Caribou Cooler Wannabe

I had a little Thirty-One party a few Saturdays ago and made a pot of coffee for my lovely guests.  At the end of the party I had about 3/4 of a pot left.  Now I'm not a fan of drinking a plain ol' cup of coffee, but I love the smell of coffee and coffee flavored things.  So I couldn't throw away a perfectly good pot of coffee.  I knew I could figure out something to do with it.  And I did.  Enter the Caribou Cooler Wannabe.

I poured the leftover coffee into ice cube trays and popped them in the freezer.  (side note: is anyone else a fan of the Dorot frozen herbs?  They're little frozen herb cubes that are so easy to pop into a stir fry, soup, casserole.  And they never go bad!  I get mine at Trader Joe's.) 

Anyway, after the coffee was frozen, I popped out about five or six cubes and threw them in the blender.

I added some chocolate and caramel syrup...

...and some milk.

Then I blended it all up, put a straw in it and enjoyed my fake Caribou Cooler!  Now, this is not going to fool anyone into thinking they're drinking a real Cooler.  It's not like those purses you buy on Canal Street in New York where you have to look super close to realize they're not the real deal.  Or just look at the price tag.  If a "Kate Spade" purse costs $20, chances are it's not real.  There you go.  Enjoy that little kernel of wisdom.

It's a great little afternoon pick-me-up...which I seem to be needing every afternoon.  So I'm just accepting that and trying to make it as enjoyable as possible.  When I have the energy.  Other days it takes all I have just to open a can of Diet Coke. 

Another use for your coffee cubes - put them in a cup, pour cold coffee over them and enjoy an iced coffee without it getting all watered down!  That's what my mom would do in the summers when we were growing up.  :)

Caribou Cooler Wannabe
Ingredients:
- coffee cubes
- flavored syrups of your choice
- milk
Directions:
- Put all the ingredients in a blender, blend, and enjoy!

Quinoa Mac 'n Cheese

I recently bought a ginormous bag of quinoa at Costco.  It's awesome.  I love quinoa.  So a huge bag of it is spectacular. 

Because I have more quinoa than our family can eat in a year (which really means me, because the rest of the fam aren't huge fans), I scoured pinterest to find some fun recipes.  And find I did. 

The first one I've tried is Quinoa Mac 'n Cheese.  It's awesome.  I'm actually eating some leftovers of it right now. 

I didn't have any tomatoes or peppers on hand to throw in to the dish, but I did have bacon.  Can't go wrong with bacon, right?  Right.  Quinoa Mac 'n Cheese + bacon = awesome. 

Fill-age. For my shelves.

This is one of the items I put on my beautiful shelves.  It's a picture of Justin and me on our honey moon five and a half years ago.  (Don't we look like babies?)  It's nothing fancy, just a picture taped to a piece of card stock in a spray-painted frame.  It was a quick space filler at our old house.  But the picture wasn't centered and it was driving me crazy.

I got this bag from Hallmark around Christmas and have been saving it since then because I love the saying on it.  I decided Old Off-Center picture would be replaced by Fun Quote. 

So I cut off one side of the back and carefully took the handles off of it.  It still had a couple fold marks which I knew would really bug me.  So I ironed it.  That's right.  I ironed a paper bag.  I like to live on the edge.  I took the old picture out of the frame and then I used some good ol' Scotch tape loops and taped the bag to the other side of the card stock.  I left the picture on the back in case I ever change my mind and have a deep desire for an off-centered picture to be displayed in our home.  Okay, that's not true.  I was just lazy.

And here's the finished product on the shelf!  I love the pop of color it adds.

Isn't this such a good saying?  It reminds me not to save things for special occasions.  I should cook good, interesting food for my family all the time, not just when we're having people over.  I should make stuff out of the fun fabrics I've been accumulating instead of waiting for the "perfect" project.  I should enjoy and appreciate and celebrate life because that's just what it is - life!  And I'm so blessed to have Life.



Shelf Time

We have an awkwardly long wall in our family room.  Like really awkward.  Like when you're reading someone's graphic T-shirt and realize it looks like you're staring at their boobs.  The wall is awkward.  It's too big to put any art on and too small to make into two different areas. 

One day while wasting time researching on Pinterest, I came across this project from Ana White. 

Aren't these shelves great?  And they're SOOOO easy!  Each shelf is 2 1x4s and 1 1x2.  Throw on some white paint and screw in a few screws and you have yourself some fantastic shelves. 

True Confession:  From the date of pinning to the date of completion?  About 10 months...  Nothing like a one-year-old's birthday party to kick my buns into gear...

Here's how it went down.  I used blue painter's tape to mark where I wanted the shelves.  I lived with the tape on the wall for a couple days to make sure I liked where the were.  (I ended up moving them a little farther apart than I had originally planned.)

My amazing husband made the shelves for me - which means I don't have any pictures of the shelf construction.  But Ana does a great job and her pictures and instructions are WAY better than mine would have been anyway.

Here's my man hanging the bottom shelf.

Starting to fill up!

And here are my beautiful shelves all filled!

I love my shelves.  A lot.  I told them I love them.  More than once.  They're the mac to my cheese, the spice to my girls.

See those curtains in that picture?  I love them as well.  My mom made them for us.  She asked if I needed help with anything for Drew's party.  I think she was offering to bring a fruit platter.  But I asked her to make curtains.  And she did.  She's awesome like that.

So now it's looking like we actually like our house and like living in it.  Oh, and everything on those shelves?  Yeah, I already had all of it.  Holla for free accessories!

Stationery card

Sweet Little Chick Easter Card

Modern shower invitations and holiday cards by Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Spring Wreath

I've been seeing so many cute spring wreaths on Pinterest.  They're just so bright and cheerful!  I decided that I wanted needed one.  I also decided that I had to make it with things I had on hand (aka - for free). 

I have a ton of fabric, so I knew I'd use that.  But what to use for the form of the wreath was a little trickier.  And, low and behold, I saw a wire hanger from my husband's dry cleaning that told me it wanted to become a wreath.  Well, it didn't acutally say that.  But if it could talk, I'm sure that's what it would have said.

So after some bending and re-shaping, I had an almost-circular hanger like this:

It's a game - find the hanger on the ironing board.  Oh, you haven't heard of that game?  It's all the rage in Europe.

Then I cut strips of fabric 1 1/2" wide and 4", 5" and 5" inches long.  And then I tied, tied and tied some more.  Here it is in progress.  Tip: make sure you tie the same way every time so your fabric "tails" all point the same way.  It took me about forty minutes to tie them all on.

And then voila!  I had a cheerful spring wreath!  And for free!  And it was easy!  I love anything cute, cheap and easy!  (Uhhhh, I mean I love any craft that's cute, cheap and easy...)

Happy spring!

I'm baaack

Well hello again, Blog World.  It's been awhile (4+ months to be exact), but I'm done being lazy and will put more effort into our relationship.  :)

Anyway, the babe turned one at the end of February.  Crazy!  He's now a walking machine.  Within about a week and a half he became a full-fledged walker, learned to wave, learned to dance, learned to point and perfected his clapping.  It's been so much fun to watch!

My amazing cousin, Jill, took some great birthday photos of Drew.  Enjoy! 

PS - Thanks to Emily for kicking my blog-writing butt into gear!