me and my fancy pants

Hi, faithful readers! I am wearing my fancy pants today. Why?

Today I am the guest columnist at Saucy Chefs! Are you excited? You should be! I think most of you know I love to cook and Heather and Tiffany asked me to write a monthly column. My posts will be about quick cooking with semi-homemade ingredients.

This month's recipe is Spicy Chicken Pasta and is yummy!

Click on the Saucy Chef on the left to read how to make this flavorful pasta dish in about a half an hour!

Oh, my room is coming along just fine! Today I made a million holes in the wall putting up a photo collage on my dining room wall trying to get the arrangment just right.

I tried to arrange them first on my dining room table and then put them up. I will show you the results when I post pictures of the finished rooms.

I have on my fancy pants and I'm still a tease. Well, what do you know? I am Saucy!

Update: They are having a contest for a camera at SITS, so check it out and enter to win!

i'm a tease

I am knee deep in the midst of a project redecorating my living room and dining room. I know, I know, you wanna know what it is going to look like, but I haven't completed all the elements yet. Here is what it looked like after we moved the beige furniture in from the den. It was awkwardly positioned in the room and my TV suddenly looked huge. And those throw pillows came from another couch that we had before and donated to the Goodwill.

Here is what it looked like today. I finished up putting on the second coat and took the tape off this afternoon. See how I still have a chair sitting on my dining room table? And all my furniture is shoved toward the middle of the room now.
But see this delightful find? This fabulous embroidered silk pillow was a clearance find at TJ Maxx. It is a lovely shade of greenish gold and is in the color scheme I am working with. I spent Tuesday night wandering around TJ Maxx and having a little alone time. That is one od my favorite places to go and relax. I took it with me when I went to a fabric store to pick out some curtain fabric.
My mom and I spent an hour and a half in the store and I walked out with one yard of this beautiful silk striped number. I could only afford one yard, but I am going to add it to some cheaper curtains to make myself some Mistreatments.
But I also found some discount fabric for another project for the room. Some really nice gold upholstery fabric. For what?

Show you later. See, I told you I'm a tease.

painting on my mind

If you remember, I showed you these paint samples and what my dining room looked like. If you weren't around that far back, just check these photos out.



This picture also shows the yellow wall I had in the living room and brown leather furniture that I had in there too. That leather set is now in my den and we moved a beige sofa and love seat into the living room. After this furniture musical chairs was over, the yellow didn't look right with the beige sofa and we still had not painted the dining room.

So once school was out, and we got back from our Florida vacation, I knew I needed to get serious about what I was going to do with that room. And even though I LOOOOOVE paint samples, I am not decisive about picking out paint. So wishy washy. I know what I like and don't like, but the exact shade of something is hard to pick out. So, I checked out a couple colors that the Nester recommended and Emily even came over and looked at my rooms, and then I still didn't know what I wanted to do. But I had loved the color that Emily had at her Sophie Marie house, and I went with that color: restrained gold.

Restrained Gold is a Sherwin Williams color. So I hotfooted it over to Sherwin Williams to get the paint. Now, I am usually a Behr paint girl. I am pretty loyal, because their paint is pretty think and generally covers in one coat. But, thinking I would want to get the color exactly right, I went to the fancy Sherwin Williams store and paid top dollar for two gallons of paint. Cashmere paint, it was called.

It was horrible.

It was like water. It was so thin and drippy and you could see every brush stroke. I only trimmed around one door before I was yelling at the paint.

Enter my husband.

He looked at the cans and saw that it was not Behr paint, and his look said "that's your first problem." But he did not comment on that. He said "Let's take it back." I told him that paint stores don't take back tinted paint, and so he put the phone in my hand and made me call the store. They thought maybe something was wrong with the paint, and could I bring it in?

Now, normally, I would have sucked it up and just kept painting. Not wanting to ruffle feathers, or anything. But I had two rooms and a foyer to paint with this color and I had paid SO much money for this paint. So we jumped in the car and headed to the store.

Where the nice man tried to convince me that paint is like that.

Where the nice man showed me what he thought was thicker paint.

Where the nice man gave me my money back.

Charlie and I headed to Home Depot with my swatch in hand. I asked my favorite paint man Larry about the color and if they would be able to match it. I had used the little matching matching while we were waiting, and the color wasn't right. But he looked right at the swatch and said they had that paint recipe in the computer becuase it was so popular, but he would make up one gallon and we would dry it and match it, then we would mix the second gallon.

It was perfect.

So I went home and painted the dining room. And today I painted the living room. But I am not gonna show you what it looks like yet, because all the furniture is still shoved in the middle of the room and I haven't hung anything up yet. I will share photos soon, don't you worry.

And, buy Behr paint.

small packages

Thursday Charlie and I celebrated our 4th anniversary. I know, the big 4. We've been married such a long time! LOL. Anyway, I decided to plan our celebration and so I made reservations at a local restaurant and B&B to surprise Charlie.

Here we are getting ready to leave.

Here is Charlie sitting in the biiiiiig bed at the B&B. The room was so cute and had the best bathroom with a whirlpool tub. I took two baths while we were there.
And here is my present! Ohmy. Ohmy. It is so pretty.
It is kinda hard to tell, but the stone is a pale green amethyst (I didn't know they came in green) and it has four diamond prongs. It looks a little odd in the picture. Hmmmm. Maybe from another angle. Is that better?

Let me tell you something though, about how well my husband knows me. After we left the B&B, we went and saw a movie and then Charlie said he had a surprise for me. We went to a jewelry store and he stopped outside. Then he told me he had picked something out for me and we were going to pick it up, but if I didn't like it, I should say so and we would just pick out something else.

Can you guess? I didn't like it.

He actually did a pretty good job and the necklace had a flower pendant (year #4 is flowers and small appliances?) but it wasn't right. So we shopped around and I picked this out. So pretty. I kept staring at it all day and letting it catch the sunlight and sparkle.

My husband is such a surprise at times. He is really a great gift giver, and I love him for that. He told me once that he was not a mind reader, so when I see things I like I need to let him know. He files the info for later, and I am so grateful and touched when something special appears.

And even more grateful when he lets me exchange it.

what we do

Do you ever have one of those days where you get so far into something, and then wonder if it was really worth it? You start down a path with all these intentions, and then it becomes something else entirely?

That's where I am.

And I wondered why we as women, do the things we do.

Confused?

Let me explain. I think most of my readers know that I am battling infertility. We have been trying for about a year and a half (off and on.) I have tried several different medications and now I am on one that is making me sick. The medication warns that it causes stomach and bowel problems while it works to help you out, and I can certainly testify that those warnings are there for a reason.


So, my goal is a baby, but I am making myself sick in the process. And I am only taking prescription pills, I am not doing shots or anything else like that. But it tells me that we weigh the pros and cons of the situation and then decide what it is worth to us.

I don't know that my husband would willingly deal with this. He probably would; I haven't asked him. But it seems to me that men have the easier part of this infertility thing, but that really isn't my point here. My point is that I have decided it is OK to make myself sick while persuing a bigger reward.

Women do that, I think.

We will get sick, be hurt, go without sleep, money, new clothes, etc, all to work towards something. While I was laying in bed the other day between trips to the bathroom, I wondered why we decide it is ok. Why am I alright with the fact that this medicine makes me sick? Shouldn't I think that being sick isn't ok?

I know this is rambling, but it makes me wonder. About life and motherhood. I think any mother would tell you that they would go without to give their child something. And I'm not even there yet. I think it means to me that I already love this child so much that I would go through this just to give him/her life. I hope that's what it means.

Tell me your stories of motherhood, please. Tell me why we love like this. Give me your perspective. Give me your prayers as I navigate this tough time.

Tell me what you do.

the deep south

I already told you about the wedding and my trip to Pottery Barn, but our other stop on our trip was in Valley, Alabama. Yes, Vaaaalley, AL. You have to say it with an accent, if you can. Valley is a sweet little southern town that is half asleep. My mom was raised there in a teeny tiny little house beside a creek, and she shows us the creek each time we go. The house has been torn down, but the brown little creek is still there.

My Uncle Tom and Aunt Sarah still live there in this cute little house. When I was little I loved the porch swing and steps up to the house. I always thought steps leading up to a house was somewhat romantic and I could just imagine a date walking up those steps to get me.

I know, I have a somewhat vivid imagination.

We spent all of 24 hours in Alabama and I came away with a jar of fig and strawberry preserves and a love of homemade biscuits. My Aunt Sarah made them for each of the three meals we had with them!
This is my sweet Uncle Tom. He talks so fast and with such an accent that when I was little, I could not understand him. He loves bass fishin' and grillin' and boatin' on the lake, which we were gonna do, but the boat battery was dead. So we sat on the shore and enjoyed the breeze and caught up.
Here is my Aunt Sarah with Charlie. She is actually my Mom's cousin, but I call her Aunt anyway. She is such a sweet lady and she fried up eggs and bacon for breakfast the next morning before we got on the road. She used to do that everyday for my Uncle Tom until he had a heart attack and now she feeds him cereal. He was so happy we were there because she cooked!
Here is the lake with the dead pontoon boat. I did walk over to the boat ramp and wade in the water a little bit to say I had been in the lake. It was nice and cool and it would have been fun to swim, but we hadn't brought our suits. Silly us.

It was such a nice little break after all the hurry up stuff that was the wedding. We relaxed and talked and drank tea and ate biscuits.

Sweet Home Alabama.

some more pics from the vacation

It seems to be a slow blogging week with the 4th coming up and so I thought I would share a few more pics from my vacation. If you want to read about someone who has had an interesting vacation, check out Melissa at Stretch Marks. Seriously, check her out.


Here we are at the hotel pool. I am showing off for you, of course.
Here we are at a lake in Alabama with my aunt and uncle. We were going to get in the boat, but the battery was dead. Alas, we had to stay on dry land.
We look like we are having so much fun, right? Right after this Charlie dunked me!

Hope you enjoy all those burgers and BBQs this weekend! Enjoy the long weekend and get some rest. Comment and let me know if you have a fun 4th recipe I should try!