So this is the new year...

... and I can't wait to see what adventures it brings. There is just something so inspiring about a new year. It just feels as if anything can happen and you can become whoever you want to be. One of my favorite traditions that Brett and I do is every New Years we make a list of goals and adventures. Most are things we want to try to accomplish in the following year but some are life goals as well. It is fun to sit down and dream together as well as remember the things we accomplished in the previous years. One of our unofficial mottos for our life is we want to try to have some kind of adventure every week. An adventure can be as big as visiting a new place to as small as trying a new food. I thought it would be fun to share some of the things we put on our list this year.

Sew curtains for our apartment

Become debt free

Walk across the Brooklyn bridge

Explore all the 5 NYC boroughs

DC cherry blossom festival

Go Skydiving

Read the whole bible

Visit Martha's Vineyard

Blog more

Finally see Shakespeare in the park

Be able to run 3 miles in 30 minutes

Stick to a budget

Eat vegetarian 5 days a week

Try to eat primarily organic

Go to Coney Island

Visit/explore all the states within 5 hours of us

Go to Canada

Complete the top chef cooking school

Bake almost all my own bread

Learn photography

Go to a Yankees game

Visit Lancaster

Go on more dates

Read 12 book

Learn Banjo

Get at least 70% on APFT

Hang out with guys more

Craft more

This is going to be a big year for us and I cannot wait!

ghost and ghouls of all kinds

Last weekend Brett and I were blessed with a number of tickets to 6 flags. What better time to use them then Halloween day. Roller coaster in the morning, Fright Fest at night! It was a blast! Bek, Simon and I went earlier and rode a bunch of coasters. Then Brett, Raf, and a few of our exchange students came later just in time to ride a few rides before the Halloween festivities started. Overall a good time and hope to maybe do it again next year.

Along the same Halloween lines, I thought I would share with you all the adorable candy ghosts Brett and I made for a fall party we went to. Growing up I use to make these ghosts every year with my mom and I look forward to continuing that tradition when I have children. Here are the instructions – easiest recipe in the world.

Ingredients:

Candy/Popsicle sticks

White almond bark

Chocolate chips

Layout a sheet of wax paper spayed lightly with nonstick spray

Melt the almond bark according to the instructions on the packages.

Set down a stick and drizzle on some almond bark roughly in the shape of a ghost

Use the back of your spoon to finish shaping it.

Place 3 chocolate chips for eye

Let cool and enjoy.

See, told you it was easy!

I will also throw in a few other pictures

Brett and I with 2 of our exchange students

My man - 5am before he left for a drill weekend

autumn weekends

I must start off by saying this is pretty near the perfect autumn morning. It is cool, colorful and raining outside, which made the rare opportunity to sleep-in all the more inviting. Now I am lazily sitting here munching on breakfast, sipping coffee and smelling the chocolate biscotti I have baking in the oven. Ahhh life is good.

Things have continued to move forward with Brett and the National Guard. A couple of Wednesday ago he passed all his tests and then was sworn in the next day. Two days later, on Saturday, he left again for his first weekend of drills. He will continue doing drill weekends once a month until he leaves for basic at the end of February. In the last post I said he would be gone 9 weeks for basic. Well, that is true, but then a few days after basic he starts his music school, so all in all he will be gone about 4 months. To break up that time for me I hope to make a trip to the midwest to visit family and friends, and also open my house to anyone who wants to come visit me or NYC. I will take either, just as long as there are other people in the house or I may go crazy. :)

My brother and his girlfriend came and visited us a couple of weekends ago. It was great to see my brother and meet the wonderful lady he is so infatuated with. We got to hang out with them in the city Friday night, enjoy the delights of apple picking and then cooking an elaborate dinner with the previously picked apples on Saturday, and worship with them at our church Sunday before seeing them off. It was a lovely weekend.

Other then NG and a weekend visit, life has been pretty consistent. I am loving fall and all the wonderfulness that comes with it. Now it is time to go make some mac and cheese to take to a fall party tonight, and then Brett and I are going to make these little almond-bark ghosts I grew up making with my mom every Halloween. Ahhh the perfect day.

link love

We have stayed busy with trying to get this apartment all set-up to fit our lives. I promise to post pictures soon - just a few more details left.

As if we didn't already have enough going on right now Brett and I have been working through some big changes in our lives. I have been tossing around the idea of making a job change. Not exactly sure what I want to do yet and it probably won't happen in the near future but the idea is out there. I want to have more free time and my long commute everyday sucks away so much of my evenings. Meanwhile, I want to start making jewelry again. It will probably be bead type work at first, until I can gather up the supply and equipment to make more intricate pieces.

Even bigger news though is Brett is going to join the Army National Guard. Right out of high school he looked into joining and playing in the army band. He is a fantastic musician and since we live in an apartment he hasn't gotten to play since we got married. This is the perfect opportunity for him. He will have to go away to basic training for 9 weeks :( and afterward he will go to the Military School of Music where he will have personalized lessons and take classes such as music theory. I will miss him terrible while he is gone, but to keep myself busy I have already said that I will have 2 months of craft night. I plan to sew curtains, re-upholster furniture, bake until I have no-one left to feed, and anything else I can do to stay busy. He has his audition on Wednesday, and will probably leave for basic in January or February.

Now I move onto what my title is all about. I want to share some of my favorite bloggers with all you dear people. May you get as much enjoyment out of them as I do.

Some favorite bloggers:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/ - I posted this last week but just in case you missed it. She posts wonderful recipes and stories of her life, all accompanied by beautiful photos.
http://mattbites.com/ - This was the first food blog I really started to follow. He is a food photographer who will occasionally post a recipe - they are always delicious.
http://www.101cookbooks.com/ - This is a fairly new discovery for me. She only posts vegetarian dishes, but they have always been fantastic and have introduced Brett and me to so many new combinations and dishes.

cool weather and warm kitchens

It is starting to feel like fall around here. The weather is cooling off - though we didn't have much of a summer - and I am in the mood to start cooking again. While I love the warmth and adventures that summer brings there is nothing like cooking a warm meal when it is cool outside. Fall is my favorite season with all the beautiful colors and abundance of food. I plan to make the most of it, picking apples and pumpkins and whatever else I can find to pick. I also want to learn how to bake. I feel fairly confident in the kitchen when it come to cooking. Not afraid to try a new recipe or add a little of this or that, but baking is a whole different game. With baking you have to be precise, no just throwing things together - at least not at first. So expect some more baking recipes on here.

To start the season, I made a Tres Leche Cake (a spanish 3-milk cake). Brett has been asking for one and while browsing a new blog I found a delicious recipe for it. As I have never had Tres Leche before I am not sure if mine tasted right, but I thought it was good and everyone who tried it said it was authentic. Check out this blog for the recipe and if you have some time (it's long), read her story of how she meet her husband. I have never been one to read romance novels but I was completly enthraled in her story. I started reading it durning my lunch break and had trouble staying on task at work because I wanted to keep reading.

So other than baking and reading blogs what have I been up to?... Oh yea, we moved into our new apartment, my parents came to visit, and I ran my first 5k! As you can tell, life has been slow at the Hartford's :) The apartment is great and I will post picture soon, but right now it is still a disaster and we are slowing getting the apartment set-up to fit our life.

Having my parents here was wonderful. We were tourist for the weekend and completely wore ourselves out. We visited a vineyard, tasted chocolate in Hershey, PA, saw the statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, ran a 5k for Africa, accessorized and worked on the apartment a bit, and ventured all around NYC. Not bad for a 4 day weekend.

Now it is time to get ready to go on a hike with some friends from our life group. I will leave you with some pictures of our recent adventures.

My wonderful parents

Brett in Hershey

The wall of names at Ellis Island

Exchange students with Elvis

My running buddy

Team Hartford

Life group + Nate

the first bits of summer

Many things have happened since I last posted

* Summer is in full swing here but it has rained too much for us to completely appreciate it.

*We traveled to Orlando for Memorial Day weekend to see Brett's brother graduate and as a nice little trip for Brett's birthday. He loved seeing all his friends and I even was able to surprise him by getting them all together for a rock climbing day at a place he use to go to when he lived down there.

*My dear old Dell laptop finally crashed. This was both a pro and con - I used that laptop for everything including my job. Luckily I had backed up all work files just the day before, unfortunately I hadn't backed up my personal files in a really long time. I was very sad to say goodbye to my Dell but we decided to go ahead and get me a MacBook. So I am typing this from my beautiful new laptop and couldn't be happier.

* Our garden is growing wonderfully. We finished planting the tomatoes and peppers. I can't wait for everything to grow, then I can eat fresh salsa and fresh produce.

* We got to see Hillsong United preform in NYC.

* Pasta party part 3 was had at our apartment last night. We had great food, great friends, and a new fun game that Bek taught us. Overall I think it was a success and I am sure there will be many more to come.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

* And probably my favorite thing is the new (to us) bikes that Brett and I got last weekend. A local elementary school was doing a fundraiser where people donate bikes. They then sell them all for $10, regardless or size, age, or condition. Brett and I managed to acquire two vintage road bikes for $20! They both need a tiny bit of work, but for not much more money we are going to have some amazing bikes to cruise around the lake. I absolutely adore mine. It is from Nottingham, England, and based on my research is from the 60s or 70s. I think it is actually worth something like $300. One brake line is stuck and it needs new tires since they are all dried out but other than that is great. Here are a couple photos from the day we bought them. I will post more after I get her all cleaned up.

city and shore

Rich and Katie, a couple in our lifegroup moved to Buffalo last week, so before thy left we all headed to the city for one last hooray. Rich's grandma has an apartment in midtown with an amazing roof top garden. His Nana entertained us with wonderful stories and we had a hard time leaving the roof top. After Nana's apartment we grabbed dinner and then wondered around the city for a while.

Today Brett did his first duathlon. He had to run 2 miles, bike 10 miles, and then run 3 more miles. Yesterday at the last minute Mark, Brett's dad, decided to do it too. We dragged ourselves out of bed at 4 am so we could meet Mark and Jacki, get everything loaded, and leave by 5:00 to head to Long Branch at the shore. It was a nasty morning; cold and rainy. We were pretty miserable just watching so I am sure the boys had to be having a hard time. They both finished and I am so proud of them. Now it is time for a relaxing evening and early to bed.

rooftop view

the boys just hanging out

3 of the girls
bek, me, katie

the group


the boys before their run

brett coming back from the bike part

and he finished!

(once again NYC pictures borrowed from Sim and Katie)

popovers

Today marks 6 months of Brett and I being married. I thought it would be fun to make something special for breakfast and stumbled across a recipe for popovers. Being me, I then had to go brows for a couple more recipes to compare before starting the cooking process. The recipe I ended up using if from Allrecipes.com but with a couple of twists on my part (of course). They sell popover pans but since I don’t have any I just used large muffin tins. If you have a popover pan by all means, use it instead.

INGREDIENTS
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Grease a 6-cup muffin tin. I sprayed mine with pam.
2. In a medium bowl beat eggs slightly, Beat in flour, milk and salt until just smooth; being careful not to overbeat.
3. Put a dab of butter in the bottom of each muffin tin and set the pan in the oven to preheat for a moment before filling with batter. Be careful because your butter will burn if you leave it in the oven to long.
4. Remove pan from oven and fill cups ½ - ¾ full.
5. Bake at 450 degrees for 20 minutes. Decrease oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes more or until dark brown. (Mine took 17 more minutes) Immediately remove from cups and serve piping hot.

I added about ¼ t onion powder and ½ t Italian seasoning to the flour before mixing in. These popovers turned out perfect and were amazing just by themselves.

A couple of recipes I found make a sweeter version by adding some vanilla and sugar to the mix and then spreading the popover with jam or dipping in cinnamon an sugar. I hope to try that soon and will report on how they turn out.

you have to start somewhere

Since we are so far away from many of our friends and family, I decided a blog may be a good idea. This way we have a place to update everyone on what we are up to, or any random thoughts we care to share. :P

Since this is the first blog, I should probably just get everyone up to date with what is happening with us.

We got married almost 6 months ago, which just seems crazy! It doesn't feel like it has been that long. We were blessed with the opportunity to go to Italy for out honeymoon. It was beyond amazing. We got to see all of the sights, go on a wine tour in Tuscany, and take a cooking class.
After Italy, we moved into our apartment in New Jersey. Brett had a job lined up working with his dad on property management, but it took me a couple of weeks to find a job as well. I now work for an online picture frame company doing graphic design work as well as other random tasks.

We were able to find a church right away that we both really like and have started connecting with people and making friends. That was probably what was hardest about moving up here was not really knowing anyone. Brett and I both really missed our friends and having people to hang out with. Through our church, we were able to join a small group of other young couples and have really started connecting with them.

We have added another member to our family in the form of a (not so little anymore) kitten named Snooks. I love cuddly cats and since our apartment wouldn't allow dogs for Brett, Snooks has been a great compromise. He is currently curled at my feet while I type this but loves to play as well. Brett has taught him many tricks and even gets him to play fetch. It is crazy because we will actually throw a toy and Snooks loves to go get it and bring it back for us to throw again.

So with work, small group, friends, and a cat we have been enjoying our new life together. I have been teaching Brett how to cook and he has even found some new foods that he had never tried or liked before. As anyone who knows me knows I love to cook, so even when Brett is not cooking with me I have been enjoying cooking new things and having someone who loves to eat around.

So yea, that is our life so far in a nutshell. Hopefully we will both be more disciplined to maintain this blog than I am with my other one.