Sunday, March 27, 2011

Happy Birthday TAYLOR!!

Friday was Taylor's 23rd Birthday, and we had fun celebrating all weekend long! Friday night Ryan and I met Taylor and Kyle for dinner at Bone Fish. It was so good, like always. Then we went back to their apartment for GiGi's cupcakes (not quite as good as Flying Cupcakes) and milk. Saturday Ryan and I got so much done, and had a productive day before we met my parents, Taylor, Kyle, and Kristin at the bar in Cooper's Hawk to watch the Butler game. We had a great meal, and what made it even better was a Bulldog victory! After dinner we met back up at Taylor and Kyle's for some cocktails before heading to Broad Ripple. We had the best time at Rock Lobster with good friends. Taylor, hope you had a great birthday weekend!! LOVE U!

Birthday Girl & her Boo
The Guys at Rock

Torey, Taylor & Me

Bam & Me xoxo



Miller High Lifes : )


Friday, March 25, 2011

♥6 Month Anniversary♥

I can't believe Ryan and I have already been married for 6 months! The day went by so fast, but I remember it like it was yesterday. It's fun for us to look back at our album and talk about our favorite wedding day memories. I think seeing each other for the first time before the ceremony was our favorite part of the day. We got to share some alone time, and it really calmed our nerves before the ceremony started. Here are some of our favorite pictures from 9/25/2011♥ taken by Jordyn who works at Jennifer Driscoll Photography.
Cute outfit Taylor made me for me to change into at the end of the night

Laker Garters from Tiffany

Lindsey at Tyler Mason did a great job on my hair.

My Dress

Handsome Husband : )

Getting to see each other for the first time on our wedding day



Kisses for my Groom

My Dad walking me down the aisle

Our Vows

Kiss Your Bride

Mr. & Mrs. Marando

Groomsmen

Wedding Party

Loved our entrance by the Wedding Party



First Dance -- "I Wanna Be Your Everything"


Happily Ever After

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Stuffed Peppers


Last night I made stuffed peppers for the first time. I couldn't find a recipe that I loved, so I took ingredients and techniques from many recipes; I love doing this. I am trying to pay more attention to the ingredient amounts so I can better explain how I made the meal. The stuffed peppers were a hit, both Ryan & I really liked them.

Ingredients:

4 peppers (any color -- I used orange)
16 oz. ground sweet Italian sausage (you could use any ground meat you like)
1 small yellow onion diced
2 cloves garlic diced
1 package of portabello mushrooms sliced (I chopped these a little smaller too)
1 package of Uncle Ben's 90 second whole grain medley rice
1 15 oz. can of tomato sauce
1 tbsp. worcestershire sauce
parmesean cheese
olive oil
salt & pepper

Preheat your over to 375 degrees. Remove the top of each pepper and scrape out seeds and membranes. Wrap each pepper in foil and place in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Heat a skillet with olive oil and brown up ground sausage, onion, garlic, and mushrooms and worcestershire sauce. Cook 90 second rice, then add to skillet, along with tomato sauce. Season with salt & pepper.

Remove peppers from the oven. Fill peppers with above mixture, and top with a sprinkle of parmesean cheese. Bake at 375 degrees for another 25 minutes.

I served mine with mashed potatoes, but just a warning these are very filling. I could not even finish one! Enjoy!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

St. Patrick's Day 2011

Hope everyone had a Happy St. Patrick's Day! We celebrated with friends at the Claddagh in Indianapolis.


Monday, March 14, 2011

Happy 50th Birthday Bob Bob!

Surprise party for Uncle Bob's 50th Birthday at Nine Irish!!

Surprise: Amanda came home for the weekend!



Wednesday, March 9, 2011

CANDLES

I am really loving these flameless candles from Pottery Barn, and I highly recommend them! They run by C batteries and the best part is they are on a timer. You can turn your candles on at 5:00 pm one night and they will stay on for 5 hours. The candles will continue to turn on from 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm every night, unless you reset the time, or keep the candles turned on or off. Depending on the size, they run between $16.50 and $24.50, and last for up to 500 hours before you have to change the battery. I also have a set of the 6 votive candles, however these do not have a timer.

Home Improvements

We bought our first house, and we abosolutley love being home owners. The most exciting part for me, is being able to put work into our house, and start seeing the results we want. We haven't done any dramatic renovations, or anything like that, but we have made a few changes here and there to get our house just how we want it. Here are some of the BEFORE & AFTER photos. Hopefully you can get some fun design ideas, or pass along some suggestions for the future.

New Appliances
--When we moved into our house one of the first things we did was replace all of the black kitchen appliances with matching stainless steel appliances. We also replaced the old washer and dryer with a new set.
Before
After
Even more recent, with the new floors below..

Dining Room
--Our small "dining room table" just wasn't cutting it, especially because we love having people over. We decided to double our seating, and purchased a large dining room table that can seat up to 8 from Crate & Barrel. Luckily around the same time our table arrived, my Boumpa was in town and installed a new light fixture from Lowes, above the table. Ryan added the finishing touches to the room by haging window curtains and some wall decor.
Before
After

Man Cave
--I already posted a seperate blog about Ryan's man cave I redid while he was away for work, but here are a few more pictures.
Before
After

Bye Bye Blinds
-- We decided it was time to get rid of the 80's style vertical blinds haning from the sliding glass door that leads out to the screened in porch. I would have loved to replace the sliding door altogether, however we decided to go with a more economical quick fix.
Before
After

New Floors
-- I also already posted in a seperate blog about the floors we recently put in throughout the first level of our house. We went through Floor Trader in Indianapolis who did a wonderful job. This upgrade made a huge difference in the look of our house.
Before
After