Mourning my Husband

So, I realized this weekend that my 9 months of single living is back.....

Football season started this weekend

Tennis US Open still finishing

Baseball is still going, and I never thought I'd say it, but I'm rejoicing in the fact that our RedSox stink this year

Fantasy Hockey draft is next weekend

FedEx Cup and Ryder Cup are still coming for PGA

Hockey season officially kicks off October 7th

By the time Baseball ends, Hockey and NCAA Basketball will be going full swing

By the time Football ends, baseball will be back

By the time Hockey ends, golf and tennis will be back

I can't win......

So I stink at Friday posts!

I really just can't get organized enough at the end of the week to remember to post on Fridays!

Maybe it has something to do that I'm working a more weekend based schedule and by Friday I'm fairly tired and just trying to get trough.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I don't truly have my own kitchen and feel kind of weird posing food for a picture.

Probably the latter. :)

So, I don't have any pictures from the food this week, other than archived pictures from older, and my previous blog.... 

Earlier this week I made one of these....

 Raspberry Bundt Cake Recipe-
1 Box Yellow Cake Mix
1 Stick Softened Butter
3 Eggs
1/2 Cup Vanilla Coffee Creamer
1/2 Cup Milk
1/3 Brown Sugar
Dash of Cinnamon
Dash of Nutmeg
2 Containers (little plastic, half pints?) Raspberries.

Preheat Oven to 350. Generously grease and flour Bundt cake pan.
Beat first five ingredients.  Fold in Sugar and Spices.  Fold in half of the raspberries.  Pour into greased pan.  Cover batter with remaining raspberries and push into batter with spatula.  Bake 40-45 minutes, or until it passed the "toothpick test".  Let cool 10 minutes, flip out of pan and let cool on plate or wire rack for an hour to drizzle with frosting, or sprinkle with powdered sugar immediately.

And some of these....

(only two left)

And bought blueberries to make some of this....(which never got made, had to buy more blueberries and will try again tomorrow!)

One of the husband's favorite foods!

I'm pretty traditional, basically, it's the batter for scratch blueberry muffins, Betty Crocker Style, slightly doctored up.

Whisk together-
1 Egg
1/4 C Oil
3/4 C Milk
1 ts Vanilla Extract
1 Tbs French Vanilla Coffee Creamer

Stir in-
2 C Flour
1/2 C Sugar
2 Tbs Baking Powder
1/2 ts Salt

Fold in-
1 Cup fresh or frozen blueberries (rinse frozen ones in room temperature water first)

Pour into greased Bundt Cake pan, bake 20-22 minutes at 400 degrees.
You can also do it in a loaf pan, but I like the way it comes out better (consistency wise) in the Bundt cake pan, but to do a loaf pan, bake 28-30 minutes at 375 degrees.

Serve warm and buttered! And preferably with fresh coffee!

And for tonight I'm making these.....

Brownie Batter-
Ingredients-
4oz. Unsweetened Chocolate
2/3 C Butter
4 Eggs
2 C Sugar
2 Ts Vanilla
1 1/3 C Flour
1 Ts Baking Powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 9x13" pan.

Melt Chocolate for one minute in microwaveable dish, add Butter, melt one more minute, stir, set aside.

In medium mixing bowl, beat Eggs and Sugar.
Add Chocolate Mixture and Vanilla.
Stir in Flour and Baking Powder.

Bake 25 minutes.

Frosting-
1/3 C Softened Butter  *(leave out remaining 1/3 Cup to soften when making batter)*
Roughly 2 C Confectioners Sugar
2 TBS Milk Chocolate Instant Jello Mix
1 Ts Vanilla
Enough Milk to make it spreadable.

Beat all ingredients together, gradually adding milk until it reaches the desired consistency.

Spread on cooled brownies.

And tomorrow afternoon I'm making two of these....

Pie Filling-

4 Large Apples any variety
my favorite combination is 2 Granny Smith, 1 Cortland, 1 Yellow Delicious, I like a slightly tart, non-mushy pie.

Peel, core and thinly slice into large bowl.

Cover in-
1/4 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
Cinnamon, Cloves and Nutmeg to "smell"

Let sit and get juicy while you do crust.

Crust-

Sugar cookie dough! You can use store bought (like the Pillsbury in a tube kind), half a batch of your standard dough, or this-

Mix together-
1 stick softened butter
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Egg
1 tsp Vanilla

Add-
1 Cup Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder

Press into the bottom and sides of a greased, deep pie dish.

Bake at 375 for 15 minutes (it will settle into the bottom and corners of the pan).

French Crumb Topping-

Mix together until crumbly-
1 stick softened butter
2/3 Cup Flour
1/3 Cup Sugar
1/3 Cup Brown Sugar
1 tsp Cinnamon

Fill crust while still hot, cover with French Crumb Topping, cover with foil.

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes, then remove foil and bake an additional 10-15 minutes or until top of crust starts to brown. (TOTAL of 45-50 minutes)

Let sit 45-60 minutes before cutting.

I think that's all in the food department, I'll post more about the weekend in general tomorrow, maybe, if I think of it, or anything interesting to say. :)

Thankful Thursday

This week has been good to us....

Thanks to the nice little tropical storm, we had three days off together this week

My wonderful husband got a bunch of work done on his car, and a bunch of cleaning for me

My husband bought me a new blow dryer-yay straight hair again!!

We were able to get some great deals at our Christian Book Store

Our health insurance plan got approved and started

Our car passed the Texas inspection system

We hit the 40% mark in paying off all of our debt, a project started only 6 months ago!

The storm finally broke and let us go walk around Old Town Spring today and enjoy an afternoon outside

We were hired to cat sit again for a neighbor for 3 weeks, they pay $10 a day, bonus $200 for petting a car 30 minutes a day

We have awesome friends who invited us over for dinner Saturday, double date night!

My hair is freshly colored and nails freshly painted-I love the little things!

Wordless Wednesday

A morning off....
 

Recipe

Thankful Tuesday

It's raining and finally below 95 degrees!!!! I'm in jeans today and it's only 77!! I'm loving it!

I'm definitely fully acclimated because I was complaining last night that I was freezing and it was 69, I've turned into a southern wimp! :)

My husband is off for 2-3 days because of tropical storm/hurricane "Hermoine" and I'm off for the next two days! Lots of time together!

I baked cookies last night!

My new friend Amber from work and her husband checked out our lifegroup on Sunday and he's asking about salvation and Jesus! (Praise/Prayer for understanding)

We're getting our car registered in Texas finally! Which means, Texas Driver's Licenses and no more explaining why my addresses don't match up.

We finally have health insurance again! Yay raise that lets us afford it!

Monday Musings

So we started a new series in our Lifegroup at church yesterday.  It's fantastic.  It's perfect for basically anyone.  And, amazingly enough, I kind of feel like we're on the better off end of it.

Check it out if you get a chance. There is a clip from the first lesson is on youtube-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiDLv24Xd64 

Also, if someone wants to tell me how to upload a video instead of a link, I'd appreciate it. Thanks :)

So.....

2 days into it and I already missed a post! Not a good sign!

I do have a decent excuse though, my husband got asked to work a double, so I had to drive my mom to work to be able to use her car to get to work later, then I got called into work 2 1/2 hours early, so, basically I had an hour free in the afternoon on the computer and didn't get to posting after paying the bills.

Our food was not very interesting this week anyways.

This coming week I'm only closing once, so hopefully I can get a few good meals out.  I'm looking forward to some baking today, maybe, after my mom leaves for work. My dad has company coming tonight, so she'll freak if I even start to use the kitchen, but I'm really in the mood, so I'll just have to deep clean again when I'm done.  These-

were on sale this week, which means cookies need to be made!

And these-

looked good and fresh, which means bread for tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately all of my pictures are stored on my computer, (and hard drive, don't worry!) and my computer decided to die, so I'm going to have to take some new pictures since all of my archives of food pictures are a bit of a pain to access at the moment.

This afternoon Adam should be getting home earlier from work and I'm hoping to get out to the outlet mall for some Labor Day weekend specials.  He needs cleats and some more dri-fit/heat gear type shirts, and new sneakers, because his are getting destroyed at work. I just want to shop! I let myself buy two things at work yesterday, I have at least one more I really want, but, I'd just as soon get some good deals on shoes at the outlets.  I'm discovering that all of my boot type shoes are a bit impractical for down here and peeptoes and sandals are the way to go.

I'm drooling over these-

at the moment.  At $130, I'll be looking for some lookalikes at about 80% off :)

Have a great weekend, off to clean so my mom stops freaking out at me. You'd think I'd never been responsible before sometimes. :)

Thankful Thursday

The Blessings from the last 3-4 days!

I have a wonderful husband who was off work today while I was at work and took it upon himself to fix our noisy ceiling fan and sort through his paper pile and put away his laundry!

I have a job that I love 99% of the time, and a new hire who is currently my mission field.

I have a manger that is so supportive of my time off requests for church events, and excited with me when I share answered prayers!

I have a Lifegroup at church, and Ladies Fellowship group that holds me accountable and prays with me through everything.

My kids choir is growing and so are my helpers! My kids already know their hymn of the month after only 2 weeks and are so enthusiastic to learn more (though silly band prizes are good incentive!)

Our car finally has working air conditioning again.

It's getting cooler! It's amazing the difference it makes when you drop from 105 to 95!

The police arrested the armed robbers who've been preying on my work plaza! BIG YAY!!!!!

It's cool enough to wear jeans today!

My husband is back on speaking terms with his brother.

Not deliberately hiding away

So, it's been 5 weeks since I've blogged.  I'm not really sure what's kept me from posting, other than that I feel like I don't have anything interesting to say.  My life in Texas is very very VERY different than my life in New York. My life in NY was non-stop, always busy, filled with people, stories, events, crazy schedules and someone interesting seemed to happen almost daily.  Here in TX, things run quite a bit slower. I'm working 25 hours a week instead of 50. I'm only working in 1 ministry instead of 4. I'm not keeping my own house since we're living with my parents, so less cooking, decorating and housework. I'm paying off debt left and right, so less shopping and deal finding.  I'm much more relaxed without the in-laws around, so less venting. Things are just different.  In NY I could always find something interesting to write about, here, it's basically just my rambling mind.

But, this blog was originally started for me, so my rambling is going to become public once again.

I need to blog.

I need to express myself with words.

I need a sounding board.

I need interaction with people, even if it is just through the internet.

And I'm learning and studying things I feel like I should be sharing and spiritually I feel like I'm in the closest relationship with God I've ever had.

So, my new system.....

Monday Musings-ramblings from the weekend
Thankful Tuesdays-no complaining allowed!
Wordless Wednesday-my excuse to take a few pictures
Thankful Thursday-because I need to be positive!
Food Fridays-I can't meal plan, but I can meal recap!

Weekends will be whatever pops into my head. And yes I know I have a thing for alliteration.

Feel free to link up and join me on any of these.  I'd love to see a whole group of thankful people during my week. We're all so blessed in ways we don't see, and acknowledging that can make a huge impact on our attitudes towards the little things that bother us.

I'll be back tomorrow with my first official post.  Today is not a good picture day, gym clothes, laundry piles and cooking chickens are not nice things to show off to the world, and I didn't plan ahead by taking any earlier this week. :)

A Day Off

Spent here-

 Laying under this-

 Then enjoying some lemonade and a sandwich from here-

 

Playing with her-

But now it needs to get a bit less pleasant while I put away all this-

Before going here-

With a bunch of ladies from church tonight.

Oh, and I did get promoted, but more on that later, I'm not thinking about work today!

Back again

So, it was a bit of a weird week.

Found out on Tuesday I'm not completely out of the running to move up at work.  I had a phone interview with our now former District Manager (her last day was yesterday) about possibly overriding the test you're supposed to pass to be considered. I guess my observation part of the interview (that I never knew even happened on her last visit to our store) was so good, and my test was so close, that I'm still in consideration. I probably would have known yesterday had my manager not been off. Now I get to wait until Sunday to find out if I'm getting promoted or not.  It's kind of driving me nuts, but kind of not. I'm really not that worried about it, but we could use the 6-12 extra hours worth of pay, and the extra $2 an hour.  I think I have a decent chance as I was one of 4 finalists, and I'm the only one the DM made a followup call about to my manager, so that's a good sign, but I'm not going to be crushed if I don't get it. My husband on the other hand will be, he's determined I deserve it and no one else should get it. Flattering, but probably a bit exaggerated. :)

The husband on the other hand, had a rough work week.  The latter half of July til early August is slow season for him.  Meaning, as a contract worker, he may only get work 2-3 days a week instead of his usual 5-6, which is pretty depressing to him.  I'm just praying he can still see his worth even if he's contributing a bit less financially for a few weeks and can get through it still enjoying his job. He loves the job, when it's busy, so hopefully this slow spell doesn't ruin it for him.

We did actually get a day and a half off together this week though, and it was wonderful!!  We didn't do anything major, just slept, caught up on our Tivo and run a few errands together, but it made a huge difference in my outlook for the week.  We're just a bit more insync now.

I'm kind of thinking the other reason things are going better between us is this book-



I can not recommend it enough. I've read through it twice, prayed through it both times (never in the month suggested, always takes me 2 or 3) and this time I'm journaling my way through it as well. 

A few favorite quote from the first 4 chapters-

"It's a gentle tool of restoration appropriated through the prayers of a wife who longs to DO right more than BE right." (speaking of the power of prayer)

"That's because prayer is the ultimate love language"
"Talking to God about your husband is an act of love"

"If He asks us to prayer for our enemies, how much more should we be praying for the person with whom we have become one and are supposed to love?"

"Telling your husband everything that is wrong with him is not only ill-advised, it probably doesn't reveal the complete truth"

"Our goal must not be to get our husbands to do what WE want, but rather release him to God so He can get them to do what HE wants"

"Allow your husband to be the head so you can be the heart"

"When disappointing things happen it's best to remind myself of my husband's good qualities"

"Loss of respect seems to precede loss of love and is more hurtful to a man than we realize"

And those are just from the first chapter.  It's a great tool to strengthen the spiritual bond between you and your husband. 

It's my day off, so I'm off to do laundry, and put away last week's laundry and go grocery shopping and to the bank and all those other fun things we do on days off.

Have a great weekend!

Still playing catch up

So, after 2 months off, be ready for lots of double blog days!  If you haven't read the prior post yet, please do, it has all the big stuff in it, this one is just all my little daily thoughts type stuff.

I've been keeping up with the working out. Haven't lost a single pound, but I've dropped almost an inch off my butt and waist, and a half an inch on my thighs, (butt and thighs are definitely my problem areas!) and have done some arm toning, without actually measuring, the backs of my arms basically just don't jiggle so much. :)  My standard routine is
15 minutes Elliptical (typically 1.35ish miles)
15 reps on the leg machine that does the outside of your thighs
15 reps on the leg machine that does the inside of your thights
15 of those things where you hold your body up by your arms on handle things and pull your legs up to 90 degrees
15 reps on the machine where you press your arms in against the weights
15 reps on the machine where you pull the bar down against the weights
and 75 crunches.

Can you tell I've never belonged to a gym before and don't really know anything about the machines except for what the little instruction posters on them tell me?  If anyone wants to correct my names for things, feel free.

I go 3-4 times a week, just basically trying to stay toned without really changing my body any.  I'm loving it and the days I work out, I notice I don't feel like I need quite as much coffee.  I've always been a coffee girl, started stealing my dad's at 12, spending my babysitting money on Starbucks with my girlfriends in highschool, and a complete, a pot a day addict by age 19. After getting married I started cutting back to two cups (or one 20oz travel mug) in the morning and then one either in the afternoon or evening.  I'm basically down to one necessary (16oz) cup a day and then a social coffee drink once or twice a week.

We've gotten really involved in a Nearly and Newlyweds class at our church and I'm loving everything we do with it.  I'm the social coordinator, we've had one social at our house and are planning an Astros game to go to as a group later in the month.

Alot of the women in our group have decided to read through the Bible together. They're doing it rather slowly, and having read through it in highschool and again as an adult, I decided to opt out. 

I'm re-reading "The Power of the Praying Wife", which I highly recommend!  It came as a suggestion from an absolutely amazing Pastor's wife I knew back in NY, who was a bit of a mentor for me. She recommended re-reading it every few years, so I'm on re-read number two.  I'm noticing it's just like she said, every stage of your marriage you get something different out of it, or a new part becomes relevant, and it's definitely something new for me each read.  If you want to join me in reading, let me know, I just restarted it this week.  If not, I'll try to give you some of my notes on it.

We're also, as a couple, reading the book "The 5 Love Languages" for the first time.  I know it's kind of a classic in Christian marriage related literature, but we'd done a short study on it without ever reading the book and decided to go back and read the whole thing. Definitely worth it so far.  I'll try to do a few posts on it as I get further into it.

I think that's it for tonight, I'm sure to have a few event specific posts, or food posts in the next few days, still trying to get caught up.

Is this thing still working??

I know, seriously? 2 months without a post? Some of you must be wondering if I'm still alive, other than the fact that most of my loyal readers are also friends with me on facebook. :)  Anyone else, introduce yourselves so I know who's reading!

Anyways, I owe about a dozen posts that are topic specific, but instead, I'm going to just give you a brief run down of what's been on my mind and keeping me from posting.

First off, I found out in early May that I was going to be an Aunt by early December!!!  Congratulations to my sister and her husband on the arrival of their BABY GIRL in 20 weeks!! I was sworn to secrecy until this weekend, so I haven't been talking to alot of people for fear of slipping. 

 This picture is a year old, but it doesn't make any difference, I'm still going to have one very beautiful niece in a few short months! Too bad she'll be living way up in Minnesota with her parents. :)

In late May I was asked be our Nearlywed & Newlywed's Group at church's social coordinator, so every other week I remind the ladies that it's Starbucks night (Good group, huh? This was established before I got there!) and once a month set up a social gathering of some form for the couples. We hosted the first one here in the end of May.

Same weekend I also helped my friend Amber (middle) host a Baby Shower for her sister Kailey. Kailey's 17, and doesn't have a very stable faith, so I know Amber would appreciate your prayers for her.

**
The first week of June we headed over to Disney World with my parents so they could work a couple of shifts and keep their seasonal cast member status up.

**

In mid June we were able to attend our first wedding down here.  Our friends from class Jim & Maryanne got married.  They are an amazing couple, so perfect for each other, so strong in their faiths and ready for marriage, it was a great wedding, just wishing I'd actually brought my zoom since I wasn't the official photographer and had to take my pictures from farther away.

In mid June I took a test through work to find out if I was eligible for a promotion/raise to "Sales Lead", of course it's a messed up trick question test (according to my manager even) and I missed by 3 points, so I'll be retaking it sometime in September/October.

The first week of July we found out my brother in law finally proposed to his girlfriend after 5 years.  So, there will be a wedding in NY sometime in the next year. Whether we'll be invited or not is still up in the air, but there will be a wedding, and I'll finally have another girl on my husband's side. Hopefully things get worked out eventually between them. At the moment we're unfriended on facebook, blocked from contacting them on facebook, and not getting responses to emails or texts, so we'll see. We're leaving the door open on our end and reminding him especially that it's still open on our end, so we just have to wait for him to come around at this point.

This is quite literally a 3 year old picture of them, but it's the best I have without stealing one of their profile pics, and I'd rather not cause a problem.

So, basically that's been all the big events.

I'll try to get a more personal blog going later this weekend. I'm back, I'm not planning on stopping blogging again anytime soon either, so keep reading!

When the words can't come....

So I have plenty of topics to blog about, in my head, because they're all topics I either can't, or am afraid to speak about on here. 

There are topics I want to share, but am not allowed to, and that bothers me, even when things aren't mine to share necessarily, I don't like being seen as the bad guy and this horrible selfish insensitive, jerk for wanting to talk about things that excite me.  Good news is meant to be shared, scary news is meant to be prayed about, how can either of those things happen when everything's kept secret?

After my last blogging experience, writing about personal struggles and annoyances terrifies me. The threats and emotional abuse I had to take from people was ridiculous, and the thought of having things that belong to me destroyed over my words is scary, because then I'd justifiably feel the need to press charges, which would bring out even more garbage, and do more emotional damage to relationships that according to me, already seem beyond repair.

It's a messed up world, which means all of my messed up feelings have to stay inside of me, at least in any detail.  It seems every time I say anything, phone, facebook, here, I upset someone, so maybe I should just stay silent for awhile, I'm getting tired of getting yelled at....

4 Years Ago Today

Astros, Absenteeism (probably not a word) and a little bit of slacking.

So, I haven't written anything in about a week, really bad for me, and you, because this is likely to be a long post!

Since last week, we've been to an Astro's Game....Great seats, free parking, all courtesy of my aunt's fiance who got them from work and couldn't use them, so much fun!

 Beautiful Park!

 BEST SIGN EVER!!

My only excuse for my lack of posting, would be work. I seriously worked all but one day out of each of teh last three weeks.  I'm loving it though!  The job is going great, mostly great people, not bad hours, 5-6 hour shifts only between 9am and 7pm, and I've already been offered a lead sales position!!  Normally you have to be with the company for 6 months, well, I've only been there 2, so I have to test out of their "Management Aptitude" test to officially get the position, but it's been offered.  I take the test over the weekend and find out Monday, so I'm a bit anxious about that.  It would mean a 22% raise and an average of 30 hours instead of 20, which I wouldn't mind at all, and I'd still be able to have 2 evenings a week off to start booking lessons, if those ever show up.  It would be great, all around, so I'm hoping the test is pretty basic. I've been in management before, but in smaller companies without so many manuals (I wrote one company's!) and never had to take a test to get there.


Running wise, I got in 10 miles last week, barely, because of time issues.  I've discovered I just plain get bored running after about a half an hour, so it's really hard to run much more than 2 1/2 to 3 miles at a time.  Today was the first I ran this week, and I got in 2 miles before I got bored.  10 miles might be a stretch this week, especially since I don't really care to run before work on early mornings. Work usually involves heels and heels after running just doesn't work for me. I may have to start running in the afternoons/evenings next week, we'll see. I made my inches, so if I back off a little I'm just hoping they don't come back. I'm officially my wedding day measurements, so that's a huge deal for me!

Working at noon today, still need to put away 4 loads of laundry and figure out what to wear and what to eat, so I'm going to run. Miss you guys! I'm reading, even if I'm not posting or doing much commenting.

Prayers

Josh was a friend of my husband's in highschool.  They Bible quizzed against each other, spent summers atcamp up at the area where my in-laws cottage still is, and kept in touch through their mutual ministry contacts in college.  The first trip my husband and I took when we were first dating was to a Michael W Smith concert near where Josh lived and we spent the weekend with his family.

Sunday night Josh crashed a recently donated plane while testing it for the Steve Saint Ministry.  He had worked as an airplane mechanic and pilot for 3-4 years before joining the ministry, and apparently realized something was wrong just after taking off, but could not make it back to the runway safely.

Prayers for Josh's family would be appreciated.

Article

Weekend Workout Recap and some Food Related Ramblings

So, this thing has been my best friend this week it seems. 2 hours worth of running later, I'm proud to say I made my goal of 10 miles and then some! 10.4 miles to be exact!  On average, that makes for an 11.54 minute mile, though I know those numbers are off because my best run was 3.3 in 30 minutes.  I'm not necessarily worried about the speed, but I'm keep track for the sake of knowing my consistency. I'm thinking I may try to get out on the road in a couple of weeks and see what difference it makes.  5k's down here will not be happening for me during the summer months, which start in mid May, but come next fall, the idea is tempting.

Measurements wise, I'm already down to my goal in the hips thighs and butt areas, but my waist just doesn't want to come.  I kept with the crunches last week and actually went up, so the crunches have to go!  The middle of my abs are actually protruding further than before because of a little bit of definition, so, maybe on Monday I'll go figure out how to use one of the ab machines, if not, I may just have to run even more than the 12 planned miles, either that or eat less, and that's not high on my list!

I'm very much an "everything in moderation" kind of girl. I like my butter, bacon, red meat, bread, chocolate, and my theory is as long as nothing is in excess, it's okay. I'd rather eat smaller portions of natural, full fat foods than bigger portions of chemically altered to be lower in fat or sugar foods.  Just my logic, and what my body likes, as I've discovered Splenda and I just don't get along, I can't get sugar free things to sit well on my stomach, so real sugar it is! Raw sugar in my coffee, but standard granulated sugar for baking, mostly for budget reasons, they tend to make it difficult to buy healthy on a budget, so I just moderate how much we use.

Definitely the right fit!

Every other Wednesday evening, for about 2 hours, the ladies from our couples Sunday School class meet here to talk and fellowship-

That should have been my first sign that we'd found the right class. :)

Dinner with new friends

So, we've only been in Houston 2 months now, and we're finally getting to entertain some friends! I'm so excited!  I've been menu planning all week, even before I invited anyone, and now it's finally the big day!

We've got these-

and that amazing pink fruit dip I still have to mix up, as appetizers.

Amber's bringing a salad.














For the main course we're having-

 Barbeque Chicken and Macaroni and Cheese








Followed by this-

for dessert-Boston Creme Cake!

And I made a few of these

to keep on hand for if we visit or play games long enough that anyone gets hungry again. :)