a birthday and a blueberry...

matt's 30th birthday party was this weekend and it was luau themed so we dressed in our luau besteven mcgee had his hawaiian shirt on
lauren's dad roasted a pig, and was kind enough to keep the head for displayand we ate him, and the amazing egg rolls that matt's mom made and i did the cake... which turned out pretty darn well if i do say so myself (and yes, i made those flower candies for the cupcakes too)
and matt opened his presentsthen, on sunday lisa and i made a spur of the moment trip to the blueberry festival and had a great time. paige decided it was a good place for a photo-op

and for her to practice swingingand lisa and i decided it was a great place for people watching, please stacey & clinton, come to northern indiana and feature some of these people that obviously don't know what not to wear. her outfit may not look bad but what you don't see are the giant gold earrings and sunglasses to add to the black and gold outfitthis is self explanatoryand i think you all know i love plaid but this is just wrong but not as bad as this halloween outfit, yes folks, those are black socks with black slip-on tennis shoes and an orange and black purse to match!

all in all, a busy weekend but great picture taking and a fabulous time spent with family!

this week i'm going to be doing a lot of finishing touches at sue's and then i'll post the final photos. if you know anyone looking for some design help please pass my name along, i think i picked up a couple of prospective clients tonight at sue & sara's lia sophia party which is promissing but i can always use more!!!

i want...

anyone willing to go in on some custom business card printing fees? i may just make some of these up on the business card forms you can buy at staples... it's just that worth it for me :)

recipe time...

so i was supposed to start working my way through the biggest loser cookbook this week but i had a slight detour when my mother in law gave me a huge loaf of french bread and i got a sudden craving for a meatball sub. i found a super easy meatball recipe online then modified it to be healthier and made josh a turkey sub instead because he doesn't like meatballs... crazy i tell ya! so here's the recipe with my modifications:

1lb. ground sirloin
1/2 lb. ground turkey breast
1 egg
3T worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 C italian bread crumbs

mix well, scoop into balls, i used a cookie dough scoop to make balls about an inch in diameter and ended up with 52 meatballs which fit just about perfectly onto a single cookie sheet. bake at 350F until done (approx 20 minutes).
i cut the bread into sub buns and put them in the oven with mozzarella cheese so that it got melty and toasty and then added pasta sauce to the meatballs and scooped them onto the cheesy bread. chip said the sandwich filled him up, brian and i had salad on the side and josh ate turkey instead since he doesn't like meatballs but we had a good dinner and i have enough meatballs left over to put with pasta tomorrow night!

btw...for those that care, 6 meatballs are about 4 points.

change in layout...

it only took me 56 minutes but i figured out how to add the new nifty background you see. why did it take me 56 minutes you ask... because my live-in tech support (aka josh) doesn't blog or have any idea how to :(

julie & julia

a must see movie for anyone that wants to see a good movie. i went with all my seesters and my mother-in-law today and think we need to go on a girl's movie date more often. i'm thinking i need to continue the cooking/blogging project i started many months ago when i got the biggest loser cookbooks. i wonder what i'll be cooking this week?

drive-thru grocery...

so my new facebook & blog buddy bonnie posted a blog tonight about drive-thrus and, long story short, how nice it would be to have a drive-thru grocery store. i remember a few months ago when casi told me she wished we had a chinese food drive-thru so that i could get her chinese quickly as an after school snack (what a girl she is!). now, i don't know if you know this or not but, martin's supermarket in heritage square has some darn good sushi. nothing fancy like the delish rainbow roll that denise and i had on our last sushi date but i'm getting off the subject... martin's is also set up for curbside pickup, so you don't have to schlep your groceries to the car in the snowy/rainy parking lot, you just drive up and they will help load your groceries which makes me think, why couldn't they have some sort of call-in drive-thru grocery service?

you could call in with (or use the circular posted online to create) your grocery list with brand, size, quantity, etc and they could pull the items for you, package them and have them ready when you arrive. depending on the items on your list/previous lists/current sales/etc they could suggest alternate items or additional quantities so you can stock up or get in on the glorious 2-fer that makes me feel like i'm somehow getting a better deal than i should. just give them your credit card number and just pull up to get your good loaded and you're done!

the only issue i see is that if you are like me, a picky produce buyer and, sadly, one of those annoying people that takes time to pick out milk based on the expiration date (the further out the better for me) you would probably have to do that part of the shopping yourself, and you couldn't reuse your handy shopping bags to get the 5 cent per bag credit, unless they had a bag-trade-in policy... i would totally pay a bit extra, maybe some sort of handling or processing fee like pizza hut and jimmy johns charge for delivering.

anyone else with me on this one? i have a sister-in-law that works at martin's and if we could get enough interested parties, how's that saying go "if you build it, they will come" no, wait... maybe "ask and ye shall receive"...

most amazing...

the ukraine really does have talent: