Tuesday, May 31, 2011

My Memorial Day Weekend...Recap.

9 stitches
8 different types potato chips
7 different kinds of desserts
6 Homecooked meals
5 coolers full of food and beer
4 life jackets
3 birthday girls
2 bottles of sunscreen
1 great weekend.










It was the best weekend I have had in a while.

Hope everyone has a great week!
Get ready for tomorrow.
It's a pretty important day.


Thursday, May 26, 2011

Oh Wow...

So I know in the last post I said I would be better about blogging...well, not so much...but on to more exciting news... Next Wednesday is my birthday! I love birthdays, wether it be my birthday or someone elses, i don't care. I love birthdays and celebrating them. I will forever celebrate my birthday, no matter what the age. So what am i asking for this year? Well, not too much. Since Kyle bought me a car, I think we can call him done. As for me...there's always going to be a ton of things I want, ha...I'm a girl who loves to shop. But as for birthday gifts for other people...I think I'm a pretty rockin' gift giver. I study, research, spend hours on the internet searching for ideas and new things. At least I think I do pretty good.

So just some ideas for some people out there that might need some last minute ideas... (a.k.a- Mom, Dad, Kyle-just in case!)


LongChamp Bag

Rosanna Parisian Glassware Green Set of 4
These cute southern lookin' glasses!
(LaylaGrace.com)


Marley and Lilley


And of course, the usual...anything from Lowe's, Pier 1, Hobbly Lobby or Micheal's.

I'm headed to the lake this weekend to celebrate a lot of birthdays! I can't wait! I'm so stinkin' excited!!

Hope everyone has a good Friday!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Thank goodness it's Thursday...

I'm just living for the weekend right now! Just wanted to share a little project I worked on last night. I finally got our message board hung up in the kitchen and I'm super pumped! Who would have thought an old frame would turn into two useful things! Here's the after. I was too excited to start on it and forgot to take a before.

Wait two things!? Yes! The glass that was in the frame, I'm going to spray it with chalkboard paint and hang it on the inside of our pantry...that's where I'll keep my grocery list...or what's in my pantry...or what's in my freezer. I haven't truly decided. Just a thought
All I have left is to hang up the two hooks underneath and TA-DA!
Here's to hoping I get a few more things up on the wall soon.
I'm in nesting mode this summer!

Britney's dance recital is this weekend so I'll catch back up on Sunday. Hope everyone has a great weekend!


Monday, May 16, 2011

Recipe Monday!

Taking a little break from cleaning my house, I would love to share a recipe with you tonight! I'll tell you this though...I haven't actually made it...it's a recipe that I would like to make. Hopefully I can get around to making it sometime this week or this weekend. It's  "Shrimp Pasta in a foil Packet". Seems to me pretty easy and looks amazing in the pictures. I found this recipe on Pioneer Women's Site just messing around one afternoon. If you try it before I do, I would love to hear if you liked it or not or what you would change! I could see this being made with fresh tomatoes in the summer for a simple summer pasta!

Ingredients

■½ cups Olive Oil
■4 cloves Garlic, Minced
■3 whole 14.5 Ounce Cans Diced (or Whole) Tomatoes
■½ cups White Wine
■2 pounds Jumbo Or Large Shrimp, Peeled And Deveined
■Salt And Pepper, to taste
■Fresh Parsley, Minced
■1 pound Linguine, Uncooked
■Red Pepper Flakes, to taste
Preparation Instructions

Cook pasta for 1/2 the recommended cooking time. Pasta should still be very firm.

In a large skillet or pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic and saute for a minute. Dump in the tomatoes and wine. Stir the mixture together, season with salt and pepper, and allow to cook for ten minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare a large parcel of heavy duty aluminum foil. It should be large enough to hold the entire pasta dish.

Throw the shrimp on the top of the pasta sauce. Throw the drained pasta over the top, then pour the whole dish onto the foil. Tightly wrap the foil into a parcel.

Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and keep warm until serving.
Open the foil parcel right before serving. Drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil over the top. Squeeze on lemon juice, if desired.


I hope mine looks like this:

TPW_9353

Just living for the weekend this week! 

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Anthro Find...

So on my off day the other day, I did the usual...went for a run, ran some errands, took britney to get mani/pedis...and stopped by a favorite of mine, Anthropolgie. I love going into this store to just look and get ideas. Not only do they have amazing clothes but some of the cutest housewears.
Normally I'm just browsing and not looking for anything particular but Wednesday I was on a mission. I was looking for some cute hooks to hang up my cute aprons! I knew Anthro was just the place to go.

Allow me to tell you my plan first. I have a frame that's empty and a fridge that is covered in pictures and invitations. So I'm going to frame some cork board and tac it to the wall. 
Like such:


Then on either side I'll have two of these hooks for my aprons and such.

Aren't they just the cutest hooks! I'm very excited to get them put up. I'll post pictures soon!

Good news and bad...Kyle is done with softball and after May our social calendar slows down...so get ready for some good blogs about our summer projects! Because I have a biigggg list just waiting for Kyle!
Projects include:
Painting the bedroom, Master bathroom, and Kitchen.
Putting together a flower garden in the back yard.
Finding someway to install a bike rack in the garage
clean out the attic
tile the shower
hanging up several pictures/diplomas/paitings.
looking for a bookshelf
buying a china cabinet

Kyle- I know you read these...get ready! :)

Hope everyone has a great week! I can't believe the weekend went by so fast!


Saturday, May 14, 2011

Book Club Post!

So excited to share with you that I've finished "Saving CeeCee Honeycutt" for the College Prep book club! I loved the book and think it's a great summer read for anyone! If you love some good southern drama and know the importance of having girlfriends, this book is a good pick for you. Check out College Prep as she announces the next book and puts in her comments about "Saving CeeCee Honeycutt".

If you read the book, feel free to leave your comments about the book!

Monday, May 9, 2011

Really...it's May already!?

It's been a while since I've blogged and for many reasons...First off, I'm coming off this horrible coughing/runny nose/no voice/only cure is horse pills disease!! Or maybe the tornadoes stirred up something in the air and caused me to feel like death for the past few days. Either way...several mornings were spent in the kitchen at 4am with me crying and Kyle trying to get cough medicine down my throat...some might have said he was beating me and all he was doing was trying to make me take some cough syrup so we could BOTH sleep. Bottom line...I will never take cough syrup again. Period.

Also I've been still a little off my normal routines with the power outage last week so it's taken me a while to get back to the things I do on normal basis...cleaning schedules and laundry schedules were thrown off and when you have a boy who goes through clothes like it's toilet paper, you do a lot of laundry.

The most exciting reason I haven't blogged lately is because I did something so very adult...I (WE) bought a car for me on Saturday!! I'm still floating on cloud nine...If you were driving a ten year old car and got a very new one, you would be on cloud nine too! I feel in love with the Toyota 4Runner's a long time ago in college but always felt a call to my Xterra...that car has seen some good times. I couldn't help but sit back and think about what that car has been through  as we dropped it back off at my dad's house and it still runs great amazingly!. I've taken down  gates at the apartment, took it off roading on the highway (long story mom- better not ask but Leah is still alive.), Kyle kissed me for the first time while I was sitting in that car...it made too many trips to and from Alabama...Bham shopping trips...it went to the beach a couple of times and if you sit in it and be real quite, you can hear Dave Matthews humming through the speakers...It was a great car with a lot of memories...And I can't wait to see what kind of memories I make in this new one.


Pulling out of the dealership in my new ride!

Hopefully I'll be able to get back in the blogging swing of things! Hope everyone has a great week!


Monday, May 2, 2011

And when it was dark...It was very very dark.

So after the power went out Wednesday, Kyle and I thought that things wouldn't be so bad. Actually, they weren't. We actually had fun...now I'm sure six days in we would have a different attitude. One can only eat off the grill so much before you start craving something from the oven. The funniest thing about all this was the habits we had walking into rooms...we would still continue to walk into rooms, flip the switch and be shocked when the light wouldn't flood the room! For those of you who don't know, our power actually came back on early Friday morning (will tell that story in a bit). But it was nice to be off work and be able to enjoy a beautiful day. I walked through the neighborhoods, read books and magazines at my leisure, and did some things around the house that needed to be done. If you ask me, I think sometimes we need a power outage...Kyle and I realized how dependent we were one electricity and electronics. To me, I was shocked...I grew up playing outside, rolling in the dirt (yes! I was a sand box baby!!), riding bikes, etc...We owned a Nintendo but I rarely played it. Shooting birds and playing Mario really wasn't my thing. We did both agree on our need to connection to the outside world was to keep up with what had happened after the storm and what was going on in Tuscaloosa. Without a natural disaster sitting on our doorstep, we would have been okay with no power for a few days.



So the story of the power...We live within walking distance to a very LARGE Huntsville Utilities substation...so in order to restore the power to the rest of Huntsville, the restored power to the very SMALL area around the substation...thus...power at 2:30 in the morning Friday. How it went down...We left the bedroom light on so if the power were to come on in the middle of the night, we'd know. Well Kyle woke up first screaming "Power! Power! POWER!" and then I (who will sleep through the coming of Christ and just wake up on the side) was like "POWER!! POWER!!" after being shoved awake by Kyle. We laid there for just a few minutes thinking this was just a fluke...it was a flash and would be off again within minutes. Five minutes in, we walked outside to see who else had power...just seeing it was out street and the street behind us, we quickly plugged everything back up and went back to bed. Giddy as little kids on Christmas. We woke up about 6:30 (because when you go to bed at 8:00, that's just what time your body wakes up- Redic!) and still had power! We were shocked. So we called Kyle's parents and told them to come pick up our generator! We didn't need it anymore. Needless to say, many people were able to shower, do laundry, make use of our freezer and just enjoy our lights thanks to living as close as we do to a substation. So it was nice.



But when the lights go out, you have to get creative. Wednesday night I didn't eat dinner because I was too upset by what had happened in Harvest and Tuscaloosa. By Thursday, I had found my appetite again.



We enjoyed a cute little candle light dinner. Pretty romantic if you ask me…


Despite regaining power on Friday moring, we grilled and grilled and grilled some more. We ate pretty good out of the freezer!

We were out looking for gas on Friday and decided stop and see what the fuss was about at Waffle House. So this was the special, eggs any style, hashbrowns, and white bread...yum. And you washed it down with luke-warm water. Totally an experience.

Between the card games, Scrabble demonation, book and sunshine, I think we managed just fine powerless.



Sunday, May 1, 2011

When God gives you lemons, it generally makes the best tasting lemonade...

I generally like to keep things on this blog happy and try not to involve politics or world news but generally those things don't directly effect me...but when they do...

April 27, 2011 will have a lasting impression on my mind...in some ways I wish we would have just jumped over Wednesday and acted like it had never happened. But we can't...and we have to face things head on...I guess one might call that reality. Most of you are aware of the tornadoes that left an everlasting mark on my state. Luckily, our house and my parents house are fine and escaped with no damage. Many areas around us were not so fortunate. Many of the places are unrecognizable and lay in piles of rubble and wood.

My college town was also hit by a massive F5 tornado...places that  I normally went to in Tuscaloosa are now piles of wood and nothingness...Thankfully all my friends who are down there are safe just lost homes and cars...replaceable things. There are pictures from places that were once so familiar to me are now unrecognizable.
My heart is heavy with "What ifs...". As a college student you think you're invincible...that nothing bad will ever happen to you...I remember we would blow storms off all the time in Ttown and head the gym, the store...or the mall.

This past weekend, Kyle and I should have been in Tuscaloosa celebrating Ken's retirement and the next weekend, Jenn's graduation...not anymore...At a time in the semester when you are preparing to close a chapter in your life and open up a new one with graduation, many are praying, crying, asking "Why me?", trying to figure out how to say goodbye to friends and a city under these kinds of circumstances.

It's painful to watch from 200 miles away...it's painful to watch from 20 miles away. This morning was the first time I was able to see my parents  since Wednesday's storms because the Harvest area was closed off to outsiders.

It's the little things in life...it's the moments, the memories...that matter the most.
It's sitting in church this morning with the people who matter the most in my life, holding hands, praying for the victims and being very thankful.