Test 2

How wide can I go on this bad boy?

Test, test, test ...

Test

I'm trying to figure out sizing for stuff when we re-vamp the Heartland blog .... so I'm just testing wider/bigger photos here.


Thanks for your patience with my randomness.

Crossover — Deanne + Carlos' Wedding

It's been an insane weekend. Two portrait sessions and one wedding, and all in about 48 hours!


You can cruise on over to the Heartland blog HERE for the sneak peek from the wedding we photographed this weekend. None of the photos in the peek are mine (Mike really knocked it out of the park), so I've included a few here. :)


Not quite "American Gothic" but a bit serious ... and I like it.

It's all in the details — Ladies' formal tea

Over Memorial Day weekend, we had a ladies' tea at my mom's house. I refrain from calling it a "tea party" so as not to be confused with the political movement going on right now. Although I cannot say if the movement reflects the view of those present, because as proper ladies at a formal tea, we talked about other pleasant things, not politics. ;)


Mom had this table runner, and I pulled it all together. :)


Let's talk about these roses. Beautiful, aren't they?


I picked them from the front flower bed. Decor does not have to be an expensive endeavor!


But let me say this: they were THORNY boogers!!!! I can't for sure say blood was shed over them, but it came close.


Those thorns were NASTY. But the flowers were SO beautiful .... I was willing to wrangle a few thorns.


Let's talk about the setup. In times past (around Christmas), we'd just set the boxes out ... but I figured we could do better.


So I rummaged around in the cabinets and found some pretty goblets.


WIth some tea in packages and some not, I was trying to figure out what to do ...






So I tried printing out pieces of nice paper with the name of the tea on it.


I think it turned out pretty good. Someone even asked if I had hand-written them. :)


There was also loose tea, which I put into deeper goblets.


With cute little spoons.


And labels.


Isn't this spoon handle cute?


Last little detail.

More photos later of the party itself. :)

Washington D.C. 2010 — pt. 1

A few months ago, I flew to DC for some portrait sessions. :)

I'm not generally a nervous flier (as long as I'm not looking out the window), but I had a window seat. Great. And this was what I saw flying into National.

I'm no flying expert, but I even *felt* that it was a short runway. We landed, and it was all "slam on your breaks" ... crazy talk!


I crashed at my friend, Kim's, house. But her cat, Louie, was the only one who got some rest. Almost immediately after landing, we headed out the door for a Nationals baseball game.


I think the park's fairly new?

It's a beautiful facility!


Interior.


From our seats.


More from our seats.


I love attention to detail. Look at the "W" in the gates! Gotta love the details!


See those streaks? That's rain, people. It downpoured!

Now, this post doesn't mean I'm 100% back in action for blogging, all. It just means I've caught up with my editing and can steal a few minutes here and there to blog. So no promises on how frequently I'll be back .... but it should be more than it has been in the last few weeks!

Baby belly

Cruise over to my sister's blog by CLICKING HERE to check out the growing progress of my new niece/nephew!

I'm excited to be taking belly pix Friday night with Robin and Chris! :)

Homemade Chicken nuggets/fingers

WOAH NELLIE!!!!!

On some TV show, I saw people making their own chicken nuggets, and I gotta say, I scoffed at them. But with my crazy eating, chicken nuggets out of the box make me a bit sick. And there were directions on the shredded wheat box on how to make your own chicken nuggets. So off I went.

The following recipe is my own adaptation. The box recipe didn't include an egg, which I thought it needed.

Ingredients:
3 boneless chicken breasts, thawed and cut into bite sized pieces (I'm thinking of using chicken tenders next time)

1.5 cups shredded wheat cereal
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt (measurements are approx. I just throw stuff in!)
1/4 teaspoon paprika

1 egg
1 Tbsp plain yogurt (or mayo)
(you can add some mustard, honey or honey mustard in if you want.

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400
2. Put shredded wheat cereal into food processor. Pulverize.
3. Add in garlic salt, paprika (and any other spices you want)
4. beat together egg, yogurt (and mustard or anything else)
5. Dip chicken bites into egg mixture, coat evenly.
6. Put dipped chicken into cereal mixture, coat evenly
7. Place on greased cooking sheet
8. Bake for 20-25 minutes, turn over about half way through.

Seriously, I thought it'd be a disaster, but we gave it a try and it was YUMMIE!!!!!!

The benefit to these is 1) I can eat them without feeling sick to my stomach. And 2) There isn't any extra added additives or sodium!

I'm pondering if I would be able to batter and dip a bunch of nuggets and then freeze them before cooking them ... then cook the number I want at any given time. Not sure about this. Just doing some thinking.

Please pardon .... doing some testing

I want to jazz up the heartland blog a bit ... but I'm first testing on our personal blog. So if you see something strange (say, a pink background), just ignore that, please! ;)

Laundry line fail

*sigh* ... I'm on vacation from blogging right now, but I need a means to procrastinate. So here I am.

I (read: Erik) put some of our jeans on the laundry line yesterday afternoon. He's very good at it, but they needed to shift around a bit, and dry longer.

I've been feeling cruddy, so I just decided to leave them over night.

And I was greeted this morning with rain.

Ugh. Now, in come the jeans to the house to dry in here.

TOTAL FAIL. Oh well, now I'll know to check the overnight weather.

PSA

Hiya all,

Life is CRAZY-BUSY-FULL right now ... lots of photo editing to do ... so to retain my sanity, I've decided to give up any hope of blogging here in the next 2 weeks. Sorry ... other stuff is higher on the priority list. And now by decreeing I'm taking a vaca from blogging, I can get things around here done that I've not had the time to do (or feel guilty while I do other work).

There will be plenty of activity on the Heartland Blog, though, so be sure to check in there!

I have a lot of catching up to do! (DC)

OK, OK, OK!

I am waaaay behind on things here. I have a TON of catching up to do.

This won't be a full post, but I'll hit on a few items from DC.


1) I flew in to Reagan airport, which even *I* noticed that the runway was short.

Then, in a foggy, misty rain, watched the Nationals stomp the Brewers (baseball talk, sorry, Mom!).


2) Hung with Deacon Jeremy at his seminary. Where there was a MRS before my name. And the first day I was there, I swear every faculty member checked my left ring finger to be sure I was married. ;)


3) And also spent time with my friend, Isaac, who I took Latin with in my days at K-State. Deacon Jeremy took us to Gettysburg. More on that later, though.

Oh, and I did take a ton of photos in DC, but I've already posted a bunch of links/teasers/crossovers, so I won't re-hash the past.

I know I have a lot to catch up on, but be patient, all! Please! :)

A MUST read!

Ok peeps, I know I need to do some "real" blogging around here .... but for the time being, you need to check out my friend, Michelle's blog.

First, let me pause a moment to talk about Michelle. We "met" because she made a comment or two here on our blog. I followed the Internet trail to her blog, and am always waiting for the next installment of her goings-on. :)

Some people get creeped out about "meeting" people via the Internet waves, and I understand that. I also share some of their caution. But getting to know Michelle and a few others has really been a treat of this technological world we live in.

Actually, I think I have some friends in common of Michelle (how she stumbled on our blog), and it's neat to get to meet people who are in the peripheral of my world, but I would not have met otherwise. I know I've seen it from my blog to my friends blogs, too. Some of my readers will hook up with another stay-at-home mom, swap stories, talk about cloth diapering .... it's really a nice circle!

Ok, enough rambling. You gotta check out THIS POST about her jam-making experience. Now, I don't know how long it took her to come up with the rhyming poetry, but I loved it (however, don't expect to see that around here, folks!).