Craft Room!!

Oh it is so so nice to have this space finally set up. I feel like I could live in this room, all the time. For the last 6 weeks it's been boxed up. And at the townhouse I had a room but I never really felt like going all out because I knew we wouldn't be there forever....but finally I have a room that I can decorate, I have all to myself, it can be girly, oh it's just fantastic.

I picked a neutral color because I have no idea, and I still have no idea what colors I want to decorate with....though it's turning out to be pink and that's okay. I just didn't want to paint the walls blue and have to stick with decorations that matched blue. Or something else.

I'm really glad it's all set up, but I'm far from done. My hubby built me this wonderfully huge table exactly the way I wanted but I need other bookcases and storage for the rest of the room. I'm thinking of getting the same cabinet I used for our kitchen "pantry" and use one down here. I also would loooove a cute girly arm chair down here too, maybe I can read in the corner, haha I have big plans :) But first, I need an arm chair upstairs for the living room! I also would like to get a new rug, I couldn't resist using my super cute rug from ikea in the room. It doesn't look horrible but it doesn't really match either. I keep seeing a brown zebra rug in here :) haha we'll see. And then a wall to ceiling cube storage on the newly built wall...hmmm something.

I need more in this room, but it's a start, a BIG start, and I'm so so excited. I love my new room!

Quickie Lamp makeover

I'm in the middle of setting up my craft room.....Chance put together my table yesterday, I love it! I painted it first thing and all day I've been unpacking my boxes, trying to figure out where to put everything. I obviously need more furniture but I'll make do with what I have right now.

I needed a lamp in the corner and I have two of these plain jane lamps and one is in the living room. Still loving my cute flowers from my wreath I thought I would make more with some random scraps that I had lying around. And I still had an extra flower from the wreath that I didn't use (the tan one). So I got on the floor with my glue gun and about 15 minutes later I had a much cuter lamp!

I love super easy, free projects.

Though if you don't already have the stuff to do this, you would need:

A lamp

Glue gun and sticks

3 pieces of fabric (to make the flowers, see the directions from my wreath post)

Annnd that's it.

Update on the weight loss...Wait, what weight loss?

I should have warned you 4 posts ago that I needed to catch up and that I was going to go into post overload today!

I'm still determined to lose more weight but I've been bad and unfoucsed lately! I feel like I'm back where I was when I first started dieting, I'll be really great one day and then eat something horrible one day! The good news is I haven't gained anything in a month, the bad news is I haven't lost anything in a month either. A whole month! I could have been at least another 4 pounds down by now!!! My total down now is 32. I have 16 more to go. People have been telling me all the time that I don't need to lose anymore but I do. I'm still overweight and I still don't fit into the size jeans that I would like. I'm feeling more comfortable but I'm still at a weight where I don't feel a huge difference, and that's going to cause me to gain it back.

Though I have had some exciting things happen in the last couple days...I tried on a pair of size 7 jeans that I pulled from the back of the closet and they fit great! Considering...oh my gosh can't believe I'm about to share this.....I had to end up buying a size 13 at one point earlier this year. When I started dating Chance I was wearing size 1. I don't expect to get back to that, I do expect to get to size 5, maybe 3, we'll see how it goes.

Though that's never going to happen if I can't focus!!! Like right now, I'm eating pasta salad and sweet tea, so so so bad. What am I doing?

But earlier in the week, I had good goals....Here was my breakfast and lunch.

Apple for breakfast.

Salad with ranch (I only use 2tbsp of what's there) for lunch. Weight watchers cheese stick and 100 calorie almond pack for a snack. And then grape gatorade g2 the rest of the day, and then sometimes I do water. And instead of salad I do a turkey sandwich.

I'm okay during the day but then I mess up at night or on the weekend! So I'm going to struggle a little but I'm determined! I need to start going to work out, that will definitely kick my butt in gear. Just one day taking my gym clothes to work is all it takes, just one day.

Fall Decor...I guess it's about that time!

I've been resisting fall....hardcore.....mainly because I swear some people have been calling it "fall" since the last weekend in August.....no sorry, that is not fall.

Technically the first day of fall is September 22nd and even then it doesn't feel like fall to me.

I think maybe October 1st is fall to me. That is, if it's consistently cool several days in a row. Which it has been. Even today it's in the 70's but if feels so great out, even "fall-like".

So I did my wreath two weeks ago (still after the 1st day of fall). And this weekend I decided to bring out the little bit of fall decorations that I do have around the house. Luckily, I was able to find the box :)

Cinnamon roll candle and my pumpkin!

My orange candle with the orangey lid
Ceramic pumpkin on my bookshelf
Wicker pumpkin with some fall leafiness....yes, leafiness

Yeaa, not so sure about this one....I had this light pink vase, painted it black a couple years ago and then just stuck some random fall leafiness in it.

So there you have it....just a little bit here and there but I'm ready to go apple picking and go decorate a pumpkin! :) Though I still think I need some new, better stuff, but for now this will do.

Mmm and I got this candle at Michaels the other night....Cinnamon Roll, it smells SO good and it was only $4! And it's lasting forever!

Hobby Lobby!!!

October 1st 2010 - What a fantastic day. They opened a HOBBY LOBBY in Columbia, MD! Hooray! Granted, I now live an hour away :( BUT I'm pretty sure all of the other hobby lobby's are much further and at least it's the same state now! AND they also opened one right in Laurel too! This girl = excited! My mother in law & I went shopping right after I got off work last Friday and we were giddy with excitement. I had heard hobby lobby was awesome but seriously?! I didn't even get to look at all the craftiness....I was amazed with all the decorative stuff in the middle! And everything was 50% off! woo hoo! It was just overwhelming, I'm so sad it's not closer but I'm just excited there is one that close! I could have spent my entire pay check in there!

But I restrained.....I did however walk away with a majorly cute black framed bulleting board and GIANT SCISSORS! A seemingly must for any crafty room and I want want want for MY craft room. I tried googling for giant scissors but had no luck so I was extremely excited to find the scissors. Now I just need some cute way to hang them! :) And the bulleting board couldn't be more perfect. I was going to try to find a regular one and try and frame it or something crazy but this one is huge, heavy and it was only $35!

Monogram Pumpkin=New computer?

Ohhh I love my pumpkin :) It's so cute and it's was only $3.99! Though if you want to get technical....it actually cost me $700 to make :(

I was so excited last week when I finally bought the SCAL software. I cut a bunch of things for my mother in law last week and the software is just fantastic. I also just downloaded Inkscape last night too...ohhh the possibilities...but more about that later :)......so I saw this monogram pumpkin that I really liked and I decided I wanted to make one myself since I already have the vinyl and now I have this great software! I went out on Thursday night (which although I'm aware it makes me super lame, I rarely go out on weeknights, at all) to Michaels and bought this majorly cute white pumpkin for just $3.99! Great price, major cuteness....I couldn't WAIT to get home and cut the monogram.

I get home, open the laptop (where the software is downloaded on) and....womp womp.....no screen is coming up! Nothing, nada, zilch.....I'm not sure what happened to the laptop, it was working fine but the thing turns on but screen doesn't. Sooooo we had to go get a new computer. My wonderful hubby went and picked me up a bunch a parts so he could build me a computer (made me a little nervous but he did the one he uses). He spent all Friday night putting it together. He's amazing, he even put my SCAL software right back on there! It was cheaper to build a computer than to buy one. I mean I could have bought a computer for cheaper but it wouldn't have had as much memory and all of that. But I still needed to go buy a screen because it didn't come with one obviously and the only one we had here was a little old dell one. So I went and picked up this fancy 20" LG LED monitor that I just looove from best buy.

So thank you monogram pumpkin, I'm still not convinced that if I wasn't so determined to make you that the computer wouldn't have been broken. :) Just kidding, these things happen...ohhh well! And I decided to forget getting another laptop, we've had two in the last few years and they've not lasted....so now that I have this craft room, a desktop will work just fine :)

Back to the pumpkin.....I downloaded Renaissance font from dafont.com and the SCAL came with this little scroll thing. It was about 3 1/2 x 3 1/2. I love it, I wish it was reasonable to make a 100 of these for all over the house.

Though, it was a little difficult getting the vinyl on something curved, you can probably see my messy spots. Though hubby came to the rescue the best he could with his heat gun but a couple spots couldn't be saved. But you don't notice, right?! :)

Recipe: Stir Fry

So yum, I had made stir fry before but Chance really wasn't loving it, so I decided to try it again but do it a little different. Before I made it with a different sauce, used chicken instead of beef and used broccoli instead of zucchini.

For this one, I use:

• About 1 1/2 pounds of top sirloin steak cut into strips, sometimes you can find it pre cut, if not just buy it and cut it your self
• 1 onion chopped
• 2 zucchini's cut into strips
• olive oil
• About 3-4 cups of brown rice (I use boil in a bag)
• Stir Fry Sauce - 1/3 cup (I used to use Kikkoman, now I use House of Tsang)

Now there is actually directions on the back of the bottle of stir fry sauce, I can't remember if I follow it exactly but here's what I do....

Cut the steak into thin strips, cook in 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. As you are doing that, boil 2 bags of boil in bag rice. It makes 4 cups but sometimes I don't use all 4 unless you want to put more sauce in this recipe. It makes plenty anyway so you don't really need all 4 cups. So I used about a bag and a half when it's all done. The zucchinni sometimes takes a while to soften up so when the beef is mostly cooked I throw in the chopped onion and cut up zucchini and then let that cook until the zucchinni is ready to go. Just keep stirring so everything doesn't burn. Then mix everything together in a large bowl, rice, sauce and beef & veggie mixture.

So yum!

Weekend away!

Last weekend I drove down to VA and saw my sister, her birthday was on Sunday and her friends were having a surprise birthday party for her. It's about 5 hours from here and my car has been iffy and I didn't want to take any chances so I rented a car! Now that I'm 25, it's cheaper so it was my 1st time renting a car by myself, I was very excited though I completely forgot to take a picture of it! They gave me a cute Hyundai Elantra, I thought I was going to get a real basic, no automatic windows and all that but it had better features than my car! I loved driving that thing around last weekend, it was so cute! See... (random picture from google)

Anyway I left Saturday around 11 and got there around 4.....I love the drive down there...Maryland is super boring...there are no pretty mountains to see driving around. I even snapped this great picture outside of the Walmart (had to stop to get a tide pen after I spilled my lunch on my shirt, haha).....if you walked outside of the walmart here, the scenery would be much more disappointing.

It was such a nice day out!

I got to Leigh Ann's around 4ish and just hung around. Luckily I already knew a few people there and my brother in law was there. Amanda got to the party at around 6:30. She was surprised, she didn't know about the party or that I was coming obviously. The party was a lot of fun, they had a bon fire and it was a nice night out. The food was yummy, and it was fun to hang out with my sister and Jimmy, and Chrissie and their friends! We got back to Amanda's at 4am...I know, how crazy am I? I slept in until 11:30 on Sunday. Omgee, unheard of. :)

Then Sunday, we went to this little buffet at this pizza place. Omg it was so yum, they had Italian food and breakfast food at the same time....so good. Amanda made me try alfredo sauce on eggs...I though it sounded horrible but it wasn't half bad! :) Then after that we stopped by Leigh Ann's and then I headed home about 3:00. The ride home was nice, it rained just a little but it was so pretty later when the sun was going down!

Wish I had taken more pictures! But had a great quick weekend away seeing my sister! :) Wish I could do it more often!