Lazy weekend

It was a glorious weekend! Some highlights are:

• Friday night after work I met my mom at the local mall and searched for a bridesmaid's dress for my sister's wedding this fall. We'll be in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for it, so needed something weather appropriate. As we were walking in, I saw a dress in a photo plastered in the window and thought, "Wow, that's a super cute dress...if they have it in the right color I'm definitely trying it on." Lo and behold, as soon as we walked in, we spotted said dress in the correct color. Looked at the size (score!), tried it on...and the rest was history! Tried on only one dress, loved it, and bought it. That's the great thing about being my sister's one and only bridesmaid - I got to choose what I would wear. Luckily, we sent a pic to Christy and she loved the dress. I guess we'll be sharing a neckline ;)

• One step closer to Mexico thanks to finally getting around to renewing my passport. Technically, my passport doesn't expire until next year, but I needed to change my name since I've gotten married since previously getting a passport, so it's not valid anymore since I don't have any identification with my maiden name on it...and the plane tickets we purchased for said trip have my married name on it..So something I learned while taking my passport photo - you don't smile anymore!? How come!? I look like I'm being booked into prison. I managed a teeny tiny smile in my new photo because I suffer what is known as "Resting Bitch Face"..It's a real thing, people!
  

• Thanks to Netflix, I got to revisit a favorite movie of mine I've forgotten about. Penelope. It came out while I was in college and hit quite close to home for me..No, I wasn't born with a pig face...but during that time in my life, I didn't really like myself. I always found too many "imperfections" in me - I was too skinny, too pale, big nose, etc. Later in my college career I started to actually embrace everything I formerly hated about myself...And thanks to on demand and DVR, I've caught up with Scandal, Reign (new guilty pleasure), finally seen what's so great about this gem...and got an Emma Stone/Ryan Gosling fix with Gangster Squad. I personally love those two together. They need to make more movies I say!

• I busted out my Silhouette Portrait yesterday and started working on spring crafts. Nothing gets you into a holiday mood like crafts! Haven't finished yet because after cutting everything out, I realized I had nothing to mount it on. Oops. Had no desire to leave my house yesterday, so saving the finishing product for later in the week when I can stop by a store on my way home to grab the necessary materials. 

• 

  Spring banner, anyone?
  
  
  

  Got really excited to see progress with my raspberry plant I purchased in February at the Seattle Garden Expo. So far my quest to no longer be a black thumb is proving to be successful..I've managed to keep an orchid alive since September, my raspberry plant is budding, AND as I was leaving home to head to work, I saw that the hydrangea plant in my front yard is budding too!

  

Hope everyone had a great weekend! I know I enjoyed mine!

My newest project

Over the weekend my mother-in-law and I went to thrift stores looking for a good deal on furniture because she was going to teach me how to refinish it. She's been finding these old school sewing cabinets with machines still inside and fixing them up. They look awesome.

Less than 5 minutes in our first store we find a sewing cabinet with a machine in it. Priced at $19.99. I was sold. Walked out of the store spending $30 because she also got a cutting table for me. She has one that she got at Joann Fabrics for over $100 and found the exact same one at Value Village for ten bucks. Couldn't leave it!

I have one more coat of polyurethane to put on it and then this bad boy is coming home. I was so excited about it last night I moved the current computer desk my sewing machine was sitting on in my craft room into the office. So it is now holding my Silhouette Portrait which will get used tonight when my sister in law comes over to work with vinyl for a home decor project for her dining room. I'm excited to see it work with vinyl, I haven't used anything other than paper in it yet, AND I'm getting paid for it with wine and Girl Scout Thin Mints :)

Here are photos:

I was so excited when we plugged in the machine and it actually worked! All that was missing was a bobbin case. We're guessing the machine is from the '40s. It's a New Home (which is now Genome). My mother in law knows a guy that has expertise in old machines in the area so she took the machine to him to see if he could find a bobbin case for it. Just got word that he did, yay!

So here's the process of how we refinished this piece. We put Citrustrip stripping gel on it to take the varnish off. Used a palm sander to sand it down (there were cigarette burns and watermarks from drinking glasses on it so we got those off as much as we could..What we couldn't get off will be "character"), wiped it down with both a towel and this tacky cloth stuff to get all the dust. For the legs because there is so much detail into it, we thought it best to hand rub the polyurethane on it instead of using a brush, and we also did the hand rub on the front with the two toned wood just because we didn't want to have drips. The rest we brushed poly onto it. Last night I did my second coat of poly, and on the legs towards the bottom I brushed poly onto it in case I ever steam clean our carpets or anything just to protect it. In between the coats of poly we let it dry 24 hours and I rubbed it down with steel wool to get bumps out. Wiped it down with a towel and the tacky thing again, then did the next coat of poly. 

I'm already itching for my next project. It'll either be experimenting with Annie Sloan's chalk paint, or learning how to reupholster..We shall see!

Weekend Update

Eating dinner is so hard for me. Well, not the eating part, the preparing part. I work full time - with a lot of overtime. Hubs works full time. When we get home neither of us wants to cook. I just want to go to bed in all honesty...I'm trying to cook more though. I'm tired of my meals coming out of paper bags and shoved out a window, or delivered by the pizza guy. I want more "real" ingredients, and I want to know that nothing weird has been added. Now, I'm not an all organic person - my budget doesn't really allow that, not that I would be if I could afford it either..but fast food kind of grosses me out. I didn't grow up eating a lot of fast food. IF we did eat it, it was Arby's roast beef sandwiches or during the summer while living in Wisconsin we walked our dog to McDonald's and got the 50 cent ice cream cones. We didn't even eat hamburger helper or boxed mac and cheese...

My list of ingredients needed

So my project for the weekend was to make 5-7 crockpot ready meals and freeze them for when I'm in the mood for a meal after work that I don't have to put too much effort into and just stick in the pot before I leave for work. I made 6 meals - 2 bags of teriyaki chicken, brunswick stew, honey sesame chicken, meatball stroganoff, and italian bolognese sauce. Before I could make these meals, I had to clean out my freezer. I really wish I had taken a before picture - it was a mess! Bags of frozen fruit that were iced over, bags of bread that we'd probably never eat, gnocchi that I'm not entirely sure how long it had been in there. I organized everything where frozen fruits and veggies had a shelf, my bags of crock pot meals were on a shelf with a half full bag of Costco chicken tenderloins, third shelf down holds most of our frozen meats - ground beef, ground turkey, kielbasa, my remaining 4 chicken breasts from a Costco pack where 2 breasts came in a packet - and my two bottles of sweet tea vodka which I loved to add to lemonade in the summertime :)

The After. So excited to try these out!



On Saturday, I cleaned out my freezer. It surprisingly didn't take as long as I thought it would, probably because I just threw most of it away..afterwards I spent some time with my sister in law and went to a Scentsy party her friend was throwing. Bought some new scents and a new warmer that I think will look nice in the kitchen - it's a red color that reminds me of the poppies that are on my kitchen mats.

Sunday consisted of spending the day with my sister - we went to breakfast at my new favorite pizza place, Puget Sound Pizza. Christy and I went there last summer I think (?) after just exploring downtown Tacoma and came across it. Ever since, it's been my go-to breakfast place! I know, a pizza place/bar for breakfast, but let me tell you, it's so delicious! After breakfast Christy and I went to Winco, pretty much my go to grocery store when I have a long list (and if you saw the earlier picture of my ingredients, it was pretty long) because I feel I get more for my money. If I would have gone to a regular grocery store, I would have spent well over $100 - close to $200. My total at Winco yesterday was a whopping $65. What really saved me is the only meat I had to purchase was ground sausage for the bolognese sauce. Everything else I already had in my freshly cleaned out freezer!

After grocery shopping, I walked down to a bar in downtown Tacoma to meet some girlfriends for our monthly Book Pub where we discussed Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Most of the group couldn't make it, so it was just the three of us. One of the girls, Tori, hadn't finished the book yet so we just talked about things that had happened in the book she has read so far, and then we talked about the cruise Tori just returned from the previous night - she, her mom, her mother in law and a family friend took a cruise out of New Orleans and went to Jamaica. How fun, right?!

After I returned home I got started on making my meals. Hubs had soccer after work so he didn't get home until around 10pm, so I didn't have to worry about feeding him. Prep was pretty easy, thanks to a gadget I'm so glad I registered for! The Progressive Fruit and Vegetable Chopper. I love this thing so much, it makes chopping onions a breeze! I also chopped celery and potatoes for the brunswick stew with it. Did I have to? No, but I did anyway because it is so much faster than I would be by hand!

After finishing all my dinners so much urge to keep going, so I decided to make green smoothie packets.

 

 

 I put 1 giant handful of spinach, between 1/2 - 1 banana depending on it's size, and 1/3 c of either frozen mango or frozen pineapple in a baggie. I had 3/4 full carton of vanilla greek yogurt in my fridge I wanted to make sure I used up in my fridge, so I put about 1/3 c of greek yogurt in a muffin tin in each hole and stuck it in the freezer to freeze into disks. I definitely put too much spinach in each pack because this morning when I took one out and put it in my Magic Bullet, I had the hardest time getting everything blended. Probably didn't help that everything was very frozen. Tomorrow I'll let it thaw a little. I blended it with almond milk and a splash of apple juice. All I tasted was the banana and almond milk. I could taste a hint of the frozen mango as well.

 

And that was my weekend in a nutshell! Next weekend consists of movie night with some girlfriends - I'm picking the movie becuase Jamie isn't allowed to have movie choice anymore after a crazy night of watching the Descendents with George Clooney (that movie was just weird), and Dee falls asleep during EVERY single movie we watch together. Has since high school. We're watching it at Jamie's apartment. She has a 3D tv and so the request I've gotten is it has to be a 3D movie. And it's peachy that no one rents 3D movies, you have to buy them. Boo. Another plan for next weekend is our nephew's 4th birthday dinner. His choice of restaurant was Famous Dave's so that's what we're doing. I'm also going to go out and buy his present...I'm thinking books because I don't know what to get the kid who literally has everything...

 

I leave you with my favorite picture as of late - the view from a vacant unit in Jamie's building that we looked at for Dee who wanted to move into her building, but after looking at her finances has decided she cannot move there. Sad day. I loved this view! And yes, this is the high school that 10 Things I Hate About You was shot at, Stadium High School.

 

 





Dec. 8, 2012

Work has been extremely hectic lately with training for a new position and prepping for our HR files to be audited next month. I haven't been very diligent with my 5k training..I might have to put that on the back burner until after the holidays, I'm not sure yet.

Yesterday I took a much needed day off from work. Thank the Lord for PTO! Friend Jamie and I drove down to Woodburn Company Stores outside of Portland to do some tax-free Christmas shopping. I scored as usual at the Gap Outlet for gifts for my second cousins and hubs' nephew. We high-tailed it outta there to get back home in time for my work Christmas party. We had fun, and I was starving so the turkey and ham with all the fixin's hit the spot!

Today has been a very lazy day. I did some cleaning, but not as much as I should have. Paid a few bills, balanced the checkbooks, took the dogs for a few walks..the usual. Tomorrow will consist of more cleaning, laundry folding, more dog walks, and maybe a little shopping if there's time. Who am I kidding? The shopping with most likely happen first. Sundays are my grocery shopping days.