Goodbye Mardi Gras, Hello Jamaica!

Today was my first and last Mardi Gras parade this carnival season. Every year my school has a PreK and Kindergarten parade...and let me just tell you. These parents take this parade SERIOUSLY. It's like an actual Mardi Gras parade, just mini sized. They go all out and I love it! Huge floats, great throws, nice crowd. You really can't beat it.

See what I mean? Insanity. One of my kids actually gave me a child sized "Muses" shoe in our school colors. (For those who don't know, Muses is an all women parade and they hand out bedazzled high heel shoes as a cool throw). How freaking cute is this?!

My "Muses" shoe, Mardi Gras tutu, and a daiquiri I picked up on the way home haha

Such a good day! Anyway, tomorrow we leave for Jamaica and I can't wait. Pretty scared to leave Buster Boo behind, but I'm hoping 7 days pass really quickly in a dog's eyes. At least that's what I'll be telling myself! Sandals Grande Rivera in Ocho Rios, here we come!!!

Football, an Anniversary, and a Birthday. Oh my!

When life gets busy, it's so much harder for me to remember to blog. I absolutely love keeping up with it, so I'm sorry for the random blogging spurts and hiatuses! So here's a recap of the end of January.

Both the Saints and LSU lost their championship games. It was a very sad time for Louisiana football...and for my household.

Jordan was so loud during the Saints game that Buster decided to sit IN MY LAP on the couch

We celebrated our 2nd anniversary at Restaurant August in New Orleans. I seriously can't believe it's already been two years! So much has happened in that time, but the best thing is that I get to spend every day coming home to my best friend (and my sweet Buster Boo!).

Napa wine and the sunset on the way to dinner

We were already pretty obsessed with John Besh, but this dining experience definitely took our obsession to a whole new level. Amazing! They don't have a corkage fee, so we brought our favorite bottle of Napa wine from our first anniversary.

I was a little disappointed that their only available reservations for a Sunday night were 5:30 or 9:30. Apparently older people know what they're doing - a 5:30 reservation means amazing and attentive service. Who knew! We felt like the only people in the whole restaurant (which definitely wasn't the case). The meal was just to die for. Prepare for mouth watering to begin.

Amazing P&J oysters, gnocchi tossed with blue crab and black truffle, and a fancy egg thingy

Speckled trout Pontchartrain (AKA the best thing I've ever eaten in my life) and Sugar & spice duckling

A chocolate torte and Père Roux’s banana rum cake. I take it back...the banana rum cake may be the best thing I've ever eaten!

So our second anniversary was a success. I highly recommend Restaurant August! It was seriously one of the best meals I've ever had. And the best part? My mom gave me his massive cookbook two years ago, and come to find out my two favorite dishes are in there! I doubt I can recreate them, but here's to trying! Speckled trout Pontchartrain and Père Roux’s banana rum cake, here I come!

The week after our anniversary was Jordan's birthday. He decided he wanted lobster at our house instead of going out to dinner (because let's face it...nothing was going to be better than that meal the week before!). I made a caesar salad, creamy parmesan risotto, and got the lobsters steamed at the grocery. Yum!

Risotto was a request because of our crazy food network obsession. It turned out to be easier than I thought. And so yummy! I may have to lay off the Kraft mac and cheese as a side during the week and replace it with a more sophisticated risotto.

In other news, we're heading to the Sandals in Ocho Rios Jamaica for Mardi Gras! Jordan found a crazy deal on someone's time share, so we're going on an all inclusive 7 day trip. Random and very quick planning process, but my goodness...I can't WAIT!! T minus 16 days!!!!!

Hmmmm...now may be time to attempt to work off those amazing meals I just showed you haha

So excited!!

I guess I've recovered enough to write about my weekend...

Ok. It's been well over a week. I guess I've recovered enough from the LSU/Bama weekend to write about it...Let's just say last Saturday was a very eventful day.

It started with my sweet friend Kelly's absolutely BEAUTIFUL wedding. Have you ever been to a wedding where you notice every tiny detail and see so much simple elegance in all of it? Well this was one of those kind of weddings. Beautiful scenery (the Mississippi River), a gorgeous beaming bride, a singing groom, and everyone dancing and having fun. It was hands down one of the best weddings I've been to. You could just tell how happy they were and I think that's what makes a wedding go from fun to amazing. Seeing the love people have for one another is always the most important thing. :-)

I love taking pictures at weddings (well, actually I love taking pictures in general), but I think this is one of the first times that all of my pictures came out this nice. That says a lot about how gorgeous this wedding was! Not even one bad blurry picture. Love it!

AND here's where the night gets interesting. After the wedding, we headed downstairs to a bar that's in the same building as the reception. They had some giant screens set up to play the big LSU/Bama game, and we were all looking forward to "the game of the century." Jordan had called ahead and got a bunch of us a really nice roped off section. I bet the people who worked there were thinking "Yay! A group of people dressed up nice who just want to sit quietly and watch the game." Boy would they have been wrong.

As you can see, we were a little crazy (as evident by the picture of Jordan being teleported somewhere via the light fixture). AND these pictures were all taken before the game even started. By the time the game started we had a table full of cheese fries and beer. Some people were armed with wrist bands entitling them to drink specials and an open bar at half time (this fact will come in handy in a bit). The bar was truly a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure my favorite part was that they played dance music during commercial breaks. After coming from a fun wedding, we were all very excited to get to dance some more!

Then came half time. And lots of shots (from the people who bought wrist bands). You would have thought my friends had never drank before in their lives. I'm pretty sure the first thing my parents told me when I turned 18 was to never mix liquors...and I follow that rule religiously. These crazy people were doing shots of jager, followed by shots of vodka, followed by shots of tequila, etc. You get the picture. And you can guess what happened next....black outs across the board. I won't get into the gory details, but I can say that my foot was thrown up on twice, I missed quite a bit of the second half checking on people in the bathroom, and over half of my friends woke up the next morning not knowing who won the game. Which is sad because that game was A-MAZ-ING!!!

Oh, you thought my tale was over? Not quite. After being one of six people (out of over 20!) who could walk myself out of the bar, I had an incident. Our ride had left due to shot sickness, so we decided to take a cab home. Close your eyes and picture this scenario. Jordan hails a cab from the other side of a busy street. Me and one of my friends scurry across the street to join him. Jordan is in the cab and the door is wide open. I get one foot in the cab....and the driver TAKES OFF! With me hanging out and the door wide open. I ended up on my back looking like a sad turtle (Jordan was curious how that part happened - I looked at him and said "What was my other option?! Surf on the sidewalk with one foot in the cab?). Needless to say my foot on the ground wasn't so happy. I know it could have been way worse, but it took me a good week to be able to wear real shoes again. 

It was actually a lot grosser in person....and hurt SO bad. Plus my pretty pedicured toes lost parts of both of the big toenails in the process. Ew. At least I'm all patched up now and lived to tell the tale!

So the moral of this story is: don't mix your liquors and be very observent when entering a cab. :-) GEAUX TIGERS!

My Mardi Gras Checklist

I’m not going to lie. Mardi Gras is not my favorite holiday. Growing up a block away from a parade route kind of ruined the magic - I’ve seen some strange things to say the least (most of which were on or near my front lawn)!

Plus I have a weird thing about giving people the right to hurl things at my head.

With that said, every Mardi Gras I do have a few “musts” in the food department. Here is a checklist I compiled this year. Without all of these things combined, it doesn’t quite feel like Mardi Gras.

A drive through daiquiri

Randazzo’s king cake

Boiled crawfish

I was lucky enough to have crawfish twice this week :-)

Abita Strawberry

Popeyes Fried Chicken

And something new I discovered this year: Blue Moon in a can

SO refreshing after drinking crappy Miller Lite all day!

I’m proud to say I accomplished my checklist this year. Happy Mardi Gras Yall!

My Cradle List

This post is going to jump all over the place. It’s three stories put together, so just bear with me here. It’ll all make sense in the end, I promise.

How I Met Your Mother is one of my favorite shows. It’s ridiculously funny, witty, and sometimes as hard as it may seem - relatable. For some reason, my hubby and me only discovered our love for the show this year, and after watching a few episodes we immediately went out and found all 6 seasons...and proceeded to watch every single episode. There were many nights and weekends spent on the couch watching a How I Met Your Mother marathon. It was, and kind of still is, a rather unhealthy obsession.

Such a great show

Recently they had an episode where the two married characters, Marshall and Lily, are having problems getting pregnant. After getting really upset about it, they come up with a concept that makes them feel better. They decide to create a list of things they want to do before they have kids and dub it “The Cradle List.”

After watching that episode I couldn’t stop thinking of a similar list for Jordan and me. We’ve been married for a year, and the most common, and honestly most annoying question we get is “When are you going to have kids?” The answer to that, which some people don’t quite like, is we’re still young and as of now nowhere near ready to become parents. We have so many things we want to do before that major step in our lives. So (drum roll please...)

After thinking about it a lot, I developed my “cradle list” of things I want to attempt to do before having kids.
(Some things we’ve already accomplished and some things are still in the works.)

1) Travel as much as possible and visit friends that live out of town.
In the past year we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon, West Palm Beach to visit our friends Lindsay and Harley, I went to Nashville to visit Victoria, and we just got back from a trip to San Francisco and Napa Valley. We’re going on a trip with my parents to the Bahamas this summer too. I’m oh so excited about that one!

Our vacations this year

Even though we’ve done a lot of traveling this year, there are still so many places I would love to go. My hypothetical travel list includes: New York to visit Allison, DC to visit Amelia and Will, Vegas, Chicago to see the Cubs (Jordan’s favorite team), North Carolina (I’m randomly obsessed with the Carolinas - I want to retire there some day), and somewhere to go skiing (not my idea of a relaxing vacation, but I guess I’ll give it a try for Jordan’s sake). Oh and of course Italy and Greece...but I’ll keep wishing on that one.

Maybe one day...

2) Buy a house.
We bought our first house at the end of October. There’s definitely a lot of work that still needs to be done, but it’s a roof over our heads so I’ll take that as a check off the list!

The day we closed on our house

3) Do something crazy and spontaneous.
We’re neither crazy nor spontaneous people by nature. This one might need a little work. Hopefully it can involve a trip to knock a few more things off of number one? Wishful thinking.

HAHA Yeah right!

4) PUPPY!
I’m so ready to get a puppy. Hopefully I can check that one off the list over the summer! All we know is that we’re going to the SPCA. I know I can’t go looking until we’re actually ready (probably after the Bahamas) because I will totally come home with a new friend. 

OMG I want one!!!

5) Sit courtside at a basketball game.
SO this is actually what this post was about. Jordan and me absolutely love going to New Orleans Hornets games. We go as often as we can and usually have seats way up at the top of the arena. Yesterday my dad called and said that his company had two extra tickets for the Hornets game. Little did we know that we would be in the club level, row 12, with cup holders on the seats in front of us, and a waiter. We even got to ride up an escalator protected by a bouncer with a black light, checking to make sure you had an invisible stamp on your wrist. There was also a lounge with a bar and couches. Pretty freaking awesome, and probably even better than courtside seats if you ask me. Since I could actually see how gigantic the players are AND see them sweat, I’ll take this as a definite check off of my list!

My camera died when we got there. My phone seriously didn't do it justice!

From classy to trashy in one streetcar ride

I realize this event actually happened a little while ago, but I was waiting on my friend to send me a picture for this post. Just wait – it’s worth it.

The week of New Years, some of my friends decided we should go out to lunch at really nice restaurant in town called Commander’s Palace. It’s a very fancy restaurant, which is cool and all, but the real reason we picked there for lunch was because they have 25-cent martinis. Yes, that’s right. 25 cents. Even though we knew the food was going to be a little pricy (and AMAZING), 25-cent martinis were just an idea too good to pass up.

So off to lunch we went! We had boyfriend/husband rides there and back, so even though it was only 11:30am we were ready for them to bring on the martinis! When we walked in we were greated as though it was the final scene in Titanic. No joke.

After a long Google image search, this was the best I could do. You get the point.

There were at least 10 people lining the entranceway waiting to greet us and tell us to have a good day. Once we made it up the stairs, there were another 5 people waiting to do the same thing. It was nice and all, but I was waiting for someone to tell us we had just been on a sinking ship.

Anyway, the room we were seated in was absolutely beautiful. It was overlooking a garden and was decorated with pretty twinkling lights. Such a great atmosphere for a nice lunch.

Next came the many, many martinis. They had four martinis to pick from, all of which seemed amazing. I stuck with the cosmo because I figured why mess with a good thing? Between all of us, we tried three of the four (we referred to them as the pink one, the blue one, and the green one - I couldn't tell you what the green and blue ones actually were if I tried).

Next came the food. My goodness was it good. Although, I'm not going to lie - those martinis might have stolen the spotlight. I'm pretty sure by the end of this lunch we all had at least 5 a piece. Why? Because it was only $1.25 a person!

Corn and crab bisque, Open faced pulled pork sandwich, bread pudding, and strawberry shortcake

This lunch was so much fun. It's always great to spend a day with good friends just laughing and catching up. It made me wish I were a woman who could "lunch" - I guess I can on random days off of school like that one was. My friend Stephanie re-discovered her love of cosmos. She evidently had given up on them after an incident 5-6 years ago. I realized that my new years resolution would be to make my friends my family (even though they kind of already are).

My cosmo with the pretty view, Stephanie loving on her cosmo

So here is where the day takes an interesting turn. A few cosmos into lunch we decided we were having so much fun that we didn't want the day to end. Somehow that thought turned into, "Hey, here's an idea. The street car runs just a few blocks away. We should get on it, head down to Bourbon Street, and call your hubby (who thinks he is picking us up at the restaurant) when we're already there! Plus, the street car is only a dollar a person, making it within our 25-cent budget!" Clearly a 5 martinis into the morning kind of decision.

We made it to Bourbon Street and called my hubby. Besides the shock of our classy day turned trashy, he was supportive and just told us to behave. I guess we can call what happened next behaving...maybe. If any of you watched the most recent Real World New Orleans, you probably noticed that the cast hung out at a total of one bar on Bourbon Street: The Beach.

The Real World cast at The Beach on Bourbon

This is a fairly new bar. I'm only saying this because I don't remember it being there...but then again I also can't remember the last time I was on Bourbon Street. Anyway, I was really excited to go there because I remembered there being a killer whale that you could ride like a bull on the show. Lo and behold, there was. And it was only $5 to ride it. Yes, please!

Besides riding the whale, there was a lot of dancing, avoiding creepy old men, laughing, and second lining with a random wedding down the street. You know, normal Bourbon Street events.

Second lining with umbrellas and a band - a New Orleans tradition

Absolutely great day spent with some amazing friends! Hopefully this will be a new after Christmas tradition!