Geocaching

Have you ever heard of geocaching? It's essentially real life treasure hunting! I first heard about it a few years ago when I watched the movie Splinter Heads on Netflix. I've been telling Andy about it for a while but he's never actually gone on a cache hunt with me. Last weekend when I came to visit we took a trip down Savery ave (the first divided highway, which happens to be quite literally next to where he lives) and I remember looking on the website and seeing that there were two caches on Savery! I pulled them up on the mobile app I have for geocaching and we found them both pretty easily.

When you find a cache, you get to take something from it as long as you put something in! We put in stickers that we had in my car and took these beautiful stones that were in it. I would have put something a little nicer, but I wasn't expecting to go caching that day. It's always good to keep some small, prize like items in your car/bag if you're a frequent geocacher!

I thought this was funny, on the first log we found someone put #TeamBieber.

These are the two things we put in the second cache, more random things from my car.

This is one of the coolest treasures I've gotten from a cache. It's a cache buddie, which when you find one you have to bring it to a new cache! Andy and I are planning a trip to Laconia this year so I think I'm going to save it until then to have it go to a new state.

Andy wrote our names on the birch tree where we found the second cache. 

Have you ever been geocaching before? What was your coolest/hardest find?

xoxo Jackie

P.S. I'm working on remodeling my blog, but since I'm so busy with the end of this semester I'm doing it little by little. Bear with my while I try to make things pretty!

Graveyard Adventures Part 1.3

And here is the final edition of Masonic graves! This was a cute little cemetery that happens to be right down the road from where the boyfriend lives and I have always wanted to explore, especially because of a certain mausoleum I would drive by (which I will have pictures of soon!).

 We thought we found the Holy Grail of Masonic markers with this HUGE and amazing broken pillar monument...

But then right next to it, we found an even MORE amazing one! It had three different sides depicting Masonic symbols and it was just an amazing find. Andy was as giddy as a school girl.

All pictures were taken at Union Cemetery in Carver, MA.

And that is all I have for Masonic gravestones (for now). Stay tuned for more graveyard adventures within the coming week.

xoxo Jackie

Graveyard Adventures Part 1.2

Here are some more Masonic gravestone pictures! We were amazed with how many we found, every time we turned our heads there would be another one and each was unique and beautiful in their own way. Varying from old to new.

All of these were taken at Vine Hills Cemetetry (est. 1800) and continued into Oak Grove Cemetery in Plymouth, MA

I can't believe that I'm actually cutting out some of the pictures (at one point my camera was starting to die, so I was only taking one shot of some and they weren't so flattering).

I especially love how excited my boyfriend got whenever we would find a new one. 

Speaking of, here we are!

Xoxo Jackie

Graveyard Adventures Part 1.1

My boyfriend like to go on romantic adventures to graveyards and explore the area, check out the old gravestones and our favorite thing to do is search for Masonic graves. One weekend we went to two different cemeteries, and another graveyard the following weekend when I came down. 

We got pretty bummed out at the first graveyard despite seeing tons of amazing, old graves; we saw NO Masonic ones! Luckily, the next cemetery we went to was FULL of them so I decided to have an entire blog post just dedicated to the Masonic stones. I didn't realize quite how many Freemason stones I had taken pictures of that I want to share, so I'll be splitting them up into three parts aside from the other pictures I took of stones. Hopefully you guys are as fascinated with gravestones as I am! 

All of these were taken at Vine Hills Cemetetry (est. 1800) and continued into Oak Grove Cemetery in Plymouth, MA

Do you like to explore into graveyards?

xoxo Jackie

Brandy-Apple French Toast

I got a text from my Dad a few days before Easter asking me what I wanted for brunch on Easter, and of all the things I could have said, I knew I wanted french toast. My dad is an amazing chef, he can bake or cook anything to make someone like it and is just amazing all over when it comes to working in a kitchen. This is a recipe that he used to make for brunch at a restaurant he worked at before I was born! This is by no means the healthiest of recipes, but it sure is delicious! (Sorry there isn't very good measurements, my dad has been making certain dishes for so long they become second nature and he doesn't bother with exact measurements.)

(I had so many other pictures for this, and all of them disappeared! Woops!)

Brandy Apple French Toast, makes one full loaf of french toast (which is A LOT)

French Toast

• 1 loaf of french bread 
• 6-8 eggs
• 1 pint of heavy cream
• Generous amounts of ground nutmeg and cinnamon

Brandy-Apple topping

• 4 apples, chopped into smaller slices
• About 3 ounces of Brandy 
• 1 stick of butter 
• About half a cup of powdered sugar

First you're going to make your french toast essentially the same way you would normally make french toast! Cut your loaf into thick slices, then soak them in the mixture of eggs and cream. Once you have them saturated enough, grill them in a big saute pan that is coated with butter so they won't stick.

Since you most likely won't be able to make all of the pieces of french toast at once in the same pan, what we do is take a baking dish usually used for a lasagna and once one batch of french toast is done, we lay them in the dish in the oven at 350 degrees and keep an eye on them, no specific time amount. This keeps the french toast warm and also helps puff them up more, making them lighter and just that much more delicious. 

Once all of your french toast is done being cooked in the pan, keep them in the oven while you prepare the topping mixture. You can use a different pan, but we ended up justing using the same pan we made the french toast in! 

Melt your butter in the pan over medium to a high-medium heat, since you're going to be using so much it's probably best if you do it in smaller chunks and have it pre-softened. Once it's melted, put your slices of apples into the pan and let them soften up, stirring occasionally. After about 8-10 minutes, you're going to pour the brandy over the apples and shortly after, take a lighter (be careful!) and light the air above the pan, and it should flambe! 

The flames will cook off, after a couple minutes pour powdered sugar over the flames and apples and stir it all in. When your apple seem a little soft, you can turn the heat off and you're done! Serve over the french toast with some yummy sides and breakfast is served!

Hope you enjoyed! 
xoxo Jackie

P.S. sorry it's been so long since my last post, I'll be back on track shortly. College took over my life for the past two weeks!