valentine's day

last weekend i went over to my sister's house and helped them make some valentine's day cookies.  it's so nice to be able to go over there and get some family time whenever i need a fix!

first i had some quality time with my little nephew, who is getting so big






we made some valentines



and baked some cookies...



then decorated the cookies...





and ended with some good 'ol fashioned wrestling

Thanksgiving

This was the first year we celebrated Thanksgiving at our house (exciting!).  I tried to resist the urge to go all-out Martha Stewart, but did do a few things that would be considered martha-esque.

I decorated the mantle:



and set the table all fancy-like:



I spent $1 total for decorating the house (I bought fake leaves at Jo Ann because I didn't want to deal with the mess of real leaves).  Most of it is leftover wedding stuff that I'm glad I kept around.

On the menu:

Roasted Turkey
Tofurkey
Stuffing (vegetarian)
Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole
Smoked Gouda Macaroni and Cheese
Chicken Nugget Kabobs
Rolls
Pumpkin Pie

The total head count was 8 (including three kids) and it was the perfect size for my house.  We didn't have to do two tables or anything, we just had to squeeze in one extra chair at the dining room table.  I did have some trouble with heating food back up after doing a lot of cooking on Wednesday.  I have to admit that I wasn't organized at all as far as putting together a schedule of when things would have to go back into the oven, etc. so when we actually sat down to eat we had less than steaming hot food.  Oh well...I learned my lesson. 

Here's my Mom with my nephews and niece:



My nephew and niece LOVE my cat.  They talked for weeks about coming over to my house and chasing him all over the house.  Percy is such a great sport, and he seems to really like all of the attention (except when they try to pick him up or scare him with screeching).  Inevitably, he always is exhausted after they leave and is usually in a verry cuddly mood with Andy and me. 

Here he is (between naps) post kids:



I can't wait until we can do it again!

september 2011

this month kind of flew by.  there was one week in there where it was crawling and i felt like the week (let alone the month) would never end.  thankfully, it did end, and now i can do a recap!

the football season started and andy couldn't be happier.  the first weekend of college football season, some friends came over to watch some games and hang out.  thanks to some help from kyle, andy got his kegerator set up just in time.



after a night of football, rockband, Things (an awesome game) and other good times, a few of us went to brunch/lunch at Bob & Edith's diner in Arlington.  it was cozy.



andy was away for what seemed like forever.  in hindsight, it was only a week and a half...but it seemed like such a long time.  i spent my nights putzing around the house and playing with percy.  i also entertained myself by buying percy a halloween costume and forcing him to wear it.


(he is a cowboy.  his bandana should clue you in to that.  and the cowboy hat discarded by his front paws)

i also did FaceTime with andy while he was away and took lots of pictures of percy doing cat stuff.


(why does the flash on my phone do that to his eyes?!?  scary.)

after (what seemed like) months of him being away, i picked up andy at the airport and we ran into each others' arms and smothered each other with wet kisses.  ha, jokes.  but we did half hug in the car and talk about how much we missed each other.  i got sick while andy was away and he was lucky enough to come home to a coughing, sneezy, whiney wife.

this past weekend, andy's family was in town for a visit.  we had been planning to go to the national book festival (my bright idea), and decided to drive down to the mall and hope for parking.  after driving around the mall twice, we nixed the driving idea and went back home to hop on the metro.  due to a million events happening in the city on that day, the train was super crowded.  we were all sandwiched in like sardines and andy's poor sister had to stand there sandwiched in, holding her crying four-month-old baby and trying to hold on to the railing.  no one offered to give up their seat, which i thought was pretty sad.  we eventually made it to the festival and saw some authors who we didn't know.  andy's mom and sister bought some autographed copies of children's books (perhaps out of pity for me, since my idea turned out to be a complete and utter failure).

after a short stay at the book festival (we had missed all of the famous people we would've known), we walked over to a restaurant for lunch.  on the way there, we stopped for a photo op in front of the white house.


(me, andy's nephew, andy, his sis, bro-in-law.  andy's mom was taking the picture.)

we ate lunch at founding farmers, a delish restaurant i highly recommend to any dc peeps.  we saw someone famous in the restaurant and made numerous trips to the "bathroom" to confirm his identity amongst the group.

after our exhausting day in the city, we decided to round out the day with some retail therapy. 

we said our goodbyes to his family on sunday morning, and andy and i spent the rest of the day relaxing and trying (unsuccessfully) to get rid of my illness.  i cuddled with my new favorite pillow pet and went through half a box of kleenex.



this week is only a three-day week for me.  i am heading up to my big sister's wedding on thursday morning(!!!!).  i am so looking forward to seeing all of my family and i'm also looking forward to spending some time away from dc! 
 

oreo truffles

a couple of weekends ago, i joined a bunch of friends at a lake house on lake anna, which is in southern(er than dc) virginia.  as part of my undying desire to be the best at everything baking/cooking, i decided i needed to whip up something delicious for a weekend treat.  i have a pinboard dedicated to recipes...and a hefty percentage of those recipes are dedicated to sweets (so what??).  i wanted something fun and easy, so finally settled on these treats from bakerella:

Source: bakerella.com via Liz on Pinterest

i didn't take any pictures of the final product (i forgot).  the only evidence is this quick picture i snapped with my phone:


they were really really easy to make.  there was a lot of rolling, and i did have a lot of white chocolate/rolled oreo truffle mixage (there were eventually little black oreo flecks in my white chocolate), but they were cute, and people ate them up. 

score one for liz.

pert's stick

i mentioned earlier that one of my favorite things that percy does is sit by the window to wait for me to get home from work.  one of my other favorite percy-isms is a newer habit that he's gotten into.  it started about a month ago, and we are stumped as to why...but for some reason he has become obsessed with this cat toy that sat virtually untouched for the past six months.  it's this plastic stick with an elastic string attached to it.  at the end of the elastic there were three pom poms (i say "were" because two of the pom poms have proven they are unable to withstand the jaws of percy).
we don't know where it started, but one day we realized that he was carrying one of the balls in his mouth and dragging the whole thing all over the house.  we would be sitting on the couch watching tv, and he would jump into one of our laps and drop the ball, meow, then beg with his eyes for us to play with him.  we usually complied.
about two weeks ago, i was sleeping and i heard a clanking noise.  shortly after that, percy jumped up onto the bed and meowed.  i sat up in bed and realized that he had dragged the toy all the way up to the bedroom.  i went back to sleep, only to be awakened a few minutes later by percy jumping on my legs and meowing, begging me to play with him.  i had to pick him up and carry him to the basement (hey, i have to get sleep somehow).  it kind of became his routine to carry the stick up to our bedroom, so eventually we started putting the stick in a drawer for the night, and that has seemed to help. 

it is pretty cute to hear the stick clanking on the stairs as he runs up with that toy dragging behind him. 

here are a few pictures of the little guy posing with his new favorite toy:

earthquake!

on monday, i experienced my first earthquake.  i was at work (i work in bethesda, maryland, but live in northern virginia), looking over some reports with my boss, when all of a sudden everything started to shake.  it sort of felt like someone was pushing a heavy cart past the cube, but then it lasted longer and i quickly realized that it was not a cart, but something bigger.  it didn't last long, and as soon as it was over people started standing up in their cubes and looking around, everyone with shocked looks on their faces.  most people were joking about it, but i think we were all a little spooked.
we went back to work for a little while, then they announced over the speakers that we would be evacuating the building (the building i work in is about 40 years old and is definitely not built to withstand earthquakes).  luckily, it was a really pretty, sunny day and we weren't too upset about having to spend 45 minutes outside.  if it had been two weeks ago, we would've all been hot and sweaty.
some of my co-workers with young children left early to go console their little ones, but most people just went back to work.  i think everyone was on google maps watching the traffic situation (it got really ugly).  by the time i left work at around 5:30, the traffic had all cleared on my route and it was just a normal commute for me.
the last mile or two before arriving home, i got a little bit nervous thinking about the possible damage to my house.  there were a few buildings in the area that had cracked windows, and that was what i was most concerned about.  i was also nervous about my cat's reaction to the whole thing..whether he would've tried to escape to save his life.  luckily, when i got home i was greeted by my usual Mr. Pert sitting on his cat climber thing, waiting for me at the (uncracked) window.  i love when he's lying on his perch like the lazy 'ol thing that he is and then he perks up and meows when he confirms that it is indeed me getting out of the car.
thankfully, there was zero damage to the house on my floors (a few pictures hanging on the wall were crooked...but they were never really straight to begin with.  good job earthquake planning, me!).  after breathing a sigh of relief that the main floor and the upstairs had no damage, i headed down to the man cave to check out it's status.  turns out, the "throw random crap on the mantel until we actually have a plan of where to put it" method of home decorating was not the best way to go.  we had some frame breakage and a couple of dents and dings to the viking horns:

thankfully, no real damage to me, andy, pert, or the house!  now we just have to buckle down for the hurricane that's headed our way this weekend!

Office

Don't worry, this is not a post about work.  It is a post about a lonely little bedroom that gets mistreated on a daily basis by the author of this blog.  You know how some houses have a junk drawer?  Well, mine has a junk room.  I try to keep all of the rooms in my house pretty bare.  I like the look of cleanliness that comes with a clutter-free home.  As a result of keeping absolutely everything out of all of the other rooms in the house, the office gets clutter overload.  I'll occasionally dump boxes or bags in there "until I get a chance to go through it and organize it".  Yeah, well, that never happens.  There never is a chance.  There's always much more interesting stuff going on elsewhere.  It's such a shame, too, because it's an entire room of my house that I could be using for whatever my heart desires.  In an effort to motivate myself to actually clean that room and make it useful, I've pinned a bunch of lovely home office spaces over on pinterest.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Source: tumblr.com via Liz on Pinterest

Source: tinypic.com via Liz on Pinterest

i like the storage solutions here:

Source: candicestringham.typepad.com via Liz on Pinterest

i think a closet office would be money:

Source: google.com via Liz on Pinterest

Source: tecpetajaphoto.com via Liz on Pinterest

Who knows, maybe this is a sign that I'm officially ready to haul all that junk down to goodwill?