Life, Love, and Faith

So I've been cooking a lot this week. As I'm waiting on notice of when I can take my boards, it takes my mind off of it and it's fun!

I started Sunday making beer bread in the breadmaker and potato cheese soup, both from my awesome cousins Jeff and Jennifer as a Christmas present! They got them from here. We used Miller Lite in the bread, and it was really good, though I'd like to do it again and use Blue Moon, I think the honey would be a really good addition to the beer.

Monday I made slow cooker chili and cinnamon raisin bread. It was really really good. I also tried my hand at making orange-cranberry bread, but I had some complications (I forgot that the breadmaker wouldn't tell me to add the cranberries and tried to put them in too late) so it didn't turn out.

That morning, for lunch, I made myself apple french toast. It was amazing! I used some bread that Nick and Stephanie gave us and used the recipe I found here. This guy comes up with AMAZING recipes, and this was no exception. Here's what it looked like...

Tuesday I didn't really cook as Ryan had a work party Tuesday night and I was being lazy. I made macaroni and cheese with bacon for the housemate and I, and it was tasty. I did make a philly cheese steak sandwich for lunch, which wasn't new, but I did add chopped garlic to it per a suggestion from the same blog I got the french toast from, and it made a difference! Pic here...

Today I made Italian herb bread in the breadmaker and then made Butternut Squash Ravioli and Caramel Apple Pork Chops. The ravioli wasn't great, I'm going to try a different sauce tomorrow. The Pork chops and bread, however, were fabulous. I love using apples with different kinds of meat, it really brings out the flavor of the meat!

Hopefully I'll have a job soon and not as much time to spend 3-4 hours cooking, but it has been fun while it's lasting!

Love,

Jesi

So after a cross country trek we made it! Moving all of our stuff from Illinois to Charlotte was a very stressful and tiring journey, but completely worth it now that all of our stuff is here!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday weekend. We made it to Deerfield yesterday afternoon, after an eventful trip. The Husband was quite tired this time, which is unusual as he can usually make it through the entire trip. I drove almost half the trip this time, and we stopped at a truck stop in Kentucky and slept in the truck for a hour before going into all the rain of Indiana and Illinois. We spent most of last night in a tired haze, catching up on DVR and eating pizza.

Love,

Jesi

Tonight at midnight we'll be heading back to the Illinois area. It's supposedly freezing rain/snowing there, so we're hopeful to not run into too much of it on our trip. I'm looking forward to the whole thing being over! It's going to be a crazy weekend.

And the secret cherry pie!

I have such a cute family. :)

Love,

Jesi

And adventure it was. It brought me back to being 12, running around behind my friend's house in the ravine, where we'd pretend to be in a war, or chased by monsters, etc. There was a "trail" to follow, made up mostly of leaves and mud (we probably shouldn't have traipsed around right after 4 days of rain) and plenty of trees and sticky branches. The dogs were troopers, Bella actually pulled me up a hill at one point (she's about 50 pounds and a lab/pitt mix so she's strong!) We thought we'd go into the woods at the point by our house and come out over by the Food Lion about a mile away, but sadly, it wasn't the case as we found a barbed wire fence blocking our way. So we went around in a big circle, found a really pretty mini waterfall in a creek, almost fell up some big hills, and made it back home in under a hour, covered in mud and leaves. It was fun, nice to get out of the house for an afternoon!

After that, we decided to try and beat Mario Brothers for the Wii, which is one of the best video games I've ever played. If you haven't made it to the final castle, I won't give away the ending, but it made all of us yell, and we still haven't beaten it! Maybe tonight...

Tomorrow's plans include more cleaning and making a Christmas dinner for Ryan that is a surprise to him, so I can't post it on here! I am going to try and start taking more pictures so that I have something to load on here, as I love blogs with pictures!

Thanks to those who've started following this little blog! You give me a reason to update. :)

Love,

Jesi

PS - I completely forgot one more movie for my worst movies list of the decade - Max Payne. Husband, his best friend, and I went to see it when Husband lived in Charlotte last year. It was laughably horrible. Poor Mark Wahlburg, he went from one of my favorites (The Departed) to that crap.

Honorable Mention - Wall-E and Up. They never cease to amaze me with the technology and the heart they are able to put in the Pixar movies, and they're BEAUTIFUL on blu-ray.

10. High Fidelity - Now, I didn't see this movie when it first came out, as that was in 2000 and I was still in high school/not able to watch R rated movies. I love pretty much anything John Cusack related, but this movie is the tops for me as far as he goes. Jack Black is also hilarious in this as well, and it probably speaks to me the most as a music major.

9. Ocean's Eleven - I'm a big fan of con artist thrillers, and this one is no exception. I love how witty it is, and how, even though the second was a little silly, this whole trilogy was smart, fun, and kept you guessing.

8. Juno - I took my Dad and Step-mom to see this movie in the theaters, and it made my dad teary and both of them laugh like crazy. Full of heart and full of realism, it was definitely one of the best.

7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Husband and I both really love this movie. It's Jim Carrey's best role in my opinion, and Kate Winslet is one of my favorite actresses. She doesn't disappoint in this contemporary love story.

6. Sweeney Todd - Again, great actors (Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter) and a great story that my high school music teacher always raved about. I love how Tim Burton made everything so dark and still so nuanced. We watch this at least every six months, more for the organ music in the beginning than anything else I think.

5. Forgetting Sarah Marshall - I love Judd Apatow movies, and it was hard to pick just one as my favorite. A close second was Knocked Up and a close third 40 Year old Virgin. I know Apatow just produced this one, but it's so hilarious with so much heart that it's at the top for my go to comedies. Plus Jason Segal singing about vampire muppets can't be beat.

4. The Departed - My favorite genre of movies is mobster movies, and this one is amazing! I will admit, I've had a thing for Leonardo DiCaprio since Titanic, and he's just one of the brilliant pieces of this Scorese flick. I have never been to a movie where everyone seemed to hold their breath the whole way through until this one.

3. The Dark Knight - My husband is a HUGE Batman fan, and this is our all time Batman movie. We've even got posters of it in our media room! Christian Bale is incredible (although the husky Batman voice gets to me on rewatches) and Heath Ledger gives the performance of his career (sadly, of course.) I especially love that most of the stunts are actually done, instead of CGI based.

2. Kill Bill: Volume 2 - I am a die hard Quentin Tarentino fan, as most of my friends can tell you. We also have a Pulp Fiction poster in our media room, and my dad got me a framed poster signed by the entire cast for my recent birthday. I like Kill Bill: Volume 1 as well, but this movie has all the backstory and heart that the first one lacks (on purpose, I know.) Uma Thurman punching her way out of a coffin just can't be beat.

1. Love Actually - Now I know, this is purely a sentimental choice. 80% of the music from my wedding was taken from this movie, including the theme, which I walked down the aisle to. It's the movie Ryan and I watch every Christmas, and while I'm not much of a romantic comedy fan, the BEST love based movie I've ever seen. Every time I watch it I find something new that I love about it.

And now for my 5 worst movies of the decade:

5. Hostel - I'm not a huge horror fan, I lean more toward the suspense/thriller side than the torture/gory side. I watched Hostel while house-sitting, figuring that if it got too scary I'd just turn it off. It was never scary, just really, REALLY, gory with a lot of random nudity and blood. Lame.

4. Mission to Mars - I got this movie for 3$ from Walmart, I think. I usually love how awesomely bad disaster movies are, but this one we couldn't even make it through at a party where no one was paying that much attention.

3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Ryan and I went to see this in theaters...because we thought it'd be like the first one, cute, kinda funny, and with a decent story line. Instead, we sat through 3 hours of big robots running into each other. It got to the point where you couldn't tell which robot was which, making it look like big piles of trash were colliding. Not my scene.

2. Open Water - A past boyfriend and I rented this one night, thinking it looked interesting. Needless to say, we fastfowarded after about 20 minutes just to watch the people die because we were that bored by it.

1. The Happening - I've stood by M. Night Shyamalan through movies other people thought were horrible...Lady in the Water comes to mind. In this movie, he had the leads running from the WIND to get away from the "plant killers." My husband kept trying to convince me it was a B movie and therefore still good...but B movies usually have some wit, or humor, or SOMETHING other than watching people come up with inventive ways to kill themselves for 2 hours. I wanted to walk out (we also saw this in theaters) but didn't...and I'd like that 2 hours of my life back, please.

So there you have it! Thoughts? Additions/Deletions? It's been a great decade for movies and I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with in the next 10 years. We were going to see Avatar this weekend but forgot that it's the weekend before Christmas and that one million people would be at the mall, so we scrapped that idea. We are seeing Sherlock Holmes this week at some point, which I'm excited for!

Love,

Jesi