Happy Birthday, Dave!

Happy Birthday to a great husband and a terrific father!

First Father's Day

Happy First Father's Day to the best new daddy I know.

Claire is a very lucky little girl.

Knights to Remember

This weekend we celebrated my 30th birthday, planned thoroughly & thoughtfully by my loving husband, Dave. On Friday, he surprised me with dinner reservations at Table Fifty-Two along with two extra dinner guests, both of my sisters Jill & Jessica.

The company was great and the feast was scrumptious including southern specialties such as goat cheese biscuits, deviled eggs, fried green tomatoes, mac n cheese and collard greens... and those were just the sides!

If you are not familiar with Table Fifty-Two, Co-owner & Chef Art Smith is the personal chef to Oprah and he was also featured on the first season of Top Chef Masters. Reservations generally need to be made months in advance so I was blown away by this thoughtful dinner :-)

The next "knight" we had a truly unique experience where about 15 of us headed out to Medieval Times for dinner and a tournament. We took a limo just to "class" it up a bit and dined (with our hands) on dragon blood soup (tomato bisque), baby dragon (roasted chicken), dragon ribs (spare rib) and potatoes. I also had the largest glass chalice of virgin daiquiri on earth.

Sadly, our Blue Knight lost his duel...

...but the night was definitely a winner!

Happy 30th Birthday, Dave!

July has sure flown by, and without a blog post at that! But what better reason to come out of cyber-hiding than to wish my wonderful, charming husband a HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY!

Happy big 3-0, Dave! I love you and am so glad to have known you for almost half of your life and even prouder to be called your wife. Cheers to many more!

Early Risers, Bring May Flowers

Today I got up at the crack of dawn to head to my first ever garage sale excursion. A neighborhood here in Chicago was having a big sale that has been hyped up a bit so I thought it might be a nice time to scope out a bunch of sales all at once, but...it was a bust. Maybe I wasn't in the mood or maybe it's just seeing the junk in other people's garages that makes me realize I really don't need anymore junk of my own. Don't get me wrong, I won't give up on garage sales altogether but today I was particularly unimpressed so I might stick to vintage sales and thrift stores, etc. for the time being.

The good news is that being up so early on a gorgeous Sunday morning did inspire me to do something about our drab balcony. It has been neglected since the winter (and the winter before) and the rusty floor will likely not to be repainted & repaired until our Condo Association gets more funds. So I thought I needed to take matters into my own hands.

I went to Home Depot and bought some commercial grade, environmentally-friendly indoor/outdoor mats to cover the unsightly balcony floor.

Let's consider this a partial "before" pic. See 3 out of 5 mats down here, and notice the rust where we do not have a mat down yet...yes that should be black to match the railings!

Then I got an assortment of flowers, and a new plant stand with a huge terra cotta pot to sit on it. I filled each of my four green plastic planters with 2 white geraniums and 6 red salvia.

Then I put a stonecrop 'Sedum Autumn Joy' in a cute yellow planter on the bistro table.

I also filled the huge terra cotta pot with yellow, orange and red gerbera daisies.

And here's the end result...

I even had helpers, well more like onlookers, but I was glad to have them there for moral support :-)

Job well done, Lou-dog! (And yes, we like to taunt the Cubs fans here with our grill cover.)

Our First Wedding Anniversary: 11-08-09

The weekend of our first wedding anniversary, was a gorgeous, sunny November weekend in Chicago. So Dave and I headed to the beach with the camera to just enjoy the last of the warm weather.

That evening, we finally used my Christmas gift card from last year and went to The Chopping Block for a "Wine & Dine!" cooking class. There we learned how to prepare (and devour) Wild Mushroom and Bacon Puff Pastry Tart, Herb Roasted Chicken with Caramelized Potatoes & Root Vegetables and Chocolate Ganache Tart. Oh, and the class included wine :-) Everything was DELICIOUS. And roasting a whole chicken for the first time was a good "dry run" of sorts for our turkey we were about to prepare a few weeks later for our first Thanksgiving.

The next morning, Sunday 11-08-09, was our actual anniversary and we decided to head to the Chicago Botanic Garden. There we enjoyed a leisurely stroll, nature and each other's company.

See autumn is beautiful, too:

Peek-a-boo:

I also got a great shot of my anniversary gift, this gorgeous Tiffany Sparklers Smoky Quartz cocktail ring!

And also a shot of our wedding rings one year later:

Overall it was a wonderful weekend!

Artery Clogging Coconut Cake

This weekend I tried my hand at baking my first ever, completely from scratch, cake. I took the new KitchenAid mixer out of the box for the first time since receiving it at a wedding shower last year and got to work.

After reading some reviews online, I slightly adapted the Barefoot Contessa's Coconut Cake Recipe as my guide. The link shows her recipe but I changed out a few things that I'll list here. (Warning: With as much butter that is in this recipe, you'd think Ina Gardner took a page from Paula Dean's cookbook!)

Substitutions: I used coconut milk instead of regular milk, more vanilla/less almond extract, cake flour instead of regular flour, adjusted baking time, and toasted the coconut topping instead of using it as is.

Ingredients

• 3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pans
• 2 cups sugar
• 5 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon pure almond extract
• 3 cups cake flour, plus more for dusting the pans
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 4 ounces sweetened shredded coconut

For the frosting: (this made way too much frosting for my cake, but I guess I could have used some more between the layers.)

• 1 pound cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract
• 1/4 teaspoon imitation coconut extract
• 1 pound confectioners' sugar, sifted (I used a bit more to thicken it)
• 6 ounces sweetened shredded coconut (PLEASE NOTE: I preferred the color and texture of toasted coconut for this part, so I baked it on a baking sheet at 325 degrees for about 12 minutes. Mine was already sweetened, but here are instructions for sweetening and toasting your coconut.)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 (9-inch) round cake pans, then line them parchment paper. Grease them again and dust lightly with flour.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium-high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until light yellow and fluffy. Crack the eggs into a small bowl. With the mixer on medium speed, add the eggs 1 at a time, scraping down the bowl once during mixing. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix well. The mixture might look curdled; don't be concerned.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the batter in 3 parts, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. Fold in the 4 ounces of coconut with a rubber spatula.

Pour the batter evenly into the 2 pans and smooth the top with a knife. Bake in the center of the oven for 35-45 minutes (she suggests 45-55 and that is too long!), until the tops are browned and a cake tester comes out clean.

Cool on a baking rack for 30 minutes, then turn the cakes out onto a baking rack to finish cooling.

For the frosting, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine the cream cheese, butter, vanilla, almond and coconut extract on low speed. Add the confectioners' sugar and mix until just smooth (don't whip!).

To assemble, place 1 layer on a flat serving plate, top side down, and spread with frosting. Place the second layer on top, top side up, and frost the top and sides.

To decorate the cake, sprinkle the top with toasted coconut and lightly press more coconut onto the sides.

Serve at room temperature.

Enjoy! But with over a pound of butter and a pound of cream cheese, don't enjoy TOO often ;-)

Happy end of your Birthday Week, Dave!

A Day at the Races

On Saturday Dave & I packed a picnic and ventured to Arlington Park for a day of betting on some horse races and soaking in the sun. This was our second celebration of Dave's birthday since we rushed to the Elton John/Billy Joel concert (which was AWESOME!) on the night of his actual day, but we never shared a meal or cake or anything so we just made it a birth-week instead!

The night before, I went to the brand new Whole Foods in Lincoln Park, which is my favorite Whole Foods, or grocery store in general, on earth! There I spent way too much on way too scrumptious picnic food, including really good roast beef, gouda and pretzel rolls for sandwiches, edamame & carrot salad, pasta salad, cheese & crackers, fresh pineapple chunks, deviled eggs, etc., etc.,

Then on Saturday we got to pull out all of those lovely summery wedding gifts that we have yet to use, like out picnic basket, picnic blankets and more, packed up the Volvo and drove to the burbs!

The weather was perfectly gorgeous and my favorite summer beer Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy was on draft, what more could we ask for?

Here are a few photos from the day. Our spread:

Our mini bottle of wine we "snuck in":

And the stars of the day:

This park is GORGEOUS and we WILL be back again. It's only $7 general admission and they allow coolers for food and non-alcoholic drinks. Now that's affordable fun!

Happy 29th Birthday Hubby!

Happy 29th Birthday, Dave! I love you more than words can say.

You are my rock... My old rock ;-)

And I'm so excited to have a fun night out with you at the Elton John & Billy Joel Concert @ Wrigley tonight!

Mellow Yellow's Mini-Makeover & Reveal

I posted last week about the yellow Ikea HEMNES Linen Cabinet that we purchased and could not wait to put together, and now it's time for the big reveal.

It came is two boxes with three full bags of hardware and a huge book of instructions. Yikes! I usually love putting things together, but I'm not gonna lie, this was pretty daunting.

Luckily, Dave took the reigns and did all the construction.

One thing I was not bargaining for, was the circus tent striped yellow drawers and back of the dresser. So I bought some cute green and white floral contact paper/shelf liner from the Home Depot and am really happy with the results.

Before:

After:

Before and After for the back:

Louie loves it!

And now the bedroom before:

And after:

View of the bed so you can see how it coordinates:

More views:

Ta-da!