Feb 20, 2012

A Bricco kind of Birthday!

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Happy Birthday Casey!!

The other night we all went out to celebrate Casey’s birthday! Her birthday was actually about a week ago but her parents were in town that weekend so we waited a weekend to celebrate. Casey loves to eat out but she certainly has her favorite restaurants. She loved Momocho the first time we went there so we were hoping to maybe squeeze in a reservation there again but they were full (weekend after Valentine’s Day I guess). So we over to Bricco in downtown Akron and had a great meal!

I had never been to that Bricco since I am just a huge fan of Café Bricco which is only about 5 minutes from our house. We like to do there for date nights with each other, date nights with others, and just on random evenings when we don’t want to cook! So I can’t say that I am surprised that I also really enjoyed the regular Bricco in downtown Akron.

We started the meal by ordering fancy drinks! Tim and I both had a lemon drop.

tim and jaci

While Casey opted for the California martini (one of my favorites) and Mark got a beer!

juves

After drinks were ordered we dug into the menu. There was pretty much no doubt in mine or Casey’s mind that we would choose the goat cheese and marinara appetizer served with fried pitas.. but not like hard fried just like quickly deep tried for a delicious warm slightly chewy but crunchy texture! I didn’t even get to snap a picture of that because it was gone so quickly!

Casey, Mark, and I are all big fans of pizza. Tim likes weird pizzas (which serves him well here) but is not a fan of just a plain old fashioned pepperoni pizza. I know… totally weird right? But I suppose it reduces the amount I eat pizza because I could probably eat it every day haha.

We chose this pizza that is like a Mexican style pizza with lots of goodies on it. beans, cheese, tortilla strips, and just about everything delicious you can think of! I can’t say for sure but this is probably Tim’s favorite pizza there so he was all good with sharing!

The other pizza we got was a margarita pizza that I also added chicken to on one side. There is just something about that tomato and mozzarella combo that I can’t get enough of!

pizzas

Although I did have enough and the 4 of us only managed to make it about half way through each pizza. They would have been delicious the next day if we didn’t forget the left overs laying on the table! UGH all 4 of us were so sad about that.

On a non-related food note I saved a boy that evening. This couple, clearly on their first date, were walking out the door of the restaurant and due to Casey laughing at how awkward they were and how you could clearly tell they were on their first date, I turned around. Well lucky for them Casey is funny because I saw the boy drop his entire wallet out of his suit jacket pocket as he flung the jacket on. So me, being the good citizen I am, ran over and said WAIT and they tried to ignore me and kept walking. haha guess that is what I get for being nice? Finally, after I said it about 2 more times, he turned around and found m.. smiling with his wallet in my hand. He was very grateful after that!

Although I think that is a bad sign for a first date? I wonder if things worked out.

After dinner we went to .. drum roll please because I know you will be oh so surprised… MENCHIES! yay for Frozen Yogurt- I can’t help but to remember my first trip to Menchies every time I say it!! I snagged a cute pic of Casey and Tim before we got into the car and also took a pic of my deliciousness for you all to enjoy!

tim and caseymenchies

and then I got a message the next day of this beautiful thing enjoying some Frozen Yogurt at Lemonberry (I think it may be owned by the same people that own Pinkberry which is where I had FroYo in Nashville), the new place on Medina Square! Apparently they gave her evil laugh to my sister when I said I was jealous of her! I can just hear that little evil laugh in my head now! HEHEHEHEHEHEEHE.

photo

So this probably goes without saying but what a great night it was! Celebrating and laughing with friends is what I consider to be one of the greatest joys in life!

I hope you had a great birthday Casey!!

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Feb 19, 2012

Date Night with my Bestest at Bonefish!!

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So Kara and I had the chance for some quality bestest time the other night! We started out our evening shopping for extensions at some uncomfortable accessory store haha! The woman there was so good at what she does she simply took one took at my hair and by the 2nd try she had the perfect match! She also made me laugh when she said “you’re hair is already long?” well yes mam I am growing it out HOWEVER I need it to be thicker, not longer, so I say that is OK. So we got the extensions and Kara’s friend Megan is kind enough to be cutting them for me and sewing them into the clips… now I’ll just have to have Erin (my wonderful fantastic hair dresser) practice over the summer to ensure we have the right hairdo for the wedding!

After getting the hair fun Kara and I headed to Bonefish Grill for dinner. We were fortunate enough to get a wonderful waiter, let’s call him Richy Rich for fun, and we had a wonderful time eating, laughing, reminiscing, and enjoying a delicious meal.

We started out the food journey with the “bang bang shrimp” appetizer. Richy Rich assured me that it may not taste nearly as good if I knew how it was prepared (not much nutritional value there) BUT I have no clue how they make it so I just thought it tasted a little bit like a spicy heaven.

appetizer

Kara and I each enjoyed a tasty martini as well which at this point I forget what it was called but it was delicious. Especially combined with the Blue Moon beer we had The Winking Lizard before dinner Smile

kara and drink

So pretty right? Ugh I am lucky to have such a beautiful best friend!!

I had tilapia for dinner which these cheese potatoes on the side that Kara recommended! I try not to eat like that all of the time and I only eat half so I felt pretty good about my choice! It was a HUGE piece of fish though… Richy Rich hooked us up!

fish

Kara had these pork chops that Dana had another time they were there and Kara knew they were delicious! She also only got through half of our meal too but we were both grateful to have some goodies to take home!

kara's meal 

Those mushrooms were definitely a highlight hu? Plus, Kara opted for the healthier broccoli instead of the cheesy potatoes like I did!

Richy Rich even offered up our leftovers in a very fun and exciting way… what a nice picture of a boney fish ha!

bonefish box

Such a great date night with my bestest! Eating and laughing a lot! Looking forward to many more dates to come!

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Jan 25, 2012

Sushi Date Night!

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We have had just a ton of wedding planning stuff going on and the other night we met with a perspective DJ in Strongsville. We headed there straight from our allergy shots (we sound like such dorks!) and we were pretty early so we headed to dinner first! As we sat across from each other chowing on Sushi we laughed and enjoyed the time we got to spend together. We got to talk about our day, talk about the wedding, talk about the upcoming visit from some of our best friends, and just reflected back on the crazy busy few months we have had. Between tax season, wedding planning, grad school, confirmation class, a busy work schedule, and a focus on exercise stress has been high but we have enjoyed being able to look back and laugh at the hard stuff and look forward to all of the good stuff. This dinner was not only delicious but such a nice time to just be the 2 of us!

We enjoyed WAY too much food… including 3 different types of sushi….

So much that I couldn’t get all 3 in the same picture!

Teriyaki chicken that came with soup and rice and of course started with edamame and pot-stickers…

I should insert here that we had a spend $50 and get $25 off restaurant.com gift certificate. So the chicken served as Tim’s lunch the next day- which was the plan from the beginning just FYI… we didn’t plan on consuming that much food in one sitting.

After dinner we headed to Starbucks to meet with PJ the DJ. PJ was great- so full of energy. Gave us the rundown of how DJ’s think during a reception, shared some of his favorite and not so favorite wedding songs, and wasn’t afraid to offer up advice! Tim and I both really enjoyed DJ. More good wedding news!!

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Nov 5, 2011

Chubby Date Nighty

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So sometimes Tim and I just let our chubby side take over the eat right be healthy lifestyle side and we have a chubby date night!

Since I had been out of town for the last few days, Tim and I wanted to spend some old fashioned quality time with each other and thought that a date was the perfect way to do that! So after Tim got home and I poked and annoyed him and made up for the evening I had been gone we got ready and went to the Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Akron. When we got there we both mentioned how lucky we are to be so close to downtown Akron even though we don’t spend much time there! The food is great and the drive easy… hopefully we’ll be seeing more of downtown Akron in the future!

I can’t say anything bad at all about this restaurant! I am only disappointed that it was the first time we were there! So it is in like an old warehouse (go figure right just like the name says) and has all sorts of old fun decor inside. It has like the inside of a rail car trolley type thing that you can actually eat inside and fun colorful pictures hanging all over the place! Not a place for a fancy meal if you are trying to really impress a girl but certainly a great place for a couple in love who want to spend some time together (hehe). There was even this cute statue guy that Tim was kind enough to snap a picture of.

So not only was the decor fun and just what we needed for a fun night out but the food was great! A pretty impressive Italian menu sat before us and the drink selection of wine and fruitiness was just what I needed ha! I opted for the Sangria which I did not regret at all!

I had this delicious grilled chicken, mushroom, bow-tie pasta, red cream sauce dish and it was SOOO good. I LOVE mushrooms in pasta and the chicken was cooked perfectly- juice and flavorful so I dug right in but managed to contain my excitement about half way. As with most Italian placed the portion were HUGE!

Tim got sausage in his meal with peppers! Another HUGE portion but that didn’t stop him.. he dug right in! I was a big fan of the meatballs!

It was a great date night and I hope to go back soon! After dinner we stopped and checked 2 different red boxes to get Bad Teacher but of course they were both out! So we stopped at Tim’s mom’s house instead and grabbed a few movies neither one of us had seen. We decided on the Dead Poets Society (yea a pretty far cry from bad teacher) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I lost Tim a few times to droopy eye lids but he managed to finish it!

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