Beginning the New Year

Hey y'all! We are now 5 days into 2017, and it has already had a great start!

2016 wasn't the best year, but at least it ended well! Nathan's parents were in town, and when they are here, we always have a blast! New Years Eve day was full of fun at the Museum of Appalachia. Although it was a chilly day, it was perfect for walking around taking pictures! The entire area was abandoned due to the cold weather, so we had the place all to ourselves.

After spending all afternoon at the museum, Cancun's Mexican restaurant was our choice for dinner. Yum! We had our margaritas and delicious food.
To stay awake till midnight, we played games like Exploding Kittens and Phase 10!
Midnight finally arrived, and we brought in 2017 together!

January 1st was spent relaxing before getting ready to go to Breakout Knoxville! We chose the Casino breakout game, and broke out with 6 minutes left to spare! We were teamed up with another family of four, so it helped having the extra brains! Our success picture ended up sticking the image on my face, but oh well! Hehe :)

January 2nd, the group of us went to the Knoxville Gun Range to shoot some targets! We had fun, and all did a good job! I look forward to going back!

This morning was chilly, which made it perfect to bake some delicious pumpkin muffins! I haven't baked in a long while, it was wonderful to finally make these again! The recipe comes from Skinny Mom blog - Skinny Pumpkin Spice Muffins

I doubled the recipe and used to boxes of cake mix, 30 ounces of pumpkin, and 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce. 

My KitchenAid mixer makes baking a million times easier!

Today we actually had our first flurries of 2017! I can't wait to get some real snow though! :)

I hope everyone had a fantastic New Years celebration! 2017 is going to be amazing! 

Question Time!

* How did you bring in the New Year?

* What are your goals for 2017?

* What are you most looking forward to in 2017?

Some Fun Around Town

Happy Wednesday! We are getting closer to Fri-yay! Plus, we're coming up to a 3 day weekend! :)

Although life has been crazy busy, but I have been able to check out a couple new places around town lately!

Nama:

Recently, my friend Jamie took me downtown to have sushi for dinner at Nama! It was my first experience at Nama. The food was spectacular, but I learned not to order the apple sake ever again. Something about the sake was way off, but the FOOD was on point!

Instead we each ordered a glass of wine, split three appetizers and then split a soy joy roll and sesame beef. 

For our appetizers, we split the pork dumplings, cali roll (sweet crab, avocado and cucumber), and spring rolls.

Pork dumplings, cali roll, and spring rolls

Soy Joy

For the main course, we had the Soy Joy roll and sesame beef dish. The soy joy roll is spicy tuna, seared albacore, cucumber, tempura crunchies wrapped in soy paper, topped with fantasy sauce, eel sauce, wasabi mayo and scallions.

Jamie and I had such a fun time, and I will definitely go back for the incredible food! 

Breakout:

This past Saturday, we met up with our friends, Don & Dora, at Calhoun's for dinner, and then went to a place called "Breakout." 

Breakout is an extremely awesome, unique, and fun experience. Basically, you and your friends (family, coworkers, etc.) are in a certain themed escape room, where you have to try to solve riddles, puzzles, and more, to break out of the room in less than an hour. 

We did the Museum Heist! 

It was our first time trying it out and we all did really good as a team, but if we had just a little bit more time, I think we would have escaped! We were close! 

I was impressed at the level of riddles, codes, etc. that you had to figure out to find more clues. 

I highly recommend going to Breakout in Knoxville!

I absolutely had a blast and can't wait to go try out the other escape rooms!!

Check it out here - Breakout Knoxville 

QUESTION TIME:

* Do you like sushi?

* What is your favorite thing to do or place to go after the workday?

* Have you tried anything like "Breakout?"