Weekend Wrap-Up

Our weekend really started on Thursday night, this week. Amara and Jeremy came over to cook some dinner and hang out.  Amara and I are two pretty serious carnivores so we made the boys grill burgers, even though it was a tid bit chilly outside. Amara is also a Pinterest addict like me, and had seen a VERY cute little idea for the burgers.  She cut pumpkin faces out of cheese slices and they were so cute!  Even the boys each “carved” a slice of cheese…too bad Jeremy tore the jaw off of his and ate it, so it needed some facial reconstruction surgery. 

We hung around in the kitchen like usual and had a few beverages.  Amara seasoned the burgers and made some SERIOUSLY delicious corn on the cob.  The corn was so good that I couldn’t even get a picture of it before we snarffled it all down.  I’ll have to check with her about the exact ingredients, but it has something to do with olive oil, cayenne pepper and garlic.  O man, now my mouth is watering.  I made another pumpkin crunch.  I may have a problem.

Saturday Amara and I ran around town to a few furniture consignment stores, but didn’t find much.  Then we got all dolled up and made our way to Nashville to see The Last Straw perform at 3rd and Lindsley.  They didn’t play my favorite song, “Tupelo”, but it was still a great show!  You can hear a few of their songs on the website, so be sure to stop by and check it out and at LEAST listen to “Tupelo”!

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That about sums up the weekend.  The only other things going on are some serious studying for Nick, a little FaceTime with my parents and lots of laundry.  Oh! I made something for dinner that currently smells so delicious I can hardly take it!  I can’t wait to eat!  I’ll have the recipe and some super fun cooking photos up in the next couple days.  Also, I’ve decided on what to do with my laundry room, so hopefully I can get started on it soon!  It will be so amazing once I’m done with it.  Keep your fingers crossed for Nick, he has an exam on Tuesday that, judging by the amount of studying he’s doing, will probably be very difficult.  Tomorrow we brace ourselves for the Trick or Treaters coming our way, all 250(!) of them.  That’s it for today!

Thanks for stoppin’ by!

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Weekends and Wine Corks

Let me start by saying that we have been BUSY lately, which is why I’ve been lacking in the blog department.  We have been out of town every weekend for the last four weekends, which is fun but exhausting.  Every Sunday night I would say I was going to post something and then I would end up getting sleepy lazy and not do anything but lay on the couch like a lump.  But now I have a fun little project to show! Yayy!! 
About a year ago I was really wanting a whole bunch of wine corks to either do crafts with or use as vase filler, but I don’t really drink wine and none of our local liquor stores were giving up their stash of corks.  After being turned down by every liquor store in town, I was sad and pouty.  Obviously my sweet husband saw this and wanted to make me happy, so he worked his magic.  He has a way of getting people to do things for him that they wouldn’t normally do, which is a very handy talent.  He walked right up into one of the places that had turned me down the day before and walked out mere minutes later with a HUGE bag full of corks!  I almost passed out, I was so happy.  I never did much with them and they sat in their cute paper bag just being awesome, until the other day when I got a wild hair.  I was driving home from work, and on my oh-so-lengthy 3 minute commute the idea hit me!  I would make a letter out of corks!  Our last name initial!  Hooray!  So as soon as I parked my car I was gathering my materials. 
I swiped a Cheerios box from the recycle bin, grabbed my corks and hot glue gun and got down to business.  First, I drew my letter and cut it out…

Then I just started gluing on my corks.  I tried to pick ones that were pretty unique..

I let them hang over the edge of the letter and little bit and staggered them so they weren’t all just in a row.  I also cut some in half and laid them up on their ends to kind of break up the design a little bit. 

I did a little slicing and dicing and got all the spaces filled up..

And took a break to eat some delicious pasta that my sweet hubby made, since I was too busy crafting my little heart out!  Yuummmm…


When I finally got all the pieces glued on I took a picture of it and showed off my creation on Facebook! I still haven’t done much with it, it’s just sitting in my window but I kind of like it there.  I will say, since I used the cereal box it’s not the most sturdy little letter but I don’t need it to do much more than just sit and look puuurtty, which it does quite well! 

And now, some pretty pictures I took last weekend…with a post to follow…



Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Thanks for stopping by!

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{Vay-cay-shun} 2011

I can not even explain how badly my whole family needed the vacation we just returned from.  My fabulous parents had not had a real vacation in a little over 10 years.  That’s right, 10 YEARS.  I would have very likely gone crazy.  When I was in high school and college, thanks to my parents, I got to take all the fun trips on spring break and in the summer, so I’m so thankful that we could all go as a family to our favorite place. 
I really wish I could tell you where we went, but I like to keep it a secret.  I would maybe tell someone if they bribed me..*coughcough*iPad2*coughcough*.. but then again probably not.  You will probably be able to figure it out if you’re smart, know how to use Google and look carefully at all the beautiful pictures in this post.  And so, on with the show!
This is the view from our balcony looking to the right.  I love the sun coming through the clouds..

Looking to the left.  The water was so beautiful!

We ate LOTS of fresh shrimp and grouper..so delicious.. OH! And boiled peanuts!

Ate at the Red Bar..Once again, so totally delicious.  Plus, we keep them in business with the amount of apparel we buy from them.  But their t-shirts are so kick-ass, having one really might be a t-shirt-wardrobe staple.



We even got some stranger to take a family photo of us! Aren’t we cute?

My (not so) little brother even played us some tunes on the guitar

All in all it was the best trip to Florida I’ve ever had.  I don’t get to spend much time with my parents, so being with them for 10 whole days was AMAZING but, as always, not enough time.  I was really sad when they packed up the ol’ Tahoe and left Sunday morning. 
We reluctantly packed up the car on Saturday morning and made the drive home.  We arrived to find the house still standing, but with a few improvements!  Our dear friends, Amara and Jeremy, watched the dogs all week and while they were here they painted all the trim in our living room white!  That little painting project was next on my to-do list but I was being terribly lazy.  They also picked all the weeds in our flower beds!  It was amazing.  There’s nothing like coming home to a clean house that’s been improved upon while you were away.
We ate so much amazing, fresh seafood and spent some great days on the sugar white sand enjoying each other’s company.  We soaked up lots of sun, dove for sand dollars, went ocean kayaking(!!!), took tons of pictures, laughed a whole lot, drank beer, looked at the stars and thanked God that we were together in such a beautiful place.  My parents really made the whole trip happen and without them it wouldn’t have been half as fun! 
Nick and I would like to thank my parents and brother for an amazing week of vacation; we had a BLAST! We would also like to thank Amara and Jeremy for being the amazing friends that they are.  We’re lucky to have all of you!
Thanks to my little mommy, Nick and I both have upper respiratory infections(love you, momma!!!) so we’re taking our sick faces to bed.  We’ll be posting some house goodness tomorrow, but for now we say good night!!

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