winter art star craft bazaar

Can't wait!

weekend

I've been a little silent around here. It was a crazy week... to say the least. We've gotten up an hour and a half earlier each morning, brought all of our work home, and fallen completely in love with a black and tan chihuahua. 


A few things we've learned:
   Operation Ava is an amazing place.
   Get dogs and cats fixed. For heaven's sake.
   Sauce's favorite activity is cuddling with us. Seriously, I'm typing this with one hand.


Have a great weekend!


Ps. It's October 29th Mother Nature. The Boss is ticked.

family of three

Something big happened this weekend. Sauce happened.

 

draft snakes

Our house is really, really old (and by old I mean 120+ years). You can imagine the drafts. So my mom and I are going to make a few draft snakes. Of course I couldn't find a single fabric I liked in stores ... I mean ... we have to look at these things for months, right? Not an easy decision.


Here are a few I found online ... but which one? 

   

Fabric 1 & 3
Fabric 2

dinner: roasted vegetable soup

This recipe is no joke ... I love you Barefoot Contessa.

*Ignore the whole chicken stock thing ... still need to get Ina on board.

While your at it, make these croutons (I dream about them) and top all soups with goat cheese (thanks Rob).

favorite place: updated

Remember my favorite place? It has recently become a bit more functional. We realized the coffee maker looked dumb in it's old location next to the sink, glasses were annoying to take out of the cabinet, and the coffee cups needed to be by the coffee maker (at all times). It's so much better now.

dining room: radiator

The pipes still need another coat ... but it's so much better...

(sorry for the dark photos... no direct sunlight in the dining room...)

dessert: "oreo" truffles

This is the most delicious treat ... and it only has 3 ingredients.

It's easy to make these organic -- we used organic cream cheese, organic oreo-like cookies, and substituted organic milk chocolate for semi-sweet.

Oreo Truffle recipe.

weekend: around the house

Highs:

perfect weather, baseball season ending (sorry ... but this is my blog so I'm allowed to say that), farmers' market, breakfast and great conversation with friends, a little Party Rocker all to ourselves on Saturday night, extra coffee, relaxing with Emily, catching up with four of our favorite people, and Sunday night TV.

weekly menu

Do you like to meal plan? I do. Really I just like to think about food.

This is a free printable from How About Orange. I've been using it every week and really feel more organized. It also helps Josh to get started on dinner if he beats me home.

weekend

Thank god it's Friday. No, seriously.

This weekend:

- put the house back together (clean)

- cut back all plants (can't believe I haven't done this yet)

- food shop for the week/cook for Monday & Tuesday

- laundry

- take good pictures of the painted radiator

- work on research paper

- babysit August (!)

- farmers' market

- try to relax

sunroom: curtains

I picked up these curtains from IKEA last weekend. They are really pretty and simple, but I'm still hung up on this Chevron fabric.

The IKEA curtains are so easy ... no sewing required. The Chevron would not only need to be sewed to size, but a white back sewed on. Are you up for this, Mom?

It does look so much better in there...

breakfast: whole-grain berry muffins

This is the new favorite breakfast: whole-grain berry muffins. They taste great and are packed with some really healthy ingredients (flax, rolled oats, whole-wheat flour, yogurt, orange, berries). The downside is 3 Tbs of butter and 1/2 cup of brown sugar -- which really isn't too bad when divided among 12 muffins.

The recipe is from Real Simple. Frozen blackberries were on sale so I used them instead of blueberries and substituted walnuts for pecans.

*You can freeze muffins for up to one month and pop one out on-the-go! Just warm in microwave for 1-2 minutes.