Peonies

We ended up not going to Starved Rock today, which I must admit I was pretty happy about. Although it's turned out to be a gorgeous afternoon, the threatening rain this morning didn't really encourage me to go hiking for the day. So, Manda and I still headed to the Farmer's Market as planned, and hit up a few garage sales as we've been doing nearly every weekend since mid-April. No great finds today, but we did grab a few fun things at the Farmer's Market (including donuts, of course).

On top of fresh cheese curds (oh, yum), organic tomatoes and some asparagus, I decided to celebrate our first Farmer's Market trip of the year with some peonies, which are now sitting happily in a vase downstairs. Typically, I steer clear of spending money on flowers and plants because I don't do well with keeping them alive... but now that it's my first spring in the house I'm itching for some plant life around here and have decided to give it another shot. I think the fact that the peonies are so pretty will help motivate me to remember to change the water and trim the stems.

At one of the garage sales we went to, we saw that the owners had a peony bush, which had TONS of gorgeous blooms on it and livened up their whole front yard. I, of course, being as indecisive as I am, decided it would be much more fun to have those in my front yard instead of the lilacs I've been dying for. After some quick reading online and talking with my dad, however, I've learned that both the lilac and peony bushes bloom in the late spring / early summer... and that's it. One website I read did say that certain varieties of peonies can bloom for up to six weeks throughout the summer, so I'll have to see if those types are available around here!


As usual, I have weddings on the brain, and was talking to Manda over donuts about how I've always said I would go to Trader Joes or Whole Foods or the Farmer's Market the morning of my wedding and just buy a bunch of flowers there, tie a ribbon around them and use them as my bouquet. I just cannot see myself spending hundreds of dollars on flowers that are bound to (unfortunately) die a few days later. Not to mention the fact that I think a big bunch of peonies is prettier than many other flowers anyways!


How great would it be to just step out into my own yard and pick peonies that morning instead of running around town looking for blooms?!

Weekend

Happy Friday! I just got back to work yesterday and I'm already anxious for the weekend to begin. Here are my weekend plans in pictures :)

OP Farmers Market. YUMMM... donuts...

Hiking at Starved Rock with Dan and the teens

Planting the lilac bushes out front (if I can find the "dwarf korean" species my dad recommended)

Baking... a quiche so I don't spend money on breakfast every day next week, and this mouth-watering cheesecake I found on the Hershey's website that will utilize the precious cinnamon chips Jennifer gave me that I have been coveting until I found a recipe as drool-worthy as this one looks

I hope everyone has a great weekend! If the weather holds up I'll hopefully have house-related posts to share soon!

Wide Open

The long anticipated posting is here... here's more pictures than you could ever possibly want to see of our new WINDOWS!!!!

A couple of "during" pictures -


Here's the giant gaping hole in the living room before the new window went in -

And the beautiful after! (with Mr. Big on tv in the living room) I LOVE the grid pattern on the side windows here -

Hello dining room window that actually opens! -

The biggest transformation of all is the view of the house from the outside with all of the porch windows redone and all of the horrible awnings removed.

Here's the before -

The during -

And the after! -

Now that the awnings are gone we have some scraping and painting to do on the fascia boards, but other than that I'm hoping that over the weekend we can finish up the "curb appeal" project on my Summer list. Apparently Home Depot sells several different types of lilac bushes so I might need to get my dad to take a trip there with me to pick out the best ones for our area before I buy them.

Considering I have been anticipating all the new windows for WEEKS, I am extremely excited that they are all finished and ready to let some fresh air in to the house!

Check

The title of this posting is twofold...

1. Check my first thing off the Summer Project To-Do List... I ordered the curtains I posted about yesterday after reassurance from my mom and my newest work buddy Lauren that they are a perfect match. So, "settle on curtains for the living room" is officially marked off the list. Obviously, this required very little actual work on my part, leaving the much bigger projects still undone, but hey - I had to start somewhere! And really, anyone who knows me (or reads this blog) can probably understand that finally choosing curtains IS a big deal, seeing as I am insanely indecisive about implementing patterns in my home.

2. Check... paid to the order of myself and Dan! We closed on our refinance today over lunch! I was excited to actually get to sign my name this time around, and on Tuesday I'll get to pick up the hefty check that we're using for all of our exciting home improvement projects on the Summer Project List. Yay!

Match

We're back from DC where we spent a whirlwind Memorial Day weekend celebrating Dan's cousin's wedding, Nikki's 21st, and Michael's 30th (all in one night I might add)... and then Dan and I stuck around an extra few days to relax, play tourist, and all in all just enjoy some quality time together (and with Noni, who graciously housed us for our extended stay).

I got up the guts (read: had a few coronas) to tell Deli (the bride) just how much I loved her wedding decorating and details which were perfectly infused with TURQUOISE. That's right people, my favorite color, expressed beautifully in a DIY wedding. Needless to say, I was a teeny bit upset that someone I know did it first, but then after talking with Deli and getting to know her a bit better I ended up thrilled to know someone that appreciates the brightness, fun and sophistication of my favorite color. Deli went on to tell me how flattered she was that I loved her style, and we decided that since our names rhyme and we both love weddings, we should OBVIOUSLY start a wedding planning business one of these days! Whether or not that dream ever comes true, one thing is for certain - I will be turning to her for tips one of these days when my own (turquoise) wedding rolls around.

(Yes, I did just write an entire paragraph about the color turquoise. If you think that's weird you obviously have not read much of this blog. I. Love. That. Color.)

And speaking of my non-existent own wedding, I would just like to let out a huge virtual sigh of relief that the "So when are you getting married???" questions were kept to a minimum - even with Deli and I chatting wedding colors half the night. Although I have to agree with Dan's mom that he COULD have snagged the prize in the garter toss! Instead, nobody caught it, and all of the single guys quite literally jumped away from it until the bride's brother (one of my favorite of Dan's relatives) finally decided to take one for the team and pick the darned thing up.

So, we're home and I'm thankful that by watching my blackberry the last couple days I don't think my 2-day week at work will be too crazy. Of course I planned to go to bed early tonight, but sans-internet for the last 5 days left me with lots of blog-reading to catch up on. A couple of the wedding blogs I follow tied the knot over the long weekend, I saw a few new recipes I'm already itching to try, and I spotted these just-funky-enough curtain panels over at one of my new favorite blogs - Centsational Girl.


Seeing as I absolutely canNOT seem to settle on a rug (or curtains for that matter) for the living room since my infatuation with the beloved Bridget Rug from Pottery Barn got shut down when it sold out (clearly, before I purchased it)... I'm wondering if I should take the leap, buy these panels, and settle on a nice plain solid color rug to finish the room up already. The colors in these curtains will perfectly tie the living room and dining room together, and they're more affordable than tons of others I've seen.

In other news... I will have an insanely exciting post tomorrow night that I am already a little giddy about. Lots of pictures to come with it!...

Refi

Our refinance loan was approved!!! We close next Thursday and I am actually excited about signing my name a million times because I didn't get to sign anything the first time around. Poor Dan is probably not looking forward to it seeing as he had to sign his name AND mine on every paper the first time... ha.

Since we are refinancing for more than our original loan amount, we have BIG plans for the house, including some of the projects on yesterday's "Summer Projects List" - a patio and a garage!

We'll be tackling the patio ourselves and I'm looking forward to picking out bricks and laying everything out. I really like the idea of a rounded design (like the ones below), but not sure how that will work since the patio will be in front of the already existing back deck.

Lilacs

What a mistake. Two work friends and I decided to go outside for lunch, and wouldn't you know it, the LAST thing I wanted to do was come back inside and sit at my desk for the afternoon! The place we went not only has amazing sandwiches, but also has lilac bushes - my favorite - in a cute little garden below the patio where we sat. My parents have some of these bushes in front of their house as well and every time I catch a whiff of them I insist that I have to have them by my house. Doing a bit of reading online I've learned that not only are they inexpensive, but they're also low-maintenance... perfect! I'm sold, and plan to plant some small ones in front of the house as soon as the front porch windows are installed!


So, last night I wrote about my hopes of finishing the dining room hutch, and now here I am throwing another project out there. I figure I may as well post my entire summer projects list here to help motivate myself to keep moving on them! Maybe since it'll be posted on my blog I'll feel more obligated to keep up with it and post pictures for everyone to see :).

Summer Project List
- finish dining room hutch - complete stripping, sand and varnish, line back panels with paper, replace molding
- curb appeal - plant bushes and flowers in front of house
- fix up front stairs
- get a 2-car garage!!
- DIY - install a patio
- put up the hammock Dan's parents bought him when we moved in, and take a nap in it
- complete furnishing the front porch
- settle on curtains for the living room
- bathroom - repaint patches, replace molding, get a new shower curtain, put up a shelf to hold the green and turquoise vases I got at Ikea for 10 cents each
- finally finally FINALLY finish organizing and cleaning up the office

Well, I clearly have high hopes for the summer. Thankfully the biggest project on the list - the garage - will be hired out so I can leave for work one morning and come home to a beautiful new place to park my car. :)

Extended Family

Usually, when I met someone new in the area - especially someone at church, they hear my last name and then say "I know _____!!! Are you related?!" And, the answer is always the same... "Well my dad's cousins are a family of 12, so yes, we are related!"

I'll be honest, I could not even name all of them, much less their husbands/wives and kids. But one small portion of the family that I DO have the pleasure of at least having some communication with is my dad's cousin David and his wife Jennifer. Since their kids go to school with Manda we run into each other sporadically a couple times a year, but my biggest way of "keeping in touch" is through none other than our blogs! Jennifer has a great blog that is constantly inspiring me to try out new recipes without 3 pounds of butter or oil - Slim-Shoppin.

Thanks to Jennifer's blog, I found out last week that the Great Harvest bread store in our area was closing. I also found this out, um, the day before they closed, so I obviously had to run out there bright and early Saturday morning. My mission? One last loaf of cinnamon swirl bread. Fail. I was also hoping to take home some cinnamon chips, which I decided I just had to have after reading about Jennifer scoring a big bag of them. Again - Fail.

Now here's where having a HUUUUUGE extended family - connected by the world wide web - comes in handy. Jennifer, being just about the sweetest person EVER, quickly offered up some of her cinnamon chips to me after I told her Great Harvest was totally cleaned out by the time I got there... and then drove over to my house to drop them off that evening!!! Needless to say, I am super excited to try out a couple of recipes with these little morsels that I honestly didn't even know existed until Jennifer wrote about them! Seeing as I can't eat chocolate and used to love plain old handfuls of chocolate chips, it was thrilling to me to have something I love as much as cinnamon in the same format. YUM.

In other news... our new windows were installed last week before Mother's Day (!!!!), but I'm going to wait to post pictures until the rest are finished. Originally, we ordered windows for the entire house minus the front porch... and as soon as we saw how big of a difference the new windows made everywhere else we quickly decided we HAD to do the front porch as well. So, they're ordered and should be installed within a week or 2 and then I can put up a posting with lots of new and improved pictures!

To add yet another project to my list, I would really like to finish up the dining room hutch before it's 100 degrees outside. It's nearly completely stripped and just needs another good sanding and some quick coats of varnish and it will be GORGEOUS. I decided a long time ago that I wanted to cover the back panels in the cabinet parts with some kind of fabric or paper to brighten them up and give the piece an overall different feel... but have found it difficult to find a simple pattern that doesn't completely clash with the fabric I recovered the dining room chairs in. Today, while in Milwaukee for work, we stumbled into Broadway Paper and I instantly spotted this flat sheet gift wrap that I think will be PERFECT -


Here's the chair fabric (from Ikea)... good match I think! -


Broadway Paper offers online shopping so I won't have to trek back to Milwaukee to buy the paper... but I'm hoping having found it will be my motivation to finish the whole thing up!

Creamy Parmesan Mashed Potatoes

Oh, yum. These might have been my favorite mashed potatoes ever. Well, besides the ones they serve at The Cheesecake Factory, but as far as I'm concerned there's no beating those. Either way, these were DELICIOUS and interestingly enough I was probably more worried about this piece of our Mother's Day meal than any of the other things I made. Most likely because I have seen Dan and his siblings in action with a bowl of mashed potatoes, and I was terrified of not making enough to feed the crowd. And in all honesty, you're taking this from a girl who thinks potatoes alone are a satisfactory meal, so I KNEW a recipe that yields 10 half-cup servings was going to have to be at least doubled for our dinner. Point being - mashed potatoes are a hit with both of our families - so the ones I decided to make had better be good, and there had better be a lot of them.

Cue me sitting in Dan's recliner Saturday night pouring over all my old Food & Family magazines. I had dessert nailed down, I found a recipe for asparagus that I knew would be easy and tasty, and all I needed was a potato... and then I found these. Potatoes with cream cheese and sour cream in them?! And boiled in chicken broth instead of water? Yes please.

Below is the original recipe from Kraft Foods. I basically worked with the ingredients list and just threw in enough of everything to serve all of us at dinner. The lack of exact measurements worked out (for the most part)... my notes on that following the recipe.

(Image also from Kraft Foods)

Creamy Parmesan Mashed Potatoes
Ingredients:
2 lb. red potatoes (about 8), cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1 cup chicken broth
4 oz. cream cheese, cubed
1/2 cup sour cream
3 tbsp. grated parmesan cheese

1. Put the potatoes and broth in a large saucepan, cover to boil.
2. Bring heat down to medium and simmer 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Uncover and simmer 5-6 more minutes, until potatoes are tender and most of broth is absorbed.
4. Over low heat, add cream cheese, sour cream, and parmesan - mash until potatoes are smooth and heated through.

A few things I learned while making this dish:
1. A potato masher is a wonderful thing. Let's be honest - Dan and I are longtime fans of instant mashed potatoes, so who needs something like a potato masher when you just mix up the flakes with a fork? WELL, I bought a bag of potatoes for 50 cents with a coupon awhile back and I'm not sure I'll ever use instant again. Yay! I'm officially converted to real life mashed potato goodness! Either way, mashing real potatoes up with a fork is a pain, and we all know I'm a fan of a new little kitchen gadget, so a $4 masher was the highlight of our morning trip to Jewel that day.
2. I used just 3 small potatoes shy of a 5 pound bag for our dinner - and it was pretty close to being the perfect amount. That being said, I wasn't sure of EXACT measurements at that point... so I used 2 cans of chicken broth and a little extra water, nearly an entire cream cheese brick (I left enough for maybe 2 bagels), around a cup of sour cream, and a bunch of shakes of parmesan cheese. As with my other rare experiences where I didn't follow a recipe exactly, the fact that these turned out was just another reminder that I am actually learning a little bit about cooking through all of this!
3. Red potatoes are (duh) very very red. In order to not muddy up the color of the finished dish, I sort of half peeled my potatoes and just left the skin on sparingly. I read that a ton of a potato's flavor is in the skin and just underneath it, so I figured leaving some of it on would be a good happy medium.
4. As I mentioned before, I added about a cup of extra water to the broth because the potatoes were not completely covered in the pot. This was not necessary and I ended up dumping out a good cup and a half of liquid after the potatoes were tender (before mixing in all of the other ingredients). This didn't matter in the final product, but next time I'll keep the liquid more to a minimum.

Seeing as there were no leftovers, I'm thinking of forgetting about my thoughts of using the extra cream cheese on bagels and throwing another couple servings of this together for Dan and I to have with dinner some night this week!

Menu Planning

I've come to learn that I really and truly enjoy entertaining at our house... specifically when I get to plan an entire "menu" for whatever get together we are hosting. I usually (ok, always) end up really stressed, and have a mini panic attack over everything coming together, but somehow, we always pull it off. Maybe it's because Dan is a pro at speed cleaning while I start preparing dishes, maybe it's because I don't pick overly complicated things to make, but whatever it is - Dan and I make a great party throwing team, and now I'm here to share the latest...

Dan and I are lucky enough to live close to both of our immediate families - mine being so close we could walk there (if it would ever stay above 55 degrees for more than a day at a time). Because we live close by, holidays often consist of driving back and forth to home-cooked meals prepared by each of our moms (and dads). So, since we are also lucky enough to have families that get along great, we decided that for Mother's Day, we would cook for them... and so began another party planning extravaganza! I hand-stamped invitations for my mom, my gramma, Dan's mom, and Dan's sister using a deep purple Stardream cardstock and gold ink, and sent the cards off in matching Stardream gold envelopes. Then time for my favorite part - planning the menu!

Here's what we had for our Mother's Day dinner -
- Spinach artichoke dip served with Roasted Garlic Triscuits (my absolute FAVORITE)
- Bowtie pasta salad
- Tossed garden salad
- Creamy parmesan mashed potatoes
- Baked asparagus
- Grilled chicken marinated in Kraft caesar marinade/dressing
- Grilled steak (seasoned to perfection by Dan)

And for dessert -
- Layered strawberry cheesecake bowl
- Banana cream pie

Somehow, I managed to time everything wonderfully and Dan's grilling ended just 3 minutes before the asparagus was finished and just as the potatoes set into a perfect consistency. (*Wipes sweat off forehead*)

Here's the best part - nearly all of these recipes came from back issues of Kraft Food & Family Magazine that Dan's mom gave me a couple months ago. Seeing as I work on a Kraft account at work and am often looking at recipes in pieces we produce, it was a lot of fun working with them to put together a cohesive holiday meal. And, just how I love it - everything was really simple!

Here is one of my favorite bookmarked sites - the Kraft Food & Family Magazine archives, with links to all of the recipes!! Recipes Galore!

And because no post about food is complete without a recipe, here's the step by step for the Layered Strawberry Cheesecake Bowl, which was a huge hit. You may remember my plans to make this for Easter, which fell through due to my (2nd) stomach flu... so I was really excited to finally make it!


Layered Strawberry Cheesecake Bowl
3 cups sliced fresh strawberries
3 Tbsp. sugar
2 pkg. (8 oz. each) neufchatel cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups milk
1 pkg. (3.4 oz.) instant vanilla pudding
2 cups thawed Cool Whip, divided
1 frozen pound cake, cut into cubes
1 square semi-sweet chocolate (I didn't use this because I am deathly allergic to chocolate and wanted to be able to enjoy some of this dessert) :)

1. Combine strawberries and sugar, set aside.
2. Beat cream cheese with a hand mixer until creamy, gradually adding milk, and then dry pudding mix. Mix well.
3. Blend in 1 1/2 cups Cool Whip.
4. Break out your fancy trifle bowl and spoon half of mixture into the bottom.
5. Add the pound cake cubes as the next layer, and the strawberries as the third layer.
6. Spoon remainder of cream cheese mixture on top of strawberries, drizzle with chocolate (if using), and top with remaining Cool Whip and a whole strawberry for garnish.
7. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

A few things I learned while making this dessert:
1. Neufchatel cheese, which is essentially cream cheese with 1/3 less fat, does have a different flavor than regular cream cheese... but it works perfectly for this dessert.
2. Sometimes, finding a new hand mixer for $10 on Black Friday isn't as great a deal as it seems. This bad boy has settings 1-5, as most hand mixers do... but 1, which is supposed to be "low", is more like what you would expect to be a 4 or 5 on the scale. Because of this, I had cream cheese and milk splattered ALL over the place in the kitchen. I guess that's why they call it a backsplash. Lesson learned - buy a decent mixer, or rig up some kind of shield next time. I can only imagine what this thing would do set on 5 and using the "power boost" button.
3. If making this, take a picture before anyone digs a big spoon in to it. It really is pretty all layered up, but after one serving is spooned out it is officially just a tasty mess.

Although I did take my own picture... this was easier - Image (and recipe) from kraftfoods.com

Kelly Green

How ridiculous is it that I am honestly looking up flights to NYC just for this -


"Call it a high-end rent party: former staffers of Domino, the effervescent decorating magazine that was shuttered in January, are having a tag sale and inviting many of Manhattan’s best decorating talents to spring-clean with them. On Monday, Dara Caponigro (far right), the magazine’s former style director, and Tom Delavan (near right), the former editor at large there, were unpacking boxes in Mr. Delavan’s Greenwich Village town house, pulling together three rooms — over 1,500 square feet — of choice effluvia. “When you are doing shoots, you accumulate a lot of stuff,” Ms. Caponigro said. “It was all just oozing out of my apartment.”

...Former Domino contributors like Rita Konig will also be turning out their storerooms, as will Wendy Goodman, the design editor of New York magazine; Brian Sawyer, an architect; and interior decorators like Katie Ridder and Tom Flynn, among many others. Deborah Needleman, who was Domino’s editor in chief, will be bringing clothes — a wardrobe that includes Lanvin, Prada and Chloé, she said, “fancy party frocks from a nice former life I happily don’t have anymore.” (From The New York Times)


I mean really, based on this article, I could fly to and from New York, shop this sale, and still spend less money decorating my house with insanely snazzy stuff than I would if I just bought the items on ebay or something. Not to mention the fact that this route would have me spending a solid 12 hours or so in NYC, where I have never been and am just dying to go.

AND - tell me that "Kelly Green" poster perched on the table in the image isn't just begging to be hung on one of my walls. I googled the heck out of it until I found it, and I'm convinced the one at this sale is going to cost less than the unframed $50 print I found here.


Obviously, the reality of the situation is that I will be right here in good old FP on Saturday morning, while some trendy New York girls with big sunglasses and cups of coffee shop this amazing sale and pack their teeny apartments with great steals.

Sigh.

Steak & Potato Kabobs

Oh hey there. Guess what? I made a full meal that I've never made before withOUT following a recipe. Pretty much, I made it up. I don't care if it was insanely simple, it made me happy and Dan and I cleared the plate so we obviously both enjoyed it!

Now before I dive into the 2-second "recipe" that is (just like the teriyaki chicken) so simple I don't know what to do about it... I would like to take this opportunity to tell my Aunt Marie that she was right. The produce and meat sections at Tony's Finer Foods are like nothing else I have ever seen. Mind you, my aunt has been telling me this for, oh, about a year, since they opened a Tony's just minutes from my house. But before I gained an appreciation for a home cooked meal prepared by yours truly, I wanted little to do with fresh cuts of meat and piles of fruits and veggies. In my own defense, I did go in to Tony's awhile back, but I headed straight for the cereal aisle, and balked at the fact that they wanted to charge me $5 for a box of my beloved Cheerios. Sorry Tony, I am an avid cereal eater, and therefore know that $5 for a snack sized box is ridiculous. I headed back to the other grocery store in the area (that I honestly despise, but can't argue too much when I compare their prices to Jewel), and didn't set foot in Tony's again until Dan and I decided to give it another shot and guess what, the power was out in the store. Sigh. Tony, I apologize again, but I am not buying meat from a cooler that's pumping off backup generators. SO, I finally decided to give it a third and final shot this past Sunday and headed over to do some solo grocery shopping (read: lots of fresh fruit, not a lot of fruit punch a la shopping with Dan).

Anyways, to make a long story short (ok, I know, it's already long)... the moral of the story is I spent $50 and came home with an insane amount of produce, chicken, pork chops, AND a newbie to me - "beef stew chunks". Gross name, right? But for $4 a pound I decided to give them a shot. These tasty little pieces were just begging to be skewered, and that is exactly what I did.

So here it is, my new summer-staple meat and potatoes...

Grilled Steak & Potato Kabobs

Ingredients:
- a little more than 1/2 pound large bite-sized chunks of steak
- 2 baking potatoes
- fresh garlic, peeled
- Kraft Roasted Red Pepper Italian with Parmesan Dressing and Marinade
- bamboo skewers, soaked in water for 15 minutes

I made 4 full skewers from the amounts above and have just a little less than half of the beef left that I bought.

1. Toss meat in a gallon-sized ziploc bag with about a cup of dressing. Shake it all up and place in fridge to marinade.
2. Turn on the grill. Or, have your boyfriend turn on the grill for you if you are afraid of blowing up the propane tank yourself.
3. Peel potatoes and cut in to chunks. Steam for 5-8 minutes.
4. Skewer it all up - alternate pieces of meat, potato and fresh garlic cloves.
5. Grill on all sides until meat is cooked to your liking, seasoning with a bit of salt and pepper and basting with the dressing left in the ziploc bag.

Yum.

A few things I learned while making this:
1. The little steamer basket that comes with most rice cookers works great when you don't own a pot steamer. But, a full 8 minutes steaming potato chunks is too long - next time I will probably only steam them for 5 minutes tops. The full 8 minutes left them too soft and several broke apart when trying to skewer.
2. Clearly, this "recipe" is my way of making typical kabobs that would usually involve peppers and onions and all those other things Dan and I don't like. I think I'd like to try it with onion just for the flavor, even though we wouldn't eat the pieces in the end. For people that like peppers and onions, I think this would be great seeing as the dressing has a nice peppery flavor.
3. Having a grill opens up a whole world of opportunities for fun simple meals! I'm excited to make more than just burgers and hotdogs this summer and expand the list of meals I would make again and again.

On another note, the lack of pictures on my blog lately is driving me crazy. I have some GREAT finds to share from a night out with Dan and Manda last weekend, but they are major project pieces so I'm waiting until I can show before and after pictures in the same post.