Hot Dates...

For Valentine's Day this year Patrick was in charge of dinner. We decided to celebrate the Saturday before Valentine's Day. Earlier in the week Patrick presented me with a menu. It had three options to choose from and whatever I chose Patrick would cook for us. The options all sounded great, but I decided on baked shrimp scampi, with seared asparagus, and a caramelized pancetta & fennel salad. I think I chose right because it was fantastic! It was the best shrimp scampi and it was Patrick's first time eating it. We ended up cooking together which is one of our favorite things to do. We ate our dinner in courses and had a great night!


We had been wanting to take Chad and Danielle out shooting for a long time. In March we finally did it. Patrick lined up our evening and found lots of deals for us to make it fun. We started by going to the shooting range where we shot both of Patrick's guns. After that we headed to a Mediterranean restaurant. Patrick got an awesome deal off a website and we were able to get $30 worth of food for $5 plus tip. Then we headed to a mall nearby where we got free three-scoop-fudge-brownie sundaes from Häagen-Dazs thanks to facebook.

We had a great evening and we all enjoyed the date Patrick planned for us!

Deals, deals, deals...

For the past couple of months Ashley and I have been getting into deals of all kind. It started out with finding other sites besides Groupon that offer deals. Then because of Sunny we started getting into the blogging world of deals. Let me just say that it's awesome! We've created an email for when we sign up for all these sites and offers. We've also created a facebook account because many times to get offers/coupons you have to "like" something on facebook. Rupert Wong is our facebook doppelganger.

Anyway, this past week and today we scored pretty big by our standards. Today at the grocery store we paid $27.08 for all this food. We saved 43% off of our total bill and everything we got was some thing we're going to use this week or next. This was one of our best weeks for savings as a percent of the total. As you can see from the pic it is quite hall.


Also, in the pic you might notice some adult intimate products. For these we made a special trip to Target. Normal they retail for $19.99. Target had them on sale for $14.99 plus a $5 gift card for each purchased. And on top of all that Ashley found or should I say Rupert Wong got us a coupon for $7 off one. She printed out two and we each went through a separate line and bought one. In summary for the two, we paid $16 cash, got $10 in gift cards, making them $3 each. This product rarely goes on sale and for the two they retail for $40. That was awesome and I'm sure it will be!!!

The last deal I'll mention (however, there are many more) is that last week, due to having multiple email accounts that have an account with Groupon and a promotion they offered, we were able to get a $30 certificate to a Mediterranean restaurant nearby for only $5. I've ate there several times before and the food is good. This deal was all about timing and being a little patient.

We are totally loving all the deals sites there are!

Our First Michigan Christmas Together...

We decided that we would have a real Christmas tree! So we went to pick one out on a really, really cold day. Many of the trees looked like a regular Christmas tree mated with a cactus. They were kind of hideous. After hunting around for a while we picked out the perfect tree. Seriously, it was the perfect tree. It looked fake after we got it decorated. Next year we think we are going to go with a mutant tree.

This is us at 5 am on Christmas morning.

Patrick caramelizing the ham. It was tasty.

Sunday Sledding...

This winter in Michigan it has been a little chilly and decided to snow. After avoiding touching the snow for as long as we could we finally caved this past Sunday and went out and played. Ashley got me a brand new orange sled, the Sled-enator 3000, for Christmas. As you can see in the first pic it has twice the acceleration as it's predecesor that Ashley is riding. Ashley got it to help me enjoy the winter as they can be a little ruff..

As you can tell in the pic above I've gained a little weight. I'm now pushing 275. The majority of the weight gain was as a result of the dozen bags of marshmallows I ate earlier that day. Kidding, the jacket is just really puffy.

This is Chad and Danielle's dog, Rukia. She's a labridoodle and loved playing in the snow. She also likes eating it. The three of them joined us in our sledding fun.

What's been cooking in our kitchen this summer...

Ashley and I cook meals for ourselves at least twice a week. Usually these meals are made to last several days, often we mix it up by using the previously cooked meal in a different way. For example, several weeks ago we spent hours one night cooking a 6 lb beef brisket. We froze two thirds and used the remaining third the next day for dinner. It was delicious, we ate it over pasta with basil and fennel. Two weeks later, we transformed it into a slammin sandwich that is seen here as the last picture.

Below are some of the things that we have cooked (the ones we remembered to take pictures of):

This is the tasty cake that Bridget made last Christmas. We found the recipe and made it on Ashley's birthday weekend.

These are the cupcakes that Ashley made for the ward picnic. They were lemon cake with raspberry poke. She was very excited to make these because she had not played with fondant for a while and wanted to use the new mixer.

This is chicken and green beans with coconut curry sauce. We ate it.

This is a fresh strawberry pie with kiwi glaze. (Side note: We were hoping for a awesome green color when making the kiwi glaze. Apparently kiwis when cooked lose their color, and the resulting glaze resembles snot.)

This is an Italian sausage sub made from leftover sausage spaghetti. It has melted mozzarella and feta spread that is amazing!

This is a beef brisket sandwich with sauteed onions and peppers, a pickle, and jack cheese. All on an onion roll. YUM!!! :)

Wedding Set Up...

This is the first installment of our wedding pictures. We make no promises to deliver subsequent installments in a timely manner, as should be expected, by this belated first installment. We hope you enjoy!

Birthdays...

Ashley's 23rd Birthday. I took off early to finish some of the painting projects we had been working on and clean up our apartment that had been "under construction" for several weeks. It looked good. She was very surprised. We went out for Mexican at the Cantina and ate this goopy chocolate cake that I made for her. It was a fun day.

For Patrick's 28th birthday we went a Polish restaurant in Hamtramck with my family. There we enjoyed traditional food. Before heading home for cake we stopped down an alley and saw the towns version of "Disneyland". A 90 year old man decorated his entire back yard with paintings, statues, and all sorts of painted things. It was AMAZING!!! The picture does not do it justice.