Hiatus

To my lovely readers,

I have decided to go on an extended blogging hiatus. I've gone back and forth about this for the last week or so & have decided it would be better for me to take some time off.

I will of course continue reading and creating- can't wait to see everything you guys are up to, it's so inspirational.

See you later, alligator...

Weekend Edition

Wow, my unforseen blog break has been quite peaceful. In 4 short days I will start my very last semester of Grad School. In December, after 2 years of solid hard work, I will have my MBA. I will probably cry knowing that I am done. I'm so burnt out on school, but a Master's is totally worth it!

I've been prepping for a really long & tough semester by doing a lot of this:

See AOK's pepper plants growing? He adds home grown jalepenos to his meals at least twice a week. I can't wait to make home grown salsa in the spring time. We're planning on adding a garden where you see the potted plants there. I'm so looking forward to that.

Anywho, we are finally getting "major" things done around the house. My plan for this next week is an official house tour. Ya'll hold me to it! I'm excited to show you guys our home, our bedroom could just use a little love! Hang in there with me, I'll try to warn you guys when I take a little hiatus in the future! :)

Hope you all are having a fab weekend!

Thursday Roses: 8.11.11

It's T-SHIRT TIIIIIME!

AOK and me totally dig The Jersey Shore. Remember the Situation bobble head from here? I know what you're thinking, but all you haters out there probably haven't even watched an episode. Because if you had, you would get sucked in with the amount of serious roll on the floor laughing that ensues each week. Last week, the Season 4 opener broke MTV records with some 6.5 million viewers. Well, here are two right here, and proud of it!

For my Thursday Roses this week, I thought about the laughing that goes on in this house & the tradition. Last Thursday we decided to eat out, since we were out & about, we tried out Vero's Italian Kitchen. Holy Cow, A-mazing! AOK had a brick oven pizza, I had pasta in bolognese sauce (my fave). Bolognese sauce truly makes me go weak in the knees. Just thinking about it right now makes my heart happy. Fitting though right? Vero's Italian Kitchen on the night our favorite Italians (besides my family of course) debuted their newest season.

I grabbed some last minute groceries today and came home to make dinner. As I'm stirring my sugo (sauce) it donned on me. Spaghetti tonight? Another Italian Thursday? Looks like we have a tradition on our hands.

Does your family have any quirky traditions like our newly started Jersey Italian Thursdays? This is just a little thing that makes our Thursdays a little more fun. Stopping and smelling those roses- laughing with one another.

We are t-minus 3 minutes away from our guidos/guidettes. I'll leave you with this adorable picture of AOK & Sam I took this week. AOK got a (much needed) haircut- LOVE!

Happy Thursday!

Sorry Homer...

Oh AOK, you gotta love him, but his decorating skills have to be harnessed and let go in one place only- his workshop. Otherwise I come home to this:

While I love Jack, The Situation, Homer, and especially Mr. Dough-boy, I'm not sure my kitchen above my pretty dishes is the place for them... I had to think quick, before they took up permanent residence here.

I remembered a couple of months back when I visited a thrift store in Houston I picked up some cute vintage yellow plates, not really knowing what I'd do with them. But for $3.99 I couldn't pass them up!

They have a sort of modern look to them, and I got the GENIUS idea to vinyl them up! I asked my lovely boss (who blogs here) if she would cut me some vinyl lettering using her silhouette machine. AND she did!

I chose a modern font, all caps, and what better word fits in the kitchen then "EAT?" Usually my go to hanging method is hot gluing a saw tooth hanger to the back of WHATEVER, but I thought for these plates I should do something different. I bought some of these & found they would work quite perfectly, I just had to be a little smart for them to work for me.

Obviously with these plates I had a clear top & bottom, these hangers get STICKY quick so I knew I wanted to just put them down on the plate once. I thought it would be best for me to mark the top of the plate with tape so that when I flipped it over I would know exactly where to put the hanger.

Then I flipped them over & attached the sticky hangers knowing exactly where to place the hanger.

See how the hooks match up to the tape?

Then all I had to do was take off the tape & hang them up using my trusty, life changing, hanging method that I've shown you previously. AND VOILA!

Much better, don't you think? Sorry Homer, to kick you to the curb, but I'll find you a new home soon enough.

I love it! One of my favorite projects to date and it cost me about $8 for the plates & sticky hangers.

Have any of you called out your man and thrown something of theirs to the curb?

Happy HUMP day!

Linking up here this week: Craft & Tell over at Cherished Bliss, Show Me What You Got at Not JUST a Housewife, Running with Glitter, Passionately Artistic, Tuesday Tutorials at The Kurtz Corner (love her!), Creative Juice Thursday at Momnivore's Dilemma, Show & Tell Party at For Mamas and Hookin' up with HoH over at House of Hepworths!

Thursday Roses: 8.4.11

Seriously, it's already August?

Where did the summer go? Well if you're around our parts you are about ready for it to go away. We've been under a severe heat advisory the last few days. I went with AOK to the dirtbike track on Wednesday and it was 111 degrees out there. Unfortunately, with the high temps and no rain, we've seen a few wildfires in our little town even though there is a strict burn ban. Here in Huntsvegas we are even supposed to be only using water for "necessary" things. I'm trying to be better about conserving. With all this said, my Thursday Roses could not be any more appropriate today. I came home a few days ago and found this growing in the flower bed, that we've paid no attention or really have been watering because we are chunking a lot of it come fall...

It definitely brightened my day- and reminded me I have a lot to be thankful for.

Happy Thursday!

Jar Full of Memories

Hey Friends!
Is everyone else avoiding melting? We are in a severe heat advisory until Thursday at 9pm. It's way hot here- too hot even! Have to remember to keep drinking lots of water! I wanted to share a project that I completed awhile ago- just haven't blogged about it!

I used to love to scrapbook- buy all the papers, make the perfect pages that described exactly what I was doing or what I loved. I just can't find the time to do that too much anymore. Plus, my creativity is being reserved for house projects.

When I first started religiously stalking reading blogs, I saw a cute post on one of my fave blogs Young House Love about putting sand from your vacation in a jar. I knew I would do something of the sort, but took it a step further.

We went to Vegas in May and knowing my plan, I kept EVERYTHING I could get my hands on. Little knick knacks from the trip & stops along the way. When I got home I dumped all my "junk" on the coffee table- it made me smile thinking about where all the little pieces came from.

Here is all my junk. You can see casino vouchers, our room key, drink stirrers from the plane and casinos, show tickets, airplane tickets, matchbooks, pressed pennies, restaraunt menus, Grand Canyon certificates, "girl" cards, champagne cork from our limo ride, and lots of other goodies! I also made sure to get a postcard- I thought that would be good to use as our label, I put the dates, where we stayed, who went, etc., on the back of the post card!

I found the jar at Ikea on a recent trip. It was big and I loved the shape, I think it was $3.99 if I remember correctly. Now that I've started this jar tradition I keep my eye out for cool jars at garage sales, thrift stores, etc,. Wait until you see the one I found this weekend!

Here is the front of the full jar. You can't tell from this picture, but the post card is glittery & sparkly. I made sure the postcard featured our hotel that we stayed at on it.

Hahah this side makes me laugh. When I told people that I was going to Vegas the ONE thing everyone on the planet prepared me for was the men/women on the street corners handing out "call cards." Some of the poses on these cards are way more X-rated then my little eyes should see. I kept some of course to put in the jar- when I had stuffed everything in there, I turned it and saw that this little lady was covered up in the exact appropriate places. How funny!

I AOK may or may not have picked up a little dirt from a certain ravine/valley/hole in the earth in Arizona... PS: we saw Mystere- I hated it...

You can see 2 of my favorite things from this angle... first my receipt from my Crepe purchase in Paris. I love crepes- they seriously can turn around my day in a minute flat. You can also see my shoe covers from when we went to the Sky Walk on the Grand Canyon- holy cow talk about crazy. You literally look beneath you through a glass floor. They said if you were to fall from the sky walk it would take about 15 seconds to get to the bottom- that is waaaay too long in my opinion!

What do you guys do to keep your vacation memories? I love our jar, it's budget friendly and doesn't take up a bunch of room, a pretty quick project too! I can't wait to collect more!

Happy Tuesday!

This week I am linking up to: Savvy HomeMade Monday over at Home Savvy A to Z, Take a Look Tuesday over at Sugar Bee Crafts,  CraftOManiac Monday over at CraftOManiac, Nifty Thrifty Sunday at Nifty Thrifty Things, Get your Craft On at Today's Creative Blog, Craft & Tell over at Cherished Bliss, Show Me What You Got at Not JUST a Housewife, Running with Glitter (such a cute blog name!), Passionately Artistic, The Newbie Party at Debbiedoos, KISS over at The Tattered Tag, and Hookin' up with HoH over at House of Hepworths!

Thursday Roses: 7.28.11

We've been recouping around these parts. Not only ourselves, but the house too. I forget about the clean up job that comes with partying at your own casa. We had about 35 friends and family over this past Saturday to celebrate AOK turning 25. Yes, we're babies compared to the blogger world, but we like it that way!

I totally got to splurge a little Saturday night to ensure I could enjoy the party. We decided to not go totally crazy with decor because it would "outshine" the house & a lot of people were seeing the house for the first time. Secondly, I had the food catered. I have an awesome relationship with ARAMARK, our on campus caterer, because of my job. They went above and beyond for me and the money spent was so worth it. I didn't have to worry about cooking a THING and *bonus* they set everything up for me! It's the (only) way to go people.

I'm thankful for AOK and his 25 years. The party was a success, here are just a few pictures from the night:



There was one thing I found on Pinterest that I just had to do for AOK. Here was my inspiration via Martha Stewart. I made AOK's '25' out of the things he loves. Once I put it on the wall, I realized most of those involved wheels. I think it turned out super cute (click on it to make it larger!) 

 Here is half of our lovely covered patio. It's a massive space, in fact, we have 3 tables, a bar, a grill, a treadmill, recycling bins, anddd a hot tub all underneath it. These are the chairs and table I redid last week. Can't wait to show you the before and afters next week!

 Here is the bar area that I did up. AOK does not like a lot of fuss, so I went with black, white, and green (Kawasaki colors) for the party. In the middle is my famous Sangria. Maybe sometime I'll share the recipe. It will blow your mind. Girls request it when I come to parties.

AOK's family enjoying the party. I love that our fireplace is also extra seating in the living room!

Here he is about to open my big ol' present. He's so cute- I love this picture!

Red Bull fridge! Is that not perfect gift for a dirtbike/bmx/minibike/RC car/zooma rider's man cave workshop? I found it on Craigslist for a STEAL! He loved it, there is a case of Red Bull already in it, thanks to my sister!

AOK teaching Meredith how to ride the mini- she only crashed into the fence & let it flipout, no biggie!

AOK's mama made birthday cupcakes, they were GO BEARKAT Orange! :)

This was at the end of the night- I was exhausted! Happy Birthday to my favorite person in the world. Can't wait to spend another 25 of your years with you! :) (There's a glimpse of our kitchen behind us, I'll be revealing that next week as well!!)

Sorry for the picture filled post! It was such a fun weekend and I wanted to share the roses!

Be back tomorrow!




PS: I'm Hookin' up again over at House of Hepworths who seriously is in my top 3 favorite blogs. AND she totally made me blush last week by commenting on my Valspar post. It made me feel OH so special and like I've interacted with a celebrity. Oh, how I love the blog world! :)