Adventures of Newlyweds in Kansas

This week, I am participated in "Shutter Love Tuesday", which is being hosted by  The Trendy Treehouse.
This week's theme was Nature and the photo is the Mediterrean Sea outside the B&B we stayed at in Vernazza, Italy for our honeymoon.

So not much has been going on in our house.  Bristol is still healing and was supposed to get checked up by the vet today but Derek's car battery was dead so he couldn't take her in at lunch.  I have also been reading up on DC and planning what we are going to do.  We leave early Saturday and return late Tuesday, I am getting pretty excited!  Our anniversary is Sunday and we have a nice Italian restaurant picked out in DC we are going to eat at.  We also took out part of our wedding cake and ate it, it is huge, but it tasted pretty good.  Here is a photo!  We have eaten it twice so far and still have over half left.













So we went to Best Buy this evening and picked out my/our Anniversary presents.  A fridge :)  It's a black Samsung, side-by-side, ice dispenser, with LED lights.  The rest of our kitchen is stainless steel but with black accents so we thought it would look fine and with the money savings over stainless models that were worse quality made it worth it.  Really, we are getting it cause Derek wants a beer only fridge in the garage and I want a water/ice dispenser :)  Happy Anniversary to us!

Derek and I have also decided to start learning German.  I get free Rosetta Stone through work and the website works at home so we've started to learn German and say silly things like "Das Hund ist klein" and "Die Blume is blau."  Hopefully someday we can say practical things!

We have also been cooking.  I make a quiche like thingy on the stove.  I enjoyed it and it was much quicker than cooking it in the oven.  Here is a picture!





   







We also made a pizza which was awesome.  We used a foccacia recipe my mother sent us and used a sauce recipe from allrecipes.com here which after removing most of the water (also cut the olive oil to 1/4 a cup) was awesome!  Yum, it lasted us 1 dinner and 2 lunches too.
















We also have a tendancy to give Bristol our leftovers and the other night I made green beans, which he gave to Bristol with some other food.  Guess what was left on the plate?
Even Bristol, my fat dog, won't eat my green beans...

Football and basketball stadiums
Pillsbury Crossing


















Colbert Hills- we like to golf and it is a gorgeous course

















Aggieville- a bar district that started in 1898 and is 6 blocks, and over 100 bars, restaurants, and shops




















Konza Prairie where my husband proposed and where we like to hike

So I guess I never wrote about Vegas.  For the most part the only things we did were eat, go to Santana, go to the Lion King, and go to Fremont Street.  We had lots of good food and both concerts were awesome.  Here are some photos
 Mountains in Salt Lake City
Outside the Lion King!
 Santana, Derek had a great time!

Then this weekend was Mother's Day so my family came Saturday and we grilled dinner and played Mexican Dominos.  Then Jan and Stan came on Sunday and we went out to eat at Houlihan's.  Here are some photos of the flowers I bought on Friday for my new vase!

Flowers!
Almond tart with flowers

 My new centerpiece and my kissing frog salt and pepper shakers :)

Bristol decided to roll in smelly crap on Saturday morning so this is where she ended up...
And she decided to get a staff infection and lick her butt so much she gets to wear this :)  It is hilarious!
She keeps running into things and driving the "party hat" into the ground and getting stuck.  She also wants to stand really close to you but cant and hits you with the "hat" repeatedly.  This one only cost $130... she's pretty expensive for being free!

So I started following a blog Kelly's Korner that asks questions that people in with blogs answer so I am doing my first one this week!  This week is:

Show Us Your LIfe - Your Kid's (or future kid's) names

While we don't plan on having any kids for quite some time I figured it'd be fun.  My husband has a pretty strange taste in names, I usually hope he is kidding but I don't think he is!  His favorites:  Anka, Wilhelm, Ludwig, and Dietlief.  I don't think he is going to get any of those...

This is what I like in a name:  I want them to be short, a long last name requires a short first!  Original, I generally like lower than top 100.  Easy to pronounce, I like original names that are easy enough where people can pronounce them.  For middle names I like family names.

Favorite girl name currently (bound to change before we have any kids):

Ada Rae- Rae is my sister's middle name and I like Ada because it is German (major bonus for the husband) and means "noble kind" or oldest daughter

Other names I like:  Bella (far too popular now because of Twilight, bummer), Lilly (also a bit too popular and close to my name), Kira, Shiloh (purely because I loved the book as a child!)

 

Boy names- I totally think I will have all girls but just incase!

I don't really have a favorite but will use a family middle name of possibly Edward, Wilhelm (or William) or something else tbd

First names I like:  Axel, Ezra, Kalen, Kyler, Jonah, Wyatt

So this week I cooked 3 successful dinners, one I already mentioned.  I have been trying to find a tilapia recipe that Derek and I both enjoy.  I love seafood but Derek not so much, however he is fine eating tilapia so I have been on the hunt for a good recipe.  I finally found this one that we both enjoyed so here it is :

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 teaspoon (t) lime juice
• 2 t chili powder
• 1 t kosher salt
• 1/2 t granulated garlic
• 1/2 t dried oregano
• 1/2 t paprika
• Mix together and marinade tilipia 30 minutes.  Reserve some of the sauce if you want to add it after cooking.  Cook on direct medium heat for 10ish minutes

Here is Derek cooking up dinner, yum!  I love our grill and the summer!

And Bristol helping!

Then last night I took a recipe and made it easier.  You cook up some chicken and when it is done put a slice of prosciutto covering the chicken, sprinkle with basil, and put provolone cheese on top.  Put a lid on the pan to melt the cheese and you have a tasty dinner.  Derek loved it and I loved it because it was so simple :)

Tonight I was going to make a spinach quiche (yeah Derek was pretty excited) but we didn't have enough eggs so he made his invented recipe:  grilled cheese with a sunny-side up egg in it!

I also got a valance for the kitchen sliding glass door.  It is amazingly hard to find a black and white valance so I had all of 3 options online, and 2 of them sold out before I could buy them so this is what was left.  If only I could just have blinds but that didn't work so well...
Derek looks creepy :)

We are also growing basil and rosemary, we used some rosemary last week and it was amazing.  I can't wait for the basil to get bigger so I can make pesto.  I also have a food chopper arriving in the mail sometime that will help with the pesto.

Both sets of parents are coming up this weekend for Mother's Day, mine Saturday and Derek's Sunday so we get to do a bit of grocery shopping tomorrow and some cleaning.  I am also trying to pick a color for the exterior of our house so either I can paint it or I can hire somebody to paint it, I still haven't decided if I want to do it or not.

So we made it back from Vegas early Saturday morning, like 2am.  All our flights were on-time and picked up Bristol about 1am from my mom who watched her all week for us!  On Saturday I slept in and worked on the garden.  I got the watermelon and onions planted.  Everything else should be planted at the end of May.  We golfed this morning, shot a 50 which I didn't think was too bad for the first time out this year.  While Derek was brewing with Brandon I went to Home Depot and got some annuals to put in my huge pot in the front.  This is what I ended up with, no clue what I ended up buying other than I didn't want anything that had to be watered everyday.
 For dinner this evening I made a Roman Egg Drop Soup with dumplings and chicken.  While in Kansas City I went to the World Market and got Gnocchi di Patate, aka potato dumplings, and they were pretty good!  The soup had chicken stock, eggs, Parmesan cheese, parsley, and nutmeg and I added the dumplings and chicken.  Derek and Bristol both enjoyed it very much!  It was also really easy to make so I'll probably make it again someday.  The only sad part is Derek ate it all so I have no leftovers haha