Top 3 Thursday: Games

I am just barely making this post on Thursday... ahh Lacey and Jen don't yell at me! This week is on our favorite games!

To say that the Baker family loves games is an understatement....so to narrow it down I chose my top 3 games that I have the best memories of playing!

1) MONSTER. This was our FAVORITE game to play before bedtime growing up. Dad would tell us (Tara, Nick and I) to go upstairs and count to 100, then come find him. With all the lights off we would all hide under a blanket (most times we all stuffed our shirts with pillows b/c we would bump into EVERYTHING including each other) and spook ourselves for almost an hour trying to find him. Looking back it is absolutely hilarious, I wish so much Mom and Dad would have caught it on video. (If you were wondering Dad would normally go downstairs and watch tv for a while, and then come up and scare & tickle us and then go back downstairs). hahaha I'm cracking up even writing this... THE BEST memories.

2) KIMPS. Really any card game I love, but I have such hilarious memories of playing this with my family... especially with Grandpa. I remember one time when he couldn't remember the 'planned signal' so he was doing every signal he could possibly think of. Tara literally peed in her pants at the kitchen table because he was making us all laugh so hard, but believe me we were all close to doing the same.

3) HEARTS/O-SHAW. I love both of these card games and I think I do because we learned to play them in Pennsylvania where my great grandma lived (on my dads side). We would go visit her in the summer, and it was such a small town there was nothing to do. We would all sit around the table with our cousins and aunts and uncles and play cards for hours. We still all do this anytime we go up to Black Mountain to visit my Grammy and Pop Pop. Love it :)

So those are my favorite games! What would yours be?

Love my hubby

As most of y'all know, Kyle has been traveling every week since February. *As of right now* he has no flights booked ... YEAH!! Anyways, I just wanted to share a picture of what I come home to when he IS in town...
Yes that's right, Kyle makes most of our dinners during the week. Unfortunately, since I work on another planet, Kyle always gets home before I do. I get home around 7:15 (I workout most days after work to try and dodge traffic) and by then I'm starving. Kyle has learned and has dinner on the table for me when I walk in the door. I love that he cooks for us, he cleans the house, he does dishes... there are no "my chores" and "his chores". We both pitch in when we have time. Things are just so much easier when he's around... I could definitely get used to this :)

Maybe one day I'll even share his recipe for orange chicken that he cooked for us last night!

Aren't husbands the best?

Dave Barnes Concert!!

A couple weekends ago we headed to midtown to go see Dave Barnes! Kyle and I have been listening to his songs for a couple years now, and were so excited to see him in person!

We started out the night by going to "TAP" a super trendy restaurant off of Peachtree Street. Amy was the one who organized all of this, so her friends Becky & Jimmy, along with Jen and Chris and met us there. It was delicious food for sure!
The concert was in "The Loft" which is in the same building where we saw Joshua Radin. It was standing room only and REALLY hot inside, but we still had an awesome time! We just love that so many artists come to Atlanta!
During the concert, Amy and I also joined his "Mocha Club", where we are donating $7 a month (the cost of 2 mochas). Unbelievably just $7 a month can:
- Provide clean water to 7 Africans for an entire month
- Sustain life for 1 person living with AIDS
- Save 1 person's life from Malaria

We joined Dave Barnes' team which focuses on helping provide clean water wells to the refugees of Sudan. We are getting monthly emails of the progress on the wells, and it feels so good to be a part of a cause that makes such a difference. It was a wonderful night with friends for sure!

A Day at the Lake!

We spent our entire Saturday out on Lake Lanier-- it was so fun! My friends, Jen and David, invited us to tag along with them on their friend Amber's boat. Well we weren't meeting them until 12:30, so Kyle went out earlier that morning (5:30 am) with our neighbor Brent on his boat to wake board! One of these days I'll go with him so I can get pictures of him doing some tricks on the wake board.

Anyways, once Kyle got home from that adventure we met Jen, David, Amber and Audrina (Amber's daughter) around 12:30 to hop on her beautiful boat. Amber had really never maneuvered a boat before (long story -- her ex-fiance used to drive it) so Kyle drove the entire time, which he loved.
We went into this Cove and anchored where TONS of other boats ended up coming later on. It was so fun. The guys even back flipped off the boat a couple of times, while Jen and I stayed on the floats!
There was a HUGE YACHT in the cove that was playing their music loud enough for everyone in the entire cove to hear. During one song a girl on the boat grabs a hula-hoop and starts dancing while hula hooping... she had some talent! She went at least 5 songs before dropping it.

It was so nice to be outside all day getting some sun. Thank you again Amber, Jen and David for letting us tag along. We had a wonderful time!

Biblestudy is over...

Sadly, Friday night was our last small group with everyone finishing the series by Tim Keller on the Prodigal God. We've enjoyed learning with and from everyone in this group so much more then we can say.

Here are all the guys: (Chris, Matt, Chris and Kyle)

And all the girls (Jen, Amy, Kathleen, and Leah)... LOVE that all of us showed up without makeup on!

Jen and Chris leave today for a 2 month mission trip to Kenya and in July, Matt and Amy will be moving to Bentonville, Arkansas as Matt took a new job there. We are so sad that our bible-study cannot continue again next year, but are thankful for the time that we had together. We were blessed with constant accountability, new friendships, wonderful prayer time and LOTS of laughs. Just to give you an example...

Someone thought it would be cute to do a kissing picture. I guess the rest of us thought we didn't have to specify who to kiss... but Chris got a little confused:

And then the rest of us laughed about it for about 5 minutes...

Thanks again Amy and Matt for organizing this small group. We absolutely loved it!!

Top 3 Thursday: Apps

This Thursday is your Top 3 Apps on your smart phone!

1) WORDS WITH FRIENDS. My brother introduced my whole family to it and now we can't get enough. My mom, dad, sister, brother, husband, and grandma all play each other and love it. I think I have normally 15 games total going on with family and friends.

2) SHAZAM. I've talked about this one before, but I just love that it'll give me the title and artist to any song. Kyle and I use this all the time when we are watching our tv shows.

3) PANDORA. I think it's the coolest thing ever. Kyle's car has an outlet to plug in your iphone, so we always listen to pandora instead of the radio since we both hate commercials so much. It introduces you to new artists as well which we love.

So those are mine, what would yours be? Hopefully you can introduce me to new ones!

Stuffed French Toast Recipe!

Last night I tried another recipe from Pioneer Woman, one that I had heard rave reviews about from my friends, Lacey and Jen! It was as delicious as they said, once I could get past the warm cream cheese factor!?! Just in case you are a lover of french toast as well, I thought I would share! (OH and here is the original recipe so you can see her amazing pictures of it!)

Stuffed French Toast

Ingredients
• 1 loaf French Bread
• 3 Tablespoons Any Flavor Fruit Spread (You Can Also Use Jelly, Jam, Or Fresh Fruit)
• ½ packages Cream Cheese (4 Oz), At Room Temperature
• 2 whole Eggs
• 1 Tablespoon Cinnamon
• ½ cups Skim Milk
• 2 Tablespoons Butter

Directions
Cut french bread into 2-3 inch wide slices. Then, with a paring knife, go back and cut halfway into each slice, in the center, creating a ‘pocket’ that your fruit mixture can be stuffed into.
In a bowl, place the room temperature cream cheese and three tablespoons of fruit spread of your choice. Combine well.

In a separate bowl, break 2 eggs; add cinnamon and milk and combine well. Now, take fruit mixture and stuff into the ‘pockets’ of your french bread slices. Place on a baking sheet. When done stuffing each piece of bread, completely coat each piece in egg mixture. Make sure all sides are covered. Do all pieces before starting to fry.

Put 2 tbsp (you can use less!) of butter into a hot skillet and melt completely. Add all of the bread to the skillet and cook roughly about 3-6 minutes on each side, until it reaches a nice golden brown. You want to make sure the cream cheese mixture heats through. When done cooking, serve immediately with butter and syrup.

Here are some pictures of my process! Look at all those cut strawberries! (they were on sale so I bought & cut a ton for me to eat during the week!)
Here is my cut bread with the filling stuffed in the pocket!
And the cinnamon/egg/milk mixture that you soak the bread in before cooking: (before I mixed it up of course)
The final outcome!
Delicious!

House concert with Matt & Amy!

On Saturday night, Matt and Amy invited me to their neighbors "house concert". I had never heard of this concept before, so I jumped on board to see what it was all about!
The show started at 8:00 pm, and immediately as we walked in we saw the "stage" (where they had replaced the light bulbs above their built in bookshelves to red and blue) and then they had chairs set up for us to sit in. Everyone was so nice, and we had a great time socializing before the event started. (Even though the lady I struck up a conversation with introduced herself to me 2 more times in the night... haha I guess I make quite an impression :)
There were 3 musicians who traveled from Nashville, TN together and they just rotated singing their songs. Sometimes they would sing background for the other, but they never really sang any songs together.

(In case you are interested, This was the 4th "house concert" that Greg, Amy's neighbor, has hosted. He plays the guitar himself, so he loves to support local artists. He just googled "house concert artists" and every time picks new people to come and perform. He sets up a table for them with their cds and t-shirts too so they can make money. It was $10 a person for us to attend)

We were thoroughly entertained by all the 40+ ladies that were swooning over one of the musicians, Billy Ryan (who's hat said "hank"?). By the end of the night we had nicknames for all the ladies... they were hilarious. They were all country musicians, so one of the ladies even wore pig tails and cowboy boots... dressed to impress :)

Amy and I with Billy Ryan:

It was a hilarious night, I wish so much that Kyle would have been in town! Thank you again Amy & Matt for letting me tag along!!

Martini's and Imax with the girls!

Last Friday I met Lacey, Andrea and Angela downtown at the Fernbank Museum for Martini's and Imax! We hadn't been in a while, and it was the perfect atmosphere for a girls' night!

Our movie started at 9, so we met an hour before to have a girly drink and listen to the music underneath the dinosaur bones! The Kayla Taylor Quartet was performing (jazz music), so we had a really fun time taking pictures and watching people dance.

Did I mention Lacey hooked us up with "buy one get one free" tickets? If you are in Atlanta, become a fan of M & I on Facebook and during the whole month of May it's buy 1 ticket, get 1 ticket free! ($6 instead of $12)

Lacey's drink was BY FAR the best choice. It was called "Banana Split" and tasted JUST like one. Made us all crave some ice cream!!
Around 8:45 we headed up to get our seats for the movie, "Arabia". The movie was kind of random in parts, but I still learned a lot about the culture there. The film highlights on hajj—the largest human gathering on Earth—where every year three million Muslims travel to the holy city of Mecca to reiterate their devotion to Islam. It. was. Crazy. (and claustrophobic, and hot). But very cool to learn about.

Such a fun night, would definitely recommend doing it!!

3 years in our house!

I can't believe that we've been in our house for 3 years (April 20, 2007)... it truly has flown by. We've done so many things to make this house "our home", so I thought it would be fun to link back to some projects we've finished! (Each one of the "bolded" words that you see below is a link. Just right click on the link and select "open link in new tab" so you can see each project we posted about!)

This was one of the first projects Kyle and my dad worked on. They ran electricity over to this side of the garage for the light, and hung the peg board and cabinets. Kyle loves this work space.
Another way to "pimp out" the garage, Kyle was given some fast track by a friend, so we immediately started hanging all of his sports equipment. I love how organized it all is.
The biggest project we've done is add a 3rd bedroom downstairs. My mom and dad came down for an entire week! Kyle and dad worked so hard on this, and I love all the special touches they added. (Click on the days to read all about it: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8)
Here is another view of the bookshelves. This took a lot of spraying and painting on our part!
Pretty soon after that was done, we focused on the stairway leading to the basement. Kyle and I ripped out the carpets in the basement foyer and added hardwoods. We also added judges paneling all the way down the stairs to make it look more finished.

This next one might be my most favorite though... the tile back splash (click here and here for more details) with under-cabinet lighting. Kyle and I enjoy it everyday... it is just so pretty! Once again my mom and dad came down and helped us add this to our house! We love it.

The last project we've done is to our laundry room. Kyle always joked about how that was the only room in our house that I hadn't painted... WELL I needed to fix that one right away :) We found these amazing cabinets from the habitat for humanity restore and replaced our white wire shelf with them!

Oh and did I mention how I painted our room & bathroom 3 times?

Yup you guessed it... same thing for the guest bedroom:

We love living in Marietta, but especially during the summer. There are so many festivals and fun events to attend, we are so looking forward to them! The last Friday of every month there are concerts and when we sit on our front porch we can hear the music.

Oh and look at how green everything is:

We love doing projects if you can't tell :) Hope this inspires you to do some as well this summer!

E-Mealz!

Kyle and I have been wanting to eat healthier for a while now, but with traveling as much as we have lately, it has been very difficult to plan our meals ahead of time. Along with that, all the recipes I found were delicious but were probably very high in fat and calories. THEN I found out about e-mealz from my friend Amy! It basically is a company that plans your meals for you (5 days a week), and you can sign up for regular family meals, low-fat, low-carb, etc plans that fit just what you/your family needs!

I signed up for the Low-Fat meals for 2, from any store. Every week I download my 2 page pdf, the 1st page containing ingredients and instructions for every meal, and the 2nd page is your grocery list to buy all the ingredients. It. is. AWESOME!

Here is an example of what I was just talking about. You can click the image to enlarge:

Anyways it really is good for portion control and for eating vegetables. I am trying my hardest to like more vegetables, and at least with these recipes I am venturing outside my comfort zone and trying new things!

This was our meal last night... chicken pizza with a spinach salad:

Just in this meal alone we ate more veggies/fruits then we ever have in our dinners... green peppers, onions, tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, and a spinach salad on the side! WOAH watch out!

OH and if you sign up to buy from a certain store they'll give you the breakdown of how much it all costs... BONUS for all the grocery gamers out there :)

The best part of this is that it's only $5 a month!! What a deal! (When I signed up, I even googled "coupon code" and found a coupon to make it even cheaper!). Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Wordless Wednesday: My secret to cutting onions!

Mothers Day 2010!

This past weekend we headed to Raleigh for many things but most importantly to celebrate Mothers Day! We planned another yard sale/tool sale for my parents for Saturday morning, and it did wonderfully. We are so grateful for everyone who came out and/or helped prepare for these sales! We were all busy "selling" though, so no pictures to share.
Saturday night we celebrated Mothers day with my whole family. Dad is just doing incredibly well, it was so nice to see him STANDING UP and WALKING this visit!! We ordered take out from Texas Road House, and it was awesome not having to cook anything. We had only gotten 4 hours of sleep the night before, so we were all ready to veg. Dad even joined us in the kitchen and ate with us!
After dinner we moved into mom and dad's bedroom so dad could lie down on his hospital bed and watch mom open her gifts. We all went in on 2 bracelets for her. The first one is the multiple myeloma colors (burgundy) with silver balls alternating in between and then a charm with the word "hope" on it. This is so special to all of us, so Tara ordered bracelets for all the girls to wear and support dad with. We also ordered a rainbow colored one for mom that has all the other cancer colors-- but we did this mainly to remember Grandpa (lung cancer - white) and Mrs. Behun (breast cancer - pink). Mom loved them!
Mom we love you more than we can say. You are full of love, selflessness, and faith, handling trials head on. There is no doubt about it that Dad wouldn't be making such huge improvements without you by his side, and it's such a wonderful example for Kyle and I. Love you!!

I also have to include this picture. I think this sums up how everyone in the Baker family feels right now...
Poor Nicky. Thank you for giving everything you possibly have to mom and dad. You are incredible and I'm so honored to call you my brother.

On Sunday morning Kyle and I headed over to Cary to celebrate Mothers Day with Kyle's family! (Please excuse the terrible flash in this picture below!)
When we arrived Mr. G had already made 4 quiches, sausage and bacon. The meal was absolutely delicious! Kerry and Brad joined us for breakfast as well, but Rach and Mike were in Winston Salem with Mike's family. With everything that we have had going on in Raleigh recently we haven't had as much time to spend with the Guenthers so it was nice to be able to relax and catch up with everyone.

Mrs. G knows all too well the struggles of fighting cancer and therefore has been so understanding and supportive of my family and we can't express how much it means. Thank you to Mr. G for such a wonderful meal, and to Mrs. G for being a strong, thoughtful, and loving mom. We love you guys!