DIY Weekend + Birthday Brunch

Sometimes you just need to get things done.

This weekend, Shaun and I spent most of Friday night and Saturday spackling, painting and installing a new closet system in our den closet. It's a fantastic storage space, but it needed a whole lotta TLC. So I'm a little tired today. And a lot sore. Admittedly we did take a small break on Saturday night and headed to Michael Anthony's in Newport for some drinks, appetizers and basketball/giant moon watching over the Hudson.

Sunday marked my mom's birthday. It's a big birthday month for the Cannon-Humistons. If you recall, last week I whipped up this little beauty when we celebrated my mother-in-law's birthday with dinner and dessert at our place. Last year, my sister Kimberly and I threw our mom a dinner party at the old Humiston residence (more on that here, here and here). This year, my mom obliged to do something similar...but this time, Mom wanted brunch. At the new Humiston residence. So from DIY closets to DIY brunch, it was a busy one.

Mom, Dad and me

I absolutely love brunch. There is simply nothing better than breakfast food and prosecco-laced cocktails in the late morning/early afternoon. It's casual, fun and pretty darn delicious. I also love hosting. I bet you didnt know that. :)

For this little soiree, I set up our little bar with wine glasses and drinking glasses. I also used one end to house the desserts until singing time and to display some beautiful roses that my parents picked up for the occasion.

To start, we dined on smoked salmon with cream cheese and capers, blue cheese + honey on crackers and a giant bowl of fruit.

Mom, Dad and Kimberly

Oh and Shaun was on drink patrol. He mixed up some rum & diet for Dad, white wine for Mom and mimosas for Kimberly and me. Gotta love him.

Kicking off the main attraction, Kimberly made a fantastic salad with goat cheese, dried cranberries, sliced almonds and a honey mustard vinaigrette. It was just about the best salad ever.

We also got to work on a strawberry baked oatmeal (a healthy one that you need to make immediately so I'll be sharing later this week!)

and a goat cheese, roasted pepper and basil frittata. Oh and we also whipped up a little mushroom frittata while we were at it.

 

And in case that wasn't enough food for ya, you know we had to get down with dessert. In addition to a glazed blood orange loaf cake that I had frozen from last week...

...I was on a mission to make a dessert that Mom would love. For as long as I can remember, Mom has proclaimed her love for malt. Specifically Whoppers, the quintessential chocolate malt candy. So I researched (and researched) until I found the perfect recipe for some stretchy-pants-inducing chocolate malt cupcakes. Oh yeah. I went there.

Stay tuned for the yum-inducing recipe later this week because no doubt you will want to subsequently get your malt on immediately. We lit some candles and sang Happy Birthday!

The only thing missing from this fun, food-filled day was my sister Christine who is off at school. Miss you Stine Bean!

So that was how we spent the weekend. DIY'ing, spending time with family, cooking and eating ourselves into a coma. How did you spend your weekend? What was the last thing you DIY'd? What's the last thing you needed to break out your stretchy pants for?

Oscar Night

Happy Monday kids! Shaun and I had a film-filled weekend. We spent Saturday eating way too much popcorn at the AMC Best Picture Showcase viewing 4 best picture nominees. It was SO fun! The day kicked off with Winter's Bone, followed by Black Swan, Inception and The Social Network. The day was topped off with The King's Speech which we skipped out on since we had seen it a few weeks ago. Plus the 2 barrels of popcorn and bucket of diet Coke left us feeling not-so-much after 8 hours.

I think my favorite movie of the day was Black Swan.

It was haunting, but fantastically done. The camera work alone was Oscar-worthy in its conveyance of Nina's meltdown. I had super low expectations of this film (since I am still haunted by Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream...eek.), but I ended up really, really liking this one. I also thoroughly enjoyed Winter's Bone (which we knew absolutely nothing about before we saw it) and The Social Network (which I had no expectations for). My least favorite was Inception. It seemed a bit disjointed and I honestly just didn't 'get' it. I wanted to though! Anyone else with opinions on these films? I will say that my top 2 movies of the year were The King's Speech and The Fighter, followed by Black Swan and then The Social Network.

The Oscar weekend culminated at a little Oscar party with my mom and my cousin Veronica on Sunday night at my parent's house. We kept the night light and healthy with some delicious eats. We made cheesy, low carb tortilla pizzas...

 

Shrimp cocktail...

 

and a lightened up chicken Caesar salad...

 

Before getting super sleepy on the couch, Mom and I made some tea and snacked on her newest creation, healthy coffee cake muffins!

These were so good and a perfect sweet treat to top off the night! I slept at my parents house and now I get to drive into work with my Dad, our old tradition that was lost after I got married and moved out of the house. Before Shaun and I got married, I lived with my parents and would drive into Manhattan every morning with my dad. We were both so sad when our daily tradition was broken, so it's very fun to dabble in this again, if even for a day!

So that's my Monday story. What did you do this weekend? What was your favorite movie this year?

Busy Weekend + Dessert Coma

Happy Monday to all! I hope you all had a great weekend! We were very busy and I can't believe that Monday is already here once again. On Friday we ordered from Boca Grande in JC and had a terrible experience! Our order took 2 hours and when it arrived, they had given me mole sauce on my vegetable enchiladas instead of salsa verde. We've ordered from here before and had great dinners, but this was one of the worst.

Aside from that, I got a super sweet early Valentine's Day gift (more on that tomorrow), we celebrated 2 birthdays on Saturday (Shaun's Uncle Johnny and our bestie Ryan) and then spent the Superbowl overindulging, doing a bit of betting and going to sleep way too late!

We kicked off the evening with a little cooking in my parents kitchen. Despite his bum wing, Shaun got to work on his latest creation...fried pickles!

They were crunchy, dilly and a fantastic Superbowl snack. Served with a bit of horseradish dipping sauce, this was my favorite food of the night. Bum wings aren't keeping this guy down!

My mom and Kimberly made Mom's famous + hearty turkey chili...

...while no game day would be complete without the classic pizza dip.

 

Also in the mix, buffalo chicken nuggets!

 

There was also delicious spinach dip, veggies for dipping and skirt steak skewers.

 

We topped off the evening with lots 'o desserts.

 

And of course I ended up with a small plate full of goodies. Rounding out the mix was a banana-nutella cupcake, Grandma Mary's pound cake (one of my favorite desserts ever and one I'm determined to master someday), cakey brownies and $50 fudge cake. I just about slipped into a food coma after this one.

And now you understand why I will be hitting the gym every night this week :)

So there you have it. A quick rundown of our Superbowl Sunday. How did you spend your weekend? What are you quintessential party foods?