Plants and Decor

From A:

Yesterday was the first hot day in Gainesville this year.  Inspired by the warmer weather, we cleared out the dead plants on our front porch and replaced them with new ones:

Left to right they are: Mexican Heather, Jade, Mini Tomato, and Boxwood Basil.  Keep your fingers crossed that I don't kill them off too fast!

We also got this awesome new lamp for our condo:

Just kidding!  That lamp was part of the staging decor at one of the homes we toured.  It was so incredibly ugly that we just HAD to take a picture.  We also saw a familiar face in one of the picture frames on a dresser in a home we toured:

Did you recognize her?  That's right, it's Nigella Lawson from the TV Food Network, host of "Nigella Feasts" and "Nigella Express."  I'm pretty sure she doesn't live in the home we toured, but I can't be sure.

Yesterday afternoon we finished the last half of the Parade of Homes.  There were a few disappointing homes with terrible layouts, but several were very nice.  Our favorite was a 2-story with just under 2000 square feet.  It had a great design for the living area on the first floor and had two good sized bedrooms on the second floor:

Engineering Banquet

From A:

Last night was the Spring Banquet for J's engineering department.  After going through nearly every dress I own in pursuit of the perfect one, I finally decided to wear this:

Highlights of the banquet included:

1. The first ever poster session.  Each group in the department presented one of their ongoing projects during a pre-dinner poster session.

2. The guest speaker, a departmental graduate who now owns a very successful solar energy company in Silicon Valley, recounted some of the nice things his research adviser did for him while he was a PhD student.  This included loaning him money to pay for his wife's medical bills after the birth of their first child, helping him work on his car to install new brakes, and taking him boating for the first time.  It was a very touching speech.

3. NFL Draft updates about whether Tebow had been drafted yet.  As it turns out, he was drafted about an hour after the banquet ended.  And it was great to see.  Go Broncos!

4. The desserts!  The best desserts were definitely the mini strawberry shortcakes and the gator cookies:

Photo Sneak Peek #3

From A:

Here's the final installment of sneak peeks until we get all the photo shoot images from our photographer.  Enjoy!

Photo Sneak Peek #2

From A:

Here are a few more samples from our photographer.  Now that I've seen the samples I can't wait to get all the images!

Yes, this is in the laundry room of Hume Hall, the dorm where we met in college.

Photo Sneak Peek #1

From A:

J and I took advantage of the beautiful UF campus to take some anniversary photos (our 1 year anniversary is in less than 2 months!).

Here are a few of the samples we've gotten from the photographer.  More samples to come for upcoming blog posts, plus many more once we get the DVD with all the images.

Busy Weekend!

From A:

J and I had surprisingly busy weekend, but a great one!  Here's what we did:

Saturday afternoon: Went to a pool party with a bunch of J's PhD program friends.  It was a farewell get-together for one of the guys in the program who will be working in Germany this summer.  It was a beautiful day to us since there was a good amount of cloud cover.  Others seeking tans were disappointed, but we pale, pasty people enjoyed the lack of sun.  Here's a photo of the guy leaving for Germany which made me laugh (Note: this photo includes much Photoshop work; as in, it's his head added to a photo from Jersey Shore):

Saturday evening: J's friend Jeff and his girlfriend Lisa were visiting from south Florida.  We had them over for dinner and made turkey burritos and nachos.  Here's photo evidence that J was eating chips prior to dinner:

We also pulled out the Rummikub game we got for Christmas and played a few rounds.  I'd love to say that I won a round, but I didn't.  Oh well, it was still a fun time getting together and catching up.

Sunday morning: Jeff and Lisa came over for breakfast.  J and Jeff had egg bagel sandwiches, while Lisa and I made waffles.  While the guys went to the gym to do strength training and play racquetball, Lisa and I watched home decorating shows that our men don't enjoy watching with us.

Sunday afternoon: J and I went to the Parade of Homes around the area.  We made it through half of the subdivisions today and plan to see the other half next weekend.  We saw some amazing homes, the most expensive being upwards of $850K:

We also saw a few homes that were really overpriced, some with super weird layouts, and a smaller one that we both agreed had a very smart, usable layout:

It was great seeing the homes we toured today and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest next weekend!

April 14th

From A:

J and I would like to send our most sincere congratulations to our wonderful friends C & C whose son Isaac Alexander was born yesterday.  He weighed in at 8 pounds 5.5 ounces and is 20 inches long, not to mention incredibly adorable!

We are so excited for them as they begin this new chapter of their lives!

Encore

From A:

Last night's dinner was a turkey pepperoni pizza encore.  This one seemed to even be better than the last, probably because I knew the exact recipe this time and wasn't just making it up as I went along.  This will probably look familiar, with the addition of more pepperoni:

We've been enjoying warmer temperatures that, unfortunately, have caused a pollen attack.  Not only are the trees dropping massive amounts of pollen everywhere, but they also think it's Fall and are losing their leaves.  Poor, confused trees!

J attempted to rinse pollen off the cars last night, although a layer still remained after a blasting with the hose:

And this morning... you guessed it... the cars were covered again.  While J was washing, I took some before and after pictures to show how much pollen we're dealing with.

Car #1 Before:

Car #1 After:

Car #2 Before:

Car #2 After:

Is everyone having pollen issues or is this a Florida thing?

Beaster Bunny

From A:

Continuing with my giant rabbit theme from the last post, J found an article online about the world's biggest (longest) rabbit.  His name is Darius, he's 4ft 3in long, and his daily food intake consists of 12 carrots, 6 apples, and 2 cabbages.  Oh yeah, and he's still growing.  I just love the pictures from the article:

I think this rabbit might be able to take on one of the small alligators I've seen at the lake lately.

What's for Dinner? Italian Edition

From A:

Inspired by the coupons I had to Publix last week, we had an Italian themed weekend of meals.  Our first meal was Italian sausage calzone pinwheels.  The pinwheel filling is basically a normal calzone filling, but the dough used for the recipe is crescent roll dough.  Instead of separating the crescent rolls into triangles to make the usual crescent shapes, two triangles are kept together to form a rectangle.  Then each rectangle is rolled around a mound of filling.  Each roll is then cut into four pieces and turned on their sides to bake.  They're served with pizza sauce for dipping:

J's calzone review was a 6/10 since he wasn't a fan of the sausage (it had a sweeter flavor than the usual sun-dried tomato variety we get).  However, we've made plans to recreate the recipe with turkey pepperoni in the near future.  He anticipates that recipe receiving an 8/10.

Our next Italian meal was three cheese tortellini, but it wasn't really photo worthy since I just popped it out of a package and into boiling water.

Tonight was pizza night!  We got turkey pepperoni, which was surprisingly good, grated a block of fresh mozzarella, and added a few unique touches to the pizza.  First was the "Italiano Classico" seasoning we added to the sauce (it was a gift from C&C in PA - thanks again!).  Next, we brushed the crust with olive oil and added garlic and Italian breadcrumbs to make it garlic bread-like. 

It turned out great!  J's comment was "very good," which is quite the compliment based upon his food review lingo.  On a numeric scale, it received a 9/10.

In other news, we had nice, relaxing Easter today, complete with beautiful weather!  I got an extra surprise when I was walking out by the lake and saw a wild rabbit.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Easter Bunny, and hope it wasn't eaten by the 3 foot alligator I saw on the other side of the lake, but it was neat to see today.

The rabbit I saw had similar coloring to the one in this photo*:

*Note: Photo not to scale.