week in photos

This week wasn't a particularly active one. The last part of the month keeps Matt at work more often, so there was a lot of cuddling and fetch playing with me and Harlem Jones. But it was a good week :) Here a few random moments from it in picture form.

I had cookies and milk for breakfast.....again. You should know by now that I have a serious cookie weakness.



I made a delicious chili. I found the original recipe on Kristens blog, and modified it just a tad.


Hung out backstage with hubby's band, The Waking Point, before their show on Saturday.




and, like I said, played lots of fetch with Harlem. We play fetch inside when it's cold out, because Harlem will not stand for the idea of not playing fetch at all for even one day. Here she is taking a quick break from our game of living room fetch...



and here she is 30 seconds later, done with break and ready to go.




Here's the recipe for that delicious chili, made in the crock pot : )

{ Brown Sugar Chili }
Crock pot: high 2 hours

1 lb extra-lean ground beef
½ c brown sugar
2 Tbsp prepared mustard
1 med-size onion, chopped
(2) 14 oz cans kidney beans, drained
1 pint low-sodium tomato juice
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper
3 tsp chili powder
frozen corn or drained can of corn
about a tbsp honey (I use raw honey)

Brown lean ground beef & onion in a nonstick skillet over med heat.
Stir brown sugar & mustard into beef.

Combine all ingredients into slow cooker.

Cover. Cook on high 2 hours. If convenient, stir several times during cooking.



next time I think I might add some crushed red pepper or more chili powder to add a little more heat. But it was SO good. Matt said it was some the best chili he's ever had!



xoxo

Weekend in Photos

This was a fun weekend. I saw lots of people that I love and ate good food. Can't beat that! Friday night we went to a Chinese Buffet. Buffets are another thing I took a solemn vow against long ago but I've recently decided that foreign ones are less dirty and yummy, so I'm making a compromise : ) Matt loves dessert at buffets, so he got a little of everything


Saturday, I went to a human trafficking awareness event at my old church, Fairfield First Baptist. It was hosted by my bestie and Stop Traffick Fashion was there sellling fair trade goods. Learning about and supporting the fight against modern day slavery has become close to my heart this year, and I'm really proud of Sarah for getting it together. This church and the people in it are so special to me. I love them so much. I was so glad to spend some time with them! Here is one of the tables set up from Stop Traffick Fashion...


and sweet Camille was there munching on some pound cake, I love her SOOOOOO much!



Then I visited with my grandma for a little bit while I waited for the beard to get off work. We went home and played with this pretty girl



On Sunday, we had breakfast at Red Squirrel. Look at that stud.





And then went to Fairfield First for the ground breaking of The Rock Community Center. They've been wanting to build this since I was there, and that was 3 years ago that I left to go to Crossroads with Matt. It's so exciting to see it finally happening!



Then we went to the antique mall with Sarah, but my phone was dying so I couldn't take it in for pics. I was so bummed! But it was a wondrous weekend! How was yours?!

the day I became an iphone junkie.

I would say how I feel about St. Patricks Day, but I think Abbi pretty much summed it up for me. I'm much more interested in the fact that today was the day that I joined the iphone club. And within an hour of having it I'd already tweeted twice. This may not seem like a big deal to many of you, but about a year ago I took a firm and solemn vow not to tweet because of something about narcissism and America. I don't know. Matt even created a twitter for beardedlady and I wouldn't use it. Apparently all it takes for me to become a narcissist and start tweeting like a madman is the iphone. But what I'm really excited about is the pictures!! I always wish I'd brought a camera with me almost everywhere so that I can catch little moments and have memories, but I never really want to carry a bulky camera, and the camera on my old phone Sucked with a capitol SSSSS. So needless to say I am all over the instagram and photo apps. Tonight we did some fun stuff so I got to break myself in. The huz and I had a little date at Johnny Rockets. Gosh I love cheeseburgers. It's almost embarrassing how much I love cheeseburgers. Then we met our friends Nate and Emmy and walked from their house in Pleasant Ridge to Molly Molones... but that's it. We literally walked there, saw the amount of people and heard that is was 5 bucks just to go in, and turned around and walked back. We opted instead to have some drinks on their deck and then go to yagoot with their super awesome dog, Zach. Zach loves strawberry yagoot. I got the italian cocoa and banana flavors swirled together with some granola. YUMSVILLE!!! I didn't get a pic of that because I was too busy devouring it. Anyway, here's some pics from the evening. Hope your's was just as swell : )







xoxo