To Bang or Not to Bang

Talking about hair people.  Minds out of gutters.

I have had one interesting haircut, ever, in my life.  I decided to make the chop when I was 17ish and I went in with the thoughts of Sweet Home Alabama and Reese's adorable flippity-outtie short hair a la:

A sophisticated Southern snip, you say?
At 16, that's totally what I needed.

and ended up like this:

Which was actually pretty cute!
I'm the whitey on the left.  The only things matching in this ultra diverse line-up are our ridiculous dresses.

then it turned into this:

What the...
Clearly the haircut is to blame for the hoops, choker and lazy eye.
How I can have such a fat face at the ripe weight of 80lbs back then is beyond me.

So here is my mission today:

Girl on the right.  To bang.

Reese makes another appearance... clearly because we are so much alike...

And yes,that is Ashlee Simpson.  My idol.  

(Jokinggggg, but that is a sweet heart faux-tat on her cheek.  Kind of like the street-cred tear tat you get for murdering someone, but in a cute, Care Bears kind of way!)

Halloween in Richmond

Patrick and I headed to Virginia this past weekend for a wedding celebration, some family time and a mini vaca to see the leaves and get out of the insanity that is selling our home and trying to move.

First stop on our mini vaca was to hang out with some family in Richmond!  Being Halloween my closest cousin, Katie had a great idea to take a stroll down Hanover Street in "the Fan" to do some people/creature watching.   It was amazing!

I did some google recon and apparently the "Halloween Block" of Hanover dates back to the 1970s as a bonanza Halloween hot spot. Bonanza...  Bringing it back.  It was crazy y'all.   The most insanely decorated houses, crazy good costumes (and plenty of bad), swarms of people and even a live band on someone's front porch crooning some Thriller and Disturbia.

Chaos in the streets!

Best costume: little kid passed out in his dad's arms dressed as Max from Where the Wild Things Are and whatever this crazy thing was.  Complete with spray painted Nickelodeon moon shoes.

Worst: monster woman wearing basically a pillow case with an Angry Bird on it dragging her child who was likely diabetic and hated candy.   (Also goes to us creepers who didn't dress up at all and knowingly just wanted to drink booze and watch little kids in the dark... )

Full-on castle in someone's yard

Bates Motel - ok this is a crap pic, but granny on the top left made it cool!

Jellyfish!

The smell of KitKat bars and hyper active children in such mass quantities was totally new to me. I grew up on Hilton Head in a neighborhood with something like 8 kids out of 400 homes full of retirees. Halloween went like this:

.. go to the local mall

.. harass Gap employees for a tootsie roll

.. head home with mediocre corporate candy and coupons for mom

.. load onto the golf cart

.. drive around trying to find a house with one light on

.. wind down the driveway, ring the bell, patiently wait for grandma to make it to the door

.. huffily take apple and pepto bismol hand out

.. resolve to go to Hilton Head Plantation next year where the kids were making the legit candy deals on the block

Patrick and I have vowed to dress up, pack a rolling cooler with big kid treats and go Trick or Treating with our kiddies in a group in the future. Quantity over quality until you know better. Plus gives us a better chance or bartering for other kids' Butterfingers and Nerds.

Me and Katie in front of a pirate ship!

Seriously, where do they store that thing all year?!

After the questionable child gawking, we headed out to a really great restaurant called Heritage: http://www.heritagerva.com and got an awesome charcuterie plate, some pastas, duck and some really awesome cocktails.

It was really great catching up with my two cousins and hearing about Katie's plans for her own Charlottesville wedding in Spring at Pippin Hill Farm in Spring. We are so excited to come back and celebrate her marriage to a mystery fiancé I have yet to meet in the decade+ they've been dating!  Sunday night, after we returned from Charlottesville and the wedding festivities, we headed over to my aunt's house and celebrated my other cousin Sara's 20th birthday.  It was a packed house, as both of my mom's sisters and my grandma were all there with their families.  We had a mini Thanksgiving celebration and I was certainly thankful to be surrounded by such great family, almost accidentally!

Decatur Beerfest: A Tradition

We braved the cold and the rain to eat our pretzel necklaces and prost in style, yet again this year at downtown Decatur's annual craft beer fest, which happens to be in October.  And we happen to have friends who paid serious money for some fantastic lederhosen and dierndles, thanks Dan & Kelly! 

Got my fleece-lined tights on and ready for business!







Yes.  We stood out.  Not as popular to dress up as we thought...



Made some friends who completed our Bavarian rainbow!



One of these outfits is from Party City....



A Half-Ass Pantry Recipe: Hasselback Garlic Cheese Bread

I have active yeast!  Put that on a short list of things I never thought I'd be exclaiming over the internet...  But I do!  And a ridiculously delicious looking recipe to test out on my super fantastic and yet-untouched Cuisinart Mixer.

My baking prowess dates way back to 2011 when my friends and I discovered a life changing app, Bakery Story.  In this year-long obsession, we each ran our own little digital bakery - creating confections and serving the masses round the clock.  Think tamagotchi, but your very own cupcakery!  (Side note: my iPhone T9'd how to spell tamagotchi for me... glad you can get that but you switch all my angry cuss words to cute quacking animals)  Eventually the tireless hours of choosing recipes and delivering baked goods to my fans got to me and I shuttered the doors of my first entrepreneurial adventure, Yeast Confection.  Still proud of that name... I should really copyright that...

Back to real life baking.  I found this recipe: Hasselback Garlic Cheese Bread

Hasselhoff you say?  Win.

How it's supposed to look...

Ingredients:

1 cup Warm Water

1 Tablespoon Honey

1 envelope Active Dry Yeast (2 1/4 Teaspoons)

1 teaspoon Salt

3 cups Bread Flour

Olive Oil, For Greasing Surfaces

⅓ pounds Sharp White Cheddar, Or Any Other Cheese You Prefer

½ cups Garlic Butter

Directions:

1.  In a large bowl, stir water, honey and yeast together. Let yeast proof 5 minutes. Once you know yeast is active, stir in salt and the flour in 1/4 cup increments. If you are using a stand mixer, be sure to not increase your speed higher than a 2 or ‘stir’. Once dough starts pulling away from the sides and the bowl seems to be pretty clean, set a timer for 5 minutes and walk away. Let the machine knead the dough. After 5 minutes, dough should be smooth and tacky but when touched shouldn’t leave any dough on your fingers.

 

 Before yeast eats the honey...

 

 

After yeast eats the honey:

 

I ran out of flour, so now my 3 cups recipe is more like 2 and a bit and I had to pour out some yeasty goods. Off to a great start considering all anyone tells you is that baking is a science. After my 10 minutes of watching the hook-go-round it still looked pretty wet, so I got crafty and started add instant quick-mix flour a bit at a time.

... 2 hours later.... just measure the first time people!

It was now past 10pm with no bread, a hot mess in the kitchen and a lot of wine down the hatch. Still waiting for the dough to get nice and gummy and pull cleanly off the mixing bowl...

2. Grease the bowl and the dough. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let rise 1 hour or until doubled in size. (Greasing to me meant pouring in a bit of olive oil and swirling it around)
 

Good and doughy and greased:

 

After being covered and rising for an hour:

 

 

3.  Punch down dough and cut into two equal portions. Form into two long baguettes the length of the cookie sheet. I like to twist mine because it looks cool, but it also keeps its length and doesn’t shrink.

4. Cover with plastic wrap and rise 30 minutes. Start to preheat oven to 400 degrees F and place dough close to the oven where it’s nice and warm. Once oven is preheated, remove plastic wrap, from the dough reduce oven to 350F, put the bread into the oven and bake 20 minutes.

 

5.  In the meantime, slice the cheese into thin slices and melt the butter.

I melted down 2 tablespoons of butter, added about a tablespoon of creepy premade garlic (including the juice) and a whole bunch of prefab Italian spices. Desperate times call for cheap measures.
 

6.  Pull loaves of bread out of the oven after 20 minutes and brush with the melted garlic butter. Bake another 5-7 minutes or until bread begins to turn a golden brown. Remove from oven and cool 15 minutes.

 

7.  Cut 1-inch slices 3/4′s of the the way through the loaves. Brush garlic butter in between each slice and fill with a slice of cheese. Bake another 3-5 minutes or until cheese is completely melted.

 

See that cheesee? That's generosity. This adventure had become a commitment and I wasn't going to be stingy at the final hour. Also, that's still raw garlic on top there. Yum.

8.  Serve immediately. 

 

End result: Hubs thought it looked like an iced dessert!  Who cares.  Get in my belly you garlicky cheesy monster, you.  It was fantastic.  And basically late night munchie food at this point.

Winter Boot Hunting!

Fact: Cincinnati's high is below freezing an average of 28 days a year.

Fiction: I'm totally cool with, and prepared for this.

Hubster agreed that I should have some new winter boots to keep my toesies toasty in the impending doom of OH winters.  We're living on the river, so this is an even scurrier impending hell.

Another fact: nobody looks good in winter boots.  I don't even know what the hell a winter boot is... I have Uggs that don't work in water (P calls them my Gout Boots.... just like the disease, charming, hm?) and I have Hunter's that don't work in cold, or for walking for that matter (read: overpriced rubber but totally worth the little red label cuteness).  So what is a "good" winter boot?  I'd really just like a snuggie made out of an Ugg, with a hood.  A life size Ugg-boot really.  With wheels for mobility.

Lucky for me, I found the perfect candidate last weekend!  I was returning a wedding gift that I *may* have registered for just to recieve the post-wedding discount and accidentally received as a gift... and I found them!  On sale!  Well, not really a sale per say, but basically a sale since I had something to return!  What's ours is mine in marriage, after all!  :)  And they're perfect for Cinci!

Python print for the win!

Tah dahhhh!  My new MK booties!  High enough to keep out snow under 4" and they have built in ice picks to spike my way down the sidewalk!  Cincinnati here I come!

Interestingly enough, P was not as enthused with the purchase, until he admired how fab they looked with my new fleece-lined tights...

But seriously, WTF do I need to get to prepare for a *real winter*?  Work wise?  Street cred wise?  We're living in an apartment in the middle of a cement garden with lots of walking to restaurants and shops...  no woods hiking.  But taking the dog for a stroll is scary enough.  Here are some options I've found: