The other stuff

I tend to blog mostly about what we're doing around our house but we also do other, non-home related stuff. For instance, in the last month I went to the Lady Gaga concert (fun) and we headed to the zoo for a Flock event.

Two of our friends are members of Flock, which is the Houston Zoo's young supporters group. The group hosts social events at the zoo for members and guests throughout the year. Flock held a Mardi Gras themed brunch a few weekends ago and we had a blast. It included a yummy buffet and interaction with several animals. The zoo keepers walked around with an iguana and a snake and tried to do the same with a cute little porcupine but she was scared of the bass from the DJ. There was also an educational piece with one of the zoo's cheetahs. The zookeepers brought out one of the cheetahs, talked about their program and involvement with international programs and then answered questions about the cheetahs. It was really neat! Unfortunately it was rainy that day so we opted to leave the camera at home. All of the pictures below are with my iphone!

After stuffing ourselves and enjoying the talk, we walked around the zoo. It was our first visit and it was a lot of fun. The zoo is much smaller than the Asheville Zoo but as a result you are much closer to the animals.

This lion is hilarious - the entire time we were at this exhibit he laid on his back and seemed to scratch his tummy!

Olympics fun

I'm a huge fan of the Olympics. This year, our friends Jennifer and Brett hosted an Olympic opening ceremony party. This will likely be the last (and only year) I watch the opening ceremony. Despite the somewhat strange and overly long ceremony, we had a lot of fun hanging out.

In keeping with an American themed dinner, I made s'mores cupcakes! I searched the web for recipes and decided on a version from Eats Well With Others, who adapted a recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers, Annie's Eats.

I chose this recipe because it combined a graham cracker base with homemade chocolate cake and marshmallow icing! Yum!

 
The cupcakes turned out really well. I might add a tad more graham cracker to make the crust a little more substantial but other than that they were perfect. The recipe made extra batter and icing so I made a few additional cupcakes.

These days

These days seem to be flying by so quickly - I find myself struggling to stay on top of things. Our simple daily schedule works extremely well until you add anything substantial to it. And then, its as if we're paddling upstream, never making any progress and barely keeping afloat. I thought I would share with you what we've been up to that is keeping us quite busy and unable to blog much (sorry). Right now one of those extra things in our lives is travel and visits. I'm so looking forward to all of the visits and travel but, to be honest, its overwhelming at times too. So you can get a glimpse into what we're preparing for, here's our tentative schedule for the rest of the year - all of the travel and visits that we are pretty sure will happen (sans the husband's work related travel).

A peak

Here's a peak into our lives over the past few weeks.

We tried our hands at taking pictures of a friend's little boy in bluebonnets. Pretty much a fail, mainly because the thought of walking around in tall grass in Texas didn't seem all that smart - oh well!

 

 

We cooked (but didn't take many pictures).

White pizza

Sweet potato, red pepper, jalapeno, cauliflower, onion, and corn ready to be roasted for enchiladas.

I did some crafting and decorating.

I made a template for an 'S,' traced it onto some extra wood, had the husband cut it out for me, and then covered it in string.

 

I hung the letter with a canvas and a painting. The picture on the canvas is of our wedding bands in a flower and the painting, which I did some time ago, is of the state of North Carolina with a small dot where we got married.

We celebrated a very special first birthday!

Day trips

The wonderful weather we've had here in Houston this month has encouraged us to get out and about more. On a recent Saturday afternoon we took the opportunity to drive up to the Messina Hof winery outside of College Station, Texas (which is the home of Texas A&M). We had a great time and the wine was actually quite good.