Twilight Tea Time

Recently our hospital completed our new building and we moved into the most beautiful, state-of-the-art facility! Transition is always bitter-sweet as we combined three smaller floors into two large floors. My unit is the one that had to split up and although it was an easy choice for me as the babies have always had my heart, leaving my coworkers was difficult. =) Making new friends is scary, whether you are in elementary school or a grown adult. To my delight I have been received with open arms and I truly love the girls I work with. Here is a little shout out to all the wonderful nurses on the first floor, thank you for everything!!!
Cathleen and I hit it off pretty quickly and discovered we both shared some key passions....tea, baking, and shopping!!! It was a friendship made in heaven! Each night we bring baked treats and have tea time at 2a.m. followed by chatting and online shopping. It is something that I so look forward to and makes work exciting! The tradition quickly caught on and it is now a group of us that take turns bringing in treats! We have some of the best cookies, peanut-butter brownies (thank you Lisa!!!!), cakes, scones, etc.
Here is Cathleen and I over tea awhile back...

It was my turn for baking and Red Velvet cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting looked like a wonderful idea!

Cathleen is Irish (if the beautiful light eyes, freckles and red hair did not give it away!) and introduced me to Irish Breakfast Tea...so yummy, I am officially addicted!

We got a little carried away with mini cupcakes, caffeine highs, and a serious lack of sleep!!! Here are some of the crazy girls I work with!

I have some new recipes I want to try so I will be posting more about our Twilight Tea Time treats and sharing the recipes...that turn out! Stay tuned.

Scary, Yummy Juice!

So, I have a new respect for bloggers who do DIY projects, especially ones who do them with regularity. Granted I am new at this and I am a perfectionist, but I have been trying to complete a few DIYs and have hit problem after problem! Haha. This is much harder than I anticipated. In case any of you have the great idea of engraving Spanish glass, let me give you this word of caution...it is IMPOSSIBLE! =0) I love a good challenge and we will be having some beautiful DIY blog posts sooner or later...well probably later rather than soon! ;0)

Anyways, on to today's topic...JUICE! Devin came home the other day determined to add more fruits and veggies into his diet. I bought a primo juicer back in college and have never used it. We decided to pull it out and try some various combinations.

It worked like a dream and produced some of the yummiest juices I have ever had! If you closed your eyes you could almost believe you were sitting in the Caribbean! I have been getting bolder and bolder with my juicing components and have found you can add some very interesting veggies without them being detected (this has been wonderful practice for children some day!). The other day I was caught, however. I added some spinach juice to a beautiful orange juice mixture and it turned it...well for lack of a better term, cat-diarrhea brown! When Devin arrived home, he was less than impressed.

After some coaxing I was able to convince him to try it!

He was as pleasantly surprised as I was to find it tasted just as good as the other combinations!

He sucked it all down and just like that two servings of fruits and veggies down for the day! Here is what I put in this one! Leave out the spinach if you need a more aesthetically pleasing beverage.

• 1/2 a pineapple
• 6 carrots
• 2 oranges
• 1 apple
• 1 banana
• 2.5 cups strawberries, halved
• .75 of an English cucumber
• 2 mangoes
• 4 cups of spinach

I forgot to measure exactly how much this makes, but we each had two cups and then there was a very large pitcher left over! Remember that .75 of a cup is equal to one serving of fruits/veggies! Happy Juicing!