did you know...

- is the number of letters in the alphabet?
- is the number of miles in a marathon (rounded down)?
- is the number of episodes in a television program each year?
- is the largest number of oscars awarded to one person (walt disney)?
- is the number of bones in the human foot and ankle?
- is the atomic number of iron?

you didnt know all that? well now you do.
and your welcome.

guest room...check

i think we have finished the guest room. pretty much. we still need a six panel door to match all the ones upstairs but we have time for that. we finally hung the old door up. with a few coats of primer to make it go with the rest of the white in the room.

after the hubs hung that canvas artwork i made politely asked him to hang up the rest of the stuff in the room.

so now weve got a mirror flanked by two decorative candle holders minus the candles right now cuz i havent picked any up yet. im sure ill be heading to target in the next few days. and then in the little nook area by the closet some shelves covered in fabric. nothing too difficult or crazy but the room looks a lot more complete. nice enough to have some guests over. (cough cough hint hint)

how bout a kitchen project?

like some floating shelves? i had to wait on the hubs on this one. thankfully most of his summer requirements (bachelor parties & weddings) are over. so that means hes not out traveling every weekend. so i gave him the measurements and he built it. easy peasy.

after building them i was elected to stain them. and then he was elected to hang em.

and then it was my turn to decorate. im excited for these shelves. it finally completes this blank wall and seems more finished. im also excited to be able to change the decorations for different seasons/holidays. cheesy? probably. but im ok with that.

easy art project

ill be honest. i was never good in art class. im in no way an artist. but thanks to the internet, especially pinterest, im able to pretend for a bit and create some easy (and cheap) art work for the guest room.

heres a picture of the project from pinterest:


1

so i started out with a blank canvas. well actually 3. they were all 50% off at michaels. wahoo! then its time for taping. any way you want. remember i said its easy?

and then we paint. any color you want. i used some leftover turquoise paint from our tv stand project. so no money spent there. i did 3 coats. and then you take the tape off. again, easy.

and after taking the tape off, the edges werent perfect. which i knew would happen. apparently that green frog tape is a lot better. but i already had the blue tape, so instead of spending money i just spent a bit of extra time cleaning up the lines with some white paint. and thats it. the only time consuming part is waiting for the paint to dry. and then you make ask the hubs to hang em up.

total spent: 5 cents for a small foam brush (also on sale) and $13 for the canvas.

diy fail

so i attempted some no sew curtains. because im impatient. and because my seamstress lives an hour away and is back to her real job. and because im impatient. so i found a tutorial online (found here) for some no sew/fixed roman shades not too difficult right? riiiiiiiiiight

my goal was to look like this:


(Picture From HERE)


i followed the directions. i swear i did. and i came out with this:

enter the wah wah sounds please. fail. but have no fear. i attempted to fix it with some more stitch witchery stuff its like fabric glue but it comes in strips and you iron to activate. yah, that didnt work either. fail x2. and then i tried some straight up fabric glue. enter a win.

please dont mind the bad lighting or the large cutting board. i was a bit lazy. its not 100% perfect. but im ok with that. it adds a bit of color to our kitchen and hides some holes im also too lazy to patch. :) what can i say. oh well. so what started out as an easy project turned out to be a bit more time consuming and frustrating, but mission accomplished.  

guest room

ive been slowly working on making some updates to our guest room downstairs. now this is the room that had a lovely bird border on it. it started out as a slower project just a bit here and there when i had some down time, no real rush to get it done. buuuuuuuuut now that its september and we have actual guests coming in october...theres a bit of a rush. to at least get it liveable. (it currently has no door)

before it started out as a yellowish upper wall with a light brown on the "bead board" i know its not actually bead board but im blanking on what its actually called right now.

so what color/colors do you think i chose? something that im sure will surprise you. except probably not. have you seen a grey & white combo before? cuz thats what was picked for down here. not the same darker grey from our master, this is a lighter grey called silver sateen from behr. what can i say, i like grey.

thankfully our seamstress was still on summer vacation and was able to sew some curtains and thanks to some back to school sales i was able to also get some bedding on sale.

now im just waiting for someone to hang some shelves. and i gotta buy some paint to finish the door. that way it will be liveable. and im currently working on some art work too. but lets be honest, thats another post :)

farmers market

so septembers resolution: farmers market & make a meal. check.

so heres the scoop. we hit up the st paul farmers market in august. and bought eggplant. because some coworkers of mine were talking about it and i had never cooked with it. so we bought some eggplant and made eggplant parmesan. except i forgot to take pictures. whoops! it wasnt too bad. not sure if id go out of my way to go buy some & make it again but who knows. did you know that eggplant seeds can be bitter because they contain nicotinoid alkaloids, which is a relative of tobacco? yah, me neither. until i looked it up on wikipedia. 

so in order to make up for forgetting to take pictures, we hit up our local farmers market instead this weekend. its a lot smaller but a lot closer than the st paul one. so we picked up some zucchini & green beans.

i wanted to make chocolate zucchini bread and the hubs wanted to try baked zucchini. and well we have no creative ideas or recipes for the green beans. so i wont talk about them.

i havent made too many different breads before. so i was a bit nervous. but id vote this one a success. it smelled sooooo good baking in the oven. and tasted pretty good too.

did you know that according to wikipedia, zucchini has folate, potassium, vitamin A & maganese? but more interesting is the fact that "its an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower"? yah me neither. arent you glad this blog is now also educational?!?! <side note: so i was pretty impressed with that fact & went to tell the hubs you know...to impress him. he said thats pretty common and the same is true for apples and oranges. dang. looks like i should paid a bit more attention in some science class...whoops!>

so the hubs decided to make some baked zucchini fries. they werent too shabby.

we also couldnt leave the farmers market without some fresh flowers. fingers crossed my allergies dont get worse.

foto friday

a perfect friday. filled with lots of sugar, two disks of how i met your mother on netflix and hanging out with the hubs. not too shabby.

consider a cake...

seriously. you should consider a cake. or cupcakes. especially from consider a cake.

all that reminiscing about our wedding last year got me craving some more of those delicious cupcakes. after a long internal debate on which flavor to get i settled on snickerdoodle. and after the hubs agreed i went to place an order with megan.

but first i checked out her new website. go ahead, click here. i dare you. and then check out the gallery of pictures. megan can make any sort of design. and its always better than you could have imagined. because shes awesome.

so finally it was time for us to get those cupcakes. as soon as i opened the box i did not want to eat them. why? because they smelled soooo delicious. i honestly was tempted to just keep the cupcakes in the box and open it every now and again to smell them. and then i came back to reality and ate em. after taking a picture of course.

can you say delicious? cuz i can.  honestly, i could have easily eaten about 5 in one sitting. no joke. so in order to not eat them all, we sent some to the hubs work to share. and we decided to freeze some. hopefully these will last longer than the ones last year. but for some reason i doubt it. oh well, guess we'll just have to order some more later. 

seriously, this girl rocks. you should definitely consider a cake.  you wont regret it. promise.

yet another kitchen update

when we last left off with the kitchen we had just painted it a blue/purple color. and it was so nice because before that the kitchen was 3 different colors. but i wasnt 100% sold on that blue/purple color.

so i waited for a few months. actually like a little over a month. but still. i didnt like the color. so i painted the kitchen again. apparently i love painting. thankfully there arent too many large walls in the kitchen so it doesnt actually take too long.

heres what the kitchen looked like before painting it the second time:

and then part way through

and heres the after:

and guess what. i love it. it seems more relaxing or something. i.love.it. and we are sooooo close to being done with the kitchen. the hubs just has to make some floating shelves. to go on the wall in the above picture. and believe you me ive already got a bunch of ideas on how to decorate the shelves. of course, ill keep you posted :)

more from wi...

like i mentioned before we were able to spend some quality time with the family. first take emma. she is the cutest thing. since her brother of course. she is always smiling and has even started 'talking'. i cant believe shes already so big! and she is always the best dressed.

the hubs also helped his parents with their new ipad. and he fell in love with a little game you probably havent heard of...angry birds...

we spent labor day at his grandparents house and got to see a bunch of extended family too. like grace. you might not recognize her...the last time she made an appearance on the blog was as our flower girl. her favorite part about school is recess :)

have i mentioned before how much i love seeing these people? and spending time with them? cuz i do. im feeling very blessed to have been able to join such a kind, generous and loving family. ones who have welcomed me in with loving arms and delicious desserts :)

this ones for andrew...

our weekend in wi didnt just consist of a wedding. we were also able to hang out with family. the hubs' family loves to play games. i mean loves it. but this weekend my brother-in-law was really into playing games. so much so that he made a statement along the lines of 'girls dont win" dah! so after the hubs and i beat him and his dad in sequence, we next played sheephead.

now i havent played sheephead in over a year. and even when i was playing, i didnt really every fully understand or remember the game/all the rules. so as the hand was dealt it turned out that me and shannon (the only girls playing) ended up being teammates. (because she picked and i had the jack of diamonds...at least thats why i think we were...) anyways...i just wanted the game to be over so i was just throwin down whatever card i could.

so whats the point of this post you are askin!?!? well let me just show you who won. FAIR AND SQUARE.

yup, the girls won! wahoo! (ps have i ever mentioned how much i am so thankful/admire/always love hanging out with this girl? but that might be a whole nother post)

and to make matters EVEN better...andrew wanted to play some more games the next day. lets just say that the girls won. but some other guys won too. BUT andrew didnt. here a pic to prove it.

b + e's wedding...

this past weekend we headed back to wi for a wedding. the groom is one of the hubs' friends since...pretty much forever. the bride & groom were two of the first friends the hubs introduced me to when we started dating. so its been fun getting to know them and seeing them tie the knot.



it had been a long time since id been back to wi (the hubs had been back pretty much every weekend earlier in the summer for bachelor parties) but it was good to be back and i had forgotten how funny the hubs' friends are. in between the wedding and reception we stopped for pictures and then at main exchange for some nachos :) and maybe a little something else

the reception was a lot of fun. they had 5 different flavors of cake (3 of which i taste tested--amazing!) and a photobooth with some pretty awesome props. take for example jake, a groomsmen.

i love going to weddings. the weddings we have went to since our own wedding, have always been a good reminder. to look back and remember our wedding, why we love each other and to celebrate with our friends in the beginning of their marriage. (sorry to get so sappy) but still. and i love going to weddings because i love to dance. and since meeting the hubs ive taken up polka dancing. so i always look forward to dancing with friends and polka-ing with my hubs.

i couldnt leave you without a picture of the beautiful bride now could i?

a little comedic relief...

we just got home from a jam packed weekend in "gods country" aka wi. we had a lot of fun. more details to come of course. but first the hubs' dad got an ipad. and the hubs and i had some fun with the photobooth app. yes, i know the pictures with these effects are nothing new. but seriously, it cracks me up every time. so just in case you need some laughter today...i thought id share.