Jam-packed Weekend!

I love long weekends and I love that long weekends make for short weeks! This past weekend was a nice mix of relaxing on the couch and lots of hanging out with friends. Jonathan spent a good chunk of Friday and Saturday at Comicpalooza. He even had a booth and everything! I, however, sat on the couch and hung out with Colleen while we knit and watched movies. We watched the Newsies which was awesome!!! Plus, it's totally weird to see Christian Bale so young and singing and dancing. The dancing in the movie is so amazing though. We considered trying to learn all the choreography after we watched the movie but that required getting up off the couch lol.

Recognize him? He's so little!



Saturday was also a lazy day for me (mostly a day for doing laundry and things around the house) except for the evening when I went to a friends' birthday cookout. Sunday we woke up (semi) early and headed out to Alvin to pick strawberries! There are a lot of farms in the Houston area where you can go pick your own berries. Last year we went blueberry picking on the 4th of July. As Jonathan will tell you though, strawberries are pretty much the only berry I like eating. I like raspberries and blackberries but I don't like the seeds so I don't really eat them whole. And I just don't like blueberries...I know I'm crazy or something... I do have to say, picking strawberries is a lot more rewarding that picking blueberries. It only took us about 45 minutes before our 5lb buckets were overflowing. Literally, we kept dropping strawberries haha. While after picking blueberries for over an hour and a half we didn't even get to a pound combined. However, both times they have been the best blueberries and strawberries that I have ever tasted. That says a lot since I don't like blueberries.

Strawberries!

Picking! Left to right: Rachel, Colleen, Jonathan.

So many strawberries!

Sunday was jam-packed with stuff to do! Hehe you'll understand the pun in a little bit. Jonathan and I headed out to Chinatown for Dim Sum. We love Chinatown and Dim Sum is usually our first choice for food when we go there! If I even mention Chinese food, Jonathan immediately thinks Dim Sum instead of your normal General Tsao's chicken, Kung Pao, etc. If you don't know what Dim Sum is you're missing out! It's a meal of small plates that you share with everyone while drinking tea. It actually started as just tea and then changed to include food over time. Did you know that Spanish tapas started the same way with wine instead of tea? I'm just full of interesting facts! At some dim sum restaurants they bring everything out on a cart and you just pick out what you want as they roll by. However, most places don't have that, at least not all the time, so they usually have a picture book so you can pick out what you want. Our favorite place is called Dim Sum King and you just order it off the menu. It's delicious and I want to go back already! After stuffing our faces we walked around looking at all the goodies at Vietnamese bakeries and Chinese grocery stores in the area. In my humble opinion, the Vietnamese bakeries in Chinatown have the best cakes and baked goods in Houston. Think about it, they did use to be a French colony... I love just walking around and smelling all the goodies. We only got two small macaroons to share or else I wouldn't have known how to choose something. Strolling through Chinese grocery stores is an old past time for Jonathan and I. It's really fun to see things like dragon fruit, durian, and not to mention an entire aisle of tofu. Our last must-stop place was a store called Japanese dollar store called Fit. Apparently in a Japanese dollar everything is between $2-5 or so. Makes sense right? Well they have tons of random stuff which makes it fun for browsing: kitchen dishes, bathroom stuff, organization things, yarn, office supplies, etc. One of my favorite sections is the gift bags because many of them try to have nice phrases but are directly translated from Japanese and make no sense. Makes for a good laugh though.

This one was all sorts of hilarious but my favorite part is where they instruct you on how to laugh.

I can't tell you how many times I wished I had a hat to keep soap out of my eyes!

Ummm....sure?

This one made actually no sense but I think they're trying to say something about humility.

After all the laughing we headed home so that Jonathan could have a relaxing afternoon playing video games and I could make jam with Colleen!! Get it? Jam-packed! Hehehehe I'm so funny...Anyways, Colleen wanted to make jam with the strawberries she picked and I wanted to watch and learn how easy/difficult it is. Turns out, it's pretty simple! There's lots of cleaning and boiling of things but the jars actually seal if you do it properly! Thanks to Colleen I may possibly, maybe, perchance make my own jam one day! We'll see if I'm brave enough. It looked so pretty when it was done and it was absolutely delicious! We were eating it with a spoon it was so good, and I don't really like jam...I know it sounds like I don't like a lot of things but I really do!
 

Filling up the jars!

Boiling them so they'll seal!

Look how pretty!

It was a perfect weekend and I'm pretty psyched that another one in upon us. I hope you had a nice long weekend too!

- Chelsey

Henna, Shepherd's Pie, and the Hobbit!

Today I got to lay around, work on a few things around the house, and be lazy. I love that I get every other Friday off! Yesterday was a pretty fun day so I thought that I'd write a recap. Work had a huge Asian Festival. Each country had their own booth with a little sampling of food at each. The food was amazing! After going from booth to booth I was stuffed. I had Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and Indian. There were also great performances with both musicians and dancers! There were tons of people there so I kept just getting in line not initially knowing which country I was heading toward. One of the lines I got in happened to be one for henna tattoos and I hadn't even realized it! I've always wanted to get a henna tattoo so I was really excited! Henna tattoos are an Indian tradition and they last about 2 weeks. They're very common during weddings and other celebrations. I think they're beautiful! Of course for the rest of the day everyone kept giving me confused looks and asked me what was on my hand haha.

My henna tattoo!

This was a Singaporean dancer at the festival . Her dress was beautiful!

Thursday evening Colleen came over for a fun night of cooking and watching the Hobbit! We made shepherd's pie which turned out delicious! The Hobbit was a great movie too. I'm so behind on my movies and that was definitely one I had on my must watch list. I read the Hobbit back in middle school so I vaguely remembered the story. It seemed like the movie was really accurate to the book. I highly recommend it!

Rainbow carrots from our Greenling local box!

Shepherd's pie!

It paired well with peach wine!

Tonight Jonathan and I went out for barbeque and walked around the Heights area. They have a nice jogging path with art and memorials along the walk. Plus all the houses are gorgeous! We were picking out our favorites and dreaming about our dream house. The rest of our weekend will be pretty low-key. We're getting together with Jonathan's parents tomorrow to celebrate a late mother's day. We're going to a Brazilian steakhouse. All you can eat meat, YUM!

Pretty art in the heights! and pretty houses!

More art! These paintings are double-sided and on doors that rotate!

Shout out to my cousins who graduated this week and my uncle Tom who will be nifty fifty in a few days!

-Chelsey

Last Weekend's Update

Another weekend is upon us and yet I haven't posted about last weekend's adventures! We started off the weekend going to a food truck event on Friday! Of course we decided at the last minute but I was so excited that Rachel was free and could come with us! It was just one of those days where we just texted each other being like, have any plans tonight? Nope, you? Want to go to this thing? Yes let's do it! So if you don't know, every first and third Friday there is a food truck gathering at the HEB Montrose. There were about 8 food trucks there with foods ranging from Asian to grilled cheese to burgers. Yum! We each got something different so we got a sample of about half of the food trucks that were there. Pretty impressive if I do say so myself! I don't think there was anything that we tried that we didn't like! They also has live music and a little area with tables to sit at. Probably the nicest location that I've been at for food trucks.

A smore brioche sandwich!

I got an Asian pulled pork banh me from this truck!

Sooo many options!

Saturday was a lazy day but that evening Jonathan took me out for a fancy date! We had free tickets to the opera to see Il Trovatore. The music was amazing! The story was pretty trippy but there's nothing wrong with that lol. I'd say that it's a mix of Romeo and Juliet with Oedipus. There was lots of messed up family situations like in Oedipus with a beautiful but doomed romance like R&J. Jonathan took me to Feast before the show for dinner. It's probably his favorite restaurant in Houston and sadly it's closing. They decided not to renew their lease because they weren't do as well as they hoped. Jonathan's pretty much devastated but we're trying to go there enough times before they close in August. If you haven't gone, check it out before they close! We ended the night by going to Amy's Ice Cream, another favorite of ours.

It was a pretty good weekend. It's always fun to go out for date nights!

-Chelsey

Officially a Chevron employee!

As of yesterday, I became an official Chevron employee! I've been working here for 6 months as a contractor but I'm making the transition to full-time employee. It's exciting to have more benefits than before and not be blocked from access to important things just because I'm a contractor. Yesterday we went out to Okra for happy hour to celebrate. Jonathan and I have been wanting to go to Okra forever so it seemed like the perfect time! Okra is a charity bar so part of the proceeds from everything you buy goes to a charity. You even get to vote for who they donate to! You get a voting ticket for every drink or plate you buy and they have pamphlets on the organizations so you can make an educated decision!


The voting booth is on the left, very official!
This building is also super old and historical in some way that I should learn more about....

They also have cocktails but you just tell them what you like and they make you something!

I asked for a champagne drink and they made me a French 75: gin, citrus juices, and champagne!

Yay for my new/old job!

Happy hours are the best! Any one have any suggestions for great places to go in Houston for happy hour? I have also loved Hay Merchant, Brio, and Triniti's happy hours. Of course Houston has so many options for great places to go and I'm married to the restaurant expert so I rarely have a problem coming up with lists of options.

Until next time!

-Chelsey

Comfort Food Weekend!

This weekend was a great, lazy weekend with lots of hanging out with friends. Oh yea, and the torrential downpour that happened yesterday.... We started off our weekend by going out for crawfish with friends. Jonathan and I hadn't had crawfish in at least two years since last year we were pretty busy around this time with the whole getting married thing. We wanted to make sure we didn't miss it again this year. I tend to avoid going out to a restaurant for crawfish. To me, a crawfish boil is the most fun if it's in someone's backyard with tons of people just chatting, drinking beer and eating as much crawfish as possible. If you've never had crawfish before it's kind of a lot of work because you have to break off the tail, peel the shell, and then you're left with a fairly small amount of meat to eat. Some people don't think it's worth it but I think they're delicious! Plus, I love that it makes for a very social event. You're spending more time peeling than eating so there's lots of time for good conversation! So anyways, I have been lucky enough to have been invited to many a crawfish boil but I didn't want to take any chances missing out this year. (Although, I won't turn down an invitation if any friends are reading this!) I was looking up which are good places to get crawfish in Houston and to my surprise there were tons of websites on this. Take this one for instance! We decided to go to Woodrow's in the Heights and it was great! We even got a group of 7 of us to go which made me impressed since we planned this the day before haha. We had a great time and ate as many crawfish as we could!

They're cute and tasty!

Colleen planned on eating then with fork and knife apparently, good luck with that...

That's 5lbs of crawfish. We ordered 12 in total. You can eat more of those suckers than you think!

Colleen made a friend!

Saturday morning we continued with the Louisiana cuisine without realizing it. We had a craving for Beignets and headed to Crescent City Beignets. It had been years since I'd gone to a beignet place in Houston so I must have just had New Orleans on the brain. They were sooo good and I paired mine with a frozen mocha. Jonathan paired his with a chicory coffee which is more authentic. Chicory coffee is much more bitter than regular coffee which is supposed to pair well with the sweetness of the beignets. I don't like coffee without lots of sugar and milk anyways so chicory coffee isn't really for me. I also apparently overestimated how hungry I was because I didn't even finish 2 beignets and ordered 3 haha.

Have to layer on as much powdered sugar as possible!

He ate most of his before I could take a picture haha.

Sunday, Jonathan told me that he wanted to go to this new restaurant called "Maine-ly Sandwiches." If you recall, we went to Cape Cod for our honeymoon and became obsessed with lobster rolls while we were there. (Apparently Jonathan has been constantly googling for lobster rolls in Houston since our honeymoon because he's been that obsessed haha.) We were ecstatic to find a place that served them in Houston! It's pretty far north of Houston so we headed there right after church this morning. When we stepped into the place it was like we had gone back to New England! There were pictures and paraphernalia from Maine all over the place. I've never technically been to Maine but it reminded us so much of Cape Cod. The lobster rolls were spot on too! We both had ours with the clam chowder and they serve everything with salt water taffy. I highly recommend this place! They're very new so it's hard to find online but they're at 45 and West Rd.

I will definitely be ordering the half lobster roll because the whole was huge!

I did not expect this weekend to be full of so much comfort food I never get to have but it was a blast! O yea and that whole torrential downpour that I mentioned...not quite as fun. Yesterday Colleen and I were out shopping when the sky opened up and it literally rained so hard that entire intersections flooded within minutes. It was pretty scary and we had to drive around some flooded roads but we made it back safely. Once it let up some we both headed home immediately and stayed in for the rest of the night. I was pretty exhausted so Jonathan and I spent the evening on the couch watching Bunheads and SNL. I later found out that the Rice area, which is where we were shopping, got 6 inches of rain. Crazy! We do really need rain but I think the ground was so dry from us being in a drought that it just couldn't take in the rain fast enough. Hopefully we'll continue to get rain but in normal amounts and without all the flooding! It seemed to make for a beautiful Sunday. Blue skies and lots of sunshine!

-Chelsey

Our First Anniversary

Where has the time gone? Last weekend Jonathan and I celebrated our first anniversary! It seems like our wedding was just yesterday. We've had a great first year of marriage! We decided to celebrate by spending the weekend in the Museum District. We stayed at Hotel Zaza which is where we stayed after our wedding. It's walking distance to Hermann Park and the museum district. We wanted to stay there for our anniversary since we were a little too busy to enjoy the area the weekend of our wedding.

We started our wedding weekend by going to dinner at Oxheart. It was an amazing dinner. The place had maybe 10 tables and the chef presented most of the dishes to us personally.

A lot of the dishes had these beautiful edible flowers. So cool!

Best carrots ever!

Quail breast on the right and thigh wrapped in turnip on the left.

Smoked beef leg with cucumber, herbs, and a something made  from seaweed  on top.

Fennel mousse, delicious!!!

Us all dressed up!

After dinner we headed back to our hotel and cut into our wedding cake. We fortunately got a new fresh cake instead of eating a year old defrosted cake. Since the baker got the filling wrong in our wedding cake they made us a fresh top tier with the correct filling: cream cheese icing! Yum! It was delicious. We opened some champagne, watched our wedding video, and reminisced about our wedding day.

Our cake! They did a beautiful job.

Yum!

Saturday we went to the Museum of Fine Arts and saw the special Picasso exhibit as well as the main exhibit. I didn't realize this but I guess I'd never been to the Museum of Fine Arts. It's a great museum. The Picasso exhibit was awesome and the main halls had Monets, Van Goghs, Picassos, Cezannes, etc. Afterwards we walked through the sculpture garden and walked around Hermann Park briefly before going to dinner.

This is a cool light installation in the tunnel connecting the two MFA buildings.

This scultpure moved and I thought it was cool!

We walked through the whole park before realizing that this was a sculpture!

We ate at Roost for dinner.

Sunday was our actual anniversary, April 14th! I was still in shock that it was already here but that wouldn't keep us from celebrating! We had brunch at Monarch in Hotel Zaza and spent the afternoon at Hermann Park. Lucky for us the Japan Fest was going on in Hermann Park! We walked through the rose garden, watched Taiko drummers, walked around the lake, and found a comfortable spot to sit along the lake while listening to the musicians. It was pretty perfect. I may have gotten incredibly sunburnt in the process but it no biggie haha. 

There was a great view of our hotel from the park.

Hermann Park is one of my favorite places in Houston!

Married for a year!

Drummers!

They started along the reflection pool and marched up to the stage.

The flowers on the pool were also part of the festival and glowed at night.

So after the festival we headed home and just planned on relaxing and getting ready for the work week. However, we have the best friends in the world and we came home to this:

                                   

Colleen and Rachel are the sweetest ever! We loved our surprise dinner while listening to the music from our wedding. It was the perfect ending to our weekend and we were blown away by how thoughtful our friends and family are. We received so many congratulations, phone calls, and cards. Thank you to everyone for making our wedding so special and for all the happy words you gave to us on our anniversary. It's been the best year and we have many more to come! I love you Jonathan! Thank you for being my husband and always standing by my side!

-Chelsey