The hubby’s been working like crazy and needed a break, so we had a nice dinner at our favorite restaurant La Belle Vie tonight. We enjoyed the four course lounge tasting menu. Food & service was excellent as usual. The manager even remembered me from my birthday party and came to our table to chat.
Max had the pappardelle with rabbit bolognese and porcini. We didn’t tell him that he was eating rabbit, of course. I’ve had his dish before, and it’s really yummy. Never thought I would ever eat rabbit, but it’s a mild tasting meat.

- Bay scallops with fois gras, beets & truffle
- Sweet bread amuse bouche
- Sea trout with cuttlefish carbonara with braised butter lettuce
- Grilled lamb tenderloin with fallen camembert soufle, dried cherry & port
- Caramelized orange pound cake with apricot chantilly and cream cheese ice cream
- Petit fours

It was really nice out this week, so we hiked the trails by our house. Max is usually busy riding his bike as fast as he can, and I like to gaze at all the beautiful houses and wonder who lives there.

My dendrobium orchids are still alive! I bought them almost a month ago. So proud of myself. Instant beauty & life to our living area.

Picked up my tile today. These are crackled glazed ceramic and glass tiles by Jeffrey Court. The minute I laid eyes on the tile on the left, I fell in love. Can’t wait to see them up.
Planning to switch out the bronze cabinet knobs to these glass knobs. Can you guess which one is the $7 Home Depot knob? And which one is the $12 Restoration Hardware knob? Pretty close, I say.

Max has Spring Break next week, so I hope we can find some fun activities to do. Maybe go to the indoor swimming pool at the community center. Hit up the Children’s Science Museum. Have lunch with friends.

This weekend, I have to pick up Max’s bed (he’s graduating to a big boy bed), pick up party favor stuff, and meet with a client. Hoping the weather stays mild. Have a good one!

+ Max loves Lady Gaga, so here he is busting his moves. I dare you to challenge him to a dance-off. Lol. This is his “loco legs” move. If you ask him to show you loco legs, that’s what he’ll do. His favorite song right now is Telephone. I like the song, but I can only listen to it so many times before I get sick of it.

+ My best friend Maysee & her daughter Rylee came over on Saturday to have dinner. It was really nice to hang out & catch up since we don’t get to do that very often. I made lasagna & Maysee brought a huge chocolate cake, which we still have half left. We made a plan to get together at least once a month from now on. (Angie, you need to hurry up & move back here.)
Maysee’s Grandma passed away yesterday, so our deepest condolences to her & her family.

+ I finally painted my living room, but I don’t know. I might change it. It might be too blue. I’m trying to find the perfect balance of gray & blue, and I can’t believe how difficult it is. The color I picked looked perfect on the big swatch, but once I painted the room, it wasn’t the same. It also doesn’t help that it’s been cloudy this week, so I don’t know what it’ll look like in natural light.

+ Max’s birthday is coming up soon, and we already bought his present for him (the Lego police station– shhhh!). All I have to do now is have the food catered & make the favor bags. Gonna be an easy & fun birthday this year.

+ Plantation shutters are being installed tomorrow. Cabinets are being enameled & backsplash is being tiled next week. Can’t wait!

I <3 Anthropologie.

Been busy busy with our house. Finally got our water softener installed. Didn’t know that our city has really hard water. Couldn’t even use our dishwasher because of it. So much nicer now.
Finally picked a color for the living room. Note the paint swatches on the wall. I am getting so sick of all the brown in our house.
Found the perfect spot for my milk glass vases. Planning to paint the shelf white & the wall around it blue-gray. Even though today was beautiful, didn’t feel like digging through antique shops to find more, so I bought eight more vases online today.
Picking out wallpaper for my den. Looking forward to seeing the end result. The plantation shutters are going to be here soon, so it will look so awesome. Giddy with excitement.

The weather this weekend was really nice. Too bad I didn’t really get to enjoy it. Spent most of it inside doing housework. On Saturday, we had dinner with my sisters & bro-in-law at Donatelli’s in White Bear Lake. Donatelli’s was featured in that show Diners & Drives on the Food Network. The food was so-so. Today, just relaxed  with the boys & hung out with my sisters later.

+ We finally had our POD delivered on last Friday, so we have all our things at our house now. I still can’t believe all this stuff was in our old house. I went through all our clothes, and will be donating four huge bags to Goodwill. It feels nice to get rid of things we don’t need & give it to people who’ll be able to use it.

+ My girlfriend Angie & her boys were in town, and they had a birthday party for her son Mason at Chucky Cheese last Sunday. So nice to see them, if only for a short while. We miss you guys!

+ I went in to do my survey last week (I got selected to do a 2-hour survey for an online stationary company), and they had enough people so they told me I could go after 10 minutes, but still paid me. Easiest $100 ever.

+ Haven’t done our taxes yet since we’re still waiting for some forms, but we don’t qualify for the $8k first-time home buyers credit, or the $6k credit for homeowners who’ve been in their home for 5 years or more. Obama, don’t you care about us? Jk. It would’ve been nice to have that $6k. We should be getting a good chunk back from all the mortgage interest we paid last year.

+ On Saturday, we dropped off Max at Mike’s parents, and saw Shutter Island. I thought the trailer looked scary, but the movie wasn’t scary. It’s more of a suspense thriller, so I was able to tolerate it. I’m such a scaredy cat. I thought it was pretty good. After the movie, we had dinner at Cafe Levain. I forgot to take pictures of the food, but we started with the charcuterie which consisted of veal sweetbreads, bone marrow, pork liver, lamb rillette & poultry pate, all served with a toasted baguette & pickled veggies. For the main course, Mike had the cheeseburger, and I had the Kadejan roasted chicken. All really good.

+ Our grocery spending has gone up by $20 to $140/week. What’s up with that? I think we’re eating the same foods as usual. I remember going grocery shopping with my mom when we were little, and I think she spent $100 for two weeks of food for 8 of us. Crazy. Then again, I do remember eating rice & water a lot.

Sometimes I look at the stats & traffic info for my blog, and get mad at all the spambots/crawlers that use up my bandwidth. But then I chuckle at those of you who stumble onto my website via Google or whatever search engine you use. Here are some search words that were used:

• a mcdonalds building
• can’t sleep ate too much
• choped of head
• shrimps alive
• who was the little kid max on charles in charge
• can you tattoo your eyebrow when you are pregnant
• watch daddy pee standing up
• haunted village wok minneapolis

Another item to add to our to-do list for our house: window seat. Above is our informal dining room nook. No dining table yet, but what I want to do is have a window seat built in like the picture below. I’ve always wanted one in my house. Check out the Saarinen table & Eames chairs. XOXO!

As you saw in the last post, the hubby had a couple drinks from Super Bowl Sunday, and decided to contribute a post, albeit a drunken one. I think it’s wrong that he writes better than me when inebriated. We spent the first half of the game at my Uncle’s and the second half at John’s. Angie, my condolences to you. :)

These last couple of snowfalls have been killer on my arms & back. While we wait for Max’s bus in the morning, I’ve been shoveling the driveway. The hubby usually does it and refuses to get a snow blower, so we put our $50 shovel to work. What’s not cool is when the city plows a ton of snow right back into our driveway. I swear we seem to get more than anybody else on the block. Thank goodness we at least have all wheel drive to get through the snow. Ah, wish I was still in Portland right now. I think all I need is a fall jacket.

It is Super Bowl Sunday, so, yes, another drunk post by guest writer Mike……

The Vikings won the *misguided* Logic 101 Super Bowl!!!! Congrats to us for finally pulling it off! Thanks to the Law of Transitive Properties, today, February 7 2010,  the Vikings finally won it all! The Vikings are definitely better than the Saints. The Saints proved they are better than the Colts, therefore the Vikings really won the Super Bowl (Vikings > Saints; Saints > Colts => Vikings > Colts). Ok, maybe not (See caveat in http://www.mathwords.com/t/transitive_property.htm). Hey, but I will take what I can get :)

Do not ask me how Favre jumped on the field, put on a Colts Jersey and threw a interception that was run back for TD  in the 4th quarter - I was too drunk at that point, but heck who cares, we won!!!!! I can almost sleep soundly tonight…..

Religion was the opiate for the masses. Now, I guess, it is reality TV. After the Super Bowl, CBS tried to convince us that the CEOs of America care about the lowly proletariat. Lloyd Blankfein got only a 9 million buck bonus this year, so they must care.

CBS’s new show, Undercover Boss, puts the CEO/COO/CFO/President/etc, into the lowest positions of the company. They then come to an epiphany that they need to treat their workers better. Will we be placated by this? Yeah, probably. As long as there is anything on TV, we are going to be mind fucked to sleep I guess…… [Mike now turns off Best of Jersey Shore, stuffs his face with 8 peanut butter cups from his 40 oz bag of candy, and then logs into the Run Sarah Run website]

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What Did Mike Eat While Drunk This Time?

- There was some semi cooked meat in a bag of left overs. Mike ate this with a hand full of rice. Hand full, really means Mike took his hand, stuck it in a bowl of rice and then ate the rice in his hand like it was a apple.

- 15 Peanut Butter cups.

- 8 Kit Kat bars.

- A bunch of slices of bread. <= Yeah, just some bread. For some reason, Mike did not put the meat mentioned above in between the bread to make a sandwich. Nor, did he eat the bread with the meat. He just ate some bread.

Recent…

New Restaurants We’ve Tried:

+ Cam Ranh Bay - Mediocre & higher priced Vietnamese food in the ‘burbs. Eggrolls were good, but I would rather drive to Minneapolis for pho.
+ Pittsburgh Blue - Very similar to Manny’s (actually owned by the same people), but nothing special.
+ Dickey’s BBQ - Not impressed with the food. Great deal on Mondays: $1 pulled pork sandwiches. Something kind of different from every other joint: free complimentary soft serve ice cream for everybody.
+ Peony’s Chinese Bistro - Decent Chinese food with the usual dishes.

Purchases:

+ Dior Compact Press Powder - My third compact from Dior. Love their products.
+ Anti-glare film for my iPhone - Just found out that Walmart sells them for half the price. Shoot!
+ Splatter screen - Finally got one of those screens to cover the pan when frying foods. It doesn’t catch every oil splatter, but it’s better than nothing.

Movies We’ve Seen:

+ Lovely Bones
+ Precious
+ Inglourious Bastards

Updates:

Well, we have been in our new home for a month now. It still feels weird being in a new house, but probably due to that a lot of our things are in boxes and that there’s nothing on the walls. I think I’m going to change my tagline to, “Back in the ‘Burbs” or something.

These past few weeks have been spent meeting with contractors & shopping for stuff for the house. Goodness, tile is expensive. I am ready for this stuff to be done & over with.

Max started his new school last week, so we are waking up a lot earlier than normal. I am not a morning person, and I am still trying to get used to it, but man, it’s hard. Once the bus picks him up, I usually go back to bed for a couple of hours.

We went to Kindergarten Registration tonight. Wow, the curriculum for kindergarten is way more advanced than what I remembered. I recall playing with playdough & finger painting, and that’s about it. Nowadays, they’re learning math & science, in addition to reading & writing. I just hope they don’t change the district border any time soon. Our district is so crowded that they’re not allowing any open enrollment for the next school year.

Just made reservations at Adventure Peak for Max’s birthday. Can’t believe he’ll be five soon. He’s growing up too fast. Planning to invite his cousins & a couple of friends. If you haven’t taken your kid to Adventure Peak, you should. Even I like climbing up there & going down the slides.

We celebrated our anniversary this weekend. We couldn’t decide on a restaurant, and the by the time we did, every place was booked, so we ended up having sushi for dinner. Dropped Max off at his cousins, and enjoyed a nice dinner downtown.

It’s been 15 years since I met my husband. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been together for half of my life, but these years have flown by. Before we knew it, we were parents to an amazing little boy & homeowners. I am lucky to have him in my life, and I appreciate everything he does for us. I love you honey!