the giraffe life

We've returned from our trip to St. Michaels!  The weather was a warm, comfortable temperature for the whole visit, but there were some wild thunderstorms and a little flooding. To be expected this close to the water, I suppose? Many of the roads had ditches cut beside them to hold excess water and runoff so the sidewalks and roads were in good shape again pretty quick.  Most of our time in St. Michaels was spent walking around town. There are a ton of cute shops (we saw one with handmade three-dimensional wooden maps of various coastlines around the world) and lots of places to eat. I was impressed that one of the restaurants, Ava's Pizzeria , even offered a vegan cheese and veggie pizza! We spent a lot of time in the water too, since our B & B had a great pool. They also upgraded our room to a suite with a soaker tub next to the bed. It was awesome! I've never used one, but my pregnant self loved all the space and how light I felt. Super relaxing! ...

Yay Groundhog Day! Groundhog Day isn't a holiday with a festive greeting like Christmas, or even a special food. It's just an excuse to discuss the weather and hope for an early spring. But it was always at least a guarantee of a coloring page or arts and crafts project at school and that makes it a good day in my book. (Maybe one day Mr. G and I will go see the official groundhog in Punxsutawney.) Today I'm at work as usual but dreaming of spring, and even better, summer! Yesterday I bought a new pair of swimsuit bottoms from Hurley , a company that was everywhere in California last year. And one step further, Mr. G and I are going to start planning our annual June anniversary trip. We're considering lots of places, but leaning toward the Caribbean or maybe Colorado? How's your Monday going?

You should follow Renee - she rocks!   I hope you enjoy the holiday! Mr. G and I have a few days off and we're starting the celebration tonight with a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the lights followed by a bottle of wine ( Moscato of course, because I like my wine super sweet). 

Ahh, Valentine's Day, the day of love and chocolate. Do you celebrate in your neck of the woods?  This is one of my favorite holidays, especially when I was still in school (kids in the US traditionally give valentines to everyone in their class, so it's almost like Halloween in terms of candy consumption, but with far less walking and no costume worries). Even as I got older, I was never upset about not having a date on Valentine's Day because I knew I'd be getting candy from other sources. Obviously I had my priorities in order. ;) Mr. G and I planned to celebrate Valentine's Day by shoveling the driveway together and then going out to lunch. (He gets off work at 6am and I "earned" Friday off by working long hours on Wednesday and Thursday.) But since he was up before me, he made me breakfast: eggs and toast, yum! Then we did our shoveling as planned and hit the road for lunch at Bahama Breeze. Why Bahama Breeze? Because I had a gift card from Chr...

Yes, Christmas is over. And the next one is 300 some odd days away. But I'm buying Christmas presents anyway. Why? Because west elm is having a great sale on their Christmas stuff (and a ton of it is handmade, which I love). (west elm doesn't know I exist by the way - I'm just linking to them so you can check it out if you want.) And look, who can resist these cute little guys? I think my nieces and nephews will get a kick out of them twelve months from now. :) And I'm sorry (but not sorry) that the owl fell as I was taking this shot - I kept it because now it looks like he and the penguin are chatting.  Feel free to call me crazy in the comments :)

I'm not big on presentation. By that I mean - I can appreciate a gorgeous plate of food, but I have a tough time making food look that tempting at home. As long as it tastes good, I don't spend much energy on how it goes on the plate. And usually when I make something from a recipe book or website, my creation only has a slight resemblance to the original. (That might have something to do with how often I make substitutions while cooking, hmm.) So, when we bought a doughnut mix to make as a special breakfast on Christmas Eve and they turned out almost exactly like the picture on the box - we were both surprised. In this house, that never happens! And, I even found a recipe online so I can make them without a mix next time. Score!  Have you ever cooked something that looked like the picture? Is food presentation a strength for you?

I hope you unwrap something you like today! You can see Dottie did ;)

Usually my husband and I don't buy each other gifts for Christmas. Rather, our tradition for the past four years has been a late November day trip to New York City. That trip didn't happen this fall for a variety of reasons (I'm holding out that we can make it in the spring!), so we had a local Christmas date night instead. My husband's idea was simple: bowling and dinner out. I loved it. So, that's what we did.  I wish all decisions were that easy! For $31, we rented a lane and shoes for one hour. Here's one of our scoreboards (please excuse the steamy penguins and kitten - they were the only sticker options in my photo editing program that would cover Mr. G's name): We hadn't been bowling in ages, and it was so much fun! (88 was my high score for the day - I'm terrible!)  Our super fashionable rental shoes: Dinner was great. Steak for Mr. G (and I didn't have to go near it in its raw state - win!) and fried greens beans with a salad...

My family always makes cookies for Christmas. It's one of my favorite traditions. This year, we ended up baking 5 batches of cookies - peanut butter, chewy chocolate chip , Black-Eyed Susans, oatmeal (minus the raisins), and chocolate chip . While that's certainly not setting any world records, we had fun without the stress (which is what happens when we try to make 12 batches in one day). My ever-present inspector I thought I'd share one of my favorite cookie recipes - Black-Eyed Susans (I also love  the plant ). They're made with peanut butter and chocolate so this is just the perfect recipe for me. They'd be great for spring parties too. Aren't they adorable?! Black-Eyed Susan Cookies • 1 stick melted butter (1/2 cup) • 1/2 cup sugar • 1/2 cup brown sugar • 1 egg • 1 1/2 tablespoons warm water • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract • 1 cup creamy peanut butter • 1 1/2 cups flour • 1/2 teaspoon salt • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda • chocola...

I remember helping my grandmother wrap presents and being amazed by how neatly and beautifully she could manipulate the boxes, wrapping paper, ribbons, and gift tags. She did every step with ease and it turned out gorgeous. Now that I've been wrapping presents for about 10 years, I would say I can adequately wrap a gift if it's an easy shape (rectangular prism, please!) but not with the same fluidity as my grandma. I also don't get the same pleasure from crafting a wonderfully wrapped present. And it kinda bothers me that all that my hard work gets torn up and tossed to the side in about 12 seconds flat.  So for the past few years, I've been using more and more gift bags and boxes because they are super easy, can be reused from year to year, and look just as pretty when the opening is through. Here's part of my stash: Paper and cardboard gift boxes, fabric and paper bags, giant fabric bow, and free wrapping paper (a charity mailed it to me in hopes of a dona...

Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the US, and I thought I'd share what I ate. (I usually get a lot of comments from meat eaters about what I can actually eat at Thanksgiving.) As an appetizer, we had tortilla chips with salsa and corn dip . I was little worried making the dip because it looked nothing like the recipe picture, but it turned out just fine. Everyone ate it so fast I didn't even think to take a picture. For dinner, I had carrots, vegetarian stuffing , basmati rice, mashed potatoes, corn, vegetable soup (not pictured - but it had vegetable broth, peas, lentils, carrots, and barley), a roll with butter, and cookie dough truffles . My truffles also turned out nothing like the pictures, haha. At least they tasted good :) Yum! I definitely didn't feel deprived by not eating turkey. I had plenty! And probably too much starch now that I look back over the pictures . .  How was your Thanksgiving? Anyone going out today for Black Friday shopping? My husban...

In many parts of the world, today is Veteran's Day or Remembrance Day. My husband is in the military and returned from a deployment earlier this year , so this day is one where I try to spoil him a little and do something nice for others who still aren't home yet. I'm donating to Club 9 , a cookie club program that sends deployed soldiers a dozen cookies for free. It was one of my husband's favorite care packages and the other guys in his group enjoyed them too :) We're also going out to dinner, courtesy of one of these companies , who provide a free meal to thank service members. We are so grateful for the support.

Travel seems to be in the air. Thanksgiving is the end of this month in the US, so tons of people are heading home or visiting family. There seem to be a lot of trips in the blogging world, too: Dar's  in Toronto, while  Sarah just returned from Vietnam and Erica from Zanzibar. It got me thinking about places that I definitely want to visit. My husband and I usually plan one "big" (weeklong) trip per year, with other day trips or weekend getaways thrown in. (This year, we spent a weekend in New York for a wedding and a week in Daytona for our anniversary . Plus we usually plan a day trip to NYC every fall.) These are some of my loftiest (and most expensive) travel wishes, and would hopefully be a weeklong venture. San Francisco: I've never been to the West Coast and this seems like a perfect place to start! I also want to see Alcatraz. London: I'd spend a month here if I could. There's just so much to see! We consider buildings old when they...

We finally decorated our pumpkin for Halloween! Mr. G found the kit at Lowe's on clearance and couldn't resist, haha. linking up for Wordless Wednesday

It's Labor Day - yay!  I'm lucky to work for a company that gives us Labor Day off, but there are definitely plenty of people who don't have that luxury. I noticed the discrepancy especially when I worked as a waitress - any day the Post Office and government offices were closed, we'd be busier that usual - and I'd be busy thinking jealous thoughts of them! So I'm savoring this day off with yummy food and some lazy couch time (we're thinking about watching The Bucket List ). Here's a few links to keep you company, and enjoy your day! Fill the Silence - a tumblr of random facts to help you fill a conversation lull (or just to read and email to people who will be as excited as you to read them) Most Common Birthdays - fascinating! How popular is your birthday? September 16th is the most popular, and NYE is nine months prior . .  Labor force around the world (infographic) - So interesting! And I wish 40 vacation days was the norm in the US. Old...

My goal for July was simple - eat at home, all day, every day (including bringing a lunch from home). I failed on this exactly twice (out of 93 meals this month, so I think that's okay). Mr. Giraffe's family invited us to stay with them at their beach house for a few days. This is where I slipped up.  First we underestimated our hunger before leaving the house, and snacks couldn't tide us over on the drive, so we stopped for pizza. Then we were invited out to dinner our last night there, and of course we accepted. Honestly, I think both these meals were worth the compromise - no one wants to be stuck in a car with me when I'm hungry, and we didn't want to eat dinner separately from the rest of the family when they had been kind enough to accommodate us at their house.  The main point of this goal was to break the mindless habit we'd been falling into - going out to eat 1-2 times a week for fun. And I think we accomplished that. I'm looking forward to ...

Memorial Day is fairly depressing when you think about the reasons behind it, rather than getting excited for tons of mattress sales and the beginning of grilling season. This year it's hitting me a little harder; I think because my husband was deployed and I had too much time to think about people who lost their special someone during deployments. I don't even want to imagine how awful that must be.  While I was reading about Memorial Day's early years on Wikipedia , I learned that it used to be celebrated with "dinner of the ground," basically a picnic. I love this idea.  But e nough of my rambling, here's some info about it if you're interested, courtesy  of Huffington Post : (click to view larger)

My favorite way to celebrate holidays is with food. Some healthy stuff, but plenty of treats, too. Who's with me? :)  I t's nice to cook for more than 2 people! And I like having permission to try something we may not be crazy about (and I just hope the other partygoers will finish it off). With Memorial Day coming up, I've been looking through my Pinterest boards for goodies to bring.  I was looking for something with mostly normal-ish ingredients (as in, stuff I already had in my pantry) and easy to travel with (so nothing that had to be kept warm). Here's what I decided on: pictures from here , here , and here Peanut Butter Brownies - brownies with a peanut buttercream on top?! I love the combo of peanut butter and chocolate, so I'm hoping these turn out as well as the picture! American Flag Cake - vanilla cake layered with red velvet cake, assembled to look like the American flag when cut - genius! This seemed appropriate given the holiday (and if...

I saw this and couldn't resist posting it. My mom is notorious for this move - hah!

linking up here and here P.S. Have you heard about the Cat Cafe opening in London? Would you go?