gratuitous puppy pictures

When my brother's friend brought his beagle puppy over last week, I couldn't help but harass them with my camera.  What I wish I would've captured was this little guy running around the house with our 15-year-old bichon- it was too funny!

Let's Go to the Beach: Part 3

This year we divided up the cooking a little bit.  My brother and his girlfriend cooked one night, and Brian and I cooked another night.  The food was great all week.  On our night we cooked bratwursts and mac and cheese.  We also had crabs one night, which was pretty fun.  Of course, we helped here and there as well, and my brother is always assisting with the grilling like in the picture above.

Our vacation ended on a good note.  On the last night we put in The Little Mermaid.  My four-year-old cousin was GLUED.  The whole family wound up watching and singing along to all of the songs, which always makes my little heart happy.

Thanks for following along with my beach recaps!

Let's Go to the Beach: Part 2

The neighborhood that we stay in feels kind of unreal.  Once you go through the gate you feel like you're in a little dream world.  And the house has a golf cart- so I took these neighborhood shots from the back seat.  It's really handy to call one of the boys to come get you when you're too tired to carry your chair back from the beach!

The whole family didn't make it to the beach for a photoshoot, but the four of us decided to persevere without them.  After tomorrow I'll be done with beach pictures, I promise!  Here is the first beach post.

Let's Go to the Beach: Part 1

I'm back!  Thanks again to my guest bloggers last week- I had such a great time while I was away, and it was great to know that my blog was in good hands while I was unplugged!  As I was going through my pictures, I decided that there were too many to keep to a single post, so you guys are going to get a few installments of my beach pics.  I hope you'll bear with me!

The beach house itself is one of my favorite things about our vacation.  I think we first came to this house in 2007, and we've been back most of the years since then.  Brian and I didn't go last year (we were on our honeymoon!) so it felt like it had been forever.  The house has a "sleeping porch," which is one of my favorite places to read (next to the beach, of course!)

What have you been up to the past week?  Got any updates?  Fill me in, I've missed you guys!

{after combing the blog archives, I found this post from the last time we were in the Outer Banks}

in this place: the enchanted forest

I'm pretty sure my mom came up with this name for the treeline behind our house growing up, but it stuck.  And it still feels a little enchanted.

in this place: the soccer field

This is the house that I grew up in, and the soccer field was basically our backyard.  I'm glad I got these pictures of the house a few weeks ago, as the two big trees in the yard came down in a storm recently.

One of my favorite memories on the soccer field wouldn't fit on one of these pictures.  One time this guy organized dinner on the soccer field for his girlfriend, which was where they had their first kiss or something like that- it was the cutest thing!  My friend and I were about 10 and were having a sleepover, and we played the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack for them blaring really loud from a boom box on our patio.  In retrospect, it might have been annoying, but at the time we thought we were being so helpful!

Carrot Cake

Simply put, this cake is amazing.  It's Brian and my dad's favorite, and it's definitely one of mine too.  It takes a while to make just because there is so much stuff in it, but I promise that it will be worth it!  And all that stuff makes it easier to rationalize when you are eating it for breakfast for days afterward (this cake is HUGE!)

 Yes, Brian frosted his own birthday cake.  He is a cake frosting wizard, and he offered so... I took him up on it.  Check out his skills!

Cutting the cake is not always the easiest thing in the world, but it still tastes delicious!  You can read the full recipe on Susan Branch's site, and here are my notes below:

• This time I made the cake the day before and then frosted it the next day, which worked well except make sure you flip the cakes out of the pans to cool!  I forgot, so my mom Googled it and it said that if you heat them at 250 degrees then they will come out.  That mostly worked, but there was still a chunk out of one of them.  Also, screw oiling the pan, go for the Baker's Joy.
• Instead of using a sieve for the pineapple, I did as my mom suggested- squeeze all the juice out of it by hand until it's almost dry.  This might be because we don't have a sieve, but apparently if you don't get all the juice out the cake will fall apart on you.  It's a really moist cake.
• A few years ago I made this cake without the carrots.  I know.  See that giant thing of carrots?  It wasn't in there.  And guess what?  It was still good.  It didn't seem that weird.  This cake is awesome.
• I grated the carrots in my mom's Kitchen Aid using the grater attachment.

This is our favorite page in the cookbook, as you can probably tell!  Check out the recipe on the opposite page.