House Warming Party

Several people involved in our extended property development project requested that we have a party when the house was ready for visitors. On Saturday, we invited friends and family over to see the progress.
Tillie and Toby had a great time greeting everyone and of course loved all the attention they received. I think they want us to have more parties.

We ended up having too much food, which is definitely better than not having enough. The menu included tomato, mozzarella & basil skewers, candied pecans, bread sticks, a fresh veggie tray, carrot cake, quiche, chicken Taquitos, brownie bites, mints crackers and a cheese plate.

For beverages, the Sangria was most popular. There was also fresh lemonade, coffee, and ice tea.

Adam took a couple of naps to make it through the day.

It was a very pleasant day outside so the patio was a popular place.

Everyone seemed to have a nice relaxing time.

Butterbeer & Corn Dogs

Tonight we tried making our own corn dogs and Butterbeer. For those of you who are not fans of the Harry Potter series, Butterbeer is a favorite drink among the students, especially when they visit Hogsmeade Village. Universal Studios in Florida is selling Butterbeer at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Since it will be awhile until we can get down to visit the attraction, we decided to make our own Butterbeer. It tasted great even though it was a little on the sweet side.

The corn dogs were baked, not fried, which is one of the reasons we picked this recipe. I took a picture before baking the dogs because the recipe warned that sometimes the breading separates from the dog while baking. This did happen, so the after baking picture would not have been as pretty. The recipe came from Rachel Ray and she likes things hot so they were on the spicy side. We are going to make a few recipe revisions and try again.

What a fun dinner to make!

Tillie & Adam Playing

Cooking for Family

We had a good time last week trying new recipes while enough people were visiting to help us eat the food. We made chips out of sweet potatoes, a Ratatouille Tart (shown below), pulled pork sandwiches, shrimp crepes, and homemade cinnamon rolls.
If you like pulled pork sandwiches, you can find the recipe in the September 2010 Food Network Magazine on page 57. The recipe takes two days to prepare but was worth the effort.

Four Generations

Mom and Dad came down for the weekend for Susan's birthday and to visit with Julie and Adam. Adam usually doesn't have 5 adults and two dogs to play with him at any given moment and as you can see, he was one happy little boy.

Since we don't know how long it will be before Julie and Adam can visit again or if Mom and Dad will get a chance to go to Pittsburgh, I took this four generation picture while they were all together. When Julie was a baby, we took a picture just like this with Julie, Susan, Mom and Grandma Bea.

Adam and Dad are playing with one of Adam's favorite toys. He loves to try and get the yellow plastic shaped pieces into the right slot on the blue and red ball. He is also fascinated with magnets and he is definitely in the right house for that. Susan and I have hundreds of magnets and Adam had a great time trying to stick them on things.
Adam took two steps, threw a toy for the dogs, and clapped while Mom and Dad were here. We hope we will start walking more before he goes home next week.

Susan's Birthday

Saturday was Susan's birthday, which gave us an excuse to have a party. Earlier in the week Julie and I managed to work on Susan's cake for two days without her knowing about it or finding it in the house. This did require hanging a few Keep Out signs around so she would not find the evidence, but we still managed to pull it off. The cake had a little something for everyone. The flower itself is lemon cake, the stem is chocolate cake and the leaves are rice crispy cookies. Julie made the ladybugs and the butterfly out of chocolate cake. YUM

Susan got a lot of nice gifts, including this new shop vac.

Mom and Dad gave Adam his birthday present a little early and Toby had to help him open it.

Hostess Cupcakes

Susan and I like to try and recreate some of our favorite foods, mostly from local restaurants. We have made the bread served at the Outback Steakhouse and the cheesy muffins served at Red Lobster as well as several salads and other dishes from other local restaurants. I have always wanted to make those delicious cupcakes from Hostess with the cream filling inside.
I have to say that watching the Food Network channel has heightened my desire to just go ahead and try things. If they don't work out, I can always keep trying. : )

There were a lot of steps to making these cupcakes, but none of them were hard and I had fun trying to recreate the original. I think I will make them again at the end of August when our family is here and see what everyone thinks.

Julie, Tommy & Adam visit Yakima

The Rubritz family arrived yesterday afternoon from Pittsburgh. They actually flew into the Tri-Cities and Susan drove down to pick them up. They seemed to survive their travel adventure just fine. Of course, there was food spilled on unlucky travelers sitting close to Adam and some cranky moments typical of a one-year old baby, but nothing drastic happened.
Once at the house, Adam cried when the dogs were jumping all over everything and acting like maniacs, but all parties calmed down eventually. Toby surprised me the most. I expected him to hide in the bedroom until they left town, but instead, he followed Adam everywhere and got very upset when Adam starting crying.
Last night we grilled Shrimp Tacos for dinner. We have never made tacos on the barbecue before, not to mention grilling peppers, corn and green onions that went into a salsa to put on the tacos. Oh, they were so good.
Julie, Tommy and Adam left this morning for Canada and we will not see them again until August 16. Unfortunately, Tommy has to leave the next morning to go back to work, but at least we got to see him, even if it was just for one evening. Julie gets to stay for a few weeks so look for more pictures next week.