Wordless Wednesday.

Nursing School Basket!

So my little sister started nursing school last week, and I wanted to do something special.

I couldn't figure out just WHAT I wanted to do, I thought about buying her a stethoscope, but then she bought her own...so that idea was out. I decided on making a basket with a bunch of things she would probably need for school, clinical etc!

The Contents included:

1. Dried Mango Fruits- To keep you healthy & fight that "2 o clock feeling"

2. Sour Patch Kids (her favorite)- To help sweeten up your sour patients!

3. Life Savors- To remind her of all the lives she will be saving

4. Keurig K Cups Chai Latte (another fav)- To get you going in the Morning

5. FIVE gum--because everyone needs to "Take 5" sometimes

6. Rubber Bands- to braid her hair and remind her to "be flexible"

7. Headbands- in case she doesn't have time to braid her hair, cuz 7 am is wayy to early!

8.Nude Nail Polish- Because it is the color of choice for nursing students everywhere!

9. Chapstick- an extra one to keep in her scrub pockets, but make sure not to wash it!

10. Notecards- to help study

11. Hole punch- to keep your notecards organized, or when you need to "punch" somebody!

12.Color Changing Pen- for charting

and lastly....

13. Cookie Dough Bites, for when your ready to cry, & want to quit; DON'T! eat some bites & relax, FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY

Here's how it turned out and all ready to go! All I did was add some cute gift tags and ribbon to make it extra special for her. She LOVED it!

That's all for now....but look for another stair update soon, the project that is taking me FOREVER, but so far is totally worth it!

Baby Steps.

Things I wish I knew about a year ago: blogging. Seriously, the house we bought was in absolute shambles, and we would have had one hell of a home improvement blog! I'm still thinking of posting some of the projects we did in the future...but for now...here's what we're working on now!

Steps?

Yup. I'll paint you a picture of what our basement looked like when we bought it; 15 year old faux finish looking wallpaper graffiti over by some party going, beer drinking, teens. I take that back, they continued their artistic expression to the ceiling as well. Ok back to the stairs...they're not the walls right? Well there was also carpet, and then a thick, dirty, nasty layer of dirt-dog hair-cat hair-disgustingness that coated the entire thing, so we did what every normal person would do--we tore it out the same day we got the keys. The catch? They put carpet tiles down and we were left with sticky-icky floors. But the basement wasn't a huge priority when we first moved in, so we put it aside.

But even after scrubbing them, they still looked gross. So what to do? We thought about just painting them, we're not quite ready to put in carpet, and we don't really know what type of purpose the basement will end up serving. So I found this pin over on pinterest, and I fell in love. There were really helpful instructions over at Lovely Crafty Home and I've started this:

I covered every other stair with the brown craft paper (crinkled up & dipped in a glue-water mixture) and am waiting for it to dry. I will keep you guys updated on my progress on this, and I hope to be done soon!

Mini Omlettes

I just wanted to stop by today to share a quick easy recipe with you guys that makes morning a little less busy. These are healthy, and easy to heat up!

Just start with a muffin tin, egg whites, shredded cheese, pam and cooked baccon. Spray with pam, and fill with egg whites.

Top each well with cheese & bacon, and pop in the oven for 20 minutes @  350*

Voila! Perfect bite size breakfast you can either pop in the fridge or freezer for whenever your ready! I put two in each container & freeze!

Shopaholic turned Saveaholic.

I have a secret.

I thought I love shopping, turns out, I love saving money MORE.

 To anyone who knows me, I love to shop, and I love name brands. I fell in love with Coach, North Face, and all my clothes were from Express. I know, it could have been worse. But I became accustomed to shopping whenever I wanted, and we ate out, ALOT. If I did go to the grocery store, I didn't care what was on sale or if i had coupons, I still got whatever I wanted. This year me and my husband have resolved to save as much money as we possibly can, and so far ( I know its only January 16th, but we started in mid-december) I feel like we're doing really well. So, here is my weekend "shopping haul"...not so typical, I know, but I'm really not a typical gal!

Grocery Shopping : $120 Total

Big Savings: $65 for meat which included 6lbs of ground meat, 11 large chicken breasts, 7 pork chops, 2 pork roasts, 1 slab of ribs, 5 sausages, 2 packages of bacon, and 2 packages of turkey deli meat. Now on a trip to our regular store we would have paid around $105, but by driving an extra fifteen minutes to a different grocery store that isn't a "big box" store, we saved on tax AND around $40

I estimate our other savings (produce & non-perishables) at about $35, bringing our total grocery savings to $75!

Drum roll please..................................ok it doesn't look like much, BUT these supplies for our next round of home improvements should have cost us around $400, BUT by going to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, we paid $92, yes $92. So we saved around $308! For those of you keeping track, that's up to $383.

And finally, I've been searching and searching for a vacuum, we have owned a house for 8 months, its embarrassing I know. I would borrow our parents, or use the one we have, which mostly just pushed the dust around and spit stuff out at you. After a year of lusting over the Dyson Animal Ball, we opted for something a little more affordable:

Bissel LiftOff MultiCyclonic Pet Upright Vacuum

We picked this sweet puppy up at kohls, with a starting price tag of $229.99

It was on sale for $149

Then I had a coupon for 15% off, so that brought it to around $137, with tax

Then I got $10, mail in rebate, and $20 kohls cash, bringing the final price to:

$107.00 total savings: $122

Lets total this all up:

Merchandise total: $829.00

Total Paid:$319

Total savings:$510!!!!! which equates to about: 61%

This makes me, and of course my hubby VERY happy. I should also mention that this is the ONLY shopping we have done so far this year. We're off to an AWESOME start to 2012!

Wordless Wednesday

Year, month lists

I came across a post over here at one of my favorite blogs and I just had to recreate this for myself, its a really good idea to give yourself a realistic ideas of what we can actually accomplish this year :)

Year list:

• Mini Master Bathroom Renovation
• New carpet- this is one thing we didn't replace when we bought our house
• Finish basement-it will be nice to kick the boys down there when they come over!
• Decorate our bedroom- finish phase 2 & 3 of the curtains, hang the TV, frame our TV & hang our pictures
• New couch for our family room-this is the finishing touch for our family room!
• Patio overhaul-we have big plans...more to come!
• Landscape yard/grind stumps- last year we cut down 3 trees & TONS of shrubs, so we will be resizing all our flower beds & grinding down any unwanted nubs :)
• Find artwork & create a gallery wall - in the living room, i want to make the frames all the same color, I'm thinking...white?

So what should we do this month?
As I'm typing this, Hubby is mounting the TV on the wall, so I can cross that off the list! Other than our "Honey Do" list, I'm working on the basement and getting that painted...its just a bigger task than I anticipated.

Busy Busy Weekend!

So I took a long weekend at work in hopes of getting lots done, and for dear hubby's birthday. I made a wonderful cake that you can see in my last post. I ended up having quite the full weekend!!

Thursday was hubby's birthday; we went carpet shopping, made lunch, he watched me paint the basement and had some yummy cake :)

Friday I had breakfast with one of my best friends who is leaving for Australia for a month, I'm going to miss her but what a cool vacation! I went to Home Depot and then had dinner with my sister and friend and then we all went out for the night & had a blast!

Saturday I got up early and headed out to my grandparents with my dad, while the men talked about tools & such, I sewed curtains for our bedroom and learned how to crotchet! I left around dinner and we had birthday round 2/date night, we played video games & ate pizza...this was probably my favorite night all weekend <3

Sunday I planned on just laying around & then finishing painting the basement, but my parents needed a saw...so this is what I ended up doing yesterday:

We ripped out the floor, tile off the wall, vanity & counter top, tub surround, plaster & ceiling in my parents bathroom....looks like fun right? I cant even lie, it was SO much fun!

This week I have one goal: Finish the basement. More updates to come :)

Birthday cake!!!

I have always used cake out of a box, I was absolutely convinced that cake from scratch was the hardest thing ever! Boy was I wrong....the folks over at Sweetapolita have some really great recipes, so last night I busted out my new shiny kitchen aid and gave their Rainbow Batter a try!

It was not only easy, but DELICIOUS! I saw cakes over on Pinterest like these, and decided to give it a whirl. I was so easy, after you make the batter you just divide the batter (I used 5) and then used a gel food coloring to dye the batter.

The frosting recipe I used was SO easy to make!! I found it here, and let me tell you when you add the milk the frosting is like magic in front of your eyes, it gets SOOOOOO fluffy and fantastic :D

After they cooled, I stacked them in layers with a little frosting in between and I am in love with how this turned out!!!

Here is the final product, I have to say I think I will be baking cakes from scratch a lot more! <3

Starting the new year off right!

So like 30 million other people, for the new year I'm resolving to lose weight. But I don't just want to lose weight, I REALLY want to eat healthier for life, make it my lifestyle. So after the holidays, this is what our fridge looked like. A disaster. So i set out to make it more "health friendly"

I adore our french door refrigerator, and all the space that it has. It has 2 crisping drawers, and a full length deli drawer that you can fit a whole sheet cake in, its kitchen aid, and its one of our best purchases from last year :)

First I threw out all of the expired food, or anything that was really bad for me. Next I took all the "no-no" condiments and put them on one side, this included: Mayo, ranch, coffee creamer, milk, butter and wine (these items I will try and use sparingly). At eye level I put all of my yogurts & fruits. Next to that I pre-portioned out leftovers and stacked those in groups. The top shelf contains more items to use sparingly, and leftover sweets for dear husband to eat :) On the left side of our door I have things to use while cooking- pesto sauce, salsa, minced garlic, artichoke brushetta & plain old spaghetti sauce.

I hope you all had a wonderful new year & join me in starting 2012 right!