Save The Date Cards!

After many many many many many many many MANY iterations Jake and I (mostly Jake) FINALLY finished designing our Save The Date cards last night! We're ordering them from Vistaprint.com, which is an awesome website. You should check it out if you haven't already. We got 100 postcards for just $4.98 plus the cost of shipping. If we weren't such slackers shipping would only have been about $7.00, but since it took us till the middle of February to get the design done, I decided to splurge on the rush shipping. That means the cards should get to me in 3 business days!! I can't wait to see them. I hope they come out great!

Now I just need to get crackin on the wedding website, because that needs to be finished before I can actually mail the Save The Date cards out to people...oh, and I also need to get Jake to ask his half of the guest list for their addresses!! Wish me luck with that :-)

Sunday Cookin

This weekend was so beautiful! It was sunny and 70 degrees on Saturday and Sunday, so Jacob and I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and get a jump start on cleaning up the back yard. We got a lot of good work done out there, but as a result, I didn't have time to get my Sunday Cooking done! I have to say, it's making this week a lot harder! I did make it to the grocery store on Saturday morning, so I bought all of the supplies for my meals. I cooked one last night, and I plan to cook the other tonight. Hopefully after that I will be back on track. Here's what I made this week.

Easy Boneless Pork Chops
6 Boneless Pork Chops
1/2 C. BBQ Sauce
1/2 C. light Italian dressing

whisk dressing and BBQ sauce together. Spray a frying pan with Pam, and place chops in pan. cover with sauce mixture. Brown pork chops until cooked through (about 10 minutes on each side). I served them with some steamed veggies and some sliced potatoes that were baked in the oven.

Fajitas
1 lb. boneless skinless chicken tenders, sliced
3 green bell peppers
2 onions
lime juice
cheddar cheese
light sour cream
salsa
tortillas

Slice peppers and onions. Saute in a pan sprayed with Pam. Add lime juice, salt and black pepper to taste. Sometimes I'll add a splash of corona too if I have it on hand. Add chicken. Saute until chicken is cooked through. Serve with tortillas, and cheese, sour cream and salsa for toppings.

Roller Coaster Night

Last Night was definitely full of ups and downs! I had to stay late at work unexpectedly, so after rushing like a mad woman to get home and change my clothes, Jake and I headed over to Phipps Plaza for Keys of Hope. As expected, it was a great event. The food was wonderful, the champagne was flowing, and Jake and I had a great time hanging out with his coworkers, supporting a wonderful cause. We even got to try on some gorgeous Tiffany jewelery, including an NINE carat diamond engagement ring! Boy, was my hand tired! Jake bought me two keys for me to try my luck, and I'm very excited to report, that I was a winner!!! I won a beautiful silver Return to Tiffany bracelet! Jake's co-workers girlfriend Wendy also won an awesome crystal bowl, so it was definitely a successful event.

Unfortunately, about halfway through, I got a phone call from my sister, letting me know that she was in the hospital. I'm so thankful to be able to say that today everything is fine, and she is home safe and sound, but she went into early labor last night. The doctors gave her some medication to stop the contractions, and she's been ordered to stay on bedrest for the next two weeks. Ugh! And to top it off, today is her birthday (Happy Birthday Kelly!)! I'm still worried about her, but I do feel much better now that she's home, and I got to talk to her today. She sounds like she and the baby are both doing just fine. I also bought my plane ticket today to go visit her when the baby comes! Very exciting!

So, my night started off full of fun and surprises, and then it took a turn for the worse. It seems that everything is going to work out ok in the end though. Kelly, if you read this, just make sure that you keep that baby inside where it's safe, at least for the next few weeks!!

Keys of Hope

One of the Nonprofit organizations that Jake's company works with is The Bridge. The Bridge is a shelter and halfway house for troubled and abused adolescents in the Atlanta area. They're a fantastic organization, and they truly are doing amazing things to help children in need.

Each year around Valentines Day, they partner with the wonderful people at Tiffany & Co. to put on a fundraiser called Keys of Hope, and it has become Jake's traditional Valentines Day gift to me to participate! I love that it benefits such a well-deserving organization, but on top of that, it is actually a really fun event as well!

Instead of selling tickets to the event, they sell keys. If you buy a key, you get to go hang out at the Tiffany & Co. at Phipps Plaza for the night. They close it down to the general public, and they serve champagne and drinks, as well as lovely appetizers. Set up in the middle of the store is a big glass case, filled with signature blue tiffany boxes, and sealed with a big lock! About halfway through the night, they call up everyone with a key (you're allowed to buy as many as you like, and all of the proceeds go to The Bridge), and everyone gets to try their keys in the lock. Usually about 20-30 of the keys will actually open the lock, and if you're lucky enough that one of yours does, you get to pick a box out of the case! Tiffany and Co. donates a bunch of lovely prizes for the winners. Last year I wasn't a winner, but the first year I won a beautiful silver necklace. I can't tell you how exciting it was when my key turned in that lock!!

I really love this Valentine's Day tradition. It's always a fun night, there's a chance that I'll walk away with a great gift, and most of all, it goes to help a wonderful cause! I'm so excited for Keys of Hope tonight!

Sunday Cookin

One of my New Years Resolutions was to do all of my cooking for the week on Sundays. You see, I'm terrible about cooking dinner during the week. I'm great about planning out meals, and I'm great about going grocery shopping for all of the ingredients. However, when it comes down to it, and it's seven thirty on Tuesday night, and I've just come home from the gym, and Jake's just come home from work, 9 times out of 10, I will say I'm too tired to cook, and we'll wind up going out to eat. This was resulting in us wasting a TON of money on groceries, as well as spending way too much money and time in restaurants. It was bad for our budget, and our waistlines.

My solution was to attempt to cook up a few meals during the day on Sunday, package them up, pop them in the fridge, and then just heat and serve during the week. I wasn't sure how it was going to work out, especially seeing as how Sunday was already shopping day and laundry day, but it has actually been GREAT! I can't tell you how wonderful it has been knowing that every night of the week, I have a delicious, healthy, home-made meal ready to go, and I don't have to cook it!!

Now, it hasn't all been perfect. For example, I have learned that you should NOT cook shrimp stir fry when you're cooking for the week, because it will be gross by Wednesday. I've also learned that we really need to plan on going out to dinner on Friday, because after eating the same two meals five nights in a row, I will want to stab you in the eye if you suggest I eat it again on Friday. But overall, the experiment has been an overwhelming success.

Because this week was Superbowl Sunday, I didn't have very much time for cooking, so I made two quick recipes. Easy Chicken with Stuffing and Four Cheese Goulash. Here are the recipes if you're interested.

Easy Chicken with Stuffing
6 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts, pounded thin
1 can Cream of Chicken Soup
1/3 C. Milk
6 slices Swiss Cheese
1 box Stove Top Stuffing, prepared according to directions on box

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Spray a 13x9 baking dish with pam. Place raw chicken in pan. Mix soup and milk together, and pour over chicken. place cheese slices in a layer over soup mix. top with stuffing. Cover with tin foil and bake for 35-40 minutes.


Four Cheese Goulash
6 oz. Ziti
3/4 lb. Extra Lean Ground Beef (or ground turkey)
1 14 oz. can stewed tomatoes
1 C. chopped scallions
1/2 C. shredded swiss cheese
1/2 C. grated parmesan cheese
1/2 C. shredded cheddar cheese
3 oz. light cream cheese

Cook Ziti according to package directions. Brown beef. Drain. Add tomatoes and cook until slightly thickened. Add scallions and cheeses. Simmer until cheese is melted. Mix in pasta.

Couch to 5k

One of the things that really helps to keep me motivated, and returning to the gym day after day, is to have a goal other than a number on the scale.

With that in mind, I've decided to give the Couch to 5K program a(nother) try! C25K is great. It is a 9 week training program to turn a non-runner (ooh, that's me!) into someone who can run a 5K (oh, I'd love to be able to do that!). For each of the 9 weeks, you are supposed to run 3 days each week, and there are different workouts, that get progressively harder as you continue. I completed week 3, day 2 yesterday.

One of the great parts about the couch to 5k program is that as it's gained in popularity, people have made podcasts to go along with it. They're great free downloads with music in all different styles that tell you when to run and when to walk for all of the 9 weeks of workouts. They make the program a snap to follow. You can find a bunch of them at www.c25k.com

If you're looking for a new source of motivation in the gym, I definitely recommend giving this program a try. It's definitely more interesting than just getting on the treadmill for half an hour, because I actually feel like I'm achieving something while I'm on there!

Dine Out in Atlanta Tomorrow!

Atlantans Together Against Crime ATAC) is working with restaurants all across the city tomorrow night to sponsor a Dine Out event in honor of John Henderson, the bartender who was murdered earlier this month, during a Robbery at The Standard in East Atlanta.

More than 65 restaurants are participating in the event, and all proceeds will be donated to Crime Stoppers Atlanta, and will go towards a reward for information leading to an arrest in Johns case. All you need to do is go eat either lunch or dinner at any participating restaurant! Restaurants will then donate 20% of their profits to the cause.

Check out www.atlantanstogether.org for a full list of restaurants participating in the event. I suggest Fritti, El Taco, or Vickery's if you're interested in the best Mac n Cheese you've ever experienced!

The Ultimate Budget Bride Purchase

As some of you might have heard, weddings are expensive. In fact, they're stupid expensive. I think when you tell someone that you're buying something for a wedding, they just automatically double the price. So in an attempt to not spend a small fortune on what, in the end, is just a big party to tell people "Yay, Jake and I are going to...keep hanging out", I've been doing my best to negotiate with vendors, and hunt for bargains. I've been doing lots of research and one thing I've found is that if you buy your wedding dress online, instead of from a traditional bridal shop, you can save a LOT of money. Like 50%. For the exact. same. dress. You just have to be brave enough to order the most important dress of your life from a very seedy looking website, knowing that if it arrives at your door (or doesn't) looking totally different than how you expected, that there will be no store for you to go to, and no salesperson for you to complain to. Scary.

When I first ran across the idea, I wrote it off. But the more I've looked into it, the better it sounds. I've found a website, Pearls Place, that has a fantastic deal on my dress. Now, their website is not exactly a thing of beauty, but it is tied to an actual brick and mortar store in New Orleans, and if you call the number, you talk to actual people, who are very helpful. The store has been in business for over 20 years, it has a favorable rating with the BBB, and it's an authorized dealer of the designer that makes my dress. And I've talked to several brides who have ordered both their gowns and their bridesmaids gowns from Pearl with fantastic results.

So, I think I'm going to take the ultimate budget bride plunge, and order my dress off the internet!! Please think good thoughts for me!

And in case you think this is a terrible idea: my sister got married five years ago in an absolutely gorgeous dress, which just happens to be my size. Should the worst happen, I have backup!!

Social Training

I am a social media junkie. I freely admit it. I even watched the inauguration yesterday at cnn.com and made full use of their Facebook feed. It was great.

Well, my friend Carmen over at Pecan Flan clued me in to a great new site this morning called dailymile.com It combines two of my favorite things, Social Media and Exercise! OK, well it combines one of my favorite things with one thing that I begrudgingly do everyday...even if I don't love it. And while I may not love exercise (although I'm working on it!), sites like dailymile.com definitely help to make it more fun, at least for techie nerds like me. Dailymile lets you log all of your workouts, but it also lets you make friends like your typical myspace or facebook site. And they can see how much you've been exercising. Talk about accountability! They can even send you little messages to help motivate you in your efforts. The site also helps to connect you with people in your area who are interested in similar types of training, and lets you know about races and events in your neighborhood. Pretty cool!

One extra perk is that you can sync Dailymile to work with Twitter, so it will post your workout summaries to your twitter feed. How nice for a twitter addict like myself!

Happy Inauguration Day

Happy Inauguration Day! I am so excited for our new president. I am proud to say that I voted for Obama (after waiting in line for a grueling four and a half hours!), and I really hope that today marks the beginning of a new direction for our country.

Today is exciting for many of us on a political level, but it should be exciting for everyone on a historical level. Today is definitely history in the making, and I'm happy to know that as a voter I helped to make this all happen.

I have a planning bio!

I'm completely addicted to the wedding planning forums on theknot.com. They're a great resource for anyone planning a wedding, as well as a fun way to waste time when things get slow at work...not that I ever participate in non-work activities while I'm at work!

A lot of the regular posters on the forums there make planning bios, or websites that show all of the details of your wedding. I finally decided to go ahead and make one today. There's not much to it yet, because we still have most of our planning ahead of us, but feel free to take a look at what we have so far.

http://ericaandjacob.weebly.com