Reminder!

Just a reminder that I moved on up to a different site, you can find me here! Please add the new link to whatever way it is that you keep track of all the blogs out there! I would LOVE to hear what you think of the new site so comment away!

moving

Hey guys,

I am finally mostly set up on the new site so I will not be posting here anymore, please come visit me on the new site landing in the stars. I cannot wait to hear what you all think of it and am super excited about the future!

xoxo

Hungry times

I plugged my camera in today to upload my pictures from this past weekend and realized just how much I have been slacking on our meal updates! Cinco de Mayo mister and I went out with some good friends but we decided against going to a Mexican restaurant because we knew they were going to be insane, we were able to order up some queso but it just was not quite up to par.. so we made queso at home a couple nights later! Forgive how sucky some of these pictures are, between school starting and being sick I have been such a slacker!! 

JJ and Erica!

Nothing beats velveeta and rotel! 

Last week was really difficult between being super sick, starting school and losing a close friend and I was in no mood to get off the couch let alone cook so Mister took care of me! Boy did he have some tricks up his sleeve! He cooked some insanely delicious dinners. Starting with a beef/tomato/rice stuffed green pepper situation. Yumm. 

Wednesday nothing sounded good, I was so stuffed up and felt so gross.... and then Salmon was mentioned. Salmon is my absolute guilty pleasure. Salmon breaded served with a delicious cheesy pasta and I am in heaven. Mister had stumbled upon a recipe that involved sauteing garlic, onion, butter and about half a cup of half and half and shredded mozzarella cheese. That delicious combination over some bow tie pasta with spinach and a nice piece of salmon, and this sick girl was in a happy place! 

Sunday I was feeling much better and since I had been taken care of so well over my sucky week I decided to make some pancakes for the mister!! I have been dreaming of making these cake batter pancakes from How Sweet It Is for months and it seemed like the perfect day! The pancakes turned out delicious, we were not huge fans of the glaze but that could be because I used pure vanilla not vanilla extract. The pancakes with maple syrup and sliced up bananas turned out to be the perfect sunday breakfast, who can resist sprinkles?!

I had my first test of the semester today and it went well, have a bunch of homework left to do and Thursday early morning we leave for Georgia!! 

xoxo

Shaners

I have been absolutely blessed with some of the most amazing friends in the entire world. One of which is Mister Shane Downey. Shane passed away this morning after a complication from being on blood thinners for the past eleven years. Shane has always been an inspirational person for me, through all of the challenges that he faced he always stayed positive. Going from being a successful athlete to a wheel chair was never easy, and he had difficult days but through it all he remained Shane. 

spring break bonfire

Shane never failed to put a smile on my face. He was always was full of stories, jokes, smiles and love. Even though it seemed like he was always in the hospital or battling some sort of set back he always stayed positive. There was one time I was bringing him his favorite dinner (taco bell) to the hospital and upon walking in the room there were 6 other people there visiting him - a true testament to how loved he was, he always had the most visitors. Shane cared deeply for his family, his faith and his friends. 

babysitting Shane's pup Guess

Birthday surprise party

Family dinner night, Shaners and Trace Face

I will always cherish the memories of family dinners, movie nights, spring break in Jacksonville and getting insanely lost driving to Austin. I know there are so many people who already miss Shane, life just isn't going to be the same without his messages, words of wisdom and his gigantic smile. 

Happy Mamma's Day!!

I have been blessed with the best mamma in the entire world. She has always been my best friend, my shoulder to cry on, my support system and someone who has kept me grounded but always allowed me to spread my wings to fly. She is the most loving and caring person in the entire world and I am a lucky girl to have her all to myself! Even when we are on opposite sides of the planet we still talk everyday about everything. I love you mamma, thank you for being my everything and enjoy a day all about you!

2005

Christmas 2008

taking care of my sick baby for me

amazing night at a "swine flu" ballet 

Pinot and Picasso 

exploring London town!

Parliament tour 

First steps in Paris

Atlantis

Cinco de Drinko!

I really don't have plans of drinking all that much, but how fun is it to say Cinco de Drinko?! I am a fan! I have spent a good portion of my week trying to find the perfect outfit for tonight, with no luck. Times like these really make me miss Houston. I know exactly where to go in Houston for the perfect traditional Mexican style fiesta dress without spending $128, in Orlando, not so much! I have dreams of wearing a semi-short dress with my cowboy boots while I snack on queso and sip a skinny girl margarita! 

Tuesday Miss Erica and I had a girls craft day preparing for SOWO in a few weeks. We started by ooing and awwing at the Target Calypso line. I am in love with almost everything, they have a great dress for cinco de drinko but the $42 price tag wasn't worth it for one night. After gawking for a few minutes we moved on over to the glass section to pick the perfect glass for our craft time! After remembering who we will be around we decided to go with plastic wine glasses instead of glass - planning ahead! We used oil based paint pens, a hot glue gun and some colorful jewels to bling it out! I decorated our "day time" cups for the actual show earlier in the week. 

I am still working on getting the new site set up - it is a bit more difficult that I hoped for, but it is going to be amazing when it is all done!! Hang in there in the meantime, I can't wait to hear what you think of it when it is all done!! 

xoxo

quick tip!

When my mom was in town about a month ago we decided to go to a day spa, because that is what mothers and daughters need to do when they haven't seen each other in months. After reading a few reviews and blogs about gel and shellac manicures I decided I really wanted to try them. 3 weeks without chipping? Count me in! 

I was a little hesitant that they take a dremel to your nails to file them down so that the gel doesn't look too thick but since I am a nail biter I was willing to try something new. I decided to go with "My Private Jet" for the color, it is a great sparkly brown and hello, I would love a private jet - great name!! The lady who was working on me REALLY filled my nails down, it hurt a little. After the entire process was done I was really happy and loved my nails for a good two weeks, around week three they had grown out so much that it was about time to take them off. Here is where I went from loving my nails to wanting to cry. The take off process wasn't awful, lots of soaking in acetone followed by peeling the gel off. 

Moral of the Story:

It has been two weeks since I took the gel manicure off. My nails hurt. My nails are so thin that even washing my hands in water that is too hot or cold hurts. I think that the nerves under my nails are exposed. They are thin and fragile and bend and I want my old bitten, chipped nails back. I had the OPI axxium process done, my mom had a shellac process done in Houston that did not involve filing the nail down. Her nails were super shiny, lasted a long time and she loved it. 

If you are considering gel vs. shellac, go with shellac!! 

Still working on the new site, so stay tuned!! 

xoxo

Updates

Hey bloggers!

I am in the process of some changes around here, so I probably will not be posting for a couple of days but I promise I am still around - just working behind the scenes! 

In the meantime I am trying to come up with my birthday wish list and so far all I have are crest white strips  and kate spade everything - any other ideas out there?! 

Have a great Thursday everyone

xoxo

taking chances

When I decided to become a world renowned chef learn how to cook I had no idea you could boil chicken.  To me you can bake, fry and grill chicken, I had never in my life heard of boiling chicken. Well there were like a million recipes out there that started with boiling the chicken and this scared me to death. I am already crazy hesitant about cooking chicken because I can never tell when it is done and am always scared I will undercook it and poison myself and friends - I think this is why I was so good at being a vegetarian! So last night I decided to step waaay out of my comfort zone and boil up some chicken!

It all started when I saw this recipe of Chicken Noodle Soup Casserole on my favorite Pioneer Woman and realized if I wanted more casserole options in my life I had to step out of my chicken boiling comfort zone. I researched what temperature and how long it should boil for and got about a million different answers, everywhere from 12 minutes to 22 minutes. So I stuck the chicken in the water with some olive oil, crossed my fingers and set my timer for 11 minutes to check on it. 

All I can say was that was the easiest chicken I have ever made!! Since our chicken was a bit thinner than normal chicken breasts it only took the 11 minutes and then it was perfect for shredding. Who knew chicken could be this easy?! 

I cooked the chicken earlier in the night since I was not sure how that situation was going to go. Once we were ready for dinner I started the water for the pasta and got to chopping up the celery, carrots and onion while mister pressed the garlic. Then we put it on a pan with some butter to start cooking all the veggies. 

Once that was done we just dumped in the cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soup followed by half a cup of sour cream and the boiled chicken ( no we did not almost forget to add the chicken, I don't know where you heard that)! 

We did not have room to mix everything in the pan so we actually put everything in a big bowl with the pasta. Once that was all mixed up we put it in a pyrex pan and stuck it in the oven for 20 minutes. 

Lastly heaven was created. Dumping an entire roll of crushed ritz crackers on top of this wonderful mix and cooking for another 5 minutes. This casserole was HEAVEN. Overall it was easy, there were quite a few steps but nothing was difficult once I stepped out of my comfort zone. 

 All I can say is I know exactly what I will be having for lunch today and probably dinner tonight!! 

On another note, I am dreaming of this dress and this dress. 

xoxo

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend has come and gone - where on earth is this year going?! Friday night mister and I went out with some friends who are my absolute favorites. Over Christmas we took pictures with Santa so we decided we had to take pictures with the Easter bunny!! So we enjoyed some drinks at happy hour and headed on over to the mall to get in line with all the babies and toddlers - please forgive my picture of a picture

After our adorable picture we wondered the mall for a few minutes where I discovered that forever 21 now has maternity clothes. I am just not sure how I feel about this. Opinions? 

Paco enjoyed his Easter. He has been hiding/sleeping in the strangest places. Yesterday we discovered him cuddling in the back of the closet with my cowboy boots. I think he misses Texas so he was drawn to the boots! I gave him some plastic easter eggs which have always been his favorite toys to play with, however all he wanted to do was sleep!

Saturday night we went to see Water for Elephants. I read the book a couple weeks ago and was really excited to see my favorite actress in this part. The movie was really good, it definitely had some major differences from the book, but seeing the changes and things left out/switched around I can understand why. Normally I get pretty upset when a movie is drastically different from a book I love, but this time I actually understood the changes and still really enjoyed it. I also loved having an awesome date night with frozen yogurt included!

Mister brought me home an awesome Easter surprise. We named him Walter. I love him. 

Thanks to the wonderful world of netflix I am completely addicted to the show Fringe. I think this show has taken over me more than any other show ever. We watched season one and two on netflix but since the third season is still currently on we had to find the first half of season 3 online which was such a pain but we did make it happen - so I may have gone a little overboard and we may have watched like 10 episodes in the last three days - Whoops!! What can I say, you put Joshua Jackson in something and I am HOOKED, I fell in love with him in Mighty Ducks. Love like that just doesn't disappear. 

who could resist that?

 Also due to my not working I have been sucked into some pretty awful day time tv, today I have been watching Bethany Ever After while I clean and do some crafts and it does not seem to be as awful as I expected. I was hesitant due to Real Housewives but I did always like her so I am giving it a shot!

Hope everyone has a great week!

xoxo

Thursday Pizza

A few months ago I saw this post about a homemade breakfast pizza on Smitten Kitchen and knew I had to make it. I am a full believer in breakfast for dinner and one of our favorite things to make at home is pizza, combining two of my favorite things? Easy decision! 

Last year for Mister's birthday I gifted him a pizza stone - best thing ever! It is awesome for homemade pizza, store bought pizza, bread of any kind. We tend to keep the stone in the oven at all times. This is where I got ours, I also recommend the scrubber and pizza peel! 

As I looked over the recipe again last night I decided to make a few changes, first of all, I was not going to make the dough - too lazy! Publix always has fresh bags of dough in the bakery section so all you have to do is pick it up! Secondly, we still had some fresh mushrooms and spinach from the farmers market last weekend that I really wanted to use. 

To start if off - we preheated the oven to 350 with the pizza stone in it and start turning the dough into crust!

We put the crust onto our pizza peel so it will be easy to transfer to the stone 

followed by a layer of cheese and four eggs

Pilled on some sliced up mushrooms and spinach

Finally transfer the pizza onto the stone! We cooked it for about 30 minutes

It was HEAVENLY!!! The egg was so perfect, I could not get enough of it! It's the weekend folks - go make yourself a pizza!!!

xoxo

discoveries

Last Christmas my wonderful mamma put a pretty dark green nail polish in my stocking. I LOVED it. I get the fabulous OPI, China Glaze and their popularity, but every once in awhile a girl just needs a low cost fabulous color that they can do at home. 

Enter Sally Hansen Insta-Dri fast dry nail color. The brush is amazing, it is flat which makes getting right up to the edge of the nail/skin super easy. I am fairly awful at painting my own nails and due to my complete lack of patience I tend to walk around/type/text and never let them dry properly, this stuff is super quick drying so you have less time to mess it up! It also only takes one coat for awesome coverage, max two coats. 

Best part - they cost less than $5 so you can get lots of fun colors!! 

I just got peachy breeze and am lovin every minute it!

xoxo

relaxing weekend

I have been a total ball of stress for the past week and a half, and I have never handled stress well. So this weekend I decided to be as stress free as I could be. 

Friday night we went and saw a movie at Universal City Walk and wandered around some shops which is always fun. 

Saturday I read Water for Elephants by the pool and I have to say I loved that book.  With the movie coming out this week I wanted to make sure I had read the book before I saw it and it was fantastic. I am hoping that the movie is half as good as the book because it was truly wonderful. I know I am late in the game, but now I'm onto Eat, Pray, Love.

Sunday we went to the farmers market and I swear I could have eaten absolutely everything I saw.  The fresh fruits and vegetables were all so colorful and wonderful. We ended up leaving with tomatoes, eggplant, spinach, mushrooms, blueberries, strawberries, 4 loaves of fresh bread, home made pasta and Guinness cheese. We decided to take everything over to Seans mom's and cook them dinner after hanging out in the pool. 

Is anyone else loving Kate Spade as much as Stefanie and I are? I cannot get enough of it lately. Everything from the bags to the breathtaking skirts/dresses/bangles/shoes/website. Here are some fantastic things I've been eyeing. I especially love the bangles because they all have cute phrases inside them and do not even get me started on the pineapple earrings!

 xoxo