Peruvian Time

Well after six flights, six bus rides, a few taxi rides and some 750 pictures later we made it home after our trip to Peru. We may no longer be in Peru, but I'm still considering myself on Peruvian time. You know, when nothing or no one is on time. Give me some time to sort through all these pictures and I promise to share many of them! In the meantime, here just might be the best of the best... Machu Picchu!

Photo Friday #43

This was a long lost photo from Thanksgiving. Back when our house was filled with family, food and from the looks of this picture... wine and chocolate too. Thanks mom for sending this picture, I don't think I ever saw it or remember you taking it. Well, that sounds bad. I remember we took a lot of pictures while sitting around the kitchen island, but this was one missing from the file. Never too late to share a good picture!

App Appreciation: Red Stamp

This is one of those way cool, make your life easier, why not download since it's free kind of app. The Red Stamp app allows you to mail Happy Birthday, Thank You or a simple Miss You card to someone in the mail without ever having to get out a pen or postage stamp. So the app saves some time, but I also really like the selection of card to choose from. They are very trendy and fun.

Enough about the app, let me show you what I've created with it! We mailed a card to Joe's parents after their trip to NC for Easter (remember we visited The Biltmore and even climbed Chimney Rock?) It was so easy to select the card style I wanted, drop a picture in that was already on my phone and then adjust the color (for this card I changed the picture black and white). For the most part the cards are $1.99 which is not a bad price at all. Purchasing a thank you card at Wal-Mart is about that much plus postage.

So check it out, download the app and start sending some cards!

Peanut Butter Granola

Ahh yes, Pinterest strikes again. This time in the form of a snack. Even better, this recipe is from Shape magazine under the header 10 Healthy Peanut Butter Recipes. Score! Perfect snack to munch on alone or to add to yogurt or a fruit bowl. Wait, that would make it even more healthy. It literally takes 10 minutes to whip this up and it's ready in less than 15 minutes. We arleady ate this test batch and now I've made a double batch to munch on.

Peanut Butter Granola
Found here

Ingredients
2 tablespoons peanut butter
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup oats

Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray cookie sheet and set aside. Combine peanut butter and honey in bowl and microwave until peanut butter melts, about 20 seconds. Stir in cinnamon and vanilla. Add oats and stir until oats are completely covered. Spread out onto cookie sheet and bake for 7-8 minutes or until granola is slightly browned. Let cool until granola is crunchy.

Ombré Baby Blanket

One more project completed! This one took me longer than it should have. Good thing I got an early start since I had a deadline! I decided to make a baby blanket for some friends who are expecting their second child in May. Here was my inspiration, of course found on Pinterest. As you can tell from my color selection, they're having a boy. I went with an ombré effect. According to Webster's dictionary, ombré is described as "colors or tones that shade into each other" in case you were wondering.

I basically used 7 skeins of yarn starting at the darkest shade (navy blue) and working my way to the lighest shade (white). When one skein ran out I switched to the next one. Of course I only buy yarn on sale and of course I only buy Vanna's Choice. I used a simple single crochet stitch for the entire blanket starting with 150 chain stiches for the first row. It ended up being about a 3 x 3 ft blanket, perfect for a little baby.

I think this could be a great go-to when I need a great baby gift. 

Mountain House

We spent the weekend with friends up in the mountains. I'm going to let most of the pictures do the talking in this post with a few words.

Here is Gwen. She is the daughter of our friends and is such a cutie. I love the shades!

Here is Dry Falls near Highlands, NC.

The name is deceiving though, you don't stay dry.

The family of three... soon to be four!

Just the two of us... please sing like Will Smith while reading that.

Look, a rainbow!

Yes we most certainly are about to walk under the waterfall.

We're getting closer... rainbow!

Behind the falls! I had to snap this picture quick because we were getting sprayed.

Whew, we made it.

Group shot.

Quick, zoom out and take another group shot.

Back on the drive home. We stopped for just a few pictures.

This would be way cool framed. What room in the house could use some blue up on the wall?

 Our attempt of a selfie. We need practice.

This was taken on my phone and edited with Instagram. Probably one of my favorite pictures I've taken of Joe. Love you babe!

Photo Friday #42

Meet Bruno. I met Bruno while in Rhode Island at Amy's parents house. He is the type of dog that thinks he is 100% human. We bonded while reading a magzine and sipping hot tea. Ahh the life of a dog.

Chimney Rock

On our drive back to Charlotte from Asheville we had planned to take the "scenic route." To me all I knew that meant was some mountains and Lake Lure. Are you familiar with Lake Lure? Parts of the movie Dirty Dancing was filmed there. Are you familiar with Lake Lure now? Anyways, my aunt and uncle suggested we drive this route sometime because they really enjoyed it on their way back from Asheville back around Thanksgiving time.

Now that I've set the stage, let me tell you how we stumbled across a really cool state park and got a really good workout while there. I had heard of Chimney Rock, never really knew what it was. We were driving along, enjoying the winding road when Joe's dad pointed out an American flag up on top of a rock. We thought it was neat... little did we know we would actually be climbing to the top of that rock!!

So here is the view from the village of Chimney Rock. At this point we still didn't know what was in store for us that day.

Then we started putting two and two together and realized you could drive a good ways up the mountain to the Chimney Rock State Park.

Here's a better view where you can see the entrance and see the rock behind it. I get so creative with my picture taking sometimes. Pat on my back for this cool shot!

Once we parked the hike began. Getting closer!

If I remember correctly this picture was taken not quite all the way to the top. It was probably one of those "need a breather" type excuses to take a picture.

We made it! That is Lake Lure in the background. Are you familiar with Lake Lure? Oh nevermind...

If only the trees were green...

Great group shot. Julie and I both bought a picture frame from the Chimney Rock gift shop. I think this picture will make its way into the frame.

Still being creative... or should I say patriotic??

Thought we were done? Not so fast! There was still mountain to be climbed. In reality it wasn't climbing, but basically just stair stepping. For the record that is still a very good workout.

This is probably my favorite shot. I should mention that all these pictures were taken with my iPhone. I love that I can snap good quality pictures when I don't have my good camera handy.

Another group shot to end the adventure. We had such a great time with Joe's parents. Thank you both for visiting and come back soon!!

The Biltmore

We were lucky to spend the Easter holiday with family right here in North Carolina. Joe's parents drove down to spend almost a full week at our house. Actually this was the first time they've seen our house. Even though we've shown them lots of pictures and some videos, it's not the same until you see it in person. It's also so nice for Joe and I to entertain guests with so much more space. As opposed to our previous small apartments, we're not able to give guests their own bedroom and bathroom. Everyone wins!

We planned a few fun activities to do while Jed and Julie were in town. One being our trip to Asheville and The Biltmore. This has been in the back of our minds for a while, one of those "must do/see" while living so close.

We started our trip actually by eating in the Stable Cafe. It is literally what is sounds like... a restaurant in the old horse stables. The booths were neat, they were situated in between the original walls or stalls for the horses. Great food too, wish I would have taken some pictures in there.

As you can see nothing was really in bloom. That made me sad. Although I could just pictures how pretty this walled garden would look with all the tulips and roses bushes full of color. Just have to use your imagination!

This was the back of the house, well maybe more so on the side of the property. Who cares, this place was huge. We snapped a few pictures back here, but the wind didn't let my hair cooperate with me.

And directly behind us in the picture above was this... beautiful rolling hills with the blue ridge parkway in the background. I see where these mountains get their name!

This angle of the house makes it look small... just remember this house is 179,000 square feet inside and the estate covers 8,000 acres of land. Holy huge house!!!

Close up, I love the detail. I'm still in awe of the inside of the house. It was too bad they don't allow pictures inside at all because I would have loved to capture some of that detail. Life back in the early 1900's was so different, I'm intrigued by their formality. Of course the amount of money George Vanderbilt had was incredible also. George, his wife Edith and their daughter Cornelia lived fascinating lives.

Like I said, the wind was howling...

Inside the green house we did find a few very pretty flowers. I snapped a few close up shots. It was nice to be inside the heated building with no wind. Plus look at how pretty these colors are. Spring can't come fast enough!

We had some fun with the statues. Although we kept it completely PG... notice how I didn't tell Joe to stand next to the statue without clothing! He's such a good sport when I get on a picture taking roll.

To end our tour of the Biltmore we stopped into the winery and tasted some wine. Completely complimentary wine tasting. Although I was a bit disappointed... I think maybe 2 or 3 of their wines actually use grades from North Carolina. The rest are either shipped in or processed in California. In addition they didn't let us keep our wine glasses. Oh well, you can't win them all!

More to come tomorrow of the rest of our trip!!

Roasted Pecans

This recipe is all thanks to Joe and his twitter account. We like to email tweets back and forth when we see fun quotes, neat picture or breaking news. In reality we both follow a lot of the same accounts so we'd probably come across the tweet eventually but it's still fun. Here is the email I receives from Joe for a recipe. Getting this email meant "we should try this." So we did.

I would recommend not baking them as long as the tweet says. I watched them pretty close and actually took them out after about 7 minutes because I smelled them burning a bit. These were quick, easy and delicious!