Good Eats!

Hi Everyone!!

The Brown house has been busy Christmas shopping and getting ready to celebrate this beautiful time of year.  We hope you all are enjoying this festive time as much as we are.

We did a lot of delicious cooking these past weeks and everything has turned out so delicious.  I have picked out some new recipes from Pinterest to try each week.  I have "pinned" a lot and was starting to see double.  I figured it was best to try them out before continuing to pin more and more.

Last week I made a homemade marinara sauce to go with the homemade chicken parmesan.  Bruce absolutely loved it, which sorta surprised me because he isn't usually a chicken man.  And for dessert I made a Butter cake with whipped butter frosting. YUM! I had to send it with Bruce to work to get it out of the house ;).

This week I made eggs benedict.  The hollandaise sauce turned out soooo good.  I decided to follow the recipe exactly and hand whip the sauce, well that was the hardest part.  My arm was killing me by the time I was done, I think next time the kitchenaid will make an appearance.  I was a bit nervous because I had never poached an egg before, but it was relatively easy.  I found out the secret from a fellow "Pinner" was to add 3-4 tbsp of white vinegar to the water, which helps keep the egg together.  And for dessert I made mini cheesecake bites and they are delicious and SO easy.

You can go to Pinterest to join the site and find all of these delicious recipes :)

On Tuesday, when Bruce is off we are going to make all of our Christmas cookies.  We make them every year for a few friends, our mailman, and neighbors.  But this year we decided to send most of cookies to a few Marines that are overseas and are friends of friends.  We also found an amazing site that we feel everyone should take a look at.  It's called Any Soldier and it is a site that you can randomly chose a soldier that is currently deployed and send a gift.  There are a few rules, but it is relatively easy.  You can get the flat rate boxes at the post office and fill with all sorts of things.  We have done this for the past few years and it truly is an amazing site.  Please take a moment to check it out and send some holiday cheer to the people that work very hard to give us all our freedom.  :)

Well we hope all is well!! We will leave you with a few pics of our week.
Love and Miss you all TONS!! xoxo
Nic and Bruce

It finally came in! :) 

 

The gorgeous view we came out to after doing some shopping 

Mini Cheesecake bites 

Eggs Benedict

Happy Holidays!

Ti's the season!!

Happy Holidays everyone!! We hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving!! :)

We had a fabulous time in MI with family and friends.  It was a wonderful two weeks down state with them.  Bruce's surprise 28th birthday party turned out AMAZING!!! So many wonderful people showed up and he had a great time! He said he was very surprised!!! :)  A BIG shout out to our truly AMAZING friends and parents.  I planned everything BUT it was the girls and our parents that got all the balls rolling and made sure it all turned out perfectly.  I couldn't be more grateful to have each and every one of them in our lives.

Bruce got to do some hunting, relaxing, and visiting with friends.   He shot an 8 point buck, which was super exciting! So because we had a lot of venison that we couldn't take back with us, we took a day trip up to the Soo a couple of days before leaving so we could give some to my Dad and to go to Tman's birthday party.  It was so good  to see everyone once more before we took off back to CO.

One highlight of my trip was that some of my best friends were able to come stay for a few days in GR.  I am so lucky to have people willing to come all the way down just to see us.  We were able to shop, laugh, and eat and we did a lot of all three.  :)

The biggest highlight for Bruce and I, besides seeing friends and family of course, was seeing our baby, Pudge.  He didn't leave our sides and we loved every minute of it.

And not only were we able to celebrate Thanksgiving with our family, first holiday in 5 years, but we were able to celebrate Bruce AND Rosie's (my mother-in-law) birthday!!  Thanksgiving was DELICIOUS and so fun! We ate, ate, ate, played games, and ate some more.  Bruce, of course, had his surprise birthday.  He also got the gift of his dreams and I am so excited for him! :)  He got a large gift card to finally go and buy his iMac.  The new one just came out the 30th, so he had to wait a bit but it gets delivered on Monday and he's so excited! And it was so wonderful to be around for Rosie's birthday.  We got her a Coach bag and she loved it.  I was so excited to give it to her!

Gosh, reading over this post I realize that this post is all over the place.  ;) Sorry!  Hope all is well with you all!!

Love and Miss you all ALREADY!!!
Nichole, Bruce, and Pudge

B and his buck

Standing next to his bday sign outside the restaurant 

Family photo 

Some of my girlies 

Peggy ridin' it! :)

Pullin the Corvette out for a bit

Brothers 

Danny and I have awesome boots

shooting a gun for the first time.  I was nervous about how 

loud it would be, so B helped me! 

Brothers shooting

Boys

Family photo in MI 

And the beautiful view we came home to :)