Welcome back to the work week! How was everyone’s Easter holiday?! Hopefully you all had a relaxing and peaceful day spent with those you love. I’ve said it in the last couple of posts, but I am in absolute disbelief that it is already the end of April. How is t
hat possible?! Time is SERIOUSLY flying by. What makes it feel like it goes by even faster is that my current employment situation has me working months in advance so I’m always feeling like it’s one month ahead of where we really are!
Either way, I wanted to tell you about our holiday weekend in the city. Friday I got to leave work three hours early (hooray for the holiday!) and the rest of the day/evening was spent relaxing and watching a documentary about the bank collapses in 2008-2009. It won an Academy Award…but right now the title of the film is not coming to mind. It was VERY good though and very
interesting. Even if I did catch a quick nap at one point! :)
Saturday it was rainy almost the entire day. We woke up to gray skies and raindrops falling so we spent the morning inside catching up on our internet browsing and TV watching. Eventually lunch time rolled around (and the rain was STILL pouring down). We decided to order a pizza since we haven’t indulged in that delicious treat in a while. After more lying around on the couch and tackling various little
tasks around the apartment the sun started to peek through the clouds. We took that as our cue to finally get up, put on something presentable and make our way out onto the damp city streets. All of the rain caused a very humid afternoon. We took little Thatcher with us and headed off for a semi-long walk and a stop at the grocery store.
As I mentioned when we introduced our little guy, Thatcher gets more attention than anything I have ever seen. We literally cann
ot walk more than 20 steps before having someone stop us to ask what type of dog we have, to pet the puppy, or simply to just gawk and say, “That’s the smallest dog I have ever seen!” We haven’t quite figured it out yet. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Thatcher is stunner – he’s SO CUTE and has the most adorable little face and coloring, but goodness – it’s like he’s a celebrity. If only you could experience the walks we’ve been taking…then you’d know EXACTLY what I’m talking about!
We had a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up all of the ingredients for our Easter feast and then we headed back to the apartment for a little cleaning and of course, you guessed it, more relaxing! Turns out I had to switch up the menu quite a bit because I just wasn't finding all of the ingredients that I wanted and I wasn't about to make a SECOND trip to another grocery store more than 8 blocks away. Once home, we ended up watching “The Good Guys” with Will Farrell on our instant Netflix. I love Will Farrell, but this movie, while p
retty funny, was just too long. After our movie watching, I headed into the kitchen to start preparing some of the food for the next day. I got the rolls all set to go (homemade Parker House Rolls…mmmm) and also put together the base for my dessert for M.; Chocolate Cream Pie.
Sunday was a totally different day from Saturday. I took our puppy out in the morning and could not BELIEVE just how
beautiful it was! The sun was shining and the temperature was WARM! I simply assumed that I wouldn’t be able to wear anything cute and “spring-y” for the Easter celebration, but after spending a few minutes inside I was inspired to don bright, beautiful colors! My natural choice of course – shades of petal pink and orange! I even pulled out my Lilly jeans (complete with Lilly Pulitzer patterned fabric back pockets!)
Once I was dressed and ready for the day I immediately got to work in the kitchen. First on my list – get the “beehive” cake in the oven (which, by the way, totally not planned that I had "bee's" on my outfit that day -- that pink sweater is one of my FAVORITE Lilly pieces gifted to me by my lovely mother!)! I pulled together all of the ingredients and about an hour later I had
a beautiful beehive molded cake cooling and waiting to be put together and “dressed”. After the cake was under control, I pulled together the vegetable side dish (turns out I didn’t see any “good” looking cherry tomatoes in the store so I nixed my initial “vegetable pie” plan and merged my broccoli side dish with my zucchini and squash into a gratin of sorts) while M. put together the mashed potatoes.
In between all of the cooking I set our table with pla
tes and utensils, and folded our napkins into “bunnies” to place on the plates. Luckily, I had the centerpiece completely under control, because my lovely brother gifted us with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers! It was such a wonderful surprise to see the flowers waiting for me when I arrived home on Friday after work! I loved the mix of flowers too – the big bold sunflowers, the pastel pink tulips, bright purple and yellow and coral flowers too! Thank you again, E. (if you’re reading all the way in China!), that was the nicest thing! 
:)
I also decided that we needed to attempt to dye Easter eggs. As I mentioned in my post last week, I haven’t dyed eggs in quite a while. I attempted the technique that I posted about, but let me tell you – they must have done something magic to those eggs, because they were NOT turning out ANYTHING like the photos. We pretty much ended up just dying them plain colors whic
h was pretty enough. I placed them in a crystal bowl to set near our spread of lunch food. To be honest, they looked pretty lame. HA! Maybe next year I’ll take a little more time (and put in a little more effort) to make them look like magazine beautiful Easter eggs!
After the egg dying extravaganza I finished putting
together my beehive cake – made the citrus glaze (with zest from lemon, orange and grapefruit) which was SO YUMMY. I put the glaze on the cake and it looked SO BEAUTIFUL! I must say though, it’s a little bit of work to cover up the seam of the two sides, but I did it!
After the glaze was in place I finished my “accent bees”. Instead of messing with marzipan or doing some kind of crazy chocolate bee (I wasn’t putting THAT MUCH time into a cake for just me and M.) I improvised and used what I had on hand. I took pistachios (in the shell
) and rolled them around in yellow/orange food coloring. After that dried, I “painted on” black stripes using black food coloring. Finally, I used shaved almonds for the wings; I rolled the “wings” in the black food coloring. The end result (once I added the “bee’s” to the cake) was BEAUTIFUL!
I was really impressed with how well the cake turned out. Of course, the main reason the cake looked so amazing was the beautiful mold, but either way – I loved it! Not only was it pretty, but the cake itself tasted REALLY delicious and light. After the finishing touches on the beehive cake, and while the rolls were baking up in the oven, I fin
ished M.’s chocolate cream pie by whipping up fresh whipped cream. And as a final touch for the pie I crumbled Oreo cookies on top and placed one whole cookie in the center.
We ended up eating “lunch” around 3. Everything was SO DELICIOUS and I was so happy to have put together a fun meal with my wonderful husband. After we devoured
our food, we headed off for an afternoon walk to enjoy the beautiful weather. We decided to walk down to the pathway by the water. There were SO MANY people out and about (and once again we were stopped every so many feet so that people could see our puppy) and it felt so nice to just get out and breath in the fresh air. The perfect end to the perfect Easter holiday!
Have a wonderful Monday!
hat possible?! Time is SERIOUSLY flying by. What makes it feel like it goes by even faster is that my current employment situation has me working months in advance so I’m always feeling like it’s one month ahead of where we really are! Either way, I wanted to tell you about our holiday weekend in the city. Friday I got to leave work three hours early (hooray for the holiday!) and the rest of the day/evening was spent relaxing and watching a documentary about the bank collapses in 2008-2009. It won an Academy Award…but right now the title of the film is not coming to mind. It was VERY good though and very
interesting. Even if I did catch a quick nap at one point! :)Saturday it was rainy almost the entire day. We woke up to gray skies and raindrops falling so we spent the morning inside catching up on our internet browsing and TV watching. Eventually lunch time rolled around (and the rain was STILL pouring down). We decided to order a pizza since we haven’t indulged in that delicious treat in a while. After more lying around on the couch and tackling various little
tasks around the apartment the sun started to peek through the clouds. We took that as our cue to finally get up, put on something presentable and make our way out onto the damp city streets. All of the rain caused a very humid afternoon. We took little Thatcher with us and headed off for a semi-long walk and a stop at the grocery store. As I mentioned when we introduced our little guy, Thatcher gets more attention than anything I have ever seen. We literally cann
ot walk more than 20 steps before having someone stop us to ask what type of dog we have, to pet the puppy, or simply to just gawk and say, “That’s the smallest dog I have ever seen!” We haven’t quite figured it out yet. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Thatcher is stunner – he’s SO CUTE and has the most adorable little face and coloring, but goodness – it’s like he’s a celebrity. If only you could experience the walks we’ve been taking…then you’d know EXACTLY what I’m talking about!We had a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up all of the ingredients for our Easter feast and then we headed back to the apartment for a little cleaning and of course, you guessed it, more relaxing! Turns out I had to switch up the menu quite a bit because I just wasn't finding all of the ingredients that I wanted and I wasn't about to make a SECOND trip to another grocery store more than 8 blocks away. Once home, we ended up watching “The Good Guys” with Will Farrell on our instant Netflix. I love Will Farrell, but this movie, while p
retty funny, was just too long. After our movie watching, I headed into the kitchen to start preparing some of the food for the next day. I got the rolls all set to go (homemade Parker House Rolls…mmmm) and also put together the base for my dessert for M.; Chocolate Cream Pie. Sunday was a totally different day from Saturday. I took our puppy out in the morning and could not BELIEVE just how
beautiful it was! The sun was shining and the temperature was WARM! I simply assumed that I wouldn’t be able to wear anything cute and “spring-y” for the Easter celebration, but after spending a few minutes inside I was inspired to don bright, beautiful colors! My natural choice of course – shades of petal pink and orange! I even pulled out my Lilly jeans (complete with Lilly Pulitzer patterned fabric back pockets!) Once I was dressed and ready for the day I immediately got to work in the kitchen. First on my list – get the “beehive” cake in the oven (which, by the way, totally not planned that I had "bee's" on my outfit that day -- that pink sweater is one of my FAVORITE Lilly pieces gifted to me by my lovely mother!)! I pulled together all of the ingredients and about an hour later I had
a beautiful beehive molded cake cooling and waiting to be put together and “dressed”. After the cake was under control, I pulled together the vegetable side dish (turns out I didn’t see any “good” looking cherry tomatoes in the store so I nixed my initial “vegetable pie” plan and merged my broccoli side dish with my zucchini and squash into a gratin of sorts) while M. put together the mashed potatoes.In between all of the cooking I set our table with pla
tes and utensils, and folded our napkins into “bunnies” to place on the plates. Luckily, I had the centerpiece completely under control, because my lovely brother gifted us with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers! It was such a wonderful surprise to see the flowers waiting for me when I arrived home on Friday after work! I loved the mix of flowers too – the big bold sunflowers, the pastel pink tulips, bright purple and yellow and coral flowers too! Thank you again, E. (if you’re reading all the way in China!), that was the nicest thing! 
:)I also decided that we needed to attempt to dye Easter eggs. As I mentioned in my post last week, I haven’t dyed eggs in quite a while. I attempted the technique that I posted about, but let me tell you – they must have done something magic to those eggs, because they were NOT turning out ANYTHING like the photos. We pretty much ended up just dying them plain colors whic
h was pretty enough. I placed them in a crystal bowl to set near our spread of lunch food. To be honest, they looked pretty lame. HA! Maybe next year I’ll take a little more time (and put in a little more effort) to make them look like magazine beautiful Easter eggs! After the egg dying extravaganza I finished putting
together my beehive cake – made the citrus glaze (with zest from lemon, orange and grapefruit) which was SO YUMMY. I put the glaze on the cake and it looked SO BEAUTIFUL! I must say though, it’s a little bit of work to cover up the seam of the two sides, but I did it!After the glaze was in place I finished my “accent bees”. Instead of messing with marzipan or doing some kind of crazy chocolate bee (I wasn’t putting THAT MUCH time into a cake for just me and M.) I improvised and used what I had on hand. I took pistachios (in the shell
) and rolled them around in yellow/orange food coloring. After that dried, I “painted on” black stripes using black food coloring. Finally, I used shaved almonds for the wings; I rolled the “wings” in the black food coloring. The end result (once I added the “bee’s” to the cake) was BEAUTIFUL!I was really impressed with how well the cake turned out. Of course, the main reason the cake looked so amazing was the beautiful mold, but either way – I loved it! Not only was it pretty, but the cake itself tasted REALLY delicious and light. After the finishing touches on the beehive cake, and while the rolls were baking up in the oven, I fin
ished M.’s chocolate cream pie by whipping up fresh whipped cream. And as a final touch for the pie I crumbled Oreo cookies on top and placed one whole cookie in the center.We ended up eating “lunch” around 3. Everything was SO DELICIOUS and I was so happy to have put together a fun meal with my wonderful husband. After we devoured
our food, we headed off for an afternoon walk to enjoy the beautiful weather. We decided to walk down to the pathway by the water. There were SO MANY people out and about (and once again we were stopped every so many feet so that people could see our puppy) and it felt so nice to just get out and breath in the fresh air. The perfect end to the perfect Easter holiday!Have a wonderful Monday!
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