Weekend happenings and cooking challenge results

Let's have a collective grunt to express our feelings about the most dreaded day of the week.

uuggghhh

Ok, now that's out of the way let's talk about good stuff! We hit the road again this weekend to visit my hometown, Portland, TN.  Got in some good family/friend time, some killer steaks, a much-needed pedi with the ladies, and we were introduced to quite possibly the most bizzare/complicated/nerdy card game EVER, Munchkin. Although it fried my brain and I had no idea what I was doing, somehow I won. 

A couple highlights of the weekend:

1.  I spent Saturday morning on the back of my dad's Harley, and we stopped to visit with my grandpa for a bit.  When my dad took him outside to show him the new bike, grandpa said he just had to get on it.  You could see a spark in his eyes as he grabbed the handlebars and remembered a time when he used to ride.  You could tell he would give anything to get back on the road.

2. We recently got some help from my parents with landscaping our yard, but because we didn't have any rock (and didn't want to pay for it) we had to use brick temporarily to go around some of the areas with mulch. 

The brick served it purpose but wasn't so cute.  Not far from my parents' house in Portland there's been some road construction and looky what we found!

This is the only time in my life I've been excited about rock on the side of the road.  It's the little things... haha

So we loaded some up in Adam's truck and headed back home!

Literally, the very second I walked back into our house I packed up and headed out again for my first grocery trip in a lloonnngg time. (Definite perk of stockpiling! Who wouldn't want to skip a trip to the store for a couple of weeks?) While I was searching for the best deals on food to keep us fed for the next couple weeks, my hero of a husband moved all of the bricks to our back yard and arranged our new rocks around the two trees and around the bushes on the left side of our house.  We were only short by a few to we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for some more rocks, but look how much better it looks! Good job, hubby!

Please ignore the shephard's hook leaning up against the tree.  The squirrels destroyed our finch feeder so we're going to be trying our luck with a hummingbird feeder.



I think it looks a lot better, and I like it even more because it was free! I wish the grass looked better in our yard, so we'll have to look into options for that.  It's more important than ever for us to get our house looking fabulous because over the weekend we made a BIG, IMPORTANT decision:

***We will be putting our house on the market ON OR BEFORE January 1, 2012!***

I am so excited to move on to the next chapter of our lives, and for me personally, that involves us starting fresh in a home together. It's very interesting getting married and moving into a home that your husband has been in for several years, and even shared with his mother and brother.  It's just felt like an apartment to me, and I've not really formed an attachment with this home. I. CAN'T. WAIT. to start the house hunt, although I know the whole process can be very stressful.  Totally worth it in the end.

Last but not least- the cooking challenge results! My ultimate fear did not become a reality, and a few people actually voted.  haha.  No overwhelming numbers (my own MOTHER didn't vote, for crying out loud) but at least I got some input.  There was a tie between the vinegar cookies and the carrot souffle, so as blog author and cook I took the liberty of making the ultimate decision on what to make... carrot souffle! I'm so interested to see how it turns out and I already have a post coming up very soon about one of my favorite cookie recipes, so the decision was easy.  I'm planning on making it later this week to go along with a whole chicken I'm putting in the crockpot.  I'll probably do one other kind of veggie and a side salad. Come back soon to see what happens!

Delicately Constructed Friday