Merry Christmas to You!

Here's to a wonderful Christmas for you and your family. Happy Ho Ho Holidays to all, and to all a good night!

Gratitude

We hope you are having a wonderful day with family and friends. Here are a few things we're thankful for this year, in no particular order:

• Our families! Near or far, they are with us always. When we do have the chance to spend time in person, we are reminded of why they are our favorite people in the universe.
• Our friends! We feel lucky every time we see our friends. They are smart and funny and interesting and talented and quirky and lively. And most of them stay up far later than us on weeknights, so they are obviously superheroes.
• Our MAN vs. GEORGE DESIGN supporters! As we approach the MvG 3rd anniversary (coming up in January), we reflect on all the businesses that took a chance getting their logos and business cards designed by a new company, all the friends and strangers (and strangers who became friends) who bought greeting cards and prints from us, all the happy couples who came to us looking for a bold and modern spin on their save the dates and wedding invitations. With your support, our little business has grown each year, and you can now find our cards in 32 stores around the country! (Check out our retail map.)
• Facebook! No, seriously. FB made it possible for us to reconnect with friends from the recent and distant past (all the way back to T's best friends from elementary school in Cincinnati!). Through the magic of Facebook, we found a loving home for George this year, when T's cat allergy went haywire. It takes a family with a very big heart to take in a 12-year-old lady cat. Considering her new family is in Michigan, and the man of the house is a friend from high school whom T hasn't seen since the mid-1990s, and the lady of the house cooks organic whole foods for George each day, and the daughter of the house has turned George into a cuddling machine (anybody who met George before would find this fact especially impressive)...you can see how lucky we feel to have these amazing people in our lives. So, thanks, Facebook, for reconnecting us and providing a tool for us to get George updates any time we need a little feline photo fix. (And even bigger thanks, D and J and K, for loving and caring for our crazy little cat...)   
• The Internet! Yes, our final shout-out goes out to the tubes and wires that comprise Ye Olde Interwebz. Without it, T would probably never have discovered this recipe. Which is our new favorite holiday tradition. As of this morning. And continuing on through the evening. And probably tomorrow. Good god, y'all.
• Each other! Every day, we look at each other and thank our lucky stars we found our way to each other in this big world of people. Thank you, universe!

Be safe and happy this weekend, all!

xo,
T and R

Happy New Year!

With 2011 just around the corner, we'd like to take a moment to thank our friends and families for making our world a better place! We may not write or call (or blog) as often as we'd like, but we sure do think about you a lot.

2010 has been a wonderful year, on balance. The things in the negative column (we seem to lose a major appliance each winter...this year it was the washing machine; we also had to replace our roof and do some structural repairs to the attic this summer) were pretty trivial, in the grand scheme of things. And they were far outweighed by the things in the positive column, such as...

• Another beautiful Christmas, a fun Thanksgiving, and an eggcellent Easter with family in Chicago
• Celebrating the fireworks holidays with friends in Wisconsin
• Meeting a phenomenally talented group of artisans through Etsy, the Craftacular shows, and the One of a Kind Show
• Relaxing vacations to Puerto Vallarta (late winter) and Seattle + Vancouver (fall)
• Great concerts thanks to the the Pabst / Riverside / Turner Hall Ballroom empire
• Cinematic enrichment compliments of the ever-intriguing Milwaukee Film Festival
• Dozens of lazy Sunday morning blueberry pancake breakfasts

...and many other moments, small and large, that made this year special.

We hope you have a safe and happy New Year's Eve celebration and that 2011 is full of wonder and joy!

Cheers from Milwaukee,
T & R

[Image credit: MAN vs. GEORGE DESIGN]

On the Road - An Anniversary Tradition (2010 Edition)

Since our wedding anniversary is just over a week after the anniversary of when we met (separated by several years, of course), the Mr. and I have made it a new tradition to take a vacation during Anniversary Season each year. And the season is upon us now!

Marking one year after our wedding, we went to Vegas, baby! Which reminds me, I never did tell you the story of how we went to see Wayne Brady's amazing one-man variety show and he pulled me up on stage for some improv comedy hijinks. (The punchline is: "There I was, on the stage at the Venetian, down on all fours, Wayne Brady riding me like a donkey." TRUE.)

To celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary, we made a pilgrimage to our nation's capital, Washington, DC. We stayed in a beautiful brownstone around the corner from the Iraqi Embassy in Dupont Circle. In the Capitol building, we saw Nancy Pelosi walk by with one of my high school friends (he is now one of her advisors). And we witnessed Christopher Hitchens attempt to convince someone sitting next to him at a bar in an Indian restaurant that Harper's is not the same thing as Harper's Bazaar. (Nor indeed are they "close enough".)

This time, we are heading to Seattle and Vancouver, BC. We have never traveled to the Pacific Northwest, and we are greatly looking forward to it. Not least because in Seattle, we are staging a reunion with four of my high school friends who have all landed there since our days at Groves! Facebook, have I told thee lately how much I adore thee? We are meeting at The Unicorn, a bar founded earlier this year by my h.s. friend Adam. Here's a link to a review -- I can't wait!

We'll stay three nights in Seattle, then up to Vancouver for four nights. We are taking the train from Seattle to Vancouver -- we hear it is beautiful!

We have no agenda for this vacation other than relaxing, drinking a lot of coffee to counterbalance the relaxation (OK, that's just me), eating great Asian food, checking out the local museums, taking in the scenery, and celebrating three years of wedded bliss (and overall nine years together!).

Happy Independence Day

It's America's birthday! Here's to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We are off to Hartland to celebrate with our friends Weber and Traci and their awesome daughters. To ensure we get asked back next year, we are bringing brownies that we baked in the all-edge brownie pan -- always a crowd pleaser!

May your day be festive, fun, and safe.

(Image: MAN vs. GEORGE DESIGN)

Bad Blogger!

So, I've been TERRIBLE at keeping up with the blog this year, as you can see from my meager postings thus far in 2010. Here's the first six months of the year in thirty seconds or less:

• Puerto Vallarta was great! We especially enjoyed the swim-up bar, swimming in the ocean every day, and parasailing!
• MAN vs. GEORGE opened an online shop for greeting cards on Etsy, the place for all things handmade. You can find it here: http://manvsgeorge.etsy.com
• 
  We took home first prize in Katy and Nunzino's 11th Annual Easter Egg Dyeing Competition, with our entry "The Easter Mummy Conquers the Pyramid of Eggypt".
• We went to some great concerts (and a great variety of them, too): The Flaming Lips, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and the "Infinite Stairways" CD release parties for Milwaukee jazz guitarist Steve Peplin. 

As for what the second half of the year will hold? It's anyone's guess!

Holiday Greetings!

Merry Christmas, everybody! Here's hoping your 2009 holiday season is safe, happy, and bright!

Warm wishes from Tilney and Ryan

(Image by MAN vs GEORGE DESIGN)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends, family, and any random unknown individuals who might have stumbled upon this blog. We've got a lot to be thankful for...

Happy Birthday to Ryan

Today is Ryan's birthday! If you haven't already sent him happy birthday wishes, you can do so in the comments!

We are going to try a new restaurant in Bay View tonight (new to us, I mean). Full report later...

Happy Birthday Happy Birthday!

Yesterday we drove to Chicago to celebrate the birthday of my 3-year-old twin cousins. We weren't expecting the roads to be quite so bad, but winter is full of surprises. We passed about half a dozen accidents on the drive down, and were never more thankful to have a Subaru. Ryan had to keep reminding me that the Subaru's all-wheel drive is not the same thing as an invincibility force-field, but we made it down safely just the same.

Upon our arrival were delighted to score a parking spot in my aunt and uncle's garage -- quite a luxury for party latecomers. We felt so lucky we didn't have to circle the city streets looking for a parking spot -- especially one that would be safe from the city's tow trucks.

We had a great time at the party, not just because they were serving margaritas. ;-) My sisters and their kids were there, as were my mom and two of my adult cousins. It was fun to see my little cousins turn 3. They are such sweet girls. A good time was had by all!

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

Just a quick note to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! We are off to Chicago to celebrate the wonder of the season, and (hopefully) the joy of well-plowed roadways.

We leave you with a few shots of our Christmas tree, taken with my iPhone because it's too early in the morning and I don't want to wake up Ryan by rummaging around for our proper camera.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We will be heading to Chicago in a few minutes for the Thanksgiving holiday. I just wanted to take a moment to wish everybody a very Happy Thanksgiving! We are so grateful for our family and friends, our health, our home, our wonderful neighbors, and our awesome cat George, who rarely has much to say but who manages to have communicate her unique perspective each and every day.

Travel safely, everyone, and know we're thinking of you!

P.S. I promise, this weekend I will *finally* post stories and photos from our trip to Las Vegas. Stay tuned.

Party Animals

On Saturday, August 23 we attended my company's annual summer family party, which was held at the Milwaukee County Zoo. It was my first time attending a family summer party at this company, and my first time visiting this zoo.

My success criteria for the event were somewhat modest. First and foremost, I wanted to see a polar bear. Next, in descending order of importance, I wanted to not make an ass of myself in front of my coworkers. (No more than usual, I mean.) Out-of-office events involving coworkers can generate strange behavior even in those of us who typically exercise constant vigilance against getting food stuck in our teeth or telling abstract jokes that result in awkward silence around the water cooler. But add weekend-casual clothing, other people's children, and some sun-warmed potato salad to the mix and all bets are off. So you have to be careful. Trust me, you do not want to be the person whose name is forevermore inextricably linked with the phrase "multi-generational fajita bar debacle" or the subject of a local news story that ends with the statement "Alcohol may have been a contributing factor."

So with these goals in mind, we joined my colleagues at the zoo. Here are some of the things we saw:

Elephants! Sweet!


A giraffe!


A turtle (right) and a tiny aligator, hiding under a rock (left).


A pretty green snake! I'm pretty sure this one was poisonous.


A very badass-looking snake. Also poisonous.


Poison dart toads. They glow in the dark! (And are poisonous.)


Lawn ornaments! So very lifelike...


I would have taken more photos but I neglected to charge my iPhone before we came to the zoo, and the battery died.

I wish I could blame the dead battery for the lack of polar bear photos displayed here. As it turns out, while hordes of Milwaukee County residents enjoy looking at animals in 90+ degree weather, polar bears do not.

That's right, Success Criterion #1 was a bust. Having failed to spot a polar bear, you might wonder if I'd return to the picnic grounds dejected and decide to go for broke by slamming a case of wine coolers and then guessing my coworkers' age, weight, and true hair color.

Thankfully, Ryan was there to pull me back from the edge. To cheer me up, he agreed to sit for a caricature with me. And I must say, it turned out to be a real mood lifter: Check out the nice rack on my drawing!

Roughing It

In the summer of 2006, a whole passel of extended family members rented a giant house on a precipice overlooking Lake Michigan. One week, twenty Malovers, one hundred-fifty stairs down from the house to the beach, and one kitchen.

Hilarity ensued, we were told! Alas, Ryan and I could not attend but we caught the edited highlights on DVD, compliments of Uncle Steve from Cincinnati. Nobody got kicked off the island, but I'm pretty sure the footage could be used to sell a new reality television show concept. It was a cross between Big Brother and Top Chef (did I mention there were cooking competitions?), with some unmistakable Malover flair (did I mention that Uncle Greg from Detroit got everyone a commemorative switchblade?).

In 2007 the family vacation took a year off, as there were two family weddings (my cousin Danielle from Cincinnati, and me!). However, it was decreed that the Malover Family Summer Vacation would become a biennial event, making summer 2008 the second installment in the series. Like Survivor, each edition would be filmed in a different setting, but unlike Survivor there would be no cash prize for the last man standing. (If there were, the smart money would be on Uncle Greg -- he's much better with cutlery than the rest of us. And firearms.)

Malover Family Summer Vacation 2008 kicked off on a Thursday afternoon in Three Rivers, Michigan. Three Rivers is approximately 75 miles from Chicago, just over the Michiana border, and two miles east of Lake Michigan, making it an easy trip for us and for Katy, Nunzino, Lucy, and Giac; my Uncle Kevin and Aunt Neela and their girls Natalie and Kendall; my cousins Tom (a Detroit transplant) and Alexis (a Cincinnati transplant); and Alexis's beau Mark. Unlike the last vacation where everyone stayed under one roof, this time we were in single-family cabins situated around a manmade lake. Wait, I meant to type "lake." In quotation marks.

Ah, yes, as we discovered upon arrival, the magic of the Web can make a pond whose diameter is no wider than a 45-second swim look like a majestic lake. And it can make the loft in a cabin look like it can accommodate people taller than 2 1/2 feet high. But hey, we Malovers are a resourceful people. We're used to roughing it. Besides, we brought a lot of booze, and the cabins had air conditioning and cable, which more than made up for the short lofts. (I say this from the luxurious position of someone who didn't have to climb up into one to sleep, naturally.)

We didn't have any big agenda for the long weekend except the general idea that lunch and dinner would be communal affairs. Katy and Alexis chaired the Vittles Committee, and sent around this amazing sign-up sheet in advance to ensure that the entire weekend's meals wouldn't consist of 20 bags of tortilla chips and 1 jar of salsa. There were openings for several lunches and dinners, including Friday night's Olympics Dinner, in which we would cook foods representing our favorite nationalities. There was also an opening for a Landfill Ambassador, who would be responsible for bringing disposable cups, plates, napkins, and utensils.

Ryan and I chose to cook dinner on Olympics Night, representing the Central American nation of Belize. We brought back some kick-ass local spice mixes from our honeymoon this spring, so we made Belizean chicken accompanied by red beans & rice. There were many other delicious cuisines represented, including specialties from Italy, Mexico, and Greece. The entire family gathered for dinner on the gigantic screened-in porch on the back of our cabin, and then retired to the living room to watch Michael Phelps win some gold medals in Beijing. At the Hipster Cabin, my cousins Tom and Zak hosted a Beer Pong tournament. On Saturday night we repeated the experience, but with leftovers this time. Still good! Dessert consisted of an unbelievably delicious assortment of cookies baked by my cousins Ally (from Detroit) and Danielle (Cincinnati native transplanted to Boston with her new husband Ali). Just when we thought there was no room for more food, we busted out a birthday cake to honor Aunt Maryalice and Uncle Larry, whose birthdays are a few days apart.

Some discoveries we made during this vacation:

• I love playing beach volleyball! However, I am not very good at it. What I lack in skill (mistakenly shouting "Mine!" when I meant "Not mine!") I more than make up for in team spirit.
• We love grilling! After four days spent enjoying the magic of freshly grilled chicken and burgers, Ryan and I really want to get a grill. We can totally see ourselves living the grill-owning lifestyle. You know, grilling. Eating grilled foods.
• We love family vacations! We had so much fun hanging out with our uncles, aunts, cousins, sister, in-laws, and little niece and nephew. We can't wait until the next family vacation in 2010!

Easter Egg-stravaganza

We just returned from Katy and Nunzino's 10th Annual Easter Egg Decorating Party, where our Ghostbusters entry took third prize.

The entire gang (back row: Slimer and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man; front row: Winston, Egon, Peter, and Ray)...


Say hello to Egon and Peter...


A closer look at Stay-Puft, as he's shot with the beam from Egon's proton pack...


Don't get too close to Slimer -- he's covered in goo...

Merry Christmas!

It's our first married Christmas! We have been a combination of busy and under the weather, so we got to the Christmas tree lot a bit late this year. Despite our last-minute tree search, we managed to find something decidedly more robust than this Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Stay tuned for more photos once we're done decorating it!

Girls Gone Wild!

On Friday, October 19, the bride and her girlfriends celebrated her bachelorette party in Madison, where the bride and groom met. A fabulous time was had by all. Big thanks to Amy and Kelsi for planning the evening.

We started out the evening at Genna's Lounge (the site of the famed first meeting), with a round of Cosmopolitans, compliments of some nice guy at the bar. We ended our time at Genna's with a round of tequila shots, compliments of a different nice guy at the bar. Actually, it was the bartender. As it turns out, he met his fiance at Genna's, too, and is getting married one week before our wedding! (From left, Amy, Kelsi, Lisa, and Colleen.)

Next we walked to Takara for dinner. (Here is the bride at left, and her friend Lisa at right. It was dark out!)



At Takara, we gathered 'round a steaming hibachi table for dinner and took many photos of one another at close range. (Here is one of Cindy!)



No bachelorette party would be complete without a hot man workin' hard to please the ladies. (Here he is, with the Onion Volcano!)





More close-range photography of The Ladies of Hibachi Night! (Here is Mary, at left, and Kelsi, at right.)


Can it really be considered a true bachelorette party without the following happening at some point in the night? One of the girls comes back from the restroom giggling. She says, "There's a man in hip-waders in there...fishing!" The rest of the girls go in to investigate. A photo is snapped. (Et voila: Man in hip-waders. Fishing!)

The next stop on the party-train was Cocoliquot, a restaurant devoted to the glorification of chocolate in all its delightful forms: Solid, liquid, and cupcake.


I'm not exactly sure what all of these beautiful desserts (foreground) or lovely truffles (background) were made of, but they tasted FANTASTIC! (And to think we were actually debating whether six girls could finish all of these treats...)


It seems all good things in life end before we're ready to say goodbye: sunsets, rainbows, well-written TV shows canceled before their time, and alas, this party. But not before we took one last photo! (Back row, from left: Colleen, Nicole, Tilney, Kelsi; front row, from left: Amy, Cindy.)

Thanks for a great night, one and all!

The Best Unexpected Birthday Present. Ever.

I turned 32 on April 21, and I had a lovely weekend of celebrating. On Saturday, we went to Madison to have dinner with our Kiwi friends Pavla and James at Jolly Bob's. Coconut shrimp, spicy crab cakes, fruity tropical beverages, gigantic fish tank, stereo pumping out Caribbean grooves...need I say more?

On Sunday, back at home in Milwaukee, we extended the celebration by having dinner at Eddie Martini's, one of Gourmet magazine's Top 40 restaurants in America. It is an old-school steak joint in the best sense: tender filets, crisp iceberg wedge, swingin' Dean Martin tunes, attentive waitstaff... It's the kind of place where the largest cut of meat on the menu does not come free if you finish it in less than an hour. Prior to our delicious dinner, we started our evening at Eddie's with drinks at the bar, where I was treated to perhaps the best unexpected 32nd birthday present ever: I got carded.

Happy Birthday, indeed! :-)

Happy Birthday to Ryan!

C'mon, everybody now:

"Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Ryan,
Happy Birthday to you!"

Hooray! :-)