Busy, Busy Weekend

This past weekend was quite eventful.  Friday, we visited our friends Gabe and Stephanie.  Stephanie is an awesome hair stylist, and they just recently renovated their guest house into her own salon!  I'm so excited for her to have her own place. That means we can go hang out and get pampered at the same time!  Pampering included... cookies, coffee, a wonderful head message from Brianna while she washes your hair, and excellent service from Stephanie (of course).  Oh, and I can't forget the message chair (the one Jesse spend 45 minutes in).  It is amazing!  You will just have to go and check it all out for yourself if you live close by.  Visit Stephanie at Bellissimo Salon:

This is the only shot of the decor I took of the salon.  I should have took more. Stephanie did a great job designing everything and turning into an awesome looking salon!

Yep... that's me getting a little color!  Nothing drastic... you probably can't even tell if you saw me.  She just added a little more golden/strawberry blonde back into my hair to brighten it up again.  This was my first time ever getting any color, and I like the subtle change.  I'm rarely brave enough in the salon to just jump into change. :)  (Thanks Stephanie for being so patient with me and my hair changes! Look how much you've talked me into... in the past few years...lol.)

Jesse getting a much needed haircut.  Stephanie is the BEST at cutting his curly hair!

Trying out the hair dryer in the massage chair. Ha!

We spent Saturday in Birmingham on our second hunt for a place to live with friends Hannah & Adam.  We think we might have found the place.  We definitely found one we like, but we have to wait until closer to May to know which floor plans are available.  While in Birmingham, we couldn't resist these...

...and they were fresh and hot, right off the "assembly" (?) line.  I've never had Krispy Kreme so fresh.  They were literally melt-in-your-mouth delicious!  There weren't very many of those left by the time we made it back to Auburn.

What's for Dinner Tonight?

My mother is still a little surprised to hear me say that I love to cook.  I had no interest in learning to cook when I was younger and still at home.  I'm sure she thought I would consume an outrageous amount of Ramen noodles while at college, but once I was off on my own, cooking began to spark my interest.  I called her many times with the question, "Mama, how do you make your...."  I like to try new recipes, although Jesse is a little leery of this.  There was this one time that I experimented with a pasta bake recipe I found.  It called for ground cinnamon in the meat sauce, and lets just say he hasn't let me live that one down yet. :)   Anyway,... several months ago I made a loaf of white bread for the first time, and loved the whole process so much that I bought a big jar of yeast instead of the little packets with intentions of baking all sorts of breads.  Tonight we made homemade pizza and I opened that jar of yeast for the first time! But making the pizza dough reminded me of how much I love making dough.  That seems like a silly statement. But it is so much fun to watch the yeast proof, then throw in some flour and knead away.... smush, smush, smush.... then that little ball of dough grows into this huge poofy mound of potential.  And then you can do this:

The dough recipe I used came from here.  I proofed my yeast in my Kitchen Aid mixing bowl, attached the dough hook, then slowly added the flour and salt with the mixer on low speed.  Once everything started blending together, I turned the speed up to medium-high, letting the dough hook knead a little for me, and drizzled a bit more olive oil to reduce the stickiness of the dough. I took it out of the mixer after a few minutes and kneaded by hand (this probably wasn't necessary, but I just wanted to get my hands into the dough!).  I pulled my pizza stone out of the oven and dusted it with a little cornmeal (technically...Jiffy cornbread mix) and tossed the dough on.  We baked the pizza crust for several minutes until it was a little firm to the touch to avoid uncooked dough.  Then we loaded it up with veggies and popped it back into the oven to finish cooking.

So yummy!

DIY Dishwasher Detergent = Fail.

There's this little website known as Pinterest, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with.  It's filled with inspiration for just about everything, and I have many ideas saved to my "boards."  This recipe for DIY Dishwasher Detergent has been on my list of to-makes, and we were finally running low on the tablets we currently use.  I wanted to try this just to see how well it works, plus it's much cheaper than store-bought detergents or tablets.  Several reviewers stated that this combination of ingredients, along with using vinegar as a rinse aid, yields better results than expensive, name-brand detergents.  We've tried it for a several washes now, and I can't say that it does the job very well.  It just doesn't cut through grease and oil. Plus it clumped up into one solid rock inside of my container.  I had already typed up a post for it with photos, so I'm still going to share it with the recipe.  If anyone has any suggestions for tweaking the recipe, please let me know! I'm still up for homemade dishwasher detergent, as long as it works!

Productivity

This weekend I got down and dirty with my printer and a big pack of white paper. The end result is this stack of envelopes that holds a special message inside!

It has a little something to do with the fact that my sister loves this stud named Jeff and they would like to live happily ever after. No peeks just yet as they have not made their grand appearance in their loved ones mailboxes. I was very happy and honored to help create a fun invitation for them and make part of their wedding dreams a reality! I surely understand the relief a bride can feel when someone else takes a task off her hands! I'm so glad I could help!

Premier Designs Party

This weekend I attended a Premier Designs Jewelry party that Heidi (my sister-in-law) hosted at her home in Dothan. (Sorry for the cheesy picture, I didn't take any of my own.)  My sister Kristi sells Premier Jewelry and was happy to do a party for her.  I was looking forward to seeing a few things in person from the catalog I had been thumbing through for quite some time.  What I didn't expect was the vast amount of jewelry Kristi brought with her for us to try on!  Tray after tray of all things sparkly and bright!  We all had a blast trying on the rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.  I'm gonna put a plug in here for Kristi and Premier Jewelry because she did such a great job and everything was so gorgeous!  What I learned at the party:

1)  The jewelry looks completely different in person that it does in the catalog, so if you can attend a party or host one, you should!  It was very helpful to see things in person.  There were things in the catalog I wouldn't have given a second glance, but in person you can see the actual colors of the beads, jewels, and metals.

2)  The hostess gets really great benefits!  I won't go blabbing the amount of jewelry Heidi got for free, but you can get $25 for keeping your original party date, $25 for having 10 people attend your party, $25 for having a pre-party order total of $100, and $25 if 3 people book a party from your party.  PLUS you get 30% of the total order from your party in free jewelry!  That adds up quick!

3)  All Premier Designs Jewelry has a lifetime guarantee.  If there is something wrong within 90 days of purchase, they will replace your piece at no cost.  After that, there is a small fee to have it replaced.  But, if it becomes one of your favorite pieces of jewelry, you won't ever have to be without it.

If anyone is interested in hosting a party or purchasing jewelry (for yourself or a gift for someone else) contact Kristi, you can find her on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/khatcher42) or let me know and I will send you her contact information.

It just so happens that Kristi also sells Thirty-One bags/purses/totes/accessories, which are also great!  You can check those out for yourself here: http://www.mythirtyone.com/khatcher/.

Thanks to Heidi for having the party and (as always) delicious snacks, and to Kristi for bedazzling me!  I'm looking forward to getting my new jewelry!

Valentine's Day

Hello everyone!  I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day, yesterday!  We played it pretty low key this year.  I surprised Jesse with a shirt he wanted from Kohl's (one he left behind on our last shopping trip) and a card I had personalized with one of our engagement photos from Shutterfly.  (They often run promo codes for free cards, and the ones I have ordered have turned out nice -very good quality- FYI.)  He surprised me with a bouquet of flowers and a home-cooked dinner!  He drove across town just to get the Bourbon salmon from EarthFare that I love so much (even though salmon is not on his list of favorite fish).  I enjoyed staying in more than enduring the busy Valentine's Day crowds. (Granted, people-watching on Valentine's is pretty great.)  

But who could resist this?!

I love this man. A lot. I'm so glad he's my forever kind of Valentine. :)

A Rather Blustery Day - Repair

Today we braved the chilly winds to do a little DIY repair to my car.  Back in December my driver's side window started to misbehave. Suddenly it started making horrible grinding noises when I would try to roll down my window.  I avoided Drive-Thrus and other such activities that involved window-rolling, until our trip to Virginia- when I cracked my window just an inch to call Jesse's attention to my moving of the car during a pit stop at a gas station.  It was at this very moment that my window decided it was done. Finished. Not gonna budge.  So we did as any other classy people would do, duck-taped it shut, and continued on!  When we returned from our trip, Jesse took apart the door and found the culprit. A little plastic spool inside the door has a cable wound around it, which controls the movement of the window up and down.  Somehow my cable had jumped off the spool and became a mangled mess.  

What would someone charge to fix something like this, you might ask?  About 200 bucks. (Yikes!)  Turns out you can't just replace the spool and cable.  You must replace the entire window regulator.  And what does that look like?