No booze or Strippers... But still a lil crazy!

As promised, here is the video!!! My great friend Sarah created it from all of the pictures and videos taken from the trip; thanks girly!!!

I told you before that my bachelorette party was full of craziness and fun. Here’s a little insight as to what is going on in the video; hopefully it will make a little more sense after this haha!

To start out, the pictures on the couch (with the lamp) were taken out of sheer excitement of being in Cocoa Beach, and just because we wanted to take pictures and thought we needed better lighting hahaha; they pretty much just ended up being wacky photos…We then headed down to the beach where we searched for hatching sea turtles, but found none (sad face!), so, we did the next best thing... took more pictures!  The crazy pics at Ron Jon (and in the bathroom) were taken because we all competed in a scavenger hunt (Bri and I won!!!), and last, but not least, the awesome interpretive dancing (creatively done by Kelly and Megan) to the Lion King song, was done because they tied in the game “Who Knows the Bride the Best”! Kelly, in the end, was deemed the winner J A fun time was had by all, and we were all completely sober the whole entire time! When was the last time you heard of a completely sober Bachelorette Party?!? This goes to show you that tons of fun can be had, even when alcohol (and strippers) are not involved! Enjoy my friends!

  

24 more days till wedding bells!!!

Nood Chicks

Caught your attention with that title, didn’t I? While you all should know by now that my spelling isn’t that bad, you should also know that there aren’t any “nude chicks” in this post, just some chicken… and some noodles. Sowwy! Get ready for a long post folks, annnnd go!

While driving to my parent’s house for breakfast on Sunday, we ran across this gem sitting on the side of the road just begging to be taken. So, we did just that.

We cooked a boat load of food on it that afternoon. We tried to smoke everything, but ended up charring most of it hahaha; this is what we ended up with! Under all of the burnt looking stuff was some really good meat, the chicken being my favorite!

Since we had some chicken left over, I decided to make some chicken and noodles! I started with the rest of the chicken that I stuffed with a purple onion for some extra flavor; it smelled so good while cooking!

To make the broth, I put the chicken in a pot full of water (enough to almost cover it) and seasoned the snot out of it since I didn’t have any bouillon cubes. Next step, boil! I rotated the chicken in the water every-now-and-then just to get it all flavored and moist.

 Check out that backsplash! Whoooo it looks good!

After about an hour later, I took the chicken out and busted out my homemade noodles from this post!

I had to untangle this brain looking glob of noodles, which was equivalent to untangling your hair after driving with your windows down going 80mph on the highway. I know some of you girls can relate.  After that was all done, I plopped the noodles in the stock that I made to let them get a head start on cooking. There was still some flour stuck to the noodles which tends to thickens the stock; depending on your preference, you can add more broth if you’d like it to be more soupy, otherwise it will thicken into a gravy.

While that was cooking away, it was chicken pickin’ time! I tried to pick all that I could off of the carcass. We even broke the wishbone, and I totally lost… Dangit!

After picking all of the meat off, I threw it in with the noodles. I let that cook on a medium high heat to let the broth thicken a little more and get all of the flavors to blend. After about 10 minutes of that, I served it up!

It was the perfect meal for a fall night! Bonus: Sean loved it! Whoop whoop! I’m loving this fall weather; I’m thinking chili might be in our near future, yum J Oh and the best part? It made enough to have left overs!

Yay!

From this.... to that.

This weekend was full of transformations! Some great, some good and some nasty… There won’t be much commentary with this post, just some tid-bits here and there to explain the pictures. So, let’s begin; shall we?

We went from having a mess of a kitchen, where the cabinets became randomly placed “islands”, as Sean called them, and some ungrouted tile with a touch of protruding switches:

To having a put together kitchen! But just on one side… we still have the backsplash to complete on the other side, but none-the-less, part one of duex is done! Yippee!

Next up is my dad…. He went from standing upright and cooking some grub:

To hanging upside-down like a bat to straighten out his back hahaha

We went from just being Mike, Cali and Sean (with creepy looking eyes):

To Olive Oyl, Popeye and Brutus!

We also went from having a really cool tribal looking fish for a pumpkin:

To having a pile of moldy melted mush that we had to throw in the yard? Apparently Sean didn’t quite make it to the garbage can…

We went from having voluptuous ghosts:

To having some flatsy patsies whirling around...

And last, but not least, went from hanging out on the beach in our bathing suits (and Sarah doing a sweet headstand):

To freezing our butts off with the windows open!

It’s freakin’ fall y’all! You know its cold outside when Sean leaves the house with a sweatshirt on, and that’s exactly what he had on this morning! And I couldn’t be more excited about the cooler temps J  not only does it mean snuggle weather, but it means that the wedding is getting closer! 26 more days, eeek! I love this time of year!

Whack-O-Jack-O-Lantern

Halloween is officially one week away! So, the other night, Sean and I decided to put our pumpkin carving skills to good use. As you all know, the first step in creating a whack-o-jack-o-lantern is to go to the pumpkin patch and pick out the best looking gourd! Megan and I decided to make that trip together and we took her lil pup Brody (who makes my heart melt), and since he’s so darn cute, we decided to take some pumpkin patch pictures with the little man. Our photo opportunity pretty much consisted of me throwing him into a batch of pumpkins, him being scared, and then him glaring at me but looking innocent at the same time… sorta like this:

Uhhhh-dorable. Love that lil guy.

Anyhoo, Sean and I always like to do different designs than your typical triangle face jack-o-lantern. I found a cool image of a tribal looking fish and we decided that it was perfect for our pumpkin. As he was drawing out the pattern, I scooped the goo. Here’s what we were going for:

After I scooped out all of the slimy goodness, he got drawing the pattern on the pumpkin and I separated the seeds to bake! Yummm J  I put them in a strainer and rinsed them off with the sink sprayer and then tried to dry them as much as possible. After they were somewhat dry, I spread them on to a foil lined baking sheet and sprinkled the snot out of them with some seasoned salt and garlic. After shaking them a bit and sprinkling some more seasoning on them, I threw them into a 375* oven for about 25 minutes. I took them out and saw that the seasoning wasn’t sticking to well so I sprayed some olive oil spray over the seeds and shook them up again. The seasonings stuck so I put them in the oven to roast for just 5 more minutes. After the dinger went off, they came out looking perfect!

Meanwhile, outside, Sean was carving away…

After he was done with his strategic cuts, we plopped two tea lights in it and turned the lights off, it came out pretty cool! It’s sorta hard to tell exactly what it is (don’t tell Sean that, he’s very proud), but the fins and tail help to distinguish the design. So for the rest of the night, we hung out, ate some seeds and stared at our pretty cool looking punkin’! Happy Halloween peeps!

Cocoa or bust!

What an amazing weekend! Wonderful times were had, awesome gifts were given, dormant muscles were used (I’m so sore) and many laughs were expressed. I would show you a bunch of photos, but I don’t have any! L Sarah has them all and is compiling all of the hilarity into a video which should be a funny recap of our trip. I’m hoping I’ll be able to upload it to the blog so I could show you what an amazing time we had.

We started out Friday at my house where we exchanged some cute gifts. I gave the girls monogrammed towels (in hopes of showing my appreciation for them coming on the trip, I seriously valued everyone that went and those that had planned to go) and they had some super cute pink jackets made for all of us to wear, which definitely came in handy since it got so cool this weekend!

After packing the cars, we were off on our adventure. The first stop was about 10 minutes away when we stopped for dinner at Chic-Fil-A; what a good start, right?!? After dinner, we were back in the car with some old school tunes on, TLC, Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and so many more.

Having no idea where we were going on the trip, I was soon wondering where the destination was after we zipped right through Orlando; Daytona or Cocoa… Hmm… the answer soon became clear when we took the exit for Port Canaveral that we were headed to the one and only Cocoa Beach!!! I haven’t been there since I was in high school, I was so excited!

We got into our rooms at the Wakulla Suites and decided to take a walk on the beach to look for hatching sea turtles. After finding that there weren’t any nests nearby, we took some silly pictures and went back into the rooms to hit the sack since we had an early morning activity J  The next morning we lazily dragged our tired butts out of bed, shoved some Pop Tarts in our mouth, and we were off walking to our activity. One of my favorite parts of the whole trip was the fact that we walked everywhere we went. The weather was amazing so walking was actually really enjoyable! After getting a tad bit lost, we ended up at the Ron Jon Surf School!!! We went over all of the techniques on the beach with our awesome instructors Patrick and Larry, and before we knew it, it was time to catch some waves! We all caught at least one wave, had some major crashes, ingested and inhaled a lot of salt water, and got giddy whenever Patrick (Patty Cakes) helped us out haha, what a cutie patootie!

We then ate some lunch at Tropical Smoothie, where we ran into Patrick. Coincidence? Nope! We totally stalked his cute self (plus I really love Tropical Smoothie).  We got talking about things to do locally and even got his phone number! Which pretty much turned into us texting/flirting with him for the rest of the day and night, ha! And we found him on Facebook... We're such creepers...

After chowing down on some lunch (and chatting it up with Mr. Super-Hot-Surf Instructor) we headed to the beach to burn tan and relax. Side note: never trust Sarah to put on your sunscreen, you’ll find out why in the video… Anyhoo, after that, Megan, Sarah and I snuck off to the pool with the GoPro and took some videos of… nothing really, just us being goof balls. Then, it was off to the showers to get ready for dinner and shopping. We went to Cocoa Beach Surf Company and found a restaurant inside and decided to eat there. The Shark Pit was really good! We had some tasty food and some not so tasty shots haha, they were supposed to taste like candy corn, but I don’t think any of us tasted the slightest bit of our favorite Halloween treat…  but thanks anyway Brittany! We all appreciated the slight buzz from the sugary booze J

We then decided to bring out our competitive side and take part in the scavenger hunt that Jes created. I’m a big lover of scavenger hunts so I was very excited to see that there was one planned! We were all teamed up (I was with Briana J) and the game was on. We actually completed most of the tasks at Ron Jon since the store was so huge, and being girls, we definitely shopped in between!

Later we went back to the hotel, after our jaunt around town, to see who won. It was judged based on creativeness and humorousness, both of which were very apparent in the pictures and purchases.  I am proud to say that Briana and I won! I think it was our trip into the men’s bathroom to take a picture next to a urinal that truly showed our dedication and devoted desire to win. Once we were declared the winners we began to play another game, Who Knows the Bride the Best. We actually had a tie! It was between Kelly and Megan (Megan had some really good and hilarious answers) so in order to break the tie and come out with a winner, we had an impromptu interpretive dance off… to the Circle of Life song from the Lion King!

It was amazeballs. I would tell you that the dance will be on the video, but some tops came off…. Hahaha extra points for tatas! Kelly ended up winning due to her awesome jumps that reminded me of Stewart off of Mad TV. 

After laughing until we cried, we just hung out in the room, took some more silly pictures and called it a night. We were whooped from our excursions throughout the day and needed some rest. We got up the next day and hit the nearest McDonalds for some healthy breakfast and we were back on the road.

I had such an amazing time with my favorite girls. Big thanks to Jes for planning such an awesome trip, and a huge thanks to all the girls that went, and an even bigger sad face for all the girls that planned to go but couldn’t make it L  you were missed! An awesome trip was had by all; I totally would not be opposed to making this a yearly expedition, and I think all the girls would agree J

Oh, and I got this text on Saturday…

What a cute little lover boy I have, he even threw up the T. Swift heart with his hands. Atta boy  J

Big things are happening!

Today is a big day in our Dockerty household! To start off, both Sean and I leave on our Bachelor and Bachelorette party trips! Yippee! We’re both so excited to spend time with our favorite dudes and dudettes, all while celebrating our last few outings as single folks. I’ll dish about the trip after we get back J

Next on the list of things to do today involves signing some papers… to get our marriage license!!! The time has finally come and I literally have to keep pinching myself. Everyone keeps asking us if we’re nervous, to which we reply, not at all.

We love each other more than anything and are so excited to be sharing this journey with each other. And besides, if we’ve made it this far, we should be good until the end of time. We’ve been together for almost five years (we’re getting married on our 5^th anniversary!), we’ve got an awesome (almost completely remodeled) house, we manage and run two successful businesses, we’ve raised two super cute fur-kids and we’re some of the happiest and luckiest people alive. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Next step, we're off to the chapel venue haha!

Greek Balloaves (huh?)

I actually found time to cook last night! Although Sean was busy outside doing some projects, and I was running around getting stuff done for the wedding, I thought I’d whip something up for dinner while watching the RHONJ Reunion. I love brain numbing stupid shows… and it was just that.

Let’s start out with the fact that I. Love. Greek. Food. I’m obsessed. I’m a sucker for a good gyro, tzatziki, and feta, oh man… don’t even get me started. So, I mixed some simple ingredients together to make what were either jumbo meatballs, or super small meatloaves… I’m not entirely sure. But they were delish! Even though I totally forgot tzatziki at the store to have with it, dangit!

The main ingredients, and pretty much only ingredients, were:

1-1.5lbs of ground turkey

1 bag of spinach

1 container of feta (I totally failed to see how much it was exactly, maybe 8 oz?)

Spices (I used garlic and Montreal Steak seasoning)

I started out by throwing the whole bag of spinach in a microwave safe bowl and nuking it for a few minutes to make it wilt. Once that step was done, I just threw everything else in the bowl and mixed it all together! I tried mixing it with a fork… and then a spoon… until I soon found that mixing it with my hands was not only gross feeling, but the best option for getting it all blended.

After all of the ingredients were combined, I rolled them into ball/loaf things and plopped them on a non-stick pan. I then put them in the oven at 350* for about 30-35 minutes.

After I saw that the juices were running clear, I took them out of the oven. I served my Greek Balloaves (technical term) with spicy yellow rice, the only thing missing was tzatziki sauce (sad face!). Next time… count on it.

Enjoy folks!

No time to be domestic...

After looking at my blog, I’ve realized that I’m starting to stray away from my domestic journey. We’ve been so busy recently that I haven’t gotten a chance to do much in the kitchen or around the house. Which is probably why it’s such a mess… the kitchen is still torn apart due to putting up the backsplash (we still have yet to grout), I still have some stuff to put away from the bridal shower but I don’t have any room in our tiny kitchen, the wedding is coming up super fast and I have a ton of little stuff to do, and there are tumbleweeds of dog hair drifting across our floors. I swear we have two of the hairiest dogs on the planet, but we love them to pieces!

Anyhoo, we had a fun filled weekend (which is my excuse for why we have such a messy house) that I would love to recap for you! Saturday we went up to the Citrus County Speedway to watch the races with Phil’s family, we had some fun with his silly little nieces J

Then Sunday we got up super early, enjoyed some homemade biscuits and gravy, and then we were off to River Ranch to check out the property! Here are some pictures of what we got ourselves into:

Beautiful! The land goes on forever, as in we rode for 20 miles and still didn’t see half of it. Crazy! It was a fun day (except for getting completely lost and dehydrated) but we got to see what River Ranch was all about.

I forgot to mention the pain in the butt mishap that we had with deal with… We stopped to get some grub at Wendy’s Saturday night before the race and when we went to leave, we didn’t move. Phil’s truck was in drive, but it most certainly wasn’t driving! From there on out, every time that Phil had to put his truck in drive, Sean had to literally get under the truck and move the transmission cable and click it into drive... I secretly think he just likes taking off his shirt, besides the fact that he was one of the only ones that could fit under the truck and actually knew how to do it haha. Either way, we were still able to press on with our adventure.

We all had a great time and we’re so excited for future trips to RR. This week Sean and I are going to focus on getting the house all cleaned up and “normal” again, all while preparing for our awesome weekend ahead! This will be our motto next weekend:

Yessss J

Randomness and snot...

No domesticated bliss in this post, just some bragging, complaining and some request for prayers. Sounds depressing already, geez…

Let’s start with gramma. My Nana fell (again) and didn’t break anything! How she has managed to fall all of these times and not break one single bone is beyond me. And while she does seem to hurt herself each time (or so we think), I’m beginning to think that she actually likes rides in ambulances and hospital food. A little change of scenery is nice every once in a while, I guess. Every single time I visit her in the hospital she always seems to be in high spirits and loves the company and always compliments the food. I’m on to that woman… and I think she knows it… and while I would love to go see her in her home away from home, I’ve been crazy sick this past week. Sore throat, achy and super snotty, in both the attitude and nasal department. Sorry Sean! This was actually the text I sent him yesterday:

Stumpy = Sean hehehe

The amount of tissues I used yesterday was into the hundreds I think… my nose was like a faucet, and a free flowing one at that. But enough about snot, I seem to be getting better and hopefully my Nana is too. So, that’s where the prayers will come in handy, thanks peeps!

Now for the bragging portion… my fiancé is a pretty awesome and talented dude, and even more so since buying the company. He now has a ton of extra time on his hands, which makes for happy puppies, a happy girl and a happy house! Check out what I came home to on Monday!

Yeah buddy! We haven’t had a backsplash in our kitchen since about the first week we bought the house almost three years ago (crazy how time has flown by). My new obsession is Subway tile and after pricing it out at a big tile store, we later found it for half the price at Home Depot! Score! We found the cool looking listello accent tile (which is actually real metal!) at Lowes. Super cool and we both love it. Once we get the big part of the kitchen done, we’ll grout it and be done! I told Sean that stainless steel appliances would look awesome in our kitchen since the whites in the tile and appliances dont exactly match up, he just rolled his eyes and walked away, which is pretty typical of him when the lightbulb above my head goes off... Oh well! Stick around for more pics when it’s all finished J

Also, once again, we have an exciting weekend planned, yippee! Saturday we’re headed to Inverness to check out the races at Citrus Motor Speedway which should be a good time, and Sunday we’re headed to our property! I’m so excited; we just signed the papers for it a few weeks ago with our friends Mike and Nick. We have three acres of land in River Ranch. The awesome thing about it is that we technically own three acres, but we have access to over 60,000 to ride four wheelers, drive trucks and roam around the beautiful untouched land of Florida! See y’all soon!