Happy 2012!!

Happy New Year everyone! I can't believe December has already come and gone... it's January! I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend, we have had a lot of fun celebrating in NY.   We went to Butter in NYC on New Year's Eve and it was fabulous!  We had a delicious four course meal with lots of champagne and cocktails througout the night. It was a fun party, complete with a great DJ, party hats and tiarras, and a champagne toast while we watched the ball drop at midnight. It was a really wonderful night.

I've been wanting to do a year in review post, but didn't feel like spending a ton of time on the post until I saw this post on According to Ashley. I thought it seemed fun so I'll try it out, with a few modifications ;).  Here it goes:

Favorite Songs of 2011: 

The Trouble with Girls, Scotty McCreery  

I went to Garner HS for one year, so it was really cool to see the school and people we know in the music video.

Favorite Movies of 2011:


Crazy Stupid Love



Midnight in Paris

These movies are really good, I hope you have a chance to watch them. I especially recommend Midnight in Paris because it was only in a few theatres, but it had amazingly good reviews. It makes me want to go back to Paris ASAP!

Favorite TV Shows of 2011:

Body of Proof

Modern Family

Once Upon a Time

 



Bones



Gossip Girl


Biggest Accomplishment of 2011:
Graduating with my MS in Biomedical Engineering from Duke in December

Favorite Vacation or Trip of 2011:

Boston Trip in August

I had a conference at the end of August in Boston and we spent the weekend afterwards in the city. Kevin and I both really loved the city and had so much fun!

Favorite Book of 2011:

I didn't have that much time to read many books in 2011, but The Help was really good!

Best Purchase of 2011:


Our first house!

We started looking at houses in February and we closed at the end of April on a house that we really love.

Favorite Beauty Purchase of 2011:


Urban Decay Naked Palette

This was a Christmas gift, not really a purchase, but it's so great! The colors are really pretty and the brush works really well.

Best Gift of 2011:

Kevin got me an iPad for my birthday in June. I've really enjoyed it and love the iCloud features that I can sync stuff back and forth with my iPhone.

Most Popular Blog Post of 2011:
Kitchen Reveal - http://newlywedmcgees.blogspot.com/2011/06/kitchen-reveal.html

Favorite DIY Project of 2011:

Dining Room Curtains

No-sew curtains for the dining room.  Link Here

Best Home Rennovation Project of 2011:

Painted Kitchen Cabinets

Painting our kitchen cabinets. It was a long and intensive process, but we love the outcome. Link Here.

Favorite New Recipe of 2011:

Cherry Limeade Jello Shots

 I made these Cherry Limeade Jello Shots for our Christmas paty. They were a modification on the original Lemon Drop Jello Shots, but they were really good!

Favorite Restaurant of 2011:

Butter Restaurant

 Butter in NYC. We first discovered Butter last January and we've been 3 times this year. It's a really neat restaurant and has amazing food. Alex Guarneschelli, from the Food Network is the chef there.

Favorite Local Restaurant of 2011:

Sushi Iwa

Sushi Iwa in Apex, NC.  I love this restaurant. It's so close to where we live, but it's also really good and inexpensive. They have Buy One, Get One sushi all the time and great drink specials.  They even offer BOGO sushi for takeout, which most places don't do, so it's amazing!

Best Moment of 2011:



Cooking my first turkey!

Our Thanksgiving Tablescape

Hosting Thanksgiving in our new house with almost all of our family. It was really great experience and we had lots of good food and fun.

Hope you had a great 2011, like us! I can't wait to see what this new year brings!



Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season and enjoying it with family and friends. Here's our Christmas card for this year. We had a lot of fun dressing Darcy up as Santa for this photo shoot.  Everyone has really enjoyed the card who's received it.

Merry Christmas!

Cherry Limeade Jello Shots

As you may know, I get a lot of traffic on my blog for the Lemon Drop Jello Shots that I made a couple of years ago. Well they're now like my signature item and I love making them.

For the Christmas party, I decided to mix things up and create a jello shot that was more Christmas-y and fun.  I decided on a cherry limeade flavor! Instead of using lemons and lemon jello, I used limes and cherry jello. It worked out really nicely and I think they had a wonderful flavor. Everyone gobbled these up at the party.

Cherry Limeade Jello Shots

- 8 large limes
- 2 packages cherry Jello (3 oz each)
- 1 cup boiling water
- 1 cup citrus vodka
- 1/3 to1/2 cup lime juice (depending on desired taste)
- 1/2 cup ice cold water

Cut the limes in half lengthwise. Squeeze the juice out into a separate container and set aside. Use a spoon to scoop out all of the insides and pulp. You can use a paring knife to help separate the inside, but be sure not to cut through the peel. Once you have them all completely juiced and cleaned out, place each of the halves into a muffin tin, with the open sides up.

Prepare the Jello mixture by mixing 1 cup of boiling water with two packages of cherry Jello. Stir until the Jello has completely disolved. Then, add the 1 cup citrus vodka, 1/2 cup of strained lime juice that you got from the limes, and 1/2 cup ice water. Stir until cooled.

Pour the Jello mixture into each lime half so that they are completely full. Carefully move the muffin tin to the fridge and chill for at least 4 hours, until hardened.

Once the Jello is firm, and you're ready to serve, cut each half into three slices. Turn the lime halves over on a cutting board and then make each slice in one fluid motion using a very sharp, warm, non-serrated knife. Share with friends and enjoy!!

Christmas Party!

This past Saturday, we had our 3rd annual Christmas party at our house and it was so much fun! I just wanted to share some of the details and pictures with you today. I'll post all of the new recipes soon :) I had a lot of fun preparing for this party. I have enjoyed decorating our house for the holidays and this was just another excuse to put up even more decorations.

I added a wreath to the inside of our bay window in the kitchen last week. I made this wreath out of the extra branches from our Christmas tree. It was a thrifty addition but I like how it brings more decorations into the kitchen.

I also updated our kitchen chalkboard to say Merry Christmas!

Then, I made Darcy a Christmas bow tie to wear to the party. I made this with a little bit of fabric that I got from JoAnn's and it was so easy to make. It slipped around one of his old collars and he actually liked wearing it!

I made a lot of food for the party and we were pretty surprised that everyone managed to eat almost everything! A lot of these things went over really well, here's what we had:

Menu

Buffalo Chicken Dip Bites

Mini Deep Dish Pizzas

Mushroom and Asparagus Tarts

Pigs in a Blanket

Knorr Spinach Dip

Veggie Tray

Meatballs

Raspberry Brie Bites

Desserts

Cupcakes

Santa Hat Brownies

Petit Fours

Pecan Sandies

Christmas Cookies

Pretzel Rolo Turtles

Specialty Drinks

Cranberry Champagne Cocktail

Candy Cane Martinis

Cherry Limeade Jello Shots

I made drink stirrers for the cocktails with straws I ordered online from Garnish and little flags that I printed.  These were really easy to make and so fun at the party.

I made Christmas colored jello shots for this party too! My lemon drop jello shots are always a hit, but I decided to make cherry limeade jello shots for this, since they're red and green. These were sweet and sour, but not too strong!

Cherry Limeade Jello Shots

One of the drink stations

Some of the food

yum!

Modeling the champagne cocktails

Me and Darcy in front of the Christmas tree

Santa Hat Brownies

It was a really great party with lots of food, drinks and fun with friends! We played Dirty Santa as usual and it was fun as always!

Hope you're enjoying the holiday season and have a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Decorations

We've gotten almost all of our Christmas decorations put up at home! It's really starting to feel like the holidays. Decorating our own house is so much more fun than an apartment.  

We started last weekend when we picked out our Christmas tree and put it up. We had a lot of fun picking out our tree, but the one we picked out ended up being a little taller than our ceiling... so we had to trim the very top of it for our angel to fit. 

This year, we chose to add a little bit of silver to our red and gold collection of ornaments. We hung our stockings on the mantle and added some garland.

This weekend, we hung wreaths on all of our windows. I found a great deal on 24" wreaths and red bows at AC Moore with coupons.  I found on Pinterest that using clear suction cup hangers is one of the best ways to hang wreaths.  This works well with our windows because the bottom sash tilts in and you can remove the screen from the inside.  We were able to put the wreaths up from inside fairly easily and so far, they're working really well!

We have some other decorations throughout the house, including a small lit tree in the foyer.  We also have greenery on the banisters on the stairs and a wreath on the front door. 

And, we got our Christmas cards in the mail this week from TinyPrints.  I'll be mailing them out to our family and friends this week!  Darcy even helped us make them ;)