Weekend Recap: It Doesn't Get Much Better Than This

I don't know if it was because it was the first completely free weekend we've had in 6 months, or the fact that it was a 3 day weekend, or maybe it was because we kicked off the weekend with Valentine's Day, but this was one of the most fun weekends we've had in a while. I won't bore you with a lot of words, I am going to let the pictures do the talking.

Just like the Rascal Flatts' Song....my favorite view is my backporch lookin in.  Nothing warms my heart more than to see our back porch full of friends having a good time.  

1. Eric surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of roses at work on Friday.  He's such a sweetheart!
2. I wasn't about to leave those beauties at work so I seat belted them into my car for the ride home.
3. My Valentine for Eric.  The hearts say "Will you Beer my Valentine?"  Thank you Pinterest for the idea.
4. For Valentine's Dinner we had Goat Cheese Pizza cooked on the Big Green Egg.
5. I mentioned before how people give Eric random appliances they don't want any more. This week it was a drink beer cooler that has found a home on the back porch.
6. Saturday night (late night) was spent playing a little pool.
7. My Sunday church outfit.
8. Our wrestling team won the state championship this weekend in amazing fashion. They had 6 wrestlers in the championship match for their respective weight classes and ALL 6 of them won, securing the first state championship (in anything) in 16 years for our town. We didn't go to the meet, but one of the restaurants in town stayed open late Saturday night for a victory party for the team.  Lots of people came out to congratulate all of the guys and the coaches. The wrestling program means so much to Eric and he was so proud of the guys!
9. Since I was off yesterday I cooked dinner...a delicious Balsamic Pot Roast with Fingerling Potatoes and Asparagus.

The boys loved their Valentine's Day bones!

 This was what our Sunday afternoon looked like.  It was a beautiful day and we spent all afternoon outside enjoying it in the most country way we could think of!

1. Donkey!  I wanted to pet it, but was advised not to.
2. Sunsets like this remind me how amazing it is to live out in the country.  You don't see sights like this in the big city!
3.  I am apparently a skeet shooting extraordinaire.  This was my 2nd or 3rd time skeet shooting and I bet I hit half of the clays.  I can't get too good or he won't let me go any more!
4. When you get really good a shooting while stationary you have to make things interesting be shooting off the back of a [slowly] moving 4 wheeler.
5. Shooting blind....the clay launcher is behind him on his left.
6. Country boys on a Sunday afternoon skeet shoot.
7. There's nothing better than riding through  the woods on the back of a 4 wheeler with the one you love. 

 And that's how you do a weekend in the South.  I would say that it's going to be pretty hard to top it this coming weekend, but there's a good chance we will! =)

A Very Special Birthday Girl

Today is a very special day for a very special lady because today my Grandma Kathryn is turns the big 9-0!  Yes 90, quite an accomplishment if you ask me. I am so sad I could not make it to her party this weekend, but I am crossing my fingers and hoping that I will get to go visit her very soon!  My parents and one of my cousins and his family were able to make the trip to Arkansas to visit her and it looked like they had fun!  My mom put together the sweetest gift to give to her from the family.  She collected pictures from all of my aunts and uncles and cousins and put them all together in a photo album for her.  It was so neat to see all of the pictures from years ago, especially since all of the grandkids are grown!

My grandparents...aren't they precious!?

My brother and I with my grandma as kids....yes I was naturally blonde as a child (explains a lot, doesn't it).

My Dad with his parents and siblings. 

The grandkids with my grandparents probably 16 years ago?                    At my cousin's wedding 2 years ago. Time flies! 

The Birthday Girl at her party!

  Happy Happy Birthday Grandma!  I love you!

Valentine's Date (A Few Days Early)

Eric and I have never made a really big deal about Valentine's Day. Why?  Well mainly because of the timing...Valentine's Day is 3 weeks after his birthday and less than a week before mine, and 6 weeks after Christmas. We always make a point to have a special dinner together whether it be going out or cooking something at home.  This year when I realized that Valentine's Day is on a Friday night, I told him there was NO WAY we were going out.  #1 we have never had luck going out to dinner on a Friday night.  We have been spoiled by living in a small town where you can walk into any restaurant at any time and immediately get a table, so a 20 minutes wait?! No thank you.  We just drove 40 minutes to get to the restaurant, we' like to eat now before my hanger rears its ugly head. And #2 It's Valentine's Day so the restaurants will be EXTRA crowded.  Thanks, but I would prefer a nice dinner at home.

I told Eric earlier in the week that I would make his favorite Goat Cheese Pizza and we can stay in on Friday, which he seemed quite content with.  But then remembered that he still had not seen Lone Survivor.  He has wanted to go see the movie since he saw the first preview for it (quite some time ago).  Unfortunately it got to theaters right in the thick of basketball season when all of my weeknights, plus my Friday and Saturday nights were being spent in the gym.  Last weekend he mentioned going to see the movie on Sunday afternoon, but decided to go fishing instead (not surprising, but I has happy because it gave me an entire morning to seriously clean the house). He called me Monday at work and said he wanted to go see it this week, so we decided we'd do an early Valentine's dinner and a movie date on Wednesday.  A few weeks ago I was browsing restaurants for goat cheese pizzas (can you tell we're a bit obsessed?) and realized that one of the Italian Restaurants downtown had two different varieties.  Naturally that's where we went and had an absolutely delicious dinner, although he told me my pizza was better (smart man).  I just wish I could figure out how to get my crust crispy like theirs!

1. Spinach Artichoke Dip on flat bread?  Yes, please.
2. Our Frenzia Pizza from SaZa's: goat cheese, grape tomatoes, caramelized onions, and bacon...this picture does not do it justice, this piece of pizza was about 8 inches long!
3.  A couple of years ago I entered an instant win contest on People.com and part of the prize were to AMC Movie passes.  At the time our movie theater was owned by another company, but for some reason I saved them thinking someday  I would run into someone who had AMC Theaters in their area.  Lo and behold our theater was bought out by AMC about a year ago.  I took the passes with us just to see if they would honor them. I didn't think they would since I'd had them so long, but there was no expiration date on them.  To our delight (well my delight) they accepted them!  We had to pay a buck fifty per ticket for a processing fee or something like that, but I will take a $3 movie date over a $15 movie date any day!  My pack rat tendencies paid off for once!

After dinner we headed to the movie and nearly had the theater to ourselves.  It reminded me of when we we'd go catch the late movie during the week in college, but instead of the movie starting at 9:45 pm it started at 6:40 pm.  Seriously how did we do so much on so little sleep back then!?  The movie was fantastic!  Eric read the book so he knew the story line and I was amazed at how much he could recall (he read it 5 years ago when he was deployed).  It was a very intense movie, but Eric said the entire thing stuck to the real story. In case you haven't heard of the movie Lone Survivor, it's a true story of Marcus Luttrell and 3 other Navy Seals fighting for their lives after they were discovered in the mountains in Afghanistan by goat herders.  If you like war movies, go see it.  It's awesome.

Chocolate Chip Salted Caramel Cookie Bars

On Saturday afternoon when Eric informed me we were having dinner at his friend's house the first question out of my mouth was, "What are we eating?"  The second was, "What are we having for dinner besides meat and bread?"  The answer to my first question was deer meat and the second was baked beans, which surprised me because 95% of the time those two are in charge of dinner it consists of meat and bread.  Often the bread is simply a loaf of white bread. I like meat and I like bread, but I need side dishes with my main course.  I was already out and about so I pulled up pinterest on my phone and found a couple of recipes I could whip up that afternoon.  I seriously don't know what I did before pinterest and if the site ever goes away I am screwed because almost ALL of my favorite recipes are on my Recipe Favorites Board.

I had been craving some homemade mac and cheese for a while and stumbled across a no-boil, no-rue homemade mac and cheese recipe on one of my favorite food blogs. I was a little nervous about making it, but it turned out delicious!  You will not regret making this one.

I also wanted to make something sweet because #1 I have a sweet tooth and #2 there was going to be a pretty good crowd for dinner so I knew Eric and I would not end up eating the entire thing ourselves.  Enter the Chocolate Chip Salted Caramel Cookie Bar or as I like to call it a little slice of heaven.

What You Need:

2 1/8 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

12 TBSP butter (1 1/2 sticks), melted and cooled to room temperature

1 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 egg yolk

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups chocolate chips

10 oz caramel candy squares, unwrapped

3 Tbsp heavy cream

sea salt, for sprinkling over caramel and bars

How to Make It:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease an 11x7 (2quart) baking dish and set aside.

2. Whisk flour, salt, and baking soda together in a medium bowl, set aside.

3. In a mixer, cream together melted butter and sugars until combined. Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Stir in chocolate chips.

4. In a microwave safe bowl, combine caramels and heavy cream. Microwave for 30 second intervals, stirring after each interval.  This should take roughly 2 minutes total (4 intervals).

5. Press half of the cookie dough in the bottom of the greased baking dish. Pour hot caramel over the cookie dough and sprinkle with sea salt. Let caramel set for a minute or 2, then drop spoonfuls of remaining cookie dough over caramel. Press down gently with a spatula or your fingers until caramel is covered. Sprinkle sea salt over cookie dough.

6. Bake cookie bars for 30-35 minutes or until the top of the bars are light golden brown. Cool pan on a wire rack to room temperature and cut into bars to serve.

These were seriously some of the best cookie bars I have ever eaten.  We heated them up in the microwave and served them with vanilla ice cream and they were a hit!

We ate nearly the entire pan, but had just a little bit left....until we got home and disaster struck.  This, my friends, is why men should never be trusted to carry food containers.

To be honest I think I was more upset about the cookie bars than I was about my baking dish. And yes because it was a Pyrex dish it shattered into a million zillion little pieces despite the fact that he attempted to "catch" the pan with his foot as it was falling.  I still can't figure out how he dropped it since it was in a bag with the macaroni dish.  RIP delicious cookie bars. I might have to bring you back from the dead this weekend. =)