Tell your boyfriend he can suck it

I heart headbands, big time. My head is way too egg shaped for me to be able to wear them often (plus i have a widow's peak, further making it difficult).... But by God thanks to this little lady, I feel like I can wear them post third grade.

John, on the other hand CLEARLY doesn't watch gossip girl nor does he appreciate all things head flair. When we went out this weekend I wore a headband with a large and in charge flower on it and he kept telling me i looked like a third grader on picture day. A girl in line for the bathroom at a bar we went to complimented the headband (because... duh) and I told her THANK you because my date didn't think it was so hot. She said 'You tell your boyfriend he can suck it' it was kind of the highlight of my life. That and this show.

I also tried to sleep in it when we got home. That got vetoed. Fun hater.

Probably John's highlight of the evening was this bad boy. The best freaking enchiladas ever. Seriously, I'll be making this again, I'm guessing it happily will feed a crowd. It's a Tyler Florence food network recipe that utilizes a roasted tomatillo salsa.

NOM NOM NOM. Highlights include:

• cold, deli-purchased rotisserie chicken (this was new for me)
• poblano peppers (because jalepenos and i don't mix)
• tomatillos (i.e. the green tomatoes, also a first time purchase for me)
• cheeses/tortillas/seasoning/cilantro/chicken stock/etc.

I was excited for all of the leftover it has made. Including lunch today!

In other exciting news, something super awesome came in the mail recently.

A DIPLOMA! Now my graduate and undergraduate ones can be best friends next to each other on my wall. Hooray!

Surely there's a country song for that...

You know, for getting kicked out of a Michael Jackson concert? Greetings peeps, this past weekend's adventures were courtesy of the mile high city, Denver CO.

Which is where one of my college besties (several favorite former Missourians live there, actually) resides. Emily and I flew out for the weekend to see her spanking new condo, celebrate her new found homeownership and party like it was 1999 (or more specifically 2005)

After a long day of pooltime, BBQs and other shenanigans, we went to a wine bar and had TAPAS (yesssssss!)

And then went got some PRETTY SWEET TICKETS.

At the end of the concert and we had been boozing ALL. DAY. LONG. We had smuggled our cameras in via the crotch of Kelly’s gay BFF (love him!!) p.s. they were searching purses for cameras, but we took a cab there, what were we supposed to do with them?. So I decided to take a picture of the venue for, you know, the blog….

And after one not-so-worth-it picture of the speaker in front of me and this dude's head, some large-and-in-charge butch looking lady grabs me by the elbow. And well...

Before I could pepper her with comments like ‘isn’t Portia derossi cute?’ and ‘those bugle boy shorts really make your calves look great’ …. I was outside. It was over before it started. I was making friends outside, but my friends came out to get me anyway (aren't they wonderful?). So I didn't get a picture, and I certainly wasn't wearing my specs (which means that anything over 10 feet away might have 15 noses or none at all, but not like I can see)... but I have it on good authority that the lead singer resembled this...

LUCKILY for … well… everyone involved, there was a fun bar/pizza place next door. I am proud to say I converted a table of people to pineapple pizza. It was my everything.

The morning after all of this ridiculousness, I got a craving for Ceasar salad like you wouldn't believe. I decided I would try to remake me own version this week. I discovered that regular Ceasar dressing has anchovies, but what am I..... Heathcliff? Yuck.

I found an eating well recipe with pureed cottage cheese, garlic, yogurt, parm, white wine vinegar, and worcheseterslekjrelk sauce.

The results? I got to use my cuisinart mini prep.. YAY how i've missed it!

I even took some WW bread and removed almost all of it's healthiness by dousing it with butter/oil/garlic. AND WHOAH WAS IT STRONG. I think I warded off plenty of vampires. It was probably strong enough to repel anyone who has even read twilight.

I had it with shrimpies and ...... meh. I was proud of it. And I ate it happily and cheerfully, but i still would've prefered to get a gooey, crusty (effortless on my part) restaurant salad. Applebee's anyone?

John was coming over later, and I was out of shrimp anyway so I threw together an egg salad salad. I actually learned out to make hard-boiled eggs via the better homes and gardens cookbook method (as opposed to haphazardly boiling them and inadvertently leaving a thousand tiny egg shell pieces all over the kitchen/world) I was proud of myself. Plus I subbed half mayo for yogurt, making myself EXTRA proud.

Then I took a photo montage of a Diane VonFurstenburg dress I got on ebay (slightly damaged) that I LOVED but when I got it in it was an old lady fabric in a WAY brighter color than I thought it would be (in real life it's brightest halloween orange). So I was taking photos to send to the former roomie fashion consultant who lives with her closet far far away in California. So, thoughts?

Happy Thursday friends!

All Hands on Deck Granger!

First off let me tell you how my week has been.... for an illustration I would like to use a visual tool a la a calendar that Angela from the office might have (or anyone in my accounting department for that matter, hey-oh) :

Staying cool as a cucumber (or Obama) during this week? Failcat.

So it was my last week of Grad School and my stress-o-meter went so far below the orange line that Kramer would've been proud (Geez Lauren, stop watching so much syndicated TV you say.... well.... we'll get to that). After my group presentation on Tuesday I got this bad boy:

And then Wednesday morning as I went to turn on the TV to get ready to the sound of Matt Lauer telling me if the Jackson family had reached a custody arrangement yet (and other such info-tainment.. i want news people!) This happened (please view the following picture with lightening bolts).... a BROKEN TV

Which prompted me to go to Target over my lunchbreak to purchase a clock radio so I wouldn't have to get ready the next morning in silence (I need news, sorry itunes).

Except that exactly 20 minutes after I had gotten back to work I realized I lost my iphone (or rather left it in the radio aisle at target while i debated getting one that was an ihome)

All this stress made me need an emergency organization break. I'm not kidding. I'm such a control freak that when I get overloaded I just need to create a little order in my life. So 3 tiers and 9 compartments later my sewing kit got organized. WHEW that helped.

Except that yesterday afternoon I had a small meltdown as I attempted to run around like CRAZY to pull together my team's enormous proposal (20-70 pages with two pages of bullet pointed instructions on formatting and content), study for my final, and unplug my stupid work phone that was ringing itself of the hook.

Luckily for me (and anyone within stomping/yelling/punching distance) the class is OVER OVER OVER OVER OVER (as is yesterday, the most stressful day of my life) and I am officially an MBA. I can't wait to add those letters to my business card. Okay not really, but I am excited for them to imaginarily exist. *sigh* Even better? Open weeknights. MWAH it's a beautiful thing.

In other exciting news, in addition to NOT getting enough homework done this weekend. My nerdy partner-in-crime and BFF from high school came to KC so we could finally get a little of this in our lives:

In honor of her visit I made a YUMMY blueberry french toast bake that the iphone helped me find.

• Cream Cheese
• Blueberries
• Sugar
• Maple Syrup
• Vanilla Extract
• Eggs
• Day old italian bread (technically it was fresh when i bought it so i cut it up and put a fan over it for a few hours... how macguyver is that?)

It was basically pouring sugar down your throat at 8 in the morning.... but like that's a bad thing.

In other news I got my parking ticket repealed, John is giving me an old TV of his (i'm not ready to jump on the $flat screen bandwagon... i kind of wish i didn't have a TV at all), the iphone was recovered just a few short hours after it's dissappearance (amber alert!!)..... I killed that test and now I am liberated of all things school.

Currently I am eating breakfast fruit at my desk and life is figuratively and literally a bowl (gladware) of cherries :)

Off Roading it

Hello lovelies! I can't tell you how GREAT it was to hang with my old college roomie this weekend. For a trip down memory lane... behold the small selection of scanned photos I have at my desk at the moment. Circa 2003 seemed like a long time ago didn't it? And how about this bad boy? P.S. Steph it's weird to see your hair that short... I feel like that is not how I remember it from yesteryear.Anyway in honor of her visit, I raced home from work to prepare the following snackies before we met up with our other friends.

The fruit/cheese/nut plate. FYI for maximum efficiency I assembled this exactly as is (the triscuits were still in their own bag) then I saran wrapped it several times so I could just pull it out of the fridge and unwrap. However the almonds got STALE. boo boo. lesson learned.

This was pre-made spin/artichoke dip that kelly brought over last weekend. In my processed food snobbery of the moment, I decided to thin it out with NF Plain yogurt.... it was a good move (considerably less gunky)... so yummy and oniony though :)

A SUPER easy bruschetta recipe that had the following:

• tomatoes (obviously)
• basil (mcduh)
• garlic
• parm
• balsamic vinegar
• EVOO
• ?? eh can't remember (onions? does that sound right?)

And best of all.... SANGRIA! :) It was the same recipe I've used before:

• merlot
• ginger ale
• gin
• oranges
• lemons
• limes
• strawberries
• love.... the most important ingredient.
  

It was fun getting ready and pretending to have a roomie full-time live-in fashion consultant again! We headed over to our friend's house who has the most adorable front porch ever... which is where a group of us sat, chatted, boozed, reminisced, joked, and she smoked while we attempted divine intervention:

Ash-tray art/miracle. She's catholic so maybe that guilty conscience will start creepin' in. Then we went to the bar where a purse set of the alphabet and numbers in post-it notes came in pretty handy as we schemed our way out of paying the cover. FYI.. this lady turned 26 two weeks ago.... NOT 33.

She was having fun though... i think she convinced herself it WAS her birthday. The letters started falling off so we borrowed some scotch tape from the bartender and wrapped it around her torso 5 times. CLASSY. but hilarious... right?

The highlight of my life was when we tried to walk to the next bar a few blocks away. Trying to use a shortcut we found ourselves trapped at the end of a parking lot, and someone's brilliant idea was just to hop down off a wall and cross the street to where we need to be. Brilliant.. right? I don't think ANYONE'S shoes or cat-like-reflexes were ready for ........

Falling into the bushes. MWAHAHA (below is me holding my friend's cigarette and falling down laughing)

We celebrated our hiking/mounting scaling success by romping in some fountains by our destination and wall summit. (please not the masking tape still around miss 33rd birthday)

All that work for a bar that was SUPER packed.

We hung around and played with letters anyway.

And decided that we don't need third party vendors to laugh all night long. Spontaneity makes for the most hilarious of evenings.. no? Anyway all in all it was a FABULOUS weekend. I celebrated it's coming to a close by preparing a vegan take on Chili Mac:

Chili Mac (fatfreevegan.com)

• WW elbows
• onion
• spinach
• kidney beans
• tomato sauce
• chili powder
• crushed red pepper
  

John liked it (GASP!)...

Hope errrrrrrybody had a crazy fun weekend.. and a Manic Monday. Later gaters.

The Rhythm is Gonna Get Cha..

One of my besties came in town last weekend (and brace yourself, another one's coming this weekend) ... and in honor we decided to catch up over a couple bottles of wine. Snacks.... obviously... were in order. Have I discussed Paula Deen's secret VEGAN recipe? The queen of butter and fried things accidentally made something healthy. It had to have been an accident, and what a delicous and healthy one that it was. She has an amazing black bean salsa recipe that includes the following:

• tomatoes
• black beans
• corn
• avocado
• onion
• cilantro
• red wine vinegar
• lime juice

ridiculously easy and heaven on a stick. I make big batches of this and eat it all week long (with fish, with cream cheese as a queso, in quesadillas, tex mex breakfast scramble...the options are endless).

I made a BIG 'ole batch to take to a Hog Roast the next day too. It was hit.. mostly because i was spreading rumors of how good it was. Also I made Zesty Cook's (food blogger extraordinaire) super easy greek dip. It basically included the following:

• cream cheese (like you could go wrong after that)
• feta
• NF plain yogurt
• dill
• tomatoes
• olives
• green onions

it was also supposed to have cucumbers but i forgot to add them to my grocery list..... so..... you know how that goes. Anyway with warm pita bread it was heaven.

Amy grabbed triscuits, some sort of summer sausagy thing and a delicous new kind of herbed cheese that for the life of me i can't remember it's name. This was the kind of gourmet lunchable that pseudo adults like us just LOVE.

Emily made fried green beans. She used some seasoned flour and fried them. With ranch they were SO good.

After mucho catching up and killing a few bottles of wine we got ready (this all went down just after work on friday, necessitating quick snacks and brief wardrobe changes). While we listened to some serious MJ hits and decided to be 'man in the mirror'

Which lead to this....

Which lead to a suggestion (I think emily gets the credit for this).. for pulling out a pair of white knit gloves from an OLD winter stash of warm things. It made it out with us for dance party madness. In recapping the evening the next morning on the phone with my mother she asked what others thought of us. Truthfully...... not sure. We actually just walked to bar area, proceeded to dance out in the open (where there's a DJ but no cover, etc.) and then go home. We actually had little interaction with others (minus friends of ours that were nearby and met up/hung out/dance partied too)

HIL.AR.I.OUS.

Lots of moonwalking happened too... I'm just saying.

Awesome.