good morning from the city!

on my way to work this morning, i snapped this shot- how beautiful! a reminder of what i love about the city, and that we serve a great & creative God who wakes us up with his beauty. wow!

zesto

while i am working for an awesome post for tomorrow on the beautiful & yummy yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting that i made tonight, i wanted to fill you in on a little treat we shared this last weekend. one of our favorite "drive in" we have found since living in the city is zesto- THE BEST SOFT SERVE ICE CREAM EVER!! no forreals, it is thebomb.com!! there are several of them all around and we love them. the soft serve vanilla ice cream is incredible- so smooth, perfectly sweet, and like licking a cloud. whatever that would be like. the consistency is almost like frozen cool-whip except way better. my favorite? a brown crown- aka, a dipped cone. super yum. check out these pics, and head to your closest zesto!! dairy queen's got NOTHING on them (well, except for blizzards, but not in terms of soft serve!!)

me, with my brown crown

trying to illustrate & emphasize the amazing texture

yum!

tune in tomorrow for an awesome recipe for some delish cupcakes!

in the morning, i'm making waffles...

this past saturday morning, nathan and i had no where to be early, so after sleeping in, i had a hankerin' for some waffles. we love lazy saturday mornings with homemade waffles, and it had been too long since we had last made them. so, i whipped out my handy dandy cookbook and got to work.

now don't get me wrong, i love a good eggo with peanut butter, but if i'm getting out the waffle iron, the only way i roll is homemade!

the recipe i use is a loose interpretation of the better homes & garden's new cookbook one.

yes, i write in my cookbooks and leave future me notes. its a good thing too, because everytime i see them i'm like, 'o, yeah!'

of course, its pink

you know me, all about some le creuset. this piece was a christmas present from my aunt...everyone needs a good batter bowl!!

so here we go. first, i mix about 7/8 cup of whole wheat flour with 1 tablespoon demerara sugar (or brown sugar), 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, and a pinch of salt. to that, this time, i added 1 tbsp flax seed

and about 1/4 bag of walnuts

in a separate bowl, i mixed 1 egg with 7/8 cup milk, 1/4 cup of oil and a big splash of vanilla. 

then, i make a little well in the center of the dry mix and pour the wet stuff in all at once.

and stir, preferably with a big pink spatula :)

finally, into the waffle iron it goes.

and thats it! these were super hearty and kept us full for quite a while! also, this recipe only made 4, but i think you could think it out to get 6. the original recipe is for 12, and i half it, but i think its too thick. perfect for us though!

while i was making waffles, nathan ran out to starbucks to get us some drinks to go with. we chose to have some quad shots, 1 pump sugar free vanilla, whole milk lattes.yum!

this was my waffle...i like them with just a sprinkle of powdered sugar and some whipped cream

after such a yummy breakfast, we headed out to piedmont park to hit up the local green market and enjoy some sunshine. 

check out this shot of the city- isn't it beautiful? i love this view

nathan's sister sarah gave us a call and happened to be in the area, so she came over and met us and her and nathan joined a pick up game of ultimate frisbee. i lounged under a tree (it was HOT) and snapped some pics.

its days like this one that make me love the city and love living here.

back to school: viking kitchen edition!

so last night, my mom joined me here in the city for a little event that i was quite excited about. i love my mom, and i am always enjoying her company (in fact, i am quite thankful for her! read about that here). she invited me a few weeks ago to join her and a ladies group that she is a part of for a cooking class. i, loving all things kitchen & cooking, of course agreed and put it down in my planner. so last night, we met up at lenox and headed over to the viking cooking store on peachtree. wow! what a cool place! we walked in and headed back to the teaching kitchen, and i felt like i was on the set of a food network show. joining 10 other ladies and the head chef, we spent the evening preparing meat in many different ways, and finally, after about 2 1/2 hours of prep, enjoyed the fruits of our labor.

i have attended other cooking classes before, but this one was done quite excellently. it was the perfect balance of instruction, fun, hands-on-ness, and yet not too intense or stressful. we relaxed over cheese and crackers, and could visit while we chopped onions, stuffed pork chops, prepared popover pans, and reduced cabernet for cabernet butter. i picked up some grilling tips and made some new friends, and went home with a full belly!

i would definitely recommend these classes if you have a viking store near you. definitely fun for a date night, birthday present, just because, christmas present, anniversary present, team building exercise- really, i cant think of an occasion it wouldn't be great for!

in addition to learning (& eating!) we got to do a little bit of shopping. mom picked me up a few "sweet treats" as well as some for herself. my personal fav? i'll let you guess:

did you guess the hot pink colander? duh silly! of course that was my fav!

all in all, a great night. check out their schedule here.
bon appetite!

surprise birthday party

hi friends!

hope you all enjoyed a great 4th of july.

its pretty cool to get to live in such an amazing country, and nathan and i enjoyed the opportunity to recognize the birthday of this great country yesterday!

speaking of birthdays, i haven't gotten to share about my sweet birthday surprise!
so last thursday, we were planning on going to Movies in the Park at Atlantic Station with our LifeGroup (thats Sunday School class at our church). i had done a lot of the planning (or so i thought) and had arranged for those that were going to meet up there to eat and then watch Grease on the lawn. i was excited of course and looking forward to it. nathan and i had decided to meet at home to ride together up there and he was running late which was kind of bothering me. he finally got there and we made our way up and when we did park, he made me turn around because he said he had gotten me something and didnt want me to see it. so i'm thinking, maybe a little cake or something for dessert. no big deal. so we head up the stairs to the parking deck and are walking over to california pizza kitchen by way of the lawn. i noticed that it was very full so i said we should go ahead and put our blankets down so that we have a spot. he said sure and pointed me to a corner and as i was walking, i noticed that i recognized a group of people. yes, my friends from LifeGroup were there, but there was another bevy of beautys i noticed!

christina, me, lydia, & erin- we all went to berry together :)

my college friends were there! what! what a surprise! and not only that, but they had coolers full of my favorite foods and 2 boxes of cupcakes from Cami Cupcakes. it really was a sweet surprise.



yes please! SUPER yummy cupcakes!



me & sarah- nathan's other sister

me & ash

me & hannah- nathan's sister

we picniced and ate and ate and ate and then enjoyed grease. it really was a great time. i highly recommend cami cupcakes- they were moist, not too sweet, and beautiful! check them out!
http://www.camicakes.com/