Visitors & Doggy Cones

This weekend we had Ryan and Lisa in town for a short visit. Ryan arrived on Thursday and Lisa arrived on Friday. We were glad they made it since they were coming from Miami and we were worried hurricane Irene would not allow them to get here, but they made it. Friday night was pretty chill as we went out to dinner and then to the Compound for some live music. On Saturday we had Mike and AJ over for another Mexican fiesta with carne asada from my favorite groceria and plenty of margaritas. The night ended with the party in the pool. The pool party was during a dust storm which was kind of crazy to see, but it was a good time.


Besides visitors we dealt with Izzy having to wear a "cone" around her neck. Yup, her eye was not healing and so Andy took her back to the vet last Wednesday. The vet gave us more prescription drugs and this time sent Andy and Izzy home with one of those doggy cones. Her eye is not going to heal until she stops rubbing it. We didn't put it on immediately because we thought we could just watch her and keep her from rubbing her eye, but that became impossible and so the cone went on her Friday. Since the cone has been on she is slowly starting to heal. I really hope it heals fast because she honestly looks ridiculous wearing it and I feel really bad for her. The first day she wouldn't move with it on as she would just stand there. We (aka Andy) had to pick her up and carry her outside for a potty break and then back in the house. In due time she finally got over the cone and tonight she is just fine wearing it. I just hopes it heals fast so my poor baby doesn't have to keep wearing this cone.

Organization Weekend

This weekend revolved around getting organized. I am a very neat and organized person, but in the past year or so I turned into a hot mess with my organization skills. I could blame it on the wedding planning, but I honestly don't think that is what caused my lack of organization lately...or for the past year or two. The weekend was not planned like this, but I started organizing the hallway closet and it just escalated from there.

The hallway closet houses three baskets with medicine supplies, SPF and other misc items. We have been in this house for four years now so you can imagine the hot mess the three baskets looked after we just piled stuff on top of stuff. I went through and tossed out all the expired medicines...and that was a lot...then I re-organized the baskets in the closet so everything is nice and neat.

From there Andy and I decided to get our camping supplies organized as well. Every time we go camping we toss all items in one large rubbermaid container and this causes all kinds of problems when we are trying to find items we need...especially in the dark. The Campbell's are always very organized with smaller rubbermaid containers and if you ask Amber for something in particular she can always tell you where to find it. After the last camping trip I told Andy that we should get more organized like that as it might make camping a little easier on me if I feel organized. We went to Target and got three smaller rubbermaid containers and some other misc items that we are always missing from our containers or items that we designated as strictly camping so they can always stay in the containers. This is the outcome and now we are ready for our next camping weekend.


We also went through all of our clothes to get rid of old clothes or items that don't fit anymore and donate them to Goodwill. We ended up with 8 bags to drop off this morning and our closet looks much cleaner. This got me thinking...let's go shopping next weekend!!!! Andy's car is filled with our 8 bags of clothes, plus one vacuum and one lamp that we don't need.


One last item I organized this weekend is my jewelry. I have always just been putting them in the cupboard in the second bathroom. This causes a giant tangled mess every morning when I am leaving for work. I can never just grab a necklace as i am heading out the door because it's always a hot mess.


I decided to hang hooks in the cupboard so I could hang up all my necklaces and we purchased those 3M hooks that are supposed to be easy to take off. Well, Andy hung up 12 hooks for me and now my jewelry is very organized.


It was a relaxing but productive weekend. Until next weekend when we have visitors from Wisconsin.

The Vet, Cleaning and Filo Chicken Pie

This weekend was relaxing as we spent it taking Izzy to the vet, me getting my nails done, cleaning and Andy making a fabulous dinner on Sunday night.

Izzy went to the vet as her follow-up visit from the previous weekend that I forgot to blog about. Last weekend she was squinting her eye and it looked swollen. After watching it for a few hours and it appeared to get worse we took her in. The vet took a look and found out one of her eyelashes was growing on the inside of her eyelid and it was scratching her eye. Ouch! The vet took care of it by plucking out her eyelash. I couldn't watch at all as it was all just too crazy for me. I was just surprised that Izzy sat still long enough for the vet to do her business. Then we (aka Andy) had to put drops in her eye all week and come back for a check up on Saturday. When we went on Saturday Izzy was still squinting a bit. The Vet took a look and even put the stain in her eye and everything looked great. She said to stop using the drops because maybe that is what was bothering her and her eye was all healed. I think Izzy was just milking the extra "babiness" we were giving her...if that is even possible. Here she is at the vet's office sitting by daddy's feet right after she completed her favorite activity...taking her temperature!


For the cleaning portion of our weekend this entailed cleaning out the third bedroom. This bedroom was the room that housed all of our wedding and bridal shower gifts that we have received. This was the perfect spot to put everything many months ago until everything began to pile up and look like a disaster. So much like a disaster that I dreaded going in there and sorting through everything...until yesterday. I tackled the hot mess in the third bedroom and it was actually kind of exciting. It was kind of like receiving the wedding gifts all over again. We were able to find places for at least half the items stock piled in there and the other half got neatly stacked in the corner of the bedroom until we complete our storage area for the garage. The items that will be neatly stored away are the entertaining dishes that we love, but don't use on a regular basis so they will go in the future closets we plan on putting in the garage. The closets will provide easy access to everything we need when we need it. Sorry, but there are no pics of the hot mess in the bedroom. No before and after because it was just too embarrassing.

On to Andy's fabulous Filo Chicken Pie that he made from the chicken cookbook. This took a lot of work...I know...I watched Andy do it. It seemed like it took all night, but it was very yummy!

Your Ingredients
Whole chicken
1 large onion halved and 3 large onions chopped finely (Andy only used half an onion since he knows I don't care for them)
1 Carrot, slicked thickly
Zest of 1 lemon
1 bay leaf
10 peppercorns
5 1/2 oz butter
1/2 cup of flour
2/3 cup of milk (Andy used Lactaid for my stomach)
Salt and pepper
1/3 cup romano cheese
3 eggs, beaten
8 oz filo pastry

Directions
1. Put the chicken, halved onion, carrot, celery, lemon zest, bay leaf and peppercorns in a large pot with water and bring to a boil. Simmer for an hour or until the chicken is cooked.
2. Take the chicken out and let it cool. Bring the stock to a boil until reduced to 2 1/2 cups then strain and keep the stock. Chop up the chicken into bite-size pieces and throw away the skin and bones.
3. Fry up the chopped onions in 2 oz of butter until they are soft. Add the flour and cook gently. Slowly stir in the stock and the milk. Bring to a boil while you are stirring constantly and then simmer for 2 minutes until it is thick and smooth. Remove from heat and add the chicken and the season. Let cool and then stir in the cheese and eggs.
4. Melt the remaining butter and use a tad to grease a baking pan. Cut the pastry sheets in half width wise. Line the pan with one sheet of pastry and brush it with melted butter. Repeat with half of the pastry sheets. Spread the filling over the pasty, then top with the remaining pastry sheets, brushing each with butter and tucking down the edges.
5. Bake for 50 minutes at 375 degrees.



This was pretty good and it was made in our C&B baking dish that we received for our wedding...that I pulled out of the disaster of a bedroom. I did not make this meal mainly because it seemed like it would be hard so I left it to Andy to make such a fabulous and complicated meal. Ok, maybe it wasn't complicated, but it just seemed to take forever. Kudos to him though for thinking of his wife while making dinner. He did half the onions the recipe called for and he used my lactaid milk instead of his own. I didn't even have to ask him. What a sweetie!

Mexican Fiesta

When you get older it becomes harder to stay in touch with good friends because of everyone's busy schedule. We are definitely guilty of this and I am trying harder to be better at staying in touch with people. Friendships do take work to maintain! With that said I recently realized we haven't seen our good friends, Mike and AJ, in two months. Where did the time go? How could two months go by without seeing them? They only live 6 miles from us.

First thing on Thursday morning last week I sent AJ a text asking if they would like to come over for a Mexican Fiesta on Friday night. I was excited that they were available to come over and didn't have anything else going on.

Now to get ready for the Mexican Fiesta I went to Ranch Market to get the carne asada, fresh tortilla's, fresh chips, pico de gallo, queso cheese and limes. Thanks to the Campbell's for introducing me to this groceria as it is my newest obsession. It is a grocery store that sells all the goodies you can purchase in Mexico and the best thing is a lot of items are made fresh right there and they are authentic. The carne asada I get from the meat deli is amazing!!! The tortillas are usually still hot when I purchase them and the chips were just put in the bag so everything is very fresh. Plus on top of everything tasting AWESOME it is beyond affordable...ok, it is very cheap. Then on Friday during lunch I ran to BevMo to get my favorite margarita mix called Baja Bob's. This stuff is great! It is sugar free and calorie free. The only calories are from the tequila you put in it. It is the only margarita mix that I can really drink because it is not sweet at all and is easy on my stomach...so easy that I was able to have three margaritas, which I can't do with other mixes.

Another bonus of having Mike and AJ over is I got to use our entertaining pieces I received from our wedding. When I got home I busted out the very colorful entertaining dishes for the Mexican Fiesta and I was able to use our new margarita glasses. I was feeling all grown up at this point with my entertaining dishes.

Mike and AJ came over with homemade guacamole and tequila for the margaritas and we all had a great time catching up from the past two months. We had a nice dinner and good chit chat. Hopefully it won't be another two months before we get together.

Mother-in-Law Week

I have not blogged in a while and honestly there is no reason other than I got lazy. I think I go in spurts with this blog. There are times when I am all gung-ho about writing and then other times where the task seems so daunting. Anyway, I am trying to get back to being gung-ho about my blog so we will see how I do.

This past week my mother-in-law, Laura, was in town. It is still weird to say mother-in-law as for more than 7 years I am used to saying "Andy's mom," but now it's mother-in-law. Weird! Anyway, she arrived on Friday the 5th and left yesterday. We did plenty of eating out while she was here. We were able to check out Prime Bar in Scottsdale Quarter as well as other yummy restaurants that Andy and I haven't been to because we don't get out much anymore. Also, she was able to experience how much AAA sucks!

Last Saturday morning when I got in my car to run errands my car wouldn't start and since I live on the equator I knew it was my battery that was dead. For non-Arizonan's your car batteries only last about 2.5 years and you can find yourself stranded in this heat. I have had the car about 2.5 years so it was my time for a new battery. Luckily I was at home and not somewhere else. We contacted AAA to come out and change up my battery and of course we told them my car is an Audi so there were very aware of the car they were coming out to do service on. After they spent 45 minutes on my car the guy knocked on the door to tell me he doesn't have the right tool to take out the battery because it's a foreign car. No shit its a foreign car and you knew this before you came so I don't understand how the guy didn't have the right tool. Then he proceeds to tell me his boss can't send anybody else out the rest of the day to help with the battery so I need to call the next day and schedule AAA again. Really???? I was pretty annoyed, but it was the weekend and the Audi dealership was not open so I didn't really have any other choice. The next day though when Andy contacted AAA he explained the situation so when the guy came out he has experience working on foreign cars and had the right tools. As soon as the guy arrived I confirmed with him that he had the right tool and he got me a new battery.

Once the car was fixed we all went on some errands and went to see the movie Horrible Bosses. Funny movie by the way. When we came out of the theater my rear view mirror was on my dashboard. Really?!?!? What the hell is going on with my car and how does that happen. I know it was extremely hot out, but I don't think it's normal for your mirror to fall off. Well, this week I stopped in at Audi to put my mirror back on and the reason for it falling off was I had a new windshield put in recently and the company didn't put the mirror on correctly. I was glad to know it was not my cars fault, but instead this windshield company who I will never use again.

Besides my car problems we also saw the movie The Help on Thursday night. By "we" I mean Laura, Karen, Melissa and myself. Andy of course did not go. I had read the book a few months ago so I was pretty excited to see the movie when it came out. I just knew Andy wouldn't go with me so when Laura and Karen suggested we go see the movie I was all in. It was a great movie and if you liked the book you will love the movie as well.

Good times with my mother-in-law this week and looking forward to seeing her again in about six weeks for a Badger football game.