Wonderful Weekend

Ok so I know it is Wednesday...but we had such a fun weekend that I had to document it!  We went to Charlotte to see friends and family.  Friday night (although two weeks late) Ryan and I celebrated my MIL's b-day.  We made a wonderfuly simple Mexican dinner.  For dessert I made some more cake pops:)

Ok so yes these cake lollipops are cute...but I have to tell you they taste good too!  Check out the inside...

We had a wonderful time catching up with Ryan's family...I can't believe we haven't seen them since Christmas! We are moving there soon though and they will get to see us on a weekly basis:)  Once again Happy Birthday Miriam!!!!
On Saturday The Lee's came up to spend the afternoon with us.  We got to play with baby Ryan and have lunch at Dean and Deluca.  Here is Ryan and baby Ryan at lunch.

We went shopping!  Rachel and I spend a lot of time on the phone together and a lot of time discussing our styles.  I run all purchases by her before I can commit...so it is nice to shop together in person:)

We also drove around Charlotte and did some house "window shopping"!  We had such a good time with the Lee's and can't wait until we live closer.
Saturday night we went to see this little guy...

This is baby Clark and he is the cutest, sweetest little boy.  He was wide awake for a few hours at just a few weeks old!  He has such a wonderful personality.  When we first arrived I was holding him and he just stared at me.  I love this picture, he is so sweet and it shows a little bit of his personality.

Jennifer and I with Clark.

Baby Clark and Ryan...

Congrats Morrisons and happy 1 month to Clark!!!!
Sunday we drove home and made a stop to see our friends Blake and Lindsay who just bought and are currently renovating a house.  Lindsay is doing a lot of the repairs/updates herself and I think she will be a great resource once we buy our next house:)  So we are home now and back into our routine, but had a great weekend celebrating birthdays, friends, babies and new houses!  I am looking forward to seeing a lot of you girls this weekend at the reunion!

Things I Love

With today being Valentines Day I thought I would share some things I love:)

A. One of my new favorites is Udi's G Free Bread.  It is the closest to "real" bread that I have found. They make bread, pizza crust, bagels, muffins, cinnamon buns, granola....just about anything!  They sell it at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and specialty stores. Also Jason's Deli is now serving some of their sandwiches on Udi's bread!!!  Love that!!

B.  Burt's Bee's Lip Balm.  This particular type has a little color to it so it helps moisturize your lips, but leaves them looking beautiful.

C.  J Crew:)  Love, Love, Love this store!  Right now they have several cute dresses and tanks that I would love to add to my closet.  Most of all I love this Timex Watch with a peach strap:)

D.  My favorite flower....Peonies.

E.  Magazines are one of my guilty pleasures.  Right now I am craving spring time and look to my Coastal Living magazine for some warmth and inspiration.

F.  Pandora Radio.  I have this playing in our house at all times.  We can create our own stations depending on our mood.  A little Michael Buble while cooking, Eric Hutchinson while doing housework, B.O.B. while getting ready to go out...the choices are endless.

G.  Red Box.  These DVD rentals are only $1 per day!  We stop by one of these at least once a week.

H.  Kuhn Rikon knives are our new favorite kitchen tool.  Ryan got several of these for Christmas and we love them!  First of all they are great knives, but they also all come with a cover so its safe(great for all those moms out there that have little ones who like to open kitchen drawers and pull everything out!).  We have found them at Marshalls and Home Goods for cheap too!

I.  Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds with Salt....the combination of salty and sweet is amazing!

J.  Modern Family on ABC.  This is our favorite show.  Great for all ages and super funny!!

K.  Oxford shoes.  I have been searching for some new shoes and finally found them...oxfords.  They go great with jeans, shorts, skirts and dresses.  My shopping expert helped me find them...thanks Rachel!

L.  Essie nail polish .  My favorite color right now is coral, great for spring time.

M.  Capri Blue Candle in Aloha Orchid.  Both my MIL and I love these candles...although she likes the Volcano scent.  You can find them at Anthropologie in two different sizes.  They smell amazing and there are several different scents.  These also make great house warming gifts!

Happy Valentines Day!!!

Celebrations

This past week has been full of fun and celebrations!  First my roommate for three years in College, Page, got engaged and Ryan and I went to her engagement party Saturday night.  Page was there for me when I got engaged, at all my parties, showers, and most importantly helped along the way with all the decision making while I planned the event.  I could not be happier for her to have found someone to spend the rest of her life with and am so excited it is finally her time to be celebrated!!  She also has a blog where she helps you live a fabulous life for less, which you can find here.
Page has a wonderful group of girl friends and one of the things I admire most about her is she always makes time for them:)

Here is a shot of Page and I...

Page's parents gave the sweetest/funniest toast to Justin and Page during the party....cheers to the happy couple!!!

 The next day we drove to Clayton to celebrate my Dad's birthday!

My Bonus Mom made her amazing Lasagna (with rice noodles for me).  She made a hearty meat one and a veggie one since my dad is a vegetarian:)

I took several pictures of the meal and Zach kept asking if I would take a picture of his plate because it looks the best!  I guess my family is used to seeing me going around taking pictures of all of the food before we eat.  He sat patiently and kept turning his plate for me while I took the pictures...haha too funny what they pick up on!  So here you go:)

Even though my Bonus Mom made dinner tonight, Dad is usually the cook in the family, so we bought him lots of new cooking gear/gadgets.  The boys all crowded around to watch him open presents...I just thought this picture summed up the night well...

My dad kept saying this was the last birthday I would be at for him....my family thinks that since we are moving to Charlotte soon we will stop coming to these events.  Dad I will always celebrate your birthday, just next time you will have to put up with me for a least 24 hours and give me a bed to spend the night and not just dinner and a 4 hour visit:)  Happy Birthday!!

Carbonara Pasta

This is one of our favorite recipes!  We had a few dishes that involved eggs this week and this is one we wanted to share...Who said eggs are just for breakfast???

First gather your ingredients...

1.  Cook pasta according to directions.  Reserve 1 cup of the liquid to use for the sauce later.
2.  Heat a pan to medium heat and add oil and the chopped pancetta.  Cook the pancetta 2-3 minutes or until it is starting to brown.

Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for another 2-3 minutes.

Last add the white wine to the pan and stir in order to get all the good flavors off the bottom of the pan.
(Ryan was doing this part while I took the picture...he moves very fast in the kitchen and this picture shows his lightening fast speed)

3.  In a separate bowl whisk 2 egg yolks.  Add the reserved pasta water slowly so you do not scramble the eggs. 

4.  Drain pasta and add straight to the pan with the pancetta and wine.  Add egg mixture while tossing to combine.

Add cheese and toss until completely combined.  Serve with some salt and pepper and more cheese if you please:)

We have made this dish twice in the last few weeks and decided to add baby scallops the second time...it was so yummy!

 I would also recommend blackend chicken or shrimp with this pasta dish!  Hope yall enjoy it as much as we did.  Also today is my Dad's birthday...Happy Birthday Dad!!!!!

F.S.B.O.

Wow have we been busy....

Thats right!  Our house is for sale!!!!  And we are attempting on doing it ourselves...hence the blog title F.S.B.O. which I have learned means For Sale By Owner.  Ryan got a job in Charlotte and we will be moving there when he graduates in May!!!  I am so proud of him and glad he has a job lined up already and that is one thing we can check off the list.  We have been busy getting our house and ourselves ready for this over the past 6 weeks.
We had lots of little house repairs...painting, cleaning. organizing, de-cluttering, staging, yard work, cleaning gutters and paper work. The hardest part was honestly taking down all my pictures during our "staging".  It just doesn't feel like my house anymore.  You can barely tell we even live here...so depressing!  I have mixed emotions about this next chapter our life and am trying to keep myself busy so I don't stress to much about the move or about what is to come. I have taken a few pics along the way, but nothing too exciting.

We are keeping our fingers crossed that it sells quickly so we can stop stressing over this (and so I don't have to keep my house looking so clean and tidy in case we have a showing:).
Although we have been working hard on our house we have made some time to fun things too!  I will be back soon with a yummy pasta recipe and what we were up to this weekend.

Having a Ball!

I have now made several "take away" gifts for parties over the past year, but this one is my new favorite.  Some call them Cake Balls and some call them Cake Pops...whatever you call them, they are cute and yummy!  Although they are not hard to make, they are sort of time consuming.  While I was busy in the kitchen yesterday making these little treats, Ryan decided to try to make meatballs.  They turned out delicious and we got a kick out of the 6 cookie sheets of little balls in the kitchen yesterday between our two cooking projects:)
So here is the Cake Pop...

To make these you need:
-One box of cake mix (I used my favorite Betty Crocker Gluten Free White Cake Mix)
-3/4 cotainer of icing
-Melting chocolate (I found it at AC Moore, Hobby Lobby and Micheal's)
-Lollipop sticks
-Clear bags, ribbon, tags or wrapping of your choice
**One box of cake yields about 40 Cake Balls.

First just bake the cake according to directions on the box.  Let it cool completely and then crumble it into the smallest pieces possible into a big bowl.  I wasn't planning on blogging about this until this point in the process so I don't have great pics of this.

Then add 3/4 the container of icing to the crubled cake.  I found that using a wooden spoon is the easiest to mix with.  This is also where you can be creative.  Use the cake flavor and icing color/flavor to make it different.  You could do strawberry icing with red velvet cake for Valentines coming up:)
To make the dough easier to work with freeze the mixture at this point for about 30 minutes.  Then roll the dough into small balls.

Then melt your chocolate.  I do this in the microwave for 1 minute 15 sec and stir it every 20 seconds.

Dip the lollipop stick into the melted chocolate and stick it into the Cake Ball.  I refreeze the balls in between each step...you don't have to do this, but it makes it a whole lot easier to work with.

You will need something to stick the Cake Pops in while the chocolate cools and hardens.  I use a big piece of Styrofoam.  Now you are ready to dip the Cake into the chocolate.

Shake off the extra chocolate and place it  into the Styrofoam to cool.

I was making these for a baby shower so I made lables to match the invitation and wrapped each Cake Pop!

Again use the cake, icing, and chocolate flavors to mix it up.  In case you were wondering...

 Ryan's meatballs also turned out great!   He made so many, we had spaghetti last night and plan on having meatball subs this week for lunch:)  Plus being in the kitchen cooking together was a great way to spend our Saturday:)

Catch Up!

So it has officially been a month since my last post....oops.  In my defense we were out of town for two weeks for the holidays and to Florida for NC State's bowl game.  So now I am playing catch up.  Here is what we have been up to....

 Christmas....first with my family.  We have started some new traditions in my family since my dad remarried and since I got married several years ago.  One of my favorites is having my little brothers all come to my house for a night and make cookies, watch Christmas Vacation and play games!

Then we spent a few days at my parents house.  We went fishing, played the new Monopoly (Credit Card edition), watched movies, baked lots of yummy food and spent time with baby Grayson....yes another boy...I am so outnumbered in my family, but I loved every minute of us all being together:)

 On Christmas Eve my dad made me Gluten Free Pancakes....yummy!  After cleaning up from breakfast we picked a spot in the living room and got ready to open presents.  In my family we go around and open one gift from oldest to youngest.  After the youngest is done with his first present and we have all seen each other open one gift....its an "every man for himself, crazy frenzy" of opening presents....but we wouldn't have it any other way:)

After lunch we went straight to Charlotte for Ryan's family's Christmas Celebration.  We enjoyed visiting their new church for the Christmas Eve service.  On our way home from church we stopped by this one house in Charlotte where every inch of the property is covered in lights and the owner is dressed as Santa handing out candy to passing cars....to funny!

Christmas morning my father-in-law Paul made Sausage Gravy and Biscuits (gluten free for me)!  It has been two years since I have had his famous SG and B and was so excited when he told me he had been experimenting and figured out how to make it safe for me to eat!   We also had gluten free cinnamon rolls and lots of other delicious food...I wouldn't expect anything else at the Londry house though:)

So after the craziness of the gift opening with my family where it happens and is over in 30 minutes, I have to say Ryan's family is the exact opposite.  They open presents on Christmas day....all day.  It is a nice change, but I am glad Ryan and I get to experience both!  So the Londrys open gifts one at a time and take several breaks during the day.  I think we opened the last gift around 2 PM:)  We spent the rest of the day in the kitchen....just us girls preparing the Christmas dinner!

Christmas night and the day after Christmas several inches of snow fell and we had fun walking the dogs and seeing the fresh snow stacked on every inch of the outdoors....nothing like a white Christmas.

A few days after Christmas we headed down to Orlando, FL with Blake and Lindsay for The Champs Bowl to see NC State play!  We had a great time tailgating, seeing old friends...but it was sooo cold.  Who knew when we left snow covered North Carolina and headed 8 hours South that it would be colder???  Thank goodness the Wolfpack won and it was worth it!

Final Score: 23-7

A few days later we finally made it home and decided to stay in for a low key New Years:)  We are very excited about this year and know that we have a lot of changes to look forward to in the next few months:)  Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years, and are settling back into your normal routines....phewww I think I am finally caught up now:)