Birthday whatnots

We had a big weekend. Bitty's first birthday was on Saturday and we had a big little family party. Then my husband's birthday was Sunday.

Just look at this adorable kid. I think he had a great time!

We celebrated with lions...


tigers...


and monkeys...
Oh my! So, for Christmas last year my brother-in-law gave me the book Hello Cupcake! It's a good one. I had been planning on making cupcakes for Bitty's birthday for a while, and was just going back and forth on which ones to make...when, as my luck would have it, my book disappeared off of the face of the earth. Yeahhhh....

So luckily I was able to find a picture of the monkeys online. The lions I tried to remember as well as I could, and the tigers were something I just made up (hmmm...can ya tell?!). My mom was in town for the birthday party and she helped with the cupcakes, since I was running out of time to get everything done before the party started. Thanks mom!

The other big project I had been planning on before the birthday weekend (my husband's birthday was Sunday) was a homemade birthday banner.

I LOVE birthdays, and growing up we always had one of those paper Happy Birthday signs as well as some plastic pennant birthday banners that we would decorate the house with on everyone's birthdays. And at some point a few months ago I just got it in my mind that I was going to make a birthday banner out of fabric. I had see cute fabric banners all over the blogging world and thought this would be the perfect idea!

I finished it around 11pm on Friday, just in time for the big weekend! I LOVE how it turned out! I should have taken more pictures to post, but for now here's what it looked like:


Do you love it as much as I do??? I would really love to hear what you think about it... I've been toying with the idea of opening an Etsy shop for a while, but I can't decide if it would be worth the trouble... But this ended up so dang cute that I thought maybe someone would want to buy one if I sold them, right? I'll take some close-ups later and post them so you can see just how cute it really is!

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Monday, Monday...

I have some fun stuff that I was going to post about today.... Our birthday weekend and whatnot, but I was too busy leaving comments to enter myself on all the giveaway posts at Nesting Place today! Check it out!


Don't worry, I've also been cleaning my house and playing with the bitty boy. Not JUST entering giveaways.. :)

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Girls' night treats

About a week and a half ago, my BFF Jackie came to visit. While I was grocery shopping before she came I happened to walk past the cake mixes and realize I didn't even have any treats for her visit, and you can't have a weekend with your best girl friend visiting without treats! That would just be insanity.

So I solved that problem!

I picked up some of this:

And a can of this:

And made one of the best treats EVER! Just take a look at these little goodies!



And they taste much better than they look! Cakemix cookies are quite versatile, but this is my favorite way to eat them. Funfetti cake with rainbow chip frosting sandwiched in between...YUM! I learned how to make cakemix cookies from my college roommates (Jackie was one of them, so what an appropriate treat for her visit!). The ones my roommates made most often were chocolate cake with peanut butter chips in the dough. The possibilities are endless, I'm sure.

The other reason these were a great treat is the fact that they are not very labor intensive. Here's the recipe.

1 package of cakemix of your choice
1/3 cup oil
3 eggs
other ingredients or toppings of your choice

Shape dough in to 1 inch balls, faltten into 1/4" thickness (I don't think we even did that step...). Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

And that's it. Easy Peasy.

We also made a late night Sonic run when my brain had gotten too fuzzy to sew a straight line anymore.

{Have you seen that one Sonic commercial with the two ladies making a late night Sonic run? OH man, I laughed so hard thinking about it, and how we are those women...I can't remember it exactly but it's something to the effect of "We're two crazy ladies on a late night Sonic run...You never know what we're going to do next! Maybe go....buy some eggs....and boil 'em...." haha... If you've never seen it, I'm sure it sounds lame, but I think it's so funny!}

And we ordered something that may or may not have been a good idea. We each got one of these in the strawberry limeade variety:


Freaking delicious! The reason I say it might not have been a good idea to order it, is that I have SERIOUSLY been craving one every day since then. And at about $2.50 a pop I can't really just go get one any time I want. That being said, I'm not sure how much longer I can last without getting another one! Maybe I'll have to take my hubby out for treats at Sonic for part of celebrating his birthday this weekend :)

P.S. There was absolutely NO signage for these babies at the Sonic we went to. If you go to order one and don't see it on the menu, go ahead and ask if they have it. Luckily Jackie had had one before so we ordered them even though they weren't printed on the menu.

What treats do you like to have on a girls' night??

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I might be crazy....

{Edited to add: I'm submitting this project as my Procrastinator Party entry at the Inspired Room. I know I posted this originally before the party...but in true procrastinator style, the project has hardly been touched since the original post date.. And the icing on the cake is that even procrastinated linking my post up. OOPS!}

Here's the story. We moved into our apartment on July 29th. We didn't bring our old entertainment center with us, because, well, it was an ugly piece of junk. We gave it back to the thrift store where it came from. Ever since then, this has been our entertainment center.

Yes. That is a {thrift store} dining room chair. With our tv on top, and video games (ah, husbands...) and a jumble of cords underneath. Pretty gangster, right? I haven't been able to find anything we wanted for an entertainment center within our budget yet. First I was looking at armiores, but my husband wasn't loving that idea... And unless we shelled out the money for one with the doors that slide back or wrap around they'd be hanging open all the time. Really. I used to complain about how much tv my husband watches, but now that we have TLC and HGTV, I'm almost just as bad. Almost.

So, I got to thinking maybe we should make a cabinet with 3 or 4 doors where we can keep everything out of sight, except for the tv. Because we SO need some storage for games and movies, etc. Just look at this. UGLY!


The problem with that idea is we don't really know how to make things. And we don't want to spend a ton of money, effort, and time on something that's going to look like we made it. (And I don't mean that in a good way!)

So, for a Saturday afternoon activity, we browsed the Salvation Army on the hunt for something that would work. I had thought of a dresser as a possibility before... Something that could be versatile, that we could use somewhere else as a buffet or an actual dresser in the future if we wanted.

We found something that we have since referred to as "a diamond in the very, very rough."

Allow me to introduce you to The Beast.And here's a closeup:


Aren't those the ugliest handles you have ever seen in your ENTIRE life? Not to mention the weirdest. It really is a beast. It weighs a TON and is going to take A LOT of work, but I'm hoping to end up with one of those beautiful wow! transformations, instead of failing miserably. Because that is a distinct possibility at this point. It could go either way.

But it was on sale 50% off. So for $40 we got it. We're just not at the point in our lives where we can go buy an expensive piece of furniture, ya know? I'm imagining beadboard to cover the damage on the sides, but I don't know if I'm that good! This is uncharted territory people! Wish me luck!

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Friday Faves

Okay, I didn't mean to totally ignore the blog this week, but on the up side, I did get some things done that I needed to!

My sister told me about a blog called Our Best Bites recently and said she had tried a few of their recipes and liked them. So, when I was doing my meal planning a week or so ago I decided to check it out and work a few recipes into my plan.

I tried the guiltless alfredo sauce, the black bean soup, and the breakfast crescent braid. YUM!


There wasn't a picture of the finished alfredo sauce, but there are the ingredients. Pretty easy, and delicious! I thought it turned out a little salty though, so next time I would probably half the amount of salt. But I will definitely make it again! If you've ever reheated Olive Garden alfredo and seen the amount of butter all that cream was floating in, you will definitely appreciate that fact that this is "guiltless". SO YUMMY!



Black Bean Soup. I like this too! It was pretty easy to make, which is always a plus. I was kind of worried that I wouldn't like it, but I really did! We ate it by itself, but I think next time I make it, I'll serve it with quesadillas or taquitos. I know they've got a recipe for homemade taquitos on the blog, so I may have to check that out!


This one's called Easy Breakfast Crescent Braid. It was super easy and pretty yummy. We were thinking it would be tasty to add some bell pepper and mushrooms to the egg next time, or maybe try sausage or ham instead of bacon, though the bacon was delicious. You could get really creative with this. The only thing I would warn you on this is that it doesn't make a whole lot. My husband, my (almost) 1-year-old, and I ate the whole thing. So make two if you have more mouths to feed!

This site is definitely my favorite this week! You should really go check it out. Not only are the recipes tasty, the site's got such a fun, colorful design and awesome pictures (including the ones on this post!).

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Still finding a balance...

Last week I was good and wrote a blog post everyday as well as getting some projects done and other projects started. Awesome, right? It would be if I had done the other important things I should be doing in my life, like my church responsibilities, etc.

I've been realizing lately that I don't really feel like much of an adult. This hasn't been much of a problem in the past, but ya know... while I am young, I just keep getting older, and I don't want to be one of those really immature 25-, 30-, or 40-year-olds. I just don't.

So my goal is to be more of an adult, and what this translates to for me is being more responsible. I wouldn't say I'm irresponsible, but I let myself off the hook for not doing things I should too often by using excuses.... I had to get those projects done, I really wanted to get that blog post done today, or even something as lame as I hate calling people I don't know!

I'm going to try to start being better about focusing on the important things and doing what I'm supposed to do when I'm supposed to do it, dang it!

I'm writing this to say sorry if my posting is a little sporadic. I'm busy trying to buck up and be an adult!

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Friday Faves (I was featured!!)

So, I felt kind of under the weather all day yesterday, and then really started to feel crummy and feverish last night (so I ended up laying in bed reading Pride and Prejudice and watching HGTV instead of painting my table, darn.)

And this morning I woke up with a huge headache, and of course, somehow with the move we ended up with no tyleonol in the house! Luckily I have a wonderful husband who went and picked some up for me before going to work. That sweet man, I love him. He even brought it to me in bed with a glass of water. So that made me feel a little bit better.

Then I came downstairs and checked my email, and saw that I had a comment on my cornice board post saying I was featured on Someday Crafts!! How awesome is that?! This is my first feature and I'm very proudly displaying my button there on the right sidebar! And right here.

I'm actually new to this blog, and it is awesome! I haven't had a chance too look through too many of the posts yet, but I love this one all about pumpkin fall decor! I think I'm gong to have to pull out my fall stuff next week (even though it's still almost 100 degrees here!) Go check out this blog, it's my Friday Fave today!

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