Friday Favorites!

This one is a little late, but we've had family in town for Easter weekend! I'm only posting for things that happened through Friday in case this week is horrible, that way I at least have this weekend for next week's post! Haha.

1) Reel Mower - Last year, we didn't have a lawn mower. Our yard is ridiculously small, so we just put it off. Josh cut the grass with the weed eater. Even that only took him about 20 minutes, so it wasn't a huge deal. We decided it was time to break down and buy one. We considered electric, gas and reel mowers. The reel mower won out hands down. We don't have to worry about fuel or motors of any sort, they're cheaper, and they're smaller. We found this one on Amazon and decided to go for it. Josh cut grass with it for the first time last weekend and he loves it! He cut our grass and our neighbor's grass in like 10 minutes. WAY better!

2) Landscaping - We got around to landscaping our front yard last weekend! I was really glad we were able to finish this before my family came to town for Easter. There are a few minor tweaks we would still like to take care of, but it's WAY better than it was last year!

3) Gardening - We got our vegetable garden planted early in the week! I'm really excited about this and I hope we come out better than last year. Unfortunately, our back yard doesn't get as much sun as we would like, so we're not sure how some of the plants will do. We also have the groundhog to worry about. We haven't seen any this year so far, but we don't have much for him to eat yet since we planted mostly from seed. We planted potatoes, okra, red pepper, banana pepper, carrots, sugar snap peas, several varieties of lettuce, spinach, 3 varieties of tomatoes, herbs, zucchini and a tomatillo plant. I've never grown some of this stuff, so I'm hoping for the best! 

Lettuce!

4) Leinenkugel Beer Garden - After a long day of yard work last Saturday, Josh and I went to Power Plant to meet some friends for drinks at the beer garden. We had a groupon that was expiring soon, so it was a great time to go. We each got a couple drinks and we got a crab pretzel to share. It was SO good! We had a really great time and it was nice to get out of the house after working hard!

5) Weekday Lazy Day - One day this past week, we decided to just relax and cook brats on the grill. Usually during the week we try to get a few things done when we get home, so this definitely wasn't typical of us. We just decided to take it easy this day and it was so refreshing and worth it! We just hung out with Bailey outside and enjoyed ourselves. It felt like a Saturday, so it was hard to get up and go to work the next day, but it still felt great!

6) Short Week - My family decided to come up a day earlier than they planned. Since they were going to be coming in Thursday night, I ended up taking my floating holiday on Friday. Not only was it great to get to spend extra time with family, it was really great to have a 4 day week at work! 

So, when we first moved into our house, our yard was a bit of a mess. It was something we knew we definitely wanted to change, but we kept putting it off for other projects and we just never got around to getting it done last year. Last weekend we got really motivated, worked really hard and got it done! Unfortunately, I can't find any pictures of the yard before last weekend! I didn't take any "before" pictures because I knew I had already taken some when we moved in. I'm still sure I took them, but I can't find them to save my life! I'll keep looking and I'll add them when I find them. 

It involved quite a bit of work. First, we had to dig up all our old shrubs and get rid of them. We had mixed types of different sizes.We had 2 Japanese Holly plants that were relatively small, a rosebush and a huge Burberry shrub. The Burberry was really pretty while it still had its leaves, but it looked horrible during the winter. Plus it had thorns. 

I was able to find this picture. It shows the random huge shrub we had. The other 2 were not even 1/4 its size.  This thing was a beast and it was pretty hard to remove. The size was definitely a factor, but the thorns were just as bad! The roots were huge!

Once all the old shrubs were gone, we removed the old mulch , weed blocker and weeds we had (it seems like everything except the weeds died over Winter). We didn't have a border last year and we really wanted one. It is really annoying to have to keep sweeping mulch off the walkways! After considering all our options, we decided to go with brick. It's pretty, it's cheap, and it reminds us of State :-). Win-win-win! We decided to slightly re-configure the area as well. The previous owners had a large area mulched out and we really didn't like it. We would prefer to have more grass. We decreased the size of the mulched area by a few feet. We planted grass there. We already had some grass seed we bought for patching up areas. We planted the grass in front of the mulched area (hence the straw). After spending a ridiculous amount of time figuring out how we wanted to space the shrubs, we planted our Boxwood! We put down some fresh weed-blocker and mulch. It looks SO much better! 

The area beside our front door used to have a shrub. We decided not to put one there this time around. I would like to be able to decorate this area seasonally and it will be much easier without the shrub in the way. Right now we just have some herbs planted here, but we may add a potted plant of some sort. I'm looking forward to being able to put some pumpkins in this space during the Fall and a small tree at Christmas time! The only downside to removing that shrub so far is that it used to hide our water hose. We'll just have to make sure we find something pretty that's large enough to hide it away :-). 

We also cleaned out all the dead stuff from the flower bed, planted some pansies and added new mulch. We're going to replace this border with a red one to match the brick. This is something that crossed our mind after the fact and I don't want to risk ruining the flowers, so I'm fine putting this off again. We will likely plant either Tulips of Daffodils here next time around. We'll just replace the border when we put those in the ground in the Fall.

Red and white Pansies.

All in all, I'm really happy with how this project turned out. There is one major, or maybe not so major change I would have made. We already had some grass seed we bought for patching up areas. Since we already had the grass, we just bought straw to protect it while it grew in. I JUST realized (a week later) that it would have been cheaper to buy the one roll of sod we would have needed to cover the space. Not only would it have been cheaper, we would have instantly had grass (our grass has yet to start coming in) and it wouldn't have been nearly as messy. We'll be picking straw out of our mulch for quite a while. We may still end up doing this if we're not successful in growing grass. From what we've heard from our neighbors, they've all had a really hard time with grass seed on our side of the street. The houses on the other side of the street have really pretty grass, but they don't get nearly as much sunlight in their front yards. I really wish our house faced opposite directions. Then we would have the full day of sunlight in our back yard for the garden, and the sun wouldn't be so harsh on our grass. 

See that straw all over the place?!?

I'll be sure to post another picture later in the season once we have some grass!

Friday Favorites!

This has been a pretty eventful week, so this is a little longer than usual...that's a good thing though, right?!?


1) Sweet 16 - So I know this was one of my favorites last Friday, and I know we had a bad game. I know we could have won that game, but it definitely could have been worse. We got farther in the tournament than I realistically thought we would. Our team definitely has a lot of room for improvement, but I think we're moving in the right direction. So, I'm sad that our season ended when it did, but I'm looking forward to making it even farther next year! Now I'm ready for our football season opener...less than 5 months away! When I put it that way, it does sound kind of far off, but I know the time will fly and we'll be in Atlanta watching our Wolfpack play in no time!

2) Grilling out - Saturday, we had some friends over to cook burgers. It was a rainy day, so we didn't spend much time outside. We hung out for a while and just caught up, then we played Taboo! It was so much fun! It was our first time playing. It's similar to Catch Phrase, which is one of my favorite games, but it's so much harder! Bailey was even on her best behavior! She sprinted back and forth between us and them when they first came in, but once she calmed down, she was a good girl. :-)

3) The Hunger Games - Josh was a sweetheart and took me to see The Hunger Games this past weekend. He doesn't like going to the movies, so we rarely go. Not to mention they've gotten ridiculously expensive. I'm usually fine waiting until a movie comes out to watch it, my couch is much more comfy than movie seats anyway, but I've been really excited about this one. We went earlier in the day so it wouldn't be so crowded and I'm glad we did! We got awesome seats with no one around us, and it was cheaper! It was a good movie. I think my expectations were really high since the book was so good. I was a little disappointed. There were certain things I expected to WOW me, and they didn't. With that said, it was still a good movie. I think they did a great job with casting, with one exception. Donald Sutherland plays President Snow. I just don't think he's evil and disturbing enough for this character.

4) Bottling - We usually save brewing and bottling for the weekend, but we wanted our next beer to be ready to drink when my family comes for Easter. We didn't have time to do it last weekend, so we did it early in the week. I'm glad we did! We're getting more efficient so it didn't take as long as it has in the past. I was also able to multi-task and get dinner started.

This is Josh filling a bottle. I'm the designated capper. Our dishwasher sanitizes, so we loaded it before work and our bottles were ready for us when we got home!

5) Weeknight Date - We had a Groupon that I thought expired this weekend. For some reason, I decided to double check and I realized it expired Thursday! So, we had a last minute weeknight date. We went to Waterman's Tavern. The food was SO good and the service was pretty good at first. Then other people started to come. They were definitely understaffed. There was only one waitress for the whole place (it's a small place, but still, one wasn't enough for the dinner rush). We were really enjoying ourselves, but we were getting to the point where we were just ready to get home so we would have a chance to play with Bailey and wind down a bit before bedtime. It took us 30 minutes to get our check! We were a little irritated because we could have been home in less than that. I guess the food made up for it though :-). I got a Cheesesteak with Chesapeake Pasta Salad and Josh got a Chesapeake Burger (burger with crab dip...AMAZING) with some really delicious handcut fries. YUM!

6) Running - I mentioned a couple weeks back that I wanted to start running 3 times a week. Well, for the past few weeks we've only been running twice. Something else always comes up of course. I have to remind myself that there will ALWAYS be something else to do, I just have to make fitness a priority. I think I got really motivated when my bathing suit came in. Haha. This week was the first time we actually ran 3 days. We're still under 2 miles, but more than 1. We almost didn't run yesterday, but I'm SO glad we did. It was probably one of the hardest runs I've done. I ran a lot faster (I kept up with Josh and Bailey for the first time) so I got tired a lot faster. I started thinking I wouldn't be able to make it a mile, but I kept pushing myself. Once we turned around to start heading back home, I had it in my head that I was going to make it and I was going to keep up the pace. I did fall back just a little toward the end, but it was still a huge improvement. Now I have to decide if I want to focus on extending the distance, or increasing my speed.

7) Weight - This is directly related to #5, but I'm really excited, so I gave it its own spot! One of my goals on my 101 in 1001 list is to get back to my wedding day weight. Well, at the beginning of the year when I started shredding, I wasn't losing weight at all. I haven't weighed myself in probably a month because I was getting so discouraged. I wasn't seeing any results all around. I didn't look more toned, so it didn't feel like I was gaining muscle. I weighed myself yesterday (and this morning, just to see if it was consistent) and I'm over half way there! YAY! Just a few more pounds to go! I care more about being toned and fit than getting to a specific weight, but the weight is much easier to measure. I'm so glad this is finally paying off!

8) Gardening Deals - Home Depot is having their Black Friday sale this week. We've been planning on doing some landscaping, but we've been putting it off because of rain. I stopped by Thursday after work and got some great deals on flowers, mulch and charcoal! We should be set for the year on charcoal now. Haha. Now I just hope the rain holds off enough this weekend for us to get everything planted!

Mashed Caulifower

I first saw this recipe a while back and I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it. I'm a huge potato person, so I didn't think cauliflower would satisfy my craving for mashed potatoes. Well, recently I've been trying harder to eat healthier and cut down on carbs a little bit. So, I decided I would give this recipe a shot. It's actually really good! While I wouldn't always use this as a substitute for mashed potatoes, I would do it on occasion. I made this one night and I didn't tell Josh what it was. I asked him what he thought about it and he said it was good. I asked him if he knew what it was. His response..."mashed potatoes?". I don't think it tastes just like mashed potatoes...but it's pretty close! I first saw this recipe on Meredith's blog over at Newlywed McGees. I stuck to her recipe for the most part. I did substitute sour cream for the half and half/cream since this is what I do for regular mashed potatoes and that's what I had on hand.

Ingredients
- 1 head cauliflower
- 2 T butter
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup shredded cheese (I used cheddar)
- salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste
- chives (I had dried on hand, so I used those)

Directions
- Roughly chop the cauliflower and boil for about 10 minutes, until soft enough to mash with a fork.
- Add cooked cauliflower to a bowl and break up the pieces with a fork. Use an immersion blender to puree the cauliflower. Add the sour cream and butter. Season with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Mix in shredded cheese. Serve immediately.

Friday Favorites!

1) Sweet 16 - I'm SUPER excited that we made it! I have us going to the Sweet 16 in my bracket, but I hope I'm wrong after that! Considering how we started our season off, I'm definitely impressed. Hopefully we can at least give Kansas a run for their money tonight!

2) My Office - I came in to find my office decorated in Wolfpack gear on Monday! My boss did it for me...such a nice gesture! It definitely brightened my Monday morning blues! I've left it up all week and it's been keeping me excited for our game tonight. GO PACK!


3) Bathing Suit Shopping - Well sort of. Online shopping still counts, right? I love Victoria's Secret bathing suits! My local store does carry them, but only a few of them. I looked around the last time I was there and they didn't have any that I liked...so, online ordering it is! Luckily, they had free shipping so it didn't matter anyway. I ended up getting this one. I know I like the style of the top because it's the same one I got for our honeymoon. Now I just have to get my belly this flat. Bahahaha.

4) Brewing - We FINALLY brewed this past weekend! We've been putting this batch off for over a month now. Our weekends get so busy, it's hard to dedicate several hours to any one thing. We brewed a Pale Ale. I'm usually not a big fan, but I've recently found 1 or 2 that I do like. We wanted to do something a little different, so we added honey after the peak of fermentation to add a sweeter flavor. I think I will like this. Next on the list...Blueberry Wheat. I'm SUPER excited about that one. It's the perfect warm weather beer...if it turns out as planned.


5) Guest Room Progress - I mentioned a while back that we picked out a comforter for our guest bed. Well, we FINALLY got around to painting the room! It turned out well for the first part. I did get a little bit of paint on the ceiling while attempting to maneuver myself off the top of the closet. I'm planning on fixing that this weekend. We have a couple spots we need to touch up on the trip where the paint leaked through the painter's tape too. I still need to pick up the paint for the bay window since we've decided to do an accent color there. We're going to do it in a burnt orange like the comforter. Then the curtains will be the color of the rest of the walls. It's the same color as we have in the living room and kitchen. I didn't necessarily prefer to use this color here too, but we had WAY too much left for us to justify buying more paint for this room, especially since we'll probably be painting it again when we have little ones. 


6) Pub Dog Happy Hour - Today we went to a happy hour at with some of Josh's co-workers. One other guy was bringing his dog and we decided to bring Bailey. She's SO full of energy we have to exercise her a bit before we can do anything like this with her. We left work a little early and came home to throw the tennis ball with her for a while...then we left for happy hour. I was so glad we were going somewhere Bailey would be able to go, because we really want to focus on her being around more new people. I was glad there was going to be another dog there took, because we're working on getting her to listen while there are distractions around (and there's no greater distraction for her than a new dog with a new owner). Well, we were pleasantly surprised. There were at least 10 different dogs there throughout the time we were there. Bailey got to meet every single one of them and she was well behaved overall. She did try to steal a bone from another dog and got a little defensive when he tried to take it back...but then she let another dog take her bully stick from her with no issues. So random. We had a great time and I got to meet some more of the people Josh works with. I hope we get to do it again soon!

DIY Starburst Mirror

I've been wanting a starburst mirror for quite some time now, but I haven't been able to accept the price tag on them. Not only that, but each one I see that I like, there's still a little something I would like to change about them.Here are a couple that I like.

$365  (+64.49 shipping) = $429.49- We're saving for living room furniture, and this is more than we're putting back each month. I'm obviously not dropping that much on a single mirror. Plus, there's just a little much going on for me here.

$69 (+10 shipping) = $79 - I like the way this one looks a lot better, but still, almost $80 for one piece,           more than I wanted to pay.

I started searching for tutorials and found this one pretty helpful. I did a few things differently, so I'll still provide a step by step.

Materials:
- A larger, round mirror (I used a 7 in. mirror from Michael's) - $4
- Smaller mirrors, mine range from 3/8" - 1" ( I got 2 mixed packs from Michael's and still have extra) - $4
- Wooden Skewers (I didn't even use half of them) - $2
- Metallic spray paint (I had some already, but you can find it for less than $5)
- Glue gun
- Glue sticks
- A piece of cardboard
* Picture hanging strips 
(I already had the last few items)

Total cost - $10 
(Prices are approximate. I bought the supplies several months ago and just got around to doing this project, and I took advantage of coupons.)

Even if you had to buy everything, you could still make this mirror for around $25, which is still much better than $80, and definitely better than $430!

Directions: 
1) Spray paint the skewers. I used a silver metallic spray paint. I tried to paint them flat, then roll them over once they were dry, but some of them just kept rolling back over. I had a random piece of styrofoam laying around and I just decided to stick them all in there and give them a couple coats. This way, I could spray all the way around at once. I wish I would have thought of this at first!
2) Glue on your painted skewers. I wanted my skewers to be different lengths outside the mirror, but I didn't want to take the time to cut them, so I basically made the "shortest" ones meet in the middle. I did draw some lines on the back of the mirror, but since I ended up using an odd number of skewers, I didn't use them. I just eyeballed it and made sure they were evenly spaced. Once these were in place and I was satisfied, I placed a skewer in between each skewer, I moved these closer to the outside of the mirror, so they appear to be longer than the first ones.
3) Glue over the back of the skewers. I did this because this thing would hurt if it fell on someone. Call me paranoid, but it would really suck. Honestly, going back, I think it would be plenty stable on its own and this just added to the bulk (I'll visit that issue later in the post.)

Before gluing on the mirrors.

4) Turn over and glue on your mirrors. I arranged mine in a pattern on the floor beforehand so I could get an idea of what it would look like. This is not necessary, but I'm a bit OCD about things like this and I needed a pattern. Haha.

Practicing my arrangement.

5) Glue over the backs of the little mirrors. This is just for a little extra stability.
6) Cover the back. I used cardboard for this, but I wish I had used something different. It's thick and it makes the mirror stick out from the wall to the point where it bothers me, and you can actually see the cardboard. Depending on where you're hanging your mirror, this may not be an issue. It's pretty high up on our tallest wall (close to the peak of the top floor), so you can just look up and see behind it. I want to try to use something thinner. If that doesn't help, this baby will have to find a newer home. This is where cutting the skewers short may have helped. I didn't want mine to stick out as far as the ones in the tutorial and I though this was easier than cutting several inches off each one.

Finished product!

Overall, I'm very happy with this mirror. Even if I can't find a way to resolve the cardboard issue (I'll post it if I do), I like it a lot and I think I can place it somewhere else in the house where it's not as noticeable. :-)

I know you can't see it as well in this picture, but you can tell how high up it is this way. I'm starting to think it's maybe a little too high up. I may move it down a few inches or so. What do you think? Any ideas on an alternate back so it doesn't stick out so far?

Here is the back of it now.

Friday Favorites!

1) Horseback Riding - Josh and I got to go horseback riding last Friday morning. It was So much fun and so relaxing. It definitely brought back some great memories from my childhood and our early dating days. Neither of us had been riding since a camping trip we took when I was in 9th grade. I love horses and this made me really miss having them. Aside from dogs, they're the best animals! 

2) Atlantic City - We spent last Friday night in Atlantic City. My favorite part about it was that I didn't even know we were going there until about 15 minutes before we got there. I knew we were taking a trip, but I didn't know any details. This was pretty spontaneous for us. Josh booked our room the weekend before and that was it. We didn't make any plans, we just played it by ear once we got there. We didn't even lose any money gambling! We came out $10 ahead! I hope to go back at some point :-)

3) ACC Tourney - I was pleased with our performance in the ACC tourney. We made it to the semi-finals, which is more than I would have expected after that dreadful game against Duke. We weren't able to watch the majority of the UVA game, but we did catch the tail end of it and we were getting updates on our way to Atlantic City (thanks Anna!). We stopped at Applebees on the way home on Saturday and we were able to watch the majority of the UNC game. I was definitely disappointed in the outcome. We lead the majority of the game and it just slipped away at the end. I guess it is a lot harder when you're up against an 8 man team, but man, we HAVE to improve on our free throw shooting! That could have been the game for us. It's OK though, Florida State had an amazing game against Carolina. It would have been nice for us to have made it to the final game, but I think FSU had that game in the bag no matter who they played. I think they'll make a decent run in NCAA Tourney too. 

4) NCAA Tourney - We're long overdue for an appearance in the Big Dance! I'm really pleased with what Mark Gottfried is doing with our basketball program and I'm impressed that he got us to the NCAA Tourney his first year. We had a good first game against San Diego State and I hope we can pull off another W! I didn't feel great today, but the game made me feel a little better :-). I'm being optimistic, I have us going to the Sweet 16.

5) Spring - I guess technically it's not Spring yet, but technically doesn't matter to me. The weather has been beautiful this week! We didn't really have a real Winter anyway, but I'm still super excited about Spring. It's my favorite season! We've taken all our plants outside so they can get a lot of sun and they're doing really well!

6) Running - I haven't been running consistently since before the wedding. I would run for a week or so then stop. Earlier in the week Bailey, Josh and I went running. Up until that point it had been well over a year since I had gone more than half a mile. I was determined to run a mile, and I did! It was slow, but that's alright. A mile's a mile. I did it twice this week. My goal is to run 3 times a week. Hopefully we'll be able to stick to it. We want to make sure Bailey's getting enough exercise, so hopefully that will keep us motivated.