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!!

Filed Under: Good Eats and Treats · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
Jan 22, 2012

Burnt Pizza BUT some great bridesmaid dresses!!

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I know I owe you some serious updates but my life has been so crazy I feel like I haven’t been able to breath let alone make some updates but our friend Adam told me he kicked of out of his favorite bookmarks so I figure it is about time!

The most exciting update to make… WE FOUND BRIDESMAID DRESSES! Casey, Rose, Kara, and myself spent a few hours together yesterday at Catans Bridal (where I also purchased my wedding gown), tried on a few things, and finally settled on the ones! Yes, ones!

Turns out, not to my surprise, but all of my girls are completely different so we ended up with each girl having same color, same fabric, same designer, but different style dresses! Every single one of them looked BEAUTIFUL and I could not ask for a more beautiful, smart, and wonderful bridal party. It was a pretty painless process for me and I hope it was for the girls and more than that I hope that they love the dress they decided on! Tim and I had talked about having the girls in different styles and I was nervous that 2 of them would like 1 of the styles and then how do you choose who get it right? Well, lucky for me I suppose each girl wanted a different one and I think (assuming they were telling me the truth) they all got their favorite style! YAY for wedding fun to be accomplished.

This is one of the dresses (i won't give away whose) and this is not the color but it is SOOO cute right?!

We liked this one a lot too but in the end it just wasn't the one! Rose was my model for a few dresses!

After dinner we headed back to my house and had an amazingly fun evening! Casey, Rose, Adam, Tim, and myself had a pizza night that ended in a burnt disaster. So much of a burnt disaster in fact that when Casey went home to see Mark after he got back from bowling he told her that she smelled like something burnt haha. Well, it was our pizza!  We tried hard but in the end that oven must have had it ought for us and decided to burn the crap out of our pizza. Lucky for us Casey made some delicious guacamole for an appetizer and Tim made some cheesy dip. I filled up on the guac so it was a wonderful meal for me haha burnt pizza and all.

After dinner, Rose and Casey had an impression competition on the Wii Just Dance game. Casey came out the winner every game but I gotta say Rose had some pretty serious dance moves. As Rose and Casey were dancing the night away and Adam was laughing and watching I walked into the kitchen hugged Tim and said “ya know, we have really great friends and I love them.” I think about this a lot but for some reason in that moment I realized just how lucky I am to have such wonderful friends in our lives. I appreciate each and every one of them and I know that not everyone has that so I am just so grateful I do!

We also checked out some old school Darren’s Dance Grooves and Rose and I very impressively learned the Britney Spears dance. We finished our evening with The Hangover movie, which I made it through about 25 min of before falling asleep! Too much fun for this girl!

I have a VERY long week ahead of me at work so it was so nice to have a ton of fun with some best friends this weekend!!

Filed Under: Wedding · Tagged: , , , ,
Dec 5, 2011

Let’s just be FLAT OUT

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So… when I went to the grocery store the other night, pitas were on my list. But then I came across these things called “flat out”. To be perfectly honest what made me by then was the picture of the delicious pepperoni pizza on the front of the package. That silly advertising got me good. Tim and I have really enjoyed pita pizzas in our past so I thought these little flat breads would be a nice addition to our menu selections so I bought them!

Then the no food in the fridge and the nothing thawed out night presented itself. So I made not one, but two, pizzas! I couldn’t decide if I wanted to classic pizza or the fancy tomato olive type pizza!

So I looked online at the flat out website and I noticed that they suggested you grill the flat breads but well, it is freaking cold outside so I said no! Instead I first baked the flat bread at 350 degrees for 7 minutes. Then I pulled the hot little sucker out of the oven and laid some pizza sauce on it with pepperoni on top with some peppers and onions! DELICIOUS! This pizza, along with Tim’s taco type pizza, cooked first! It was as tasty as it is pretty!

Looks good right?

So then I made my other pizza! With a olive oil and salt and pepper base I topped it off with tomatoes, olives, artichokes, and cheese! It LOOKED delicious but I made the mistake of having bigger eyes than I do belly and didn’t even tasty it! By the time I tried to eat it a day later I realized it was a terrible idea because the flat bread was just too soggy even with the reheat in the oven! Oh well, next time I’ll try it!

I think it tasted as good as it looks haha!

So pick yourself up some FLAT OUT bread! then check out the website and make some delicious recipes!

Flat Out rocks!!

Filed Under: Good Eats and Treats · Tagged: ,
Sep 19, 2011

Board Games and Pumpkin Martinis

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I always feel indifferent about Fridays. I love doing stuff on Friday nights because I think it makes the weekend feel longer and more worthwhile. I dislike doing stuff on Friday nights because I am just down right exhausted! But this Friday night I said hey be tired and fall asleep on the floor if you have to but do something fun with your awesome friends.. and so I did.

See we had a great time!

Friday Tim and I were so happy to have Kara, Dana, Paul, and Amanda over to hang out for a while! After some serious discussion we opted on a seriously random dinner consisting of Chinese Food and Pizza (some ppl had both **cough cough me***) and it was delicious! The pizzas were simple frozen pizzas but I gotta tell you- they were darn good! One was a 4 cheese pizza and the other was just a pepperoni one. I opted for at least a piece of each.

The Chinese food varied and I didn’t order anything for myself but rather picked off of everyone else (classic Jaci I know). Kara’s was my favorite which was a good thing because she was willing to share! Plus, she made this plate look beautiful for my blog!

After dinner we went to MENCHIES for delicious FRO-YO!! This was Paul, Amanda, and Dana’s first time at Menchies so it was a real treat to see how much they enjoyed it. I, of course, was not disappointed even though they were out of the Angel Food cake flavor that I desperately wanted to try. Kara also told me that they have a new chocolate covered banana flavor but our Menchies hasn’t rotated that in yet. In any case I got some sorbet (of course!) but I also got a little peanut butter in there too! I attempted to keep it healthy with the fruit but the candy pieces literally called to me so I had no choice but to eat them. So I LOVED mine but both Amanda and Dana made some pretty impressive choices. Dana’s tasted like 1 million candy bars in a tub which I found to be delicious. Amanda’s wasn’t quite intense but the chocolate to candy ratio was right on. Paul and Tim ate theirs soo fast so I wasn’t able to share with them… but they looked pretty good. Kara’s was probably tied with mine for most boring looking but still delicious tasting!

After Menchies Amanda had to head to work so the rest of our sat down to enjoy a nice quiet game NOT. Paul and Amanda had brought over this “Game of Things” and if you have ever played that with a bunch of ppl that think it is funny to pick on one person you can imagine how much we laughed over that game. Everyone was feeling pretty good after Tim’s delicious pumpkin martinis and didn’t hold back and got to town on making fun of me. Lucky for them I am a great sport and probably enjoyed it more than they did. If you like a good game and you have some awesome fun friends I HIGHLY recommend buying this game… really freaking funny!

Game time!

As mentioned above I was tired so yes I did end up falling asleep at 11:30 on the floor in the living room. By 12:30 I made it up to bed and was asleep in seconds. Probably a good idea since I had a 5K the next morning!  Usually I am a light sleeper and I need like white noise and the perfect temperature to fall asleep but not when I have had a rough week at work! All I need is somewhere I can lay down!

Oh and Kara and Dana brought delicious treats that we enjoyed the next day!

yummmmmy hummus and tabouli

Filed Under: Random Crap · Tagged: , , , ,
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