It's SO good.  Loved it, loved it, loved it. 

6.  Roma - This one was great!!  It really surprised me how much I liked this one.  I'd seen a few different trailers for it, and I couldn't get a good feel for it.  I'd heard from multiple people that it was awesome, but I just wasn't sure if I was going to like it.  But, I definitely did!!  I thought it was great, and this is the one that I think will win.  It isn't MY pick, but I think it'll win, and I'll be happy if it does win.  I also think this will win for Best Director!  It's a Netflix movie, so it's an easy one to watch!

7.  A Star is Born - I didn't like this one at all.  Like, not even a little bit.  I know this is like the 4th or 5th remake of this one, but I just didn't enjoy it.  And, I truly can't believe that Lady Gaga is nominated for Best Actress.  Her acting was NOT good for the most part.  She had a few scenes that she did a great job in, but for most of it I was like, "Oh my gosh... this is terrible".  Bradley Cooper did a good job though, and so did Sam Elliott. But I'm not rooting for either one of them.

8. Vice - I didn't like this one either.  I think it was REALLY well done and everyone involved (acting, directing, etc) did a great job, but OH MY GOSH this movie made me so upset, angry, stressed, and sad.  I had a feeling that's how I was going to feel watching this one, so I wasn't excited to see it.  So, I think they did a great job with this one, but I just really didn't enjoy it one bit.

Guinness is 6 years old! Plus Oscar nominations.

Guinness turned 6 years old on Groundhog Day, and I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by!!  It seems like just yesterday he was a little puppy.  We hung out with him all day on his birthday, and there was snow on the ground (he loooooves snow!!), so we played lots of frisbee with him throughout the day! We also boiled up a little bit of chicken breast, because that is his faaaavorite.  And of course me and Kevin watched the movie Groundhog Day, because that is tradition!!  I love that movie. 

Here's our little goober as a puppy!! 

Another one of him as a puppy.  He's still got that white line down his forehead! 

He had so much fun playing frisbee on his birthday! 

Here he is chowing down on some boiled chicken. 

And here he is suuuuuuper passed out after a fun birthday!! 

You can kinda see the white line down his forehead here!  This was during a nice walk yesterday! 

We have had some craaaazy weather the past few weeks.  We have had insanely cold temperatures (down to 1 degree), and just a few days ago it got up in the 60s.  So... I cannot keep up.  The poor planet is broken.  Climate change is real, guys.  But, one of the days we had snow,  Kevin pointed out something ADORABLE on our front porch!!  A bunch of birds had been hopping around in our snow, and left the cutest little footprints.  Oh, and there's a few Guinness footprints there as well, so just ignore those! 

The Oscar nominations were announced!!  Wahoo!!  You guys know I love the Oscars (I have no idea why... but I do), and for the past 5 years or something Kevin and I have tried to watch all of the Best Picture nominations.  I think we only actually watched all of them once, but we have been VERY close a few times!!  This year the Best Picture nominees are:

-BlacKkKlansman:  This one is by Spike Lee, and we just watched this one over this past weekend!  It's based on a true story about the first African-American police officer in Colorado Springs in the early 1970s, and how he organized an investigation into the local KKK chapter.  John David Washington (Denzel Washington's son!) stars in this, and Adam Driver is AMAZING in it.  He's nominated for Best Supporting Actor for it. 

-Black Panther:  I love this one!!!  I've seen this one so many times already (and saw it in the movie theater too), and I think it's so cool that a Marvel movie is nominated!!  It was such a great movie.

-Bohemian Rhapsody:  I haven't seen this one yet, but I really want to!  This one is about Freddie Mercury, and it looks amazing.  Rami Malek looks so much like Freddie!  It's crazy.  I've heard this one is a front-runner to win, but I have no opinion yet!

-The Favourite:  I don't know much about this one!  I know Emma Stone is in it, and I know it's supposed to be funny?  But other than that I don't know anything at all.

-Green Book:  This one looks great!!  I really want to see this one.  And Mahershala Ali is amazing in everything he does, so I'm always excited to see anything he's in.  Mahershala is nominated for Best Supporting Actor too I think, so that seems like a tough competition this year! 

-Roma:  I literally know nothing about this one, except that I know it's on Netflix and I've heard it's great!!  I think we'll definitely watch this one.

-A Star Is Born:  I think this is the 4th or 5th time this movie has been done?  I'm not super excited to see this one, but maybe I'll end up loving it?  I'm not sure!  I do love Bradley Cooper, and sometimes I like Lady Gaga (though I haven't really seen her acting I don't think?), so this one is kind of a wild card for me.  But I've heard this one is a front-runner to win too. 

-Vice: This is the one about Dick Cheney.  This one definitely seems interesting!  Christian Bale is very unrecognizable as Cheney, and Sam Rockwell is great in everything (ANOTHER Supporting Actor nomination!), so I'm guessing this one will be pretty good.

So, so far we've seen 2 out of 8!  We'll see how far we get before the Oscars at the end of month!