MIA and a new direction

Well.... where do I begin.... four months ago I gave birth to a BEAUTIFUL baby boy! You may have noticed I was smuggling a watermelon in the last post, so as you can imagine I've been busy ever since then. They say life changes when you have a baby and even though I believed them I wasn't really able to grasp HOW much it was going to change and how it changes instantly.

It has taken some getting used to but it has been amazing at the same time, what a beautiful experience. Liam is such a cutie pie - such a happy and healthy baby. Thank God!

This has been a humbling experience, a learning experience and an inspirational experience - I thought I had it all figured out before Liam was born and QUICKLY realized I hardly had it figured out, I am learning something new everyday now; how to take care of a baby, how to be a good Mom and how to be a better person. Inspirational... having Liam has inspired me in many ways that I can hardly put them all into words.

Having a baby for me has given me more clarity (actually I'm hardly "clear" about anything lately I think I'm always in a fog now LOL) and made me more focused. I am focused on providing the BEST life I can for Liam and one of the ways I'm going to do that is providing him with the best meals I can made with REAL food, of course he's only four months old and hasn't started on solids but when he does I'll be READY!

With all that being said I'm going to stop this blog.... and start a new blog that will just be about our culinary adventures not about everything since thing in my life, I think that will help me be FOCUSED on blogging and not feel pressured to have a blogable (LOL) life. Cooking has been a passion of mine for a long time and I can't wait to share that passion with you all.

Stay tuned to for the release of my new blog in the next few days. In the meantime here's a picture of the little cutie patootie.

Happy New Year: 2008 Year In Review

As we move ahead into 2009, I'm thinking back at what a great year we had in 2008. Full of so many events, many of them life changing. There were weddings and babies born. We moved to another state and we traveled traveled traveled. I would have to sum up 2008 as the year the Burtons traveled around the world. :) Of course there are more places we could have gone but for us it was a pretty exciting year of discovering new places. The biggest trip had to be Paris without a doubt, it was an amazing experience and reminded Fer and I how much we like to discover new places and expand our horizons. We can't wait to go back. Above is a collage with pictures from some of the highlights of the year. I also posted a photo album of the same on the side.

I had to show this little ornament at some point this holiday season. My parents gave it to us for Xmas and I think it's is so appropriate for us this year! We just hopped in the car and started traveling. I love it.

I'm not sure what 2009 has in store for us but I have a feeling it will be amazing whatever it is. A new year for me always has a good feeling of wiping your slate clean and starting fresh, a new plan a new way of doing things. So let's get this party called 2009 started!

Cheers! I wish you all a happy and healthy new YEAR!

Music City - Nashville, TN

A few weeks ago Fer and I set out on another trip this time to Nashville, TN. Now let me back up to why we went and why we chose Nashville. Fer has been working so hard lately and did such a GREAT job at the Ground Breaking events back in September in Savannah that his boss rewarded him/us with a weekend getaway of our choice... somewhere we could drive to. [first thoughts were Italy or France.] So we looked at the map and checked out where we could go within a 3 to 4 hour drive and picked Nashville, TN. Neither one of us has been there and thought it would be a fun place to visit.

I put on my travel agent hat and selected the Gaylord Opryland Hotel as our place to stay. This is a beautiful hotel right in the heart of the Grand Ole Opry area of Nashville. You honestly wouldn't even need a car while staying at the Gaylord because if you're interested in going to a show at the Grand Ole Opry it's right there and they will shuttle you back and forth, there's also a huge mall for shopping and within the hotel itself there's entertainment and several restaurants. It's really incredible.

The next thing I did was plan our itinerary for the trip, since we've been wanting to check out the Jack Daniel's Distillery I thought this would be a great time to do it since Lynchburg, TN would be on our way to Nashville (Lynchburg is 1 hour outside of Nashville). Once we got to Nashville we would enjoy our hotel, relax a little, have some good meals and check out the Country Music Hall of Fame. (we only had two days.)

Here's some pictures from the trip, to see all of them check out the photo album on the left hand side:

This is the entrance to the hotel once you pass the lobby, something else, huh.

this was also inside the hotel there are waterfalls all over there place and a river that runs thru a part of the hotel that you can take a boat ride on.

here's one of the restaurants inside the hotel

Jack Daniel's Distillery:

here's a statue of the man himself

Country Music Hall of Fame:

(the design of the outside is supposed to look like piano keys, cool.)
someday Fer will have one of those records with his name on it. :)
Downtown Nashville
good Bar-B-Que

We had a great time on this trip and truly appreciated every minute of it, I wouldn't say either of us were big country music fans but after this trip there are definitely a few more CDs by some country music artists on our shelves. Also (at least for me) didn't realize how much of an influence there is from the country music world on the music world in general.

If anyone is thinking about visiting Music City USA I highly recommend the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame and having some delicious Bar-B-Que at Jack's Bar-B-Que. Also check out a real Honky Tonk Bar while you're there, they are a lot of fun.

how was your weekend?

ours was great, it was so nice to relax and still get some things done. Amazing when that can happen.


This weekend we watched this:it's so good! I saw it in the theatre with Joanne but now have it on DVD and can watch it over and over again.

We also went here:

and bought some bookshelves. Now I have to put them together, whenever that happens I'll take some pictures of them and how they came together.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and have a great week to follow. I have SO MANY things I want to get done this week I need to make a list so I REMEMBER what it is...

made a little trip to Savannah

this past weekend Fer and I made our first trip to Savannah since becoming Georgians. From Atlanta it's four hours each way, but it wasn't to bad - didn't seem like four hours. It was a nice and calm drive. It was a fast weekend we as usual hit all our usual spots that we like to visit while we're there. It's so nice there (almost a second home for us, based on how many times we've been there.) and if you ever need a tour guide for a trip to Savannah let me know - or a suggested itinerary.

I think that's something I'll work on and post a weekend stay suggested itinerary what do you think?

this time I didn't take as many pictures as I usually do, but I know I'll get back there soon. This time we went to the Olde Pink House for LUNCH! They have always ONLY opened their doors for dinner but now we can enjoy their meals two times in one day if we'd like. The food there is DELICIOUS and I mean DELICIOUS, you cannot go to Savannah and not have a least one meal at the pink house.

Here's a picture of the Pink House it was taken on our trip back in December not this recent trip.

Here's some pictures from this trip:

this is the view from our room at the Mulberry Inn, we had the only room with a view of the square.
they were set up for a wedding at Forsyth Park, I never thought of that having a wedding there at the fountain, how nice.

side view

this time we explored a little deeper into Forsyth Park and we found this a life size chess game. There was so much activity in the park that day, the weather was beautiful and people where playing frisbee, football, playing catch with their dogs, kids in the playground it was really nice. I would say Forsyth Park is the Central Park of Savannah

a view from above of River Street.

walking along Bay Street

this was part of our Sunday morning brunch. Beignets, New Orleans style. YUM!

I think that's a sweet ending.

Nothin' But a Good Time!

Wednesday night Fer and I went to see Poison, Skid Row and Dokken in concert. It was awesome awesome AWESOME! We had such a good time it just transports to you to the good ole days when those were your favorite bands and you knew every song by heart.

Poison (my favorite) still sound great, LOOK great and put on an awesome show I just think they keep getting better. Can't wait to see them again next year.

Some more pics from the concert:

Second Thought

Just thought incase based on the pics in the last post you think it's only Fer moving that's not the case; we BOTH are {LOL} more later.

Weekend in Review

We've had a busy weekend and it's not over yet; I started out the weekend with cooking two separate Baked Rigatoni's (Martha Stewart recipe with a few changes by EM) for two different friends of mine one who had a baby a few months ago and the other (as seen in the previous post) just came home from the hospital with Twins. I try and do something like this for any of my friends who have babies just so they can worry about one less meal to put on the table.


Here's the finished product:

Then we went to a friends for a get together with their family and brought these:

That brings me to Sunday (today) where we are in the midst of this/these:

Wonder why? I'll tell you more later...

Mi Cantante

This picture didn't come out that great (blurry) but had to post it anyway, Mr. Fernando is so handsome.