Summertime Movie Reviews

One of our favorite things to do on the weekend is go to the movies. We have seen several movies since Memorial Day weekend. I thought it would be fun to put together a post with those movies we've seen and our ratings so we have a record of them.

Ironman 2

We loved the first Ironman and thought this one was almost just as good. I think I liked the actual storyline of the first one better, but there were some great action scenes in the sequel. I'm sure we will buy the DVD which obviously determines whether we liked it or not.

Michael's rating: 3.26 out of 4 stars (don't ask about Michael's ridiculous ratings!)
Sara's rating: 3 out of 4 stars

A-Team

I never watched A-Team as a kid; it is a few years ahead of my time. So, I didn't go in to this movie knowing the characters from the show. I didn't really expect much, but ended up really enjoying this movie. It was a fun summer blockbuster with a lot of laughs and a lot of action.

Michael's rating: 3.5353 out of 4 stars  
Sara's rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars

Toy Story 3

I have been looking forward to the last Toy Story for a while. Even when we were in Disney World last fall, there was buzz about the last movie coming out. I have to say that Disney did not disappoint and ended the series on a heart warming note. I laughed, I cried, it was a really great story! 

Michael's rating: 4 out of 4 stars
Sara's rating: 4 out of 4 stars

Eclipse

I love the Twilight books and have read them several times each. I was a little bit disappointed when the first Twilight movie came out because they changed so much for the screen adaptation. However, the second one did do a better job. I was looking forward to Eclipse for a long time and I can say it is the best one yet! They really kept the integrity of the story from the books and the special effects have really come a long way since the first one. I can't wait for the 2 part finale of Breaking Dawn!

Michael's rating: 2.226 out of 4 stars (boys just doesn't get it) 
Sara's rating: 4 out of 4 stars

Despicable Me

We saw Despicable Me totally on a whim this weekend because we were looking for something to do. I had seen previews and thought it looked funny, but it wasn't on my "must see" list. I am really glad we went. This is a really fun, smart, heart warming movie. We laughed a lot and of course I cried a little too. It's a really cute story and we both enjoyed it and would highly recommend you see it too!

Michael's rating: 3.402 out of 4 stars  
Sara's rating: 4 out of 4 stars

Menu Planning Monday

Since we only have 1 week till we leave for our California trip, we decided to keep it light with groceries again this week. We are going to try and use what we have so we don't have to throw much away before we leave. So this week's menu is not too exciting unfortunately. Hopefully after vacation I'll have some new recipes to share!

Monday: Chicken Parmesan Paninis

Tuesday: Burger Night

Wednesday: Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches

Thursday: Homemade pizza

Friday: Take out

Weekend Recap

We had such a great weekend! The weather was beautiful; 2 weeks in a row without rain, it's amazing! I was off on Friday which is always a good thing. I got up and had some breakfast and headed out to the garage to work on the mirror for our master bedroom. Michael had it all painted white for me and I just needed to add the touches of yellow and black to the circles. It turned out exactly as we planned and it looks great!

The finished mirror drying in the garage.

I left the mirror to dry in the garage and headed to the nature preserve to get my workout in. I had a nice 3.5 mile walk in the sunshine. It was a good start to the day.

Beautiful view of the pond from the walking path

After my walk I met Michael along with Rich, Tif, Baby Jacob and Ken for lunch. We had a nice lunch just talking and then Michael had to go back to work. I said good-bye and headed out to do some shopping. I needed to get a new pair of gym shoes before California so I headed to Kohl's since I had a coupon and of course everything is always on sale. Gotta love Kohl's! I got a new pair of cute kicks and I also found a few home decor items for our entryway table.

New Nikes

New tray on the second shelf, 2 new birdies and new candle with holder

Close-up of birdies and new candle and candle holder

After shopping I came home and checked on the mirror and it was fully dry so I brought it in the house, cleaned it up and got it hung on the wall above our bed. I'm really happy with how it came out. I can't wait to see it with our new curtains and custom chair coming in a few weeks!

Our re-purposed mirror

Friday night we just stayed in, ordered some Chinese food, and relaxed watching a Harry Potter marathon.

On Saturday, we woke up and went to our favorite breakfast spot. At breakfast we decided we wanted to go see a movie so we headed to the AMC and saw Despicable Me. It was so good! We really enjoyed it. 

After the movie we came home and made some lunch and relaxed. I spent a lot of the afternoon getting my blog posts ready for the week and for while we are on vacation. I don't want our blog to go silent for 2 weeks. I thought if I could get some posts ready ahead of time I'd be more likely to do it. For dinner we headed out to one of our favorite local sushi spots and it was delicious as usual. After dinner we stopped at Dairy Queen for a little dessert treat and then headed to Rich and Tif's to hang out. We sat and talked and of course spent time with our favorite nephew Jacob! He is 4 weeks old today, time is flying already! He is such a good baby and super cute. Afterward, we headed home and crashed for the night. 

This morning we got up and had breakfast and I got some vacation packing done. It's amazing how quick those suitcases fill up! It doesn't help that we're going for almost 2 weeks. Luckily we're flying first class so if I need to add another suitcase we don't have to pay for it at least. 

I think I need a bigger bag!

After some packing we headed out to Schaumburg to do some shopping. I wanted to go to IKEA to pick up a few more frames for our travel wall collage I want to work on. I finally have the right configuration down. Now I just need to pick and print the pictures and get the frames hung. This will definitely be an after vacation project. Especially since we'll have lots of new places to add to the wall! 

The winning configuration!

After IKEA, we headed to Nordstrom Rack where I found a few cute new shirts. Then we headed to Carson's Furniture Gallery and bought a new couch for our living room! They have an amazing sale going on right now and we got the sectional for less than half of its original price. It was too good to pass up on. We didn't pick in-stock fabric so we have to wait 6 weeks for the custom order but it should be here the first week of September! We are so excited!

Our new couch! Not a great picture, but you get the idea.

Fabric sample of the color we chose. The color is called Chestnut.

After picking out the couch, we had worked up an appetite so we headed to Wildfire for lunch. We had a gift certificate to use so it was a free lunch, bonus! After lunch we headed home. We are going to just relax the rest of the evening and have a yummy Sunday dinner of bacon wrapped pork tenderloin medallions. 

I hope everyone had a great weekend and has a quick work week ahead. I know I'm not looking forward to having to work a whole 5 days this week, it's been awhile! I can't complain too much though since we'll be on vacation the week after. Have a great week everyone!

Our week in pictures: 7/4 - 7/10

Sunday, July 4: Our flag waves proudly in front of the house

Monday, July 5: Patriotic cupcakes

Tuesday, July 6: Our first red tomato of the season, it was delicious!

 Wednesday, July 7: Relaxing watching some Top Chef

Thursday, July 8: Crazy car accident in our neighborhood, good-bye mailbox! (17 year old kid doing 50 mph in our subdivision and took a turn too quick and hit the mailboxes almost decapitating his friend in the passenger seat)

Friday, July 9: I had a great 3.5 mile walk on such a beautiful day!

Saturday, July 10: Our re-furbished mirror is finally done! Another item done for our master bedroom re-design.

California Animal Encounters

We are just 10 days away from our big California trip! I am going to start packing this weekend so I don't have to wait till the last minute to get things together. We are so excited! All of our park tickets are booked for Sea World, Disneyland, the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and the San Diego Zoo. We also booked some extra experiences at Sea World and the San Diego Zoo. We will be taking part in some "animal encounters."

At the San Diego Zoo we are doing a tour called Backstage Pass. I am so excited for this one. It's a 90 minute tour with a lot of animal interaction. You get to feed the rhinos and scratch them with a broom, which they supposedly love. You also get to meet a cheetah, pet and feed a kangaroo, pet a hedgehog, various birds, a wolf and more. I did a tour like similar to this at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando with my family several years ago. We really loved it so I'm sure with this being one of the best zoos in the world, its going to be awesome! I can't wait for all of the photo opportunities as well!

At Sea World, we are going to do a tour called the Dolphin Encounter. This is as close as you can get to the dolphins without actually getting in the water with them. It is a 60 minute tour guided by a dolphin trainer and you get to touch and feed the dolphins. The trainer will also teach us some of the hand signals to make the dolphins do tricks. I think this is going to be a lot of fun!

Now I just need next week to not drag on, so we can get to California!

Family Favorite Recipe: Mermaid Salad

This is a salad my mom used to make all the time and for some reason we haven't had it in a really long time. Since we were heading to Arla and Teddy's on Sunday for a pool party, I was looking for a good salad to bring. Michael remembered me talking about this salad and suggested I make it. I've never made it before but it comes together really easily and is delicious. It tastes just like my moms, which is always good! Try it, you'll be glad you did.

Mermaid Salad

1 - 16oz box of shell pasta

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup sour cream

1 - 16oz package of crab meat

3 stalks celery

3 tsp. lemon juice

1 tsp. celery salt

1 tsp. onion powder

2 tsp. garlic powder

1 tbsp. Mrs. Dash table blend

salt and pepper to taste

Ingredients

Celery not pictured, I forgot when I was setting up, oops!

Cook pasta shells until tender. While the pasta is cooking, dice crab and celery and prepare sauce.

Dice crab meat and celery

Prepare sauce. Combine mayonnaise, sour cream, lemon juice, salt and pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, celery salt, and Mrs. Dash.

Add cooked and cooled noodles to a mixing bowl and add crab, celery and prepared sauce. Add small amounts of the sauce and mix to combine. Add sauce until the noodles, crab and celery are coated.

Let salad chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours. Enjoy!

New Recipe: Michael's Taco Dip

Michael wanted to bring a taco dip to Arla and Teddy's on Sunday and he decided to make up his own recipe. This is what he came up with. I can't say whether it was good or not because I would never eat anything like this (Mexican food is not my favorite), but everyone else said it was so good and there wasn't a crumb left!

Ingredients:
1 can black beans
1 can refried beans
1 packet taco seasoning mix
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup cream cheese
2 cups colby jack cheese
4 green onions, diced
1/2 a green pepper, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 package iceberg lettuce shreds

Directions:

Ingredients

Spread refried beans along the bottom of a cookie sheet

Mix cream cheese, sour cream and taco season until combined

Spread mixture over the refried beans

Add diced green onions 

Add diced tomatoes

Add black beans

Add shredded iceberg lettuce

Add shredded cheese, grab a chip and enjoy!

Weekend Recap

I can't believe the 4th of July is over! The summer and this year in general is just flying by way too fast! We had a really nice relaxing weekend with family and friends. I did not take a lot of pictures this weekend for some reason and of the pictures I did take they are almost all of food! We did quite a bit of fun holiday cooking this weekend. I have lots of pictures and a couple of recipes to share this week too.

My weekend started on Friday and it was such a beautiful day. I woke up and grabbed my rollerblades and went for a workout at a nature preserve near our house. I did 5.5 miles on my rollerblades and it was a great way to start the day.

Beautiful view from the path

After a great workout, I got showered and ready and met Michael for lunch. He had to work on Friday but it was nice to be able to have lunch together. After lunch I headed to my salon to get my hair cut. I cut off about 7 inches. I am loving it and so glad I did it!

New cropped cut!

On Saturday we got up and headed out early. We grabbed some breakfast and headed to the movies to see Eclipse! 

I had been waiting all week to see it and it did not disappoint. It is by far my favorite so far. Michael wasn't really impressed but at least he went to see it with me. After the movie we had lunch at one of Michael's favorite places, Buffalo Wild Wings, since he went with me to the movie and then did some shopping. Saturday night we went to dinner at Shaw's Crab House. I have to say, I am normally such a fan of Lettuce Entertain you restaurants, but Shaw's didn't really impress me. We had a really good waiter but the kitchen was painfully slow. It took over 45 minutes to get our appetizer! We had to wait another 40 minutes to get our dinners as well. The food was good for the most part. I had a really good walleye fillet with asparagus and morel mushrooms. Michael had filet and crab legs. His crab was excellent, but the filet not so much. All in all, I think we'll stick with Wildfire, Ruth's Chris and Bonefish for our steak and seafood cravings.

On Sunday we got up and went to breakfast and then came home to make some dishes for Arla and Teddy's pool party that we were going to for the 4th. Michael made a taco dip with his own recipe.

Michael's taco dip - there wasn't any left!

I made a seafood salad my mom makes called Mermaid salad. We haven't had it in so long and it was so good!

I also made some festive red, white and blue strawberries!

 

After we finished making our dishes, we packed everything up in the car and headed to Arla and Teddy's. They had a huge lunch spread out for everyone waiting when we got there and everything was so good. We got to catch up during lunch and hear all about Arla and Teddy's Hawaiian honeymoon. They told us about all of the amazing things they saw, did and ate during their trip. They had a great time and really got a well deserved break. They also picked up their wedding photo proofs on Saturday so we got to look through all of the pictures. They came out amazing! It is going to be so hard to pick our favorite pictures. After lunch we all hit the pool! The weather was amazing and it was the perfect day to swim. The water was 86 degrees and it was wonderful. We had so much fun hanging out with our family and Teddy's family.

Michael and I taking a dip

Today we got up and had breakfast and did some things around the house. I also made some cupcakes to bring to Michael's parents house.

Patriotic cupcakes!

We headed over to Michael's parents house to have lunch with the fam. We talked for a while and then had a yummy bbq lunch. I also got a lot of quality baby Jacob time! I got so much baby Jacob time I didn't have the chance to take one picture, sadness. He looked so cute in one of the outfits I bought him too! He was such a good boy, he just wants to be held and he is perfectly content. We had fun just hanging out. We came home and the rest of the day was spent relaxing. I am sad the weekend is over but it was really nice. We ended up with beautiful weather every day and we just hung out with family and friends all weekend, and nothing beats that! Luckily I only have to work Tuesday - Thursday this week so I have another long weekend coming up. Plus we'll be in California 2 weeks from tomorrow; so much to look forward to! I hope everyone had a great weekend and has a great week ahead.