Bringing Spring Home

As I mentioned yesterday, I went to a bridal shower on Saturday afternoon, and fell in love with everything from Crate & Barrel and from the Martha Stewart line at Macys.

Right now there are so many cute spring items for the home in bright yellows, oranges, limes and even pinks! Some of the things that I would love to buy for my home include:

Crate & Barrel:

Two-tier citrus server -- I actually ordered this online yesterday =)

Sorrento Dinner Plates

Fiore Platter -- I might have to get this over the weekend

Botanical Lemon Print Dishtowl

My Mom and I also went to Walmart to pickup a few houseware items, and I came across these cute items from Better Homes & Gardens for Walmart:

Citrus Blossoms Dinnerware

Citrus Blossoms Comforter Set

Posies & Plaid Comforter Set

Such fun stuff! I am sure I will come across even more as I attempt to bring Spring into my home!

Weekend with the Family

This weekend was amazing, and the weather was awesome! I think on Sat it was in the low 40's and it got up to 50 today (well for a few mins my car registered 50 degrees, so I'll take it)!! And the sun was out and the sky was beautiful!

On Sat, at first I went to a bridal shower for a girl I work with, and she got some amazing gifts! Love Crate and Barrel! I'll have to share that in another post. I then headed off to see my family who lives about an hour away.

I got to see this guy:



And this little girl!
We had dinner at my parents house, and really just sat around and watched the kids play. After my brother and SIL left with the kids, my Mom and I watched Couple's Retreat (which I had previously seen, but she had not), and of course Dad slept through the whole movie!

Then today I went to my Mom's church and then we headed on over to the "Garden of Olives" (aka Olive Garden) to have lunch with my Dad (he plays for a different church). We had a great lunch (I had the chicken alfredo pizza...yummy!) and then my Mom and I headed on over to Walmart for some houseware shopping. They have some fun spring color bath towels, dishes and bedding that I so want to go back and get. They now are carrying more Better Homes and Garden's brand items, and they are soo cute!! And have really great Walmart prices! I am seeing another spring stuff post in your future!! Oh how I am loving spring right now!

Pink Saturday -- 3/6/10

For this week's Pink Saturday, I wanted to share with everyone some fun things I have made for my cube space at work. Because I have been spending a lot of time lately at work, I decided that I wanted to make some fun items for my cube space.

I have been looking at some really cute items on the Lilly Pulitzer site, and when I came across this cute fabric (which is the same fabric I used for my table center piece), I thought, I can use this to make some of these items.

I really liked this message board, and came up with this:


I found a really inexpensive cork board at Joann's and sanded it and painted it white. I then took a piece of fabric and stapled it to the cork board to cover it. I then took hot pink ribbon and strung it across in a grid pattern. I used staples to help hold the ribbon into place. I finished it off by running some glue around the edges and covering with some of the hot pink ribbon. I then added some furniture finishing tacks where the ribbons cross to add some detail. I am very happy with how it turned out!

I also totally loved this travel mug, and here is my version:

I found this photo travel mug at Starbucks and used some of the fabric, and a piece of hot pink ribbon. The bottom of the travel mug unscrews and there is a template that I used to cut the fabric to size. I used a little bit of glue to hold the ribbon in place, and inserted the fabric (with the paper template to help insert it) and screwed the bottom back on, and voila!

I still have some extra fabric, so I am sure that I will find some more fun things to make. I may make another message board to give to one of my friends as a fun gift! If anyone has any fun ideas please let me know.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

And check out Beverly's blog for more on Pink Saturday!

Show Us Your Life: Life of an Advertising Account Executive

This week's Show Us Your Life, over at Kelly's Korner, is to share your typical day. I am an Account Executive at an advertising agency, and every day can be different, but my typical day is:

7 am (or sometimes 7:15 am) -- wake up, shower

7:30 am -- let out dog, eat breakfast, finish getting ready

8:15 - 8:30 am -- leave for work

8:45 - 9 am -- arrive at work

9:15 am -- tea time with my friend Jenny (this is aka therapy or gossip time)

9:30 - Noon -- meetings, client calls, emails, processing paperwork, giving my team direction, reviewing layouts/copy documents, etc.

Noon -- my friend Jenny and I head to the kitchen to heat up our frozen meals

12:15 - 1:15 pm -- eat lunch, read blogs/personal emails, Facebook or sometimes Jenny and I quickly eat our meals and take a trip to Target for some retail therapy

1:15 - 6'ish -- more meetings, emails, paperwork, sometimes we get out of the office for a client presentation

3 pm – sometimes Jenny and I need a hot chocolate break (aka more therapy/gossip time, especially if it has been a really difficult day)

I typically get to leave around 6 or 6:30 pm (although this last week it was more like 7 or 8 pm!!). Typically my evening schedule is:

Mondays -- watch my boyfriend play hockey, or sometimes I go to my Latin Fusion class at the gym

Tuesdays -- gym date with my boyfriend

Wednesday -- date night with my boyfriend

Thursday -- kickboxing class at the gym

Friday -- grocery and sometimes my boyfriend comes over and we hang out and get caught up on tv shows on my DVR

I try to start getting ready for bed around 10:30 or 11 pm. Many times I'll take a hot bubble bath and then curl up in bed with my beagle and read for a bit before I turn out the lights.

That's pretty much my life during the week. Nothing too crazy, just a lot of working. I'll have to do another post sometime on fun on the weekends!

Lunch of Champions -- Buffalo Chicken Salad

I hardly ever go out for lunch during the work week, and typically end up having a frozen meal. I came across this recipe in the Hungry Girl 200 Under 200 cookbook and I am in love with it, so I thought I would share (my friend Jenny thinks I am obsessed!! I probably am!).

Image from Hungry Girl website.

Buffalo Chicken Chop Salad Wrap:
-- 1 low-carb/high-fiber (or a pita pocket, which I prefer)
-- 2 1/2 ounces cooked skinless lean chicken breast
-- 1/2 cup shredded lettuce (I don't typically include this)
-- 2 1/2 teaspoons Frank's RedHot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce
-- 2 teaspoons reduced-fat Parmesean-style grated topping
-- 1 1/2 teaspoons sour cream (I use fat free sour cream , but you could use low-fat Ranch or Blue cheese dressing)

Mix all ingredients together, and place into wrap.

PER SERVING (entire recipe):199 calories, 5g fat, 986mg sodium, 21.5g carbs, 12.5g fiber, 1.5g sugars, 29.5g protein

I typically warm it up the chicken mixture for about 30 seconds before putting into my pita pocket. Also, I have found if you get the Tyson pre-cooked chicken cubes in the little pouches, that equals about 6 ounces of chicken. I just triple all the ingredients and you can get about 3 small servings out of one of those pouches.

Today I had this along with some carrots, Activia yogurt (swear by it!), and a Luna bar (love the Chocolate Peppermint Stick).

If anyone has any fun lunch ideas, please do share!!

Tips Tuesday: Tips for Doing Laundry

This week's Tips Tuesday (hosted by Leslie at Lamberts Lately) is tips for doing laundry.

I don't have a bunch of ground breaking tips, but here are a few things I do when I am doing laundry. I really don't care for doing laundry, especially ironing, so you may call them the lazy girl's guide to doing laundry =O)

Wash in cold water -- I typically wash all of my clothes in cold water. I do this for 2 reasons: 1. it keeps my things from shrinking and 2. I only have to pay for hot water (I don't understand it, but my leasing office confirmed it). Therefore, to save my clothes, and my water bill (and gas bill for the water heater), I wash everything in cold. Sometimes I'll wash towels and bedding and what not in warm if I think they need it.

Hanging to dry -- I hang the majority of my clothes up to dry. All pants, nice shirts, skirts/dresses, bras, etc. get hung to dry. My washer/dryer is in my guest bath, so I typically just hang everything up on the shower rod to dry. This also helps the things I do dry to dry faster since there is not as much in the dryer.

Fluffing for wrinkles -- I hate to iron, therefore I try to fluff whatever I can in the dryer first, and then go over it with an iron, but only if really needed. I especially do this to all things that I hang to dry. I throw them in the dryer for a few mins after they are completely dry just to fluff out the wrinkles. Luckily I can wear jeans everyday to work, so I hardly ever iron.

Folding -- I typically fold my clothes right out of the warm dryer. This helps keep them from getting wrinkled, and keeps me from having a large basket of clothes that sits there and daunts me. I know it takes time, but it's going to take the same amount of time anyway, and it is easier to break it up into smaller chunks.

Dry cleaning -- I don't dry clean. If the item needs dry cleaned, I either don't buy it, or I try and wash it. If it says dry cleaning recommended, then you can typically wash it out by hand or in the delicate cycle. If I had to take clothes to be dry cleaned, they would never get there.

Removing grease stains -- One time I had this really cute silk type shirt, and I ended up getting neosporin on it. I tried washing it several times, tried soaking dish soap on it, and nothing got it out. I almost had to get rid of this really cute shirt (that I had only worn 2 times!!) when I came across an article online about using babypowder to remove grease stains. I didn't have baby powder, so I tried flour (yea, the stuff you bake with!) instead. I laid the shirt on the counter on top of a towl. I put a handful of flour over the stain, laid another towl on top of the flour, and then put a heavy object on top of it for about 20 mins. I went back, shook off the flour, and some of the grease was gone. So I repeated this about 2 or 3 more times, and the flour soaked up all of the grease. That is the only time I have tried that, but that one time made me a believer. Hopefully you will never have to try it though!

Hope you enjoyed some of my laundry tips, and if you have any you would like to share please do so. And check out Leslie's blog for more tips.

Spring Fever

As of today, there are only 20 days until Spring!! And only 61 days until we leave for vacation!!! Yes I have a little cabin fever with all of this winter weather, and I will probably continue to count down until it gets here! So to help get me through the next 20 days, I wanted to share some inspiration from Martha Stewart (love her!!). All images from marthastewart.com.

Love all of the little delicate flowers. Wouldn't this look cute in an entryway or on a buffet?

Bulbs always remind me of spring.

Love, love, love the purple and green combo, and with the white, it really looks fresh!

The bright yellow is very cheery and spring like!

I hope everyone is getting through the winter, and the spring comes possibly a little early!!