Date Night

For Christmas one of hubby's bosses gifted him with a gift certificate for a fancy restaurant named Manna here in town. I love to eat fancy food I just hate to pay for it. The guilt of a hundred dollar meal always gets to me. In the back of my mind I always think about the weeks worth of groceries I could have bought with that much money. So needless to say it was a super nice treat to drop the little one off at the grandparents and have a nice quiet expensive dinner out on someone else's dime.

Manna is a very small restaurant in downtown Wilmington. I stole this picture off their website but I swear it was taken from the table we sat at, which was in the front window. There is a pretty bar, but I think it's kind of frowned upon for the pregnant lady to hang out there so we skipped right to dinner. ;)

Hubby and I started with a super delish smoked prawn appitizer, I could have easily eaten about 20 of those prawn but alas it only came with two!

For my entree I had a grouper dish that was very yummy and hubby had porkshank. Neither of us shared our meals, so his must have been good because he didn't even offer one bite.  There was nothing but a pile of bones left on his plate as evidence that there had at one time been a meal there.

For dessert we had something that included the words chocolate cake, ganache, passion fruit ice cream, etc. Needless to say it was gone shortly after arriving at the table, YUM!

Our short date night was a delicous treat! It will probably be a long time before we can have a nice dinner like again,

since we will soon be bribing the grands to take on not just one kiddo but two! :)

New Recipe and a New School

So due to a friends new obsession with Pinterest and my weakness for desserts I was compelled to try a new recipe this week. She posted a picture of a pie on her blog and overwhelmed by the power of suggestion I printed the recipe out and ran to the grocery for all the ingredients. The fact that the pie only contains 3 ingredients made it all the easier to give in.

So here it is Butterfinger Pie...

The recipe called for 6 full size bars, I used about 20 snack size.

1 8oz. cream cheese, softened.

A 12oz container of cool whip (they don't make that size anymore so I guesstimated out of 16oz container)

1 graham cracker crust

 Combine all of the ingredients and put in crust and there you have it. Ouila!

Pie needs to be refrigerated for at least a few hours before serving.

All in all for a quick simple dessert its not that bad. I have managed to eat my way through it without complaint but I think I would prefer a peanut butter pie if I was going to go to the effort which is only 1 ingredient more.  :)

In other news little one started back to school this week at her new school. She goes Mon, Wed and Friday mornings and was very excited about the fact that she gets to eat her lunch there with the other kids, as this school has extended hours. She seems to really love it already. I love that it is definitely more academic then her previous school. Today I received this month's curriculum and was impressed to see that in addition to their daily reading lessons they will be learning about such cool things as

fossils and rocks, Thomas Edison, Anarctica and one of my all time favorites...

This image stolen from some random website, Thanks!

Vincent Van Gogh and his painting Starry Night!

I hope that her enjoyment of school continues, I know I'm enjoying the 12 hours a week she's there :)

It's Been 6 months, Oops!

So it's been a while since I've blogged. I know of a thousand excuses I could use pregnancy, moving , chasing around a preschooler, holidays, yada yada but honestly I got slack. :)

 Since it's the new year I thought what better time to get motivated to start blogging again. This upcoming year already looks to be an exciting one with the new addition due in February and the continued house hunting. Which eventually means another fun and exciting move to look forward to. I should have lots to update you all on but in the meantime I must get back to my new year's must do list which includes such fun things as unburying my desk and going through a years worth of unread magazines. Whoohoo!

Bed side table redo...

 We have recently been redecorating the little one's bedroom because she is no longer in her toddler bed but is now in her " big girl bed". One of hubby's co workers was nice enough to gift us with a really cute twin bed frame that hubby fixed up and painted. Our dilemma became what to do for a nightstand. I had an extra bed side table that had been residing in a closet in the guest room...

 Not exactly what I had in mind to go in a little girl's room but it was already paid for which made it perfect! It was my intention just to paint it white to match the bed frame and book case. Hubby fortunately had another plan in mind...

After hubby was finished it doesn't even look like the same table. He cut down the base and top of it and flipped the drawer fronts and changed the hardware.

The drawer pulls are perfect! The lavender petals match her rug and her new bedspread without being to over the top cutesie!

I have to admit it is really nice to have a hubby who knows his way around a power tool and isn't afraid to pick out little flower drawer pulls!

:)

It's Freakin Hot!

Even the squirrels think it's to hot to do anything outside!

Caught this little guy resting on the fence the other day.

A Busy Month Recap and the Princess Cake Debacle...

April was a crazy month for us which is why it has taken until almost mid may for me to blog. So I decided that it would be easiest to recap by going back through and picking some of my favorite photos from the month.

For my birthday hubby got me my favorite Dairy Queen ice cream cake and a sweet new zoom lens for my camera.

Little one came down with a nasty virus the week before her birthday, which involeved a Friday afternoon trip to the doctors. It took three people to hold her down so the doctor could tell us that her ears were fine and it was a virus. Hubby and I both got colds thanks to her. :)

One of my sister's came for a visit to help with little one's 3rd birthday. 

We went on a beach adventure while she was here. Here is little one recreating a scene from the movie The Birds.

We also let her white trash it up at the beach by letting her go in the water in her undies. Who would have thought she would want to swim with the water temp only in the 60s?

The birthday cake for little one's party was quite the adventure. She had specifically requested a pink princess cake. I refused to pay $50 for the grocery store version, so instead I spent probably about that much to make it. ;)  Sister and I thought it would be best to make a practice cake. I went to the craft store and bought the Wilton Wonder Cake mold  but neglected to read the instructions fully. I read the part that said use a two layer cake mix. What I did not read was the fact it said you may need 1- 2 two layer cake mixes ! Oops!

Good thing we did the practice cake! The first cake seemed teeny tiny!

The second cake was perfect!
Sister had  recently taken a cake decorating classand managed to bust out with this...

A perfect princess cake! Totally the cake I always wanted when I was little.

I will say that the practice cake was a great idea except my waistline paid the price!
It looked a lot like our little princess shown here modeling her new princess dress.

The birthday party was a big success even though it poured down rain. The kids still enjoyed the princess  jump castle

and an indoor picnic.

Hubby and I gave her a big girl bike, which at first she seemed excited about but now is refusing to touch it. Go figure.

Maybe in a few weeks she will decide that she is ready to try it again.

:)

I will end this post with a picture of one of the four beautiful flowers my wonderful little old lady nieghbor gave to me.

She has the most randow assortment of flowering things in her yard which she loves to share.

Lucky me!

:)

It Was A One Ring Circus...

The last circus I went to was over 20 years ago. My parents took us to see the Ringling Bros. Three Ring Circus. I remember it being pretty awesome, especially when they shot the man out of the cannon and he landed in the audience, Oops!
The Cole Brother Circus was in town over the weekend. Hubby convinced me that we really needed to take the little one to go see it. So Sunday afternoon we headed  over to the fairgrounds to check it out.
Cole Brother's is a very small circus. The girl that sold us our tickets and the girl that showed us to our seats were both in the show as acrobats. It is most definitely a one ring circus.
Our seats were fantastic, we sat in the second row, I almost felt like I could pet these guys we were so close!
Meow!
 

Munchkin was mesmerized by all of the action!

Somehow I doubt that any of my cats would do this trick.

I'll just turn my head while you bite his arm off!

In addition to the tiger's they also had trained horses, camels and

PINK poodles!

There also were lots of humans trained to do tricks as well :)

I wouldn't want this big guy sitting in my lap.

The finale of the show for us was the elephants.

   We left shortly after because the motorcycles roared into the tent and  little one said she had had enough. The one thing she truly dislikes is the noise of loud motorcycles. Can you blame her?

All in all it was a good first circus experience for her, hubby and I enjoyed it too.

:)

Damn Rosalina Sale, Makes Money Fly Out of My Wallet...

Today was the first day of the semi annual Rosalina sale. I had just about forgotten about it until a friend called yesterday to see if I was going. Thanks so much Melissa, I really would have been better off with out the reminder! :)

Even though little one didn't really need anything, I thought we would just go and window shop...

Here is little one showing off a new dress.

Cute red and white polka dots with green smocked design. Thought it could make a cute holiday season dress for next year but it is not so festive that it can't be worn now.

 Could not pass up this cute top and pants for this summer.

 Love the precious flower embroidery!

 There was no way I was leaving this dress on the rack.  Little one loves it too!

 LOVE the little octopus and the pink polka dots!

 I was in the middle of checking out when I turned around and saw this dress. It is so different from the usual smocked things that I had to have it too.  Who doesn't love butterfly and flower fabric?

 I also bought the little one two super cute outfits for her dolls. She is getting old enough now that she likes to change her baby doll clothes so for 2 bucks an outfit it was something cute to keep her entertained while I shopped.

Somehow my intention of looking and not buying didn't happen, damn you Rosalina for having such cute stuff this time. 

:)