general life

Vino: Ohio Winery Jaunt

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The day  I have been waiting for for weeks finally arrived; Brian and I left Jameson at his grandma’s house and went out with friends JP & Lisa to the wineries on a co-anniversary trip. We have now decided this must be an annual activity! And Lisa and I decided it will be a little while before we’re drinking wine again. But we had a blast, it was a lot of fun.

We started out at Debonne, our usual first stop. We enjoyed a couple plates of cheese, crackers, bread and finger food basics. The hunks of cheese were sizable and we drank a couple whites wines to start of the day.

When we arrived right around opening time, it was fairly empty, but by the time we left, it had really filled up with what must be the usual jazz Sunday crowd.

Brian and I left with a bottle of Razzberry Riesling (I should say I left with the bottle, because Brian won’t be drinking that fruity sweet rose wine).

Our second stop was at South River, which has always been far and away my favorite winery, in wines and atmosphere. We don’t come here for the food, anyway! The winery sits right against their vineyards, and they have a new pavilion attached to the main building, which is an old church.

Forgive the dark tinge in these photos from our phone:

Our favorites at South River are always their reds, particularly their Trinity blend and Karma. In fact, several years ago we bought a case of Trinity which we have one bottle of left, so of course we had to buy a case while we were there (the $12 a bottle case price is a very good deal, and you can mix and match bottles so we came home with Trinity, Karma, and Semillon, a white wine of theirs that we tried for the first time.)

And a better shot of the lovely South River vineyard, from Lisa’s camera. Brian and I are having a great time!

Hello, random guy who we don’t know!

We then moved on to Harpersfield. This was Brian and my first time visiting this winery. They are known for their whites, and Brian’s parents highly recommended the chardonnay. We tried the St. Vincent since they were sadly out of the cheaper stuff. (Hey, we had already had 4 other bottles, we were trying to go on the cheap!)

This vineyard was a little less polished in terms of decor, but also sits next to the vineyard for some classic photo ops, plus a little two person table that begged for a casually awkward posed photo!

Full disclosure: by this time, Lisa and I were feeling pretty good. After all, we had carried babies for 9 months prior, and had not had a lot of leisurely drinking opportunities for well over a year. But before anyone suggests that we didn’t fully appreciate the wine, I claim that better than many, the taste of wine was savored on our tongues!

Anyway, pictures at this point took an entertaining turn. I’m giving myself permission here to show one funny photo of myself and Lisa, with Lisa cropped out for full effect on my awesome face.

Our final stop was Ferrante’s which is where we always go for the food! Again recommended by Brian’s parents, Brian and I had the seafood alfredo:  “Fresh shrimp, and sea scallops sautéed with broccoli tossed on a bed of Linguine with our Romano wine sauce”. It was a wonderful rich pasta dish to sop up some of that wine.

We arrived home just in time for Jameson’s bedtime, and he had a great time at grandma’s. The little champ has his 6 month appointment tomorrow, so we’ll get to see how much he’s grown which we are looking forward to. It’s going to be a nice short week with the holiday coming up so be prepared for some adorable American pride gear on Jameson!

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diy, general life

Mmmmozzarella Cheese Making

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I know this is nothing new; there are all kinds of sites out there with directions on how to make your own cheese. But I bought a kit from Urban Cheesecraft a few years ago for Brian for Christmas, and this is the first time I’ve documented our process. I thought it was about time!


The basic ingredients for making mozzarella is:

Milk
Vegetable Rennet Tablets
Citric Acid
Cheese Salt

Pretty sure you can buy all that separately, but the kit is only $22, and I’m telling you, it’s worth it. The instruction book alone is probably worth that price. It addressed all my questions and concerns and offers advice. Brian and I have made mozzarella with just the cheese salt, and also added herbs on occasion. We’ve been impressed with it almost every time (the time we wildly experimented with salt amounts didn’t turn out to our liking).

 

First you need a glass of wine.

Well, I needed a glass of wine. Brian was doing all the hard work while I took pictures.

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general life

911

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Not really, just thinking about it. Dialing it, that is.

Call me paranoid, but ever since Jameson was born (actually, about 9 months before that), I have been harassing asking Brian what we want to do about a home telephone. We won’t use it often I’m sure, but I don’t feel comfortable without lots of phones in the house. Particularly since I am prone to leaving my cell phone downstairs, and it charges there at night.

This ended up being a two-step process. First, we purchased a home phone set with 3 phones that had bluetooth capabilities. We got this a month or so after Jameson’s birth. We didn’t have home telephone service, but we did use the phones to link up to our cell phones, so that I could pick up a phone anywhere in the house. We even were able to change the ringtones of the phones by whose cell phone is being called.

But that wasn’t good enough for me. I mean, God forbid there be an emergency, but there would still be two problems with the above scenario.

  1. The 911 dispatcher still may not know exactly where I am. Did you know that? In a panic, what if I forget my address?! It is not unheard of, and we’ve only been living in the new house for a year.
  2. I still have to go through a selection process, selecting my cell from the home phone, before I can dial out. That is critical time wasted.

So a week or so ago, we purchased home phone service. But not your typical phone service, we decided to go with Ooma Telo Free Home Phone Service (purchased from Amazon, of course! they sell everything). Basically, we have paid for the device, and if you compare it to your typical month home phone service, it’ll pay for itself around 7 months. After that, it’ll be about $3 in taxes a month I believe. Cheap is sweet.

In selecting this alternative home phone service, we looked at Magic Jack (computer has to stay on) and Vonage (very similar to Ooma, but in this you are paying for the service, not the device). Ooma was the best fit for us, so far we’ve been very happy with it. I just hope we’ll never have to use it in an emergency.

P.S. Did you notice the new Amazon plug on the right? We’re pretty much Amazon freaks lovers at home and buy almost everything from them. Since I’m constantly sharing things I love from Amazon, I’ve thought to compile it all in one place. It’s a work in progress, but browse around our favorites in real life, shop or not, these are a few of our favorite things. 2GJFJ7R33YW9

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general life, wedding

Merry Monday: Happy Anniversary

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Yesterday was our 2 year wedding anniversary. It arrived with much less fanfare than last year’s did. I actually forgot… like 3 times that day. In the morning, Brian was the first to say it. Then, I saw his card for me on the table, and I remembered to get his out. And last, he sent me flowers at work for the first time, and my Monday-mommy-addled brain said, why am I getting flowers?

They were lovely, and are still sitting on my desk just as lovely today.

We didn’t have time to share cards in the morning, so we saved them for later. I suppose I should be thankful I even remembered to get a card, but let me just tell you that I am SUPER awesome at card giving this year. Because of a website called tinyprints.

I got Jameson’s baby announcements from there, and was very impressed. Greeting cards are just as impressive: they can get pretty custom. Typically I’ll throw in an photo or two of my own on every card. I love that they can print on all sides of the card. I was sold, even at their regular $3.99 price (because let’s face it, that’s the average cost of a card in the store.) But then they ran a promotion then where I got to be a super sender for a year free, and now I’m hooked. They link in to my facebook and note birthdays to send me reminders. Which is a good thing, because the only downside to this service is that you need to have a week or so to spare to allow time for shipping.

I am a card fiend now: for Father’s day and birthday, Brian got 3 custom cards each (Sasha puppy wanted to send him a card too); Grandpas got extra cards from Jameson. I’m having a blast with it so far.

Here’s a few screenshots of my fabulous cards:

So celebration yesterday consisted of cards, flowers, and a wonderful dinner made by Brian (chicken rotini pesto, made from our very explosive basil plants). It was excellent. But I am even more excited for the weekend.

1) Our new couches arrive. Somehow we always end up getting one nice new piece of furniture a year around our anniversary and we call it our gift to each other (so far anyway, though that might be because of the new house! I think we will need to continue the trend… haha)

2) We are going on a “co-anniversary” outing with JP & Lisa. Jameson and Jonathan will be staying home while us new parents enjoy some time away visiting wineries and eating cheese. Lotsa cheese.

It’s only Tuesday though. I have a little while to wait.

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general life, life with baby

Graduation (aka, Jameson and Aunt Holly are Stars)

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Long overdue, I am here to tell you that we survived the 3-1/2 hour trip to and from my parents for the first time! The weekend of June 3, we spent visiting Jameson’s grandparents on my side of the family. We were excited that Jameson would get to see his uncle Tyler again for the first time since his birth, to spend some time with some other cute dogs, and that he would get to see his grandparents and Aunt Holly for a more extended visit (does 2 days count as extended?)

On Friday night, we left around 8 pm. Packing up baby was a lot more work than either of us expected. My parents didn’t have a crib (yet… *hint hint*) so we folded up our pack and play, packed a ton of outfits for Jameson, plus bottles and my pump, his new Jumparoo which was still in a box and super convenient to take for entertainment, and his activity mat. All in all, 3/4 of the car was taken up with Jameson and his stuff, and Brian and I had one little bag. So consumed with getting Jameson ready, I forgot my favorite hair dryer!

Jameson slept through the whole car ride, was up for about an hour when we arrived late, and then went to sleep like a champ. Phew, that was easy!

The biggest reason for our visit was my sister’s high school graduation.


She graduated with some 600-700 kids. (I did not try to count the names in the program). My maiden name begins with a Y as well, so on top of there being a lot of kids, we actually had to wait through that lot of kids before hearing her name called. I would call this a high risk Jameson situation.

But he was a champ. After about an hour of people watching, he fussed and we fed him; then with a little of what I call dad-magic, Jameson was asleep in Brian’s arms for the later half of name calling.

All-in-all, we didn’t have to leave and were able to stay through the whole 2-1/2 hour she-bang. I call that a win!

Here are the stars of the show, graduate and Mr. Jameson

Jameson enjoyed meeting other puppies and exploring his brand-new Jumparoo which has 3 of his favorite toys, I am not sure what to call them other than spinning circle things. AND of course, he loved seeing his grandparents, uncle and aunt.

My parents’ garden exploded with strawberries this year for some reason, and we had about a quart of strawberries to go with two kinds of pasta salad and steak. What a wonderful summer meal!

On Sunday, we had spaghetti lunch (tradition in our house growing up) with family friends, the one who made Jameson’s wonderful baby quilt, custom with the fabric she and my mother picked out.

We also got to spend some time with my old high school friend Katie, her husband Dave, and their son just one week younger than Jameson, Mark. It was wonderful to see another baby so close in age to Jameson. They were cute together, though Jameson was a little cranky after this adventure-filled weekend.

The drive home was a little rougher, since we left earlier, around 6 pm. We were hoping Jameson would go ahead and nap the whole way again, but contrary little man did it in chunks, waking up to cry and play off and on during the whole trip. But we didn’t have any screaming fits or reasons to pull over. Sasha of course was delighted to see us come home though she had a blast at her other grandparents’ house while we were away.

We had a blast, and hopefully we’ll be able to make the trip again soon. Hopefully with a little less stuff. I am pretty sure we packed enough to spend a week there. Which I’m sure my parents would’ve loved, haha.

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general life, life with baby

Date Night

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Finding time to spend just the two of us is more difficult than ever with work and baby, but Monday movie night is helping us get that time together. It’s becoming a mini date night almost, after Jameson goes to bed.

It started a few weeks ago, Brian got a code for a free first night’s rental for Blockbuster Express (their version of Redbox… Redbox is in more locations and is generally more convenient, but who can pass up free?). And maybe it’s working for them, because they keep doing it! (Here’s a site that has a promo code for this week)

For us, we watch the movie Monday night and return it on Tuesday so we never pay. So far, we have been using it more than our Netflix via snail mail. Okay, we still do watch a lot of Netflix via streaming, but I had a Netflix DVD sitting on our console for about two months, no joke (for the record, it was Green Zone, and I ended up finishing it last week finally; it was pretty good).

Anyway, I have a standing list of movies, in the order that I’d like to see them, that I just kind of add to each week for Brian to choose from. So far, Brian has been avoiding my chick flicks. *sigh*

Love & Other Drugs
Life As We Know It
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Tangled
Dinner for Schmucks
Letters for Juliet
Chronicle of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Last Airbender
No Strings Attached
Narnia
The Kings Speech
Tron

Some weeks, I am just too tired, and Brian gets a movie for himself to watch. But for the most part, this has become a nice new routine for us. I suppose when Blockbuster stops, we’ll go back to Netflix movies, but I like the dedicated night for movie watching.

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general life, life with baby

Lettuce

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I go to the farmers market for the lettuce. I do, seriously. Someone from some small little internet news business took a photo of Brian. When she asked why he came there, he said for the “fresh produce”. Laughing, I corrected him with what I firmly believe to be the reason we go. The Lettuce, with a capital L. There is nothing like farm- or garden- grown lettuce. It is soft and crisp at the same time. Light, but still filling. Excellent with just a little oil and vinegar or lemon juice.

Lucky for me, it was also the only thing really there this early in the season. Maybe I was just dreaming, hoping for something a little more… but really it was just lettuce and some starter plants. We did go ahead and get some herbs which we’ll plant in pots (since we have no garden this year)

So no fresh produce for Jameson just yet. We did go to the grocery store then and buy him some more Gerbers Nature Select foods. We bought more of his favorite carrots, some peas, bananas and prunes. I am sure there are a lot of theories out there as to the order things should be done, but I figure after cereal, its a free for all (except meat, and food with more than one ingredient, or food that is too thick… I am not that crazy), just space some things out a few days and make sure there is no bad reaction. So he’s getting a mix of fruit and vegetables, we didn’t start with vegetables cause they taste bad or anything. I myself like vegetables better than fruit, actually. Not that that has anything to do with his likes and dislikes.

For the first time the other night, Jameson finally opened his mouth properly for the spoon. I think he likes the carrots. We had them for a couple nights, but when we switched to peas, spoon eating became a struggle once again. But then on Sunday night he decided he liked peas. So we will keep at it!

P.S. We are famous now, because my quotation was in the little article along with Brian’s photo. She seemed to take it literally though when I edited Brian’s comment, because Brian is quoted as saying that we come for the lettuce. haha.

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general life

Homemade Ice Cream Cake

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I don’t cook, but I do bake. I like to make cookies and brownies, though I’ve never ventured into the cake territory (except for boxed, but I don’t really think that counts). A co-worker made this lovely ice cream cake for another’s birthday a few weeks ago and I was sold. She shared the recipe with me, and the great thing about this cake is that is can be made completely unique for every birthday!

This was hers (pardon the phone photo)

And this was mine.

Brian picked out his cookie base and topping and his flavors. He chose lady finger vanilla and creme cookies, and triple chocolate peanut butter sundae ice cream, and french vanilla of course. It was so easy though it did need a food processor, but you could probably get by without one and just crush some cookies in a bag “manually”.

I’m no expert at spreading things, so I made the whipped cream flat, and layered some more crushed cookie on top. So it didn’t look as fancy as the recipe photos, but it tasted great. I have orders for the next birthday already!

So was it cheaper than just buying one from the store? Here’s the break down:

I did my cake in a 10-1/2 inch spring form instead of 9 inch like the recipe calls for, so I needed more ice cream. I have a little french vanilla left over, but I used 3 full pints of the chocolate peanut butter (ice cream usually comes in quarts, so I bought 1-1/2 quarts of two flavors of ice cream)

  • Ice cream was 2 for $6 on sale – $6
  • $4.50 ice cream sandwiches (there were 12 in the box, and I used about 8-1/2)
  • $2.50 cookies (this is a guesstimate, they were on sale also)
  • $1.25 cool whip (on sale for 4 for $5… we didn’t buy 4 though..)

Our total was $14.25, cheaper than the typical $20 ice cream cake. Win!

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general life

A New Chapter

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Wednesday was my last day working for a national sewing/crafting retail company. There were a lot of things I liked about working there. Namely, (most of 😉 ) the people and the support of crafting in general. I picked up a lot of new hobbies while I was there. Brian said he was glad I wasn’t going to come home with any more crafting stuff to pile up in my room to not use. There just isn’t as much time and my priorities have changed, but I still can’t pass up a good scrapbook paper, stickers, or fun beads.

I was there for about 3-1/2 years, which is the longest I’ve been at a job (unless you count my stint as a recovery/stock person/cashier/customer service rep at Big Lots in high school and early college). I will be moving from a big ecommerce team that seemed too small to a smaller ecommerce team, which will probably still seem too small, composed of people I actually used to work with after Big Lots but before the crafting company, when I worked at a toy company. Lost in my job history yet?

I’m going to be the Internet Product Manager, managing product not people (thank goodness). I’ll be focused on marketing to the same types of people I was before: women. I’m just selling clean instead of toys or crafting or sewing… But the great thing is that because its a smaller team, I expect we’ll all have our hands in a bit of everything. Just the way I like it. I anticipate this blog will suffer from a bit of a drop in postings while I get the hang of my new schedule there and at home. I am prepared to work hard and never be bored.

On a different note, this weekend Brian and I plan on keeping busy with Mr. Jameson and Sasha, enjoying several cookouts! If I have time I’ll post some photos early but if not, expect to see some next week. Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

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general life

Photobook Follow up: Review of Paper Coterie

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A short time ago, I wrote about trying out a new place to publish photo books. I purchased a 5″x5″ coil bound book from Paper Coterie which I finally received about a week and a half ago. Initially I was pleased with it. It has a very unique look with the paper they use. It is recycled fiber paper, and it is pretty stiff. It makes a nice matte look to the photos.

front of photobook
nice frosted plastic cover
easy 2 page spread
lovely recycled fiber paper

However, after having it a couple days and having the uniqueness of it wear off, I am quite sure I wouldn’t pay full price for these books. Remember, I only paid for shipping, so this was definitely worth the trial run. For one, you can see where the cuts have been made on the paper at the top, they’re a touch frayed. For another, I have ink speckles throughout my pages, which lends itself to a classic, old fashioned look but not my cup of tea, so to speak.

not so nice cutting... this is also a good close up of the paper quality though
another look at the poor cutting on top
the cutting on the bottom of the book is perfect
odd speckle on Jameson's poor forehead
raw edge of elastic showing on the back (ignore my dust speckles, the back cover is nice quality plastic)

Remember, I purchased two of the same photobook. My second photobook had similar defects. In the second photobook, the frayed edges were on the side and a little less noticeable. The clasp of the elastic in the back was much nicer too – the raw edge did not show. Speckles were there, but not on Jameson’s forehead 🙂 The difference in quality is significant enough though that I wonder if one of my photobooks came from a poor run? Regardless, inconsistent quality is not a good sign.

I would like to add that their use of facebook is entertaining and clever. Their motto is capturing moments, and their photos are cute. Customer service seems wonderful. Definitely unique and easy to use. I would keep them in mind for their other products, the calendars and growth charts, which would be absolutely stunning in this style paper, but not quite up to my standards for photo books.

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