New wheels, winning crepes, and free shipping

The whole time I've had Happily Going, I thought I was showing my pictures as big as Blogger would allow. It turns out, my pictures were practically tiny. I apologize, and am excited to have larger pictures now, without ruining the bloggy format. Three things on the agenda:

#1: The past few weeks we have busy with the car business of selling and buying, and here is our new purchase!  It's a blue Prius and I really like driving it- it's very smooth on the road and has a much tighter turning radius than I'm used to. The Mr. loves watching the fuel economy. We are exciting like that.

#2: I n-e-v-e-r win raffles or drawings, so I was super excited when I checked my e-mail this morning and found that I won a gift certificate to a restaurant! The restaurant is called Ravenous and they make some pretty fantastic crepes and pommes frittes (Belgian French fries). The last time we were there, the Mr. had the Blueberry Zeppelin (blueberries) and I had the French Kiss (chocolate-hazlenut). Their other specialty is pommes frittes which we chose to eat with aioli and a horseradish sauce. YUM!!

#3: We, at The Crafty Bees, are offering FREE SHIPPING on all card orders to US and Canada until December 1st!! Just enter coupon code FREE11 at checkout.Just look at all that awesome, crafty goodness!

Does anyone have any suggestions for which kind of crepe I should try next? You can find Ravenous' menu here. I hope everyone is having a great start to their Thanksgiving week!

Action packed weekend and ISU BEATS IOWA!

This weekend, the Mr. and I were super busy. Among many things, we went over to a friend's, grilled out, and watched Iowa State beat Iowa- which was fantastic! Triple overtime and ISU pulled ahead, I'm so happy for the win!!! 

We also went out to eat this weekend, which was fun. I have some more pictures, but couldn't quite figure out the settings, so I went for this artsy shot. We sat on the patio outside to eat, and we were the only two left outside so it was like we had private service! We watched the sun set as we ate dinner, which was pretty cool.

Here's my photo for 'The Creative Exchange'. I had some fun with the heart bokeh effect on fotoflexer.

I hope everyone's having a lovely start to their week!

It's been more than one whole year!

We had a great time celebrating our anniversary! We dressed up for a date and went to a fancy Indonesian restaurant that the Mr. had found.  Later, we bought a cake (since we had already eaten the top part of our wedding cake) and have been eating it throughout the week.  It has lasted a really long time since it is so rich and tasty!

 I'll be sad once we finish it, later today!

wall-hanging

For the sake of my own remembering (and anyone else who is interested), the Mr. and I each dined on a course of traditional Indonesian Rijsttafel. With five courses, we had:

1.) Amuse bouche - this was a Japanese, bite-sized hors d'oeuvres. Very small, very tasty.
2.) Chicken satay and soft shell crab - The chicken was spicy and delicious. As for the soft shell crab, this was the first time I've ever eaten an entire crab. It was about the size of the palm of my hand, and tasted really good. I was skeptical, since it seemed weird to eat the claws and everything, but it was a pleasant surprise.
3.) Soto makasar - From the menu: "Beef, chicken, & lamb with kaffir lime leaves, glass noodles, bean sprouts, and beef tenderloin".  I was surprised at how tasty this could be, and I think I'll have to make lime a common addition to any beef-based soups that I make.
4.) Gado gado - This was an interesting salad with peanut sauce.  Our salads also had hard-boiled eggs, tofu, and  "shrimp crisp".
5.) Bakmi goreng (vegetables with fried noodles), babi kecap (pork in sweet soy sauce), and daging rendang (coconut beef) - This was our "main course", and I definitely couldn't finish all of it, even though it was really good. They also served it with "shrimp chips", pickled vegetables, and rice.

For dessert, the Mr. had bananas foster and I had creme brulee. After writing all of this out, I'm really surprised at how much I ate. Wow!

Mignardises - they gave us even MORE snacks. Oy! These were hand-made and wrapped, so we took them home to eat later.

They gave us a complimentary glass of champagne for our anniversary, and we shared half a bottle of Riesling Maximin Grunhauser. I totally forgot to get any pictures of us at the restaurant, but that's alright.

Looking forward to another great year!