No more ducking!

After JM mowed the yard today he made me a very happy lady...he trimmed back our big tree!!! You can see in some of these pictures from before how low some of the branches hung. To mow the lawn or even walk around you had to duck. This first picture was back in the spring so the leaves haven't filled in but you can see how low the branches hang.

This one kind of gives you an idea of how much it hung over our patio.

It looks so much better now. We could trim back a little more but we didn't want to be too aggressive and trim back too much.

And here's the man that made it all happen.

The fence is almost here!!!

We are closing in on our fence!!! After 2-3 weeks of waiting, the homeowners association FINALLY approved our proposal. When I got home from my errands today the survey guy had been here and marked our yard. It was an extra cost but I'm really glad we did it. Our yard is this strange diagonal shape (I forgot my geometery...it's a rectangle that angles...anyone???) and now we have visuals for the neighbors in case they don't know their yards do that. We won't have anyone questioning if we're in their yard or not.

Then at 3 today the fence guy will come out and go over exactly where we want the gates and which decorative posts, etc. Then he'll come out Monday and put the posts and cement down, and I believe then they'll come out Tuesday and finish it! Kodi is thrilled!!! It took me 8 years, but I finally got him a yard!

Of course last night JM was talking to one of our neighbors and it turns out there's an invisible fence already in our yard. But without the transmitter I think we'd still have to pay quite a bit...and not to sound like the old grouchy neighbor, but I'm tired of the teenagers cutting through my yard!

I was excited when I got home and saw the stakes were up so I took pictures!

Kodi's already out there wishing he had a fence so he could lay outside all day.

And then he refused to come inside with me. Just a few more days, Kodi!!!

Beer can chicken

Tonight I made Beer Can Chicken for Dad's birthday dinner. I made two since I had Greg and JM there, and with a total of 4 of us there was just a tiny bit leftover. The chicken itself was delicious, but it was definitely a messy situation! Especially for someone who doesn't like to see bones and that kind of gross stuff on the food she eats!!! After I got the chickens all oiled and seasoned up and put the cans up their behind they cracked me up so I had to take a picture...

Here's the recipe that I found on foodnetwork.com. Keep in mind that they will be dripping, oily and hot when you get done so have a way to cut them up close by!

Ingredients
1 (4-pound) whole chicken
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
3 tablespoons of your favorite dry spice rub
1 can beer

Directions
Remove neck and giblets from chicken and discard. Rinse chicken inside and out, and pat dry with paper towels. Rub chicken lightly with oil then rub inside and out with salt, pepper and dry rub. Set aside.

Open beer can and take several gulps (make them big gulps so that the can is half full). Place beer can on a solid surface. Grabbing a chicken leg in each hand, plunk the bird cavity over the beer can. Transfer the bird-on-a-can to your grill and place in the center of the grate, balancing the bird on its 2 legs and the can like a tripod.

Cook the chicken over medium-high, indirect heat (i.e. no coals or burners on directly under the bird), with the grill cover on, for approximately 1 1/4 hours or until the internal temperature registers 165 degrees F in the breast area and 180 degrees F in the thigh, or until the thigh juice runs clear when stabbed with a sharp knife. Remove from grill and let rest for 10 minutes before carving.

I also made corn souffle with fresh corn from the farmer's market. We get it from My Dad's Corn up in Tipton County and it's amazing! I found the recipe on their website:

3 cups corn -- 1 cup sour cream -- 1 egg -- 1 box Jiffy corn bread mix --1 stick margarine

Melt margarine. Stir in egg, then all other ingredients. Bake at 350º for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Kodi's 8th Birthday

Today was Kodi's 8th birthday and Murray's 6th. For those of you who didn't know, Mom had been told Murray's birthday was sometime in July so she made it Kodi's birthday so she wouldn't forget. I can't believe Kodi's 8 already! I swear I just got him!!! We've been really lucky so far, for such a big dog he's had no major problems. He has a thyroid issue but I forgot to refill his prescription over a month ago and he seems to be doing fine, and he had a touch of arthritis in his hips this past winter but it only seemed to bother him on really cold days.

Of course, since I thought 8 seemed like a big birthday, we had a mini-celebration of a trip to the dog park and doggie cake :-)

Kodi's licking his chops already!

I finally figured out I should cut it in half so they didn't have to break it themselves.

Kodi's half didn't last long!

Murray looks like he thinks he's in trouble! No Murray, that is not the beer bread from the counter...this is ok for you to eat!

Dining room down

It took almost an entire day, but the dining room is presentable!!! Here are some before pictures (and yes, we've been pretty much living like this for the past couple of weeks)...

And the after!

The journey of my hair

My hair had an amazing journey today!

Here's how it started the day

Then it became this

Some of it ended like this

while the rest is in a package being sent to Wisconsin where it will become a wig for a woman with cancer.

Quite the productive day for hair!

Hard at work?

Yesterday while I was hard at work on a Saturday (and yes, I really was hard at work yesterday), this is what the rest of my apartment was doing.

Beautiful fall days

First and foremost, my matron of honor had her baby on Tuesday! Yay!!! Gabriel Michael was 8 pounds, 2 ounces, and perfect. Both mom and baby are doing wonderfully.

Today, JM and I went and filled out the application for our marriage license and got all of that taken care of.

Yesterday we had our meeting with the photographer to finalize all of the details. If you haven't checked her out, you should, I think she's incredibly talented and can't wait to have her shoot our wedding! Here's her blog:

http://erinhession.com/

Tomorrow is our engagement photo session and if the weather is anything like today, my world will be wonderful! I'm going to Studio 2000 earlier in the afternoon because Michelle does my hair MUCH better than I do! Then JM, Kodi and I are meeting Erin at Coxhall Gardens for the photo shoot. Kodi is SUPER excited. Here's the Coxhall Garden website:

http://www.coxhallgardens.com/Home.aspx

We're also meeting our new harpist tomorrow. The one we had originally signed with had a conflict come up, so she got us another woman. I'm excited to meet with her and see what ideas she has. This is her site, I think you can listen to some of her music:

http://www.janaldridgeclark.com/

That's it for now!

Tuxes, dresses,and cakes, oh my!

Well, we're another step closer to being prepared for the wedding. We emailed all the guys today and let them know the tuxes we picked out. We got them through A Step Above Bridal, which is where my dress is from. The guys will all wear black notch lapel tuxes and french vanilla shirts. The dads will have black ties and vests while JM will have an ivory vest and white and ivory striped tie. The groomsmen will have chocolate brown vests and chocolate brown and black striped ties.

This is the tux and JM's ensemble...Then this is the swatch for the groomsmen's...My dress came in last week so Mom, Lynds and I went over on Saturday morning and I put on the whole she-bang. It's still wonderful! And I still need to name the dress!!! For those of you who don't know, the first one who buys one of Antonio Fermin's designs gets to name it! This is a MUCH harder task then I had imagined. So much stress!!! I would love to name it 'The Shannon', or after seeing myself on Saturday, 'Princess Shannon'. But, my mom used Grandma Haines's inheritance money to pay for it, so I feel I should pay tribute to her somehow. 'Elaine's Love' (Connie's idea) or something of the sort. Anyone have any suggestions?!? Maybe I'll make it a contest...whoever comes up with the name I use wins something. Hmmm...I don't really have any prizes!

We also decided on a cake. Ritz Charles will be bringing the cake as well as the food. They won out pretty much solely on price. I was amazed at how good of a deal they gave us. Anyways, it will be the 'Ritz Buttercream' frosting, yellow cake and chocolate truffle filling. This is what it will look like (minus the flowery thing). The main color will be more of a lime green and then the borders will still be chocolate brown.We still have to decide on a cake topper. No clue what to do about that. We may just go with a big 'L'. How creative!

Our engagement photo session is in a couple of weeks and will be done by our photographer, Erin Hession. We had been planning on having it downtown on the canal (with Kodi, of course), but a friend of mine did hers at the Oliver Winery and the pictures turned out amazing!!! I emailed Erin today to see if that was an option. Also, it's my last name, and we're going to a winery for the honeymoon, so how fitting!

I think I need to hit the hay now. I'm not working tomorrow except for a class at 3, but I'm hoping to check out a couple of places and find out about bridesmaids dresses. Less than 10 weeks now...need to get my butt in gear!

I'll blog later about the honeymoon, rings, and hopefully other things that have been accomplished!

Catering Tasting

Last Friday JM, Mom, Dad, Lynds and I went to the Ritz Charles to taste a few samples so we can make a decision on the wedding menu. It was really neat, they had a table set up on the dancefloor for us so we could see the china, linens, etc. that will be used for our reception.

This is how the tables will look, minus the diet coke can! We will be using these ivory tablecloths, but we are having chocolate cloth napkins. The centerpieces come with the catering (the votives with the mirror). I haven't decided whether or not to add some rose petals, leaves, or whatever, in addition. The family tables will have centerpieces made by the florist...but it was way too expensive to have one at every table!

We are going with the buffet option, in which we get to chose a salad, a couple of sides, a veggie, 2 main meals, and then rolls. We were able to try 3 of the main dishes, so the first one we tried was the london broil. The chef came out ahead of time and explained everything. He had marinated it for 2 days in a tomato basil. The rose is made out of tomatoes. It was excellent.

Then we tried the key lime chicken. I didn't want to do the usual chicken with sauce or gravy, so I thought this would be different. It was marinated in lime and honey and then it was cooked so the marinade became a glaze. I thought this was amazing. The chicken was sooo juicy.

We then tried the beef brochettes, which I had no clue what would be! They were awesome. It was flank steak on skewers with olives, pearl onions, artichokes, and some type of sweet pepper. It was then sprinkled with feta cheese. The chef said it was Mediterranean inspired.

While it all was amazing, we could only pick two. I wanted a red meat and then a chicken, so we obviously went with the key lime chicken. It was a tough decision between the brochettes and the london broil, but the brochettes won out. We thought it was a very unique dish to have at a wedding and sooo tasty!

Then we tried 3 different cakes to see what icing, cake flavor and filling we liked. The icings we tried were cream cheese and buttercream. It was a unanimous vote of the buttercream. We then tried the white, chocolate and yellow cake. That was a toss up, but in the end, yellow. It was moist and didn't take away flavor from the rest. The fillings were almond mousse, cafe mocha and chocolate truffle. The cafe mocha was way too coffee-like. I really liked the almond mousse, but the majority vote was for chocolate truffle. We're not for sure that we're going to have the Ritz do our cake, but if we do, this will be the cake.

It's a wine/beer bar. There will be a white and red wine and then the two beers will be Coors Light and Mich Ultra. That may change, but for now it's what we're going with. Cocktails will be cash only.

We still haven't decided on appetizers or sides, but that should be taken care of in the next week or so.

Hope everyone had a happy Father's Day!

A visit to the wedding site

Last Friday, JM, Mom, Dad and I went over to the Monon Center to meet with the coordinator and take a look at the grounds. Everything was a blur when we went there originally and decided to have our wedding there, so I wanted to take another look and get an idea of what we need to order and decorate. Turns out they have made some major purchases that I am THRILLED about! They bought white wooden folding chairs for the outdoor reception (which we don't have to rent!). They also are buying a shuttle so the bridal party doesn't have to walk all the way over to the ceremony site...it's not that far, but it will be when I'm dragging a train behind me! Now they're thinking of buying...ok, I can't think of the word for it, but it's that rectangle thing that the bride, groom and officiant stand underneath. Kind of like this...

Although there won't be an ocean behind us :-) (BTW, this is Courtney, one of my bridesmaids, and her husband, Ben's, wedding in Naples last November).

I'm very happy with all that the Monon Center is doing. They actually haven't had any weddings there yet and they're bringing in a wedding coordinator from the Ritz Charles so they have all of these ideas. Yay!!! Here are some pictures of the site.

These are of the banquet halls where the reception will be. They had it walled off for an event that night. This side has the stage. We'll also have all the balcony area that you can see outside.

The wall that you see to the right of this picture below will be open leading into the other rooms.

This is the other side of the banquet hall.

And the kitchen area where the food will be set up.

If the weather is poor (which it BETTER NOT be!!!), the wedding ceremony will be held inside on this breezeway. The doors at the end of this hallway will be shut and the furniture will be removed.

This bridge will serve as the background to the wedding ceremony outside. That's JM and Dad up there ahead of us.

Closer picture of the bridge and Dad videotaping for Greg.

This is looking out from the bridge. Everything's flooded right now so it's not a great view...but if you can tell there's a small hill on the right. They are going to build a walkway up to the top of the hill and that's where the ceremony will be held.

I should be hearing from the Monon Center sometime this week with their final decision on the catering (it should still be the Ritz Charles). I'll also get to speak with the girl who is going to be coordinating the weddings and get some ideas from her.

My cupcake attempt

I decided to try my hand making cupcakes today from a recipe in my Kraft Foods Magazine. They turned out soooo good. Good enough I'm including pictures and the recipe!





Lemon-Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Prep time: 10 min Total time: 1 hour 34 minutes (includes cooling)



1 pkg (2-layer size) white cake mix

1 pkg (4-serving size) Jell-O Lemon Flavor Instant Pudding & Pie Filling

1 cup water

4 egg whites (I used the egg-beater whites)

2 Tbsp oil

1 pkg (16 oz) powdered sugar

1 pkg (8 oz) Philadelphia cream cheese, softened (I used the reduced fat)

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened

2 Tbsp lemon juice

gratings from 1 lemon peel



Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat cake mix, dry pudding mix, water, egg whites and oil in large bowl with electric mixer on low speed until moistened. (Batter will be thick). Beat on medium-speed 2 minutes. Spoon batter evenly into 24 paper-lined 2 1/2 inch muffin cups.



Bake 21-24 minutes or until wooden toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes; remove to wire racks. Cool completely.



Meanwhile, beat sugar, cream cheese, butter, 1 tsp grated lemon peel and juice with electric mixer on low speed until well blended. Frost cupcakes and garnish with additional grated lemon peel.