a week in iphone pictures

Thank goodness for my loads of energy on my days off that came out of nowhere (nowhere... or the daunting list of to-do's that seems to be growing). Last week I finally tackled the formal living room. I think i've been putting off this room because 1) it's HUGE and we simply don't have enough to fill it 2) the colors of this room...... so many shades of gold. I love gold but gold carpet/walls/and ceiling.. a bit much. But I threw together some leftover wedding decor and called it a day. At least there's something to this room now! Don't mind the slipcover project on the chairs for now :)

 I'm also trying to be more thrifty when it comes to personal shopping. Less spending on clothes/candles/things I want and more focus on things we need.. or projects we're working on at least. I had a tulle white dress I wore last summer to my bridal showers and decided to re-purpose it as a skirt with a jean shirt on top. I loved how it looked and decided I'll be making some more tulle skirts asap. 

 just alittle shoutout to my preachin' man ;) love getting to hear him do his thing! here he is preaching to the seniors at their baccalaureate service.

 while redoing the bathroom and ending up in tears and figuring out a rented weedeater to conquere the yard, we mananged to finish one project! This script roll on our dining table wall. It was so simple, I don't know why we didn't do it sooner... I bought a wood dowel at a hardware store and slid it through a roll of brown paper (found in the mail supplies section at target) then tied yard around the ends and hang on a nail. boom. 

 we ended our exhausting night of home improvement projects with a sonic run. I'm embarrased to say how much food we ordered for just us two but here's a picture to honor Sonic's summer of shakes (their half price shakes start at 8pm... so when we drove up and realized it was 7:55pm, do you think we waited to order? absolutely. call us cheap or whatever)

raid the fridge

I've been trying to be better about using what we have in the refrigerator and cabinet rather than getting new groceries all the time, here's a few meals I threw together on the spot:


meatless fried quinoa
made just like fried rice
boil up some quinoa all while sauteing some garlic and onion in a BIG skillet. Once the garlic and onion are nice and golden brown, add in 2-3 eggs and scramble them and all add in some peas and carrots (I usually dump about half a frozen bag). Finally add in the quinoa (this is when you could add meat too). Mix all together and then add the good'ins-butter and soy sauce. I've made this once with too much and again with too little, so just use your own discretion. 

It takes like your local hibachi grill but at home and cheaper...and healthier :)

soy sauce and garlic chicken with zuchinni
we had some frozen chicken breasts in the freeze so I threw those in the crockpot with soy sauce, garlic cloves, 2/3 cup apple cidar vinegar, 1 cup brown sugar, salt and papper and called it a day (thank goodness for recipies that accomadate my night-shift sleeping habits :))

we also had a few zuchinnis that were bound to go bad soon so I cut them in half long ways and topped them off with olive oil, parmesean cheese and some seasonings and cooked those in the oven at 350 for 20 min. 

since we had leftover chicken from this meal...


BBQ chicken pizza
I finally tried out the Jiffy pizza crust mix. Lesson learned, should've used 2 boxes for the crust. But I prepared the crust and topped it with... leftover chicken from the night before mixed with BBQ sauce, cherry tomatoes, red pepper and cheese. YUM! 

That's it so far, 3 dinners, no groccery store stop :)


lettuce burger wraps
this one of Cody and I's favorite meals and it's (somewhat) healthy! We had a head of lettuce that I pulled apart in complete pieces. We cooked up some burger patties (I did the crockpot while I sleep, but you can do it however). Add the hamburger meat to the inside of the lettuce piece with some black beans and avocado slices, yum!

we still had some meat and lettuce left over so...


taco pizza
I used 2 boxes of jiffy pizza crust mix for the crust. I then concocted a "taco" sauce with some ingredients in our cabinet-siracha sauce, fajita seasoning, and olive oil. I added the leftover meat from the burger wraps and black beans, corn, onion and cheese and baked it. Then I added some chopped up lettuce on top afterwards. It was so good!! 

how I'm using my YL essential oils.. so far!

    

I just received my oils in the mail days before our trip to Jamaica, so i've only a few days to put these guys to practice but so far so good! So far.. this is what I've used my oils for:

frankincense: I put some drops of this in my bathwater to relieve my sunburn after Jamaica and then I mixed some in with coconut oil to apply to my sunburnt skin

lemon: i added some drops of lemon to tea for alittle flavor

thieves: I added a few drops to a big bucket of warm water and pine sol for cleaning day and it made the house smell so good! I also added a few drops to my tea (with the lemon) when I woke up feeling cruddy this morning, and rubbed some on the bottom of feet to help prevent this stuffy nose business from becoming something more!

peppermint: i rubbed some on my sinuses to relieve sinus pressure 

lavender: I added some of this to a bath as well

peace and calming: we used this mixed with coconut oil to make a massage oil for back massages

joy: I diffused joy in our bedroom

I haven't used all of the oils yet but this just shows how many purposes there are in the few days I have been using them :)

Jamaican me love summertime!

warning: this post has entirely too many pictures and most of them being selfies. what can I say, thats all you can expect when you go on a vacation with just your and your husband, so sorry!

Cody and I went to Jamaica last week! Woo! We had the time of our lives and now we're reminicing on the sweet coconut juice we drank, crystal clear water all while picking off our peeling sunburns, yuck. 

We truly had such a wonderful time! I'm just a picture person, it was difficult to get plenty of pictures with just myself and Cody.. so lots of selfies it is, haha! 

We took all of the water pictures with a GoPro camera and they turned out great!

here's a short little video of us taking a "picture" aka video at the famous Dunn's River Falls. see how fast that water is rushing down? Well shortly after this video was taken I put the camera in my swimsuit top so that I could record the hike while holding onto someone infront and behind me... and I bent over to go under a bride and the camera FELL OUT. I felt SICK! my sweet husband reminded me that it's just a thing and it's okay... but a few minutes later a tour guide brought it back to us, whew!

 let's talk about how beautiful that water is!! this is us on a catamaran boat ride to the waterfall

here we are at the Dunn's River Falls... I opted to exit the waterfall at the 3/4 way mark. I was way too exhausted and the whole time I was so stressed about slipping and busting it on a rock. Cody wanted to keep going but he left with me :) he was such a great servant to me this entire week! 

 snorkeling :)

Cody LOVED the GoPro camera and probably could've enjoyed vacation with it alone and wouldn't even notice if i wasn't there ;) just kidding. But this picture was his idea, "let's sit in front of a wave and take a picture as it crashes into us!" I personally love how it turned out!

alittle out of order, but here we are leaving the airport in Jamaica... pale, tired, and alittle shocked that people were already smoking!

here's our view as you leave our room to go into the resort.. if you look, you can see mountains in the background. it was gorgeous!

 here's the view from our balcony

 my first jamaican breakfast :) they had a huge buffet for every meal! In the mornings they had pitchers of just made smoothies that you could pour. I always got the banana, yum!

I abosolutely loved this view, this was walking down the "hall" from the eating area to the beach or lobby with the beach in the background

let's take a minute to discuss the importance of sunscreen-on our first morning in jamaica we had from 9:30-10:00 to hang out before we met with our "travel lady" to arrange bus rides, etc. so i figured it would be okay to go without suncreen for that short amount of time. Cody is more fair skinned than me so he wanted me to rub sunscreen on him, so I did. then I placed my hand on my thigh... hence this lovely handprint :( the burn is just as bad if not worse on my chest and calves. I'm literally peeling as a write this... that was definitely my only regret of the whole trip!

Us after dinner one night. Why is it pitch black? The sun ROSE at 5:30am and went down at 6:30pm!! it was crazy! we disconnected from technology so never had any clue on time but were shocked the first morning when we woke up thinking we slept the day away but it was only 5:45am!

so on our first full day, these men walked by on the beach in full hunter green clothes carrying machetes. I was bit scared but they offered us a coconut. So, they little climbed up a palm tree and pulled one off, hacked the top of the coconut off and put a straw in it!

We met another couple on the resort and they told us about this bungalo restaurant if we kept walking along the beach past our resort. it was the cutest thing. see how close the waves come to the tables?! We shared a lobster (cody's first lobster experience ever!) and it was delicious!!

RIP pale, healthy skin

If you stuck around this long, congrats!!

mixers, spatulas, and flowers...oh my!

We had Ashley's "kitchen themed" bridal shower this morning and had so much fun! I was so excited to see this shower decor come to life. Ashley had mentioned she really liked the kitchen theme idea and then I just really liked the black/gold/bold color scheme to it all worked together perfectly. 

this chalkboard is one that I had from my wedding, I wrote their initials on it as if it was a monogram and then added some silk flowers for decor

 I had text Aaron (the groom) about a month ago asking why he loved ashley and he responded with this.. I framed it and it was such a hit at the party! It caused many tears!

 How cute are this witty little signs that I incorporated with the kitchen theme?

 again with the witty sign and the 'R' was just some scrapbook paper I cut out and added to a frame I had

 I made this fruit and cheese platter.. I choose a more "elegant" look but thought it turned out cute!

I used another chalkboard that I had from our wedding and wrote a "recipe for marriage" on it (the measurements are not accurate ;)) I added a cupcake liner garland and some cute fabrics I got

 we had recipe cards and a recipe book that everyone could fill out for Ashley

It was so easy to decorate for this shower-I grabbed so many items out of my kitchen and just put it all together

 We had a punch and lemonade to drink

 the invitations, handmade by Kate

 bingo cards for our game

 Kate also made this backdrop that went along with our kitchen theme as well

 the bride!

 what we ate:

chicken salad, pasta salad, cheese/fruit, puppy chow, chips/queso, ooey gooey butter bars

what we did:

movie quote game: I had a list of well known quotes from romantic movies. we split the room into 2 teams and the teams had to guess the correct movie the quote came from

bingo: we had everyone fill out bingo cards with what they thought ashley might get as a gift at her shower and as she opened her gifts they can check off the boxes

 here's the whole group of ladies together

here's myself and the bride :)