What Happens at Meet the Teacher… Stays in Vegas

Okay, so I know this title is super cheesy, but I am combining two posts into one. This past week has dawned the beginning of yet another school year in the Gray household, but not before meet the teacher and a very fun girl’s weekend in Vegas (hence the title). So here we go!

Meet the teacher night is always a pretty hectic day, there is a lot to get ready in a short amount of time. For the most part I had my room ready to go with a few exceptions. At my school, our second and third grades loop, which means we keep our same kids from second to third grade. This is going to be my first year experiencing the loop, and so far it has been great. Usually, meet the teacher is a little nerve racking just meeting my new students and their parents. I pretty much had my same class from last year, so it was really good seeing all of my kiddos and their families. Here are a few pictures of my room.

My classroom library

Half of my class

The other half of my class.

My door

All and all it was a successful night!

So the day after meet the teacher night I went on a girls weekend to Las Vegas. I was pretty excited because I had never been to Vegas before. We stayed at Caesar’s, which is a huge hotel. Once we got in on Friday we just walked around on the Strip which was entertainment alone. We went to Sprinkles Cupcake and Ice Cream. The Sprinkles in Houston only serves cupcakes so we took advantage of the ice cream. The ice cream was pretty good and worth the try. If you are ever in the Dallas area it is the closest Sprinkles that has ice cream. On Saturday, we got up to make our 9:00 reservation at Mon Ami Gabi, which is at Paris Las Vegas. It was a recommendation given to us and it was a good one that I am passing along. It is definitely worth the try. I had the Salmon Eggs Benedict, the eggs were a little overdone, but the hollandaise sauce and salmon were amazing, and even though the eggs were slightly over done the meal was not at all horrible. After breakfast we began our day at the pool. The group that I was with were not big gamblers, so we were just fine with a couple of spins on the slots, but the main thing we knew we were going to want to do is sit by the pool all day. I would definitely recommend staying at Caesar’s. The staff is very friendly and the rooms and pools are out of this world. There is plenty to do just at Caesar’s. This of course is my first time in Vegas so I am sure the other hotels are just as amazing. If you are an avid pool goer I would definitely recommend getting a day bed, especially if you have a group. The day bed was $250 for the day. I know some of you are probably in shock just for a day bed, but if you have a group the split of the cost per person is not that bad, and trust me, it is totally worth it. It was in a really good location and the service was really good for as many people were around. I think they were a little backed up in the kitchen, but our waitress was really nice and she kept the drinks coming. That night we planned to go to the Brittney concert, and had dinner reservations at 6:00. We ate dinner at one of the restaurants at Caesar’s called Nobu, which is a Japanese restaurant. All of us love sushi and it was another recommendation from one of the girls co- workers. The had some different rolls and it was very good, and I thought it was also reasonably priced for Vegas. Dinner was cheaper than breakfast, but we also had drinks at breakfast, which is honestly what will get you in Vegas. I will say that being from Houston has made somewhat of a food snob (I mean our restaurant week lasts a month). If you know anything about Houstonians, know that they love their food and they love to eat out, so I have had my fair share of five star food. Nobu was definitely amazing and the food was absolutely five star worthy, but it isn’t anything that I couldn’t find at my favorite sushi restaurant here in Houston. Again, it is so worth the recommendation and a place I would recommend to others. To end our night we went to the Brittney concert, which was absolutely amazing. Now don’t get me wrong she is no Beyoncé, but for her being one of my favorite childhood pop stars she put on a really good show. She played all of her hits and then some, and kept me on my feet the whole time. She comes on about 15- 30 mins late and she plays for about an hour and a half, but the best thing is that she costume changes every three songs. After the concert we went back to the hotel because we had an early flight the next morning. Here are just a few pictures from the weekend.

Paris Las Vegas

Caesar’s

Bellagio

Breakfast at Mon Ami Gabi

The Britney concert

The girls at the concert

It was a wonderful weekend and my last quick trip before the school year. This past week went great. It was tiring, but great seeing all my students again. I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Labor Day weekend!

Love Always,

Amie

Our Camping Menu

So I was definitely supposed to have this post up a LONG time ago, but I have been a little out of commission this past couple of weeks. I dropped a freaking 4 lbs weight on my toe about two weeks ago at my barre class, so I have been dealing with that, working at the museum, and this past weekend attended a wonderful wedding, but there should be no excuses. So, this post is going to be about the food we made and ate during our camping trip that we took at the beginning of the month. Now of course, this isn’t really true camping, we were not in a tent. We were in cabins and one of the awesome things about the cabins is they had a kitchen, so we were able to buy groceries before getting there and save a little money at the same time. As you all know I am new at blogging so I don’t have pictures of any the recipes I am talking about, but feel free to ask me any questions you have at all about the recipes (I promise I will get better at this)!

For breakfast, we kept it fairly simple, all the meals we had could be prepared in about 30 minutes or less. This was great because it allowed us to have a good breakfast and start our day early (it also allowed me to sleep in a little bit, which is a favorite thing of mine). The first day we did ham and cheese croissants, which consisted of three ingredients, ham, cheese, and croissants. We get our croissants from the bakery at our grocery store, we are a Kroger and HEB family, and we do the deli ham sliced at about a 1 and the Kraft American cheese singles. We cut the croissants and assemble them with the ham on one side and cheese on the other, and place them in the broiler. You do not have to put the croissant together until after it comes out of the broiler, but I will say that you will need to watch the croissant since the broiler is so hot. We usually cook them until we can see that the cheese is melted. I love this breakfast because the options are endless. The next day was the day we went hiking so we just ate cereal and fruit. On the day before we left we had sausage and egg breakfast tacos, another easy favorite of ours. Loren and I stumbled upon a little jewel a couple of months ago, it is in the refrigerated section and it is called Jimmy Dean Turkey Sausage Crumbles. The wonderful thing about them is they are already cooked, so for the tacos you can just throw them in the skillet and add the egg. We also had fruit everyday with our breakfast

For lunch, we bought sandwich stuff, so we had that for lunch each day. Again, something easy and we could take it down to the river with us.

For dinner, we had meals each night except our last night there. On the first night we were there we had fish tacos, which was perfect because they are so easy to prepare. We buy tilapia and cook it in a skillet with oil. My Dad found this really great slaw mixture to put on top of it. Dole makes it and it is the Chopped Asian Blend, and while it may not be exactly what you find at your local Mexican food restaurant, it sure does do the trick. To top off our tacos we slice avocado and make a chipotle ranch sauce to go on top. The chipotle ranch sauce is really easy to make, and you only need two ingredients, chipotle peppers and ranch dressing. You can get canned chipotle peppers at your grocery store; we buy the brand La Costeña. You only need about three to four peppers, and you need to make sure you open them up and clean the seeds out of the peppers; you can also chop the peppers into smaller pieces, which will be easier to mix when the time comes. After you clean and chop the peppers, put them into a blender or food processor and add the ranch dressing (we used hidden valley). Now I did not measure out exactly how much dressing i put in there, but I would start with at least a cup. The great thing about this sauce is that you can adjust the recipe to fit your family or crowd that you are cooking for. To garnish the tacos off we had slices of avocado to put on top. The next night we had steak, which was delicious! My Dad and Loren got ribeyes and we had baked sweet potatoes and a salad to go with it. Loren and my Dad cooked the steaks on the grill and we backed the potatoes in the oven; a fairly easy meal, but time consuming. For the last night, we had my absolute favorite meal, which is chicken spaghetti. My Dad makes the best chicken spaghetti and I so happen to have his recipe. I took a picture so I am going to go ahead and just upload the picture for everyone. Now, my dad does not put the pimento or peas in the recipe, but feel free to customize to fit the likes of your family.

Chicken Spaghetti Recipe

For dessert, I made blondie brownies that are like the blondie brownies from Applebee’s. They were super simple to make, and are the perfect dessert to have since they are so easy to serve and keep fresh for the week. I made an executive change to put white chocolate chips instead of chocolate chips, which the recipe calls for. Click on the link to go to the original post. The other dessert we had was strawberry shortcake. I love strawberries, especially paired with pound cake and cool whip. We added blueberries too, we were still living it up from the 4th of July.

So there you have it, our camping menu. Remember that this was my first food post, so it will only get better from here! Again, if you have any questions about any of the food don’t hesitate to ask.

Love always,

Amie