Mike and Music

Mike and Music’s Year in Review

1) Obviously this is a big one: we got hitched!  Mike and I had a ton of fun at our wedding, and from what they’ve told us, our guests did, too.  The honeymoon that followed was great– very fun and relaxing– and best of all, we paid for both ourselves, up front, in their entirety.  So no debt!

2) We finally spent time working on our house!  A lot of time, actually.  The kitchen remodel was huge, and now that the backsplash is in, it’s all done.  Projects on the list for 2009 include renovating the bathrooms, putting in sliding doors and building a deck on the front of the house, and painting the exterior.

3) We lost a tenant.  I suppose that’s a natural part of landlording.  You rent to people and sooner or later, they move.  So it’s good, in a way, to have that under our belt.

4) I lost a job, and then got a new one.  I start on January 5, so we’ll see how it goes.

5) We got a dog.  The cutest dog in the world!

Those are the high (and low) lights.  Hopefully 2009 will treat us– and the readers of our blog– well.  Happy New Year!

What better way to celebrate Christmas than by putting up a backsplash in the kitchen?  Yup, Mike and I spent the evening of the Saturday after Christmas putting up our beautiful travertine backspalsh.  That was the one thing that remained to be done as part of the kitchen remodel, and we finally decided there’s no time like the present to get it done.

We picked some small (1/2 by 1/2 inch) travertine tiles for the main backsplash, and as trim, a piece with 1 inch tiles surrounded by 1 1/2 inch horizontal pieces.  The trim piece has a decorative metal piece in the middle.  Sound confusing?  Here’s a picture:

First Mike mixed the mortar and affixed the tiles.  I went behind him and wiped off all the excess mortar and made sure the tiles were as straight and level as possible.  They dried for a couple of days and then tonight we went through and grouted.  Mike did the grout and I wiped off the haze (excess grout) from the tiles, walls and counters.

It came out really well, and looks nice.  It’s amazing how much of a difference the backsplash makes in terms of making our kitchen look finished.  Don’t you think?

You know how Rey came to be our dog, right?  (If not, check out the archives from March 2008, the story is there.)  Well today, when Mike and I were coming home from a post-Christmas shopping trip to Lowe’s…  We arrived to find a super cute, super sweet terrier mix in front of the garages!  It was a Day-After-Christmas Miracle!  God’s way of saying, “Mike and Music, I want you to have another dog!”

This dog is a girl, and she’s smaller than Rey.  She is darker in color, too.  We’re pretty sure, though, that she’s related to our little guy.  We think that some stupid neighbor has a terrier who hasn’t been fixed and that the dog keeps begetting new puppies.  (Who knows, we may end up with three or four dogs, at this rate)

I had sort of been thinking about getting another dog, though I hadn’t shared that with Mike, who is not nearly as enthused.  By my thinking is, we (Rey and I) already go to the dog park once a day, we (Mike and I) already buy dog food, we (well, mostly I, actually) already clean up dog poop…  how much more work can another dog be?

The dog didn’t have a tag on it and our neighbor who knows everything about the neighborhood didn’t know anything about this pup or her owner.  I initially told Mike I’d take the puppy to the shelter, which would give us first right of refusal for adoption after seeing if anyone claims her, but then we agreed that we’d keep her overnight to see how she and Rey would do together.  I gave her a bath and brushed her, and cut the matted areas out of her fur.  She and Rey frolicked and played and ran in circles, and she ate Rey’s food and drank his water (the poor thing was famished!).  But then I noticed that she seemed to be bleeding from her girl dog parts and got a little freaked out.  So off to the shelter we went (I mean, what if something had seriously been wrong with her?), where I was informed that she is in heat.

The shelter will give her all her shots and scan her for a microchip.  If she’s microchipped, we have to wait five business days for someone to claim her; if not, we have to wait four.  Then, if we want her, she’s ours.

As you might know (if you’ve read the header on our blog), Mike and I like bacon.  I was thinking about getting him a bacon of the month club membership as a Christmas present, but they’re all really expensive and I could think of a lot of other (better) things to spend money on.  While doing my bacon research, though, I found Bacon Salt– available at baconsalt.com.

Bacon Salt comes in a number of flavors, including original, hickory, peppered and natural (as you can see in the picture).  I got Mike a four pack that included those flavors, and he loved it.  When we opened presents tonight, it was the Bacon Salt that got a big laugh and promises that we’ll try it soon.  Perhaps tomorrow, when we make breakfast for my parents, who are coming over to exchange gifts.  I’ll post a review after we’ve indulged in some (hopefully delicious) bacon salt.

Sunday was our 3 month wedding anniversary.  So far, so good!

My team had our final (since our office is being closed) staff meeting today.  My boss brought in some cake, and she and I gave our staff presents.  My gift to everyone was the bread I’ve mentioned, wrapped in star-festooned bags with a cute gift tag that Mike designed:

For staff, I picked out (on behalf of my boss) mugs with notable quotes on them (like “be the change you want to see in the world”):

As you can see, I wrapped everything up with ribbon that matched our office’s colors, and everything looked lovely.  Very festive.  We had a nice meeting, very upbeat, and I think people appreciated the chance to have one final hurrah.  I have been lucky to work with some really great people, so it was good to take a few minutes to celebrate that.

Mike and I today were all set to go to a Rockapella holiday music concert.  (For those who don’t know, Rockapella is an a capella group that Mike really likes.)  The concert was in Rancho Cucamonga, which is 2 hours away, but we’d made arrangements for a very generous friend to watch the dog and headed off.  After almost two hours in the car, we were excited to be approaching the venue, and then Mike’s phone rang.  It was someone from the venue saying that the group was stuck on the East Coast due to a winter storm and that the concert was canceled.  Oh no!

We’d already decided that while we were there, we’d have dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, since Mike loves the pasta with browned butter and mizithra cheese, and since the one here closed about a year ago.  So when we got news that the concert was canceled, we just headed to the O.S.F. and grubbed and then wandered around Victorian Gardens, a “lifestyle center” (a.k.a., very fancy mall).  While we were in the area, we headed west a few miles to Claremont, where I went to college.  I forgot that they roll up the sidewalks there at 5 p.m.!  Everything was closed.  But there’s been all this expansion and all these new stores have gone up.  It’s amazing.  Not everything is a positive change, though.  We went to 21 Choices, a college haunt where we used to enjoy massive amounts of frozen yogurt for very low prices.  A “tres small” was $2.50!  Outrageous!

So when the concert is rescheduled, we’ll head up again and hit the O.S.F., but not 21 Choices.  The times, they are a changin’!

I have spent the last six and a half hours baking.  And I’m only a little more than halfway done.

Mike and I decided to give our coworkers loaves of homemade bread.  After consulting allrecipes.com, we settled on a pumpkin cranberry bread.  Festive and delicious, right?  Yes, but also an enormous time suck.  The bread is really good– moist and sweet, with tart whole cranberries– so I’m sharing the recipe (as adapted, by me and Mike) here.

Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 5 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (if you don’t have it, you can make your own.  it’s nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 1 (15 ounce) can LIBBY’S® 100% Pure Pumpkin
• 4 eggs
• 1/2  cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9 x 5-inch loaf pans.
2. Combine flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt in large bowl.
   
3. Combine sugar, pumpkin, eggs, vegetable oil and orange juice in large mixer bowl; beat until just blended.
   
4. Add pumpkin mixture to flour mixture; stir just until moistened.
   
5. Fold in cranberries.
   
6. Spoon batter into prepared loaf pans.
7. Bake for 60 to 65 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

I’ve been doing double batches.  12 loaves done, 4 in the oven, 8 to go.

UPDATE

This is what 24 loaves of pumpkin cranberry bread looks like:

My employer has managed to find a position for me within the organization, and come January 1, I will be working in Human Resources. It’s not what I want to be doing in the long run, but a girl’s gotta eat!

My horoscope for today reflects that:
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). There are plenty of exits from the freeway to success. But if you accidentally get off before you reach your destination, don’t worry. By now you have a pretty good sense about where the next entrance will be.