What's New With Us

Yesterday, Justin unfortunately had to get a root canal. Thankfully, it went quite quickly and painless and his tooth will now be painless! Fortunately, the rest of our week is much more exciting.

Last year I convinced my mom to go wild and drastically change her hair.

Before

After

Ever since then I have been dying to do something different with my hair... cut it short, try a new color, or even a new style. However, I didn't want to try something and end up hating it and being stuck with it like that for our wedding.

Justin and I desperately needed haircuts and our friends referred us to a local salon. Today we went and I decided to be bold and try something new. I now have blunt bangs and lots of shorter layers!

We checked the mail today and this had arrived...our honeymoon album!

We had so much fun looking through these pictures together and wish we could go back right now!

Today Justin took me to a Manderfield's, a local bakery, to pick up some sweets to take to our friends. I also got my favorite treat while we were there :)

The most exciting news of the weekend is that the Olympics start tonight. If you did not grow up in the Cork or Mink household, you do not know how exciting the Olympics are for us! It makes me wish I were a kid again making torches to carry on our bikes, eating the local cuisine, learning the country's trivia, and of course participating in our own backyard Olympic games. Justin and I will definitely be watching as much as we can. In fact we will be joining some friends here shortly to kick it all off with the opening ceremonies.

One last thing...look how cute my husband and Peyton are :)

(this was a pre-haircut picture...I promise he is not that shaggy usually)

Christmas in July

Merry Christmas! Christmas came early this year. We bought each other tickets to...

December 23rd at Lambeau Field

We may possibly be jumped, beaten, and mugged in our Titans jerseys (if you will be able to see them under all our coats) but we couldn't live in Wisconsin without making it to a game... and why not see our favorite team at the same time?

Hey Good Lookin'

Now that I have a lot more time on my hands, much to Justin's liking I have started experimenting a little more with cooking and baking. We have found a lot of new favorites, but I have to share this one. I actually discovered this one last year while at home, but Justin had never tried it so it was new for him. Be warned... it is addicting! :)

Gooey Nutella Banana Bread

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 1/4 cups mashed ripe banana

1/3 cup skim milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 heaping cup Nutella

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8x4 loaf pan with nonstick spray. Mash the bananas.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda & salt.

In a separate large bowl, beat sugar and butter with an electric mixer at medium speed until blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add banana, milk & vanilla. Beat until blended. Add flour mixture, beat at low speed just until flour is incorporated.

Spoon Nutella into a small dish and soften in the microwave for about 15 seconds. Add 1 cup of the banana bread batter to the Nutella and stir until blended well. Spoon Nutella batter alternately with plain banana bread batter into the prepared pan. Swirl betters together with a knife.

Bake 50 to 60 minutes. It will seem a little undercooked but that's what makes it good. Cool for at least 15 minutes in the pan, and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Summer Highlights

Jamaica! A few of our favorite memories are the steak and lobster dinner on the beach at sunset..perfection, snorkeling with sting rays, and swimming with the dolphins. 

 

We even got to do this...

...we just didn't pay $109 for the picture to prove it.

If you know anything about us then you know that two of our favorite things are mexican food and ice cream. We were very disappointed when we got to Wisconsin and discovered that our favorite mexican restaurant that was less than a mile from our home had closed! However, we have found a couple new great places. We also found a candy store/bakery that makes awesome homemade ice cream and sells it for only 95 cents a cone! We go here at least once a week.

We both enjoy anything Harry Potter...we even went to the WWHP at Universal Studios for spring break a couple years ago. Justin came up with the idea of HP weekend. Over a few weekends we have watched every movie (except the third..not a fan) and mastered the art of butterbeer. Yum!

4th of July is one of the greatest holidays of the year, in my opinion. Celebrating without tons of family and friends was a big change, but still fun. We even put leftover wedding sparklers to good use!

Mr. and Mrs.

We are married! All this means is there were lots of wedding festivities this spring. It has been a fun few months and we really appreciate all that our friends and family have done for us, but we are so glad it is all over now and we can just enjoy the memories! :) June 1 was the most fun day of our lives and we were so happy to celebrate our wedding with our closest family and friends. 

We had a fabulous time relaxing in Jamaica on our honeymoon, but are glad to be settling into life in Wisconsin. Our first month married has been spent doing a lot of traveling, packing, moving, unpacking, shopping, cleaning, cooking, organizing, exercising, paperwork, and job hunting (which is proving to be a difficult task with no openings to apply for). I am just going to enjoy this time while I don't have to work and know that God will lead me to the job he wants me to be in...whether that be in a high school or not.