Once a Month Cooking

My new favorite thing- Once a month cooking. Search for the cookbook on amazon and get started. The idea is that you spend one day cooking and have meals in your freezer for a month. The cookbook gives you a grocery list and step by step instructions on how to do everything. Most of the recipes serve 4-6 so my mom and I split the cost and the cooking and it was much easier. I think after we split the grocery bill it cost $150 for 30 main dishes. Before you start assembling the dishes, you chop all the veggies and meats and have all your ingredients out so putting everything together so much easier. While it's a long day cooking, it's so nice to have your dinners already planned out and ready to go with minimal cooking or heating up. Give it a try!

Thanks for your advice, but...

I didn't take any of it. I'm such a jerk. Not that I didn't completely respect your opinions, but once I got all the stuff on the shelf, I didn't feel like taking anything off of it, so the shelf stays. Also, where the bench sits in the picture, there is now a dining table there so the bookshelf separates the dining area from the living area. Eventually, I will get a buffet to go there that's lower and opens the whole room up but that will probably be awhile. So, I hope ya'll don't think it's terrible!

New Sofa

I know it seems like all I talk about is the house but that's our biggest project right now. So, here's another update on the never ending project!
We finally got the sofa I have been waiting for. Also, a new rug to go along with that. Interface Flor is my favorite place to shop for rugs now- individual carpet tiles create 1 big rug- any size you want. Check them out www.flor.com
The ottoman doesn't have legs right now (long story) but those are coming in the next week. So...what do you think???

Here's where it's time to vote. I have a bookshelf I was going to use as a room divider but Mike's not so sure. Above is without it but below is with it. Let me know which way you like better. Thanks!

I'm Just the Decorator!

Well, when it comes to my house that is. God has really been reminding me of a lot of things lately, most importantly, that everything that I "own" does not belong to me, it belongs to Him, and He can take it away in the blink of an eye. As I studied that this week in my quiet time, I realized that I had spent so much time and energy picking out things for the house and being frustrated that I don't have the money for everything that I want, and I hadn't really consulted God about the whole thing. I prayed "God, I really hope you like everything I just picked out for this house you are letting me live in". That's a little silly but seriously, my new attitude is that it's Gods house that I'm living in and he is just allowing me to decorate it. I need to change my attitude in other areas of my life as well. I asked the question "how can I be a better steward of Gods property?" and came up with some things I need to change. I'm going to share those here to help remind me daily.

Finances
Create and stick to a budget. Rely on God to provide for our needs. Focus as much money as possible to pay off debt and get rid of car and credit card payments in one year (or less of course). Make a list of everything that we "want" and pray consistently over them- allow God to show us when we should purchase these items.

Mind
Continue learning. Keep reading and keep learning in my field, in leadership, and in Gods word.

Body
Take care of my body with good nutrition and exercise.

Possessions
Take care of the things we do have, even the little inexpensive things. Keep the house clean, don't leave things laying around. Don't be protective of our things, use them for Gods kingdom.

Relationships
Seek to find out what I can do for my friends. Be better about sending cards and giving gifts.

Talents
Use my talents to help others. It's okay if it takes some extra time and I don't get paid for it.

Well there you have it. I'm praying about each one of these things and I'll try and keep you posted on any new developments.

Dine by Design

Every year our church has an event called Dine by Design. The ladies decorate tables to their hearts content and then have a big dinner party complete with a speaker at the end. This year my theme was "Damask Road" and I had a lot of fun choosing things to decorate with. My tip of the day: they make rub-ons in scrapbooking with various shapes and words. I read somewhere that you can use those on glass so i did on my candle holders and they looked great. Then, decided to use them on the plastic cups you see on the table. They turned out great and even stayed on through the dishwasher. Thanks to my sweet friends for helping rub them on the cups the night we decorated. It does take a little hard work!

A smart find.

We found this at Pottery Barn and it's quite brilliant. It's not as modern as I typically like but it's so practical we had to get it. It's called a charging station or something and there is a built in power strip on the inside that you can plug everything in to and keep it organized and neat. There is even a little drawer up front for extra stuff. The only problem is, there is enough room for 2 more things to plug in but because the plugs are so big nothing else will fit. But I still like it. This color is on sale right now so it made it particularly appealing.

The furniture is in... well, most of it

I promised I'd post a picture of the room with furniture so here it is. Of course, I have moved the furniture already- the bookshelf isn't there anymore and we are still waiting on the new sofa to come in so in a month it will be different, and a month after that, I'm sure it will be different again. Thanks for the positive encouragement about the floor. We are really loving it!

Do I look stupid to you?

Well don't be fooled- I am. In school, people always thought I was smart. I'm not sure what it was but I was usually considered one of the "smart kids" but that's not really the case, I made decent grades but i certainly wasn't smart. Now, I'm just plain stupid.
We had another huge house project this weekend. One that I have been putting off for a year but always wanted to do. We stained our den concrete. We have been working on this project from about 1:00 Friday afternoon until minutes ago at 9:30 Sunday night. I love the results but it was a HUGE project. I would be happy to give you advise if you want to do the same thing but there's no way i'm doing this again. Here's how it went...

First we had to pull up the carpet, and the pad, and the tack strips all around the room, then sweep up the mess and dust and see what we were working with. While we had hoped to find pristine concrete under the carpet we instead found that the previous owners had a paint fight on the concrete. So, we poured all kinds of brain damaging chemicals on the concrete to remove the paint and scrubbed and made 4 trips to Lowes and scrubbed some more. There was glue, footprints, paint can rings- all kinds of things. Late Friday night we went to bed and figured that was as good as it was going to get.

Here is mike pulling up the tack strips. He worked so hard this whole weekend. I'm not kidding, if you want someone to work as hard as possible on your project without stopping, he's the one.



Here's what it looked like when we were finished cleaning the concrete before going to bed. So clean you could eat on it, it just doesn't look like it!

Next step is to apply the stain. The concrete had to be wet then you spray on the stain. Let it dry for 4 hours then wash the floor with baking soda and water. Well, according to the video, only one water/soda scrubbing will do but for us- 3 scrubs later we finally stopped. By "scrub" i mean, pour water on, scrub with brush, wet vac up the water, test to see if the color is still coming up.



After that dries you roll on an epoxy sealer and wait 12-24 hrs. for that to dry. The picture above is shown mostly finished and we are still waiting for the sealer to dry. Hopefully we can move the furniture back on tomorrow and I'll post pictures then. It's very crazy but we love it!

If you are feeling down-

Take a look at this. I just wanted to make those of you who are having a bad day or feel like their house is a little messy, or their life is spinning out of control feel a little better. These photos are what my house has looked like all weekend, and actually, right now as well. And, unless I am struck by some miracle of motivation, it's going to stay like this until tomorrow- or possibly next weekend. Who knows. Enjoy!



Is that my entertainment center and TV in the kitchen? I think so. My sofa is in there too, you just can't see it.

What's new in this picture

I know that pictures of my living room are getting old but I've been wanting to get curtains on the windows for a year now and I finally got them. These, of course, are from Ikea and i think they work great. Anyways, just wanted to share. Thanks for looking :-)

LOST

I love waiting for LOST each week. It's by far my favorite show and even though my brain is too small to comprehend everything that happens, I still like trying to figure everything out.
So, we heard last week on the promo that "Someone will die this week" and my question is: Who do you think it will be? My guess is Michael. I have my reasons but I don't want to influence your decision so leave a comment and tell me who you think.

I have recently discovered the best web site ever. It's called Lostpedia and it is a complete reference to everything Lost. It's not a cheater site so secrets won't be given away but you can search anything Lost and it will give you a very descriptive answer. I like going on the day after lost runs to read the synopsis of the episode and there are always things I missed. It's also a good place to find screen shots of the things you want to see again. I just went in and typed "numbers" and got a definition of what that means for Lost as well as a list of every time the numbers appear- broken down by "numbers used all together, used individually, etc." So cool!

Oh, my other prediction is that Jin is not really dead. I think the grave was made for him when the news released that flight 815 had crashed and they were just visiting it. But who knows.

March in Texas

I think everyone probably has similar photos from today but here's what Mike and some of the neighborhood kids did in the snow this afternoon. The house across the street had a fort too so they could throw snowballs back and forth. We really enjoyed the snow and getting off work early but it looks like tomorrow it will be back to normal, except I have 2 hours of work to make up and a grocery store trip to make that keeps getting postponed.
There's nothing like watching Lost on a snowy day with a cup of hot chocolate by the fire though, it doesn't get much better than that.

Painting the Den

So, we finally decided to paint the den. It's something I've wanted to do since we first moved in so 1 year later is appropriate. Last weekend, we moved all the furniture, taped off the edges, and started painting. It went easier than expected but was still a very long, tiring weekend. Lets review- here is what the den looked like before:

Previous owners had dry brushed a dark brown on to the paneling in attempt to make it look like wood? (a question mark because I can only assume that's what they were thinking, whatever it was, it was a bad idea). Next we have a progress photo- we painted the window frame and bar cabinets white.
Next, we painted the entire room Macadamia. After we rolled one coat we had to brush each of the seams in the paneling then roll another coat. Here is the stage after the first roll. I think mike is saying "Do you think it looks good like this?".
And here is the final product. I was really happy with how it turned out. I still have a lot of things i want to do to the den but this was a good start. Another new addition are the 2 new mirrors over the sofa we got at West Elm this weekend. Well, that was last weekend and this weekend we are still recovering. I'm not sure what the next project will be but I can tell you this will be the last time we paint the den.

Getting off the Boat

This part was easy. The night before, they had dropped off luggage tags at our cabin with a number. We went to breakfast at the main dining room for the last time then back to our cabin. We decided to carry out our own luggage so we sat in our cabin and at 8:30 they started calling out numbers. When our number was called we headed down to the exit and they scanned our card and we were off. You go into a warehouse next and we grabbed a porter (we got a tip this was the way to go) and the porter took us to a porters only line- much shorter than the rest- and waited to go through customs. We had filled our our paperwork and we got up to the agent and handed everything over. About 5 seconds later he motioned us through. I stood there looking at him like "don't you want to ask me some questions, I could be dangerous!" but he didn't care. I guess he thought that if you were boring enough to only claim "3 t-shirts and 2 bottles of vanilla" than there was nothing to worry about. Well, we took the bus back to our car and we were off for Fort Worth. I think I slept most of the way home dreaming about going on another trip. That's pretty much the only thing we talked about for the next week actually.
Good news, we decided to go on another cruise! This time with as many friends as possible so you are all invited! There is a bigger ship that goes out of Galveston also, the Conquest, and it's a 7 day trip to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel. We are leaving on Aug. 31st and I have a group number if you are interested. It's going to be totally awesome. I recommend this kind of travel to anyone. You can be as active or laid back as you want to be and spend as much or as little money as you want. I think our total of onboard purchases was under $100 when we were through and that included the spa treatment! It works great for kids too. The childcare is included in the cruise rate so you basically have an adult vacation depending on how much your kids want to go to "Camp Carnival". Email me if you are interested or have questions. I'm not getting any kickbacks for organizing a group- if we get anything it will be a group cocktail party but I'm not getting a bigger cabin or anything. :-) I'm totally addicted- I know you will love cruising!

Fun Day at Sea- Day 5

So sad, our last day on the boat. The boat is still rocking a lot so the morning I don't feel great but that's okay. We started with a late breakfast as usual in the main dining room. Mike had his usual eggs benedict and I had the usual fruit, pancake with bananas, and hot tea. There was another trivia so we went to that, didn't win. Then there was a Debarkation talk that had tips on how to get off the boat the next day. Pretty boring but also necessary.
Today we tried lunch at the main dining room for the first time. It was very nice and there were a few other options than the casual dining place. Lunch took a little longer than we thought so we missed part of the TV theme trivia but caught the end of it. We had a break until our next trivia so I think mike and I went to the casino and played $5 of penny slots. So much fun, I think mike was up $8 at one point but that was as high as it got. Even though there were a lot of smokers in there it wasn't too smoky. I have been to an Oklahoma casino and you couldn't see 2' in front of you because of the smoke so the cruise must have a very good way to get the smoke out, also, they are cleaning it every time it is closed. We played with cash but you could play with your sign and sail card by sticking it in the machine. Very dangerous. I got tickled by the people who had their card in the machine and a stretchy cord that attached to their shirt. I'm guessing they needed this in case their lungs stopped working from the smoking and they fell off the stool and they wanted their card to stop the machine from charging it. If your lungs stop working you got bigger problems than that but to each his own. I think some people spent all day in there.
Well, it was time for another trivia "Who wants to be a Carnivalaire?" We didn't win again, but had fun. Oh, I forgot to say, about 1 the boat stopped rocking and it was completely smooth for the rest of the trip, couldn't even feel the rocking. Apparently this was how it was supposed to be the whole time but we were traveling during a rough season.
Next, Mike and I went to "Q & A with Captain Scala". Audience members asked him questions and it was very interesting to learn so much about the boat. Next they had a Guest variety show where 3 people sang songs. They were all discovered at the karaoke club on previous nights and they were actually quite good. We went back to the cabin to pack (sadly) and then to dinner and the show. The show tonight was a comedian and a country musician who was just okay. We decided to skip the late night comedy and went back to the room and ordered cookies and milk from room service. Yum.
On a side note, Cory had secretly ordered Rachelle flowers and chocolate covered strawberries at one of the ships stores and they had come into the cabin while we were at dinner and had them laid out for her (we were cruising over valentines day). It was really cool that he was able to do that!