My Birthday & 30 Day Photo Challenge

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!  I know I sure am, especially since today is my birthday :)  I love when it falls on Memorial Day weekend because I get that extra day off with my husband and Mr. C!  We did some major landscaping this week (pics to come soon).  And now that we have a yard, I've been seeing birds!  Bluebirds, Robins, Purple & Yellow Finches.  Its so exciting!  My hubby got me a bird feeder & bird house for my birthday!  So hopefully once I get those up, the birdies will stick around for good!  

I am not going to tell you how old I am today, but on a completely unrelated topic *wink* I found this 30 day photo challenge on Pinterest and thought it was a great idea.  So I am going to do this for the next 30 days.  

Today is day #1 - Self-Portrait.  

Have a great weekend everybody & as much as I get excited about my birthday weekend, please don't forget about our service men & women this Memorial Day and thank you them for all that they do! 

Happy Monday #1 - Routine

I want to start something new here on my blog. I would like to share a quote with you every Monday morning, and something that makes me happy.  Because we all know how much fun Monday can be, why not try to make them just a bit better right?

So the quote for today is:

"The pleasure of doing a thing in the same way at the same time every day, and savoring it, should be noted." ~ Arnold Bennet

I'm not sure if I've shared this yet, but I am a creature of habit.  And one thing that I really like is a routine.
Here are just a few examples:

• I like to go to bed and get up at the same time every day
• Every day at work I have the same thing for lunch  (turkey sandwich on wheat, and baby carrots) 
• On Friday nights you can find my husband and I out on a date at our favorite place to eat: Noodles & Co. - where the staff knows us and even notices if we're late! 
• On Sunday we get groceries, and I do laundry

So when I was putting groceries away on Sunday, it made me happy to see this in my cupboard:

Yes, that is 13 boxes of oatmeal.  My husband and I just love those oats for breakfast, but we can't always find them when we buy groceries.  So when we do, we stock up because I HATE when we are out and I need to find something else for breakfast.  I think I may have gone a little overboard (just a little), but to me that just means a lot of happy mornings!

Have a Happy Monday!

Granny Smith Apple Bran Muffins

I've come across a couple recommendations that apple bran muffins are a great snack alternative.  I don't know about you, but when I get home from work I'm starving and usually end up at the cupboard eating some sort of potato chips or cookies or something else bad for me. I thought if I had these in the house instead, it would be just as convenient for me and healthier too!  There were quite a few recipes online, so I took bits & pieces of some of the ones I found and this is what I came up with.

Granny Smith Bran Muffins
3/4 cup All Bran Cereal
1 cup milk (I used 1%)
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup oat bran
1/2 cup of raisins (I used golden)
1 Granny Smith apple peeled and sliced
1 egg
1/4 cup of honey

Combine the All Bran Cereal and milk in a bowl and set aside. Meanwhile mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, allspice, cinnamon, and oat bran.  Add raisins and apple.  Next in a separate bowl lightly beat egg and add honey. Stir this mixture in with dry ingredients until fully incorporated.  Spoon into greased muffin tins.  Bake about 15 minutes in an oven preheated to 350 degrees.

All Bran and Milk Mixture

Golden Raisins - yum!

I filled an ice cream scoop about 2/3 full for each muffin

All done! 

Inspirational Pink Craft Room - Reveal!!

Maybe you remember way back to January when I decided it was time to re-do my craftroom?  Here is a reminder of what my "before" looked like.  You can check out my original post here.

Well, it took me a little longer then I expected to get finished, my flooring got back-ordered forever, and everything took a lot more work then I anticipated.  But I am happy to say, I'm now ready to reveal it!  Now its still not 100%, but its close and I'm too excited to wait any longer!  So now to the good stuff!  

First here is a pic from the door (the same as my "before" picture).  As you can see I added an accent wall of pink! I originally wanted to stencil that back wall, but this is actually wallpaper! It has the look of stenciling that I wanted but without me having to actually stencil.  I love it! 

We also replaced the carpeting with laminate wood flooring that matches our baseboards almost perfectly!  I ordered a bunch of new furniture including this HUGE craft table and the accent chair in the corner was the start of the color inspiration in my room with the green and pink.  As you can see, I need a better stool for my craft table, please ignore the one in there right now is from our kitchen.

Before my machine was on a tiny cheap-o desk made of particle board.  This one is a real sewing desk, that can drop my machine down which I really wanted in a sewing table.  I love this quote & thought would be perfect for inspiration...and its pink too of course! :)  

In the end, I think turned out even better then I expected, and I think it will be hard to NOT be inspired in here.  I really wanted a pink room, but I didn't want it too look like a baby's room.  I think I was able to accomplish that, with the one wall of pink but not going overboard.  Thanks for being so patient to see it since it took me 3 times longer then I though it would, but hope you like it too!  

Bingo Time!

Today was the first day that I got to play in my craft room since I tore it apart to re-do it in January.  This morning I saw the Bingo game that Cherise at sewingly along was getting ready for & it sounded like fun!  So my first project in my new & improved craft room, was to create a Bingo Board for the May for Me Bingo hosted by these fine ladies:

Tonya @ Hillbilly Handiworks
Sharon @ Vroomans Quilts
Snoodles @ Lily Pad Quilting
Marcia @ Marcias Crafty Sewing

Its part of their May for Me Celebration, which I'm finding intriguing.  Since I just found out about this all this morning, I haven't had time to figure it all out yet but it sounds fun! So to start with, I had fun rummaging through my fabric stash and creating my own Bingo board which is below with the master list as to what each of my squares is. I didn't get the B-I-N-G-O letters at the top, but I hope thats ok.  I did try to color coordinate on my card and my listing to make it easier to follow.

The fun starts May 1 and you have until April 22 to get your card made too!  Just drop by any of the ladies hosting & you can find all the info to join in as well!

Happy Easter - Bird Nest Cookies

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ... 1 Peter 1:3

Happy Easter everyone!  We are going to my parents for the day, they have goats and cows and chickens and ducks!  Its going to be fun!  Since we're just doing a simple dinner, I wanted to bring a Easter-y treat.  I saw these on Pinterest and was super excited to make them for Easter. They are very similar to the Haystacks my grandmother makes for Christmas.  And there are only a few ingredients.

All you need are:
1 - 12oz bag of butterscotch chips
1 - 12 oz bag of chow mein noodles
1 - bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs

Before starting, I sorted the Mini Eggs by color.  Yes I am a dork, and also look how you few pink ones you get compared to the blue & yellow!  Which was ok though, because we have been seeing a bluebird in our yard this week, so I went with the blue & yellow eggs anyway.  There were also a million white ones, but I didn't use those either.

Ok, cookie time. First melt the butterscotch chips in a glass bowl in the microwave.  I also mixed in a scoop of creamy peanutbutter at this point (maybe about 1/4 cup).

When that is fully melted, then you mix in the chow mein noodles.  (One thing would change for next time, is I would pour the melted peanutbutter and butterscotch over the chow mein noodles. It was kind of difficult to get them fully coated when I added them on top of the mixture without breaking too many while I stirred.) Once the chow mein noodles are mixed in, I used an ice cream scoop to drop on to wax paper.  Add some of the Cadbury Mini Eggs to the center of each one and you're done!

Update & Pinterest

I can't believe its been so long since I've last updated. I've been really busy with work and studying lately. And I've been exhausted at night. Haven't had time to do laundry let alone anything fun like sewing or quilting. My husband can attest to the laundry bit, apparently I let the underwear situation get a little low last week....oops! I do have all of the work in my craftroom finished, but don't have quite everything back in there yet. So no pics quite yet, but I promise they are coming. I am so excited to share.  Things should quiet down for a bit for me after Easter so I hope to have a *reveal* post for you then.

One thing I have done is, I've finally entered the world of Pinterest. I've been seeing the amazing ideas everyone has been coming up with from Pinterest & I have finally got myself set up. I even posted a link to my coffee pot cleaner tutorial, and was really suprised on how many hits I had from Pinterest. I've added a button on the side of my blog, so if you want to follow me & I can follow you back! I've started a Facebook page too, not much on there yet but feel free to visit me there too :)

Hope everyone had a great Monday!