Easter Weekend

Lets have an Easter recap shall we? Since you haven't already read a million and one blog posts about colored eggs and candy already.

How about I shake it up for you and reveal I didn't have any candy to speak of all weekend - gasp - nor did I spend anytime with eggs of any variety.

I did however celebrate birthdays, attend the cutest 4 year olds soccer game, catch up with sweet friends, dice/freeze 5lbs of butternut squash from last summers harvest, and snuggle my precious Sunday morning babies.

$6 Tulips from Trader Joes - that still have their bulbs - all the praise hands. Those sweet things will be getting planted in my front flower bed after they are done showing off. 

The Starkist Tuna pack is my new adult lunchable. I recently put it in my purse during some long travel and it came in so handy. I'm not sure those sitting around me in the airport would agree... meh. This past weekend it was my lunch on the go between photo shoots, soccer games, and the gym. Beats my usual Taco Bueno stop.  Oh, and that sparkling water - DELISH - $0.74 at Target and worth every penny. Zero sugar - Zero Calories but you feel like you're getting a special treat. 

 My diatribe of nothingness has come to a close. Happy Thursday - that feels like Friday - Friends.

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Beaded Belt - DIY

Praise the good Lord above - its Wednesday! 

I have been dragging this week - I'm not sure if it was all the Easter festivities or what but someone give this girl a nap. 

At the beginning of March I was in a wedding of my dear friend Alyssa. I was lucky enough to wear a bridesmaid dress I absolutely LOVED - as in I will definitely wear it again. The only draw back was the front was very simple and I'm a bling kind of girl. I mentioned to Alyssa the idea of adding a belt and she was 100% game. After looking around I realized these belts are EXPENSIVE. I seriously couldn't find a beaded belt for less than $50. 

Like any true DIY-er I figured I could make one myself for way cheaper and boy was I right. 

$10 and 10 minutes of time - seriously that easy.

I grabbed this headband from Ulta thinking it would be the best addition to my navy gown. Turning it into a belt proved to be as simple as I thought

I cut the elastic band off the back of the headband. See where it loops in the picture above? All I had to do was cut the rubber band on each side of the headband and pull it through the loop. So easy and left me with the perfect beaded strip for a belt!

Once I had my headband deconstructed all I had to do was add it to 2 yards of satin ribbon. Aleene's tacky glue has been around FOREVER and works like a charm - not to mention dries clear!

I found the center in both the beaded strip and the satin ribbon by folding them in half. This seemed to me to be the easiest way to ensure the belt was centered. If you would prefer to measure - go right ahead!

After gluing the beading down I felt like I needed to secure it to the ribbon while the glue dried. Clothespins to the rescue - they did their job like a champ. After about 30 minutes the glue was dry enough to wear my sassy new belt. I put this together in MAYBE 10 minutes but made sure to do it a few days before the wedding in case there were any snags. 

Final result?

The perfect amount of bling to a gorgeous bridesmaids dress!

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Lets talk Taters

I never realized that growing potatoes is actually pretty easy and best grown in a container to boot. Last summer I planted some sweet potatoes and though they were no fuss to grow they were major fuss to harvest. You have to dig them up archaeological style as to not bruise the skin in the slightest.

This year I'm taking a different route and trying my hand at growing Yukon gold and red potatoes.

About two weeks ago I purchased 3 Yukon golds and 3 red potatoes at my favorite Tulsa nursery for around $2 total. Its best to buy "seed" potatoes from a nursery rather than using grocery store taters. Most potatoes in grocery stores have an agent that keeps them from sprouting too quickly. I brought those babies home and left them in a brown paper sack in my laundry room for a few weeks. It was still a bit too cold here to plant them and, unlike if you were planing to eat them, I needed those little eyes to sprout a bit. 

Every eye on the potato = 1 plant, therefore, you could get around 5-8 plants per potato. 

This was two (red) potatoes worth of eyes only using the ones that had sprouted. They don't have to be sprouted super tall to plant but since I was limited on pot space I chose the best sprouts to start with.

Is it just me or do the sprouts resemble a sea creature of sorts? I love that vivid purple/pink color. Don't worry if your taters start to get mushy - this is completely fine for growing. You can see below my Yukon golds were starting to shrivel a bit.

With a small pairing knife I cut the potato up to give me just the eyes. The extra tater can be chunked in the compost bin or trash. Some people just plant the entire potato and skip cutting them up - that's 100% a personal choice

I ended up only using the eyes from two potatoes from each variety, had I thought ahead and bought more than 3 containers I would have been able to plant 5 containers worth with the eyes from each variety!

Here is the neat thing about growing potatoes - they are a mounding plant, which simply means you have to add more potting soil to the container as it grows rather than all at once. I have seem people use (clean) trash cans and laundry baskets to grow these in - the taller the better! 

For these 15" tall pots I filled them maybe 5" tall with potting soil. I added 5 eyes to the bottom of each container and covered them completely. Granted you do want your potato eyes to be buried just not uber deep. If you are planting full potatoes and not single eyes I would suggest 2-3 potatoes per square foot. Once you start seeing the growth on each plant you will add more soil to cover it. You can let them grow maybe 12" tall before covering about 1/3rd of the plant again. Just make sure the small potatoes that appear either get a) picked and eaten (hints new potatoes) or b) covered with soil. 

DO NOT LET YOUR POTATOES TURN GREEN - this is toxic

You can harvest your taters after about 100 days - they are best grown in full sun and watered but well drained (they will rot!) It is completely fine if you run out of room in your container, that just means your yield has stopped. Let the plant continue to grow and get green/luscious. When its time to harvest gently dump your container out and see your veggies!

Pretty handy, eh? You'll even get lots of extra pretty greenery as you go from the plants. Are you going to give it a try? Make sure to send me pictures if you do!!!!

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Toast This

One of my best friends owns a Bistro in Phoenix and I shot her a text the other day after having lunch to tell her I had the best menu idea. Toast. Not just any toast. Customizable toast. Just think of all the combos : sweet, savory, nostalgic - I'm looking at you pb, banana, and honey.

My current choice? Savory with a side of hearty. Enter Avocado, Egg, and Bacon toast. Le sigh.

Tell me your mouth isn't watering? I fried my bacon first (in this best bacon skillet ever) and then cooked the egg in the grease after... genius I know. 

I like to use the Sara Lee 45 calorie wheat bread with a little smathering of butter. Smashed avocado right on the toast and then that warm egg with the runny yolk. Top it off with bacon and I die. 

Outside of salt and pepper this is my go to seasoning

In full disclosure I ate the bacon first. All of it. So this is what my lunch looked like. Maybe its just me but bacon doesn't stand a 5 minute chance. This kept me surprisingly full until dinner - it would make a great breakfast too that would help sustain you through a long day.

Bacon Egg Avocado Toast: 480 Cal // 22 Carb // 31 Fat // 31 Protein

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I like to grow things

Mini panic attacks are almost a daily occurrence for me and not because I have great responsibility. My earbuds aren't in my workout bag - panic I might actually have to workout without music. No almond milk in the fridge - panic now I have to used powder creamer. Obviously I worry about very life altering, world ending things.

The sun is out on a steady basis, birds are chirping, trees are budding - major panic I haven't started thinking about my garden for this season. Lucky for me, and you, its not quite time to get all our summer crops in the ground yet but its definitely time to start planning. I already have onions planted and garlic in the ground from the fall (they harvest late spring) so now its onto summer planning.

If you don't have a garden (raised or not) you can still start planning now for a great container garden. I used to think container gardens were only comprised of tomatoes and herbs - wrong. There are some awesome veggies and leafy greens you can grow in containers.

Did you know potatoes (all non sweet potato varieties) are GREAT container plants? As a matter of fact I plan on doing a few containers of them myself this year even though I have a raised bed.  I'll walk you through my process when I start in the next few weeks. All you need are a few potatoes (various varieties if you like), a large pot, and some garden soil.

Another great container plant is onion - you can cut the greens off the top and use them as you would like in salads, soups, on potatoes, etc while your bulbs grow throughout the spring/early summer.

Outside of my current onions and garlic this year I am going to give watermelon the good college try along with my usual tomatoes, peppers, jalapenos, and squash. The thing about planning for your garden now is you can start to do some research on the best growing methods for your crops. For example, watermelon has to be started from seed because it doesn't take to transplanting, so, I have to get seeds started inside in the next few weeks. I also know they LOVE the heat and because of this I don't want to put them outside to early and risk temps getting below 70 during the day.

In the past few years I always make sure to plant cherry tomatoes and this might be the first year I am going to back away. Not because I don't like them or because they are hard to grow - the exact opposite actually - but because I want to challenge myself a bit more. Lets all hope this isn't the summer of zero tomato crop!

I also thought long and hard about trying corn and okra in the raised bed but came to the conclusion that corn is cheap as is (I like to grow things that are expensive and I can store - ie butternut squash) and I'm not sure I would eat a ton of okra. Have you ever done either?

Next weekend I'm adding another raised bed to my garden and cant wait to get the extra space ready for lots of fun planting.

Okay, so... Tell me, what are you wanting to grow this spring/summer season? Have you started planning?

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Bring on Spring

The weather here has been so amazing lately. Even though we still have days that are a bit chilly its becoming way more apparent that Spring is on its way. Thank you mister groundhog.

With the fresh weather I decided my phone needed a fresh look to and went in search of a new background. There are SO many free, cute, fresh phone back grounds out there.

For this round up I went with BRIGHT and FLORAL as the themes - because every party needs a theme. If you see one you like the best thing to do is follow the linked number below each picture to the original page the picture was posted. From there save the image to your phone and then add it to your home, lock screen, or both!

1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

Did you use any of the ones above? My lock screen is currently the pineapples and I seriously get giddy every time I see it. Next theme - flamingos or donuts or confetti...

Happy Monday Friends!

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Bachelorette Party: Austin

At the end of January we all headed south to Austin for a fun weekend getaway - 15 girls celebrating this bride to be!

Yes you read that right. Fifteen girls. How we managed to coordinate schedules and get everyone out of town at the same time is beyond me.

The bridal party decided early on that with that many guests we didn't want to get hotel rooms. Instead we scoured VRBO and found the most perfect villa on Lake Austin that slept 24(!).

We had the sweetest welcome gifts for all the girls when they arrived. Everyone had assigned rooms - we've watched one too many Real Housewives vacation episodes to know room assignments are a must.

Since our "theme" was glaming - think glamorous camping - we made sure to add in SMORES wherever we could. Obviously we are original and Pinterest aint got nothing on this bridal party!

Each room had prepackaged s'more kit and a schedule of the weekend

The goods! Koozie, ring pop, mini champs, hair ties, heart glasses, personalized mimosa glass, face wipes, gum, Advil. The best survival kit out there

 

Our first night was extremely relaxed with pizza, wine and a lingerie shower. I put together the best game of bachelorette balderdash ever - Ill share that soon!

Stacey, our planner MVP, also put together the sweetest guest book. Each guest took a turn kissing the "guest book" and signing their name. Afterwards we had a picture of the weekend framed with all our sweet kisses!

Saturday is when all the fun realllly started to happen. We had a party bus scheduled from 10am - 1am to shuttle us all around Austin. VIP status. Starting with brunch and then off to winery tours, lunch at Salt Lick (omg to die for) and then into Austin for dinner and a night out on the town. There might have been a 2 hour nap window built in there.

Little did we know the day had some major detours ahead. Starting with a bit of car sickness that had us stopped at a CVS followed up with this...

No your eyes have not deceived you, that is our WHEEL completely off the back of the bus and 15 girls standing on the side of the rode. The entire wheel fell off the bus.. How does this even happen? Thankfully UBER was around and got all of us safely to the winery while we waited on a new bus to arrive.

Even with all the crazy happenings this was by far my favorite bachelorette party ever. Its just so nice to get away for the weekend with a bunch of awesome girls and celebrate one of the best. 



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