Monday, October 31, 2011

Harley grows.

On November 15th, Harley will be six months old. I just don't know how parents of human children do it. I can't handle her being six months. And in dog years, that is like being four. She's nearly an adolescent!


I've been watching Harley grow since she came into our lives in July (well- actually, watching her grow since I visited her in June!) have documented it, in true dog-parent style. 


Here is our first encounter:




Here she is the first week we got her (mid-July):



And here she is a week later:


On August 1st, I started her "chair pictures":

Here's her September chair pic:

October:



And here is November, taken a day early:

She has really gotten "basset-y" lately. She is very long and her feet are huge. She's still into everything but is doing much better with potty-training. 

And just for fun, here are some outtakes:




Doesn't time just fly?
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Sunday, October 30, 2011

3 Dog House.

We've been a three dog - one cat house now for a few months. Our girl is getting older and easier to manage. But the best part is how much our pups love each other. Here's a snapshot from this weekend of our three guys together:


In floppy ears and basset kisses,
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Saturday, October 29, 2011

Fry Sauce.

So I love Zaxby's. Love. And their fry sauce? Amazing. Apparently fry sauce is a cultural phenomenon from the West, because when I googled it, these people in Utah were all about it. 


Well, the other night I decided to make some. And, as nasty as the combination of items sounds, it was really good. You might want to try it. 


Here it goes - 

You start with ketchup, hot sauce (Franks, please), and mayo. Yum, I know. 


Then you combine all three, I just sort of did squirts and dollops here and there. Equal parts ketchup and mayo, I suppose. Then stir in pepper - I also added in some onion salt for kicks. 


I let it sit overnight in the fridge before serving with dinner. Here the star is, in the line up with ranch and blue cheese before our chicken tender dinner: 

And here is our dinner - grilled chicken tenders tossed in Frank's hot sauce with fries and green beans. 


I must say that the fry sauce was really ridiculously good. So if you're into that kind of thing, check it out!




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Monday, October 24, 2011

Fall Break, Part Two.

 As mentioned in my part one post of Fall Break, Jake and I took the stars aligning of no test to study for and a break for me to create a little stay cation for the weekend. Friday was busy and fun and Saturday set out to be just the same. 


We started the morning with a walk on our fabulous Green Line through East Memphis. Here's my guy with Sebastian, gearing up to walk:
 And here is my favorite part of the Green Line trail. It is a converted rail road trail that has a canopy of trees for most of the way. I downloaded an app to map our walks and so I've really enjoyed seeing how long/far we've walked. 
 And, of course, right after walking the Green Line, we decided to negate all aerobic exercise by going to our favorite breakfast spot, Bryant's. I've been going there since I was little and Jake goes most Saturdays with his guy friends. There's almost always a line to the door and you have to kind of know the "Bryant's way" of getting in line, ordering at the counter, THEN sitting down. You see, it isn't too big of a place but the tables flow through pretty quickly. 
 I always get the same thing - 2 sausage biscuits and a coke. Jake is a bit more diverse. This morning, it was an egg-bacon, and sausage biscuit and a ham biscuit. He also loves the scrambler and the philly omelette if anyone is wondering. 


Bryant's is on Summer at Graham in a nondescript shopping center across from Grahamwood. You should go there. 
 After breakfast, we spent some time with our puppies. It was beautiful outside and we enjoyed playing with them:

 And of course, we couldn't leave Ty out:
 Sunday brought church. During October, our church has a fabric sculpture it hangs for AIDS remembrance. I think it is just gorgeous:
 After church, we walked around downtown (and had City Market for lunch... again) and then hit up Maggie's Moo on Main Street:
The rest of the day was spent enjoying ourselves and our little doggie family - especially this little puppy who is getting bigger each day!

Breaks don't come too often, so we relish them (and each other) when they do. Here's to Thanksgiving break being a month away!

In loving what you got - 
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Sunday, October 23, 2011

Go there: City Market

On day one of fall break, I went to City Market with my trendy downtown-dwelling friends, Chandler and McRae. They apparently go there a lot and we were looking for somewhere near McRae's work that allowed us to sit outside. 


Having never been to the recently opened City Market, I decided to document the occasion and share it with my fake-friends on the ole b-log. 


City Market is on Main Street in Downtown Memphis. It is a deli and market combined. You walk to the counter to order your food (sandwiches and paninis with daily specials and soups). Here's the market:




 The selection of goods in the market section was impressive - it surely is an asset for downtown living. It wouldn't replace your major grocery trips but it would be good in a pinch and also carries a lot of specialty items other places don't. 


I ordered an Italian sandwich with salami and proscuitto on rosemary potato bread. It had a pesto sauce on it and some cheese. It came with grilled onions and red peppers as well, but I did not oblige in those:


 The sandwich was delicious and filling - I would definitely recommend it to someone. There were a lot of different choices and it appears they have a good selection of Indian-style sandwiches. Some of their sandwiches had Indian spices and sauces on them. 


We sat outside and it was great to people watch and enjoy the weather. There were tables inside as well. 


If you find yourself downtown at lunch time, you should definitely check out City Market. 


In paninis and patios,
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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Fall Break, Part One.

One of the perks of being a teacher (besides changing lives, of course), is that I get periodic breaks. This one happened to coincide with the end of a testing period for Jake so somehow we had the weekend with no schoolwork to ourselves. And in the spirit of Jake's studies, fall break was just what the doctor ordered. 


We'll do this recap book report style...We had Friday off (Monday was a half day, reporting in at 3 but I worked the whole morning so it doesn't count) and so I started with a 4 mile walk with my friend Rachel (cute baby alert):

 (these pictures are not from fall break weekend, but still portray the characters at hand)


After my green line walk (great company, great weather, great workout), I headed back towards Midtown to meet up with Chandler for lunch and downtown fun. 


First we hit up City Market for lunch with McRae and then walked down Main Street a bit to grab a table outside and meet Jake post-exam. The weather was gorgeous. 


Chan:
 Our view:
 After some fellowship with Chandler downtown, Jake and I ventured out east on Operation Upgrade. Jake's iPhone was a 3, which meant it was about 3 years old and therefore majorly in need of replacing. Buttons didn't work, the operating system wouldn't run right... it was no bueno.


After calling AT&T stores around the city, Twitter came in for the win as a local news reporter tweeted that Apple still had a lot of the 4S. So we made the haul to Germantown's Saddle Creek and arrived at "Mecca": 
 Thanks to a phone upgrade for a patient Jake, we were able to score the sweet little device. 


Next on the agenda was some dinner with Jake's parents at RP Tracks (always in good taste) and then a trip to the movies. See, I follow Craig Brewer, a Memphian, on twitter and he had been blowing up my feed about his movie for weeks. That escalated me from "yay for Memphis, Footloose is coming out, I might rent it" to "legit, let's do this."


And that is how I found myself paying an arm and a leg for a movie on the weekend it premiered. Nonetheless, we went to Studio (our local Midtown establishment - go Midtown) and got to talk with Craig Brewer himself. Lovely guy, very nice. I hear he goes to Cafe Eclectic some so maybe I'll continue to stalk/see him out (kidding. mostly.). So after purchasing tickets and talking with Craig (he follows me on twitter now - we're tight), we went across the street for some gelato at our favorite YoLo before settling in to see the movie:
 (Jake's iPhone makes its blog debut)
Footloose was a lot of fun. I love a good love story, the music was fun, the dancing made me jealous (wanted to boogie myself), the actors were well cast, and the movie was well made. Honestly, it was a solidly good movie. We really enjoyed ourselves and I found myself wanting to adopt Willard as Jake's new best friend (since his best friend moved away... tear...). 


After a busy busy day, we headed home for the night, day one of our long weekend in the books. 


In living large over fall break,

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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Happy Two Year Anniversary, House!

October 15th, which was last Saturday, was our two-year anniversary of owning our little misplaced ranch. Two years ago we signed (many) dotted lines, walked into the empty house realizing it was ours and spent the next day moving our worldly possessions via U-Haul and helpful family. 

 In the past two years we've done a lot, and yet there's still so much more to do. Last year, I chronicled our first year of home-ownership:

Here's my posts chronicling come of our house projects over the past year:

And here's what we did this past year:
The house has gone through some changes.. here are a few before and after picture selections:


The Den (2009) - 
The Den (2011) - 

The Living Room (pre-move in, 2009) -
The Living Room, 2011 - 
The Kitchen, 2009 - 
The Kitchen, 2011 - 



And now, plans for the future. Who knows if we'll do all this, but ideally, we'd like to...
  • Give the front a facelift, putting in posts instead of the wrought iron and replacing the wrought iron front door
  • Change the hardware on the cabinetry in both bathrooms, repaint the back bathroom, and refresh the front bathroom
  • replace the paneling in the den with new drywall, painted the same color as the kitchen 
  • put in french doors where the den windows are, making the old back door a window so we can have a banquette seating area in the kitchen
  • build a deck off the french doors
  • (Finally?) organize and utilize the guest bedroom

So here's to two happy, successful years in our house! And here's hoping for more!

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