Chicago in 48 Hours

I had a training scheduled in Chicago a recent Sunday through Tuesday so Laura A and I took the weekend before training to run around Chicago. We had a really good time and had lots of strange/funny moments including getting caught in a thunderstorm while walking down Michigan, arrived at the Art Institute 30 minutes before closing (while running out of the thunderstorm), were hit on by a segway tour guide, couldn't find a fast food place to grab a snack at and must have walked an extra half mile even though it was 10 pm on a Friday, arrived at the hotel for training to find that none of our rooms were ready and were offered an illegal substance while at the hotel bar where we were sent to wait for our rooms to be cleaned. All of these things made us collapse in laughter more than once and made for a really fun weekend.

sausage, peppers and onions stuffed chicago deep dish

how cute is that kid?

signature room on the 96th - skyscraper martini

blood orange mojito and pork sliders with guava bbq sauce (before)

blood orange mojito and pork sliders with guava bbq sauce (after)

this yoga guy was having a photo shoot... he was crazy good

as soon as the sun came out, kids were all over the place in swimsuits...

this one was making water angels

sausage and mushrooms spaghetti at mia francesca

I really had a great time in Chicago. I got to stay at a nice apartment on Michigan across from Millennium Park, visit the Art Institute, see Navy Pier, shop, and eat great food!

Girls Dinner - Gossip Girl Style

I'm so behind with this post but here we go anyway!

I have some great girlfriends here and we try to get together every so often to do girls dinner. In general, we cook, bake and pick out a movie or tv show to watch together. This time we based the food around a Gossip Girl themed shower menu we saw online and watched a few episodes of the first season of Gossip Girl. As always, we had a really good time and good food!

I didn't do a good job capturing everyone's dishes but we had the Plaza Hotel grilled cheese with truffle oil, mac & cheese, scones, french toast/giant donut holes, tomato-basil-mozzarella skewers, pea pesto crostini, deviled eggs, popovers and crab cake sliders. The last three dishes were mine. (The crab cake sliders were created from a crab cake recipe from Big Girls Small Kitchen and the popovers were created from a recipe on the Kitchn. Deviled eggs kind of evolved from different recipes from my mom and various websites.)

Engagement Pics Preview

Mike's mom was nice enough to come down and take our engagement pictures for us a few weeks ago. We started to get worried as the weekend came closer and closer because the forecast for rain kept increasing. Luckily, the rain cleared out for a few hours both Saturday and Sunday and we were able to get lots of pictures taken.

Mike has just started editing the photos so here's how they are looking so far...