The Holidays are Here for the Musialowski’s

I love the holidays! After Thanksgiving, Christopher and I quickly worked to turn over the Fall decorations to the Christmas decorations in just a weekend. I love how festive our home looks with all the garlands and lights. I also feel nostalgic as I remember when I received our ornaments and decorations and who gifted them to us.

This we purchased a second tree and decorated in all of the angels that my Nana had given me growing up. It looks beautiful and reminds me of her. Christopher of course added his favorites too the angel tree – his favorite Star Trek ornament and his silver bell from his birth year.

My Aunt Midge also gave us some holiday decorations over the summer that I was so excited to put out this year.

I am so excited for all of the Christmas parties we have coming up. They start tonight with Book Club, which I am hosting. I am making Bourbon Glazed Kielbasa, Pizza Pinwheels, Piggy Wreath (Pigs in a Blanket formed into a wreath), white pizza dip, and some desserts. I hope it all goes well. Oh and you cannot forget the wine J We will have lots of that too.

Then we have our Christmas Brunch with the Abbarno/Keohane side of the family, Linton CU Holiday Dinner, Splurge Group, Republican Christmas party, Brunch with our Godson, Cousin Christmas PJ swap, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners, neighborhood open house party and wrapping it all up is Christmas with the Wright side of the family. Phew – are you tired, because listing that out I am already exhausted from all of the partying we have planned in the upcoming weeks.

I am also looking forward to cookie making with  my mom and mother in law. Yummy!

Our Angel Tree. I am really slacking on the Christmas decorating pictures. Will have to take some this weekend. 

Thanksgiving was a Success

Thanksgiving dinner was a success! Everyone had a wonderful time and we had plenty of food. I was so nervous to host Thanksgiving, but everything came together so well. I will say that I probably over planned it a bit, but my preparedness definitely helped out because when Thanksgiving morning rolled around, everything was all set and I got to relax, have coffee, read the paper and watch the parade.

It was a wonderful holiday with our family!

Christopher carving our first Thanksgiving Turkey

One of our buffets filled with delicious foods

Our beautiful tablescape all lit up! The floating candles looked so elegant. We filled the tall vases with cranberries and then filled each vase with water and topped it off with the candles. 

Mom and J

Table pre-dinner

Getting the Turkey in the oven - Christopher was amazing!

What a guy! It was so much fun to cook our first Thanksgiving meal together. 

Our Disney Countdown

Since we were so excited about our 2^nd anniversary, we decided to do something Disney related every couple of days. We had a lot of fun with this.

Some of the things we did:

-          Watched YouTube videos of Disney World rides and attractions, parades, firework shows and guest experiences

-          Disney themed crossword puzzles

-          Wrote a letter to our favorite Disney Villain (Disney wrote us a postcard back!)

-          Reviewed all of the park maps and wrote down our top 5 rides/attractions/shows

-          Listened to Disney Music

-          Eat a Mickey shaped sandwich

-          Put together a container of pennies and quarters for the penny press machines

-          Made Mickey shaped Oreo pops

-          Ate cupcakes in Disney themed liners

-          Bought Disney PJ’s for the trip

-          Made Mickey shaped cookies

-          Picked out the Ears we would wear

-          Made a door hanger for our resort room

-          Made a decoration for our resort room window

-          Buy glow in the dark necklaces, bracelets, etc for the parades

-          Looked at pictures from our past vacations

-          Made Mickey shaped pizza

-          Found our Mickey watches

-          Picked out which Disney character best represents our significant other

-          Bought Disney themed water bottles

-          Played Disney trivia

-          Read a Disney World travel book

-          Watched a tv program on Disney

-          Watch Pixar movies

-          Made the Pillsbury Disney sugar cookies

-          Picked out a room scent

-          Planned our first day outfit

-          Picked out our top 5 tastes for the Epcot Food & Wine Festival

-          Picked out snacks for the trip

We had so much fun. We especially liked to see how many food items we could turn or create a Mickey shape out of.

How does your family get excited about Disney?

Our 2nd Anniversary Trip to Disney

WE WENT TO DISNEY WORLD! 

It was such an amazing trip. Spending time with Christopher (and my in-laws) was a blast, but went by really fast. I think we did a pretty good job of hitting everything we wanted to do in four full days.

In summary, we did the following:

Day 1 - Epcot - rides and Food & Wine Festival, Lunch at Coral Reef, Dinner at La Hacienda de San Angel, Illuminations (from our table - it was incredible)

Day 2 - Magic Kingdom/Epcot - Breakfast at Chef Mickey's, Lunch at Be Our Guest (amazing), Dinner at Le Cellier. Rode lots of rides and went to attractions at both MK & Epcot.

Day 3 - Rocked out Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. We had lunch at Tusker House and our very special anniversary dinner at California Grill.

Day 4 - Epcot all day - we had an amazing time at the Food & Wine Festival. Then we changed at our resort and went to Narccoossee's for dinner. It was awesome and we watched Wishes from our table. Christopher and I then ventured off to Magic Kingdom for some extra magic hour time.

Day 5 - we left the most magical place on earth :(

I will post more entries with our daily details and pictures - got to have pictures! I also will post about our favorite and least favorite tastes at Epcot's Food and Wine Festival and our special Disney Countdown and Daily Fun Facts.

And special announcement here...we become Disney Vacation Club members!!!

All this goodness to come!

More Buffalo Bills games

We are in the middle of football season and we are enjoying our season tickets despite the Buffalo Bills record. At the end of September, we tailgated with some of our friends from the Bills Message Boards. It was a great time and the weather was beautiful! It is usually rare for us Buffalonians to attend a game in shorts and a t-shirt, but the day was perfect.

We also had some delicious treats too. Lots of dips, chips and snacks. We brought homemade chocolate chip brownies and Christopher made bacon wrapped steak bites. Delicious. One of the other members brought venison tenderloin, hot dogs, hamburgers and homemade cookies. We ate our hearts out.

Our 2nd Anniversary

At the end of September, Christopher and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary. It was such a nice night. We celebrated at Russell's Steaks, Chops & More. After dinner, we both agreed that this restaurant is our new favorite! You could literally cut the steak with a butter knife it was so tender. Christopher also surprised me and had champagne delivered to the table. We had a wonderful, intimate night together.

Before we went to dinner, we exchanged some small gifts. I made Christopher our 2nd year picture album. He loved it! I ended up having to make TWO books - we had a very exciting and busy year!

 Christopher gave me a beautiful bracelet and earrings set, a gift card to Disney and beautiful roses. I am very spoiled!

It is hard to believe that another year has passed. It has been a beautiful two years. Looking forward to the lifetime to anniversaries we will get to spend together. Not to mention all of our Disney trips!

Launch of EllegantDecor on Etsy!

So this past month, my mother and I decided to really start up our little business of making accordion scrapbook albums. After making enough to start selling, we launched our Etsy site! If you are looking for a reasonable gift for a teacher, friend, stocking stuffer, co-worker, etc, this is perfect! At $10 per album it is a perfect gift and a unique one.

If you want to check out our site, click on this link: EllegantDecor

Happy Shopping! And keep us in mind with the holiday's coming up!

Hiatus

Where have I been the past month? I know, I know - I have been very absent and I apologize. But I promise there are many posts to come.

Since the end of September, we have celebrated our first anniversary, gone to Disney (woo hoo - I can't wait to tell you about all of the awesome things we did in just 4 full days), hung out with lots of cute babies and have already started planning our next trip to Disney as....Disney Vacation Club members! Yes - big news - we bought into the DVC! And our home resort is The Grand. We are super excited about it.

Most posts to come - I promise! I will leave you tonight with one of Marv's pictures from Halloween.

Happy Halloween!

Pictures from Marv Eric's Birthday

 Last night mom and dad Musialowski, Lindsay and Ryan came over to help celebrate Marv's 2nd birthday. Dinner and Dessert was delicious, but we enjoyed spending great time with our family and loved the conversation. Marv also enjoyed his birthday very much and over indulged a little bit on treats. He was a in a treat coma by 10!

Lindsay came over to celebrate!

Happy 2nd birthday! 

The Musialowski's

Mom & Dad Musialowski

Look at all the treats he received!

One happy birthday pup with his Dad

Super man or super dog???

Father and pup

Mom and pup

Our handsome little pup on his 2nd birthday!

Molly Rae

I am so excited to announce the birth of my best friends first child - Molly Rae. She was born on Friday, September 13th at 6:09 pm weighing 9 lbs 7 oz and 21 inches long. She is just a bundle of joy and her and mom are doing great!

I was able to go visit them in the hospital after she was born. I am so proud of my best friend! She is going to be a wonderful mother and I am looking forward to many years of spoiling Miss Molly.

Amish Breakfast Casserole

I found this recipe while scanning through Pinterest to find a quiche or casserole to serve at the splurge party brunch I was hosting. I liked the basis of this recipe, but added my own flavor to it.

Amish Breakfast Casserole
Serves: 8

1/2 lb Turkey Bacon, diced
1 tsp onion powder
5 eggs, beaten
1 bag of frozen shredded hash browns
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cups cottage cheese (I used fat free)
1 1/2 cups shredded swiss cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large skillet, cook bacon until bacon is crisp. Drain any excess fat. In a large bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients. Once bacon is slightly cooled, stir in the bacon. Transfer to a greased 13x9 pyrex dish (see note below for what I did for the party). Bake, uncovered at 350 for 40 minutes. Let stand about 5 minutes and then serve.

Note: for the brunch I hosted, I cooked the casserole in two pans - 8x8 and glass loaf pan. This made serving easier; when the 8x8 was cold, I pulled out the warm loaf pan to serve "2nds" from. I kept this pan in the warm oven (at 200 degrees) until I needed it to serve. Also - instead of cutting the casserole into squares, I served it with a spoon and it worked out just fine.

Splurge Party - Waffle Bar Brunch

Waffle Bar

So it was my turn to host our splurge group for this month and I decided to do a brunch complete with a waffle bar, make your own mimosa's, amish breakfast casserole, sausages and yogurt parfaits. The party idea was a hit with my friends and super easy to host too.

My plan of attack to pull off the party was as follows:

One Week in Advance:
- purchase all non-perishable food and paper items for the party. Store these items all together so it is easy to find the day of the party and so that nobody uses the goods in the house.
- put together your cooking schedule or timeline. You will want to make sure you are not trying to juggle 4 things in the oven or 5 on the stove top.

4 Days in Advance:
- Start cleaning, I usually pick up the stray items that get left all around the house. Then I will organize any counter space and wipe down the appliances and cabinets.
- Pick out music. We have satellite tv, therefore my favorite go to are the music stations for parties as I am not a big music person.

3 Days in Advance:
- Purchase any alcohol that is needed (in this case, the champagne) and store properly

Make your own Mimosas!

- Clean the foyer or front hallway where the guests will be walking through - everything look right? I do a walkthrough to the party space to make sure things look neat and tidy.
- Clean out the fridge to make room for your party groceries and dishes

2 Days in Advance:
- Do the grocery shopping for the party!
- Vacuum and mop
- Set out all serveware to make sure you have what you need
- Press table linens (if using)

1 Day in Advance:
- Clean the bathroom (make sure you have extra TP)
- Sweep your front steps
- Prep any dishes that an be made ahead of time. For this brunch, I prepped the Amish breakfast casserole, rice krispie treats and cut the fruit.

It's Party Time!
- last minute room check to make sure everything looks neat and tidy

Fruity Yogurt Parfaits

- Make/Bake day of items. For the brunch, it started at 10 am. I made the yogurt parfaits around 8:30, baked the casserole at 9:00, started the sausages at 9:20 and starting making all the waffles at 9:15. I read online that to keep the waffles warm and crispy (not soggy like they get when they are left out), to put them in a pyrex dish and keep warm in a cooler oven. I did this and set the oven to 200 degrees and it worked out perfectly. I wanted to have all of the food prepped, baked and ready to go so that my guests could eat by 10:20 and so that I could enjoy the party too and not have to be cooking in the kitchen the whole time.

Rice Krispies, Parfaits, Casserole and Sausages

The party went off perfect and all my friends took home both waffles and rice krispie treats. I would definitely do this again - it was easy to host and fun for my guests!

Here is what I served for the waffle bar:
- waffles (duh)
- fresh fruit - strawberries, banana slices, blueberries & raspberries
- Spreads - peanut butter, nutella, butter
- Toppings - maple syrup, chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup, chocolate chips, nuts and whipped topping

For the Make your Own Mimosas:
- 3 different juices: orange juice, fruit punch and apple cider ('tis the season)
- champagne and ginger ale (for virgins)
- Fresh cut fruit - strawberries, oranges, blueberries & raspberries

Tablescape