Two years and counting

Since I won't be able to post while on vacation, I'm doing this before I go. Just about (in 3 days) 2 years ago I married an absolutely wonderful man on an absolutely gorgeous day. I couldn't imagine my life without him. It's crazy how fast time passes although I'm still getting use to being a Mrs. and having a new last name...ha.

We loved our wedding day and still don't mind glancing back through the pictures over and over. Won't you share in our joy all over again?

No photo editing here....really, the bluest sky I've ever seen.

Boy band shot!

Here's to hoping year #3 is just as great as the first two! Now, we're off to the beach!

Vacation Countdown

5 more days until we leave for OBX! That's 4 more working days and it couldn't come soon enough. I have definitely been burning out at work lately. The same ol' same ol', long days, and typical work "problems" have been wearing on me.

Joe and I are taking a little trip to Kill Devil Hills, NC for an anniversary getaway. That's right, we're celebrating 2 years of marriage the right way...at the beach! We're renting this cute little house...


Keep your fingers crossed for lots of sunshine!

Are you serious?

So I was catching up on my DVR (yup, still love it!) and enjoying fast forwarding through all of the dreaded commercials when something caught my eye. I actually stopped, rewound, and watched...well, I'll show you....


No, the kitty cat is not preparing to go to the moon, he is apparently using a high tech kitty toilet. Wowsa! I really thought the commercial was a joke but after doing a little googling, it was clear that this is indeed for real and called the Litter Robot. There is an original version an even an expanded version for cats with a little more junk in the trunk. And you too can have it for the low low price of $350!!

Now back in the day we owned one of the original automatic litter boxes but it didn't go so well. The thing scared the bejesus out of Midnight everytime it scooped but worse than that, it wasn't covered and he got litter EVERYWHERE. The poor soul that lives in our old apartment now is probably still finding litter behind things. So the Litter Robot, with it's innovated sphere like design, may indeed solve the flying litter problem - but, $350? This cheap girl can't stomach it.

I hope they some day come out with a $500 litter box that's covered, scoops, cleans and finally takes the waste out to the trashcan. That might be worth the investment!

Dinner at our House - Pulled Pork

We often go grocery shopping without making a list so it's easy to fall back on the old staples when you aren't armed with any new ideas. This weekend, for some reason, I was motivated to look up some new recipes to try and escape the same ol' same ol'. I found a recipe for BBQ pulled pork on sparkrecipes.com. If you've never heard of sparkpeople.com or sparkrecipes.com before you should definitely check them out. They provide a lot of weight loss/healthy living guidance for free. Anyway, this recipe will be appreciated by fellow amateur cooks because it has limited ingredients and it's super easy! You will need....

2 lbs. Pork Tenderloin
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup diet soda
1 cup low-sodium barbecue sauce
Hamburger buns

Put tenderloin in the crock pot. Mix up other ingredients in a bowl and pour over pork. Cook 4-6 hours on high or until tender. Take pork out, then shred. Put pork back into juice and stir it up. Put it on a hamburger bun, and enjoy! Makes 8 4-oz. servings.

The finished product:

Instead of hamburger buns, we used Arnold Sandwich Thins - only 100 calories for the whole "bun" and they stand up to juicy meats like this pulled pork. This meal was 100% husband approved and we have tons of leftovers for the rest of the week. Try it out!

Adventures of a bargain hunter

Check out a recent Aldo purchase I'm pretty proud of:

Only $19.99!

And it's always nice to revisit the website and see that the price has gone back up and the said "sale" wasn't all a lie.

$17.49! Here.

Free shipping and everything. Score! They arrived in the mail yesterday and I was pretty excited that the size 7s fit me since I'm normally a 6 1/2 - Aldo doesn't have half sizes. The goal is to purge some of my old shoes to make room for the new. We'll see how that goes....

"Wild and Wonderful" West Virginia

This past week had been somewhat of a headache - Joe had Project Management class all 5 days (um hello, we don't do 5 day weeks!) and I...well...was having a normal work week, complete with nagging boss. So, we were quite happy to participate in a mini weekend getaway to the Charles Town/Harpers Ferry area of West Virginia with my mom and Chuck. Turns out, it only takes two hours to get there from CB.

To start, I picked Joe up from work around 11:00a.m. and we got on our way. Somehow we must have timed our trips perfectly because we ended up arriving at our hotel within 5 minutes of my mom. We had a late lunch at Applebee's, scouted out the place where we'd need to go the next day for our activities, and checked into our hotel. The highlight of the day was getting to go swimming in a pool for the first time all summer. After our dip, we all showered and headed out to Charles Town Races and Slots (must be read like the commercial... Charrrlllleeeesssttttooowwwnnn Races and Slotttsss do do do do do do doooo). I enjoyed watching a couple horsey races, as I call them, but kept all my money in my purse where it belongs. We also had tons of yummy Diner food for dinner.


Saturday was when we really got to play. We did a full day of tubing on the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers through the River Riders company. A "full day" entails a morning of flat water tubing, returning for lunch, and an afternoon of white water tubing. We had great weather which made for an even better day. The flat water tubing was my favorite - you could lay there and cruise along forever. The river is very shallow but it's nice to be able to stop and picnic or just play around whenever you want. Sadly, I was too scared to bring my camera along being I didn't know what to expect so I have no pictures of our day.

The white water tubing was fun but a lot of work. The water level of the river is low during the dry summer months so you spend a lot of time pushing yourself off of rocks. Also, when they first drop you off you at a very wide section of the river and instructed to paddle all the way to the other side before proceeding. Holy geeez, it was a lot of paddeling - my arms are soar! This picture from the company's website might be a little exaggerated illustration of what we did, but because it might make us seem a little braver than we really are, i'll include it.


After all of the fun, we ate dinner (where Joe won a stuffed monkey out of a claw machine and is very proud of this accomplishment) and Joe and I made the trip back home. We are excited to tube again some day since it is so close. I love being in water on hot summer days!

A couple more reasons never to get off the couch

While there might be a stigma surrounding the claim of "television watching" as a hobby, the Guido's don't mind calling it theirs. And as of yesterday, our television watching experience just got a whole lot better.

A couple weeks ago we came home to a letter at our doorstep. The letter was from a Comcast representative and it stated that our current cable package was about to "expire" and it offered incentive to stay on for another year. Now I thought the whole idea of a package was to hook you for the first year and then jack up the price once the promotional period was over. I guess I was wrong! Long story short, we now have HD, DVR, a ton more channels, and telephone for LESS than what we paid last year. Score!

While Joe is drooling over the crystal clear HD picture, I'm most excited about DVR! So many of my favorite TV shows come on after my bed time so I frequently fall asleep before I finish watching them. And yes, that means they come on after 10:00...I know, we're old people. I've set out to record:




The Little Couple on TLC...love them!






Design Star on HGTV...even better this season because Vern, Genevieve and Candace. Sadly, the Washington D.C. girl is very annoying and needs to be kicked off.






Kendra on E!







...just to name a few. I'll even get to catch daytime flicks like Oprah and Tyra without having to take off work. Joe will continue watching sports, sports, and more sports so I don't know if he'll love DVR as much as I plan to.

Clearly, we are excited!