Last Dance With Mary Jane

Morning!  How was y’alls Saturday?!  Mine was fantastic:  we got to ski an amazing powder day at one of our favorite mountains with great friends!  Let’s back it on up to Friday night though.  Dinner was BREAKFAST (“Binner” as our friend Ben calls it :))  We made scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hashbrown casserole, and cinnamon roll French toast!  I was hungry, so I piled my plate up with eggs and hashbrown casserole:

Not a ton of color, but it was yummy!  I was so jealous of this plate of cured breakfast meats that everyone else got to partake in:

Anyone who’s a vegan might be cringing at that one, but I was definitely a little sad 🙁  7 more days till I can eat meat again, and the closer to Easter it gets, the harder it gets to refrain!  I know I’ll make it, but as much as Lent has helped me to appreciate the foods that come from the ground and has shown me how I don’t NEED meat, it’s also just reinforced how much I enjoy meat!  Good thing I didn’t give up dessert though because this was AMAZING!

To get the completely artery-clogging recipe, just click here.  The pecans on top are hand-picked by my parents from Texas (probably what makes it so darn good ;))  I had 2 small slices, but probably should’ve stuck with just one since I was pretty full.  Community group was a lot of fun, and it just felt so good to share life with my good friends!  I love them all 🙂

Yesterday morning we went to Starbucks for breakfast (I did a short iPhone post) and then David, Emma, Nate, and I headed out to Winter Park.  It snowed pretty much the whole way there, and we were so excited to see 7 inches of fresh powder on the ground!  It was a great day of skiing, but I was kind of sad since it was likely my last time out to the mountains this year.  I was pretty excited to go ski the Mary Jane side of the resort though!  It’s a little more difficult and less traveled, but SO much fun!  My knees were starting to ache, so Nate and David went and skied a bowl while Emma and I stopped to rest and snack.  I was STARVING so I got the only vegetarian option they head:  mac & cheese in a bread bowl (no picture, sorry, I don’t know where Nate put my point and shoot).  Really?  My inner Carbzilla rejoiced, but I was a little disappointed in the lack of options.  Oh well…I ate the pasta and little bread and threw the rest away before I could mindlessly eat the rest.

On the way back home we stopped at a gas station to use the restroom and grab some coffee.  In the bathroom I totally sliced my thumb open on the toilet paper holder!  SO gross, and it was bleeding everywhere.  Good thing they had band aids there.  I think my thumb nail is bruised too though = no fun.   Regardless, we decided that homemade pizza sounded AMAZING for dinner.  As soon as we got home Nate was the best husband ever and took over cooking since my finger hurt so badly!  We made a batch of dough from one of our cookbooks and then cut it into 4 pieces to make 4 small pizzas with.  Here’s Emma’s:

She was so sweet and made a slice without sausage on there for me!  ‘Twas delicious. I had a Guinness while I waited for my pizza to bake:

And then I wrapped my Guinness bottle in the fake fur liner for the hood on one of my ski jackets.  Totally normal, right?

What it comes down to is I just love playing with different ways to photograph stuff and saw the fur on the table (I zipped it off since I thought it might snow).  So much fun!  Then pizza was ready:

It had marinara, mushrooms, asparagus, red onion, Roma tomato, fresh mozzarella, and parmesan!  SO good…and I ate all but one slice.  That’s right, don’t be scared 🙂  Nate was also amazing and made a slice of his that didn’t have meat on it, but I gobbled that down before I took the picture.  Oops!  After dinner David and Emma left, and we snuggled on the floor with the dogs before hitting the sack.

Breakfast this morning is a smoothie that has spinach, but is not even a little bit green:

• 1 cup nonfat milk
• 9 frozen cherries
• 4 frozen strawberries
• 1 banana
• 1 cup spinach
• 1 packet hot chocolate mix

I just used the last of the spinach I had in the fridge, which wasn’t a lot compared to what I normally use.  It’s delicious anyway!  The rest of the day is just going to be going to church (where I’m serving the nursery – YAY BABIES!!!) and then likely relaxing/cleaning/grocery shopping the rest of the afternoon.  Should be a fun day!

I am so excited to have been featured on Tastespotting twice this week!  I always get rejected (I think they could use a better word) by Foodgawker, but Tastespotting is very easy to use and they are very communicative via email as well!  Being on there has made me realize that I want to work a lot more on my photography.  I have the equipment to do it, and I think it would be a really fun, creative endeavor to improve my pictures on the blog (today is obviously excluded :))  I look forward to seeing what I can do!

Are you interested in photography?  What sort of camera do you use?  Any special editing software? For the majority of my pictures I use a Nikon D200 with a Nikon 50mm F1.8 prime lens.  I also use Photoshop and Lightroom for editing!

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If you’re married, what did you and your husband/wife dance to for your first dance? We danced to Jack Johnson’s “Better Together” 🙂