Friends

Emily’s Wedding

May 7, 2013 By Laurie 18 Comments

Hi all!

So WordPress was not cooperating last night, so I couldn’t post this But, this morning, I have a recap of an amazing wedding James and I attended this past weekend in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One of my best friends, Emily, married her wonderful husband Bill on Saturday, and I had such a blast celebrating their marriage with some of my best friends.

James and I drove to my parents’ house Friday night to break up the trip a bit, which was a great way to start the weekend. I always love seeing them, so that was great. Then, Saturday afternoon, we were off to Grand Rapids.

James and I checked into the hotel (the Amway Plaza — BEAUTIFUL) and met up with Molly and Steve to change and then head to the wedding.

Look at this lobby -- are you kidding me?

Hotel room before the ceremony

The ceremony was so beautiful!

Gettin married

Kappa bridesmaids

The happy couple

After the ceremony, we went back to the hotel for a bit before heading over to the reception. I’ll let the pics speak for themselves (Note, I had to borrow a lot of these pictures from Molly — she was much better with the camera thing than I am)

At the reception

Molly and Steve -- our roomies!

Enjoying ourselves

James and Steve cuttin a rug

Newly weds

getting ready for a group photo

Kappa ladies

Molly and I approving some photos

Hilarious

Randomness

End of the night

After the reception, we headed back to the hotel to get some shut eye. Sunday morning, James, Molly, Steve, and I spent most of the morning telling stories, recapping, and giggling, which was a huge highlight of the weekend as well

Also, I have to mention — this was my first time in Grand Rapids, and I loved it! It was a beautiful city!

Look how pretty!

We had SUCH a blast! I love being with my friends always, and this wedding was no different! Everything was beautiful, so fun, and such an amazing start to wedding season! Congrats to Emily and Bill, you are both wonderful and we love you!!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Filed Under: Faves, Friends, Wedding

Weekend Recap in Pics: My Bridal Shower

April 21, 2013 By Laurie 16 Comments

Hi everyone!

Hope you had a fabulous weekend! I definitely did because I was able to head home to Indiana to see my family and attend my bridal shower hosted by my mom and my matron of honor (my sister). It was such a great time, so well done by my mom and sister, and overall, an amazing weekend. So enough with the words. Here is my weekend recap in pictures:

Blue and green theme

Mimosa and candy bar (mimosas to-be poured)

The spread

Hanging out in the kitchen

Getting some food

Chatting and eating

My lovely sister ready to announce a game

Presents

Enjoying my mimosa

opening presents

Kappas at the shower

My sister and my mom did a great job, and I can’t thank them enough for everything they did for me (this weekend and always). I felt so blessed to have so many people to spend my day with, and I can’t wait to see them all at the wedding.

Hope you all had a great weekend, and have a wonderful Monday!

Filed Under: Family, Faves, Friends, Wedding

My Weekend in Indy

April 16, 2013 By Laurie 18 Comments

Hi everyone! Thanks for letting me reflect a bit. I’m still reeling, as I’m sure we all are, but here’s a post for some normalcy.

****

Time for my weekend recap!

My friend Emily had a bridal shower and bachelorette party in Indianapolis, and I was so excited to attend. Emily is one of my dearest friends, and we have had some excellent adventures together back in college, so of course I wanted to support her this weekend. Also, it was an excuse to see all my other Butler friends!

To start the weekend, I drove to Indy to stay with my bff Molly. I love staying with her because 1. I love her, 2. I love her fiancee, Steve, and 3. I am obsessed with her pup! He is the sweetest.

Molly, Steve, and I had dinner at Cooper’s Hawk, then played some old school Super Nintendo. Great night!

Saturday morning, after a quite snuggle with Stuart, I got a quick run in then got ready to meet my other bestie Alicia for lunch.

Super old school pic of Molly, Alicia, and I

We head to Cafe Patachou to eat and catch up before the shower. And talk about her ADORABLE baby, Annalise.

So cute inside -- we ate at that counter

Seriously! How cute?!

The shower was great! My friends Maggie and Kim hosted in Maggie’s beautiful house, and we had a blast laughing, eating, and watching Em open presents.

I then headed back to Molly’s to see the puppy she was sitting for. Oh. My. Gosh. So so so cute. I think I died about 13 times from cuteness overload.

How cute?!?!

Puppy!!

Stuart and the puppy playing

After gushing over the puppy, getting some Chipotle for dinner, and getting ready, we headed back to Maggie’s for the bachelorette party.

Beautiful Kappas at the bachelorette party

After catching up with some more wonderful friends, we headed to Broad Ripple (our favorite stomping grounds while in college) to keep the party going. After dancing, hanging out, and tons more laughing, we called it a night.

Sunday morning, Molly, Steve, and I headed to the A2Z Cafe for some much needed reinforcements before I headed home. It was a long drive Sunday, but totally worth it.

Seriously, my friends are the absolute best and any opportunity to hang out with them is a blessing. I miss them all already (the weekend went wayyy too fast), but luckily I get to see a handful of them next weekend for my shower, and all of them for Emily’s wedding in a few weeks.

Until then, I will just reminisce about this weekend and how I’m so blessed to have this amazing group of ladies in my life.

I hope you had a great weekend as well! See you tomorrow!

Filed Under: Faves, Friends, Traveling

#MKE Foodie Fitness Fete

April 10, 2013 By Laurie 20 Comments

As promised, I do have something super fun for you today — a recap of the blogger meet up I attended last week!

This was a meet-up unlike any I have been to or could imagine, it was amazing! Eleven Milwaukee-area bloggers and a few additional food and fitness enthusiasts got together to mingle, share fitness tips, food ideas, and eat, drink, and be merry.

The way the event was set up was each person was to bring a food from a certain category (I chose my Flourless Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies for the healthy recipe category), introduce ourselves and talk about our blog/fitness routine/and recipe, then watch four people demo their recipes so we could see how easy they were to prepare, then eat all the delicious food.

The event took place at a community room in the Gaslight Lofts apartments, a Mandel Group property. I have to give a HUGE shout out to Mandel — remember the apartment I lived in when I started blogging, where I got engaged on the balcony? It is still my favorite place I have ever lived (outside of our home), and I still miss it so much. The Mandel Group is awesome, and if you need a place to live in Milwaukee, start with them!

Thanks for letting us use the room!

Another person to mention is Ly Nguyen, who works at Capture Life Moments Photography. She took all the pictures I will be posting here — plus tons more! She was great, and I love that she documented everything. Check her out, too! Now, onto those pictures of hers (I picked a select few to showcase on here):

Beautiful check in table

The cookies I brought

Our wonderful host, Sheila

Introducing ourselves

Listening intently to the intros

Wine and Cheese

Watching the demos

Plate of absolute delicious-ness

The whole group

All the food was so good, and I can’t wait to try all the different recipes! Here is a quick list of the other foods at the Fete and their rightful creators:

Alysha Witwicki: Cowboy Cookies
Brittney Lynn: Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies
Sheila Wordell: Blue Cheese Walnut Spinach Pasta Salad with Avocado, Mint Cantaloupe Granita, Orange Blossom Lemonade
Maressa Porter: Pizza Casserole
Nicole Genthe Smith: Southwestern Veggie Soup
Sun Torke: Peanut Butter Mounds Bar & Baked Southwestern Egg Rolls
Kaylie Magestro: Profiteroles filled with Mousse
Kat Pummill: Red Quinoa Avocado Salad.
Melissa Moore: Stove Top Salmon Patties (<– which we had for dinner this weekend — so so good!!)
Michelle Zerzanek: Power Scones (you know I loved these)
Sara Brozek: Indian carrot soup
James Brown: Chicken & Slaw salad

If you are interested in any of these recipes, let me know and I can get them to you!

The event was so fun, and it was nice to be a part of something so big and exciting. Sun even created a hashtag for the event, so of course, we all tweeted about it that night and the next day:

Proof

Seriously, loved them!

Another fete is in the works for June, so hopefully I can attend that one as well!

That’s it for today, enjoy your Wednesday!!

Filed Under: Blogging, Faves, Food, Friends

Weekend in Review

March 24, 2013 By Laurie 18 Comments

Hi everyone!

I took a little break from the computer this weekend to hang out with some friends and watch some basketball. It was a fun weekend–minus one minor detail–so let’s get to it in the form of a tangent-ish post:

1. James’s high school friend (and groomsman) Bradford and his girlfriend Sara were in town, and his other friend (and groomsman) Mark and his fiance Sam came over as well. We had a great time hanging out with them, as always. We went to our favorite brunch place, Trocadero, watched basketball, played Kinetic, and just generally enjoyed each other’s company. We will be seeing them again for the wedding and hopefully more this summer because Milo was a big fan of his new friends.

2. Speaking of Milo, he was pretty pooped after hanging out with everyone this weekend:

my sleepy bear

3. So, after watching Casablanca, I fell in love the champagne saucer in the movie. I wanted to register for some, but we couldn’t find the right ones. Well, James is the best, scoured the Internet for me, and found the exact replicas, which came this weekend. So we, of course, broke out the champagne this weekend to enjoy them!

Our new glasses

Some Casablanca memorabilia

Delish champagne

Obsessed!

4. I bought some new nail polish to use this weekend. It’s a different color than I’m used to, but I love!

fun weekend color

5. Now for the sad part — Butler lost It was hard having them play Marquette because typically James cheers for Butler with me, but he had to go for his alma mater. I was pretty much devastated, but I know there are big things on the horizon for my boys!

Always my team

6. James and I are now getting ready for some Walking Dead, then early to bed to make up for some missed sleep this weekend (totally worth it!).

Have a wonderful Sunday night and a great start to your week!!

Filed Under: Faves, Friends, Milo, Movies, Sports

Weekend Recap

March 11, 2013 By Laurie 24 Comments

Hi everyone!

I apparently decided to completely avoid the computer all weekend, but I’m glad I did! I had a great weekend and enjoyed unplugging for a bit.

Friday night, James and I enjoyed a frozen pizza and watched some episodes of The Walking Dead. James and I always talk about how our favorite “date nights” are having carry out and a beer in front of the tv on Friday nights. It doesn’t sound romantic, but it’s seriously my favorite place in the world.

Loving this show

Saturday, we woke up bright and early to clean up the house for our guests! But before that, I went for my longest run since the heel injury. It wasn’t fast, but I LOVED it. It felt so so great to get out there and run again.

4.05 miles

And I’m ok with this time because it was hailing and sleeting, so I think I did ok

Proof of the crappy weather (34 degrees!)

James’s college roommate (who was also his roommate his first year of law school when we started dating AND one of James’s groomsman), his wife, and their almost 11-month old daughter came to visit. I didn’t take any pictures of the baby, but it’s a good thing I didn’t — my camera would have exploded!!! She is the cutest! Such a happy, smiley baby, and I loved watching Milo with her — he loved her!

Saturday night, the five of us headed to COA, a local mexican restaurant for some dinner, then ended the night with frozen yogurt.

Old picture, but you get it

Perfect choice!

Sunday morning, we had carry out breakfast from a local cafe, so after enjoying some pancakes and eggs and watching the baby and Milo play a bit, they headed out. It was so so good to see them and meet little Ainsley — can’t wait to see them at the wedding!

Someone was incredibly tired after running after his new buddy all day:

Passed out

Snuggling with his duck

And telling mom to not leave

After they left, James and I headed out to finish our registry at Bed, Bath & Beyond. It took quite awhile (despite already having put a large amount of items on our registry online), but we found some great stuff we are really excited about! We actually registered for a lot of outdoor entertaining/pool things — you can tell we are over this WI snow.

After registering for about 4 hours, we were too tired to do anything but watch The Walking Dead, so that’s what we did. I made a batch of roasted brussel sprouts for dinner, and we stayed parked in front of the tv until bedtime.

Then it was back to the grind today! It was such a great weekend, and I loved hanging out with our friends, so hopefully this week goes fast so we can get to another great weekend! One day down

Have a wonderful night!!

Filed Under: Fitness, Friends, James, Milo, Running, Television, Wedding

Hot & Sweet Crock Pot Meatballs

November 18, 2012 By Laurie 14 Comments

End of another weekend, huh? They go by way too fast This weekend was especially fast because of how busy we were, but it was definitely worth it.

Friday, James and I spent the majority of the night cleaning and finishing unpacking. The house is finally unpacked (still not filled with furniture), and it’s so nice to have everything in it’s place!

Saturday, James and I went for a run then got ready to host some of James’s co-workers and their significant others. We had them over for a little game night, and I made a little spread of appetizers.

Apps for the evening

First, I made spinach and artichoke dip using this recipe. I used plain greek yogurt instead of sour cream, and next time I think I will use some Laughing Cow cheese instead of cream cheese. But it was absolutely delicious. We also had some salsa to got with the tortilla chips.

Chips, dip, and salsa

Next, after a little collaboration with my mom, I came up with a meatball recipe we loved (see below)!

Crock pot meatballs

Seriously, what recipe is complete without some mom collaboration? :) I definitely recommend making these — soo easy and flavorful.

We also included some pretzel crisps (buffalo and jalapeno) in our spread, as well as these DELICIOUS pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

Pretzel and tortilla chips

New favorite cookie

These were a hit, and I would recommend them for any Thanksgiving function you are attending next week.

All in all, between the foods, games, and fun drinks, we had a great night.

Them, this morning, James and I got up bright and early for brunch, and it was well worth it!

We met Alysha and Brittney and their significant others at Blue’s Egg, which is supposed to be one of the bst brunch places in the Milwaukee area. Alysha had been there before and there was an hour wait, so she suggested we met at 8 a.m. It sounds early, but there definitely would have been a wait otherwise, and the food was wonderful! There was such a variety of traditional and nontraditional options, and it didn’t disappoint!

Blue's Egg

(Source)

I know now why this place comes so highly recommended! I got the hash browns with curry tofu, yogurt sauce, and a buttermilk pancake on the side. James got a crab cake with toast and two poached eggs. We were both extremely happy with our choices!

Unfortunately, no pictures (we joked about forgetting cameras), but we spent too much time talking to think about pictures. In fact, we chatted for probably close to an hour after we finished eating! It was so great getting to see Alysha again and hang out with Brittney! I’m definitely looking forward to hanging out with them more.

After brunch, James watched the while Milo and I napped.

This is an old picture, but apparently this is what we looked like

Then we played in the backyard with Milo for a bit, watched more football, and relaxed.

Luckily, this is a short week, because I am a little tired still, but that’s ok because the weekend was definitely worth it. Fun times with great friends and great food is always the perfect combo!

On that cheesy note, time to do a little reading then bed. Have a great T-Giving week!

Hot & Sweet Crock Pot Meatballs

Ingredients:

- 1 large bag (or multiple small bags) of frozen, precooked homestyle meatballs

- 12 oz can of beeer (I used Miller Lite)

- 1 bottle plus 1/2 cup more of your favorite BBQ sauce

- 1/2 cup of ketchup

- 1/4 cup grape jelly

- 2 T of garlic

- 3 T hot sauce

- 3 generous T of brown sugar

Directions:

Thaw the meatballs to prevent your sauce from being too runny (I left them out overnight). Add thawed meatballs and all the other ingredients to a crock pot and cook on low for 8 hours.

These were great on their own, and as a part of a meatball sandwich. Definitely something I will be making again for a party or event. Enjoy!

Filed Under: Blogging, Food, Friends, Milo, Milwaukee

Wedding Weekend

September 10, 2012 By Laurie 5 Comments

Another weekend away from blogging. This time it wasn’t because I needed to unplug, but because I didn’t have internet (except on my phone) and I was busy!

This weekend, one of James’s best friend’s from high school (and one of our groomsmen) got married in James’s hometown. We had a great time seeing members of James’s family briefly and hanging out with his friends at the wedding. I don’t have a ton of pictures (too busy having too much fun), but here’s what I do have (sorry the quality isn’t great):

Jeff waiting for his bride

Groomsman James

Groomsmen (the two on the right are also in our wedding)

The beautiful bride

Wedding party (James on the right)

On the party bus (sorry about the terrible glare -- James said it was my halo, haha)

Well, that’s it for now, just a short recap. I’m off to run a bit and then get some much needed sleep!

Have a happy Tuesday!

Filed Under: Friends, Wedding

Bridal Shower and Bachelorette Party Time in Illinois

August 20, 2012 By Laurie 16 Comments

Happy Monday everyone! Ready for another week?

I had a great weekend to lead me in to this week!

This weekend was my best friend Steph’s bridal shower and bachelorette party in Illinois. I was super excited to see Steph’s family, see some of my sorority friends, meet some of the other bridesmaids, and of course, go out in Steph’s hometown.

But first, I drove to my sister’s on Friday night so that I could get a portion of the driving out of the way and get to see my sister at the same time!

My sister and her husband just moved into a new apartment in Illinois, which I saw only briefly before the furniture got there, so I was excited to see the finished project.

Looking into the living room

Her balcony with our patio furniture

It was fun to sit and chat with Susan and Chris and enjoy some deep dish pizza and ice cream cake. Saturday morning, Chris made me this delicious sausage, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich.

Pure delicious-ness

Seriously how good does this look? It tasted even better! Thanks, Chris

I can never spend enough time with my sister, but luckily she is coming to my apartment on Saturday, so I bid her farewell and headed to Steph’s house.

Once I got to Steph’s, I changed at her parents’ house, then we headed to the shower. I was busy catching up with some friends from college who I hadn’t seen in awhile and also meeting some of Steph’s high school friends, so I didn’t take many pictures, but I did get one of the happy couple opening presents.

Steph and Patrick

Following the shower, we headed back to Steph’s parents’ to change, then it was off to the bachelorette party! Steph’s sisters had rented a party bus for us to go to different bars throughout the area. I didn’t get a ton of pics because I was too busy dancing, chatting with Steph’s mom, aunts, and cousins, and just having a great time with the bride and my friends. But here’s what I do have:

Party Bus

Our rolling nightclub

The Bride ready for her night (and her sister getting the music ready)

Wonderful sorority sisters

Karaoke at one of the bars

It was such a fun, fun night! I had a blast and am so excited for Steph’s wedding!

Now, it’s off to work. Have a great Monday everyone!

Filed Under: Family, Friends

Wedding Weekend in Illinois

July 22, 2012 By Laurie 8 Comments

Happy Sunday night!

This weekend went way too fast because I spent it with some of my best friends at my sorority sister Lauren’s wedding. James and I went to southern Illinois to spend the weekend celebrating a great friend. The wedding was so so fun, but instead of talking about it, check out the pics below: