NOLA

A couple of weekends ago we drove to Louisiana to celebrate MeMaw's birthday with her.  She had a big party at her house in Slidell on Saturday night.  JW and I had never been to New Orleans together and neither of us had done a lot of the famous tourist attractions there, so we decided to make a weekend of it.

We left Houston late in the afternoon on Friday and stopped in Lake Charles for dinner at Steamboat Bills, at JW's request.  He had a big plate of crawfish and loved it.  I don't do crawfish.  JW kept calling me a "yuppie girl" and maybe he's right, but I wanted no part of those things. 

Happy camper with his crawfish, potatoes and corn on the cob. :)

 

So, then we had a couple more hours in the car to our hotel in New Orleans.  We had booked a room at a cool-looking local hotel near the French Quarter because we thought that would be a fun experience.  Well, it wasn't...  When we got there about 9 p.m. the front desk service was pretty terrible.  Then, we got up to our room which was supposed to be a king room and it had two small double beds.  We went back down and were told that they were out of king rooms.  So, they adjusted our rate and gave us a queen room.  It was pretty terrible.  Tiny room with no windows and a full glass door with only blinds for privacy.  We checked online and found a Hyatt Place (one of our favorite chain hotels) a couple of blocks away.  JW talked to the guy at the front desk again, who wasn't very pleasant and finally we were out of there!

 

We made it to our new hotel close to 10 p.m. and they were so nice.  Breath of fresh air after what we'd just been through.  We got a little chocolate cake from their small cafe, since by then we were hungry again, and enjoyed it in our room. 

 

I got to pick our breakfast spot since JW had picked dinner the night before.  Of course, Cafe Du Monde was on our list, so that's what I wanted.  We walked from our hotel about a mile to the French Quarter and found a two-man jazz band and a line of people waiting to have beignets at Cafe Du Monde.  I probably should have done a little more research because I knew they were known for their famous beignets and coffee, but I didn't realize that was ALL they had.  I had big built up expectations and envisioned sitting and get to have my morning tea, eggs, bacon, fruit, and beignets.  Well, when we got up there and could see their menu of only beignets and coffee we decided we were too committed to go anywhere else.  The beignets were great and I'm glad we can say we went to Cafe Du Monde, but next time I think I'll head there for a mid-day snack or dessert rather than breakfast with the rest of New Orleans. :)

 

 

After breakfast we walked around the French Quarter for a little while and then decided to walk to the WWII Museum. 

 

Live music and a lot of vendors in Jackson Square

 

Canal Street

 

 My lawyer in front of the US Court of Appeals

 

 We found a Farmers Market on the way with fresh fruit frozen popsicles.  Yum!

 

We learned that New Orleans is home to the national WWII museum.  JW really enjoys history and I'm not a huge history buff, but we both enjoyed our afternoon at the museum a lot.  They have done a really great job with it.  We really could have spent a lot more time there.  There is a lot to see and do.

 

 

Things I knew from a history book were brought to life, and I was reminded of the sacrifice of so many.  I am thankful for those that served to preserve the liberty that we enjoy today.

 

After the museum, we headed to MeMaw's house for her birthday bash.  The whole family and so many of her friends came over to celebrate with her.  It was pretty special and a lot of fun!

 

MeMaw lives on the lake and had so many fun things planned... a DJ, blow-up water trampoline, kayaks, etc.  About thirty minutes into the party it started to pour down rain.  It was a pretty bad storm that lasted most of the night.  So, we moved everything inside and still had a blast.

Macie, Jenn, and me

 

 JW's dad and him

JW playing ball with his cousin, Charlie.  Once the music started, she asked him to dance and he turned her down.  He told her to go ask her daddy and he danced with her.  It was adorable.  I hope that one day JW will be suckered into dancing with a daughter who has him wrapped around her little finger. :)

MeMaw, Aunt Lisa and Angie dancing

 

We partied hard and I ended up crashing on the couch.  Recie hopped up to join me and someone snapped a picture.   

 

 We had breakfast and spent some time on the porch all sitting around talking before JW and I hit the road back to Houston on Sunday morning.  It was a good trip and I'm so glad we got to celebrate MeMaw with family. 

Housewarming Party

Happy Friday friends!  The first weekend in June, we hosted a Housewarming Party at our new house.  It was great motivation to get projects done, and it was a lot of fun to have the opportunity to celebrate our first home with so many friends and family.  We each invited our co-workers as well as friends and the whole family. We had a full house, and it was wonderful to get to use the house to host people we love just as we envisioned when we bought it. 

Because who doesn't love details, here is the spread!

Mom came over early (with perfect mirrors that were a last-minute find for our bathroom in tow as I shared in the last post) to help make a few little flower arrangements and put the finishing touches on things.  Fresh flowers just make my heart happy!  For the record, JW thought we were ridiculous for doing flowers, but they add so much, don't they?

I love to look back at party menus for inspiration, so here's what we served:

Drinks- Peach Tea, Red Sangria, White Wine, Beer, and Water

Food- Guacamole, Salsa, Fruit, Artichoke Dip, Texas Caviar, and Baked Crescent Roll Brie with Blackberry Preserves

Dessert- Southern Chess Squares, Brownies, and Lemon Crinkle Cookies

Of course, I put some recipes at the end of the post for you!

We had such a great time.  It feels good that our house is feeling like home and we have been able to use it to entertain and make memories with friends and family.  Here are some of those recipes I promised.  Enjoy!

Texas Caviar

Ingredients:

•  2 (15.8 ounce) cans black-eyed peas, drained
•  1 (14.5 ounce) can petite diced tomatoes, drained
•  1 (15 ounce) can of chickpeas, drained
•  1 (16 ounce) bag frozen corn, thawed
•  2 fresh medium jalapenos, stemmed, seeded and minced
•  1 small red onion, diced
•  1 green bell pepper, diced
•  1 red bell pepper, diced
•  1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
•  6 tablespoons red wine vinegar
•  6 tablespoons olive oil
•  1/2 teaspoon salt
•  1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
•  1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
•  1 teaspoon dried oregano
•  1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

Directions:
Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl; cover and refrigerate 2 hours or up to 2 days.  Taste and adjust seasoning if needed before serving.

Baked Crescent Roll Brie with Blackberry Preserves

Ingredients:

• 1 can crescent rolls
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup blackberry preserves (or any other preserves you'd prefer)
• chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
• 8 oz. block of brie cheese

Directions:
Unroll the crescent rolls all in one piece on a baking sheet.  Press together the perforations to form one piece of dough with no breaks or tears.  Place block of brie in the center.  Spread the preserves on top of brie so that it runs over the sides and sprinkle with either pecans or walnuts.  Fold the edges of the crescent roll up over the top so that the brie is covered.  Pinch together the dough to seal.  Place in the oven at 350 degrees and bake for 15-20  minutes until the crescent roll shell is golden brown.  Serve warm with crackers.

Mom's Famous Artichoke Dip

This is a recipe my mom started making several years ago.  It's always a raving success and people always want the recipe.  I think almost every woman in our family has it in her repertoire now.

Ingredients:

•  8 oz. can artichoke hearts, chopped
• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 8 oz. block of cream cheese, softened

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and then spread in a shallow ceramic dish.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, until browned around the edges.  We always serve warm with Wheat Thins.

Southern Chess Squares

Ingredients:

• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
• 3 eggs
• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
• 4 cups (1 lb) powdered sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees and spray a 9×13 dish with cooking spray.  Mix cake mix, melted butter, pecans, and one egg to a soft dough.  Press into the bottom of the pan.  Mix powdered sugar, softened cream cheese and remaining two eggs until smooth, about 1-2 minutes.  Pour on top of crust.  Bake at 300 for 40-50 minutes until top is golden brown.

Home Improvement- inside edition

For Memorial Day, my office closed Monday and Tuesday of last week.  I went ahead and took off Wednesday through Friday so that I could really focus on knocking out some of the projects around the house I wanted to get to before our party on Saturday.

First up... some drapes in our living room that were too short.  I bought these new drapes after the curtain rod had been hung according to the length of other drapes.  Instead of moving the rod, I decided I would sew a fabric trim onto the bottom.  My mom was free on Tuesday so she offered to come over and take me to one of the fabric/trim stores she goes to.  We found the perfect fabric for the curtains and trim we wanted to use on a bench (more on that later).

Curtains that were too short

When we picked out the fabric, I didn't fully think through what a challenge it would be to sew it.  It was sheer with a striped texture to it and it easily frayed.  My sewing was a little rusty, so I pulled out my sewing book and was reminded how to do a french seam.  I practiced on a scrap piece of material and got everything measured out and cut just perfectly.  It took me a full day to sew the fabric on four curtain panels.  I was pretty grumpy by the end of it, but am sure I'd be quicker next time!  I did enjoy getting to spread out upstairs and put my craft room to use for the first time. :)

The finished product

Living Room complete with new curtains, pillows, rug, and chairs

So, I mentioned my mom came over to help me shop and get trim for a bench.  I've had this bench at my dining room table since my sophomore year in college. It's made it through five moves and over seven years, but the tassel trim on the bottom looked a little rough so we had ripped it off.  It then hung off the ground too far and needed a new trim on it.  My mom had pre-shopped for trim, so we picked the sample we liked best and went to purchase it when we got fabric for the curtains.

Sewing it on was the challenging part.... Oh how I wish there would have been another person home to video this!  My mom pinned in onto the bench while I fired up the sewing machine and got rid of the cobwebs (both on the machine and in my head related to working it). 

Dakota of course wanted to help and was in her face most of the time since she was on the floor.  Mom was a trooper.  

I don't know if you can get the full effect of this setup from the pictures, but since the part we were sewing the trim onto was attached to the bench we had to get creative.  I put the sewing machine on a chair and sewed with my knee on the pedal instead of my foot while my mom held/slid/maneuvered the bench.  It was quite interesting and challenging positioning for both of us.  I whined and mom cheered us on.  I'm glad she was there to push us on this one.  I don't think I would have done it otherwise.  It looks great though, so I'm glad we did!

The finished product

It looks like it was made that way all along doesn't it?

Another one of our projects since moving in was mirrors for all the bathrooms.  I've shared with you before that none of the bathrooms had mirrors, towel bars/hand towel holders, toilet paper holders, or cabinet pulls/knobs.  We got most of that purchased and installed when JW's dad came over to help awhile ago.  We got a few of the mirrors picked out and hung too, except for the mirrors in our master bath.  Wow, have those been a challenge!  The space there is very tight and quite an unusually sized space apparently.  We've spent a lot of hours shopping for the right mirror and have just been functioning without one for the whole time we've been in the house. 

Until... about 3 hours before the party, on her way to our house early to help me arrange flowers, my mom stopped in a Tuesday Morning and found the perfect mirrors!  She bought them, loaded them up, and she and JW got them hung less than an hour before our housewarming party started.  Love it! :)  Go mom!

Master Bath

Upstairs Bath

Downstairs Guest Bath

Our house is really feeling like home.  We've gotten a lot of the bigger and more immediate projects on our list checked  off, and it feels really good!  I told JW that we need to have a party every quarter so that we have the motivation to knock some things out and get the house in tip-top shape.  We feel so blessed that we get to call this house our home.

Home Improvement- outdoor edition

We scheduled a housewarming party for June 1st, and it was great motivation for us to get lots of house projects checked off our list!  I shared with you that our yard needed serious work when we moved in.  We finished the landscaping in the front and are really pleased with it.  The backyard was a bit more challenging, but we got it done and are enjoying it as well.  There were sections of the yard that needed to be leveled and have new sod put down.  The previous owners had put down winter rye in patches that was dying and looked terrible.  You wouldn't believe how much work shoveling dirt and hauling sod can be!  Whew!  It was worth it, but I hope we don't ever have to do this again. 

Now we are just watering the heck out of it everyday.  I'll be really glad when it takes root and is a little more durable!  I don't even want to know what our water bill will be this month...

The beds up against the house also needed some work.  We decided that with our two dogs we wanted to get rid of the dirt and to not plant things in the ground that they could rip up.  We ended up doing two rock beds with potted plants in them.  The small black rocks we chose were called Black Star gravel and then we went to a rock yard and handpicked a Chopped Blue Ozark stone for the border.  We are really pleased with the way it turned out!

The pictures really don't do it justice, but here are a couple of the final product.

We also had the trim and a few accents on the outside of our house painted.  We wanted to do black gutters, so decided to have the trim painted before we get those installed.  Here are the before and after photos.  The black really makes it pop and we are loving how sharp it looks!

Before:

After:

trim changed from white to black and white shutters changed to black

Before:

After:

trim changed from white to black and siding around back door and upstairs window box painted tan

The last project I had outside was planting some bulbs.  I love ranuculus and anemone flowers, and one day while I was shopping at Sam's Club I saw that they a box of bulbs for those two flowers.  I bought a couple and put over 100 bulbs in the ground a couple of weeks ago.  But, recently I've been finding little holes in my flower beds from what I suspect is a critter digging them up.  I'm really upset!  They are summer blooming flowers, so we'll see in the next couple of months if any of them make it.  I guess next time I'll have to plant in containers first and transplant when they start growing.  Weird looking bulbs, huh?

More on some of my inside projects later!