Good Eats

I went to the doctor a few weeks ago to see if we could finally figure out why I get so many darn migraines. While I was there he did some blood work and found out that my cholesterol is insanely high! I was so scared because I wasn't really sure what it meant. He said it couldn't be from my diet, but suggested I come back in three months for more blood work. I decided that I was going to cut out sweets, cut back on red meat, and change my eating habits. Eddie and I have been making healthy meals and we had to come up with ways to make the food creative. This is a spin on chicken that we really enjoyed:

Grilled Tuscan Chicken with Rosemary:

3 pieces of boneless chicken

2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

1/4 cup olive oil

2 garlic cloves

coarse salt and fresh ground pepper

 Mix together and let marinade for at least 4 hours. Once Marinated, spray bottom of frying pan and cook chicken on medium heat for approximately 15-20 minutes (or to your liking).

Zucchini:

2 zucchinis 

coarse salt and fresh ground pepper

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder with parsley 

(California Style from McCormick)

1 teaspoon butter

olive oil

Spray bottom of frying pan. Chop up zucchini, sprinkle coarse salt and fresh ground pepper (to your liking), add 1/2 teaspoon of oregano, add 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder with parsley, add 1 teaspoon butter and sprinkle olive oil over zucchini. Mix well in frying pan and cook on medium heat for approximately 15 minutes. 

This is such an quick and easy meal and it's so yummy! 

Hope you enjoy it :)

GAGA, RAH, AH, AH!

I. LOVE. LADY. GAGA.

(obviously...)

I love her music, I love her voice, but most importantly I love how she dresses outrageous and doesn't care what anyone says. I knew I wanted to be something fun for Halloween so I thought, "What the heck? Why not be Lady GaGa!" I knew it was going to be hard to pull off since she dresses so crazy, so I started to look online for ideas. I saw Lady GaGa costumes, but I didn't want to have the same costume as anyone else so I decided to put together my own look. I bought a blonde wig, a  microphone, fingerless gloves, a leather leotard, and metallic leggings and I think it turned out pretty rad! We celebrated Halloween Saturday night at Carnival Court on The Strip. Since that was Eddie's parents last day here they got to come down to The Strip to see us dressed up:

The Fam

Kasie and Randy dressed up as vampires. They looked so hott freaky!! They went all out on their costumes in the blood department. They kept wanting more blood on their faces...it was kind of creepy!

Francesa dressed up as a fellow musician of mine, Katy Perry. She looked so cute and totally pulled it off!

Katy - GaGa - Vamper

I was really blown away by Eddie's dancing skills in the beginning of the night. This lady (obviously being a cougar for Halloween) kept pulling Ed out on the dance floor and of course he couldn't say no to a cougar.

Katy and GaGa on the microphone!

Kasie and Randy's mom, Linda, came with us too. What a great family photo, right?! I love this family...they are always SO much fun!

ARGGGHHH!! :)

I love to dance so I had a blast dancing all night as Lady GaGa.

Apparently I also like to sing because everytime a Lady GaGa song came on I got up on a chair and starting singing (into my fake microphone) to the whole entire bar. I got so into the songs and really thought I was Lady GaGa...maybe it was the wig...I don't know, but it sure was FUN!

Family Time

I have been extremely HOMESICK for the past few weeks so a visit from the in-laws is just what the doctor ordered! I love to cook dinner for Eddie's parents when they are in town so the first night when they arrived I was looking forward to cooking dinner for them. Since the weather has been chilly and chili is one of Eddie's favorite meals, I thought it would be the perfect meal to make! This is a picture of the chili as it cooked:

Once it was done we topped it off with sour cream, cheddar cheese and onions. For desert I made carrot cake cupcakes from scratch. Although I didn't eat them, I heard they were pretty tasty.

Throughout the week got to gamble, watch sports together, go to dinner (Ventano's - YUM!) and spend some quality time together! While Eddie's parents were here our three year old camera finally decided to die on us (hence why I don't have many pictures with them). Eddie's amazing parents bought us an early Christmas present...A NEW CAMERA!! We've been looking at cameras for a long time and we've always heard such good things about Canon, so we chose this one:

It takes awesome pictures and now we can take lots of pictures next time our families come to visit or next time we visit them. So far I'd say it's going to be our favorite Christmas gift! :)

Testing out our new camera:

Ed taking the first photo...I look like a hot mess, but it's the only picture I got with Ed's mom so please excuse the grossness!

Of course we had to test the camera out on Boo Bear.

Eddie being a goofball.

I'm really lucky that I have such great in-laws and I can't wait for them to come back in February!

This week was a lot of fun and full of much needed family time.

The Ditata Family ;)

The other weekend we went to Lake Las Vegas for a picnic with The Espejo Family. We laid on a blanket in the shade and watched people paddle board, played with Grace and watched a play rehearsal for Shakespeare.  The weather was perfect and we had strawberry/kiwi Capri Suns - doesn't get much better than that!

Grace is getting so big...SO FAST! She's making all these funny noises now and I love to play with her and hear what she has to tell me. :)

The Espejo Family

I love when I'm holding Grace and people come up to me and say, "Oh my gosh, she's gorgeous!" I like to pretend like she's mine so we decided we'd take a "family" picture too. This is our first photo as "The Ditata Family". ;)

The boys played catch while us girls chit-chatted and took pictures of Grace. How could you not have a fun day when this lil' chick is around?!

"S" is for success!

October 8th was Savannah's 23rd birthday and she had an "S" themed party. Since Halloween is right around the corner everyone had to come as something that started with an "S". I had a few ideas: Steelers Fan, Sarah Palin, Statue of Liberty, etc., I was talking to Courtney about how I wasn't sure about what I wanted to be  and she suggested we be "Spanish". I had two sombreros and a poncho at home, so I just had to get ginormous sunglasses at the Halloween store and a mustache. Once we got ready we decided to bring cigars to look legit:

Remember the game, The Sims? Well Eddie was a Sim. He created the green diamond to float over his head and made his t-shirt. He was the cutest Sim I've ever seen! :)

The Party was so much fun and it was so interesting to see some of the ideas that people came up with. Here's a list of a few celebrities that showed up to the party: Serena Williams, The Situation, Snooki, Stone Cold Steve Austin. Some other costumes were: Spanish, Sim, Savannah, Sperm, Scuba Diver, Skittles, Soldier, Slackers, Stewardess, Sailor, Satan. I've got some pretty creative friends!

Kasie (Savannah) - Courtney (Senor Santiago) - Me (Senor Sanchez) - Cassidi (Slacker) - Francesca (Scuba Diver) - MaryAnne (Skittles)

The Boys.

My Blues Traveler.

"You know I don't speak Spanish!"

 She's got Beiber Fever!

 Peace.

The "S" Party was a SucceSS!

Piece of Cake

Last weekend Eddie attended a job fair while I woke up early Saturday morning to do a 5k race for breast cancer with Kasie. Although my mom and dad did not have breast cancer they did win the battle with cancer so I'll do any type of race to support their cause, but for some reason this race was very emotional for me. I woke up, got ready and received messages from my family about how proud they were of me for doing the race and I just thought proud of me? I'm proud of my family of survivors. Although it was hot and the sun was beating down on me, running in the race was a piece of cake compared to what my parents went through. These cancer races are very important to me and I'm so happy I got to do another one!

Thanks for pushing me Kase! :)

On a lighter note, that afternoon we had plans to go tailgating for the UNLV vs. Reno game (even though we ALL knew who was going to win - Reno). Kasie, Bethany and I made "FUNR" shirts in hopes that we could talk smack to the UNR fans. At first I thought we were going to be rained out because it was pouring  on the way there, but the rain stayed away from the tailgate lot and let us have some fun!

The shirt came out cute, huh?!

Betho - Kase - Sav - Me - Cass

The Hubmister.

Ed playin' football with the guys.

Once we decided it was time to start the party we rounded up the troops and got everyone in on some flip cup and once again the girls dominated!

It begins with the boys having high hopes...

...but always ends in a girls victory!

Around 6:30pm the cops started kicking everyone out and telling everyone to go home. When the cop car started approaching our area Ed decided to pose with the cop car:

Apparently he's above the law.

We kept our distance.

After tailgating we went to PURE with some friends to dance and have some more fun. It's been awhile since Ed and I have gone out to a club with friends so it was fun to do some dancin' with my hubby!

The girls at Caesar's Palace.

Shots of buttery nipples - our drink of the night!

Frack - Frick

Basically, life is good! I'm very fortunate to have friends that push me to be a better person and to enjoy life. I must admit life is very challenging right now, but the people that I'm surrounded by everyday truly make it all worth while. Eddie and I have been having so much fun lately and have really been enjoying the simple pleasures in life and that is truly what it is all about!