Fall with a Daughter

Sorry for my crazy long blog hiatus friends!  I didn't really do it on purpose.  Sometimes life just gets in the way, huh?  

We've been out of town and busy, busy, busy so I have lots of updates for you!  First up...apple picking!

Matt and I go apple picking every year and I was so excited to share it this year with our daughter.  As an aside, want to know something weird?  It still feels unreal to me to say "daughter" and know she's mine.  I have a daughter.  When will that sentence not feel like a dream?  I mean, the girl is 9 months old!

We ended up venturing out on a weekend that was a little cold and wet...but we still had a great time and came away with a ton of apples.  Good thing they keep well!  I have them coming out of my ears!

Girl looks more and more like her daddy every single day.  

We let Natalie try some of an apple and she didn't seem too impressed.  Apparently since she has some in her oatmeal almost every day she could have cared less it was fresh from the tree.  Girl is our child for sure.

Weekend Round Up with Recipes!

Friday:

Matt and I went to dinner with some of our friends at a Mexican restaurant. Now, this not your typical Mexican food....as it is actually called mod mex and the restaurant serves things like duck and boar taquitos, weird flavors of margaritas, and crazy types of guacamole. Excuse me for not being sophisticated enough to understand the coolness of "mod" but I really much prefer chicken soft tacos, chips and salsa, and a regular lime flavored frozen margarita...but whatever...no one asked me.

Dinner was followed by....wait for it...salsa dancing lessons. Ha! Obviously not our idea. It was...interesting...but overall pretty fun. We learned the basic moves of salsa and were given a chance to do a little dancing after the class. My dear husband, bless his heart, did such a great job. I was so proud of his effort. He was the cutest little salsa dancer I had ever seen.


Saturday:

This weekend was filled with all sorts of yumminess! Thanks to my wonderful friends Lucy and Shaina...I was introduced to the amazingness that is pumpkin. Matt and I headed out to buy some ingredients for my pumpkin baking extravaganza and also bought a few more decorations for the outside of the house which I will share later this week. They may or may not include hay stacks and pumpkins!

I whipped up some pumpkin chocolate chip bread as well as pumpkin cream cheese muffins in the afternoon. They were both delicious. I was partial to the bread...because of the chocolate of course...but Matt fell in love with the muffins and had three for breakfast the next morning :)

Sunday:

Still overflowing with apples from our apple picking adventure of '09, Matt and I made an apple pie in the morning. We also tried our hand at homemade pie crust which was oh so yummy!

Here's a before picture of the pie before it went into the oven:


And the after:


It smelled delicious. And this is coming from a girl who does not like apple pie. Matt loved it...and I loved the crumb topping...so success all the way around :)


With the leftover pie crust we made these fabulous pie crust cookies!


Baked up...they were freaking unbelievable and ruined my diet for sure.


Matt went to the Browns game with a friend Sunday afternoon...so I hit up DSW for a new pair of black boots and Old Navy where I snagged these gorgeous fall items:

source

source

I had a coupon for $50 off! Who can beat that??

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I am looking forward to getting out of work and heading to the gym to try and work off all of those devilish pie crust cookies!

XOXO

Apple Picking

Good morning!

Weekend update...coming up!

Matt and I had such a lovely weekend!! I had wanted to go apple picking all week, but the weather was seemingly not in our favor. My hopes were low when I woke up on Saturday, but it wasn't raining so we took a shot. Oh my, I am so glad we did! It was a perfect fall day, no coat required, and simply beautiful outside. It was the first day I loved that it was fall.

Right as we got there I wanted to snap pictures of course! So I took this one!

As you can tell, NOT a picture. I was accidentally taking video...but it made me laugh so I thought I would share. Please do not judge my hideous laugh....

Please excuse the hair in my face...obviously I was struggling.

Matty...an action shot!






Peek-a-Boo!

I wanted to act like I was eating the apple right off the tree..but instead it looks like I am eating the branch. Funny photo FAIL.



Take Two...Success!






Matt in the tree getting the perfect apple! We later read a sign that said you weren't supposed to climb the trees. Oops. Sorry tree. Our bad.

We finished the day with a trip to the grocery and enjoyed homemade lasagna for dinner by yours truly! It was yum! Tomato and Basil Prosciutto! Yeah for leftovers!


We got our butts back to church on Sunday which felt incredible and hit up Sonic on the way home. Then I finally put up all of our fall/Halloween decorations! I am so excited to share those with you guys...perhaps tomorrow...

Then the very best thing happened! I went to the gym for about an hour, came home, and walked into a kitchen where ALL OF THE DISHES WERE DONE and I could hear the faint sound of the laundry running. My husband was busy, busy when I was gone. Talk about a love tank overflowing. My tank runneth over. I have to admit, I got a little teary. So sweet!


I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!! I cannot wait to hear about them all!!

XOXO