Homemade Bread

Well guess what I did this weekend? I decided it was high time I learned how to bake bread.  I found this little recipe for multigrain bread on Pinterest. And for my first batch of bread, I thought I did pretty well! It was moist and soft but packed full with flavor. We used it to make grilled cheese and tomato soup on Sunday's rainy afternoon, and it was so yummy! It did take me all day to make it on Saturday, but that was mainly because of the lag time: waiting on the hot cereal mix to cool and letting the bread rise twice. But it was so worth it! If you're thinking of trying to bake bread and like a good healthy wheat bread, this one is perfect! [The instructions are rather lengthy so I'll let you jump over to Our Best Bites to read Sara's instructions.]

Now I'm headed to the kitchen to go slice off another piece... What did you do this weekend?

High Five for Friday!

I'm linking up with Lauren over at From My Grey Desk for High Five for Friday! And I don't think I've ever been so excited for a Friday...

1. I'm finally kicking the butt of the cold I've had all week. Feeling refreshed and ready for the weekend :)

2. Loving the cute calendar that I printed from anna and blue paperie. Free printables are great! (Leave a comment if you want to find out how I got it). I have all 12 months but I'm only putting up 4 at a time on the wall of my cubicle!

3. Even though I was feeling tired and sick this week, I still managed to try 2 new recipes (one of my new year's resolutions). Wife points!

4. This week I joined the church choir and I am SO excited to be singing again! I cannot wait for the Easter performance.

5. And hurray for good friends finally getting engaged!! Congrats Corinne and Joseph!!!

Can we say High Five for Friday??

Annual Photo Album

It's here!! I ordered our 2011 photo album over a week ago and it's finally here!

I love it and I'm so excited to have this be the first of our collection of yearly photo albums. I came up with the idea when I realized that I haven't been good about printing our photos, but we have so many fun ones that document our first year (and a half) of marriage. Instead of making photo albums for certain big events like trips and holidays, it will be so much easier to have all the events that take place in each year compiled in one succinct book. Apparently I'm not the only one with this idea. The day after I placed my order, Young House Love posted pictures of their family yearbook, and they got the idea from the Bower Power family.

I basically spent all of my free time for over a week straight trying to get all the photos I needed and write little blurbs about our year. [I am hoping that I can work on our 2012 book throughout the year so at the end all I have to do is edit and order it. We'll see!] YHL and Katie Bower did it more of a yearbook style with no words, but with my horrible memory I decided it would be good to record a little more detail. It's always so fun to go back and remember what you thought at certain stages of life. I also want to highlight big prayers that were answered and reveal God's faithfulness in our life during that particular year. Plus, it will be really fun for our kids to look at and read one day!

Some pictures of our various vacations... we traveled a LOT this year.

I also did a spread on what our apartment looked like in 2011 and also how we both got grown-up jobs that year!

With the discounts going on at Shutterfly.com at the time I was able to save over $60 and get free shipping, so for a 12x12 album I only spent $34.99! This book is about 31 pages, but I imagine with each year it will get larger (especially one day when we have kids). I am not sold on doing Shutterfly every year, so we will see what else is out there. In the past I used Picaboo for our wedding album, but their baseline prices for a 20-page book are pretty expensive, even with the sales. And I'm definitely going to need more than 20 pages. I need to check out MyPublisher next year because I was blown away with the deal that John and Sherry got - $45 for 100 pages shipped! However, I was very satisfied with the quality of Shutterfly. They are still having some great deals on their books (maybe even better than when I ordered mine!) so if you're thinking of doing making a photo book, now's the time to do it!

Do you make a yearly photo album? What method do you use - do you scrapbook or make it digitally and get it printed? If you don't make one, now is the time to start! I highly recommend it as a way to document the years of you and your family's life!

Hide-away Corkboard

This weekend I also completed a mini project: adding a little bulletin board inside of a kitchen cabinet door. I saw the idea on Young House Love a few weeks ago and have been wanting to try it. I thought it would be a nice place to store recipes I want to try and random pending things I don't want scattered on my counter. And it was so so simple!

First, I bought a pack of cork boards at Jo-Ann Fabrics, for about $5.

What my cabinet looked like before... 

I measured the space and cut the cork with scissors. A razor blade probably would have been more effective/neater, but I was lazy and it didn't come out very jagged so it worked well. I was planning on gluing the cork board to the inside of the door in some way, but the package came with these handy adhesive squares that worked just as well and were super easy!

Thanks to the measuring tape, they fit in there perfectly. 

Now I have a handy place to store recipes, coupons I need to use soon, and other things that clutter up my desk corner of the kitchen. This is the perfect project for a renter. I can't see the rental company ever having an issue with it, and even if they did, the cork could be easily removed. I might also add some decorative pushpins to jazz it up.

When the door's closed, you can't see a thing! I'd have to say this little project was a success!

[Did you spot my 2012 goals and resolutions list?? It's never too late to make some resolutions for the year! Click here to get yours!]

Musical desks

Well folks, we sold the secretary. We actually made $20 on it, which is kind of cool! Doesn't the nook look so sad and lonely now?

This weekend we went through the other desk and decided what to keep, what to throw away, and how to reorganize the drawers to work better. We also got rid of all the clutter in the corner next to the desk. This took a while but I'm so glad we did it. Here it is in the little nook now:

I know, it needs a lot of work. One being the chair. It's just not the place for an old office chair! The space is so cute and the chair just doesn't fit! I want to find something fun and simple. I also mentioned before that I want to paint the desk. So that will change the look, too. The office/guest room now looks a lot different, but I will share pictures of that later.

Isn't it cozy though? It's so nice for Michael to have a place to get work done. He also can pack all his stuff away in the drawers when he's not working so that it's out of sight :)

I hope you had a good weekend! Did you rearrange anything like we did?

Starbucks Rewards

If you're a Starbucks fan, something you definitely want to do is register your giftcards so you can get rewards. How do you do this??

Let me introduce you to My Starbucks Rewards. Go to the Starbucks website and create an account. If you have any gift cards on hand, go ahead and add those in. Every time you by a drink with a registered card, you'll get a star on your account. Once you get enough stars, you'll start getting perks like free add-ins, refills on brewed coffee and tea, and free drinks every once in a while. Once I found this out, I now only use gift cards to buy Starbucks coffee. If my balance gets low, I just add more money to the card, rather than using cash or my debit card because then I can rack up those stars. It's a great way to get rewards off of something that we all spend so much money on! :)

What other rewards programs are you a part of?

Goodbye, Secretary

Let me clarify: I am not forcing my husband to fire his secretary because I think she's too pretty (okay, okay, bad joke). This post is about this cute little secretary desk I bought off Craigslist over a year ago. While it looks adorable in our little nook, it is extremely non-functional because it is not deep enough to use with a laptop, or anything really. I basically only use it to store my stationery, which is about all that it holds. I also have never been a huge fan of the Queen Anne's style legs.

remember this guy?

So, we're selling it. Anyone want a cute decorative desk that doesn't do much else than look pretty?? The big deciding factor was that in our search for a larger desk for the office, I realized that I didn't want to part with the small desk we already have.

this area of the apartment hasn't gotten a lot of love, has it?

While it doesn't do the job we want it to in this space (we really need more surface area and shelving), it actually has a lot of storage and has so much charm and character. I can just see it painted white for a little girl's bedroom one day in the future. So when I really though about it, it makes more sense to keep it as an investment and get rid of the one that doesn't really do anything for us. So we'll move this one into the nook area. I have already been brainstorming ideas of how to spruce it up and tie it in with the colors in our living room (read: paint!). Of course you know I will post about that project when the time comes! For now, I need to sell/donate the secretary first so we can move the other desk into its place, and then we'll have the free space in the office to move in a larger desk once we find one.

So that's the plan! Anyone have any ideas as to how I can spruce this desk up? Paint colors and fixture suggestions? I would love to hear from any of you... I am always looking for out-of-the-box decor ideas. Hope you are having a great weekend!

[If you live in NC and are interested in this desk, here is the link to our Craigslist listing.]

Simple night

Sometimes a simple spaghetti and meat sauce is all you need. It really is my favorite comfort food, and I realized that I hardly ever make it! I am always trying to try new things or do something fancy. Tonight I stuck with the basics. And let me tell you, this meal hit the spot.

The sauce is Giada's Tomato & Basil sauce, found at Target. I added a pound of lean ground beef, 1 clove of garlic, and a little fresh ground pepper. The spaghetti noodles are from World Market.