Livin' It Up

Happy Easter!

I hope you're having a wonderful holiday weekend. Things around here have been pretty great so far! The weekend started with a day of girly fun on Friday, complete with pedicures and shopping with my sister. When we got home, it was time to get things ready for an old-fashioned part-ay with good friends. It's been quite a while since our whole gang got together, so a few months ago we told everyone to save the date for a shindig at our place.

I always love spending time with my girls!

We ended up having about 30 of our friends stop by, so we had a great time. It was so nice catching up with everyone and hanging out all together. Of course no party is complete without some fun cocktails...

...like strawberry-basil infused vodka spritzers!

Good snacks were enjoyed as well.

Some of the highlights were those toffee fudge brownies you see up there, and blue corn tortilla chips with Matt's homemade cumin & garlic hummus:

And my homemade pretzels with cheddar beer sauce...These were delicious hot out of the oven! The recipe will definitely be coming your way soon.

It was such a great night! We spent most of the day on Saturday cleaning up and recuperating, which may or may not have included some Ellio's pizza and 80's movies.

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This morning we woke up nice and early to exchange Easter baskets. Riker got his first basket today, but I'm sure this tradition will be much more exciting when he can have candy instead of books.

Matt and I don't like to keep much candy in the house, so we generally fill each other's baskets with other fun, but inexpensive things like movies or small kitchen gadgets. I always like the thought of getting Reese's eggs and all that good stuff, but I usually can't bring myself to eat it...a few weeks ago Matt was cleaning out the freezer and found my Easter candy from last year that still hadn't been eaten. Ha! I get much more excited about the white lily Matt buys me every year.

So pretty! This year I bought Matt one of his favorite movies, Sideways, and he bought me a blackberry plant and some gardening stuff. Woohoo! I always tell him that I would garden more if I had cute gardening gloves, so now he'll be holding me to it.

After exchanging baskets, we met up with Matt's family for some breakfast. I consumed a bazillion calories on Friday night between cocktails and snacks, so I tried to keep things lighter this morning. I ordered a broccoli cheddar omelet with egg whites and half the amount of cheese, rye toast (dry), and fruit salad instead of homefries. It was tasty!

After breakfast, my sister headed back to Connecticut and we jumped on the road to Vermont. We're headed to my parents' house for a few days since Matt has spring break this week. It's my last week of maternity leave, so I'm determined to live it up and enjoy every minute.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!