Taylor Swift tickets purchased!!

Many of you know my love for Taylor Swift (thanks for the t-shirts and calendars, Mom and Ashley!) and I am very happy to share that I just purchased presale tickets to her concert at Cowboys Stadium in October! I have just spent the last 30 minutes with an elevated heart rate as I waited for ticketmaster to confirm my purchase. I went to her concert last year and she puts on a great show. I cannot imagine missing this year's peformance. Here are a few pictures from last year.

Casey, Kate, Me, and Tiffany

<3

Also on the concert line up for this year is Lady Gaga (March 14) and Ke$ha (April 26). Super excited!



Stuffed Baked Potatoes

Last night, Eric and I decided to grill some steaks and I decided to make stuffed baked potatoes to go along with it. My friend Erica shared this recipe with me and it was great and super easy!

Here are our raw and bloody New York Strips.

Now on to the potatoes!

First, I prepped all the ingredients. Butter, Green Onions, Half and Half, Cheddar Cheese, and Sour Cream. Yum.

Once your potatoes are done (allow a long time for this recipe, you have to cook these guys for an hour and 20 minutes), scoop out all the insides. You add the pulp to all the other ingredients in a skillet.

Oliver helped.

You put it all back in and bake it up for 20 more minutes.

And there you go! Lots of flavor in the steak and the potato!

Now here is the recipe:

Stuffed Baked Potatoes

Prep: 1-1.25 hours

Bake: 20 min

3 large baking potatoes (1 lb each)

1/2 cup sliced green onions

1/2 cup butter, divided

1/2 cup sour cream

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 cup (4 oz) shredded cheddar cheese

1. Pierce potatoes with a fork. Bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour and 20 mins or until tender.

2. When cool enough to handle, cut potatoes in half lengthwise. Scoop out the pulp, leaving a thin shell. Place pulp in a large bowl and mash.

3. In a small skillet, saute onions in 1/4 cup butter until tender.  Stir in potato pulp along with sour cream, salt, and pepper. Fold in the cheese. (We added bacon at this point also. So if you want to also, while the potatoes are baking, fry up some bacon and cut it up.)

4. Spoon into potato shells.  Place on a baking sheet. Melt remaining butter; drizzle over the potatoes. Add additional cheese on top if you want it. (You want it!) Bake at 350 dgrees for 20-30 minutes or until heated through.

Valentine's Day Weekend

This year I decided I wanted to have a Valentine's Day Brunch for my girl friends. What is a Valentine's Day Brunch you ask? It is just an excuse for me to cook a lot of good food and have my friends over for brunch and mimosas. I planned a yummy menu and Eric was nice enough to help me prepare everything.

Here are a few pictures of the brunch.

Frosted Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes (with Eric's homemade butter cream icing)

More cupcakes, fruit salad, and a homemade sourcream coffee cake

Flowers for decoration

Double Cheese and Bacon Egg Biscuits, Sausage Frittata, and Spinach and Cheese Strata
All of these dishes turned out so good! My favorite was the Double Cheese and Bacon Egg Biscuits. They were so easy to make also using refrigerated biscuit dough. Click on the name of the dish to be taken to the recipe.

The Sausage Frittata

My good friend Tracy and her precious baby, Cate

Kate F., Kate J. Lauren H. and Lauren K.

This was the party for babies! Our super cute niece, Blair also made it to the party, along with her mom and dad,  Jessica and Jeff

Hanging out with Uncle Eric

The Valentine's Day Brunch was a success! It was so great to have my friends over to enjoy time together. We all have such busy lives and it is nice to have an excuse to get together. Thanks everyone for coming! Eric and I celebrated Valentine's Day that night, by ordering pizza from our favorite neighborhood Italian restaurant, Franki's. Eric had to go out of town on Monday, so we just enjoyed a relaxing evening at home with Ollie. He remembered me on Valentine's Day though and sent me a beautiful bouquet of tulips and lillies. I hope all of you spent Valentine's Day with the one you love!

A suprise winter break!

As everyone knows, Dallas experienced some of our coldest and iciest weather in quite a while last week. Last Monday night, we recieved a huge ice storm. I went to sleep like normal on Monday night and woke up to a yard and street covered in a thick sheet of ice. "Yes! Snow day!" was my first thought. Eric and I both confirmed our offices were closed and we bundled up because Ollie couldn't wait to get out and play. There is something about the ice and snow that just makes him extra crazy. Here is a picture of him taking his first lap around the front yard.

I settled in to watch a couple episodes of Glee, while Eric tended to work emails, but Ollie was dying to get out of the house. Eric still had work to do so, I bundled up and Ollie and I set off for the short walk to Casey and Michael's house. They have two dogs and Casey was baking cookies, so I thought this sounded like a perfect combination for us. Ollie was my reindeer and practically pulled me the whole way there.


We made the cross over Royal as carefully as we could and made it safely to the Erdmann's. How we made it the whole way without falling, I do not know. It was not until I went down their back steps that I fell flat on my butt. Ouch. Ollie, Rowdy, and Max took off playing an loved every minute of it. When we humans got cold, we went inside and made some snickerdoodles and quesadillas. Yum!

We also had a visitor during the ice storm. While my parents went to visit my brother and his family in Greenville, South Carolina for my nephew Mason's 4th birthday, we kept Chipper, our family's miniature schnauzer. He did not like the snow as much as Ollie, nor does he really like Ollie. The two got along pretty well though, which means Chipper tolerated Ollie.

With the temperature never getting above freezing, we were blessed with another day home from work on Wednesday, which meant more fun in the ice. Here is a picture of Ollie in his green puffy vest. (Ok, my green puffy vest....)

Thursday brought some relief from the ice and things kinda returned to normal. Eric and I both braved the roads and went into work for part of the day. Friday morning we woke up to this. SNOW!

Take this snow on top of the ice already out there and once again the city shut down. After making breakfast and having our coffee, we put on our warmest clothes and headed out into the six inches or so of snow. Ollie tore off down the street and found some neighbor dogs that were also outside playing.

We chatted with some neighbors and watched the dogs as they enjoyed themselves. Eric decided to get adventurous and take advantage of the icey snow and do some sliding. Please enjoy the following photos.

Our three and half days home during this ice storm were really nice. It was great to be able to eat breakfast together and just spend the days alternating between playing in the ice and snuggling (with Ollie) on the couch. Things accomplished during the snow storm: finished the entire first season of Glee, baked white chocolate butterscotch brownies, and made a delicious beef lentil soup. Saturday we were dying to get out of the house so we went to lunch at Kel's and then to Cavender's, where we both got new boots since we were planning on going to Billy Bob's that night. We stopped by Eric's sister's house and saw Baby Blair, who is getting so big! Saturday night, we ventured to Fort Worth to go to Joe T Garcia's and Billy Bob's for a Clay Walker concert to celebrate one of Eric's coworker's 30th birthday. I had never been to Joe T's before and it was great! I was super excited to see Clay Walker. His CD "Hypnotize the Moon" was one of my very first CDs ever. Sorry Erica for ruining "This Woman and This Man" for you!

We went to the Romo's for Super Bowl Sunday and took some yummy pizza puffs and peanut butter butterscotch cookies (both recipes are yummy and will definately be made multiple times more). It was nice to get together with friends and watch the game. So that was our snow vacation! It almost happened again on Tuesday night when Dallas got more ice and snow, but it was not as bad as last week's and we both we able to get to work and it is pretty much back to normal around here. I made a yummy Creamy Pork Sautee last night that I might be sharing soon! Eric agreed it was a keeper. Stay warm everyone! My toes haven't warmed up all day!

I now have a blog!

After much deliberation and frustration trying to figure out this blogging thing, I think I have gotten enough of a handle on it to give it a go. I have wanted to start a blog for a while now to chronicle Eric and I's adventures as we experience life together as a family. I am glad you are reading this now and I hope I can keep you somewhat entertained to come back!

What can you expect from Bases Loaded? I plan to blog about our every day fun, travel adventures, Ollie updates, and house projects, as well as my learning experiences in the kitchen. As most people reading this know, I was not blessed with any inherited cooking abilities. I followed my mother's foot steps and married a man who could cook. I am very fortunate for this or Eric and I would be eating Velveeta Shells & Cheese and Hot Pockets for most meals. Recently though, I have decided I will not let my lack of experience prevent me from trying to learn to cook. The last couple of months I have scoured the internet for the best recipes to try and have had a couple of successes that I can proudly put to my name. Eric still can dish out the fancy meals that are quite impressive (braised beef tips, veal marsala, just to name a few...), but I have learned that I am a pretty good baker and casserole maker! I love cooking blogs, so I plan on sharing the recipes that make it into the keep pile with ya'll!

So stayed tuned for more!!