I love buns.

Cinnamon buns that is.  Easily my favorite breakfast treat.  I love anything with cinnamon in it, and luckily thats a major ingredient in these buns.  I used this recipe from the pioneer women. The only change I made was in the icing.  I chose to make a basic royal icing instead of her maple icing--mainly because I had no maple syrup.  They were awesome!  Only problem was that they took much longer to bake then the recipe says.

Party Time

Sorry it has been so long since I last posted!  Actually, I can blame my absence on the topic of this post.  All last week I was busy preparing for an engagement party that I hosted.  Here are the pictures....

Making candied lemon. NBD

Before

After

The bride and groom to be in the middle, with their family.

Oh my, these next few are just way too good not to share. This is the Muddy's staff in a nutshell.

Cookies!

I think I've mentioned this before....but if you are new to reading this blog then let me fill you in.  I love cookies.  Chocolate chip to be exact.  I would love nothing more than to eat a delicious piece of heaven, or a cookie, for every meal.  

I could talk about cookies all day.  But I will spare you.  

I recently found this recipe.  It makes just two cookies...how perfect.  I can't wait to try it out.

Personalities

Do you watch Downton Abbey???  If you don't you should join the trend because it is a gripping show!  Prior to a few weeks ago, I had seen a few random episodes, but then Andrew and I borrowed the first two seasons from a friend and we love it.  The third season is currently on TV, so we hope to finish the second season sometime this week and finally join the rest of our fellow fans for the third season.

A treat that DA followers can indulge in is this personality test, which tells you which character you are most alike.  Here are my results:

Yep, as you can see I'm a man!  So I'm Matthew Crawley...only the heir to Downton Abbey, Mary's lover, original hater or butlers (Mosley. He's annoying anyway), war hero, and the hunk of the show.  I'm totally OK with all of the above, no big deal.  A few of my friends who have taken the test, said I would be a Mary, but boy, were they wrong!

I think I might browse for another test to see if my results are consistent.

Monday Night

What do you do tonight? I read this book, picked up green bean tofu from Pho Binh and then talked to my friends Emily and McCauley on google hangout!  Have you used google hangout yet?  It's the cats' meow.  A very pleasant evening if I do say so myself.

This and That

Just some funny pictures....

Boone, very confused in the hail today

Someone, ahemmmm, Boone.  Went through the trash.

Hooray for snow!

A terrible cake that I made for my friend Becca's bday!

You're Invited

So I'm hosting an engagement party for two friends of mine, Robyn and Michael.  I picked out the invitation above from Etsy... isn't it incredible!  Secretly, I have a thing for mustaches, so I fell in love with the invitation when I saw it!  I purchased the invite from this shop owner.  She was professional, efficient and adorable.  The last description is more of an assumption based off the imaginary face in my head, whom I exchanged emails with :) 

The invitation was actually sent to me in the form of a PDF.  Slightly unconventional, but wonderful if you are on a time crunch!  After I was emailed the PDF, I put it on a zip drive, went and got them printed at a local print shop and mailed them out the next day.  I'm sure not everyone would enjoy sending out invites this way... but I know I will do this again in the future AND use this shop owner again!

Pictures to come from the actual party!

Here's another invite I found.  I would get re-engaged... to throw myself a party... to send out this one! 

Pearl Jam

Apparently pearls are something exciting to buy when you visit Hawaii.  In all the jewelry stores, they sell a variety of pearl necklaces, rings, earrings and more.  Many jewelry stands in the outdoor malls entice tourists as they walk by with a bowl full of living oysters.  Peaking the interests of many, shoppers will find out that for the low price of $14.99, you can open an oyster and have the pearl inside!  The catch?  You have no idea what size or color the pearl will be.  BUT, you are guaranteed to find a pearl...because they are grown in farms.  Not in Hawaii I might add, but in Tokyo.  Womp. Womp.

You might ask, what kind of silly tourist would fall for this?  And the answer would be me!  Yep. I got to open my very own oyster, just as if I had found it in the ocean while snorkeling.  At least this is how I picture finding my pearl.

Anyway, I love my pearl!  The man who sold it to me said it was one of the biggest he had seen and was worth much more that $14.99.  I hope to use the pearl to make a ring someday in the near future.

TA-DA!  Thanks for the pearl Mother Newman!

Christmas in Hawaii

After a long, long red eye flight Sunday night, we finally arrived home Monday afternoon.  Greeted by the bitter cold of Memphis, we were none the less ready to get back into our daily routine.  Hawaii was beautiful, warm and filled with a great deal of family laughter.  We can't  thank the Grandparents enough for getting us all together!

We landed in Maui late on Christmas Eve. Most of the family did not see us until Christmas morning when we headed to church together (pictured above).  Each day of our vacation was different, usually involving one activity that included that whole family--26 of us I believe?  Besides our group adventures, Andrew and I slept, read, and relaxed.  Such a treat.  Here are some pictures from our Hawaiian excursions!

The Grandparents

Siblings

One day we biked down Haleakala, a massive shield volcano in east Maui.  This was one of my favorite days in Maui.  Each family tried to fit everyone on one bike...it was quite a show.

We stopped at this organic lavender farm for lunch.  They had an incredible menu and everything was made in a food truck.  I love food trucks so this meal made me a happy camper.  I ordered a taro burger, it was delicious.

One night the family went to a traditional Luau.  It was incredible, and slightly depressing, to see the hula dancers do their thing.  Learning to hula...I smell a new years resolution.

Andrew's parents decided to have their immediate family stay one day longer since we arrived later than everyone else.  Here's what we did...

Aloha!