Weekend in Asheville (aka: Angie and Nick got Hitched!)

Oh, where to start?!? Last weekend, we spent an amazing few days in a gorgeous town with some of my favorite people ever. Oh, and my best friend got MARRIED!!!! We got into Asheville late Thursday afternoon, and headed out for pizza and beer (more of each than you can imagine!). Then the girls and guys headed off in separate directions. We kicked off our night with key lime pie martinis, complete with graham cracker rimmed glasses! From there we made friends with a pirate mannequin, got creative with an impromptu toilet paper veil and witnessed Angie get an "E for Effort" lap dance from some locals. It was such a fun night, and much thanks to Angie's sweet mom Debbie for making sure we all got home safe and sound!
Friday Jon and I wandered around Downtown for a bit and found a little Latin cafe called Chorizo. So, so good...and not too shabby when you are needing a good hangover cure! Then I met Angie and her sister, Lauren at the salon for a manicure, which was nice. My nails haven't seen that much attention in a while. After our mani/pedi's we headed to the rehearsal, which is when I saw the wedding site for the first time. I have to say that it took my breath away a little. It was so gorgeous, and you would never even know it was there. Let me just take this time to also say that this was the first time I became aware that I was going to have to walk what seemed like half a mile down a steep gravel hill with people watching while wearing heels. Thoughts of tripping, falling and rolling immediately entered my head! After a smooth rehearsal, we left for the rehearsal dinner. It was at this adorable little restaurant and the food was amazing. It was just such a sweet and funny evening complete with a sentimental slide show, heartfelt toasts and a little performance of Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling" by the Groom himself.
I'm going to try to describe Saturday without being too cheesy or sentimental, but that's going to be hard! The day started off with a brunch honoring Angie and was full of delicious food and treats. Angie, Lauren and I then went over to the salon to get our hair and make-up done. That in itself was so much fun, I want someone to come do it for me everyday! When we were all beautiful, we left to get dressed. When we walked into the bridal suite, Angie's dress was hanging up, and I started to get all choked up. There are no words to describe that dress. I remember when she first tried it on, it literally took everyone's breath away, and Angie said "I don't want to take it off". That was sooooo the dress!! It's funny to hear her talk about it because it's the complete opposite of what she pictured. She thought she'd end up with something simple and this dress is the most elaborate, "fancy" dress that you can picture. In the words of my 3 year old, "She looks like a Princess in it". Once we were all dressed we went out for a few pictures and headed down to the grove to wait for the wedding to start. Oh, I should mention that the weather was amazing...too good to be true!! Before we knew it we were making that long walk down the gravel path and all managed to make it down like pros :) We waited anxiously for Angie to walk down with her Dad, Donnie. At one point I looked over at Nick and his knees were moving back and forth a million miles a minute. He looked so anxious, but in the absolute best way possible. The second I saw Donnie's face, I had to hold back tears...which I apparently didn't do so well. I don't think I cried at my own wedding, but everything about that day got to me. Not only do I love Angie, but I adore her family and absolutely do not think that she could have married a better guy. She and Nick are the sweetest, funniest, most down to earth couple you will ever meet...and it made me so, so happy to be standing there, watching their wedding. Enough with the cheesiness...onto the party!! And what a party it was! I cannot remember having more fun at a wedding reception. There was great food, amazing cake (red velvet, carrot and pumpkin chocolate chip to be exact) and good music. All of this, along with wonderful friends and one huge dance party made for a seriously fun night that I will not soon forget.
Sunday morning Jon and I reluctantly got out of bed, packed our bags and checked out of our hotel. We made a not so quick stop at the Tupelo Honey Cafe for lunch which was so, so good. There is usually a pretty long wait, but it is so worth it! We didn't get to do most of the big tourist-y things (no Biltmore on this trip), but that just means that we have to go back soon!
Thank you Ang and Nick for including us in your amazing wedding weekend. We feel blessed to have been able to share it with you! Love you :)

Click on the top picture to take you to the album...enjoy!

Asheville-Nick and Angie's Wedding

Half Marathon Training: Weeks 8 and 9

Whew...so these last two weeks have been a little crazy. I spent about 6 of the last 14 days out of town or on the road (Angie's amazing wedding in Asheville, then a turn around trip for the Aggie Bonfire Memorial), had part of my toenail cut out (stupid, nasty ingrown was killing me and it took what seemed like forever for it to feel good enough to run on), and I feel like I've just been playing catch-up. Needless to say, training has not been my #1 priority like it should have been, and a few runs were definitely missed. I did what I could though, and I will admit that I felt like I totally paid for these last 2 weeks today. I went out for my 1st run all the way around White Rock Lake (9 miles) and it was HARD. Most definitely the hardest run that I've had. My legs were killing me, I was tired, and just felt the effects of slacking off a bit. I felt that little bit of doubt creeping back up. I did it though, even though it took me what seemed like a lifetime. I think I have a few weeks of serious gym time ahead of me! The good thing is that I'm running the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving (8 miles) so that will give me an extra long run....feeling like I'm going to need that! Just 3 more weeks now, and I'm determined to make them count!

Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Chocolate Frosting

I have not baked anything in what feels like forever, and had a few bananas sitting on the counter getting all mushy and brown. Normally, I would have made my Grandma's Banana Bread, but I was in the mood to try something a little different! I thought cupcakes sounded so good, since I have a tiny bit of an obsession with them. I found several recipes for banana cupcakes, and honestly I chose these because I had all of the ingredients on-hand. They came out so good! Very dense, but definitely cupcake-y and not too muffin-like.

Banana Cupcakes
From: marthastewart.com

Ingredients:

Makes 12

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (about 4 ripe bananas)
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar*, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
2. Make a well in center of flour mixture. In well, mix together butter, mashed bananas, eggs, and vanilla. Stir to incorporate flour mixture (do not overmix)**. Dividing evenly, spoon batter into muffin cups.
3. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan; cool completely on a wire rack.

*I never have plain white sugar unless I'm buying ingredients to bake, so I used a combination of Sugar in the Raw (1/2 c) and Splenda (1/4 c) and it came out great. I've never baked with the raw sugar before, but I think I will again!

**The key to keeping them light is to stop mixing the second the dry ingredients become wet. Maybe about 30 seconds mixing with a spoon. Do not bust out your fancy-schmancy stand mixer for this recipe...do it all by hand!!



These cupcakes were paired with Honey-Cinnamon frosting, which sounds delicious, but was so not what I wanted at the time. I was trying to think of what would go good with banana, and peanut butter and chocolate came to mind. I found a few recipes, all a little different. Some used real peanut butter, some peanut butter chips. Some used chocolate chips and some melted bakers chocolate. One was true chocolate buttercream with peanut butter chips folded in. So, this is what I came up with, because I had all of this stuff in the house :) It tasted like I melted a Reeces Peanut Butter cup, whipped it back up and piped it on top of the cupcakes. I was pretty happy with myself!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients:

6 oz. semi-sweet Bakers Chocolate (6 squares)
1/2 c unsalted butter
1/2 smooth peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
up to 1 c powdered sugar

Directions:

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt chocolate and butter (heat on 30 second intervals then stir until melted. Do not over heat). While still hot, stir in peanut butter and vanilla until peanut butter is melted. Cool in refrigerator for at least 10 minutes.

Once cool, add powdered sugar in 1/3 c increments and beat on med-high until you reach desired consistency and thickness.

Frost cupcakes and Enjoy!!

Half Marathon Training : Week Seven

This week I had a weird realization. I always go into my shorter weekday runs thinking that they are going to be easy simply because it's a distance that I've run many times by this point. I go into my long weekend runs with less confidence wondering whether or not I will make it, how slow I will be, how hard it will be, etc. You know what happens? Those shorter runs are always the ones that KILL me and I love my long runs. HUH??? I think it's because I go into them with a completely different mindset, and prepare myself in different ways. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I do my weekday runs alone, in my neighborhood, and it gets boring. Plus, I have to fit them in to a crazy schedule (not just mine, but Jon's). On Saturdays I get up, drive to Travis and Andrea's and we head out to the lake. It's time each week that's set aside for that specific purpose...no fitting it in or rushing. Anyway...this week was a couple of 4.5 mile runs (one of which turned into 5 b/c I didn't check my schedule...whatever) and a 7 mile run on Saturday. The 7 mile took me 1 hour 16 minutes. Still a turtle, but a turtle who's feeling like that 13.1 that I'll be running in 5 weeks is not so scary after all :)

Wordless Wednesday

All of the Halloween-y Goodness

This year was so much fun! I always say that, but the older Ava gets, the better it is! She was such a pro at trick-or treating this year. She didn't ask me to go to the door with her once. We went with Aidan again, and they would walk up, ring the bell and wait for their candy. We had to remind them to only ring once a few times, and make sure everyone said thank you...but the were great! Wednesday we took the kids up to the school/Church for trunk-or-treating and Ava got to see some of her friends. Thursday was trick-or-treating through the classrooms and a party at school, and then Boo Bash Friday night. Aidan came to that too and they danced their little tushies off all night. It was so cute. Then we hung out at the park for a neighborhood Halloween party with Jon's family before heading out to get waaay to much candy on Saturday night. Needless to say, I got my money's worth out of their costumes :) Ava has already asked how many days until it's Halloween again, and has her costumes picked out for the next 15 years. Seriously...she informed me that she wanted to be a cowgirl when she was 18 after rattling off a huge list of other costumes. Spider Girl, a bunny, a princess and some sort of fruit were in there too. At least she plans ahead, right?

Half Marathon Training: Weeks 5 and 6

Well, this means I'm halfway there. Six weeks down, six more to go! Week five was great, probably the best so far. I was better about my strength training (as in I had a few days where I could barely move...but it was good!), and had a 6 mile run that weekend. I was turtle slow, as usual (I think it took me right at an hour and 5 minutes), but it was one of those really good runs that makes up for crappy ones! My Ipod died about 2 miles in, but even that didn't really mess with me as much as I had anticipated when I turned it on and saw that dreaded low battery signal. Week six was pretty easy, just a couple of 4.5 mile runs during the week (one of which got cut short when I got caught up in a serious rainstorm....I'm talking soaked and whacked in the head with acorns), and 5k over the weekend. The best part was that I managed to fit in several yoga classes over the past two weeks, which was a big goal...I was really missing that. I think my muscles were too. So, mark your calendars people...because six weeks from today I'm going to need all the good luck vibes I can get :)