One Year

One year ago...

The Marriage of Arianne Winston & Jeff Lott from Anna Lisa Stone on Vimeo.


...I married my best friend and the love of my life.  It's been a crazy year, filled with travels, new adventures, and a whole lotta growth, but it's been a fantastic journey so far!  So to celebrate our first year of marriage, Jeff got me flowers!

Some wonderful family members treated us to dinner as an anniversary gift as well, so we got to eat at a fancy local restaurant.  The food was great!

beef, onion, and goat cheese sliders

foie gras and brioche

glazed bacon - which was fantastic with the foie gras and the brioche!

Jeff's NY strip steak

green beans with toasted almonds

my filet mignon

The restaurant was pretty dark, so the pictures aren't as clear as I'd like.  But the food was tasty, and my date was pretty awesome too :)

my handsome date :)

And for fun, we got all dressed up in our wedding clothes to recreate one of our favorite wedding pictures.  Here's the original (photo taken by Matt Thompson):

...and here's this year's photo:

Sadly, no adorable nephew in the background :(  But not too shabby for a self timer!

All in all, it was a lovely anniversary.  On to year two!

Dumplings!!!

Tonight, my parents and younger sister came over to hang out and make dumplings from scratch!  I love dumplings, so this was pretty much the perfect meal for me.  They brought over the pork and vegetable filling that my dad and Helena made earlier this week when they were doing a test run.  Helena made the dough - using flour, salt, and water.  After waiting half an hour for the dough to rise, we cut it into little pieces and pressed them into circles.

Then Helena put a little filling in, sealed the edges, and formed the dumplings into crescent moon shapes.

We used a "triple boil" method - involving added very cold water to the boiling water (after putting the dumplings in) 3 times, and then put them in a frying pan to crisp up the bottoms.

Then it was time to dig in!  We made maybe 30-40 dumplings in smaller batches of 5 or 6 at a time, and they were delicious!

The process of making the dumplings takes a long time, although it is easier with a bunch of people helping, and not very difficult.  It was totally worth it!