As promised...

Culinary Victories! This week I made a Sweet Caramel Cake for my book club meeting. I think it was rather tasty and it proved to be a hit at Book Club and at work the next day! I got the recipe from http://topwithcherries.blogspot.com . Her blog is fabulous!

Here is the Sweet Caramel Cake in all its Glory! :)

And, I made homeade Salsa last night!!! It was mighty tasty and super easy to make! I got this recipe from, you probably have already guessed as she is one of my favorites, The Pioneer Woman! You should really check out her blog if you haven't!

Tonight I'm making Beef Stroganoff and might try and bake something new! Justin has some homework for his Saturday class, so that leaves me to the kitchen :) Tomorrow we are going to try and go see the Georgetown/Duke game, but tickets are MIGHTY expensive right now, so we'll see! Tomorrow night we are going to Michelle and Jarret's housewarming party/Michelle's birthday party, it should be a blast! Sunday we've got church and a game watching party for the Tennessee Game! Fun filled weekend for the Waters!

Justin's headed to Frozen Nebraska!

So Justin flies out tonight to go to Omaha, NE for work. Just an fyi, we had a high of 60 here today and he's headed for frozen temperatures. So, I do feel a little bad for him. I never like it when he goes on work trips. As silly as it may seem, I miss him terribly! It will be just me and the dog until Wednesday night, but I think we can manage. Tomorrow night, I'm going to make a Sweet Caramel Cake from scratch for my Wednesday night Book Club meeting. Besides spending any time I can with my husband, Book Club is my most loved event! I just absolutely love getting together with my girlfriends and have a few (too many) glasses of wine and discussing the book we've read while munching on delightful snacks! This month we read The Help. It is FANTASTIC!! It's probably the best book we have read so far and I am so eager to discuss it - I think we all are!

Happy Monday! If I have any culinary victories this week, I'll share those!

My husband is a HARD worker!

So I decided to treat him last night. I made my first (first successful) homeade cake, COMPLETELY from scratch! I got inspired by The Pioneer Woman's blog and made one of her recipes: Strawberry Shortcake Cake. It took a lot of work and patience, but I was SO proud once it was done! I think Justin really enjoyed it!

My finished cake from the top and then from the side!

Chesapeake Beach, MD!

On the Sunday of MLK weekend, Justin and I went to Chesapeake Beach, MD for the night. We had a free night's stay at the Chesapeake Beach Resort and Spa from buying two Wizards tickets because they are so bad. They literally have to pay you to come, but we were ok with it! :) We had a blast! The town is SO cute! Our resort was really nice. We had a nice seafood dinner and then went upstairs to play SERIOUS bingo! We had so much fun. We were definitely the youngest folks by a good 30 years, but we really enjoyed ourselves. We had a nice breakfast and walked around the cute bay town for a little while before heading back to DC. It was only 30 miles away from the city, but we felt like we were worlds away! So much fun!

Justin and I on the pier at our Resort!

New Year's Eve!

This year for New Year's Eve we bought tickets to the DC Downtown Countdown New Year's Eve party with Third Eye Blind. We had a GREAT time! Katie and Nick came up to visit and Courtney and Liz came to the party with us. It was a lot of fun, minus the Vols losing their bowl game.

Nick, me, Katie and Justin about to ring in the new year!
Happy 2010!!! Me and Liz!

Me, Liz's friend Sarah, Liz, and Katie having a blast!

KD girls ready for New Year's Eve!

Me and my handsome husband in his Vols formal wear! :)

Christmas Extravaganza!

So we did the Christmas Extravaganza again this year, except this year we had to leave one night early. We packed up really quickly and left on Friday night when we were planning to leave Saturday. The threat of the Blizzard of 09 was real, so we wanted to hit the road. We only made it to Fredericksburg (about 60 miles away) before we had to pull off and spend the night. The next day was a lot of driving, but we finally made it to Myrtle Beach, SC to see my extended family. We stayed there until Monday and then went to Gastonia, NC to spend some time with my family and my Aunt Dannie and Rick. On Wednesday morning we left to go to Tennessee and see all of Justin's family. Justin's 10 year high school renunion was Wednesday night and we had so much fun at that! We spent Christmas morning at his mom's house and then at his grandmother's house and then Christmas night into the next day at his Dad's house. We had a wonderful trip! We drove in that little car of ours so much that when we got back we decided we needed a new one! We got a 2007 Camry and we love it! :)

The girls at Grandmother's on Christmas Day. Tara, Kimberly, Ashley and Me.

Justin and I on Christmas Morning

Justin's 10 year reunion gang!

Justin and I at formal Christmas Dinner at Uncle Stewart's

My family at Formal Christmas Dinner! :)