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

moving in fast forward

Hi there!

Life has been so busy lately and full of changes. Good changes though.
We are moving to a new apartment in 2 weeks. We thought we were moving the last weekend in September but do to a miscommunication, I found out this morning that we are moving the last weekend in August. So these next two weekends will be busy with packing and miscellaneous moving stuff, then the next weekend is moving weekend, and the weekend after that my parents will be here.

I am excited about this new place! I will finally get to decorate my "home". The place we are living now, we knew it was temporary when we moved in. We thought we would only be here a few months but a year later we are finally moving on. The new place is slightly smaller but is also cheaper and much closer to our friends. I have so many decorating ideas and can't wait to see the place become our own.

Another big part of my life lately has been training to run a 5k. This may not seem like such a bit deal to some but for me it is huge. I have always said how much I hate to run. I would pick swimming or biking over running any day. I have also said I would like to do a sprint triathlon someday. The only thing holding me back, has been the running part. I would start to run and then would quickly give up. This time I have a great friend to run with and challenge me, and I have a goal. My church is doing a 5k fundraiser run to raise money for building wells in Africa. Bek and I started on a program that is supposed to take you from the couch, or doing nothing, to running a 5k in 9 weeks. Together Bek and I have been running 3 times a week and are just finishing up our 9 weeks. I'm pretty proud of us!

The race is Labor Day weekend and my parents are coming to visit that same weekend. I can't wait. My dad has never been here and my mom was only here briefly. I am excite to get to show them around where we live and take them to the city. My mom may even run with me.

So there is a brief catchup with what is happening in our lives. I have been cooking up a storm and promise to start posting recipes again. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

summer eats and travels

One of my favorite food bloggers, Matt Bites, posted this recipe for pasta with a fresh tomato sauce. It is very tasty without being heavy at all. A refreshing dinner for hot summer days.

Angel Hair with Fresh Tomato Sauce

garlic - Matt's recipe called for one clove but we both agreed that 1 or 2 more would be good
4-5 very ripe good size tomatoes (approx. 3 lbs?)
juice and zest of 1/2 a lemon
a bit of salt and pepper
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
olive oil
1lb angel hair pasta

Mash the garlic or put it through a press, and then further mash it into a paste with a bit of salt.

Chop up 2/3 of the tomatoes. Grate the remaining tomatoes on the large holes of a box grater over a good size bowl. Reserve the pulp and juices but discard the skin.

Mix together the tomatoes, garlic, lemon juice and zest, salt, and pepper. Put aside until pasta is done - at least 10 minutes.

After making the sauce, boil the pasta according to direction. Drain and immediately toss with the tomato sauce. Sprinkle with basil, olive oil, and a bit of salt.

Enjoy!


Here are some pictures from our trip to Virginia for the 4th. My goal for this summer is to visit as many states around our area as we can.

We stopped in hersey just to grab a bite to eat. I hope to go back soon and do the chocolate tour!

Finally made it to Virginia!

1st year anniversary and getting in shape

Hello out there I am posting from Virginia. We are traveling down to a family reunion for Brett's side of the family.

Life has been pretty good for us lately. Last weekend was our 1 year anniversary. We had a completely unplanned but fantastic day to celebrate last Saturday. The plan was to visit a vineyard in NY but last minute that morning a friend of Brett's told us to switch our plans and go to this one in west/middle NJ. It ended up being a really fun tour and tasting and we bought a bottle of their famous and fantastic blueberry wine.
As we were leaving we GPSed looking for a place to grab a bite to eat and saw there was a Sonic about 20 minutes away in PA. Now we would usually not get so excited about Sonic but there are none around where we live and we had really been missing it. Sonic became our anniversary dinner and we finally were able to use a gift card a friend had given us a year ago for our wedding.
While eating Brett started messing with the GPS and found that the oldest drive movie theater in America was only 20 more minutes away. Of course we had to go. That evening it was showing UP and The Proposal. We had already seen UP but it is such an amazing movie, I had no problem seeing it again and The Proposal was not bad either.
Overall it was a great day spent having a carefree and wonderful road-trip with my husband and I don't think I could have asked for a better anniversary day or 1st year.

So what else has been happening?
Our garden is growing wonderfully. We have one tiny bell pepper, the carrots are about 2" long, and the squash have tons of blossoms all over them. Looks like we should get a pretty good crop this year.

I have started running and actually enjoy it. Something I thought would never happen. My mom had told me about this program, couch to 5k, and then about a week later my church organized a charity run to purchase a rig in Africa. We are currently involved in building wells but by getting this rig we will be able to drill a well a week! I told my friend Bek about the program and together we are training for the run. What is pretty cool is from my mom telling me about the program, and Bek and I telling everyone else, there are now people all over the world doing the couch to 5k program and encouraging each other.

Along with getting myself in shape our life group is all doing the Financial Peace University together. It is a program by Dave Ramsey that teaches you how to handle your money. He is big on getting out of debt and then never getting in debt every again. He teaches about using cash for most of your spending and never using credit cards or loans again. It should be a good class and I have already learned a lot in just our first week.

Hope everyone has a great 4th of July!

taking pictures of myself in the rear view mirror

the scary 1 lane road we took to get the vineyard

tasting some wine

who knew our trip would be so biblical

our view of the movie