photo unrelated to blog. I took it yesterday and just love it.

As much as Price and I would love to get the hell out of Dodge (Boston/New England) we have been coming around to the idea of sticking around for a bit longer than we originally planned. So we calculated what we would be spending on rent over the next few years and what we realized is that is would basically suck to continue to rent. Sure there are benefits when it comes to maintenance, such as the woman upstairs from us flooded her apartment and the building management is dealing with the damage to our apartment. But at what cost does that come to?

We decided to do some online searching for what and where we could afford in the Boston area and have begun to look at places. We saw 3 places this past weekend in East Boston.

First Listing: This was actually a single family house.  It is located behind another house that has 3 units in it. This is 2 story, 3 bedroom + 2 bath house. I like this most because of the face that there is so much room in it, including a full basement and pull down attic. The kitchen layout is horrible which I really dislike but still trying to envision how we would make it work. This was the most expensive one we looked at but again, it was the largest.

Second Listing: This one looked like it could be viable option because of it’s price, it is a 2 bedroom + office, the kitchen is old but the layout would make for an easy update, and there are washer dryer hook ups in the unit. However, after further discussing it, we decided that it had a weird layout, no view (balcony looked onto a parking lot), and a 3rd story walk up. Yes, we would hire movers to haul all those boxes and furniture up there but I am more concerned with the day to day stuff requiring trips up the flights of stairs… like my heavy purse, groceries, and baby carrier.

Third Listing: Right away we dismissed this last one because of the uneven floors. It had new flooring, kitchen, bath but the bones were not good.

So it was an interesting start to our search process.

Besides looking in East Boston, we are going to drive to other areas that we are unfamiliar with this weekend so we can see if we would want to look at any houses/condos in that area. I have to admit that I am being a bit stubborn about looking in different areas. Not because of any good reason, only because of commute times. Our current commute is 35 minutes on the train so I would like to reduce that (by a lot) if possible. The train ride from Maverick (in East Boston ) is 6 minutes, but could be a longer walk. Places like Malden only have an 11 minute train ride so we are going to look there as well as Chelsea, which would only have about a 20 minute. Oh the possibilities.

These are the things I have been considering for each of the places we look at…

we are looking for a 2 bedroom, 1 bath places in the 850+ sf range

within a mile of a train station or bus stop

house > 2nd floor > 1st floor > 3rd floor

laundry in unit > laundry in building’s basement

deeded parking > resident permit parking (long shot)

old kitchen  + low price > new kitchen + high price

With all that said…

What things did you consider when buying your place? What were your must haves and wants? What suggestions do you have? What did you learn from the process? Did anything scare you that you were not expecting?

I’d love to have some input.

wow only a few photos from this long weekend. Sometimes I’m amazing with 30 pictures and I select 8 of them and other times I only take 4. wha??? that being said Price took this photo of Bunny that I LOVE!!!

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Week 5 was filled with some quality time with my brother and sister, cupcakes, a spiffy new Starbucks Gold card, movie viewing, and being horribly sick. I actually approached the day that I stayed home with ‘sweet, I feel like shit but at least I can scrapbook’ by my body had other plans and I laid on the sofa ALL day. no lie. Clearly I needed the time for my body to recover from the nastiness that was inhabiting my body but it was so disappointing that I didn’t even get to utilize my day off with some fun.

I think my favorite thing about the week is the old timey telephone sticker that I have on the left side page. I wish I could say I strategically put it there but no, I was just tired of journaling so I copped out and decided to put the sticker there so I would not have to write anything in that 3×4 rectangle. In case you were wondering it was going to be about my Monday night being great with picking up a new pair of shoes and having dinner out with Price. I think the phone works just fine instead.

Week 5:

Full Spread

Left Side

Right Side

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As the group arrived one by one we began to order the usual coffee and juice. But what is a brunch without a cocktail?!? While brunching I enjoyed a Muddy River and a Liquid Caramel Coffee. I loved the Muddy River was a lovely concoction of coffee brandy and half & half over crushed ice. It was very heavy and rich.

While the Irish Breakfast sounded good, I ordered the crab cake eggs benedict which did not disappoint. I try to order Eggs Benedict ever where I go because it is my favorite brunch dish and I love to compare it from place to place. The crab cake was very flavorful and did not include very much filler. Tender pieces of crab were gently held together with a flavorful binder. On top of the crab cakes sat poached eggs that were covered in a lovely lemony Hollandaise sauce. I love a lemony Hollandaise sauce and this was perfect. The intense lemon flavor paired nicely with the crab cake as well. One of my poached eggs was over cooked a bit but I will take an over cooked egg over an under cooked egg any day. They Eggs Benedict was served with home fries, which always act as a great medium to scoop up Hollandaise sauce.

Shortly before we were leaving the musicians started to practice for their afternoon performance. Live music begins every Sunday for brunch at 1pm. We were lucky to experience a little bit of it as our meal winded down.

I highly suggest going to The Lansdowne Pub for brunch to enjoy some live Irish music, amazing food, fun drinks, and great service. Head over there for their brunch from 10am- 4pm and you will enjoy yourself and get lost in the Irish feel of your meal.

*While I did recieive a complimentary brunch from The Lansdowne Pub these opinions are entirely my own.

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When I was planning out the menu for our party I hopped over to Food Network to look up some recipes for inspiration. I absolutely love Chef Marcela Valladolid and her show Mexican Made Easy is one of my favorite FN shows. She has a recipe called Key Lime Trifle that I thought was interesting. I am not a huge fan of graham crackers and I would need to have needed much more than what the recipe calls for so I decided to as a spring board to make a trifle to serve to our guests.

As I have said in previous posts, trifles are one of my favorite desserts. I love the combination of cake, pudding, whipped cream and candy. I think that I love that the possibilities are endless when making a trifle. In this case, I didn’t want to use graham crackers so I substituted cake for that. In one of the way I adjusted the recipe, I used less evaporated milk because I didn’t want the cake to get too moist and loose it’s shape.

The lime zest that dots the entire trifle is so lovely. It provides a nice little pop of color in the dessert as well as informs you of the flavor you are about to enjoy. The lime is not over powering because it mainly is just the zest so it is pretty subtle. I think the consistency of the cake after is soaks in the milk mixture is lovely- not too cakey, not too soggy.

Key Lime Trifle

Serves 16-20 people

Ingredients

• Yellow Cake mix
• 2 cans condensed milk
• 1 1/2 cans evaporated milk
• 4 limes
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• pint heavy cream

Process

1. Prepare yellow cake according to instructions several hours in advance of preparing the trifle. Let cool until you can touch it, cut into 1″ x 1″ pieces. Lay the pieces out on cookies sheets and leave uncovered. If you don’t have the luxury of time, once the cake has been cut up put your oven warm and let the cake sit in there for at least 30 minutes until the cake has dried out a bit.
2. While the cake is cooling, prepare the milk mixture for the trifle. Zest all the limes and putting the grated zest in large bowl. Add the condensed milk, evaporated milk, and juice of 1 lime to the bowl and mix thoroughly.
3. Make the whipped cream by combining the heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla extract and mixing until you have soft peaks.
4. In your trifle bowl, layer 1/3 of the cake at the bottom of the bowl. Slowly pour 1/3 of the milk mixture over the cake covering all pieces. Layer 1/3 of the whipped cream on top of the cake pieces.
5. Create another layer of cake on top of the whipped cream mixture. Slowly pour 1/3 of the milk mixture on top of the cake. Gently press down the trifle at this point. Top with another layer of whipped cream
6. To finish the trifle add the 3nd layer of cake to the trifle. Evenly, pour the remaining milk mixture of the cake and then top with whipped cream to complete the top.
7. Garnish with strips of lime peel* or serve with fresh fruit.

*To get strips of zest I suggest this OXO Good Grips Lemon Zester.

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As a result to me getting in work from 6:15-6.30 I get up at 5am. As hard as I try to be quiet, I still make noise or forget something and have to put our bedroom light on. I feel bad that I keep waking Pricer up. So as a little “I’m sorry I wake you up at 5am everyday” present I got him an iPhone 4S earlier tonight.

As much as my iPhone has FaceTime, the best part of Price having a new iPhone is that he can do it with his family whenever he wants. Tonight he called up his brother and got to say hi to family back in NY. The cutest was when his little nephew was asking Price why he was all dressed up, not knowing we just got home from work. Adorable.

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“Hey! So I’ve been home with the nastiest cold, ever. I had to take tylenol cold twice last night to get to sleep. Anyway, so this morning I’m pretty sure that stuff made me trip balls because I had the WEIRDEST dream with you in it. We were at some weird craft fair (typical) and there was this Greek style of candle that you really really wanted. You had one from Greece but it broke or something and you were really upset about it so you wanted another but the one that had left didn’t look right.  They offered to make you another one on the spot and mail it to you. It was called a “margarine” candle but it required five cups of your blood to make… one cup of blue blood and four cups of red. The blue blood came from holding a flame next to your thumb until a blue liquid came out that the woman showed us you could use as ink… Then the four cups of regular blood just came from your thumb so it took you forever and you had to drink like 10 juice boxes to keep from fainting. You asked me to take photos of the process for your blog and I kept getting dizzy. In the end, they made you your uglyass candle that looked like a gnome made of butter. You were thrilled.

What the fucking the hell, Tylenol Cold. NEVER AGAIN!”

LOL!!!! I read this over and over at my desk cracking up. Definitely the best thing to break up my day.

Happy Hump Day!

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This has to be a yummiest and easiest dessert that you can whip up for Valentine’s Day. Perfect for a last minute idea for any occasion really. In total this took me 20 minutes to do and I’m sure someone could do it even faster. I love fast desserts. Mainly because I don’t want anything to take too long and because I would rather eat chips so why would I want to spend a ton of time on something sweet. Whip up a batch up these Biscoff Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries and I swear you will enjoy them. I would not steer you wrong!

Plus stuffed strawberries are so much better than chocolate covered strawberries for Valentine’s Day. When you get a massive chocolate covered strawberry you have to take at least 2 bites of it and when you do the chocolate cracks and falls off. You instantly rush your hand to your mouth to catch those bits so they don’t fall on your new outfit, all the while looking ridiculous= not sexy.

Ever since I made my Biscoff Muddy Buddies, I have been thinking of making another treat using Biscoff. I love cheesecake stuffed strawberries, so I figured the next best thing would be to add Biscoff spread to the cheesecake mixture. But I knew I could not just leave it there… Oh no, I had to use Biscoff Cookies as well! I ended up processing the cookies to create crumbs that I could dip the strawberries into. I love the aroma of the cookies as I processed them. Oh killer. It was well worth a wait to get the crumbs on there since these suckers were so good.

Biscoff Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries

*Serves 4*

Ingredients

• 1 lb of large strawberries
• 4 oz of cream cheese
• 1/4 cup confectioners sugar
• 1/4 cup Biscoff Spread
• 4 Biscoff Cookies

Process

1. Cut the top off of each strawberry. Using a paring knife, gently hallow out the center of the strawberry by carefully inserting the knife 1/8″ of an inch from the edge of the strawberry. The point of the knife needs to be angled towards the center of the strawberry. Carefully work the knife around the entire strawberry completing the circular cut. As you remove the knife, gently apply pressure to the pull the core of the strawberry out. Repeat this process until you have cored all the strawberries.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the cream cheese, sugar, and Biscoff spread until it have a smooth, consistently mixed cheesecake mixture. Put the mixture into a sandwich bag, massage it to a corner of the bag, twist the extra bag in your hand, and then cut a small portion of the tip off the bag.
3. In a food processor, blend the Biscoff cookies until a fine crumb as been achieved. Put the crumbs in a small bowl for dipping.
4. To fill the strawberries, insert the tip of the filled bag info the hallow core of the strawberry. Squeeze the bag to force some of the mixture out. As the strawberry begins to fill, slowly pull the bag out of the strawberry allowing more to fill the berry. Fill the berry until some of the cheesecake mixture is out of the strawberry.
5. Once the strawberries have been filled, gently dip the filled portion into the cookies crumbs.

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I have been so busy at work that getting to work on PL has been getting pushed aside a bit but I’m determined to work on it a bit more this week. I am constantly thinking about taking photos, which ones to print, and what size. Plus I think about what goodies can I slip into those pockets. What shall I journal? I can’t see myself getting bored.

Week 4:

Left side

Right Side

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