Happy Halloween!

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Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy and safe Halloween! More to come later! We’re off to go fight crime! (photo by Shirley!)

The Chew Taping

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Last month, on September 29, I woke up at the insane hour of 5:30 to attend a taping of the new ABC show, The Chew. It was Rosh Hashanah so Sienna was off from school so I had my dad sleep over the night before since I had to leave so early! The Chew is a talk show centering around food with 5 co-hosts. It replaces the long running, now canceled All My Children so it already has that running against it. I have a friend who hopes the new show will be canceled so they could bring back AMC. I think she ignored me when I said even if they cancel The Chew, they aren’t going to bring back AMC, at least on tv! Anyway, the taping was at 7:30 allllll the way up by Lincoln Center. I went with Brenda, who told me about the tickets, and Joy. I won’t lie to you, I was hoping for some good swag or at least some good food to taste! Got neither (unless you consider a Mickey Mouse apron good swag!)

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A self portrait

The taping was really like any other show taping. There’s a comedian there to get you in a good mood and to tell you when to clap. Paula Deen was on the show and although she is not my favorite chef, it was fun to see her. She really is like how she is on TV! Very personable. They did actual cooking on the show and it was such torture to smell all the goodness! The taping ended around 10:30 and there were seats available for the 2nd taping (there are 2 tapings on Thursdays). No way! We are going to go eat! I am actually surprised Brenda was able to keep her eyes open, having come home at 1 am the night before. No sympathy as she was at the Radiohead show at Roseland!
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My bad photo of Paula Deen
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Brenda dealing with work issues
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All done!

I had wrote in my Facebook status that I was going to the taping and my friend told me to say hello to Clinton Kelly. She is good friends with him and they went to high school together. I actually had the chance as he was in the audience talking with someone. Nice guy! Michael Symon also seemed like a personable guy as I noticed he was chatting with several audience members. The others, well, they really didn’t even turn our way. Not a criticism, just an observation! And as a coincidence, Yves had videotaped Carla Hall the day before as she was a former Girl Scout!

Now, on to lunch! We decided to go to Shopsin’s! It’s been so long.
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I ordered poutine (exact name on their menu, I don’t remember!) MMMMMMM!
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Brenda got a pancake sandwich with bacon and eggs. They don’t skimp on bacon!
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I think Joy got some sort of baked potato with fresh ricotta?

Of course, I had to stop off at Economy Candy! All in all a nice day!

First Day of School

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I know that Sienna’s first day of school was over a month ago and things have been going really well so didn’t want to jinx it by posting too early. She actually says she likes school!! Practically everyday that we would walk across the street to nursery school last semester, she would tell me she doesn’t like school. From practically the first day of this new school, she would wake me up in the morning by asking if we can go to school now. At 6:30 in the morning. The first few days there were issues with walking the 3 blocks home, where she wouldn’t want to walk home. Things are better now, thank goodness. Don’t know what that was all about. And while lately, she hasn’t been waking me up to go to school, she is still happy to go!
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It is now part of the routine to walk over the bump everyday going to and from school. The bump is from the Hurricane Irene back in late August when a tree fell over and uprooted the sidewalk. Almost 2 months later and it still hasn’t been fixed!

She instantly became friends with a girl we had met when we were at the school to register, back in June. Her name is Emma. She is also friends with a boy named Vinny and usually the 3 of them play in the playground if it is nice after school (or even when it’s not so nice out!) and I get to hang out with the moms for some adult talk!
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Playing with chalk on a sunny day
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Playing Simon Says, it had just stopped raining! Do you see Vinny’s butt all wet? They had just finished running around the whole playground and Vinny was sitting on the play areas!

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A self portrait!

I’m happy that she has a chance to run and play after school. It helps the time go by since she gets out of school so early. I have a bunch of craft kits in the arsenal to pull out for the winter, when it’s too cold for the playground. I hope that they will be adequate substitutes!

10 years

On Friday, Yves and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary! 10 years ago on Friday, we went to Vegas to get married and a handful of our friends and family joined us. We had planned it earlier that year as October is my favorite month. It was nice to get so many well wishes on my Facebook page. Our friend, Rob, who went to Vegas with us, reminded us of how his room in the Tropicana hotel had mirrors on the ceiling! LOL! He also wanted to make note that he did not request the mirrors! HA! Yeah, ok! 🙂 Anyway, we celebrated on Friday by going to Morton’s Steakhouse. I knew of the place, having bought a gift card for friends Bill and Laura, who were moving from New York to Chicago a few years ago (all the cdmomers chipped in!). Our friend, Jana, highly recommended the place so we said, why not?

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Here’s the photo they took of us. The service was wonderful and everyone wished us a happy anniversary. The food was so good! I am still full from the dinner on Friday! We opted for the steak and seafood special. They started us off with warm onion bread. I could have easily eaten the whole thing! But I only cut off 2 pieces! I ordered the chopped salad and Yves got the caesar. I love that salad! It was so delicious! I’m going to have to attempt to make that at home. I got the Shrimp Alexander with my filet mignon. The shrimp was jumbo, lightly breaded with a butter wine sauce. MMMM. I also ordered the brussel sprouts sauteed in bacon and shallots! Yves got the lump crab cake with his filet and the grilled asparagus with balsamic glaze. I was already half way full when our entrees came! I was only able to eat half of my warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream! It was so good but I felt like I was going to burst! Yves got carrot cake. It was very light and fresh but it had cloves in it, something that Yves doesn’t like. If it wasn’t for that, it would be the perfect carrot cake! He ended up taking home the carrot cake. It’s too bad I couldn’t take the warm chocolate cake home!
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My chopped salad, you can see the onion bread in the back!
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Sorry for the bad vegetable photos but I just wanted to make sure I document them. We ended up taking them home too.
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Afterwards we had originally thought of going to check out a movie. Going to the movies is not something we do often since Yves has unofficially banned going to movies. He ALWAYS seems to get stuck sitting by the noise makers! But since it was a special occasion, we were thinking of giving it a go. Well, we were so stuffed from dinner that sitting down for a movie did not appeal to us. We had to walk it off! So we decided to walk down to the Brooklyn Promenade. It was very nice! We haven’t been down there in awhile. We also took a few night shots, which we used to love doing!
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All in all, a very nice evening! Oh, here is the card I made for Yves too! Very simple.
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