throughly disappointed

to all my fellow top chef lovers out there, i'm sure you feel my pain with being disappointed for carla. she was so spunky and quirky and made such good food. i was sad about how things panned out for her...

chocolatey, minty goodness

the joy of my life arrived today...my girl scout thin mints. i may or may not do a line of them tonight.

dreaming of warmer weather

i am ready for spring to have sprung. i am at the point in winter where i yearn for my bright colors and flowery dresses so i decided to post one of my favorite pictures from last summer. no photoshop necessary, those sun spots are natural and i love them. this picture is across the street from our townhouse and the view of the mountains is incredible. the sun is usually beginning to set on my drive home from work so its rare that i come home in a bad mood. how can i when confronted with so much beauty?

i love mac

i've decided to declare my love for mac and all that it encompasses to the world via my car. really, i just found an old apple sticker when i was cleaning out my craft room but i decided that since mac is one of the rare companies i can say i truly support, i might as well. i think it suits her well. atleast i'll be able to spot my little chrysler among all the others a little better. :)

take advantage

this is the last week, but what a great deal. if you like friday's you can't beat two meals for the price of one! printable coupon here.

my finds this week

i love to frequent my local thrift shops. its like a giant garage sale whenever you want. oh man i can't wait for garage sale weather. its one of my and josh's favorite things to do in the summer on a saturday morning. get some iced coffee at mcd's and go. anyways, i was pretty pleased with my finds this week...goodnight moon (.35), an old school lacoste polo($2), and a pretty turquoise bowl(.25). I've been hunting for lovely children's books for awhile and started a pretty decent collection for my future children. I want them to have tons of books at their disposal. I also love to find vintage stuff and apparently the blue alligator is a dead giveaway of vintage lacoste according to this guy, that little alligator gets me every time, its just cute in a scary looking kind of way. and the color of the bowl is an addition to all things pretty in my kitchen.

bathroom storage

i am happy to say i have completed another project. yay! i the above picture in a magazine and thought that was such a cute idea and should be super simple to find some pretty white cake plates. well i was wrong about that. a pretty white cake plate is obviously few and far between around here. especially a smaller one like in the picture. I found a couple bigger ones but I would have to be willing to shell out $30 to have it. SO, i decided to reinvent the concept. I found a matching dinner plate and salad plate at t.j. maxx (love that store!) for $2 and $1 respectively. And then I went to my faithful goodwill store and found a wooden candlestick holder for .50 that I spray painted a glossy white to match, used some epoxy glue for extra holding strength and voila! It serves the exact purposed I intended and I only paid a whopping $3.50 for it!

my interpretation

my inspiration

v-day at home

so, in order to save some of our precious money, josh and i decided to have a quiet, sweet v-day at home. so i decided to start the day out right by making josh his favorite meal...pancakes! and what better way to be festive than to make heart pancakes! josh loved waking up and having pancakes ready for him. 

Josh learns to snowboard

So for one of the first times, it was me teaching josh something. normally, he's teaching me things. But since I had several years of drowning in snow in upstate ny to learn to snowboard, i had a slight advantage. he did great for a first timer. learning to carve with a snowboard is not easy though. we had so much fun...wintergreen had just put down a bunch of powdery goodness so it helped to break josh's fall(s). 

joining the blogging world

a little late, i know. but i've recently been inspired by other blogs that i follow and decided to start one of my own. i have so many projects that i've been working on and i feel that if i have the end result of posting them for the world to see, it will motivate me. maybe. probably not. but i do have good intentions of keeping up with this and posting the things that color my world. although, you know what they say about good intentions. ha. 

anyways...i will start out with one of my latest endeavors...recipes. i want to be a good cook. my mom got me a subscription to everyday with rachel ray and i've vowed to make at least several recipes from each month's magazine.

So here is February's. Josh absolutely LOVES loaded potato soup....his favorite is from O'Charley's. But this recipe held its own and Josh said and I quote "I almost like this better than O'Charley's." It's a ton healthier too since the main component of theirs is cheese.

I'd say I'm off to a good start. :)

This was rachel's rendition:

and here is mine:

yes, it tasted as good as it looks! if you'd like the recipe, let me know!