Sounds like a weird combination? It sure is. Yes, in this blog post I will be writing about cooking and food… and aquarium fish. Weird.

This past weekend we hosted a dinner party for our friends Liv and Rob, who we always have a fantastic time with. We decided to make a three-course meal, but didn’t try anything new since we were under some time constraints for cooking.

It’s strange, I’ve gone from being a cocktail-only person, to being a maybe-sometimes-champagne person, to appreciating both wine and champagne now. I guess I have my friend Crista to blame for that! We had quite the array of drinks on Saturday, and I was surprised the next morning to see how much we had really consumed.

I prepared the tiramisu the night before, but everything else we cooked fresh the day of. It wasn’t quite dinner theatre… we were scrambling around the kitchen in front of our guests. But I think overall it was a success!

For the appetizer we had a roasted creamy butternut squash soup with fresh cream, shaved parmigiano reggiano, chopped chives, and freshly grated nutmeg. Click here for my butternut squash soup recipe.

For the main we had beef shortrib braised in Barolo red wine, served over a bed of fresh pappardelle pasta noodles with pine nuts, spinach, chanterelle mushrooms, and parmigiano reggiano cream sauce. Click here for my braised beef short rib and pappardelle recipe.

For our sweet finish, we had my cheesecake tiramisu with strawberries and espresso wafers. The tiramisu had lady fingers soaked in Kahlua, coffee, coffee liqueur, and chocolate liqueur. Click here for my cheesecake tiramisu recipe.

The dinner party was probably a little too fun.

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On a completely other note, we bought some new discus for our aquarium! I am really as I have always wanted more discus in the tank and finally was able to convince Allan over the past year or so to be open to more discus.

We bought four new discus fish, for a total of five now in our tank. We got a Golden Master, Red Melon, Red Turquoise, and Tiger Snake Skin to add to our Red Dragon (the larger one we’ve had for almost a year now). I absolutely love them! Now we have to name them…

What did you get up to over the weekend?

Continuing our little apartment makeover series, today’s post is about out Living Room! To see the previous Sports Room one, click here. I’m also including our bathrooms since this is a fairly short post.

To be fair, the “Before” picture isn’t really accurate. Our living room didn’t look like that all the time before … this was in the midst of our craziness preparing for the party and getting the apartment ready. The major changes to the living room were the lamps, the framed photograph, a side table, a new coffee table, and well… cleaning up. We had our sofas from last year and the TV and swiveling TV mount about 6 months ago.

Nevertheless, here is our “After” photo. Much cleaner, better lighting and some small design additions. Leather sectional and Brown Microfiber ‘Nest’ chair from Urban Barn, Vancouver. Floor lamp and table lamps are both Robert Abbey Fine Lighting “Porter” polished nickel lamps, from Chintz & Co.

Noguchi coffee table from the Modern Source. Samsung TV and Sony surround sound, I believe both were purchased at Future Shop. Photograph is my own (see below) and cheap frame is from IKEA

Framed photo.

Our lounging area! I really love the Nest chair… Allan and I use it for watching TV, playing video games and cuddling… it really fits two people perfectly who want to cuddle and watch TV at the same time… it’s kind of a hybrid between a bed and a couch.

Aluminum Side Bistro Table from Urban Barn. Here’s the Porter table lamp. Silk flowers from Thomas Hobbs, with two of my favourite cookbooks … Gordon Ramsay 3 Star and Araxi’s cookbook.

Our fish tank! Finally cleaned up a bit and the plants are really starting to grow with the new light and CO2 reactor I spoke about in a previous post. In fact, if you check that post and look at the tank now… you can really see how much plant growth there is! We’re really trying to aquascape it to look like a real landscape… almost like something out of the Lion King. Stay tuned, I’m hoping the tank gets better and better. In other news, since the aquarium is open on the top, I’m really happy no one spilled a drink into it at the party!

Here’s my computer setup… dual Samsungs and the Logitech diNovo keyboard set and MX Revolution mouse. I’ve had these for ages and seem to just keep replacing them I like them so much.

I thought I’d include the bathrooms too since this is a bit of a short post. Here’s our Master Bathroom. Brown towels and bathmats from The Bay (Distinctly Home) and photo frames from Walmart. Photos in the frames are below.

Framed photos.

Here’s the guest bathroom. Towels and bathmat from The Bay (Distinctly Home) and photo frame from Walmart. Photo in the frame is below.

Framed photo.

And that’s it! What do you think of our living room makeover?