Are you there Friday? Its me Kirstin!

What a looooooong week! Ugh.

I am so thankful today is Friday AND I don't have to work this weekend!

The weekend is shaping up to be busy but fun and productive!

Tonight the hubs and I are going to go out for drinks for a friends bday at The British Open

Tomorrow I get to go wedding dress shopping with one of my favorite ladies!!! Miss Sarah is getting hitched! I can not wait to see her as a bride, she is going to be beautiful!

After dress shopping I will do some house work, and get some chicken and dumplings going for dinner! The hubs is having some of his man friends over to jam, so I will get to listen to that all night :)

Sunday I plan to work on my china hutch! I picked it up for $50 on Craigslist! I have reallly been wanting one, but just didnt have the $500++ bucks to shell out for the brand new ones I have been seeing. I am excited to finish it. I am trying to make it match our dining room table set the best I can.

This is the hutch...super 70's looking huh? I am painting it all black except for the buffet area I am staining a walnut color (p.s. this is not our house, this is the person I bought it froms house)

This is our dining room set (clearly not our house)

Have a great weekend!

Holy Storm Batman!

Wow! So supposedly AZ is getting one of the worst storms its seen in like 10-15 years. Yesterday we got somewhere around 7" of rain, which is generally the amount we get for the WHOLE year!!! Nuts!

We even had a tornado warning, which thankfully didn't come near us...AZ is not really equipped to handle a tornado, we don't have basements for crying out loud!

As far as I can see, our house didn't suffer any damage. Our pool is pretty full...but that's it.

And my very sweet husband got Ralphie (the little blind homeless kitty that lives under our bush who has adopted us) and stuck him in the garage with his food and a little bed so he could ride out the storm safely. :)

Not to much planned for the weekend. I work at Deb's tomorrow...Have to go grocery shopping at some point as our house is pretty bare. Have a good weekend!

Oh! And check me out on Yelp! www.KirstinE.Yelp.com

Happy 9 Months Olivia!

Little Livy is getting sooooo big!

She army crawls super fast now! She is also getting a little attitude, Its to cute! She is also very particular about her toys. None of her farm animals can be in the barn yard, if you put them in there she crawls over super fast and flings them out of there! LOL! She also has a little tea set that has a little plate of crumpets on it...She insists that NO crumpets be placed on the plate.

Ang sends me phone pics a couple times a week since I am an Olivia addict. Here she is just this morning :)

This is from a couple weeks ago. Olivia got to eat her first grilled cheese sandwich! Look at how happy she is! Love it!

Here She is sampling some yogurt for the first time! Haha Love the look on her face! Priceless

Happy NINE MONTHS Olivia! Next stop ONE YEAR OLD!!!!!!!!

Hello Friday!

Man am I glad the weekend is just about upon us! I have the whole weekend off and lots to do!

Tonight will just be making dinner and laying low

Tomorrow I am going to look at a china hutch, then lunch with my Jen Jen, then a house warming party and THEN possibly dinner with another couple.

Sunday I have a long list of TO DO's around the house. Hopefully I will get a few things crossed off the list.

She will be embarrASSed knowing I posted this...

Dora is the lady of the house.

She is a princess.

She is a daddy's girl, BIG TIME.

I busted her a while back in the bathroom....

Lord only knows how she got a piece of toilet paper stuck to her bottom.

The first full week of 2010

Well the first full week of 2010 is just about through.

And so far I am not pleased with 2010 at all. I asked 2010 to be nice this year, but so far she is being a bitch. Hopefully this week will not be an indicator of how this year will go. Wasn't a super terrible week all things considered, but it could have been a lot better. Just sayin, no more bumps please.

I do get to go have dinner with my amazing mother in law tonight, so that will be a nice way to cap off the week.

ALSO today is three awesome peoples bdays!

Happy birthday to my Brother in law Ryan

My nephew Zach (He is on the far left)

And last but not least my little Sharoo, Sheila

New Tilapia Recipe!

I didn't take any pictures :( Sorry. But it is super easy!

So last night we had Muriel (my MIL) over for dinner, Mike was out of town.

I made Tilapia on a bed of mashed sweet potatos with a pancetta and sage breadcrumb topping!
It was sooooooooo easy and sooooooo tasty! I found the recipe on Epicurious.com

I bought frozen tilapia and baked it, the recipe said to fry it in a skillet with butter...but I try to cut corners where I can.

poke hols alllll over 3 large sweet potatos. Put them in the microwave for 8 minutes. Turn them over and go for another 8 minutes. Turn again and another 5. They need to be soft enough that a knife slides right through the middle. Once they are done and soft. Slice in half. Scoop out the potato into a bowl. Add 1-2 tbs butter, some salt and pepper and maybe 2-3 leave of the fresh sage torn into pieces. Mix until smooth.

It called for fresh breadcrumbs. This made me nervous, i had never made them before. It was super easy. I tore up a couple pieces of bread. Stuck them in the magic bullet and a couple seconds later, fresh bread crumbs.

I took 2 oz of Pancetta, diced it up small and cooked it over medium heat until it got crispy. Removed it from the skillet and then dumped the breadcrumbs right in to toast up in the leftover pancetta "grease" While the crumbs were toasting I added 3 TBS of fresh sage that I just hand tore into small pieces and tossed those in with the bread crumbs. Total toast time of bread crumbs, about 5 minutes. Then add the pancetta into the bread crumbs and mix around.

To set the plate. Do a pile of the sweet potato mash, Lay the tilapia across the potatos, and then pile a nice heaping mound of the bread crumbs on top of the fish!

Really easy and amazing. Muriel said she felt like she was eating at Sierra Bonita or Houston's! lol

Tried another new restaurant!

Goal #14 is almost complete!

On Friday me, Micah, And our friends Josh, Sarah and Kevin all went out to eat at the Cork'N Cleaver. It is a steak house, and steaks are always good in our book!

When we arrived we were seated promptly....at the very very back of the restaurant in a room where no other people were sitting. I'm not sure if it was because we are "young"... we were dressed dressy casual, all the guys had a button up or Polo on. Not sure what the seclusion was for. Its not THAT fancy of a place.

We were seated, a girl came by for our drink order. When our waiter finally came over he handed Sarah a meat cleaver! The menu is actually on a huge "knife". That sucker was heavy. I told him that it was all of our first times being there. He just said ok. Really? No informing us of the place. No welcome. Nothing. I was less then impressed.

We all finally ordered, the cool thing is you get a side and a trip to the salad bar for the cost of your meal. Prices there ranged between about $29-45. Ruth's Chris prices but they included a side and salad so its a good deal. They brag about the large salad bar, and while yes it is large, and I thought the chilled metal plates where neat, the salad bar was not impressive. The cucumbers and carrots were in realllly thick slices, not one bite or manageable slices. They also had caviar and anchovies on the bar....along with gummy bears and some sort of ambrosia grandma looking concoction.

The dinners arrived, Micah, Sarah and Kevin all ordered the prime rib and all ordered it medium and with a baked potato...hard to mess up right? Wrong, they brought Micah out some rice? Josh and I both got the New York strip. I was less then impressed. For $39 I expected a lot better cut and the way it was cooked just wasn't great.

Overall for the price you get a ton of food...but is that always best?

I don't see us going back. It wasn't terrible, but not impressive in the least. The services was terrible.