the world is a little dimmer

1955-2011

You all know how much this devastates me. I love Apple, and think Steve Jobs is one of the most brilliant people of the last century. His creativity will not easily be replaced.

weekend recap

As I mentioned in my cooking post yesterday, I went to St. Louis this past weekend to hang out with my main squeeze. We have done a lot of the touristy things in stl because we've been dating for almost 5 years (ah! can you believe it?!), which means I've made a lot of weekend trips, both when we were at mizzou and after. Now we do more every day type things, which I like, because I've learned I've started to prefer the things we go do in St. Louis to the things we do in Kansas City (shh, don't tell my parents...), which will make a move there someday an easier transition.

So anyway, I'm long-winded as usual. This weekend we (and by we, I mean me again) cooked, did some laundry, and cleaned up the apartment. I seem to be incapable of enjoying my free time (one of the characteristics of a Type A personality, awesome), so I always have to be moving.

Between all of THAT excitement, however, I watched Sam play some softball...

We also had some delicious Italian food with Sam's dad, brother, and his brother's girlfriend...

Went to a super exciting poker game...right Sam?....

Saw an a-MAZ-ing movie {seriously, loved it, despite the fact that anything and everything about cancer still makes me cry}....

And took a lot of medicine (me, not Sam). My mom has bronchitis but I'm maintaining I have allergies, so I refuse to go to the doctor. Interesting story, a nursing student that hates doctor's offices...

Who else loves these Mucinex commercials?

What did you do this weekend?


*One thing I didn't do this weekend? Take pictures.

homemade weekends

This semester of school hasn't been fun, mostly because it's been uber disorganized, which I can't stand. Anyway, the good thing about having an actual semester rather than hyper speed summer classes is that my weekends are more or less free to do whatever I want. 

Since I've been going to see Sam a lot more, I've been trying out some Pinterest recipes, since most of the things I find on there are fairly easy.  We (and by we, I mean me) tried a couple of new things this weekend and I must say, they were pretty tasty. 

This is a Chicken Parmesan Bake that is really, really good. I made Sam rate these two different recipes, and he gave this one a 9 out of 10 (remember that he probably doesn't want to hurt my feelings when looking this number). My favorite part is that it is SO easy. There is a 3 minute video on his blog and that is literally (LITERALLY) the amount of time it took me to prepare this dish.

This is a Baked Potato Soup that I was really nervous about while it was baking, but it was decent too. I substituted the chicken stock with chicken broth because the grocery store by Sam's apartment didn't have chicken stock, but that resulted in it turning out a bit runnier than I would have liked. Another issue is that I didn't read the recipe well enough when I was writing down the ingredients, and didn't realize you needed to puree part of the soup, so I had to run to Target in the middle of making everything to buy a blender.  The nice thing about this recipe is that you can just throw it in the crock pot and it cooks itself. VERY easy to prepare. Anyway, Sam gave this was a 7/10, although he claims if it had been thicker it would have been a 9.

Also taken with Instagram. Did I mention I LOVE instagram?

iPhone love.

You might remember that I'm doing my share to keep Apple afloat after Steve Jobs' retirement by buying every Apple product that exists. So far my favorite is still my computer, then my phone, and then my iPad. I think I'm just not efficient enough with the iPad yet to make it step above my iPhone. Also, the iPad doesn't place calls so it's not as great because it doesn't let me call Sam twelve times a day. Kidding. Kind of.

And while my iPhone frequently irritates me (I say "you stupid piece of fill-in-the-blank-phone" at least three times a day to it, mostly when I drop calls), it is pretty great for a lot of things.

First, it has officially replaced my iPod touch because my iPod touch will no longer charge.

Second, it syncs with my iCal so I don't forget things (except to go watch people try on wedding dresses).

Third, it takes pretty dece pictures, despite the fact that it's a phone.


This third point brings me to the reason why I'm writing this post. Instagram. If you have an iPhone and don't have Instagram, you're missing out. I love how simple it makes editing your pictures right after you've taken them, and the fact that you can instantly share them on Twitter or Facebook. I also adore the fact that they look like polaroids. Who decided 4x6 had to be the standard photo size?


Point and case:

The obnoxious garden that turned out to be fairly pretty in my parent's backyard.

it's love

love her.

As you may have noticed, I particulary enjoy using this overlay but they're all fantastic.

perfect for capturing those quick shots of food for my blog, or for tormenting Alden.

weekend of bridal fun :)

Something happened to me last Saturday that NEVER happens. NEVER.

I mixed up the dates of something.

As all of you know, I am type A to the nth degree. In fact, I not only write things in a planner, I have a calendar hanging on my closet door that I put all of my important events on, AND I keep them on my iCal, which is on my phone, my iPad, AND my computer. So while you may all be under the delusion that I'm just totally awesome and can remember everything, not true. I have a lot of help.

Anyway, despite my best efforts to remain organized, I still messed up. So, Al & Linds, I AM SO SORRY even though I've apologized to both of you a million, trillion times.

See, my BFF Allie is getting married next June. She came in town to try on wedding dresses last weekend, but I wrote down that she was coming on October 1st. So even though she sent me a text at 9:30 in the morning and asked if we were still on, my school fried brain somehow thought she was confirming for NEXT weekend. I swear. I'm losing it. 

So while I was celebrating my ooother BFF Lindsey's upcoming nuptials at her bridal shower, Allie was waiting for me on the other side of KC at a winery with another one of her bridesmaids. Cue the texts and phone calls asking me, in much nicer words than I would have used, where the hell I was. Long story short, I ran out of Lindsey's bridal shower in tears to frantically meet up w/ Allie, which is just ridiculous, and in the process blew off my other wonderful friend Abby (who may not read this, but Ab, I'm sorry again, again.).

So, Allie. I'm sorry I was late, but totally happy that the rest of the day went smoothly and it all worked out for the best! You're seriously a wonderful friend, and I can't believe you weren't mad. Lindsey, I am sorry that I was a crazy person. I had SO much fun at your shower, and can't wait to see you again. And Abby, I'm making that shopping trip up to you this week!

And to those of you that weren't there, but I'm sure can imagine me having a panic attack when I realized that I'm a human that makes mistakes and actually forgets things sometime, yet still apologizing with words going about a million miles a minute, I'm sorry you read all of that above.


And what's a long blog post without some pictures? Duh! Here are some I took at Lindsey's shower. I have some from dress shopping with Allie, but those shall remain hidden until June 7th.

The bride-to-be hard at work in the kitchen!

Lindsey's grandma and aunt helping out.

Some lovely ladies

Lindsey and her mom :)

And with her grandma :)

miss you already!

One of my favorite gifts she received, haha.

ribbon bouquet! love these girls.

I have beautiful friends, it's true.

PS: Lindsey, tell your mom I will get these to her ASAP.

sunday shopping 2.0

Well, wanna see how I did? As you recall, I went shopping at the outlet mall near my house this afternoon. I think I did a great job, considering I only spent half of the money I budgeted for this trip!

Excuse the terrible pictures. The lighting in my bedroom is awful, and it was already dark when I took these pictures.  And I don't know how to work my camera.

This fun flannel shirt which is super warm was a steal from Old Navy. The whole store was buy one, get one 75% off!

This was on clearance so it wasn't part of the "buy one get one" sale, but it was still like $10 and I've been looking for a shirt like this for awhile.

This fun dress is maybe the tightest article of clothing I've ever owned, but I'm going to attempt NOT to be self-conscious in it, because it's PERFECT for a bachelorette weekend I've got coming up :). Also a steal at $25 from TJ Maxx.

This poor dress has the problem of looking way better on than on a hanger :). Also a great deal because it was on final sale at the Loft outlet for $14.

I have this blue open cardigan shirt in gray too from J. Crew and I love it. And since it was 40% off, I had to have another.

These shirts were $6 from Old Navy..which means one of them ended up being $1.87 after the 75% sale.

I almost walked out of Banana Republic before I spotted this beauty :)

FINALLY a pinterest suggestion. I love this royal blue infinity scarf!

Some jeans because I had like 2 other pair that fit.

And finally, these are not for me, but I found these in the J. Crew kids section for my 7 year old cousin. She loves leggings and purple and I loved the stars, so I bought them for her for Christmas. At $6, I could NOT pass these up!

i heart fall!

Fall is in the air in our household. We've been keeping the windows open at night (hence the beginnings of the sore throat I can feel), and even though my mother adamantly refuses to get excited about any sort of decorating, I have enough excitement for like 4 people.

Remember that little obsession I constantly talk about called Pinterest? Yep, inspiration for this blog post too. I always doubt my abilities to be crafty, but when I showed this project to my mom she didn't believe I made it (she thought I bought it at the store), and Sam said "that looks like it was made by a pro for real." So therefore, I believe it is blog worthy!

So, without further ado, behold, The Fall Wreath.

I started out with a basic GrapeVine wreath from JoAnn Fabric. They are only $4.99 and they happened to be buy one get one half off, so I picked up another one to make a Christmas wreath (spoiler alert!).

They also had a bunch of "Autumn Inspiration" bouquets, so I picked up three of those. You could probably vary how many you buy by how voluminous you want your wreath to be. These were also a steal--the bigger one was $4 and the others were $1. I got lucky and went on a day when all of their fall stuff was 50% off! Once I got them home, I cut each individual stem apart so that they'd be easy to stick in the wreath.

These were each like $1.50, and while they weren't as good of a deal as the bundled bouquets, I thought the little scarecrow man would make the wreath.

I also bought some ready to finish numbers and painted them white. I thought these were 50% off (and they were only $2 to begin with) but the woman at the register wouldn't quit arguing with me about it and I was really hungry so I just paid full price for them. She was really annoying.

So anyway, this type of wreath is SO EASY to make. I just stuck each of those individual stems through the wreath and made sure they weren't poking through the back. Although the covering on the stems are plastic, the underneath part is wire so it makes it easy to bend and make sure it's in there really snug. It does not make it easier to cut, FYI.

And here's the finished product! I was pretty impressed myself, although now looking at this picture I can see a gap in the leaves I'm not pleased about. As you can tell the house numbers aren't on there, because I can't figure out how to glue them on there. Hot glue won't hold them to the leaves, so I'm thinking I might try some twine or something.

And here is the beginning of my other fall project. I'm obsessed with tablescapes and I'm terrible at making them. We had most of these things (minus the pumpkins and scarecrows), so I just decided to put out what we had and then add as I find more stuff on sale.

Did I mention I love fall?

How is everyone else decorating for this most joyous of seasons?!