Happily Ever After

Hi there!! First things first, I am so very sorry about my absence.  Wedding planning, my job, and working on this new house are taking up way to much of my time.  But in the midst of all this hectic crazy schedule, I have neglected one of my favorite hobbies, spending time with ya'll! So, I sincerely have missed ya'll and I vow to never stop blogging again!

Ya'll, this wedding stuff ain't for the faint of heart.  I can only describe the deep mental anguish, the hands covered in paper cuts, the awful headaches that come from long hours of mentally calculating numbers (number of people, number of tables, number of yards for each table cloth, number of hours needed to do hair).   I have gotten so in over my head in showers and thank you notes and invitations and reply cards that I feel that if I am asked to give one more opinion, my head will pop off and spin into loony land. All of this fuss and hub bub has clouded over the really important part of this wedding mess.  The bigger picture is that I am getting lucky in a big way.  I have the privilige of vowing to love and cherish my best friend.  That I will always have someone in my life to support me and share my dreams, my success, my laughter.  Someone that will help me bear the burden of failure, sorrow, and tough times.  He is my cowboy in shining armor, the goofiest, sweetest, hardest working salesman in all of planet cellular land. He makes me smile when all I wanna do is sit in the floor in the middle of a huge blue paint stain that I put right on the hardest to hide spot on our new carpet in our new home that we have owned all of 24 hours.   That is why I am so stressin' about this day because I want it to be the perfect reflection of my relationship with my bass fishin', football watchin' boot wearin' cowboy.  But you know what, it will be.  I don't think I'll notice if the table cloths are a shade off or the groomsmens tie are no where to be find after the recessional or if the buttercream is ivory instead of snow white. I am pretty positive that my mind will be on one thing and one thing only: my happily ever after spent hand in hand with my husband!  I'm so glad ya'll stopped by! See ya'll soon!

Goin' Fishin'

Mobile Skyline from the Causeway



Hi ya'll! I hope this beautiful weather is being enjoyed by each and everyone of ya'll! Today, I want to tell ya'll about Matt and I's fishing trip that we took early this morning.  Now, I can think of a few ways I probably would have rather spent my morning (sleeping, for example) but over the last couple of years I have learned a rather important lesson.  Mind you, this applies to both parties, so take turns! I cannot stress enough the importance of occasionally joining your other half in their favorite hobbies.  My sweet hubby to be has been begging me for months to go fishing and it was priceless to see the look on his face when I suggested we go this morning.  That alone made it worth it but then SURPRISE! I had a great time too! And I caught a HUGE flounder (it took me about 3 and 1/2 hours but by golly I caught one!) We had so much fun even though I woke up late then realized I didn't have a fishing license so we had to swing by Walmart for one of those then I got hung in every tree and grass bed this side of the mason dixon then finally after 3 and 1/2 solid hours of casting lessons (from Matt) I finally caught a fish to his 3!  But it was a memory and we got to spend some precious time alone talking and laughing and bonding over fishing rods and beetle spins. Love ya'll! Have a great weekend!



In Our Life Jackets: Safety First!!



My Big 'Ol Flounder
Note: forgive my nerdiness but I am in fact sporting my math club t-shirt from high school: Math Is as Easy as Pie  :)



Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

Hi there, ya’ll.  I hope ya’ll are truly enjoying the first days of May.  Today’s post is dedicated to my home-away-from-home for the last four years, Tuscaloosa.  Seven days ago, I was perfecting the art of procrastination by putting off my book arts final paper and worrying about where all of my family and friends were going to eat lunch after graduation.   Then, just a half an hour later, my world was a radically different place where the worries of yesterday had been replaced by very real fears about life after the storm.  I have seen some things in the last week that have broken my heart, tested my faith, and taught me some hard lessons about the brevity of life.  However, once the initial heartbreak let up, it was replaced by something altogether better: hope and determination. I have seen a city pull together with an incredible strength.  The people of Tuscaloosa are a force to be reckoned with and as the wonderful Mayor Maddox said, “Our hearts are broken but our souls are stronger than ever.”  I know that statement to be true and I have seen that determination played out in a variety of ways across the state.  People are donating time, goods, and money to help those who have seen some very dark days.  But those dark days are behind us and we will not stop until Tuscaloosa and the other cities that were ravaged by the storm are living in brighter days.   Although I feel a strong sense of hope for the future, I am still having those moments where I am really struggling with why? I have had some moments where I begged my sweet Savior to help me understand.  I am coming to terms with the reality that I probably won’t totally understand why and I’m learning to accept that.  I am choosing to trust that Jesus knows much better than I do, plain and simple. 

Tonight, as I was watching one of my favorite shows, I was reminded of a song that I wanted to share with the people of Tuscaloosa and other hard hit cities around the South.  As Fleetwood Mac sang, “don’t stop thinking about tomorrow/ don’t stop because it’ll soon be here./it’ll be here better than before/ yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone!/don’t you look back!” So Tuscaloosa, don’t you stop thinking about tomorrow because it will soon be here and it will be better than before! Tuscaloosa, you are always on my mind and in my heart.  Thank ya’ll for stopping by and reading what I have to say! I love ya’ll! Night!



Wednesday Addams'

Hi there, ya'll! I hope this rainy, dreary Wednesday finds each and every one of ya'll curled up dry and warm doing something that you truly enjoy! Today, I am gonna share with ya'll a new recipe that I literally just pulled out of the oven.  These are your typical Double Chocolate Chip Cookies that I am renaming Wednesday Addams' in honor of a character as deliciously dark as these cookies.  Be sure to have some milk on hand.. You're definately gonna need it!



1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  In a big ol bowl, cream a stick of butter with 1/4 cup of sugar and a 1/2 cup of brown sugar until fluffy and light.  In your microwave, melt 2.5 ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate.  Then slowly beat in 1 egg, 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, and the melted baking chocolate.
2. Mix 1.5 cups of flour with a teaspoon of baking powder then add it, little by little, to the sugar/chocolate mixture.  Then dump in 3/4 cup of chocolate chips.
3. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a wax-paper lined cookie sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes (I baked mine for 11 min).  Let cool a few minutes on the cookie sheet before moving to a rack. 
4. ENJOY with a glass of milk!

I hope ya'll get a chance to whip up these delicious cookies! Ya'll have a great rest of the week! Thanks for stopping by!

Dining Room

Today, my fabulous friend, Faith, and I did a little shopping.  While we were out and about in Birmingham, I came across a ton of things that I want to use in the dining room of our new house.  I think its important to stress that with a little creativity and time, you can find things that are inexpensive but come together to create a comfy, beautiful home. Here are some things that I love and am hoping to use in my new house, specifically, the dining room.

This lovely dining table and chairs, which I'm head over heels for, are from World Market:

And today I picked up this serving platter and bowl at HomeGoods for $20 total:

Here are the plates that I found from the Better Homes and Gardens Collection at Walmart.  The price of $35 dollars will get you 4 place settings that consist of dinner plate, salad plate, bowl, and mug. What a great deal!

This is the color that I am planning on painting the living room, dining room, kitchen, and hallway! I love the soothing color and I'm planning on using brown, taupe, and a little doses of brighter colors to accent with!

And lastly, here are some curtains, also from World Market, that I think would go perfectly with my color scheme!



I am hoping to create a calm and cozy dining room to entertain guest and eat yummy dinners at night with my husband to be! I am having an absolute blast brainstorming ideas and searching for inspiration at my favorite stores! I will keep ya'll posted as I have the opportunity to pick up pieces and see what happens! Remeber, all it takes are little touches like new dinner plates or dinner napkins to creat a new look on your dining room table and creative style doesn't have to be pricey! Ya'll have a great weekend!

Daffodils

Hi there, ya'll! I hope this post finds everyone enjoying the beautiful weather the Heavenly Father has shown us lately! My musings tonight don't have a single thing to do with cooking, cleaning, decorating, crafting, marriage, Matt, or wedding stuff.  Lately I've been feeling a little overwhelmed by all the changes underway in my life. The house I've called home for the last four years has just been sold, Matt and I recently became the proud owners of our own home, and my mom and dad have decided to do a little remodeling in the house I've lived in since I was three. On top of that, I'm preparing to graduate from college, get married, and start graduate school.  All of these things have transformed me from a happy go lucky girl into a weeping, emotionally unstable, hallmark commercial.  So tonight, on my way to Saraland, Al from Tuscaloosa, I had a little rendevouz with my childhood.  The route from T-town to Saraland happens to go right past the pot-hole patched road where my mama and papa lived for most of my life.  About four years ago, they moved to be closer to my great grandmother and sold the farm where I remember spending weekends and summers growing up. Ya'll, I can't even begin to describe how perfect this house was.  It was an old house with these big doors that had those door knobs that you could only open with these heavy metal skeleton keys.  The front yard was full of trees and hydrangeas in every color.  Even when it was 100 degrees outside, the front yard was cool from all the shade.  It has this front porch that stretched all the way across the front and it had a swing on each end that was perfect for napping.  The backyard was corn fields that stretched on until it met woods. Along with corn, my grandfather grew tomatoes, collards, okra, cabbage, peas, and beans. During the summers, we would eat a dinner made of fresh picked goods that I shelled, picked, or cleaned with my own two hands.  We would play house, school, and store in the backyard for hours until we got hungry, mad at each other, or we had to use the bathroom.  Then we would beat on the back door until my mama let us come in. Before we came in, though, we had to wash our feet in the five gallon bucket that mama kept filled with clean water and bar soap.  When it rained, we would all go swing in the front porch swings or rock in rocking chairs on the front porch.  Every Saturday mornings, we would watch cartoons and drink chocolate milk.  Besides it being an incredible house, it was always abuzz with wildlife.  I remember papa putting out hair from the barber shop to keep the deer from eating the vegetable garden.  At night, we would take turns looking out the kitchen window at deer as they sniffed and poked around the yard.  When I was a toddler, mama's neighbor had a pet deer, named Heather.  The story goes that I walked right up to her and threw my arms around her collar-ed neck.  Another time, I spotted a red fox slinking along behind the corn field.  But my most favorite and magical thing about the house in Leroy, was the field across the road.  In late February and early March, this field grew thousands of daffodils as far as the eye can see.  My mama would take my cousins, Hayley and Hannah, and I to pick daffodils until we had so many in our arms that we left a daffodil path behind us a we tromped back to the house. Then we would dig out every vase my mama had and fill them up with daffodils and disperse them throughout the house.  The house would smell like a spring breeze for days.  So tonight on my way home, I stopped by to have a peek at the house I haven't laid eyes on for four years.  When I pulled up in front of it, I teared up.  It looked nothing and everything like the house I knew.  The tree and hyndragea filled front yard was flat and bare.  The scuppernong vines that lined the yard were gone.  Strange vehicles filled the driveway.  I pulled into the tire tracks in the field across the street to turn around. When I looked up, I saw the field full of daffodils in front of me.  I turned off my car and got out. The sun had almost set and a breeze blew the smell of fresh grass and daffodils to me.  The air there was always so clean and fresh and there weren't ever city lights to cloud the view of the stars.  I picked as many daffodils as I could fit in the cup I dug out of the back seat.  I took one more deep breath and decided that maybe I would just forget about the house the way it looked now and just remember it the way it was when I was little and how I hugged a deer and the hydrangeas that filled up the yard and most importantly, the field of daffodils.
I hope that ya'll enjoyed reading about my trip down memory lane and I encourage each of you to spend some time remembering the wondeful things about ya'lls past.  Seeing the house where I spent one half of my childhood helped me remember that lots of things change but somethings don't.  And that no matter what, I always always have my memories of my daffodil field.  Ya'll, have a wonderful weekend and thanks for stopping by!

                                                                   My Daffodil Field

Wife Practice, Level 2

Hi ya'll! As ya'll know, I'm a wife in training.  I'll let ya'll in on a little secret: Even though I'm proud to have something pretty delicious to feed to my soon to be husband, it's really me that all this cooking and table setting is for.  I just love entertaining and cooking delicious food too much.  So I'm gonna let him think this is for him but I wanted ya'll to know the real truth! So tonight, I added another level of complexity to my wife training (jk)! Along with making a meal, I also set the table and added an element of presentation that I avoided last night.  I would like to thank my roommate, Kimberlee, for being a brave taste testing guinea pig.  Tonight's menu consisted of the classic sloppy joe's (from henceforth to be known as sloppy jac's) and baked beans.  I finished up the meal with simply delicious strawberry parfaits.  Here are the pics from the evening:

                         



Here is the recipe for Sloppy Jac's:

1. Put 1 1b. ground beef, 1 chopped onion, 1 chopped and seeded bell pepper, and 1 chopped clove of garlic into a nonstick skillet and cook, stirring frequently and breaking up the beef with a wooden spoon, over medium heat for about 8-10 minutes, until beef is evenly browned.  Carefully, drain the fat.
2. Stir in 1 tbsp mild mustard, 3/4 c. of ketchup, 1 tsp of white vinegar, and pinch each of chili powder and paprika.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes.
3. Divide mixture evenly among 4 hamburger buns and serve immediately. 

For the beans, I just grabbed a big can of original baked beans.  I diced up 1/2 an onion and 1/2 a bell pepper and sauted them in a pan for a few minutes. Then I added the baked beans and a spoon of each: ketchup, syrup, and brown sugar.  Adding a few things to a simple can of beans makes them taste like homemade instead of outa the can :)

For the parfaits, I whipped up some lowfat instant vanilla pudding.  I added a layer of crushed graham crackers, then some diced strawberries, then a layer of vanilla pudding. I repeated once more and finished up with a sprinkle of graham cracker crumbs on top.

This recipe turned out so delicous: both of my roommates gave it there seal of approval! I can't wait to whip this up one night and see what reaction I get from Matt.  I suspect that he will greedily ask for seconds. So ya'll get in the kitchen and see what kinda trouble ya'll can get into! Thanks for stopping by and talk to ya'll again real soon!

Wife Practice

Hi ya'll! I hope that this post finds everyone doing well! BIG NEWS: Matt and I bought a house!!! I'm so excited! My brain is already filled to the brim with decorating ideas, potential paint colors, and furniture arrangements.  I can't wait to get some pics up so ya'll can tour the new place!

Tonights blog is about what I'm jokingly calling "Wife Practice".  Eating Special K for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and using my floor as extra craft space is okay when living alone but those habits may not be conducive to marital bliss. So first, I've decided to conquer cooking! The recipe I attempted is called "Battered Beef" but I think it needs a much better name.  It turned out way better than I was hoping for! Here are some shots from the prep part of the cooking:

 First, I made the batter.




   Then I diced onions and fresh parsley, mixed it with 1 lb. of ground beef, and seasoned with salt and pepper.  

 

 Last I poured the 1/2 the batter in a a pan, added the beef mixture, and poured the rest of the batter over the top.  Bake for 1 hr.  and Voila! Dinner is served!








Here's the recipe:
1. First, make the batter.  Sift 1 cup of all purpose flour, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a pinch of salt into a bowl.  Make a well in the center and add 1 egg and 1/2 cup of milk.  Stir together with a wooden spoon, then beat well with a whisk or mixer until smooth and full of bubbles. Stir (with wooden spoon) in another 3/4 cup of milk, cover the bowl, and let rest for 30 min.
2. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Combine 1 lb. ground beef, 1/2 onion diced, 1 garlic clove diced,  and 1 tbsp. parsley chopped.  Salt and pepper to tast. 
3. Heat oil in a shallow baking pan ( I used a rounder deeper dish and the cooking time was longer.  I would recommend a 13x9 pan) until very hot, then remove pan from heat.  Stir batter and pour half of it into the pan.  Spread ground beef mixture on top, using a spatula, and pour remaining batter over it.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, until batter is bubbling, then reduce the oven to 350 degrees and bake additional 30 minutes, until golden brown.
5. Garnish with parsley and cut into squares. Serve immediately. 


I really enjoyed the final product! I might would add some cheese into the batter mixture! It was so fun to cook a real meal for myself! With a little practice over the next few months, I will be whipping up meals that will have Matt rushing home every night with his mouth watering! Later this week, I am making homemade sloppy joes!! Tune in for the recipe! Love ya'll!


Note: This recipe came from "1 ground beef, 100 meals" by Linda Doeser

Hi Ya'll!

Ya'll, it has been far too long and for that I apologize.  Starting back to school and getting used to my new work schedule and the run of things at my internship has been quite enough to thoroughly exhaust me. As we speak, I am sitting at the kitchen table, chin deep in psychology notes, eating peanut butter from the jar and using this wonderful blog as a tool of procrastination.  So here's the update:

1. I bought a dress!!! I mean this dress is seriously the most amazing piece of clothing to ever grace this body.  I love it, I look like a incredibly svelte movie star in it, and my mom agreed that it was pretty much, all together, amazing so we bought it.  It should be in at the end of May so I will let ya'll know then how it fits and what all will begin then!
2. I also booked the photographer, the florist, the caterer, and the venue.  I am officially getting married on August 6, 20ll at 6 p.m. at the Kirk House.  Rosebud will be in charge of my beautiful flowers (green hydrangeas) and Full of Grace Catering will be in charge of the delicious fare ( A NACHO BAR!!!).  All in all, things have really come together!
3. Matt and I are house shopping! As soon as we find a place to call home, I will keeping ya'll in on every detail from painting to appliances to bed linens.  Most of the houses in our price range need a little TLC so it should be interesting to see the transformation. 

I think that is it for now as far as updates are concerned.  I'm experimenting in the kitchen so I can learn to cook something that won't poison my poor new hubby.  I will fill ya'll in on the quick, easy, and delicious ones and I'll probably just keep the disasters to myself.  That is unless the disaster is so hilarious that it would be wrong to keep ya'll uninformed.  Keep checking back and be sure that I am working on something fabulous to share with ya'll! Love  ya'll!