Dinner at the Addison

So on Saturday night, my dad decided to take myself, my husband, my mom, grandma and brother out for dinner. It was partly to celebrate Easter, it was partly to celebrate my husband getting his name on a patent, and it was partly to spend time with my grandma who lives a little over an hour away.

He decided on the Addison. He warned us it would be fancy... but I don't think that even my dad knew just how fancy it was going to be.

You can check it out at their website Addison

For one thing, it claimed to be a four course dinner, and that is special enough. But we counted... and with all the in between courses added in, it was 10!

1. First we had an Amuse-Bouche that was a little tiny bite of an avocado sauce thing with lime and basil on it. It was delicous... although everything was, so I am not going to say it every time, just assume it was.

2. Next they brought this (I don't remember names of almost any other course, so...) cheese puff thing. It had cheese in the center of some kind of yummy fresh bread.

3. This "course" is just like rolls at many restaurants. The difference is that this roll was served with fresh butter with some herbs in it, and you didn't take it from a bowl at the middle of the table, but they would individually serve them. You could have as many as you wanted (my husband had 4) but they would just ask you each time and place it on your plate.

4. This is the first course that we actually ordered. It was an appetizer... but there were two rounds of appetizers and I am pretty sure that they didn't have the same name. Oh well. I ordered a leek soup. It was great, but interesting because it was served cold on purpose.

5. This was the second appetizer course. I ordered risotto for this course because they kept making it on Hell's Kitchen and because it sounded good. It definitely was.

6. This was our entree. I ordered Duck three ways, but it was in french so it sounded pretty (no, I don't speak French, and yes, I did have to ask what it was). I enjoyed the duck breast, but it was a little rare for my taste, but that is fancy food for you. I also had duck liver on there. I had never had liver before, and I have to admit that it tasted good... but the thought of eating liver made me squeamish so I only had one bite and then gave the rest to my husband.

7. By this point we are getting extremely full... but knew that dessert was coming and we were all thinking to ourselves that we can make it one more course... little did we know. Number 7 was our pre-dessert. No kidding. It was really yummy, ice cream with what tasted like an apple snowcone on the bottom.

8. Somewhere around the dessert time they asked us if we wanted a cheese course as well... naturally we all said no. Very stuffed at this point. This was our actual dessert. I ordered a raspberry citrus dessert and I enjoyed it, and got it all down even though my stomach at this point was too full.

9. We are finding it amusing by this point how many courses we have had... glad we made it through it... my mom jokes about a post dessert and we all groan because we couldn't fit another bite... and then they bring out the post dessert!!!!! We all had to stop ourselves from laughing outloud. They were little delicate cookies that crumbled in our mouths. Even though they tasted good... few of us made it through the two little cookies on our plates.

10. I know what you are thinking... what could they add after a post dessert. Well... I might be exaggerating to call this another course, but by this point we are overwhelmed by the amount of food we ate, and yet as we are coming out the door, they hand us a little box with caramels in it for the road.

Some highlights.
- Everything was presented beautifully! It made me better understand why it is called the culinary arts.

-It had amazing ambiance. Every time they served a dish they served it simultaneously, where 6 servers would place our food in front of us at the same time. There was a footstool for my purse, and every time one of us left to go to the restroom they would replace our napkin.

- The service was unparalleled. That many servers helping you at once, and they even had our car, which we valet parked, out front waiting for us when we got outside.

It was an amazing night, and I had a blast.

Fun with Video Editing software

For months now, no... years, I have had footage and pictures that I wanted to make into a fun movie to watch, but I didn't have the software needed. So, for my birthday, one thing I asked for was for Adobe Premiere Elements so I could finally do something with it.

I hope to produce much better videos later, but so far I have made two, one of Roxie and one of the kittens.Note- the kitten one was messed up, so I had to fix it and I decided to totally revamp it, see it on a newer post. Here they are for your viewing pleasure.

My 25th birthday dinner

On Sunday, I celebrated my 25th birthday at Napa Rose in Disney's Grand Californian with a group of my relatives and my husband's family.

We got the privilege of sitting at the chef's table, where we are right in front of the kitchen and can see everything that they are making, and even talk to them (if they aren't too busy). The other special thing about the table is that you can ask the chef to create a menu for you of the options based on what you say you like and dislike, or you can basically ask for anything you want (as long as they have the ingredients).

I chose to let them make a meal for me, and even though I gave very little description of what I liked, I think they did a great job! Everything was absolutely delicious, and as you can see in the pictures, it was also beautiful. It seriously showed why they are called the culinary arts.

Afterward, we opened presents in the lobby, and I got lots of gift cards for restaurants, which is one of my favorite gifts, and a bunch of things I asked for. It was a terrific night, and probably my best birthday ever. Yay for 25!

Our Garden is taking off!

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are recent pictures of our garden, taken this weekend, and made into a pretty slideshow for you!

Spoiled? No... well maybe... okay, definately

So, I never thought that I would be one of "those" people.

You know the ones, they spoil their animals, and treat them like children. They spend oodles on money on their animals. I have always known I loved my animals, and I want them to be happy, but one of those people? Never.

But I am. I have come to terms with it, accepted it, and know that I will always love my (future) children and husband more, and will not spend outside our means on our pets, but I do love them very much, and have started buying more and more for them.

With Roxie, it was a necessity. She destroyed her toys, so we had to buy replacement (stronger) toys. She destroyed them, we got new ones again. (Now she has bones and KONG products, nothing else can live).

Ellie we bought a few toys at first, but she really wasn't interested. She would play with the interactive feathers and stuff for a bit, but not really. She would much rather chase a pen or a chapstick around the room anyways, and we had plenty of those, so it was a non-issue.

Enter the kittens. These two play with EVERYTHING! And when I say play, I mean rough and tumble, jump off things chase around the room till they fall asleep play. These kittens, who are filling the cat space left by Ellie would be spoiled for that reason alone. Every time we went to the pet store, I would buy another toy. We had got them a little scratching post, but it was clearly not cutting it for these two little rambunctious climbers.

So... and here is the reason for the post... we decided to spoil them with this deluxe cat tree. It was on sale, and it was online so it didn't cost us lots, but Ellie sure never had something like this. But the kittens love it, and it brings us joy seeing them love it. And isn't that what spoiling someone you love is all about?

So after starting this dress well over a month ago... maybe a couple months... I told myself this weekend I HAD to finish it.

It shouldn't have taken long, all I had left was the zipper, the hem and the ribbon (I'll explain why this doesn't exist later). But the problem was that I had accidentally made the dress too big. I know, you're thinking that's a good thing, but not really, because I had to try to rectify the mistake by taking it in.

I am getting all my supplies out, and realize that I have somehow misplaced the portion of my pattern that explains how to do the zipper. I search everywhere, and it is nowhere. So, I will not change my goal, and left without options, I decide that I will just wing it, because how hard can a zipper be?

In theory, not that hard. In practice, when the dress is made too large, very.

I pin the zipper in place, and try the dress on. Too big. I undo ALL the pins, take in the sides, rinse and repeat. Very hopeful, I try it on, and .... still too big. I undo ALL the pins again, take in the sides, try it on, and it is a better fit, but the middle is still too loose. So I take out the middle pins, hoping that I can just re-pin those areas... nope, won't work, I end up fixing all the pins again. It finally fits!

I sew the zipper in place, then I take it off the sewing machine to look at it. I groan. My husband asks, " What's wrong?" I show him that I have somehow managed to sew part of the dress onto the zipper. Sigh. I take out my seam ripper, take that apart, and fix my mistake.

Then I take my time hemming carefully, and that, thankfully, goes well.

I intended to add a ribbon along the bottom, but after all the time and effort the rest of it took, I just wanted to try it on. Overall, I think it looks good, but I am not in love with the top, so I will probably always wear a sweater or shirt of some kind over it (like in the picture).

With that in mind, I decided that if I added any color ribbon, I would need to always match the sweater to that color, but if I leave it plain it is more versatile.

I ended the day being giddy that I actually made a dress that (with a sweater) looks good on me, and doesn't scream out that it was made by hand. Yay! Good day.

Watch Lily and Argon play

Siblings at play! Aren't they cute. Sorry no music, this was a really quick video and post.