Cake Pops

I recently discovered the Bakerella website. Her ideas are super creative and her recipes are so good. I fell in love with the cake pops she makes. My sister recently got married so I decided to make a cake pop bouquet to take to the salon while we got ready. Here are the results

I actually did a few practice runs before I got to these. Here are some of my practice pops--not as cute as the final outcome.

To get the heart shape I used a small heart shaped cookie cutter and pushed it through. They are dipped in white and purple candy melts. The first few batches I made to practice I used melted chocolate chips and I found the candy melts got much better results.

Chili in a Mug

For Super Bowl Sunday my Mom and sister came over to watch the game with Ryan and I. We were deciding what to make and I decided to go with chili, its so easy and it's always a favorite. I use this recipe from Food Network for Sandra Lee for her 5 Bean Chili. Since everyone was going to be watching the game and sitting in the living room I was trying to come up with a super easy way to serve it and thought of mugs. It was perfect, people could layer their chips, chili and toppings and eat it easily without sitting at the table. It would be really fun in the mugs above from Overstock.

Spring To-Do List Project #1

I love, love, love this house number idea from the DIY Show Off blog of making house number flower posts for spring. I'm not much of a gardner but I think I may have to make an exception for this project.

Suprise Bathroom Re-Do

Over our winter break I had to travel for work from the day after Christmas until after New Years so I was really upset I wouldn't be home for break to do projects at the house (plus I would be away from Ryan for New Years). While I was away Ryan decided to surprise me with a bathroom re-do. We had wanted to do this project before we moved in but just ran out of time so we had been living with it for the last 6 months. He got down all the terrible wall paper and repainted it the same cream color we have throughout the upstairs, its about 1000 times brighter.

These are the before photos that we took during our home inspection. Before we were able to do the bathroom we at least had a green shower curtain and towels to use but it was still pretty bad.

Here are the after photos. Ryan picked a great white cabinet and mirror and brushed nickel hardware for everything. The shower curtain is from Target and we accented it with some apple green towels to add a splash of color. We still need to find some artwork for the walls but I think it looks great.

Its been awhile....

Its been awhile since posting, the holidays were super busy for us but we enjoyed them in our new house. It was so much fun to get to decorate the whole house, I for sure need more Christmas decorations for next year. After Christmas it was my mission to find decorations on clearance but it seemed like there weren't many left in the stores. I'll just have to be creative and start to make some things for next year.

A hippo could have lived here.......

Over this past weekend Ryan and his Mom's boyfriend hulled away more stuff from our property to the dump. We made about 4 truckloads over the summer and with this weekend's trip we have now gotten rid of 3 TONS of junk! That is about the weight of a female hippo! The old owners left a lot of random things behind, plus we ripped a lot of their home-made storage solutions out. Seriously what were they going to do with 8 bags of sandbox sand (they left it for us)? We took away everything from rail road ties to random boulders sitting along the driveway.

I Heart Ikea!

This past weekend I was on a trip for work to Ann Arbor, MI and was extremely excited to find out there was an Ikea about 20 minutes from our hotel. When my co-worker and I heard this our eyes lit up and we knew exactly how we were spending our free time on Friday morning.

I decided since we have been in the house since July it was time to start to hang some things on the walls and start to decorate a little. While we were there I found some great new things for the house. I found some pillows for our new basement sofa, some candle holders and some great frames that we will put some prints in from Ryan's Aunt. Once we get thing together I'll get photos up!

I found this great photo for our hall for only $9.99!