Happy Fall y'all! I hope you're enjoying the cooler temperatures, non-stop football, and pumpkin spice lattes/beer/recipes/everything as much as I am :D
All of my blogging stars have aligned... Mr. Smith is on dinner duty tonight, there are no football games or HBO/Showtime shows I need to watch, I don't have any work related events... so I think I can knock a megapost out in one fell swoop. We have been busy bees the last few weeks, so I have some fun stuff to catch up on! Unfortunately, my blog has gone from a few small posts each week to a once a month iPhone photo overload, but what's a girl to do? I sound like a broken record, but I promise I'll try harder.
Ok, where did we leave off??
Oh yes, Brittany O'Brien's (better known by our friends as BOB) visit.
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| Washington Apples at P Brennan's- a DC first timer tradition |
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| Columbia Pike Pub Crawl- next stop William Jeffrey's. |
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| Friday: took a break from sight seeing for a glass of wine at Proof |
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| Found an ice cream truck! |
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| Pre-dinner drinks at POV at the W Hotel |
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| Friday night did Restaurant Week at Cieba. Everyone LOVED their food... I'll definitely be back! |
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| Scallops = Sooooo good! |
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| Lobster Enchiladas |
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| Spanish Chicken |
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| Churros |
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| Post dinner drinks in Capitol Hill- partied with the college kids. |
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Slept on Kendall's couch and met a reincarnated version of my college dog, Schatzi!
If you knew Schatzi, you know he looked EXACTLY like this dog! I miss him so much :( |
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Took advantage of the beautiful weather and had a pool day.
Made pink lemonade cocktails- thank you pinterest! |
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Later that night, Brittany met Brittany. Clearly they hit it off ;)
Don't mind the random guy in the back. |
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| My Britts :) |
Zeke was MIA for part of the weekend, he got a really bad cold and was bundled up on the couch all day Satruday and Sunday :( We had a blast thought, thanks again for coming to see us, Britt!!
The following week was the 2012 LivingSocial Olympics. I know you all know I love my job, and this is one of the reasons why! Who else busses their entire office to a farm and puts on an awesome adult field day?? Each department competes against each other in games like tug-of-war, balloon toss, egg-spoon race, and flip cup.
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Prepare to be schooled by the Recruiting Team!
{Hence the nerd glasses and rulers} |
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| Repurposing at it's finest. |
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| Cousin style! |
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| Keepin' it classy with boxed wine and a cut off tshirt |
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| Pie eating conpetition |
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| Food! |
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| Flip cup team representin'! |
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| We crushed the first game! |
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| Made it to the Semi-Finals and were outsted :( It was a good team effort though! |
The following weekend was Labor Day, and Miss Tracie graced us with her presence for a night! Her corporate office is located in Reston, VA, which is about 30 minutes from Arlington, so we luck out when she has work trips :)
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Sunday night- dinner at Acqua Al 2 in Eastern Market for some steak & pasta.
If you're in DC and can only eat at 1 restaurant, this is one I would HIGHLY suggest!
The original location is in Florence, Italy and everything is fresh & authentic. |
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| Bill & Sookie love it, too! |
We love hosting first time visitors, but return guests are actually our favorite. You knock out the sight seeing on the first trip, so the second visit is a little more low key. You can do things like sleep until 11:00, go shopping, and cook dinner. {We did all three}. We were feeling creative and were still in an Italian mood, so we bought some pumpkin ice cream mix at William Sonoma and picked up a few items to make some homemade pasta and vodka sauce!
It's no secret I love cooking, and Tracie has a stand mixer that she doesn't know how to use, so I showed her a few tricks of the trade :)
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| The makings |
We started the ice cream first because it has to settle for at least 2 hours in the freezer before you can eat it. I never knew how easy this would be!!
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This attachment is a MUST if you love icecream or sorbet. It does all of the work for you.
Literally mix, pour, and stir on speed 2 for 20 minutes. BOOM! |
The following weekend, we flew back to the great state of Texas for the Texas Tech vs. Texas State game. Mr. Smith went to TxSt, and I'm a TTU alum, so we knew we couldn't miss the matchup. Luckily, my parents went too, so I flew to Houston and rode to/from San Marcos with them. I was able to get a little Brayden and Tara time in :) I just love this little man so much!
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| Bring a kid a toy.... |
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| And he only wants to eat the paper tag. Go figure. |
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| Love these two :) |
Friday night, we were able to stop in Austin for dinner with my mom's family. It was SO good to see everyone!! My cousin Layla and her hubby Greg, the couple on the left, are expecting their first born on 12-12-12, and I was finally able to see her baby bump.
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| Finally, REAL Tex-Mex! |
I did a bad job of taking pictures in San Marcos, but it went something like this:
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| SAE Tailgate crowd doing the wobble |
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| That didn't happen.... more like 58-10 Tech. Thank god. |
Sunday, I booked a late flight from Houston to DC, so I was able to spend some time with the fam in Humble. I'm officially spoiled, because my Mimi made me a peach cobbler from scratch, and mom made one of my favorite dishes: Orange Stuff.
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| Mimi working her magic |
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Mom's famous "Orange Stuff" aka enchilada casserole salad {or something}. It's a family favorite.
You basically take the fillings of an enchilada casserole and dump it on lettuce, tomato, and avocado. |
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| Topped it with some Blue Bell Ice Cream... I was in heaven! |
Mom and Mimi inspired me to get back in the kitchen {I was in a lazy "let's just order takeout" funk for a few weeks}, so I found some new recipes to try. Disclaimer: if you've ever seen my blog before, you know I have an unhealthy addiction to taking food pics. {My husband hates it}. My only excuse is I love cooking, and I love eating, and I try and recreate dishes all the time, so it helps me remember how the food tastes.
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Roasted balsamic & spinach tomatoes... a new go-to for us.
Super easy & healthy: slice tomatoes, put in a ziplock with balsamic vinegar for 15 minutes.
Bake for 20 minutes, top with wilted spinach and parmesan, bake for another 5. |
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| Aunt Amla's biscuits and red eye gravy. |
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Stuffed tomatoes with spinach, shrimp, mushrooms, and parmesan.
Topped with tomato vinaigrette. Modified from this recipe... highly recommend it! |
Remember when we went on the
Paleo Diet kick last year? Yeah, yeah... I got on a lot of "kicks". But this one has {sort of} stuck, we try to follow the diet when we can. Zeke bought me an awesome cookbook called
Well Fed, and the next 2 recipes are from it. If you're trying to follow a similar eating habit, I definitely recommend the book!
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| El Minzah Orange Salad |
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| Garlic-Ginger Shrimp |
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| Grilled chicken with balsamic chicken and the tomatoes from above |
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| Home fries |
And last but not least...
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Black bean and mango stuffed avocados.
No recipe for this, I threw in a few things from the fridge and pantry:
Avocado, mango, green chiles, tomatoes, roasted corn, black beans, cilantro, queso blanco. |
Moving along... a few weeks ago Zeke and Richard rode in the Gran Fondo that I mentioned in
my last post. While he was slaving away on the bike, climbing 11,000 ft mountains, I joined Eoghain and Alyssa in DC for the 2012
H Street Festival. For the non East-Coasters reading, H Street is a cool, eclectic neighborhood in DC. It's "transitional" and has really changed over the fast few years, so the revitalization organization responsible for the clean up hosts this event every year as a celebration of the progress.
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After being elbow to elbow in the street, we decided to head into Biergartenhaus for a cold one.
{The large man doesn't look amused with my asian tourist tendencies} |
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Proud moment- I survived a taxidermied animal encounter!
I was only weird for about 5 minutes. |
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| Look at the size of those mugs! |
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| Eoghain and the giant banana |
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| Kate and the giant banana |
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| Alyssa's American Gothic moment |
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| Crazy art cars |
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| Pork bahn mi from a Food Truck |
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After bar hopping for a bit, we ended the night with some Big Buck Hunter.
Been steins + food trucks + BBH = successful day |
Sunday, we headed downstairs to watch some Texans Football! There's nothing like watching your hometown team with some hometown fans.
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| Richard's family friend Angie is another HOU->DC transplant and met us. She was so sweet! |
After the Texans win, we were feeling crabby, so we headed to Quarterdeck in Arlington to handle some business. I was so excited... this has been on my DC Bucket List forever!!!
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| Cheers! |
If you've never cracked crabs before, it's quite the experience. It's like crawfish, but about 10x more complex. It's not as easy as I thought... you really have to dig to get the meat out, and you have to be really careful or the shells can cut your finger off!
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| Toolbox: hammers, vinegar, napkins. |
It was super fun, but I now understand why jumbo lump crab meat is $20 per can. It's a lot of work.
The following weekend was the much anticipated Clarendon Day 10k. Aside from my first 5k ever, this was the most unprepared I was for a race. After my half marathon last March, I figured "Ehh... 6 miles won't be that hard". A few of my co-workers and Zeke also registered, so I knew if they did it, I can do it.
Well... I'm an idiot.
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| Pre-race |
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| Me + Jenny |
6 miles {and several cuss words} later, we finished!!
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| We did it! |
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| Let the celebration begin! |
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| And again! |
This progression was pretty funny...
After some afternoon cocktails, we wandered out to the Clarendon Day festival for some shopping. Of course, we were bombarded by more election crap. Mark my words: I will NEVER live in a swing state during an election year EVER AGAIN. Never Ever. I don't mix politics with social media, so here's what I'll say about the 2012 election:
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| Nice "O", but not so much. |
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| That's more like it! |
The following week, we finally recovered from the 10k, and Mr. Smith decided to watch someone else exert physical energy at the Ravens vs. Browns game. He had a manager's meeting and outing in Baltimore that day, and they definitely made the most of it. He got his iPhone 5 the same week and has been taking panoramic pics of... well... everything. Here's a pretty sweet pic of of M&T Stadium.
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| He tried to throw something at Jacoby Jones, but they were a little out of pegging distance. TRAITOR!! |
That weekend, Brittany invited me to tag along for a Virginia winery tour day with her college girlfriends. We rented a limo bus and headed North for some vino!
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| Bluemont Winery... here we come! |
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| Yes, the clouds are real! |
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| That's right! |
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| Such a great time!! Thanks for bringing me along, Britt :) |
Last week, October officially arrived. LivingSocial hosted a pumpkin painting night for our employees at our event space, 918 F Street. I was SO excited, I have so many cute pumpkins pinned on Pinterest, and I couldn't wait to try my hand at it. Simpson, my cousin who also works at LS, met me there.
Little did we know... everyone who showed up works on the graphic design team, and they were REALLY good. Also, the large pumpkins we were painting are being used as displays in the window, so we could only take home the little ones. I'm not complaining about getting a free mini-pumpkin... it's so nice of the company to do! But when you're already artistically challenged, it's hard to paint on something so tiny.
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| Awesome sparkly spider web |
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| Me + Simpson's contribution: painting the base coats |
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| We let the pros do the rest |
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We liked how the spider web pumpkin turned out, but Zeke would kill me if I brought anything with glitter home.
{Bad experience with glitter wrapping paper at Christmas} |
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| Attempting to paint a spider web pumpkin |
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| Spider webs turned out smeared... so I got "creative". Not exactly Pinterest worthy :-/ |
I'm spent for tonight, so stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow night with pics from the following:
- Kristen and Shannon's visit
- Catching up with the McDow's
- Anything else I remember to include
