Friday, October 15, 2021

Friday Favorites

Hello and welcome to my Friday Favorites! Today I am linking up with Andrea!

1. If you read Monday's post you saw that we moved down to the Greenville/Spartanburg area of South Carolina. After we got here we decided to go downtown and walk around a bit. The downtown here seems really nice. The Reedy river flows through downtown and you can see a nice view of the Reedy river falls by way of the Liberty bridge.
2. Croissants have been something I've wanted to try baking for a while and I finally decided to give them a try! They are quite a process as you have lots of waiting. You have to let it rise multiple times, then once you add your butter block you have to close the butter block in, roll it out, fold, let rest in the fridge, and roll and fold two additional times. Then I let it rest overnight and cut, shape, and bake them. I did 6 croissants and 6 pain au chocolat. 

As I was cutting them out I knew they seemed awfully big, but I thought maybe I should just stick with what the recipe said. But sure enough they puffed up a lot in the oven and were just much larger than I would have liked. So in turn they didn't bake as well in the middle as they would have were they smaller. So I know for next time to just trust my own instinct and not the recipe! 

But even though they were not quite what they should have been, I was still pretty pleased with how they turned out! They were light and flakey and tasted so good!
3. My mom and I have been having a hard time trying to find a place to go for walks as our neighborhood is pretty small and all the hiking is about 45 minutes away. So one Sunday we drove to a small town nearby and walked around. We came across a frozen custard place and decided to give it a try! I got the black raspberry which was very good!
4. Last weekend my mom and I went downtown for the Fall for Greenville event. A bunch of local restaurants had booths set up where you could get different foods to try. Since we are new to the area we thought it would be a great way to try out some local restaurants. You had to buy tickets, and then the tickets could be redeemed for different food items. 

The portions seemed kind of small which was fine since my mom and I were sharing everything and we wanted to try several different places. We weren't really impressed with anything we got, but it was nice to go out and do something as we don't typically go to stuff like this.
We tried blackberry beef tips with whipped Yukon gold potatoes (beef was tender but you couldn't taste the blackberry at all. And the potatoes weren't bad.), sparkling blackberry lemonade (wasn't sparkling like it was supposed to be and you also couldn't taste blackberry or lemon at all which was disappointing.) We also tried a slice of pepperoni pizza (just ok), beignets, teriyaki chicken and rice, and birthday cake gelato (this was good!). 

As we were finishing up a burst of rain came out of nowhere and it just started pouring! There wasn't anywhere to go so everyone had to just stand there and get drenched! Not a great way to end the day!

5. In case you missed it, on Monday I shared a Currently post and then on Wednesday I shared my August Photo A Day pictures!

Hope you have a great weekend!
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDiaryOfNicoleAlicia

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

August 2021 Photo A Day

This is obviously a little bit behind but I wanted to get it posted anyways! The prompts for August of this year were gratitude, where each day you were free to pick something each day that you are grateful for. While I certainly have plenty to be thankful for, I find that trying to come up with 31 things that I can actually take pictures of tends to get a bit difficult and frivolous. And, it's just easier for me to have an actual list of prompts to work with. So I decided to pick a list of prompts from 2018 instead!
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDiaryOfNicoleAlicia

Monday, October 11, 2021

Currently

Hi! It's been a little while but there has been a lot going on and it's hard to know where to start again. Every time I've sat down to start writing again I seem to get stuck. I don't typically share too much personal type stuff on here so I have a hard time figuring out how to write those sorts of posts. We moved at the end of August and it's been really crazy. Fortunately things have finally started to settle down. 

We moved down to the Greenville/Spartanburg area of South Carolina. The house we had been renting in Virginia sold so we had to move. Housing prices for both buying and renting are so out of control that we had some trouble figuring out where we could find something affordable in an area that we wanted to live in and ultimately we decided on the Upstate area of South Carolina. 

So far we like the area. It reminds us a lot of Boise, Idaho. We are a little over an hour from Asheville, NC, and even closer to the Blue Ridge Mountains where we can go hiking. Like Boise (although maybe not so much anymore!), it seems to have kind of that small town feel while still having pretty much everything you could want for stores, restaurants, things to do, etc.

All that to say, I've finally had the time (and gotten into the right mindset) to start blogging again. I've got several old posts from earlier this summer to work on and share so I'll have a bit of catching up to do in terms of the content I'll be posting; but I want to get those older posts finished and posted! Thanks for reading and I'll get on with some current things I've been up to!

Working on - Blog posts! I've got several that I had started early in the summer that I never got around to posting so I've got to finish those up and share them.

Looking forward to - Some cooler temperatures. I guess basically just some consistent temperatures! It's been in the upper 70's and lower 80's during the day but has been getting down into the 50's and 60's at night. 

The leaves are just starting to change colors and I'm looking forward to when they near their peak so I can get out and take some pictures! 

Watching - Since fall shows have started up again we have been watching Dateline, The Great British Bake Off, The Voice, Tough as Nails, and Shark Tank.

Trying - I've been trying some new recipes. I've been trying to bake more complicated/newer recipes instead of always making the same things. I made croissants a while back and they turned out really well! Especially for my first time making them I was surprised at how well they turned out. There's a couple of things I'll need to change for next time (basically because I followed the recipe instead of trusting my own instinct!) but I'm glad I finally tried my hand at making them. 

We had a 5-pound bag of frozen raspberries that had partially thawed and then re-froze which in turn turned into a solid block of raspberries. I certainly wasn't going to get rid of it so I had to come up with some other things to make with it (We got them to use in smoothies and that wasn't going to work any more.) So I made some raspberry syrup as well as some raspberry curd that I used as a filling in a white almond cake. All turned out really well!

Reading - I just finished Lethal Intent by Cara C. Putman and it was pretty good! 

Needing - To start figuring out Christmas gifts for my family. I like to shop early and figuring out what to get everyone can be a bit tricky. 

Buying - I haven't really been buying anything, although there are quite a few things I need to buy. I have been on the search for several clothing items I would like to get, but so far haven't found what I've been looking for. I also have several makeup items I need to get but just haven't done so yet. Actually, I did just get this lipstick and I've really been liking it!

What have you been up to lately?
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDiaryOfNicoleAlicia

Monday, August 2, 2021

July 2021 Photo A Day

For the most part, the prompts for July weren't too hard; but there were a couple that kind of stumped me. Day 30 for example was 'my favorite word'. I don't have a favorite word! I happened to have a paper pad next to me that was a 'whimsical' theme so I just picked that. Also, 'fuel' was hard. How do I take a picture of that? So I just used a picture of my protein shake. Fuel for you body, right?

I'm glad I was able to get this month done early as I always seem to be running way behind! 
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDiaryOfNicoleAlicia