Divine Brownie Recipe

Last Friday was my dad's birthday. To recognize his big day, I sent him a care package with homemade brownies (from scratch). I tried a new recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks - The Foster's Market Cookbook. There are two amazing Foster's Markets -- one in Durham, and one in Chapel Hill, NC. My group of friends frequented the one in Durham as often as possible in college. They had the best salads and everything was so fresh and tasty. Sarah Foster is the founder and owner, and she used to work as a chef for Martha Stewart's catering company. Anyways...back to the brownies. Here are a few pics from the baking adventures.....

Meet the beloved KitchenAid mixer...

In a word...YUM!
And here is the recipe. Yes, there is a ridiculous amount of butter, sugar and eggs -- but these are seriously worth the splurge.

Foster's Brownies:
*makes 2 dozen 2.5"x3" brownies

2 C. all-purpose flour
1.5 C. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 t. salt
8 large eggs
4 C. sugar
4 sticks unsalted butter, melted
2 T. pure vanilla extract
2 C. semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Mix dry ingredients, set aside. Cream together the eggs, sugar, buttter and vanilla in a separate bowl. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until all the dry ingredients are moist and blended....do not overmix. Spread batter evenly in pan, and bake 35-40 min. Let cool completely.

Eat, Pray, Love.....the movie!

Am I the only one who hadn't heard that the phenomenal book Eat, Pray, Love is being made into a movie? (side note...if you haven't read it, you simply must! It's a great, easy read) Julia Roberts appears to be starring in the lead role. I'm SO excited....she's the perfect actress for the part, and I can't wait to see this one. Here's Ms. Roberts out and about in Haryana, India:

Summer In A Bite

Right now these are my favorite things:
I know that I should be over summer, and getting excited for fall -- but it has yet to really get cold at all here, so I'm not necessarily feeling it just yet. BUT I am really excited for the weekend. My sister, BIL, and the 2 older kids are all driving here tomorrow! I can't wait to show them the house, visit some fun sights in St. Louis, and then we'll all go to the Rams v. Packers game Sunday. PLUS my sister and I will be able to fit in a run together Sunday morning (fingers crossed there will be no more snake sightings!!!)

Vineyard Vines.... Last Day!

Thinking of Atlanta

When we moved from Atlanta, the city was dealing with some very serious drought issues. At that point, Lake Lanier (the lake that provides most of the city's water) was like 20 feet below its full level (leaving docks stranded), city officials were debating whether or not they could even fill pools for the summer, and nobody was allowed to water their lawns.

Now, they're dealing with horrible flooding. It's been raining for at least a week straight with no end in sight. The pictures are really pretty amazing. My cousin's basement is flooded, our old neighbors have the Chattahoochee River lapping at their decks, and roads are submerged everywhere. Here are a few scary images:

(source: AJC)

And while it's no laughing matter, this did make me chuckle:

Sending positive thoughts and prayers for SUN to my Atlanta friends!!

Randomness

I had a great weekend. Nothing too exciting in terms of activities, but it was fun and relaxing and perfect.

• Swung by the mall with SB.....tried on lots of stuff at J.Crew, but only walked away with the first top in the post below (super cute - and could be worn for a lot of different events). I think my checking account breathed a sigh of relief that I only loved 1 item after trying on.....you guys are right, the prices are def. on the high side for some of their pieces.
  
• Had a tasty lunch at PF Changs
• Finished off our Crate & Barrel registry.....purchased one nighstand, 8 green apples to be displayed in the lovely Charleston glass bowl, and 2 cereal bowls for SB b/c he can't drink the milk out of the shallow ones (*sigh*)
  
• SB and I went running twice together.....40 min Saturday morning, 45 min Sunday. On Sunday, it was raining when I woke up - and I couldn't believe it when SB came down the stairs a little later in full running gear. Typically I stay inside if it's raining (or go to the gym, but I haven't felt a need to join one here yet) -- but SB channeled his old x-country days, and was excited to head out in the rain like a hard-core runner. 45 min later, we were all soaked to the bone (including Daisy!) - but it was a lot of fun.
• While running on Sunday, Daisy pulled a rattlesnake's shedded skin out of the bushes right by the sidewalk. Totally freaked me out. If there's one thing I HATE, it would be snakes. Yes. Hate. I will be running with Daisy right by my side by those bushes in the future. Yikes. The old trail in Atlanta by the river has lots of snakes. If it weren't so beautiful, they would have scared me away....but I was just on "snake patrol" every time I went.
  
• Made brownies for my dad's bday....sent them off via USPS today. I'll share the recipe and pics in a future post. They are DELICIOUS if I do say so myself :)
• Watched the Packers and Rams lose....booo.
• Tonight I made a new recipe, and set off all the firealarms in the house by accident. OMG - at least I now know that there is no way we could ever sleep through a fire in this house. Those things are LOUD and they're in every room. I was running around like a freakazoid trying to open doors/windows, fan the air out, pull out the batteries from the alarms (which didn't turn them off??) I called SB, who of course couldn't help -- and then all of a sudden they turned themselves off. They were soooo loud though.

More new favorites....

J.crew has some adorable new additions to their fall lineup. I'm hoping to swing through their store this weekend to try on a few of these pretties:






(don't need the purse above...recently found a new one at Nordstrom that was 50% off -- SCORE!)

Sugarland's New CD

I'm a big Sugarland fan, and the fandom has hit a new high with their new CD, Love on the Inside. My favorite songs are "All I Want To Do," "Already Gone," and "It Happens" - but there are so many more awesome ones. This CD alone got me through the drive to Chicago.

Beautiful Wedding Inspiration

I just have to share a few pics from a wedding featured on Style Me Pretty. First - I love horse farms - and it's the setting for this lovely soiree. Second - the dresses are just beautiful, and Third - the photographer (Laura Olson) did quite an amazing job capturing all of the fun. Enjoy...

(PS - speaking of wedding pics....I'm waiting to post mine till I have the CD with all of our images (without the photographer's watermark right over the middle). Of course that means choosing the 16 for our album first....and that seems to be an impossible feat right now. Hope to share them soon!!)

Channeling the interior designer within...

Right now our new house is a bit of a blank slate. One of these days I'll take pics to share (with SB's approval...he's kind of nervous about the idea of sharing toooo much info on this - which I do understand). We have a large "great room" downstairs. There's a flat screen tv over a lovely fireplace mantle, and nice white built-in shelves on either side. Beyond that...the room is empty. This week we received the delivery of our new sofa....it's a beautiful sectional from Pottery Barn. Here it is (side note....this delivery meant that SB and I moved his "man-iture" (aka: giant leather couch and enormous arm chair--what is it about men and these giant pieces of furniture?) upstairs to the loft space. That's right....UPstairs. The guys who delivered the new sofa turned down cash to do the job (???!!!)...so it was left to the two of us. (sidenote #2...we need neighborhood friends!!! especially large masculine ones who can help SB move things) We did manage to do it, but it was pretty challenging (and hilarious at the same time).

A few weeks ago we also received the arm chair for this room (from PB too). This is it:

So now we need to get a side table, a coffee table, accessories galore, and a few things for the walls. When we go into our fave home decor stores, I always feel the need to buy everything exactly as they display it. I know, I know - it's sooo boring to do it that way. I mean, I don't want my room to look exactly like the PB showroom, but it always looks nice, and then bam! you're done just like that. However, I'm trying to expand a bit and piece things together better.

Long story short.....I need some more inspiration! Where do you all find ideas for decorating your homes? Any favorite blogs? (I already read This Young House regularly....but would love your insight into some new ones)