2012 In Review | What an Awesome Year to Blog!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for perdueosity.

Here's an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 35,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 8 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.


Sexy Time Chicken Fettucine Alfredo

Ok ladies and gentlemen, this past weekend we had decided to take on a simple, yet sometimes quite difficult dish. I don't know how many times I've had Fettucine Alfredo that just seems to miss the mark, and there's no way you can ever buy a pre-made jar of Alfredo and get the kind of feeling or response you can with a home-made sauce!

We decided to do this dish since we were having our friend Elaine over and that is her go-to meal, I don't know how often she eats it, but it's one of like three different type meals she likes. Of four, I think it may be her favorite! I want to give you some quoted reviews before I get into the recipe as I want you to be able to grasp the awesomeness of this recipe!!!
 

"I'm totally getting goose bumps right now! This is so amazing!" ~ Elaine (the Fettucine Alfredo connoisseur)

 

"I was sitting next to Elaine and can vouch for the fact that she literally had goose bumps all over her arms due to this awesome Fettucine Alfredo!" ~ Paul (who sat next to Elaine)

 

"When a guy is in the doghouse, if he makes this, there is no way his woman can turn him down!" ~ Desi (speaking from experience!)

 

Sexy Time Chicken Fettucine Alfredo
Servings: 6

Ingredients:

  • 3 Large Skinless Chicken Breasts
  • Fettucine Pasta
  • Heavy Whipping Cream (32 oz container)
  • Cream Cheese (approx 2 oz from an 8 oz box)
  • Finely Shredded Parmesan Blend Cheese - 5 oz Bag (includes Parmesan, fontina, Asiago, and Romano cheese)
  • Finely Shredded Parmesan Cheese - 5 oz Bag (Half for sauce, half for sprinkling on finished dish)
  • 6 Garlic Cloves
  • 1/2 Cup of Butter (two sticks)
  • White pepper (to taste)
  • Black Pepper (to taste)
  • 1 Tbsp of Salt (or to taste)
  • Fresh Parsley (1/2 finely chopped in sauce) and the rest as garnish

For the Chicken:
Brine the chicken in a 4 hour salt and garlic powder brine. We placed the chicken breasts in a Pyrex dish filled with water mixture which included approximately 4 tbsp of Garlic Powder and 3 tbsp of Salt.

The chicken was cooked on a charcoal grill, searing both sides for about 3-5 minutes depending on size of chicken breast. Once seared, they were moved away from the flame for indirect cooking for about 15 to 20 minutes. (FYI - our grill was only at about 250 degrees, the cook time will vary, but you don't want to cook it too long or the chicken will dry out and get tough!)

Also, the chicken should be on the grill when you start the water for the pasta.

For the Sauce:
Start by dicing up the garlic and simmer with the butter. Once that gets to a frothy boil, add in whipping cream gradually (it is not necessary to add it all at once). Spice the sauce up with your salt, and peppers stirring regularly with a whisk. Whisking the sauce will increase the thickness! Begin to add in the Parmesan Blend and the cream cheese. Let it simmer while you put your pasta into the boiling water (with olive oil). Continue to simmer the sauce while you are working on the chicken and the pasta, stirring regularly as you don't want the sauce to burn! Now add in the Parmesan cheese and chopped parsley. It's almost ready... now taste and add more garlic (fresh or powder) and salt as needed.

To Serve... Place noodles on a dish, spoon on the alfredo sauce, and place sliced chicken on top. Sprinkle with shredded Parmesan and chopped parsley and voilà! You are now ready to get your Sexy Time Fettucine Alfredo on!!!

We hope you will enjoy this and it's effects! It's absolutely amazing! It's not an every night thing as I have no idea how fattening it is, but it is an awesome treat or a way out of the dog house, as this will definitely get you SEXY TIME! ;)

(FYI this recipe is named Sexy Time Chicken Fettucine Alfredo after our "unnamed dinner companions" decided they had to excuse themselves from the dinner table to have SEX after eating this amazing meal!!!)

Valentine's Date at the Neon Museum, Las Vegas

I'm doing double duty posting as many as I can about our trip to Vegas! I've got another handful of posts, and want to get caught up soon!

So on Valentine's Day we had a date at the Neon Museum or "Bone Yard." It was a very cool experience to say the least! The museum is in development and has not been around for very long, but in an effort to preserve the true art of the Vegas signs, they have begun a collection, and built a park and are in the process of developing a visitor center.

Right now you have to make advance reservations on their website to get a tour. The tour is with a guide and they are very informative and take much care in making sure everyone is safe (around the broken glass and rusted metal) and following the rules of the museum. We learned a lot about the various designers, font types used over the years and what the different shapes and colors signify. They even offer private photo shoot reservations for special events like wedding shoots and they even had a music video by the Killers filmed on site!

It is quite a sight, check out some of our pictures (Paul did HDR's of most of these), and in all honestly while the pics are amazing, it's is so awesome to see in person! You should check it out next time you're in Vegas and support the preservation of all of this awesome work from the past! It's well worth the donation!

Hope you enjoyed and stay tuned as there is a lot more to come from our trip!!!


Blog Love!

Blog Love! One of the blogs I visit regularly, "People I Want to Punch in the Throat" recently posted a Blog Love post where people can share their blogs. It's amazing how many people have responded so far, and I have found a lot more blogs I will be checking out more regularly! Like this one, "I Like Beer and Babies", is hilarious! I love it! Can't wait to check out more... and maybe down the line I'll do my own "Blog Love" post...


Join Me and Stop the Privatization/Expansion of Briscoe Field!

Greetings,

I just signed the following petition addressed to: Board of Commissioners Gwinnett County. I've lived in Gwinnett County for about 20 years now, and grew up in Lawrenceville, GA where Briscoe Field is located - There has been so much great development in Lawrenceville and Gwinnett it would be a shame for them to ruin all the great stuff with this new plan to privatize and/or expand!

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Stop the privatization or expansion of Briscoe Field
Don’t Land in My Back Yard

Join together and let Gwinnett County Commissioners know they need to care more about the quality of life of their citizen’s than making a buck.

There have been numerous article, commentaries, opinions, etc. about expanding the use of Briscoe field. We need to deal in facts and realities, no matter what they call it; this privatization will evolve into the expanded use of Briscoe Field.


What does that mean to the residents of Gwinnett County, more traffic, added pollution, noise and larger planes landing and taking off from Briscoe Field? The quality of my life over the last 18 years has been impacted with the rapid growth of Gwinnett. Growth is good if it does not also impact the value of your home as well as the quality of your life in that community. Real Estate motto, location, location, location try and sell your home with large and frequent planes landing 10 miles from your back yard. In my case I’m about five miles from the airport, less as the crow flies.

I did a search looking for the number of residences within a 20 mile radius of Briscoe Field. These are the zip codes I came up with 30011, 30017, 30019, 30024, 30043, 30044, 30045, 30046, 30052 and 30052. There are over 70,000 homes based on information from the post office in these zip codes. If you live in these zip codes your probably within about 20 miles of Briscoe field.

I can sit in my back yard and watch planes every 5 minutes fly over heading for Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. I’m over 35 miles away from the Atlanta Airport and the planes are usually fairly high but we do occasionally hear them. Try to imagine being 5 or 10 miles away from the run way.

You can say not in my back yard, you can attend meetings and get verbal or we can band together. There is strength in numbers and it has more impact than an occasional article or TV spot on the news.

Let your voice be heard, tell Gwinnett County Commissioner’s that we do not want Briscoe field privatized or expanded.

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Please join me and sign this petition today! Click here to SIGN!


Loving My Pinterest!

So I've had an invite to Pinterest for some time now, but hadn't taken the leap cause I knew it would be another thing that I would truly become addicted to and I was right. But with the constant stream of COOL stuff that I find EVERYWHERE, I need a resource to hold all these cool things I would love to have, try, and do, so I'm in it and collecting and adding new things daily to my boards!

I imagine my account will be huge not too long from now, and it will be a great resource for any and all ideas I've got for our life! Not only that, but I imagine it could be a very good "hint" resource for Paul when it comes to knowing all things I'm into and loving right now! Couldn't hurt!

I've found several ideas I am ready to implement soon. I think my first project will be this one...

But another very cool one that both Paul and I are loving is this! I image this one will be further down the line as we don't really have a bar area for bar stools YET, but it will happen, and these puppies will be in the picture of our bar/living space.

But this isn't just a resource for home decor ideas, it's about anything and everything you can imagine! Whether it's a frame of mind, a frame to put on the wall, a frame you make, or a place to go so you can put it in a frame... you can pin it!

It's like the new "there's an app for that", but now it's "pin it!"

And to top all of the fun decor stuff we will be implementing hopefully soon, I'm also in absolute DIY mode, and Pinterest has totally been feeding my "to do" list of things I KNOW I can make, and they WILL be so cool you'll want to pin them. I think I may start with the Christmas ornaments... It is that time after all.

Either way check it out!


Vote for Sunday Alcohol Sales TOMORROW!!!

How many times have you gone to the grocery store on Sunday and picked up a bottle of wine or case of beer, gotten to the register and realized during check-out... "DANG IT it's SUNDAY!" Well it's happened to me more than once, and I'm not really absent-minded, I just don't think about those things all the time cause it's really unnecessary!

Georgia is one of only three states that does not allow alcohol sales on Sunday, and it's finally time things change! This will be the first year that we have been able to decide on this issue ourselves, and I am hopeful people will get out to vote! This is not a primary election, and I'm sure there may be more pressing matters on the ballot than this issue, but I personally get the impression people will care about this! And they will care more about this than the other random local votes on the ballot.

About 100 Georgia cities and counties are holding votes on whether to allow stores to sell alcohol on Sundays. The referendum is the result of a lengthy battle in the state legislature over whether municipalities should have the right to decide on the issue. This has been a very controversial issue, and you can rest assured that there will be as many people out voting against it as there are for it.

If passed the Sunday alcohol sale referendum will allow convenient stores, grocery stores and liquor stores to sell beer, wine and liquor on Sundays. I know it's not a primary election or anything, but there is definitely good reason to make the trip to the poles tomorrow! Read more about it here!


The Chunk Pumpkin!

Desi and Tristan came over tonight to help decorate for our Halloween Party tomorrow night - and have dinner with us (Paul cooked up an amazing roast!)! Anyway the decor was not going to be complete without The Chunk Pumpkin! This was my first ever attempt at carving a pumpkin and while it was harder than expected, I am very pleased with the outcome!

Our friends Natalie and Michael Webb sent us a template cause it looks just like our dog Chunk. I was so excited save the stencil for over a month in my inbox waiting for the right time to execute our work of art!

Paul started out by cutting the top (lid) and cleaning out the inside. He started to do the set-up or the stencil, and cut out the nose and first ear and then I took over the rest! You can check out the template above and see some photos of the process below. Chunk even stayed by me while I made his pumpkin portrait! I'm so excited, it turned out awesome!

Such a beautiful Chunk Pumpkin! If you've got any cool pumpkin art, I'd love to see them. And if you have recommendations for what we could do next time, I'd love to try them out!

Happy Halloween and check back soon as we'll be posting more fun pics from the fun weekend ahead!


Fall Inspiration! Herb and Flower Arrangements

The Wall Street Journal is providing some awesome fall inspiration, and this one, of many caught my eye! It sounds delicious and beautiful all at once, to have the fragrant herbs and flowers to create a beautiful home arrangement!

WSJ: Herb & Flower Arrangements - "Mint and basil are flowering, autumn is releasing its early blooms—now is the moment to combine them. New York flower expert Nicolette Owen explains the basic steps."

For details about how to make the pictured arrangement read on!

Mint and Lavender + Pom-Pom Dahlias + Grass

Step One: Start with a slightly asymmetrical base of greens. We used flowering mint. Leave some stems nice and tall so the arrangement will be taller than the pitcher. Step Two: Place your large showy blooms throughout the base of greens. We used pom pom dahlias. Play with the directions of the "face" of the flowers so they are not all looking the same way. Step Three: Finish the arrangement with a bold gesture of grass to balance the shape of the pitcher. Sprinkle little sprigs of flowering lavender throughout to add some extra fragrance.

Click here to view "The Off Duty Fall 50"

I'll definitely post a pic when I get the opporunity to make my own arrangement!


Super Cool New FaceBook Timeline Developer Release! Check it out!

 

This is a super cool new Timeline Developer Release! You have to set it up to be able to view FaceBook in a timeline format. Only those that set this up can see other's Facebook in this format.

It's really cool! You can hone in on certain dates in the timeline to see pictures, posts and comments, etc. Definitely worth checking out! Click Here to access details about set-up...