T-Shirt Night

Drew & I kicked off the summer with a little BBQ gathering on Friday. And because we're awesome, we themed the party as T-Shirt Night. We saw some pretty fun t-shirts!



Heather hearts her wiener:

Jack showed up in his t-shirt, but Grandpa stole him away from us pretty early in the night. He didn't even get a drink from the keg!

We continued Katy's birthday celebration with cupcakes:

Melinda is our favorite brunette:

The Boyds:

We'll let it slide that Andrea is clearly wearing a KU shirt.

Brooke clearly won bonus points with me for having a Dunkin Donuts themed shirt:

Ummm... no idea what's happening here:

Girls who like...

Hey! Nice t-shirt:

Look what I caught Trophy Wife with:

More t-shirt madness:

Someone had to sport the wolf shirt. Although I'm not sure this one is as intrinsically awesome as the three wolf shirt:

Kait worked her way through a box of bomb pops:

Drew played grill master all night long:

Jaime made the trip all the way from Dallas, so we let her in even though she wasn't wearing a t-shirt:

Heather shows off the new bf:

And Kaitlin shows off her ability to eat Bomb Pops:

My favorite people:

Okay, in the Evite I promised a prize for best t-shirt, but then maybe ran out of time and didn't get a prize so I hoped no one would bring it up at the party. But of course, someone is uber-competitive and needed a winner. So I crowned the winners as Trophy Wife and Cute Boy because they wore the most R-rated shirts of the night.

Kev showed up late and I was SO excited because I just assumed he brought Meggy with him. No such luck. Meggy was home with a migraine and we missed her SO much! I may or may not have started a rumor that she is pregnant. That rumor has since proven to be false.

Israel was the man of the night. He brought Drew and I steaks from some small town butcher and they were delish! He also went out on a beer run when the first keg ran out and brought back a second keg. Never a good decision:

2J:

This is my dog:

We kept Ari locked in the office the first half of the party because he... well... you know. He's a bad dog. But after a few drinks I decided to let him join the party and he was SO well behaved! Well, you know... he wasn't completely awful.

Miss Mya however, hammed it up all night for the guests and scored herself some pretty sweet treats. I think someone even shared their hamburger! Lucky girl:

Drew love me so much:

Between the first keg running out and the second keg arriving, most of the party left. That left a smallish group of us left to try to finish it up:

Survivor Flip Cup:

Just like regular flip cup, but the losing team has to vote off a team member. For some reason Melinda and I were always voted off first:

Too much fun:

Nick & Melinda facing off:

I think they won:

All in all the party was a great success. We didn't even make a dent in that second keg, but I was super impressed that we even made it through the first one!

The next day left the Gibsons a bit under the weather. Ari in particular wasn't feeling 100%:

Word is "someone" was giving him beer off the keg. He and Drew spent all of Saturday on the couch. Hungover dog = kind of funny. :)

Happy Birthday Caddy!!!

My lovely friend Katy celebrated her 27th birthday this week. Our Denver friend Lauren was in town and invited us over for a special birthday dinner. Little did we know that since moving to Colorado, Lauren has become a self-taught gourmet cook. We totally lucked out with the dinner invite!

Our lovely chef:



We arrived with appetizers waiting. I can't do the descriptions justice, but they were all beautiful! Starting at the top and going clockwise: smoked salmon with a lemon cream on seasoned crisps, avocado cream soup, and corn custard squares with some sort of creamy goodness on top.

Holy moly these were good! And so fancy!!! For the main course, Lauren made a pork tenderloin:

There are four different homemade sauces to go with the pork: two different salsa verdes, a mustard based sauce, and a Gorgonzola sauce that I wanted to eat with a spoon. A-MAZING!

We also had loaded mashed potatoes and a salad with homemade dressing. Delish. All together, the best meal ever. And Brett, Lauren's lucky lucky husband, confirmed that Lauren cooks like this every night. That guy has got it made!

After we finished our fabulous meal, Katy blew out the candles on her birthday cake:

The dinner group + Milo the dog:

And, minus Milo the dog:

Happy birthday to my beautiful friend and thank you Lauren for an amazing time! It is probably a good think Lauren lives in Colorado, or she might be getting a lot of uninvited dinner guests stopping by every night. :)

Rice & Beans

We don't really stick to the "Meatless Mondays" anymore, but we do have a few meatless meals throughout the week. I came across this recipe for Quinoa and Black Beans and tried it out last week. It was so delicious I had to make it again this week! And of course I had to share.

The recipe calls for cilantro which works out perfectly since cilantro is the only herb in my garden that decided to grow this year.


Unfortunately the recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of cilantro, and that pretty much wiped out this little pot. Hopefully it grows back quick!


This is technically supposed to be a side dish, but I just served it up on a plate and called it dinner. There's not much to it: beans, corn, quinoa, cilantro. But for some reason it tastes SO good! I could eat this at every meal.


The leftovers also make a tasty quesadilla filling the next day! Just add cheese and salsa.

A tip if you are using quinoa for the first time; make sure you rinse it first! Quinoa has some sort of film on it that gives it an off taste unless it is rinsed off before cooking. Super easy, but makes a big difference!

Another tasty tidbit: Quinoa is the only non-animal food that is a complete source of amino acids. I learned that in Chemistry this semester. See, Junior College is totally applicable to real life!

Harvesting Rain

In an attempt to actually do stuff together* Drew and I signed up for workshop to build our own rain barrel. Not sure what a rain barrel is? Well, that's what I'm here for.

A rain barrel is a barrel that... wait for it... collects rain. You direct your gutters to pour into the barrel and then you can use that water for your garden and lawn. Some info on rain barrels:

• A house with a 1,000 square foot roof harvests 600 gallons of water from a 1 inch rainfall.
• A rain barrel diverts water from leaking into your home's foundation.
• It reduces city-wide water consumption and reduces storm water run-off.
• The barrel provides free, high-quality water for your garden and lawn.

Our workshop was put on by Shawnee Parks & Recreation and Bridging the Gap. Bridging the Gap partnered with Pepsi to get the barrels. These barrels were originally used to hold soda. Pepsi used to just grind them up and throw them away. Now they are being put to good use, collecting rain!

There were about 25 people who attended the workshop. The first 30 minutes were spent answering people's questions like, "Should I add bleach to my rain barrel?" "How do I decorate my rain barrel?" "What if a squirrel gets into my rain barrel?" "Can I put fish in my barrel?" As we usually do at things like this, Drew and I sat in the back and made fun of people. One of our favorite things to do together is to be bad people. We especially liked how everyone kept talking about "harvesting the rain". I guess we're all a bunch of rain farmers now.

Putting the barrel together was actually a pretty simple process, once we got done with the Q&A. We picked a Mountain Dew barrel and Drew drilled the first hole.

While we waited for the next drill, I attached a fiberglass screen to a flower pot with a bicycle tire tube (all recycled materials) to make a strainer which keeps out leaves and junk.

Then I got to tackle the drill and add a hole to the barrel. Umm... yes. I was very excited to use the drill.

Next we added a hose to one of the holes we'd just drilled for the excess water to flow out of.

Then came the little spicket guy where the water comes out of. You just turn it on and off like a faucet.

And tada! We have a fully functioning rain barrel!

I had the parks & recreation guy take our picture and then he took one with his camera that he said may end up on the website. He asked if we were from Shawnee and I think if we'd said yes he would have made us the official spokes-couple of the City of Shawnee. He loved us.

If you'd like to make your own rain barrel, check out http://www.bridgingthegap.org/. You can also thank us for the lovely weather we've had the last couple of days. We were pretty sure that by making a rain barrel we would cause a massive draught that will leave our barrel empty for months.

*We do stuff together all the time: 24 on Mondays, Glee & BL on Tuesdays, The Office & Community on Thursdays, The Soup on Fridays. I guess we're just trying to do stuff together that doesn't involve sitting on the couch.