Beau Photo Op

     It's no secret that I love my dog, possibly too much but the reason why is same reason why I love anything really, he makes me laugh. Beau is a comical genius and he never fails to entertain me. Beau's mannerisms are funny like when he shivers looking up at you with the whites of his eyes showing, from outside when its 60 degrees outside. Or like when he dances in circles and "talks" to Ryan when he comes home. Sometimes I am able to catch those moments in photos and I wanted to share some more recent ones.

Cheesy Beau

Dapper Beau

Beau "helping" me paint

Blind Beau

When he sits like a human in the car.

When he lets me dress him in whatever.

Germany

      We may get to go back to Germany, I hope we do, there are a lot of things that we did while we were there that I would like to do differently. The last time was kind of spere of the moment and not well planned. Mainly I would like to brush up on my French a bit more and give Paris some more time than we did.
      When we decided to take the weekend to go to Paris, well we didn't book a hotel room and we ended up having to stay in Versaille. After eating the most amazing breakfast in the world, fresh chocolate crissants, we asked where the palace was, I am really surprised the guy didn't laugh in our faces when we asked if we needed our car. We drove there, which was a mistake because it was only a couple blocks away and we waited for a parking spot for an hour. Then we stood in line for an hour just to find out that American citizens are suppose to stand in a different line first... FUUUUUUUCK. Our entire day was exactly like that and I blame the car. Really I do, don't drive to Paris unless you are going to spend a week site seeing.

I know you can't tell but those are "lines"

      The places that we enjoyed ourselves at the most were places that we found just while driving. Not having any idea what to expect or what to go see. Like when we found this old church, called Notre Dame.

     Brussels was my favorite place that we visited and it was again, totally spur of the moment. We woke up that morning and thought, "how about Belgium waffles for breakfast?" So we did eat waffles, and chocolate and beer. We went to a beer store, they had more than one and the store was filled with beers from top to bottom, totally overwhelming but we found a book in the store and purchased what they had suggested.

      Actually just all of western Europe was great, yeah, all of it. But if I had to pick just one country to stay in, I would pick Germany and here is why.

The gardens

The strawberries taste better

Nothing goes to waste

Hard work

The history

Because around every corner you find something like this.

The nature

And there are castles

Our Home.

     Ryan and I started looking for houses online while we were in Abu Dhabi, I thought that it was out of boredom and just to get an idea of what might be out there. When we got back to our garage-less condo and started getting letters from the H.O.A again it became a little more serious to us to find our home.
     I probably looked at 500 houses online, they all became a blur of horrible jewel tones, less than original kitchens and bad plots of land within manicured communities, but one stuck out. This one house out of hundreds was of course just above our max, so I pressed on to find a house that would be just as good for what we could afford. I found lots of houses, really neat one with custom kitchens, custom garages and mostly good paint colors. Surely enough, we found major problems with each one as we either drove by it or finally did a walk through, nothing was quite living up to our standards or the standards that I had placed. lol.
     Ryan and I knew what house was right for us, we knew that before we even had an agent or been inside the house. It took a while to finally do it, half a year actually but we finally bought the house we wanted, its the one.

      These are not my pictures, since we haven't closed on the house, that won't be for another couple months. It was just driving me insane, I had to share.

542 Greenville Pike, nice ring to it. 

There is a cabinet built in to hide all of the cords for the tv above the fireplace and wide plank wood floors all through out the house.

Master bathroom (le bain), the walls are the same color as the master bedroom as well. The only thing I don't like about this house are the words painted on the walls, its a bit cheesy, easy fix though. 

Custom built cabinets and island. I love the shelves on the end of the island and the fact that the sink is next to my largest work space. Granite counter tops= dough making!

The best part of house is the open floor plan, it was very important to us that the kitchen not be closed off from the living space so I can always be in my favorite place of the house while Ryan is in his favorite place. 

     So this is our house, it takes my breath away. I can't wait to have my family over, I have already imagined making carmel popcorn balls with my grandma, sisters and niece. I can imagine rocking on the front porch, sipping sweet tea with my best friend Kat while taking in the view of the cotton field. I can't wait to share this with my nieces and nephews, I can remember the first time I saw a cotton field, I will never forget seeing the snow in summer. It's what made me fall in love with Alabama.

Mini Quiche, Finished Product

      We ate the mini quiche for breakfast this Sunday morning. Ryan said it looked like the fanciest omelet in the world and tasted even better. They slipped right out of pan and minimal crumbs in the bottom. Really an easy recipe with great results and easy clean up. You could make them ahead of time and freeze them so you always have hor devours at hand or a last minute brunch. Either way I hope you try these out.
      (for the recipe look at yesterdays post 2/18/12)

Super Easy Mini Quiche

       Mini quiche is kind of the soup of breakfast. What I mean by that is if you have eggs and cheese, you have mini quiche. Just throw whatever you have left over in the fridge into your quiche, makes it interesting and its always tasty. Use the rinds of cheese hunks, that last bit of sandwich meat thats not enough for a proper sandi, the spinach thats about to go bad, the one spring of green onion you are not sure why you didn't chop up, really whatever. 

      Melt you some butter. It's not necessary to melt it in a pan but I don't own a microwave.

      Crush up some crackers in a ziplock or croutons, or hard bread or just use bread crumbs.

     Fill muffin pan cups with butter and crump mixture and smash down with whatever you can find.

      The hardest part of the whole process is chopping up veggies and cheese and whatever meats you find.    

     If you are using white onions and mushrooms, saute them in butter, and then eat the remainder of the stick.

     Layer the cheese on top of the crumbs, mix the cheese, don't mix it, I don't care what you do.

     Then put everything else on top, filling it to the very tippy top.

     Crack a couple eggs, pour about 1/2 cup of cream in and give it a generous grating of the nut of meg. Use fresh nutmeg, really it makes all the difference in the world.
      At this point you can either fill each cup with egg mix and cook in a 300 degree preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes or you can keep the egg separate from the rest of the quiche and make it later. Like Sunday morning.
   

Ingredients

• 1 cup of crush crackers, bread crumbs, croutons, whatever you have. I used crackers and italian bread crumbs for flavor. 
• 5 TBSP of melted butter
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/2 cheese 
• other toppings of your choice
• nutmeg, salt and pepper. 

   Preheat oven to 300. Melt butter and mix into crumbs, add about a tablespoon of mixture to each muffin tin. Smash into place with fingers or glass jar that has been sprayed with non-stick spray. Layer with cheese then other toppings to nearly the top. Mix eggs, cream, salt, pepper and nutmeg then pour over muffin tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

 

The Best BLT EVER!

 
   I am a woman, therefore I know how to make a sandwich. So take my word for it when I say this is the best BLT sandwich that ever existed, hands down. It may take you a little more work than the classic BLT but really its just a couple changes and a few additions.

      Avocado, tis the season.

     Totally not necessary but I thought a spoonful of the bits and grease from the bottom of the pan would make a nice addiction to my avocado.

       The other addition is turkey, a subtle sweet addition to the salty bacon. And the key ingredient is homemade ranch, it must be homemade, no substitutes.

       Stack it all up on some toasted whole wheat bread and there you have it, the best sandwich in the world. Some other welcome additions would be thinly sliced red onions and brussel sprouts rather than lettuce, but really its amazing the way it is. Enjoy this sandwich with a red beer, 3/4 beer (preferably a wheat) and 1/4 tomato juice.