Keeping flowers a little longer

Struggled with the title of this one. Can you tell? Really lame.....maybe I'll think of something better and when you come back again, things will be different.

I always try to get my money's worth when I buy flower arrangements, especially if it's a random assortment of flowers.....If it's a dozen roses then you're probably out of luck.

When the bouquet is on it's last limb, looking ugly and time to throw out I always pick through and see what I can find that's still good, sometimes it's not much but usually it's worth picking through the dead flowers :)

Arrangement I bought on March 13th.....

Flowers I was able to save from it 13 days later.....

I think I love the smaller one more! :)

And you remember this picture from my post about Valentine's day.....this little rose was going strong 10 days after Valentine's day.....so I put it in a tiny vase and I got a few more days of it by it's self even though the rest of the arrangement was dead.

I'm probably not the only one to do this but if you're not doing this...you should be!

Reupholstered Bench

I need a place to do my makeup...BAD. My bathroom has no plug and the counter top isn't that big any way.

I've been doing my hair and make up on my pretty blue table and there are spots on the table now where I've been putting my straightener....time to retouch the top with some more paint....boo

So this afternoon I decided to completely clear out the "dog room" (except for their cages) and keep the "cold room" as the storage room. I moved in an old console table which I thought would be the perfect height...it is.

I also had this bench that I bought a while back from ross (they still have these) for $30....I really have no place for it and I had wanted to re-upholster it anyway. So this seemed like a good time to do it! I need a CUTE space to do hair and make up of course! I have plenty of this purple fabric so it worked perfect.

Here's where we started......

I removed the black backing, cut the purple fabric and started stapling away. Then I restapled the black backing.

Trixie was my little helper...... :)

Love it....very excited to do my hair & make up here tomorrow morning.

Of course this is temporary, this room will eventually be our guest room but I needed something for now! :)

I'm linking up to Texas Monkey

Hummingbird Cupcakes

First....I've become cupcake obsessed!!

Mainly right now with Georgetown Cupcakes, it's so easy to go to the Bethesda location...and now that they are giving away a free cupcake every day (if you follow them on twitter and/or facebook you can find that info)....I've been waiting for the day that they give away the banana split cupcake so I can go there again. Otherwise I'll have to wait until August! That's the next time they serve them, boo!

So another one I wanted to try is their Hummingbird cupcakes.....banana, pineapple, cinnamon, pecans? YUM! They don't serve those until April....but that's sooooon! But by following them on twitter I found out they posted their recipe for the Hummingbird cupcakes! I tried to make them last weekend....they turned out good and were super yummy but I'm not the best baker and I bet when they make it, it's way better.....so I long for a Saturday in April so I can get a salted caramel (SO GOOD), hummingbird, and the banana split! At least if they giveaway the banana split on a sunday I can still get the hummingbird but not the salted caramel....I've got this down.

Here is the link & video for the Georgetown Cupcakes Hummingbird Cupcakes on Martha Stewart!

http://www.marthastewart.com/333253/hummingbird-cupcakes

Pasta Salad

I thought I'd post the recipe of the pasta salad that I made yesterday....it's a quick and easy thing to make and it's filling so I've made it for work stuff a lot before.

I always use:

1 box tri color rotini

1/2 - 3/4 bottle of italian dressing

chopped up cucumber

Sometimes I add:

pepperoni

shredded cheddar cheese

tomatoes

red pepper

This time, I added red pepper and pepperoni. I've never done the red pepper before and I'm glad I did, it was so yum. I usually don't do cheese because I don't think it adds much to it except for calories. And I don't like tomatoes so I usually only do that when I'm making for someone else.

The red pepper really added something extra.....yum.

You just cook the pasta, run cold water over it after/while draining. Put in bowl, add ingredients, mix well. If you are making ahead of time, make sure to mix again before serving.

Celebrating hubby's 26th bday

We celebrated my husband's 26th birthday yesterday with his family. It was really nice! His actual birthday is on Tuesday. It was really fun to actually have some people over (besides one or two here and there)....we never did do a housewarming so this was exciting :)

Here are some pictures from yesterday.....I barely took any pictures

I made an unnecessary amount of food considering we only had 4 people over, lol

Pasta salad

meatballs

chips & salsa

fruit dip

brownies

And from the Amish market I got:

That awesome fruit watermelon bowl

potato salad

broccoli salad

sour cream & chive cream cheese w/bagel chips

I also got my fav chicken salad (but that was just for me...YUM)

And his mom brought stuff too. Yeah, way too much food but there was a chance that maybe more people could have come so I wanted to make sure we had enough and you can never have too many yummy leftovers, lol

P.s. Since my husband doesn't like sweets too much, we did brownies instead of a cake so I needed a home for the candles I bought....candles + skewers + bowl of fruit = awesome

Look at my great little utensil basket I got! Party City $9.99 and my carefully picked out, not overly girly napkins & plates :)

My love!

And his super cute Mom mom loving on Trixie...

Throwback Recipe: BBQ Shrimp

Continuing with my search of old photos, I decided to post a throwback recipe :)

Hmm two BBQ Recipes back to back....maybe someone is in the mood for summer?

This picture is from last Memorial Day weekend.....we cut up watermelon (I am a watermelon CRAZY! I buy an unnecessary yet oh so necessary amount of watermelon in the summer), made some kabobs and did some BBQ shrimp.

I love BBQ Shrimp, it's so good, so easy.

Just put some raw peeled shrimp on a stick, brush with your favorite BBQ sauce (As I've said before, we use Sweet Baby Ray's Honey BBQ) and grill until done! SO good....and you can go as far as to wrap with bacon...even betterrrr. But without bacon, it's actually not too unhealthy for you. You use such a minimal amount of BBQ sauce and shrimp is great for you.

See, not everything I post is totally fattening :)

Throwback Project "SC Moving Kit"

Continuing to find old pictures and projects before I started my blog.....here's another "throwback project"

A friend and co worker left us a couple years ago to move with her family to South Carolina! We miss her enormously! :)

So we collected some money and put together a 'Move to South Carolina' Kit...

It included some yummy snacks, awesome road games...emergency chocolate, old bay (you CAN'T leave MD without some Old Bay!!), a SC travel guide, "Home Sweet Home' Yankee Candle car freshener, Tylenol, stress relieve lotion....and other fun things.

Oh how I love making themed baskets.....remember my "first apartment basket" I made for my brother?

Some throwback projects....

I have a usb drive with all our old pictures and I'm having a great time looking through them! :) I uploaded the pictures years ago when we got a new computer and haven't looked back. Found some cute pictures of us and some friend pictures but I also found some blog worthy pictures so I thought I would do a few "throwback" picture posts with some projects & ideas.

Here are some cute pictures of Chance and I that I found....

This one is from 2004....lol we were dating about 6 months..

This was from 2006, we were dating about 2 1/2 years.....what was I think with that hair color?!

This was in 2008, we were dating for 4 1/2 years, right after we got engaged

And a picture of Christina and me that I don't think I ever posted on fb! lol from my 21st birthday almost 5 years agoooo!

And look at my little Trixie when we brought her home....she was freaking CAUUUUTE

Anyhooooo, back to the project I mentioned.....I found pictures I took of a little coat hanger thing I bought from Ross for like $8 and re-did....

For the life of me, I don't know why this picture is turned......it's not turned on my computer and I can't fix....so just tilt your head :)

So I painted black.....

And hung it here at our townhouse :)

But here it is now at our new house, sort of in my dining room :)

ps....like my new signature? I'm trying it out.....

I love Safeway

Yea...I said Safeway. They always have the cutest vases and such. I went there today to get lunch but I always check the floral dept first.

Today they had this super adorable planter for $3.99!!! It was from Valentine's day I guess and it was marked down from $12.99...yes please! Had to get it....

They had other cute things too....maybe next time...loving those teal glass vases

They also had this super yummy little snack pack that I got for like $2.19....grapes, carrots, cheese and pretzels?! Yes!

p.s. I shop at Giant so this post about Safeway is completely random (/weird/hopefully still relevant), but you still should go check out their awesome vases and such :)

BBQ Fajitas

Nom.

So I found this link over at the 'Eat at Home Cooks' blog and planned to make these BBQ fajitas ASAP.

I saved the link, bought the stuff and then made it tonight without ever looking back at the recipe....it's super simple, you really don't need a recipe. I didn't grill mine like she did, I bet that would have been better. But I just battled a 4+ hour meeting this afternoon and I'm surprised I even worked up enough courage to cook when I got home at 7!! Though hubby helped.

Anyhoo....I cooked 4 chicken breasts in a skillet. Sliced some onion & green pepper in another skillet. Once the chicken was cooked, I took it out of the pan, sliced it and then put it back in the pan with a little barbeque sauce on it and let it cook for a couple minutes. Then I put some chicken, green pepper, onion and some cheddar cheese in a tortilla....YUM!

I was surprised to see that she also suggested to use Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce....that's all we use, so good...but we get the honey bbq sauce.

You can make this, you will make this....because it's easy & yummmmy

40 fabric flowers

So I was dying for a project to do, but this week, it needed it to be free.

I got the idea to make a pillow and I wanted to cover it with fabric flowers. I had all of the materials here. So I made a pillow, one side white fabric, one side left over curtain.

Then I started making the fabric flowers. I made 40.....FORTY.

In the end, I probably should have done 50. I like it, but not very much. I would have looked MUCH better with more flowers tightly together.

Oh well, still sorta cute.

I tried it in a couple places, I think I'll leave it with the blue pillow...

So you can see both sides....sort of.

I'm linking up at Tatertots and Jello and Be Different, Act Normal

Mini pitcher

I heart my new pitcher so much.....here it is with some fresh Irish themed flowers from Trader Joes......

I was at Michaels and couldn't help my self when I saw this little guy for $3.50! woooo

I thought it would be perfect for my dish brush...only downfall is I had a spongy dish brush and it was getting gross so I went to find a new one that wasn't spongy....no luck. So right now this little guy is housing the sponge, waiting for a new dish brush.

:)