Friday Love

{ONE}

Almond milk. Why have I waited so long? So yum!

{TWO}

I have never felt like one of these stupid pictures everyone posts on Facebook has described me better.

{THREE}

Tony's Pizza. If you live in Northern Virginia, you most likely know Tony's Pizza. Before I went for my first time ever last year (about this time of year actually, yes it took me 5 years of living here), I thought seriously people, it's pizza. But it really is so good. I always try to take our visitors there, but they never pick it. They are missing out. The one on Mathis Avenue in Manassas is my favorite. It's New York style pizza and they have this really bomb Greek Salad that I highly recommend. 

{FOUR}

Shark Tank. Shark Tank is one of the very, very few shows that we can both agree on in our house. It's kind of a Friday night tradition.

{FIVE}

Superbowl Sunday. Just because it's a good excuse to eat junk food every year and even if your team isn't playing you can watch the commercials!

Marathon Monday

It's been a rough week for running. So disappointing after the perfect weather and 5 miles last Monday. We had so many days off for school, both for snow and cold temperatures. It's so frustrating that I had all this time to train, but it was far too cold and snowy to do anything. The good old windchill got above 20 this weekend so I decided I had to do something. I have to say if you told me a couple months ago that I would be outside dodging ice and snow in 20 degree weather I would have laughed, but that's what happened both Saturday and Sunday. Mostly I ran in the middle of the street, but my favorite part of my neighborhood to run through is connected by this snowy trail so I tried in on Sunday. I only almost wiped out once. And now... Marathon Monday by the numbers: 96 days until Pittsburgh (less than 100 is a little scary). 7.27 miles this weekend. Here's to hoping for at least one or two nice days this week to get a couple miles in before next weekend!

Friday Love

{ONE}

No School January. Here in Virginia we got a whopping 4 inches of snow Tuesday and subsequently got Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off from school in addition to a two hour delay today. Add this to the MLK holiday on Monday and 2 other snow days we had this month and we basically haven't done much but stay home and love life this January. I'm only a little worried about a big February snow storm I have been praying for since 2010 and having to go to school extra minutes or days in the future.

{TWO}

Virginia Gateway. Moving to the suburbs was a little anxiety provoking when we bought our house. We can't walk to as much stuff and the caliber of restaurants isn't the same, but with the addition of Virginia Gateway in Gainesville, things are starting to look up. We have a movie theatre now, and new shops and restaurants are starting to open. Last weekend I went to Bar Louie for happy hour on Friday and Sunday night we met a bunch of people for dinner at Nando's Peri-Peri. Both were good and I still can't believe how many people were at Bar Louie's happy hour in Gainesville at 4:00 and then the rest of the night.

{THREE}

This post on Dinner: A Love Story had me laughing.

{FOUR}

Wegmans has made {Friday Love} before and this Buzzfeed really just hits home to us Wegmans lovers. Numbers 6, 7, especially 11, 21, and 25 are my faves. And I have often had #23 cross my mind when I have my days of wanting to move back to Pittsburgh.

{FIVE}

New Decor. I bought this sheet music - our first dance song - as a gift for Matt for our first anniversary. I thought it was fitting as the traditional first anniversary gift is a gift of paper. I never got around to framing it because I could never really find what I wanted, even though it's very basic. It was a great snow day project earlier this week. I think it turned out pretty good, and I'm pretty proud how evenly we got it to hang.

I Won't Give Up - Jason Mraz

Recipe of the Week

Monkey Bread

I'm not big into breakfast, and I am really not into sweets. I would take salty and greasy over sweet any day. This monkey bread is an exception though. Maybe it's the massive amount of butter that reels me in every time. I have Elena Smith, kindergarten teacher, to thank for this recipe. She makes it every time her kindergarten team does birthday breakfast at school. Until I made it myself I would have sworn to you she laces it with the most addictive drugs. 

I decided to try it myself as a part of my contribution to our birthday breakfast this year...and this will conclude my blog breakfast series I have done the past few weeks. Constructing this monkey bread was only one of the biggest kitchen nightmares I've ever had. When I went to the grocery store there were so many buttermilk biscuit tubes to choose from that I got confused and just went middle of the road...not to big and not too small. This was a crucial mistake. Knowing now what I didn't know then I can tell you I should have went small because my biscuits ended up being too big. They baked up out of the pan into the oven rack. Disaster number one, but I quickly fixed that. Soon after the carmel sauce started flowing out of the pan, smoke was filling the entire first floor of my house, and the smoke alarm was sounding. All this and the center of the bread wasn't cooked through yet. Then I started getting more stressed because I needed to get going with all the other food I made so it could all be set up in time. Finally I just took it out of the oven and hoped for the best as I tried to transport a 350 pan to work. People ate it so I guess it wasn't that bad, but the process was ridiculous. 

As stressful as this was, I decided to try again Christmas morning (pictured above). This time I bought the correct biscuits...and realized right away why things had gone so awry a few days earlier. My best advice is to find the 4 pack of biscuits. It's vital. 

USE ONLY THESE BISCUITS OR YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY REGRET IT!

Ingredients:
3 packages of buttermilk biscuit tubes (7.5 oz tubes)

1 cup sugar 

2 tsp cinnamon 

1 cup butter 

1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)

Directions:
Take 3 packages of buttermilk biscuit tubes (10 per roll) and cut each roll into pieces (I cut each biscuit into fourths). In a large ziploc bag, mix sugar and cinnamon, drop biscuit pieces in and toss to coat. Drop sugar coated pieces into a well buttered bundt pan.

Put 1/2 cup of the left over cinnamon/sugar mix and 1/2 cup packed brown sugar and 1 cup of butter into a small saucepan. Bring mixture to a boil and remove immediately. Carefully drizzle over the roll pieces in pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Cool slightly in an upright position, then flip pan over a plate.

Marathon Monday

Since my last Marathon Monday post I have been really lucking out weather wise. I was able to do miles outside 4 days for a total of 11.99 miles. I don't think I will be as lucky this week with snow and frigid temperatures starting tomorrow. I also want to clarify that I do no run all of my miles...I do a walk/run (you can see by my pace on that chart below) which is how I plan to do the half marathon in May. The official half marathon countdown: 104 days. 

On this Marathon Monday I am very excited to announce that I have done my longest run so far. FIVE miles friends, five! I'm pretty pumped about it. There was a point at which I thought for sure I wasn't going to make the five miles I had planned. I almost burst into tears somewhere between 2 and 2.5 miles cause I was getting all neurotic and thinking "if I can't do five miles on this ridiculously nice day, how am I ever going to do a half marathon?" I couldn't understand why I was having such a hard time, my mind was playing tricks on me for a good 10 minutes, but I made it. Then when I got home and looked at my RunKeeper app that documents all kids of things about my run, my mental anguish all made sense. Do you see that stupid hill? I'm so over hills.

When I made it home things got even more interesting...I was looking at Facebook on my phone when I found this gem of a post:

Options

Bristow Beat · 4,271 like this

2 hours ago · 

• Stay off the Victory Lakes/Braemar Trail right now. This tip hasn't been confirmed yet, but someone saw men with masks, guns and an axe.

Basically, I narrowly escaped death today...in more ways than one. I just rechecked whats going on with the masked men...it seems as thought it was teenagers building forts and playing paintball. I love suburbia.

Friday Love

{ONE}

Work Friends. I am so happy to work with people that I consider to be good friends. A lot of work friends took a little vacation last week and those were some lonely times. I'm so happy my friends came back!

{TWO}

New Furniture. We got new furniture for our living room today. It's so exciting. And big. The good news is we can now both lay on a couch at the same time, and not as many people will have to sit on the floor when they come to our house.

{THREE}

Avogolemono. You might remember my obsession with Katerina's. Well, they have this amazing soup...I would describe it as Greek chicken and rice soup. It's so lemony (I love lemons!!!) and delicious. I am going to attempt to make it this weekend. I found what looks like a super easy recipe on Dinner: A Love Story, one of my fave food blogs. I can't wait!

{FOUR}

{FIVE}

Kid Thoughts. There are days where I don't think I will make it til 4:00, actually there are days where I look at the clock and can't fathom how it's only 9:30 because of the ridiculousness that has already happened in my day. But every once and awhile one of my little shining stars says or does something that is just so funny, I can't help but like my job a little bit more. One of my favorites from the past week is when a 4th grade girl was eating lunch with me and confessed that for her whole first year at BES as a 3rd grader she thought I was the real Katy Perry. I'll take it.

Recipe of the Week!

Sausage Balls

Installment #2 of the breakfast series...remember I had to make a couple of dishes for my team's birthday breakfast as school last month. Behold the sausage ball. Super easy and for some reason I love these. I was glad they were pretty much gone by the time I got to them. When I made these for school I made them to completion the night before, let them cool, and put them in the fridge overnight. In the morning I just warmed them up in the oven before leaving for work. I only did this because I had a lot of other things to do in the morning. Otherwise, they are so simple and quick I would have just done them in the same morning I wanted to serve them.

Ingredients:
1 lb. spicy Italian sausage
2 cups Bisquick
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl combine all ingredients until well integrated. Roll into small balls and place on baking sheets. Bake in the oven until golden brown and cooked through.

Marathon Monday

I have gone back and forth for a little while now about theme-ing one of the days of the week with half marathon training news. I guess today, on a whim, I am naming Monday that day...it was that or training Tuesday, but I am hoping that Marathon Monday can be a little motivation to get myself in gear on the weekends, especially. The extreme cold weather, ice, and snow have not been helpful. 

What is helpful though, is logging all walk/run activities on RunKeeper. Back in October, when I was still debating this half marathon, I did like two random miles one day just to see how it would go...since then I have cut over 8 minutes off that time. That gives me hope friends. And not only has my pace gotten better, but now it's actually slightly more enjoyable, and I don't want to die and quit the whole time anymore. 

This weekend's biggest motivation...my facebook blowing up with pictures of Walt Disney World Marathon weekend. I had so many friends completing quite the array of races this weekend the least I could do is go run four miles around my neighborhood. Congratulations to Brian, Kathy, Mike, Sam, Bryan, and Ashley...who ran between 22.4 and 48.6 miles each this weekend. I'm super proud and super jealous! 

Recipe of the Week!

Sausage Hash Brown Breakfast Casserole

My next three recipes can be considered the breakfast series. My team at work was in charge of the December birthday breakfast, so I have a few recipes that need to be posted from that. It was quite a morning trying to prepare multiple breakfast dishes, getting ready for work, and figuring out how to transport multiple hot dishes to my workplace, and because I can't quite always have it all together...you know there was a kitchen disaster to add to the drama of the morning. Thank goodness it was the last day of school before winter break. This casserole was pretty simple. In effort to make my life simpler, I cooked the sausage and hash browns the night before and added the cheese and eggs in the morning before throwing it in the oven and it worked out just fine. Just an option for you if you want to have breakfast ready quicker in the morning.

Ingredients:
1 lb hot Italian sausage
1 package frozen hashbrowns (30 oz)
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 cup shredded cheddar
8 eggs
2 cups milk

Directions:
Preheat over to 350. Brown sausage in a stovetop skillet until crumbled and no longer pink. Prepare hash browns according to package directions, seasoning with salt and pepper. Stir together sausage, hash browns, and cheese. Whisk together eggs and milk, and pour evenly over sausage and potato mixture. Bake in oven for about 40 minutes.

Friday Love

{ONE}

Staycation. Every year Matt's work does an annual conference the first week in January. Last year you might remember I joined him in New Orleans. Well this year is a little less exciting...Washington, DC. It's kind of fun, though, to stay in a hotel in your own city. At least I think so. I am going to join him tonight and see what I can find to do in the nation's capital.

{TWO}

Orange is the New Black. Matt and I recently finished all the episodes of Mad Men that we had been watching together, so we needed a new Netflix show. I had been wanting to watch Orange is the New Black since the summer, but we waited on it. We finally watched the first episode together earlier this week. Matt is not a fan, but I love it, so I am watching it by myself. It's by the same writer as Weeds which was our first Netflix obsession. It documents a rich, white woman's experiences in prison. I highly recommend it!

{THREE}

Snow Days. I know this has already made a {Friday Love} list, but I couldn't help but add it on again today. Yesterday when I was leaving school I thought there was no way we would have today off, but we got more snow than predicted (you know almost 2 whole inches...it's going to be a really sad day if we ever move back to Pennsylvania and I have to give up these snow days) and I was so excited every time I looked out the window last night...I couldn't wait for the code red call, which finally came around 10:45 last night.

{FOUR}

Birchbox. Last Christmas (like Christmas a year ago) my sister gave me a 6 month subscription to Birchbox. At first I wasn't that excited, but I grew to love getting my little box in the mail once a month. You get little samples of new beauty products and you can go online to review them for points (10 points per review) and 100 points equals 10 dollars. Well I spent my free birchbox money around mid December and I was so upset when they sent me the wrong products in my order. So I emailed them about it and not only did they let me keep the products they accidentally sent, they also get me a full refund for everything I spent, and sent me the new products for free. It did take a long time, but now I can go shopping for free again and end up with everything I wanted plus some :)

{FIVE}

NY Times Dialect Map. So I'm sure you all have seen this by now, but I thought I would post about it anyways. You answer 25 questions and the results show what city your dialect is most like based on your answers. I really can't believe it's accuracy. Everyone I know who has taken it has got the city they should. A screen shot of my map is to the left. Pittsburgher!!!!

Happy New Year!

 

Happy New Year! Last night we spent the night with friends eating at one of our favorite restaurants, Katerina's, watching We're the Millers, and drinking champagne at midnight. It was a nice, relaxed night.

This morning, we started a new tradition that we worked on all through 2013. Last year around this time we decided to write down good things that happened all throughout the year on pieces of paper and keep them in this baked bean pot. The things we wrote could be anything positive, or funny, and we never showed each other what we wrote, and I don't think either of us peeked through the year. This morning we read through all of them since we were too tired when we got home last night. It was pretty funny to see what each other wrote, and to remember some of the completely random little things I wrote. I think one of my resolutions will be to try to write more things for our 2014 jar.