Blog MIA: Part One

Here's the first in a gojillion-part series of catching you up on my life over the past two frenzied months.  The entries mayyy be a little disjointed and out of sequence, but I'll do my best to keep things clear.

The first weekend in December, we flew to Miami and then drove to Key West for a wedding - both new cities for me, yay!  Key West was not at all what I was expecting.  I guess I thought it would look a bit like the beaches of Cabo, complete with sunbathers as far as the eye can see.  But, nope!  It was very, very green with oodles of trees - evergreens, palms, mangroves and others that I can't remember the name of by now.  And the coastline was rocky and reminded me a bit of Oregon's beaches, but on a much smaller scale.

Oh wait!  Let me back up a little.  Right before we left, Marnie and I burned up lots of much-needed beauty sleep making these guys for the reception.  Yay for dark circles under our eyes!!  The wedding colors were espresso and coral, and the couple also requested that their monogram "C" be on some of the pops.

The day of the wedding was abnormally windy, so this is my only photo with decent hair.  I had to hold down my dress so that this photo could be rated G, yikes!  (And I have to say - doesn't Bo's tie just look fabulous with my dress?!  We couldn't have coordinated better if we had bought the two together, instead of a year apart and totally without planning.)

This is soooo close to a great photo.  But, oh!  Maybe I'll just wait until Alecia hits the Sneaky Cropping chapter of her Photoshop book to fix my hair in this picture :)  Yes, yes, good plan.

The lucky and beautiful couple!  Oh yes, even in crazy winds with buckets of humidity, she still looked stunning. 

Hurrah!  I so love this photo!  They didn't know I was snapping pictures, and I totally got him with his tongue sticking out a little :)

Another sneaky photo!  HaHAAA, I'm SO good.

Ok, non-wedding photos now.  During a crazy sudden downpour, we popped into the restaurant, "Margaritaville," owned by Jimmy Buffet.  Don't ask me why I was compelled to take a photo of the ceiling and not more important things like MY SCOOTER - YES I RODE A SCOOTER FOR THE FIRST TIME.  But, here's the ceiling.  It really is kinda cool.  I guess.  Now I'm feeling all scootery letdown.  Sigh.

Oh but wait!  There was a hot guy in there!  And he toooootally let me take his picture.  Swell of him, huh.  And he lives in San Diego too!  I really should have asked for his number or something.

Look!  There he is again!  This photo is in Miami, our last day of the trip.  I wanted to see what those beaches were like, so we wandered down to one. 

And stuck our toes in the sand.  Evidently, it wasn't the season for warm water, but it was still leaps and bounds warmer than the ocean water off Oregon's coast :)

"Wish I could be, part of that worrrrrrld."*  My last photo of the trip!

* Thanks to Sidenote, I now can never look at this photo without thinking of that movie poster.

Tuesday Twee: Blue Ribbon Dog

I recently returned home from a business trip to find that Rory's cute polka dot collar had been changed out for a royal blue one.  And Bo claims that it's because her old one was dirty (how does chocolate brown even show dirt??), and that Rory herself had picked out the new one.  He's not fooling me; I'm totally on to the fact that he's trying to turn her into a boy.  I even heard him whispering secrets the other night to her about being a good tomboy. 

What to do?  Tie a pretty matching ribbon from Christmas to that boy collar of hers.  Boy dog, indeed.

Oh yeah!  That black flashy thing means treats, right?

My pretty bow makes people smile at me and call me a good girl.

Oh, gosh - this ol thing?

And here, I'll pretend to contemplate serious bunnies and squirrels.

I'm totally cuter than Nellie Oleson.

* I promise - cross my heart! - that this series won't consist solely of dog photos.  But there might be a lot of them.  Just sayin.

Cooking with Sara: French Dip Crockery

Santa brought me a crock pot this year (yes, it was totally on my list!), so I decided to crack open the box today and whip up something.  I flipped through my new cookbook and cruised around All Recipes, and ended up choosing a French Dip recipe because I had nearly all the ingredients already on hand.  And going to the store is suuuuch a big fat pain. 

As always, I made a few mods to the original recipe, mostly because I didn't have the exact ingredient list.  But, the key to this recipe is the step where you slice the beef and then continue cooking it.  I tried a taste at this step, and it was kinda dry and flavorless.  Cooking it sliced for an additional hour allowed it to really soak in the yummy juices. 

2-4 lb Roast (I used sirloin roast, a teeny tiny little one)

2 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce

1/4 c low-sodium Soy Sauce

12 oz Water

1 packet Lipton Onion Soup Mix

12 oz. Beer (obviously, I went wayyy fancy with this item, hehe)

8 oz Beef Broth

1/2 tsp. Dried Thyme, crumbled

1/4 tsp. Dried Oregano, crumbled

4 Cloves Garlic
Black Pepper, to taste

Throw all ingredients into a slow cooker and cook covered on High for 3 hours.*  Give it a quick stir and turn the temperature down to Low for another 2 hours.  Remove the roast, and slice it thinly across the grain.  Return slices back to the slow cooker and cook for one more hour.  Serve on buttered, toasted french rolls with small bowls of the broth for dipping.

* Note:  You could just leave it on the Low setting all day instead.  But, as usual, I was rushing this recipe and trying to make it ready in 5 hours instead of 7-8.

Ooooooohhhh...new and shiiiiiinyyyyyyy....

Dubious.  And - Lover of weird face photos.

The ingredient lineup.  I wouldn't normally have used a light beer, but this was all that was in our fridge, so there you go.  I wasn't about to make a trip to the store for this venture.  I wanted it put together and thrown in the pot as fast as I could do the prep (and take photos).

My roast looks so teeny and lonely in the huge crock pot.

G'night, lil guy.  Sweet marinating, tenderizing dreams.

After I sliced the roast and put it back into the pot, it looked like a sad, veggie-less stew.

You can't really tell from this photo (I'm no pro), but the meat was falling apart as I stacked it on the bread.  Success!

Bo's sandwich got the cheese.  (And not even a great variety of cheese either. That's what happens when I don't eat dairy and have no idea what state our cheese supply is in.)

And...done.  My plate looks like a ghost town.