Easy Summer Dinner

Marinated Veggies

Chop up your favorite veggies.  I use 1 cucumber, 1 onion, 1 green bell pepper, and 1 tomato.
I put them in a container that has a top.  Pour over some Italian salad dressing, enough to coat.  Also a couple of Tablespoons of white or apple cider vinegar.  Let them sit in the fridge a couple of hours and you have an incredibly easy, healthy, yummy side of veggies!

Tilapia

I buy the bag of frozen Tilapia at Target.  There are 6 individually wrapped tilapia fillets.  Follow the directions to thaw (or you could use fresh).  Pam the bottom of a pyrex, heat the oven as directed.  Place the fish in the pyrex, salt and pepper the fillets.  In a small bowl chop up some whole wheat bread crumbs, put a Tablespoon of dijion mustard and a few drops of lemon juice.  Put the mixture on top of the tilapia and bake as directed. I believe it is 12-14 minutes.  The mixture gets a little crispy and gives the fish a lot of flavor.

Rice

I recently have been making the Uncle Ben's 90 second packages.  They are great, so quick, and always turn out great!  So choose whatever flavor you like!

Enjoy your weekend.  We have an exciting weekend planned for all of Kerra and Chris's wedding festivities! YAY!

Subtle Changes.

Preparing to spray paint.  I wanted to take the 2 more "wild colored" crosses and paint them white to make the cross wall a little more neutral.  The flower topiaries came from my grandmother a few years ago.  Originally the bottoms were blue and for my apartment I painted them green, flowers remained light pink.  So I sprayed all of these things white.

Before:

After:

(For now, I have them in the guest room, haven't quite figured out where I am going to put them)

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

(This was red before.)

I like the way it turned out.  Looks softer.

Fresh Look.

We had a wonderful weekend.  Hope you did too!  We went to the beach Thursday and spent a long weekend with my family.  It was wonderful, but too short!  Hopefully I will get in more posts this week than I have been.

Do you ever get tired of what you look at every day?  I have been on this crazy organizing, cleaning, changing kick.  I have organized every nook and craney, every closet, every basket, etc.  I also have been thinking about "our next future house" and how I think I want to do every thing in neutrals and whites. Fresh and clean feeling and no CLUTTER.  So I have been putting some things away and changing things around.  I changed the pillows on the sofa to some others I had around the house.

Before:

After:

I know the slip covers are horrid... But I am holding on to the dream of fabulous new sofa's in a fabulous new house!  I'd rather save for that and it work with that house instead of now.

Have a great Monday!

Shopping for an outdoor side table.

I'm trying to find an outdoor side table to go in between our new outdoor chairs.  Not really sure what look I am going for, but something clean and simple.  Here are a few I found shopping online.


I think this is my favorite.  But I would have to paint it, the wicker does not match the wood of the chairs.  Unfortunately, I'd rather not buy something new then have to work on it..  It is from Target and it is $ 79.

Love this one!  So retro.  Bad colors though: green, red, yellow, blue.  It is from Walmart and it is $ 35.

This is from Overstock.com  I like the sunburst pattern.  It is $88.

I like the fact that this one is large enough to eat on.  The color looks like it would match perfectly.  It's from World Market and it is $ 69.  It just might be the one!

 I need to check out Home Goods again.  Thought about going to Hobby Lobby, but it might all be too frilly and iron-ish.  Any thoughts of where else I could look?  Anyone seen anything recently?

Hire ME.

The job search is frustrating.  All of my life I have wanted to try working on my own, having my own clients, etc.  So I figured, grab the bull by the horns.  So if anyone needs help SPACE PLANNING, DECORATING, ORGANIZING, STAGING, RE-FINISHING FURNITURE... call me.  I have had 1 client and have another lined up for the summer.  Hope my dream comes to fruition!

If you know anyone that has mentioned needing some help and advice, I would really appreciate you forwarding my information a long.

Thank you!

Greenery

Phew, it's been a whirlwind.  But, I wanted to post my new plants.  This is our back porch before.

The mat had gotten mildewed from the rain, so I had to replace it, something where D$ could scrape his feet!

After:

I bought the mat and the 2 pots for $22 at Old Time Pottery.  The grassy plants where $9 a piece.

This lower picture was taken a week or so after the first picture, so the plants have grown a little.

Here are the new chairs.  I love them, they were $40 a piece at Home Goods.  Now I just need to find a small table to go in between the chairs and cover up that weird white spot.

My bromeliad died.. So I replaced it with this callalily.  It has grown SO much in less than two weeks.  I water it every other day.  The pot I put it in was a bit pricey, but I thought it looked perfect with it and it's the perfect size. =)

This sucker has to be watered daily.  I thought I killed it after having it for 2 days, turns out it just needs watering constantly, and the shade!

Hope everyone had a great weekend and that you are headed towards a fabulous week!

Crazy!

May is a CRAZY month. 4 Weddings in less than 3 weeks and a beach trip that hopefully the oil spill won't ruin!  So forgive me if I don't post every day, hopefully I can get 1 post a week!

I have redone the back porch/tiny plot of land.  Every time anyone comes over instead of going to the cutely decorated front porch that is an actually front porch, everyone goes to the back!  There were no chairs, no greenery, no nothin!  So now we have cute chairs, plants, new door mat.  Now I just have to find a little table to put in between the chairs.  I'll post pics soon. I haven't been able to take any due to the rain yesterday.

My cake that I made for mother's day was delish if I can say so myself.  That is a really good icing recipe.  I saw a tip that Ina Garten  (from Food Network's Barefoot Contessa) uses on her cakes.  She takes a cup of hot water and dips her icing knife and flicks the excess water off and smoothes the icing.  Wish I had known that trick before!  But I am sure I will use it again!

Here is a pic from our friend's 80's skating party from this past weekend of D$ and myself.  We had a ridiculously busy weekend and that was only the beginning for May!

Hope everyone is having a great week and hopefully I can get another post in on here soon!

Strawberry Icing

All of D$'s family is coming over tonight after dinner out to celebrate mother's day.  Unfortunately, I don't get the opportunity to see my sweet mom for mother's day, but I am trying to make the best of it!  SO I have a PINK theme!! All the gifts are wrapped in pink, flowers are pink, cake is pink, pink napkins.  I may have gone overboard, but I am trying to do something nice!  I went to the grocery yesterday in a panic because that is when I found out I was having everyone over TONIGHT...  I didn't feel like putting myself through making a home made cake, so I was going to buy a box of strawberry cake mix and make home made strawberry icing.  Well this is the 2nd time I have been to Publix and they didn't have that cake mix!  So I bought white cake and put a little pink food coloring in the mix.  I am making this yummy sounding icing for the cake.  Hope it is as delish as it sounds!

Hope every mother had a wonderful Mother's Day!

I love you mom, wish I could be with you!

In Style.

I'm glad to know our home is "in style."  I have recently found some pictures from different blogs and websites that match my style or actually pieces of furniture in our house!

Their's

(Design Sponge)

(Design Sponge)

Mine

Their's

(I've had this picture a long time and I don't know where it is from, sorry!)

(I've had this picture a long time and I don't know where it is from, sorry!)

Mine

The stools were found on Overstock.com and our bed is from Three Sheets.

Supper can be SUPER easy and SUPER creative!

Last night we had some of Drew's family over.  I made the super easy pizza's that I blogged about Friday, you can find the recipe right here.  I also made the fruit pizza that I blogged about here.  It was pretty yummy and SO easy!  Fun idea for a party of a few friends coming for dinner because everyone can make their own pizza!

I put each different topping in a little tea cup. Pepperoni, sliced ham, pineapple, green pepper, onion, olives, sun dried tomatoes, and I put the sauce and cheese in bowls.

Here is the fruit pizza.  I put it on my huge cake plate and I thought it looked really pretty and it is SO easy!

Here was the table scape.  Just used my every day dishes with some monogrammed napkins I received as a shower gift.  I had to take a picture of the beautiful roses I found at Publix as well!

It was a fun night and I didn't have a whole lot to clean up, which is always a plus!

New Sideboard

I am thrilled.  I have wanted this piece of furniture since December.  I have had my eye on it at the Antiques and Interiors Market it in the old Ethan Allen building.  I didn't want to spend the money and I felt like we didn't have the room, but Drew has been trying to convince me to get it.  So I went Friday, talked them down on the price a little and they delivered it that day!  The only place that it would really go is in the dining room, eventually I would like to have it in a foyer of a different house...  But the storage is FABULOUS.  Everything is much more organized and now I can put my hands on what I need when I need it instead of searching everywhere.

Recognize?

Yes that is 1/2 the reason I wanted this piece so bad...