School’s out for summer and I couldn’t be happier! We’re celebrating tonight with a pizza party, homemade vanilla ice cream sundaes and we’re watching “Dazed and Confused”, which is our last day of school tradition.

Hello, Summer! We are more than ready for YOU!

{Deena Martin as ‘Shavonne’, Christine Harnos as ‘Kaye’, and Michelle Burke as ‘Jodi’ in a publicity still from Dazed & Confused, 1993 found HERE}

I met Mr. Michie Friday afternoon with Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” blasting from my iPod. The wide smile on his face let me know just how happy he was!

It’s one of the prerequisites of summer in our house to watch Dazed & Confused at the end of every school year.So on Friday night, with pizza and a carpet picnic we set up the projector and screen and started summer off right!

School’s out for summer and it feels so good!

As Rod Stewart croons, “Tonight’s the night!”. We’re going on a date to see Solo: A Star Wars Story. And I can’t wait! Popcorn, holding hands with Mr. Michie, a tub of these heavenly chocolate covered honeycomb bites our movie theatre sells to share, all equals happiness to me!

Here’s to the weekend, long may it last!

{I snapped this image of the movie poster on my morning run. I love its old school look!}

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This has felt like a week where there has not been a chance to catch your breath. The news is inundated with sadness, from all over the world. I’m very much looking forward to this weekend, as chance to catch our breaths and to hide away in the cottage; baking, cooking, listening to music with candles lit and restoring our beings from the week that has been and the week that is to come.

Inspired by a recent blog post from the lovely Alexandra Stafford, I made her pickled vegetable recipe yesterday morning, to sprinkle over homemade pizza tonight. I don’t know why I haven’t thought about this combination before, as one of our favourite pizza joints in Copenhagen, Neighbourhood, has a pizza that is topped with pickled veggies and we simply adore it. I normally try and recreate things at home, but this one has slipped my mind to attempt. So, I am very excited about dinner tonight, followed by our movie date to see Blade Runner 2049.

On a side note, I have long been a reader and fan of Alex’s and have been making her mother’s peasant bread ever since she originally posted the recipe. It is a staple around these parts. It is super easy to make and incredibly delectable to eat. I make it not only for us, but also for my family when we visit them and quite often to give away to friends. I would highly recommend making a loaf for yourself or someone you love. It is great toasted, slathered with salted butter. It makes a divine grilled cheese, a perfect pair of book ends for a roast beef sandwich and we normally save the ends to make croutons with as toppings for soups or salads.

I hope that wherever you are, you find peace in this weekend and are able to find the beauty in the everyday, because it’s still there, even in this messy, messy world.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this weekend, we decided to try a new Date Night plan of action: “M&M Date Night”. The M&M equals “Movie and Menu”. We want to try and do this at least twice a month and simply put, we plan to create a menu around a movie.

We started off the first of many “M&M” date nights with a childhood favourite, a classic really: The Goonies. We decided to go with homemade pizza and ice cream since that is one of Chunk’s favourite things to eat! The party lights were on and candles were lit.

While I was busy making pizza dough (I used my go-to recipe from Annie’s Eats, although I have made a few tweaks of my own to it), Mr. Michie found a “Which Goonies Character Are You?” quiz and we took that. I got Mikey:

He got Sloth:

I’m not sure what that says about us? We went with Italian sausage, mushroom and feta as our pizza toppings. Although Mr. Michie was sans mushrooms and just ate a manly carnivore pizza. It totally hit the spot and for dessert, we made ice cream sundaes with caramel sauce, chopped pecans, marshmallow fluff, whipped cream and cherries all piled high. It was a really fun way to spend a date night and we plan to do many many more!

So, here’s to date night, long may it last! GOONIES, NEVER SAY DIE!!!!!

We had so much fun last night! We cut up veggies for a snack platter and made a fresh goat cheese dip to go alongside it. I saw an idea on Martha Stewart ages ago, about making Halloween cheeseburgers, so that is what we did last night, they were very cute and very tasty!

We even ate Halloween carrot cake! I laid everything out and Mr. Michie set up the projector and the screen. The first on the bill of our double feature was Hocus Pocus. I have always loved this movie, you just can’t go wrong with it!

Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy make excellent witches!

After a little intermission where we made cups of tea and sliced a piece of cake each, we watched our more “adult” feature, Fright Night.

I love the wonderful cheesiness of this movie, the formula it follows, I am not a horror movie watcher, but I can watch this, it is more funny then anything else and has just the right amount of “spook” factor for me.

The 80’s music is perfect. I am not embarrassed to say that after Mr. Michie made me watch this ages ago, I downloaded the soundtrack, you just can’t beat a good bit of 80’s music nostalgia!

 I love that once bitten, your hair seems to miraculously not only change color but also grow! In the end, the boy saves the girl, they kiss and we are left with his friend Evil, now turned vampire, laughing demonically, just in case they wanted to make a Fright Night 2….

It was cold here last night, the rain and wind poured down in sheets through most of the evening and into the early hours of the morning. It is our taste of Hurricane Sandy.

The rain has stopped for the moment today, but the skies are silvery gray, as I look out the window across the street I can see the bare branches of the trees waving furiously as if they alone are beckoning in the first of the month.

Today is a day to bundle up, drink copious amounts of tea and read a good book and I think I am going to do just that!

It is that time of year again and Halloween wouldn’t officially be Halloween for me, if I didn’t get to watch Charlie Brown. So last night, was a movie night in our household. The scene was set, the candles were lit and it was FUN!

Yesterday afternoon I made a big pot of chili, using a new recipe that I adapted a little. When the chili was almost ready, Mr. Michie went to work making his famous guacamole to go on top of it, while I set up the screen and projector.

I love this projector, it is old, it has an old smell to it, not displeasing, just old and slightly musty, it is from the early 60’s, I feel like I am in my own little episode of Mad Men, when we set it up to watch something on it.

We popped a few beers, plunked down on the couch and watched. It was wonderful, as always, you just can’t go wrong with Charlie Brown. We left the screen up last night, I am planning on watching Hocus Pocus this evening, with a steaming cup of apple cider and a bowl of fresh popped popcorn.

(Poster image found here)

I grew up watching “The Goonies” and somewhere far away, over an ocean and on a small island, Mr. Michie grew up watching this movie too!

What could be better than a Spielberg movie from the 80’s? A great cast? Pirates? A treasure hunt? Cyndi Lauper singing the theme tune?

It is one of our favorites and we both felt, it was the perfect movie to watch on our screen. So, we had a carpet picnic. Mr. Michie made dinner, I took care of the popcorn and the movie and we just vegged out.

It was a fun night, it has been awhile since we had a carpet picnic and we always love doing it, it reminds me of being little, my mom would do this for my sister and I on rainy Summer days, it always made your house feel more exciting, like you were going on a mini adventure!

Mr. Michie, popcorn, a quilt on the floor and “The Goonies” on the “big screen” all equals a great date night!

So, Mr. Michie made some fresh popcorn, we cozied up under quilts, as it has turned quite cool here and put on, “Meet Me in St. Louis”.

It looks even better projected onto our little screen! It was fun night. We laughed, we cried, who doesn’t shed a tear when Judy Garland thinks it is her last dance in St. Louis and Grandpa whisks her behind the tree only to pass her over to John. I always get tearful when I watch that part!

It was a wonderful movie and a wonderful night! Tonight, we are going to make chili dogs, eat popcorn and watch, “The Goonies”, because GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE!

“Dazed and Confused”, is how I feel some days, how I feel most mornings as I tumble into the shower and also the title of one of my favorite movies!

If you haven’t seen it, please go out and get it! It takes place over the course of one day in 1976, one very important day: THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! It follows the lives of high school students, as juniors become seniors and jr. high students become the new freshmen.

The cast includes among other greats the wonderful and delicious to look at, Mr. Matthew McConaughey! The music is perfect. The clothes are fantastic! The cars are cool!

It is the perfect movie to watch on the last day of school, on the beginning of summer, on the eve of freedom and that is exactly what we did!

It was drizzling last night, so we couldn’t go outside for movie night, we just changed our plans and put the screen up in the house instead. Rigged the projector up on the couch, on top of a box my mom had sent me a package in. These are the days I know my grandpa is smiling at me, because it was some kind of crazy ingenious concoction he would have rigged and it worked!

We closed the curtains, turned off the lights, got our rice krispy treats ready and ice cold coke-colas and sat down to enjoy!

It was perfect! We had so much fun, we are going to do it again tonight and as soon as we have nice weather we are planning a little movie night in our parking lot with our neighbors, we are already going back and forth on what the first movie to watch should be, we are leaning toward something old and classic! Stay away rain, because I am ready for a movie night under the stars!