Treats...

My "treat" from my husband tonight...

Too early?  Not when my favorite Christmas drink is in the stores already too...

:o)

Week in review...

Monday afternoon we went to our nephew's game (#64).  I don't remember what the score was...something like a lot of points to not many points with Conor's team winning.

I planted some mums on Tuesday afternoon.  Glad I did it that day because we had pretty much nonstop rain from Wednesday through Thursday.  Now I just need to get some pumpkins.  Not sure when we'll get that done though since the fields are all muddy.

Since it was cool and rainy on Wednesday, I baked some cookies after school.  These are my favorite (original Toll House recipe).  I like when they're flat and have the little ripples on the side.

I got my Halloween swap package mailed out on Thursday.  I'll show you what I sent once I'm sure my partner has received her package.

Friday night David and I went out for supper.  Nothing too exciting but it was nice to go out.

This morning I'm watching the Christmas programming on QVC.  90 days to go :o)

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Recipe: Spaghetti Casserole

So one of the things that I've enjoyed about having my husband home every night is being able to cook a meal each night.  I enjoy meal planning (most of the time) and I like to cook (most of the time).   When I was here by myself I'd eat cereal, popcorn, or whatever else I could find to feed myself.  It got old but I wasn't going to make a whole meal for myself.

One thing that makes meal planning easier is my recipe binder.  I don't always need a recipe but it does give me ideas.  A couple years ago I decided to gather all my recipes and put them in a binder.  It has been so much nicer to just go to my binder for a recipe than try to dig through various magazines/cookbooks. 

I rarely post recipes on here and I'm not sure why.  Blogs have been a great source of new recipes for me.  I guess it's time I start sharing more too.

I made spaghetti casserole for supper Tuesday night.  We don't have it often but it is really good.  It's nice too beacause you can make two pans of it at once and freeze one for a future meal.  I usually just make mine in a 9x13inch pan so we leftovers for lunches.

Sorry about the crusty appearance of the paper.  It got splattered on a time or two before I made my recipe binder. 

Oh, and don't bake it for 55 minutes unless it's one you've taken it out of the freezer.  It only takes about 15 minutes or so if you make it and bake it the same night.

Fall....

Well I've had my fall stuff out for quite awhile now so I thought I'd show you what I've done before I take it down.  I decided this year I'd decorate for fall in September then take it down to decorate for Halloween in October.  I usually just have the two out together but I decided to do it differently this year.  Then I'll bring some of the fall decor back out in November for Thanksgiving.  Since I don't have much it shouldn't be much work.

Anyway, I don't have a lot of spaces to decorate so I just have little touches wherever I can stick them.  Here's my buffet....it's pretty simple. 

I'm glad to report that everything is slightly stuck to the top of the buffet thanks to my impatience on letting the paint fully dry.  :/  Oh, and as you can see I still haven't turned the upside down handle the right way.  Or redecorated the wall space.  I'll get to it eventually.  Not sure why it looks like there are big dirty marks on the wall either.  Hmm, maybe I need to wipe that wall down.  Something else I'll get to eventually.

Yeah, that's the door to our apartment.  Try not to be jealous of our steel frame and awesome wood grain door.

And that's pretty much it for our fall decor.  We'll probably go get some pumpkins either this weekend or next so I can decorate our patio a bit.  :o)

Weekend Recap

It's been awhile since I last posted.  Not much has been going on around here, nothing fun anyway.  I've really enjoyed having my husband at home with me every night though.

We had a pretty calm weekend.  We hung out at home almost all weekend.  We did make a W-Mart trip and I went grocery shopping but otherwise we were home.  I've been trying to fight off a cold all week and it finally got the best of me Saturday.  I was tired and just didn't feel like doing anything.  I started feeling better on Sunday though and finally did some crafting.  It's been awhile since I last made anything.

I can't show ya any finished products yet though. I joined in on a Halloween swap so I made some things for my partner.  I'll post them here once I know she's received her package.

We definitely had some fall like weather this weekend.  I don't think we made it out of the 50s all weekend.  I'm ready for fall but I hope this early cool snap of weather isn't a predictor of an early winter.  I'm so not ready for winter.

That was about it for the weekend.  Nothing too exciting.

PS - My family could really use your prayers if you are the praying kind.  My 97 year old grandma is in the hospital with pneumonia.  My uncle found out his leukemia is out of remission.  My aunt is going in for tests this morning because she's been having chest pains,shortness of breath, and pains down her left arm.  We've had some other stressful issues too so any prayers would be appreciated.  Thank you!

I Love This Day.

I'm loving today. 

I love that our weather is awesome.  It's 6:40pm right now and the temperature is 63 degrees with a steady breeze.  The sky goes from this:

to this:

over and over.  It's the best of both worlds - a crisp, sunny day to a dreary, rainy day.

I love that it's Thursday night.  I am so tired from work this week but I can handle one more day.

I LOVE that my husband was offered (and accepted) a new job yesterday!!!  I almost cried yesterday when he called to tell me the news (I probably would have if I'd been alone but I was at work. I'm not a public crier).  We have been waiting so long for a new opportunity for him.  He has worked really hard at a job for the past two years that he didn't enjoy. 

I really love that for the first time in our 5 years together we will be working the same hours.  We usually got to spend about a half hour together from the time I got home and when he left for work.  That was it, a half hour per day.  No more nights and weekends alone!!

Hope you're loving your day too!

Buffet is done...

sorta...kinda...until I decide what else to do with it anyway.  I can't decide if I want to distress it, add some sort of something to the doors, or just leave it alone. 

Anyway.  Here she is in all her glory when we brought her home.

And here's her super loverly shelf liner.

See those pennies in the bottom?  Yeah, we scored 7 cents....lucky much?

So I sanded her down and painted her with this paint from Lowe's:

Mine came in a plastic jar, whatev.  David and I chose the color Rolling Prarie.

Here she is after her facelift:

I ripped out the mushroom liner on the shelf and in the drawers.  I just know I'll regret that one when orange and brown mushrooms come back into style again.  I haven't found anything to replace it with yet though.

I put the old hardware back on when I was finished painting.  My original plan was to buy some new stuff but the handles on the doors weren't going to come off without some major damage to the doors.  So I had to tape around them before I painted.  MAJOR pain in my butt.  And yeah, I just noticed that I put that handle over there on the left on upside down.  Probably never would have noticed it if I wouldn't have written this.

Now I need to redecorate the wall above the buffet.  Everything is a little off center with the buffet.  Uh yeah, just a little.

The shelf is already down, now I just need to decide what I want to put up once the rest is down.

She's not sitting around naked anymore either.  It took FOREVER for the paint to dry.  The paint was still a little tacky but my patience ran out and I found some things to dress her up with.  I'll show you that in another post though.

Total cost $25 for buffet + $6 for paint - .07 cents that came with her = $30.93  Not bad.

Ohhh...want to see what we did with the hutch?

Yeah, that's where it has sat for the past two weeks.  I think it's about time we figure out what to do with it.

I'm linking up to The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday.