Chicago is my kind of town...

       For our third, yes third, anniversary Hace and I took a drive north to the windy city, Chicago.  I had never been to Chicago and was really excited to see this city. Hace had been once with his dad when he was in High School but it had definitely been awhile.  Miraculously, we both got Friday off work so we hit the road early for the five hour trek north.  When we got into town Hace was insistent that we drive in on the famous Lake Shore Drive to get cool views of the City and Lake Michigan.  Well we didn't think about traffic and it was pretty trafficy but totally worth it.  Not only was this my first time to Chicago, this was my first time seeing a great lake and wowzers it was huge! You couldn't even see the other side, it was like looking out over an ocean not a lake! So we drove up to the Lincoln park area where we parked our car at a friend's place for the weekend to avoid the absurdly high parking rate at our hotel. To get to our hotel, we took the El, which is awesome and different from any other public metro/subway I have used because it is all above-ground. I was trying to play it cool and not be such an obvious tourist but also having a mild panic-attack that I left my phone in the car. Good news, I had the phone it was just buried in my purse! So we get downtown and checked into our hotel and head to Michigan Ave aka: Miracle Mile. This is where you can do some FABULOUS shopping. While I didn't have much to spend we had agreed I could get an anniversary gift so naturally I got some fab shoes from Nordstrom. Next we went to the top of the John Hancock building and took some great pics of the city at sunset and also met a European who had seen more of the US than we had, shocker. To end the night we ate delicious deep dish pizza.
        Saturday we woke up and headed to the Art Museum. With clouds in the sky and a chance of rain this was perfect timing for my museum pick.  We saw some great stuff including some cool African art, lots of Monet, and the special exhibit on Leichtenstein.  After the museum we headed over to Millenium Park where we were enchanted by the silver bean and grabbed some lunch at a cool outdoor venue. Sidenote- we sat next to some older women who were slamming bud lights at like noon, oh mid-westerners.  After that we went down to the Buckingham Fountain and then Navy Peir for a ride on the giant ferris wheel. Fun trivia fact, the ferris wheel was first introduced in Chicago when it hosted the World's Fair! For dinner that night we went to a place recommended by our friends who are locals. The restaurant was called Epic and it was, well pretty epic! It had a very cool roof-top bar that we went early to check-out and grab drinks. The food was some of the best I have had in ages and then we went back up to the roof-top bar that, unknown to us, had became a posh night-club complete with a D.J. sketchy ex-braves player and lots of young people looking for love. Hace and I both concluded we would be incredibly awkward singles in that setting.  When we finally left there was a line to get in, not sure when we have felt that cool, haha.
        Sunday we met my dear friend and college roommate Bailey and her fiance Andrew for breakfast at Yolk. Our breakfast dishes were huge but very yummy and with stuffed bellies we headed down to the river for a boat-tour of the city. It was the perfect day to be out on a boat. It was sunny and warm and we got some great views of the city from the river and Lake Michigan.  After the boat-tour we parted ways with friends and headed to Lincoln Park to retrieve our car and find the house where Hace's dad lived during his seminary years in Chicago.  The neighborhood was super cool with tons of boutiques and local restaurants. We grabbed lunch at a sportsbar and walked to streets.  Late in the afternoon we said good-bye to Chicago and headed back to St. Louis.  It was a fabulous city, while it doesn't trump NYC in my book it is still very cool. The lake also gives it a totally different feel and since we went on a mild weekend in late spring I claimed I would totally live there. If I went in winter it might be another story...

Lake Shore Drive

Historic Water Tower

Deep dish

Aslan?

Underneath the silver bean

Silver bean

Buckingham Fountain

On Lake Michigan

   

Georgia Pecans

This weekend Hace and I got to go home for my long weekend off and his small break between Jan-term and Spring semester. The trip was awesome and we got to see a lot of friends and family. Before leaving one of my associates asked if I would bring him back a pecan pie, apparently people don't make those often here?! Sm I mentioned this to my grandmother and sure enough she sends me back with two bags of pecans from her yard. Now I am searching through all my cookbooks for yummy recipes using pecans (besides pie of course!). Today I made a simple but delicious treat, Hello Dolly Bars and I am adding them to a salad called Green Salad Unique. Here are the recipes:

Hello Dolly Bars:
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups finely crushed graham crackers
1 6-oz package chocolate chips
1 16-oz package butterscotch chips
1 1/3 cups coconut flakes
3/4 to 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
14-oz can sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter. Stir in crushed graham crackers. Put mixture in bottom of an ungreased 9x13-inch dish. Layer ingredients in order listed. Pour condensed milk over top evenly. Bake for 30 min. Cool. Cut into bars.

Greene Salad Unique:
1 pound assorted lettuce
1 pound fresh spinach
2 medium avocados, sliced
1 pint strawberries,halved
1 cantaloupe, cut into balls (I substituted mandarin oranges)
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
2 cucumbers, sliced
8 oz fresh mozerella, sliced
And the dressing...
Poppy seed dressing:
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup tarragon vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbspn poppy seeds
1 Tspn salt
1 tspn dry mustard
1 tspn grated onion
3/4 tspn onion salt
Combine all ingredients in covered jar; shake well. Refrigerate until ready to use (may be prepared ahead). Makes 1 3/4 cups.

Quick and Easy Soup!!

  This time of year we all need a recipe for something quick and easy that tastes good! Well last week I found just that! It is a corn chowder with bacon and it is deilsh. Perfect for those cold rainy (or snowy) winter days. Here is the recipe, hope you enjoy!
Ingredients:
1 can chicken noodle soup
2 cups milk
1 can cream style corn
1/2 cup cheese
3 slices of bacon
Combine the soup, corn, and milk and heat on the stove top. Cook the bacon in the microwave and crumble into the soup. Add cheese and stir until melted. Enjoy!!

A desk out of a door!

   For a few years now I have really wanted to make a desk with an old door. Some friends of ours in Athens had done this and I just loved it! Unfortunately, in our last apartment we had no room for such a thing with all of the furniture we already had. When we moved our new place has a dining room that we didn't have before. In our current stage of life we don't have a nice big dining room table and no real need for one so I agreed to let the room be Hace's office/study room.  The only problem was he didn't have a desk and mine was too small and, well, mine. So I finally got to make a desk out of an old door and I love it!! We found the door at an antique shop here in town and then the owner gave us the contact info for a glass company he had worked with in the past to cut us a piece of glass to go on top of the door.
    Figuring out the desk top was pretty easy the difficult part came in with the legs.  We knew that eventually we would need some drawer space but weren't sure we would find anything initially that would provide drawers, be a good balance of "cute" and "functional" (guess who wanted which:), AND be in our price range. I have been eying some filing cabinets from pottery barn for awhile that fit all qualifications except that last one.. They were out of our price range by a long shot. We didn't want to create this desk and end up spending way more than if we had just bought a desk. Hace's mom, who is a great decorator, suggested I look at homedecorator.com and we found the perfect thing! The filing cabinets there were cute, functional and on sale for $69! We did have to assemble them but we did it pretty easily and neither of us are good at stuff like that. Now we just have to find a desk chair that meets the said qualifications...

Assembly!

Drawers, obviously

Finished product!

The BEST Chocolate Chip Cookies

   My husband Hace is quite the snob when it comes to chocolate chip cookies. Seriously, in college my roommate would always laugh at the fact that if we had break and bakes he only liked Pillsbury because he claimed they were better than toll house or the store brand.  Being the good girlfriend and now wife that I am, I always made sure get the right kind. Well now I have him hooked on a chocolate chip cookie that is the REAL deal.. A recipe from an old neighbor that's tested and true. Not exactly healthy but I never promised to be health-conscious. Here it is, the best chocolate chip cookie recipe..
3/4 cup butter flavored Crisco shortening
1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
2 tbspn milk
1 tbspn vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tspn salt
3/4 tspn baking soda
1 cup chocolate chip cookies
    Heat oven to 375 - Combine butter flavor crisco, brown sugar, milk and vanilla in large bowl. Beat at medium speed of electric mixer until well-blended. Beat egg into creamed mixture until blended. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop spoonfuls of dough 3 inches apart onto ungreased sheet. Bake 8-13 minutes, Enjoy!

Song of the South

Go Dawgs!

Mrs. Linda's tailgate

   This weekend Hace and I were able to travel to Memphis to see some of his family and our college friends and go down to Oxford, Mississippi for the Georgia - Ole Miss game. I must say, it was so good to be back in the South! For once I wasn't noticed for having a funny accent and being obsessed with College-football. Random people would talk to me and befriend me just for wearing red and black.  It was also so good to see great college friends and reunite with people we have such fond memories with. I wanted to high-light the weekend and give some funny re-cap of things that I noticed now about the South after living outside of it for a little while.
     First-off, if you have never experienced game-day in the grove at Ole Miss, it's a must! Talk about tailgating at its finest. My friend Brittany and I just spent some time walking around to find the most extravagant (and impressive) tailgates. Now for a little back-story, I have always been fascinated with tail-gating and game-day traditions of different college towns, I even wrote a research paper about it in college (strange, I know) so I have a great appreciation for things like this.  Some of my favorite and classic Ole Miss tailgate scenes were candelabras on the table, chandeliers hanging from the tent, food on silver platters, and last but not least, bloody Mary's from a drink dispenser. (It was an early game after all.) 
     With the early kick-off there wasn't much time to tailgate before the game but that didn't slow anyone down from getting the party started after the game. It made no difference that Ole Miss lost a game that wasn't really even close, they still threw a great after-party.  We primarily tail-gated with Hace's extended family but after the game we also looked for someone with a TV to catch some of the other SEC games on. That's when we stumbled across Mrs. Linda's tailgate.
     Now Mrs. Linda had quite the spread of food and decor (see picture below) and claimed Southern Living came by to photo her tailgate once. Not only was it aesthetically pleasing, she was also your classic Southern lady, so hospitable, bringing us food, making us take chairs in front of the TV, and slamming Bud Lites. Like I said, classic Southern Lady. But all-in-all it was an awesome weekend topped off by dinner at Proud Larry's on the quaint and beautiful square in Oxford and Sunday lunch at BB Kings in Memphis where they have awesome BBQ and live blues. Last but certainly not least, we went to "that hotel where they have cocktails and trained ducks" (Matt Wood) known to most as the Peabody.

Missoni For Target!!

         Many of you fashionistas are probably well-aware that today was the debut of Missoni for Target! This long anticipated line has had ample news coverage to prepare everyone for the arrival. I first read about it in an interview with the Italian designer Margherita Maccapani Missoni in Vogue.  It has been marked in my planner for over a month and today it finally arrived in stores and online! For those of you who have no idea who this is, Missoni is known for combining bright prints and designed knitwear in their clothing. Like I said before, it is an Italian Fashion house and you can find their clothing in store like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.  The line had a private launch last Wednesday in Times Square and it was a madhouse. This should have prepared Target for what would happen on the full-launch of the line today! The long-awaited line finally hit stores this morning. I thought about heading over to Target on my lunch break to check it out but decided to wait until after work so I wouldn't be pressed for time. Well right at 6 I headed to Target which is 5 minutes from work and I enter the store to see some of the obvious Missoni displays but filled with other things like halloween t-shirts, what the heck? I make my way back to shoes and find an endcap of what few shoes are left. As I search  through the sizes left with another shopper I ask if she knows where the clothes are. She informs me that they sold out at 9:00 a.m.... the store opens at 8! Then I comment that you can buy it online but she then tells me that their website isn't able to handle the volume of traffic and isn't working properly. Major. Bummer. I come home to see if I can access even a peek of the line online and sure enough their website is going haywire. Finally I get to see the clothes but all the really cute-things are sold out, naturally. So if you live somewhere near a Target you should CALL before going and see if they even have anything left and it they do let me know where it is;) Hopefully Target will be replenishing their shelves with more Missoni product soon! Until then I guess we can search the web...

Some of the likely sold out pieces, they are pretty nonetheless!