Twitterpated with Yardwork

First, let me say I haven't felt as alive as I did this morning when I walked outside in the sun with a light mist going on. I was wearing flip flops, so the little blades of grass were tickling my toes, and everything just felt so... Incredible.

I love spring. I love the smells, the sounds, and temperature  It's the perfect time of year. But our house doesn't really have a lot of spots that are very outdoor friendly... So I really wanted to make it my goal to make some good outdoor spaces that we can use.

First up... We have this corner of the house that is just... Terrible. Everything about it. There's some trash, the AC unit and heating oil drum. But there's so much potential! It's a little nook that you can look out into from three different rooms in the house! 

 

Never mind the peeling paint... We'll have to fix that at a later time. But this is what I'm working with. My first thought was to get a lattice and some vines and create some sort of barrier between the world and the AC unit. Frankly, it didn't feel like it did that much. But I'm hoping that once the vines start really growing up and sprouting flowers that it'll look nice.

So what I think I'm going to do next is take some nice outdoor pots and find some pretty flowers to sort of bookend my vine situation. Not sure what to do along the long edge of that space just yet... Maybe a bench.

I also worked on this little fella' over the weekend. Meet the world's ugliest picnic table. It lived in our backyard since we bought the house. I have no idea how old it is, and it was fully covered with this ugly tearing tarp (you can still see it on the seat in the picture above). So we ripped all that off, and started spray-painting it. I know we should have sanded and primed it and done it the right way... But... Well... We just don't do things the right way sometimes. And after a few coats, it's starting to look a ton better. 

Have you ever seen cushions on picnic table seats? I feel like that would be really cool and comfortable. I also have this crazy idea of painting something on the top of the table... but I'm not sure what yet. We'll see!

I'll post more updates as we de-uglify our outdoor spaces!

On Being Midsized

I am a midsized woman.

This means that I wear anywhere from a L-2X depending on the store.

Everyone I know has a complaint about their body. And most of those people have complaints about how their body relates to clothing that typical stores carry. The plus sized girls can't find anything cute in their size. The stick-thin girls can't fill out the butt of their jeans. The big chested girls look too top-heavy. The small chested girls don't look top-heavy enough. And the petite girls that have to hem every damn thing they buy.

We all have issues. That is something we have in common.

But I want to take a moment to recognize the midsized women out there who may not always experience the common shopping dilemmas that other women face. Or may experience those, in addition to a plethora of unique experiences.

I don't know of many stores that do this, but DEB splits their store right down the middle. Plus size is off to one side, and non-plus size is off to the other. But what about me? I am sitting right on the line between plus size and non. The plus size items in this store are a little above my range. And the non items are a little below my range.

Waaaah!!!

And then of course we've got stores out there that only cater to one size demographic, but have another store that carries similar clothing in higher sizes. Think Hot Topic and Torrid. This means that I have to go to not one, but TWO different stores with nearly identical items and face double the amount of "why don't they carry my size" than the average woman.

I am grateful to stores who carry plus size options because generally it's easier for me to take a plus size garment and get it altered than it is to add something to something that is too small. But I just wish the middle group wasn't forgotten so often.

When things go horribly wrong

One of my cakes from 2008

Husband's birthday was last week, and like a good wifey I decided I'd make him a cake! When I was in high school and college, I made cakes all the time and they were always pretty tasty and beautiful.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to put the cake together for his Saturday evening birthday party, so I decided to stick with boxed mix and canned icing - not that that's a bad thing. I got white cake mix and added some almond extract (1 tsp per box), and got strawberry preserves to mix with the icing. It was fool-proof.

I even went out and got a brand new square cake pan. Everything was set. Saturday afternoon comes around, I mix up my cake mix and pour it in the greased pan. Little while later, cake was done. Let it cool for a few minutes, then came issue number one...

Cake was stuck.I finally got it out of the pan, but it was pretty damaged. Well, shit. That's okay. It's salvageable. No problem. I went ahead and cut the cake down the middle so I could put a nice thick layer of delicious strawberry icing in between the two pieces. No big problems yet. Iced the bottom half. No issues. Went to put the top half back on...

And it fell apart. It just crumbled.

That's okay. That's okay! I can just use icing to even it out...

Nope. Didn't work. It was awful. The icing was just making it crumble more and I had a major cakedown. I started crying, asked Husband what I could possibly do about it because it was so ugly and awful and I had already spent the money on the cake trying to make it. He tried his best to soothe me, but sometimes there's just nothing you can say.

And then I went crazy.

Just kidding. Sort of. I did go crazy, but I also had an epiphany. I could smash up this ugly horrible cake and make cake balls! I had never done it before, but I watched a friend make them once and it seemed pretty easy... I wasn't sure if my ratios were right at all (turns out the balls were a little moister than usually prepared due to too much icing).

Turns out it was fine. Rolled up the cake and icing into little balls, covered it with blue and green candy melts - which, by the way, I couldn't find a good way to do to get a smooth surface... Everyone loved them. I was surprised! But also happy my disaster didn't ruin the night.

My cake balls and some other snacks for the evening.

Weekend Challenge: Sunroom

Our sunroom has always been one of our most used, and yet most neglected, rooms in the home. Every party we host, the sunroom becomes the music and dancing center, and so it was important to us to keep the room open. On a daily basis, the sunroom has always been our cats' favorite place to lounge, and I have slowly been moving my crafting supplies into the room...

Step 1? Clear out everything.

Unfortunately, this room evolved into a space to store all of our wedding goodies until we found real homes for them. Cutting boards, picture frames, a deep fryer, glasses, car repair kits... A little bit of this, and a little bit of that.

Step 2 - deep cleaning. Something I learned - vinegar is a seriously badass cleaner. I have a spray bottle of 2 parts water, 1 part vinegar that I use as a general cleaner. The old owners of our home were smokers, and vinegar has done wonders.


Step 3 - My first rule when redoing a space is to only bring things back in that you want to live in that room. I know it sounds like common sense, but this is something that most people forget. And once you end up with a pile of stuff that doesn't fit in the space anymore, it becomes a lot easier to purge the items you don't need.

I'm really happy wit how the space turned out, even though a lot of the changes are temporary. We're going to need to drag everything out again to repair the walls and paint, but damn. Already a big difference.

And you see that horrible ugly light fixture? I'm so blessed to have an electrician for a husband... He put in a beautiful new light on a dimmer switch, which is going to be awesome for entertaining!

I found these pillows at Home Depot in the garden center, but they really helped me figure out my vision for this room. Once I do a little more and get the paint on the walls, I'll post another update!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Unique Unity

I really wanted to do a unity ceremony for our wedding, even though we aren't particularly religious. We looked at all of the usual ceremonies, but couldn't quite find anything that was "us." We liked the candles, but then again everyone does it. Everyone who doesn't do candles? Sand ceremony.

We had looked at hand-fasting (but apparently some people consider this evil), rose ceremonies (I really wanted something we could take home afterward), and all kinds of other things on Pinterest and wedding boards... But still nothing that stuck out at me.

Until one day I saw a pin like this one over to the left on Pinterest and had an "ah hah!" moment.

Finger print hearts!!! 

There were three things that I loved about this idea:

1. The symbolism.

2. It's really cheap to do.

3. We've never seen it before!

Our minister wrote the following for our ceremony before we did the ceremony:

Sarah and Ryan, this celebration today honors a commitment by the two of you to continue to share and grow as individuals and as a family, today and every day for the rest of your lives. Unity ceremonies involve a symbolic representation of the bringing together of the unique individuals you are into a new and beautiful whole. Here, you have chosen to use your fingerprints, which are unique and represent the differences in you that compliment each other so well. As you make a heart shape with your prints, it represents the bringing together of those unique and different qualities into a unified whole while retaining your individuality.

I loved it. It couldn't have been better! The only thing to remember if you do this unity ceremony is to keep wet wipes or hand sanitizer up with the ink so you don't get any on your white dress!

Oh... And PRACTICE! 

Thanks to Katie for the beautiful pictures!

Pinterest Party: Harry Potter Theme

If you haven't heard of a Pinterest party, they're super easy to put together and a ton of fun! How often do you have a hundred recipes on your Pinterest and realize you will never have time to try them all? Host a Pinterest party with friends and you can knock out more than a few. I'm going to tell you how we do it, but feel free to tweak the steps to work for you.

1. Create a group board on pinterest. Ours is here. When anyone posts, I ask them to tag the pin with the date of the party.

2. Choose a craft and pin it to the board. Pick something that will amount to ~$10 per person - nothing too expensive or too cheap. Nothing too crazy either. Try to avoid anything that will require long drying times, a ton of prep, etc...

3. Ask everyone invited to the party to pin a recipe to the board - and don't forget to do it yourself, too! You could even pick a theme for your party (holidays, movies, etc). Everyone should prepare their recipe and bring it to the party.

4. Get the supplies for crafting and get everything setup for the guests. Collect $10 from each guest, repay yourself, and keep an envelope for next time if there's any leftovers.

5. Eat your delicious food and make crafts!!!

Sounds fun, right? 

Recently I hosted a Harry Potter Pinterest Party for some friends and I and I wanted to share some of my favorite recipes with you!

Our craft was making wands, so I had my dining room table setup with all the different materials needed. I got the idea for the craft from here and even though we aren't kids anymore, I think everyone had a lot of fun. Oh, I forgot to mention in the steps above... Make sure you get a bottle of wine (or two!) to share with the pinners! It makes it more fun, especially if you end up with a "nailed it" moment.

You can check my Pinterest board that I pinned above, but I want to take a moment to highlight my absolute favorite recipes that we tried. First of all, this is the BEST homemade butterbeer I have ever had in my life. The recipe is posted to the board, but check here because I think some of the text is cut off. 

Next up, I had a chance to make Mrs Weasley's Rock Cakes. Mine didn't look quite as good as the ones in the picture on the recipe, but they were really tasty and not too sweet! I would love to make these again sometime, because they were just so easy. I do want to point out that they expand A LOT, so make sure you leave plenty of room between them on the pan, and smaller globs of the dough are better.

I'm not sure what we'll do for our next Pinterest Party, but if you have any theme ideas please post them here! Maybe something related to spring... Who knows!

Day Off Challenge: Living Room

I have today off for Presidents' Day, but Husband had to go into work, so I figured I'd contribute something worthwhile to society. Now, I'm not going to lie and say that I got up early and got to work right away... 

No, I snoozed my alarm several times. Watched some My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and had some snacks. (Healthy snacks, mind you - a huge bowl of various fruits!)

But all was not lost! I totally got up off the couch and did some productive things! My main project for the day, after figuring out how to get Pandora running on the PS3, was cleaning the living room. Believe it or not, this state posted below is actually not *too* bad compared to how it's been... But either way, it needed to be unfucked.

Just in case you couldn't tell where the problem areas were... Well, I highlighted them. Ahem.

So let me break down what I did to tackle this project step-by-step. This is for all of you that seriously hate cleaning. If you're a veteran cleaner/organizer, I promise you won't learn anything from me. Not on this post, anyway.

Step 1: Music. Put on your favorite motivational music. I like the Summer Hits of the 90s genre station on Pandora. Whatever gets you up and moving! 

Step 2: Dishes. Remove ALL dishes from the room and put them in the sink (or better yet, dishwasher).

Step 3: Couch. I cleared everything off the couch, fluffed it, febreezed it, and then neatly returned the pillows to their home. Always start by giving yourself a clean, comfy area to sit so that way you have somewhere comfortable to hang out and tackle that pile of papers that you've been meaning to go through but just haven't had the time...

Step 4: Coffee table. Our coffee table is where everything in the world lives, and it gets cluttered very quickly. Remove EVERYTHING from it (inside, outside, on top, etc) and move it somewhere else. Now clean the table. Noooow, you can slowly move things back. But keep in mind: does this item have a better home than the coffee table? If so, put it in its better home!! If you're lucky, you'll end up with a nice clean coffee table with nothing on it... Maybe now's a good time to find a new candle to burn. :3

Step 5: Floor. Same as everything else... Pick up everything and move it elsewhere. Then go through it. Find homes or trash it. This is a good time to vacuum, unless you still have a lot of surfaces to tackle. 

Nope, still not done. but here's my in-progress shot. I still need to tackle a few surfaces and then attack it with the carpet shampooer.