Lookin’ like a Fool with your Plants in the Ground

Why yes, that is a reference to this video:

I don’t watch American Idol regularly.  In fact, I don’t really watch it at all, but “Pants on the Ground” happens to be one of my littlest brother-in-law’s favorite songs.  So we sing it a lot at our house.

But anywho.  I’m happy to report that we are in business.  We’ve got our garden planted!

YAY!  It doesn’t look like much (yet) but we have high hopes of it feeding us well this year.  My uncle who lives down the street was gracious enough to bring the tractor and plow us up a nice huge garden in our back yard.  We have a really nice area for a garden because our yard has two tiers.  The top tier is where the house sits.  It’s fairly flat and a nice big area to play with Harley in or have a party.  Then there is a weird little dip and a second relatively flat section of yard that we put the garden on.  It hardly ever got used anyway and it makes that much less ground for us to have to mow!  We were very fortunate in that, although the house sits directly on red clay, this section of the yard has AMAZING soil.  My uncle called it “loamy”…?  It feels amazing on your toes!  At first we, being the novice gardeners that we are, were worried about how huge the garden was.  I’ve always heard that too much garden means too many weeds, but once we started planting/spacing, we realized that we didn’t have too much space after all because so ground vines take up so. much. room!

Here’s a rundown of what we planted:

1) 3 tomato plants.  These are roma tomatoes or sauce tomatoes.  Not the best for just plain eating, but Josh and I don’t eat tomatoes, we eat salsa, so these should make amazing salsa!

2) 8 jalapeno pepper plants.  We make hot salsa…

3) an unknown number of green pepper seeds.  Not sure how many of these plants will make it, but we planted quite a few.

4) Okra.  Not as much as I would have liked, but if it comes up nice and thick then it should be perfect for us to get a mess (that’s the technical term) for supper every now and then.  Fried okra is one of the highlights of my summer.

5) Cucumbers.  we planted 4 plants because it came in a pack of four, but we really only want 1-2 max.

6) Squash.  I love baby squash covered in cheese, and apparently lizards like squash.  So a squash we planted.  Same as the cucumbers, if more than 1 plant makes it, we will have to thin them out… or give away LOTS of squash.

7) Watermelons.  We bought these because we thought, “Hey, we have way too much garden space, let’s plant watermelons and see if they grow.”  Josh nor I either one have ever grown watermelons so these are an experiment.

8) Dahlias.  These aren’t edible, but a very successful gardening couple that I know (who have been gardening for about 75 years) swear that if you plant flowers in your garden, the bees come, and they make everything grow better.  Once again, no idea if they will grow, but here’s to hoping.

Unfortunately, that’s all we have room for.  I was a little sad… and shocked.  When we first looked at our garden we thought for sure we’d never fill up the whole thing.  I wish we were growing onions, spinach, and lettuce, but we aren’t going to for a multitude of reasons a) they are hard to grow.  Onions not so much, but lettuce and spinach take a LOT of effort to get them to grow nicely.  b) They are cheap.  I can buy onions and lettuce cheaply at the store.  c) I got connections.  I have family who are always looking to give away lettuce from their garden… we’ll just snag a head from them every now and again.  We also plan to grow a little herb garden with cilantro, mint, and a maybe garlic.  Our attempt is to grow all the major ingredients for my homemade salsa.

Our neighbors, aka my cousins, came over and kept us company while Josh planted and I got the worst of the old grass clumps out of the soil.  The entire evening was amazingly relaxing.  Makes my heart full.

So I’ll keep y’all posted.  Now Josh says we’ll have to fight off the rabbits and birds, both of which we have in abundance in the woods behind our house, so hopefully we’ll be able to keep them at bay.  We aren’t going to try to grow this stuff organically, but we will be sparing on the chemicals (sevin dust is a miracle worker on pests!) For now, I’m just excited at the prospect of growing our first garden!

And here’s one more, because I’m in love with this little picture!

Hosta Takeover

Sorry about all the plant-related posts here lately, but… it’s spring and Josh and I have been spending every non-raining moment outside here lately.  And because we are super excited to finally have a yard at our disposal, we have been doing our best to cheaply spruce up the exterior of the house.  Thankfully, between Josh working at a landscape store and my aunt donating to the cause, we’ve been able to get some cute little plants started without spending much money.

So far we have:

1) Added day lilies around the mailbox.  They are still alive, but just barely.  Any thoughts on how to make them not die would be appreciated.

2) Bought a trellis at Lowe’s (with our cashback rewards) to try to corral this cute little flowering vine to grow up the side of the house.  I’ve been determined to do everything in my power to break up the monotony of our grey home… so far, meh… I’m not doing so hot, but I am making some not-too-expensive-or-time-consuming improvements.

3) Took some of that vine and some of the day lilies and planted them in front of the awful black railing at the front of the house.  As you can see from the picture above, I have plenty of vine to spare.  I had great and amazing aspirations of sanding/priming/painting that railing.  But Josh, in his infinite wisdom, convinced me not to.  And he’s right.  It’s not my house, it’s not my house, it’s not my house.  One day, I will have a house with some su-weeeet curb appeal, thanks to my hubby’s love of plants/landscaping, but until then, I’m at least hoping for some “hey, nice people live there” appeal.

As you may can tell from the picture, once again… the day lilies are nothing to write home about, but the vine is at least not dying.  I’m hoping that the warmer weather ahead (finally!) will give this vine the kick in the pants it needs to start hiding all the ugly spots.

Here is a closer picture of the vine.  I think it might be morning glory, but I’m not sure.

And please don’t judge the astro-turf.  Again, I was all for tearing it up, but Josh says no.  Not my house, not my house, not my house…   But still, you can see why I’m doing my darnedest to hide all that icky stuff!

4) Planted canna lilies, another gift from my aunt, in the corner by the back patio stairs.  This is what it looks like now

And this is what I have hopes of it looking like by summer’s end…

4) hung ferns from the back patio roof.  Here’s a picture of one, but we have them on either side of the stairs.  I love ferns.  They add polish to any exterior in my opinion… even ours…

6) Admired the cool tree in the back yard.  We didn’t have to do anything to it, and it took us both forever to figure out what it was.

The flowers gave it away…

Yep.  It’s honeysuckle.  I didn’t know honeysuckles made a tree.  From what we can gather, there was a pole in the center (probably to an old clothesline post) that the honeysuckle grew up, and then it was allowed to grow and grow and grow, and now it’s the size of a tree.  I love it… Josh says it’s a weed… all in the perspective.

7) Planted hostas along the edge of the back patio.  These are the one plants that are really thriving so far.  Josh, in his infinite plant-wisdom, knew that hostas like water.  So he planted them where the rain water pools at the edge of the patio.  They are growing like weeds!

8) Collected cast-off plants from Josh’s job and coax them back to life.  Often times, before they can put in new landscaping, Josh and his crew rip out all the old landscaping.  Most of the plants go in a reject/burn pile.  Because he’s sweet, Josh goes through and picks out the plants he thinks we’d like and brings them home to nurture them back to life.  Sometimes they have to start out in this little plant-hospital until they are big enough to transplant

But the other day he brought me a full-sized rhododendron that we are going to get to plant!  Woot!

So our yard is a work in progress.  And if I know my hubby, it always will be.  We have been l-o-v-i-n-g our yard here recently (when it’s not raining that is) and it’s been so much fun to get to see it take shape.  It’ll never be perfect, not at this house, (we aren’t willing to buy the plants/mulch to really finesse the landscaping… not our house, not our house, not. our. house.) but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.  With this poor yard, anything is a step in the right direction.

So what about you?  Have you been up to any spring-time sprucing lately?  We are so pleased with the way ours is taking shape.  The yard is where we’ll be spending most of our summer hours, so it’s nice that it’s becoming a place where we can relax and enjoy God’s beautiful creation…

Hiding in Plain Sight

Once upon a time, there was a young man and a young woman and they were very much in love.  They were very excited to married and start their lives together.  This woman, as I said, loved this man very much, however, there was a problem.  For, you see, three months before the day they wed, that man, in a moment of insanity, bought a big ugly chair at Goodwill for $5 which he refused to ever part with.  The woman begged and begged, but everywhere they lived, that chair lived, in some corner of a room that no one ever saw until one day, the woman and the chair became friends and lived happily ever after.

The end.

If you didn’t notice… I hate Josh’s chair.  I was so excited before we got married (almost 2 years ago! AAAHH!) that Josh didn’t have one of those “bachelor chair” that you hear horror stories about.  No worries, he fixed that.  3 months before the wedding.  It was the most hideous chair I’ve ever seen.  BURNT ORANGE VELVET!!! So old and threadbare.  But… it is insanely comfortable.  Like, “pass me a book and my coffee I’m not moving today” comfortable.  Still, it was too ugly to have out where people might see it and leave blinded by its awfulness.

But unfortunately, the alternative wasn’t much better.  If you’ll remember WAAAY back, a whopping 8 months ago now, when we moved, the first thing I set up was a little “me space” a cute little nook where I could just go and sit and try not to think about all I had to do.  Just a refresher, it looked like this:

That checkered mauve arm you see in the bottom right corner of the picture?  That was the alternative.  My Dad’s cast-off 90s recliner.  Awesome.  I’m not sure why I kept it around so long, I guess because I hadn’t found anything I like better, and Josh’s chair was slightly worse..  I tried slip covering it before I ever even started blogging; that was a FAIL!  So it just sat, forlorn and unused in it’s cute little corner of the room.

But it’s gone now.  To another place, away from me… FOREVER!  Becaaaauusee… I was able to salvage Josh’s man chair into something not so hard on the eyes.

It’s not perfect, but it’s still a HUGE improvement.  The slip cover is way too big for the little chair, but I like to think it’s shabby chic.  Not sure it it works, but we’ll go with it.  Thankfully it has these cute little side ties that help gather the fabric and make the baggy cover hang a little better.

It also helps lighten up the room!  We have very poor lighting in this house.  Couple that with dark floors, a dark couch, a dark desk, dark tables, and a dark book shelf, and our house definitely comes off looking a little Eyore-ish, so anything like slip covers or curtains that can lighten up the room are awesome!  Josh fusses that he can’t sit in it when he’s dirty (which is about 99% of the time) but I don’t care.  Hopefully it will be an incentive to get clean once he gets home!

So anywho, we went from this (notice the lovely worn orange-y brown velvet)

To this:

Sigh… Happy Mandi!

Here is the link to the slip cover.  From good ole’ tar-jay!  And I still have wedding gift cards to Target, so I actually paid $0000 out of pocket.  Woot!

The one last thing I forsee needing to do to this slip cover is hemming it.  See how much extra fabric is crumpled at the bottom?  Yea… dirt MAGNET!

But considering I don’t even OWN a needle and thread… seriously, I don’t… That’s gonna have to wait until someone either takes pity on me and does it, or I learn to sew.  The former is more likely…

So what about you?  Been snazzing up any old furniture lately?  One day, I’d love to have a (couple) new armchairs like this one:

but, right now they aren’t in our budget (that particular one is probably NEVER in my budget).  Plus, Josh has warned me, if I bring home a chair without arms, he’s burning it.  And he’s right!  Chairs are meant to be sat in, and ARMchairs… kinda supposed to have a place to put your arms.  Like I’ve said a gazillion and five times, I want our house to be functional and usable primarily, and pretty second.  For us, that means a Craigslist couch, a little dirt on the floor, and big ugly chair hiding secretly in the corner of the room.  We’re no better homes and gardens, but it’s OUR home and garden and we like being comfy.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the Mail (it never fails)

Hopefully there are one or two of you out there who got that title, because all I’ve been wanting to do lately is yell MAIL!  Well, ever since I spruced up our sad little mailbox that is.

Here is exhibit A) The mailbox in need of some TLC

As you can see, for starters, it’s old.  Really old.  Sometimes old is good, because old often means durable.  But old can also mean chipped, rusted, dirty, and otherwise an unpalatable place to go to every day to get the mail.  Also, you may notice the giant pile of rocks and dead grass that meant previous occupants didn’t have to weedeat around the mailbox.  They were not a pretty pile or pretty rocks, but rather a hodge podge of river rocks, bricks, and jagged rocks that just looked… trashy.  Another problem was the faded, stained old post that held up the mailbox.  Anyway, the mailbox pretty much screamed “WE DON’T CARE ABOUT OUR YARD.”  As does the yard itself, bless it’s heart, my poor hubby is still adjusting to the fact that in Tennessee, we just chop the tops off the weeds and call it the yard.

But anywho… drumroll please!

Here it is now!  Yay!  So much happier.  Ignore the current wilty-ness of the flowers, they are newly transplanted and still need a little time to take.

To achieve this much-improved look I:

1) Painted the mailbox.  Good ole Rustoleum can cover a world of sins.  I peeled off those fading, chipped old number stickers beforehand and hosed it off inside and out to get off the dirt/excess rust.  The mailbox itself was actually in pretty good condition.  I think it’s galvanized steel, so it isn’t going anywhere for a long time, but the handle was rusted and what looks so charming as a planter tub just looks old and dingy as a mailbox.  So I painted it white.  This took several coats to get it all covered. Then I just took several coats of red acrylic paint and carefully repainted the little flag.  I tried to make my own stencil for the letters and use black spray paint #fail.  #UBERFAIL.  So I REpainted that part of the mailbox white and went to Lowes and got 60¢ vinyl mailbox letter stickers for each side.  Oh well, ya live and learn… and be glad you hadn’t already used all the white spray paint.

2) Stained the wooden posts that hold up the mailbox.  Don’t you love the leaf detailing?  Not my first choice, but also, not my house so I live with it.  What you’d need for this step is a paintbrush you are willing to ruin and, wait for it, a DIY oil change.  Yes, you read that right.  Oil Change.  This gorgeous dark stain is actually used motor oil!  Who woulda thunk???  My hubby, that’s who.  Apparently they use motor oil to stain things all the time at work.  And I gotta admit, I love the way it looks.  I’m not sure I’ll be staining any indoor furniture with it, ya know I try my best to avoid cancer, but for the mailbox, I love it.

3) Removed most of the rocks.  I made two piles, the get-these-outta-here pile that I put in a 5 gallon bucket to be disposed of and the come-to-momma pile that I saved to make a ring around the flower bed once they were in.

4) pulled LOTS of weeds.  Most of them were dead, but their roots hang on for dear life, and make planting impossible.

5) Stole… ok… gratefully accepted the donation of… daylily bulbs and planted them around the mailbox.  I just love flowers around the mailbox.  They are just… charming.  These have yet to really bring on the charm, unfortunately, but Josh says I have to give them a few weeks before I’m sad/angry at them for not growing.  That’s my problem with plants, I want them to look like what I want them to look like the minute I plant them.  So here’s to hoping those puppies perk up in the next few weeks and start to grow.

I’m in love.  Our yard is slowly but surely starting to look like PEOPLE ACTUALLY LIVE THERE!  There are still a million and 1 things I would do to the front of this house (including but not limited to tearing it all off and starting over) but, as Josh keeps reminding me, this isn’t where we will be forever, and I don’t want to spend TOO much time and money fixing up a house that isn’t mine.  So for now, I’m trying to limit my tender loving care to the following criteria

• Things that we will use once we have our own place.  This includes curtains, art, remaking our furniture (working on some of it now!), new furniture, etc.
• Things that drive me absolutely, beyond belief, keep-me-up-at-night BONKERS… like the rocks around the mailbox… or the navy paint on the walls when we moved in.
• Things that cost under $10 that I can do to this house

In light of that under $10 mark, I am happy to say that this project meet the last two criteria.  Here’s the budget breakdown

White Rustoleum paint – $4.50

Red acrylic paint – already owned (I bought it for this project)

Used Motor Oil – free

Rocks – free

Day lilies – donated (aka… free)

Total: $4.50!

Woot!  That’s a price tag I can live with, and an upgrade I’m willing to make, even if it’s only temporary.  So what about you?  Any renters out there making the best of it?  What are you willing to do to your rental, even if it’s something you can’t take with you?  Homeowners?  Have you been working on the curb appeal?  I enjoy coming up to my cheery yellow door, fresh window box, and happy mailbox these days.  It makes home feel a little more like home.

P.S. The birds apparently like my mailbox too. #keepinitreal

Pallet Planter

Well, the Decker household was a-buzz this weekend.  We got cracking on our yard: planting flowers, transplanting flowers, mowing, organizing our outdoor space.  I had a ton of fun, especially since I did a lot of watching.  The hubby is definitely the plant person of our family, so my job was the plead with him to do what he does all week at work for me this weekend, instead of just sitting and taking it easy.  It worked!  Partly because of my charm, but mostly because he’s just awesome like that.  This is the fruit of our.. er… his labor.  But hey, I’m the brains behind the operation.

It all started when my little bro came over, and I noticed a dilapidated old pallet in the back of his truck.  Having seen the gazillion and one uses for an old pallet on Pinterest, I immediately snagged it; it was headed toward the burn pile anyway.  And boy am I glad I did.  I convinced Josh to chop it apart for me this weekend.  I originally wanted to break it down and just reuse the wood to make a little window box for my kitchen window, kind of like this one from pinterest

but Josh, in his infinite wisdom, knew better.  He simple cut it down to the size we needed (that size being 32″ wide and two boards tall) and worked his magic to make it into an adorable planter box.  More like this one:

I forgot to take a picture of the sawing, but he used a sawzall to cut it down to size.  Here is a picture of him screwing the basic box underneath the kitchen window.

You can see the where we made the cuts in this picture.  Basically, we, and by we I mean he, cut right at one of the center supports already in the pallet.  Then he ripped an extra board off the as-yet-to-be-used portion of the pallet and cut it down to size, then screwed it on to what used to be the side of the pallet, making the bottom of the planter.

But as you can see, there appears to be a major flaw in our plan, AKA, a huge gap between the boards that won’t hold dirt.  Have no fear, Josh had a plan.  He found an old scrap of window screen he had laying around, don’t ask my why he had that laying around because I don’t know, and we fitted it into the box like so:

I held the mesh apart while Josh dumped the dirt in on top of it before he carefully slid the screen down into the planter.  This way it fit down in the box about 3/4ths of the way: enough to cover the hole and keep the dirt from pouring through but not so tall that it poked out the top.  The black screen blends with the black soil and you can’t even tell it’s there.

Then we went to Lowe’s and bought some cute, cheap flowers to put in it.

We ended up with three begonia plants and one little trailing flower that I can’t remember the name of:

Oh, and Josh added a little resurrection fern he found to the side, so hopefully it will grow onto the sides of the flowerbox.  Isn’t it precious? I can’t get enough of it.  And I love looking at it while I wash dishes and watch Harley play in the yard.

Here’s a more distant shot.

And one more… because I think it’s so awesome:

So there’s that.  A little rustic charm added to our bland little house.  Poor thing needs all the help it can get.  Can anyone say curb appeal? So what about you?  Have you been out enjoying your yard?  The last few weeks have made me infinitely glad we made the decision to move.  Having a yard, a grill, sane neighbors, privacy, birds, woods, a dog, a patio, a yard, a yard… a YARD! has been amazing.  We are loving every minute of life right now.

P.S.  Here is the budget breakdown for my little window box:

Pallet – free

Screws – free (or already owned)

Bag of potting soil – $5 (used about 1/4th of it)

Begonias – 3 @ $2.50 each

Trailing flower – $3

Total: $15

Some Beach

I love the beach.  I miss the beach.  So I brought a tiny slice of beach home with me this Saturday.  Because I found this amazing piece, and now it’s mine.  To stare at whenever I long for the sand between my toes.

Isn’t it lovely?  I found it at a yard sale.  You can’t tell in the picture, but it is an original oil painting, not a print, and it is in a FANTASTIC rustic wood frame.  And the best part?  I got it at a yard sale for $6.  Woot!  The frame alone is worth that in my opinion, but I love the cool tones and the calming seascape in the picture.  Not to mention, it matches my house to. the. tee.  See?

Once again, pictures, meh… you just can’t see things well in them (at least not in the pictures I take.  Lord knows I’m no professional).  But the color of the sky in the picture is the exact color of my curtains and the color of the grass?  Yep… might as well be the same paint that’s on my walls.  It matches perfectly.  It’s hanging over my hubby’s ginormous fish tank (the wood at the bottom of the picture is the top of the tank.  He built an awesome top to the tank out of scrap flooring so it would hide all the messy wires and lights and stuff. #keeper) which is appropriate considering it is a seascape.

And, as you know from here, I love a good story behind the pieces I bring into my house.  New stuff is great, but the mysterious past lives that a vintage piece brings is my bread and butter.  So I started examining this little gem and lo and behold, a story.  It’s obviously old, because the paint itself is faded (although the frame is in stellar condition for its age, no scratches, gouges, or cracks).  But it’s also got these on the back:

The top is the copyright stamp stating its an original piece and is not to be reproduced.  No worries there, I can’t draw stick figures.

The bottom is an OLD business card that has been taped to the back of the painting indicating where it was sold from.  Note the lack of web address and email?  Even Google the Great and Powerful couldn’t find me anything on “Art World-Arthings,” so I’m guessing it may have been out of business for years.  I’m always curious about these kinds of things.  Who is Gianelli?  Besides the artist of this painting… haha.  Was he broke or famous?  And how did his painting end up in Tennessee?  Obviously, I’m probably sitting on a million dollar long lost painting from a famous artist… Or more likely, some broke art student in the 50s who hawked a painting to pay rent.  But either way, I like it.  It makes me happy.

So what about you?  Have you been bringing home anything vintage lately?  Are you a yard-sale-aholic like me?  Besides the painting, I brought home 3 Mennonite tomato plants for our soon-to-be garden, a space heater, and a couple of boxes of cereal.  (Yes they were sealed, yes they were out of date, and yes I still eat them.)  I love yard sale season!  Can’t wait ’til next Saturday!!!

Barbeque Chicken Quesadillas

I made these not to long ago.  They are amazing.  A perfect blend of Josh and his Tex-Mex loving self and my Southern affinity for anything slathered in bbq sauce.  Here’s the recipe:

2 boneless-skinless chicken breasts

1 bottle bbq sauce

flour tortillas

butter

shredded cheese

salt

Step 1) Boil and shred the chicken, then douse it in barbeque sauce until thoroughly coated.  If you are short on time / not a cheapskate like me, you could have a couple of different options.  You could always use rotisserie chicken instead of boiled, or you could pick up a pound of bbq chicken/pork at a barbeque joint and use it.  If you plan ahead, also unlike me, you could always throw the chicken and bbq sauce in a crock pot and let it cook all day, then shred it.  It’s really just whatever you have time/energy/money for.

Step 2) Butter one side of tortilla and lay it flat on a griddle or sandwich press.  I use a George Foreman knockoff for mine, but you can also just use a pan on the stove.

Step 3) sprinkle a little shredded cheese on the tortilla, I put about 1/8th of a cup on either side of the chicken and that is the right amount for us.

Step 4) Scoop about 1/3 c. chicken onto the tortilla and spread it out evenly.  Just a side note, I prefer to use two fajita size (about 6″ diameter) tortillas for my quesadillas, but Josh prefers to use a giant burrito one and fold it over.  Pick your preference, but my way is better…

Step 5) Cook the quesadilla until both sides are golden brown and crispy.  Even with a sandwich press, you have to flip it to get it just right because the weight of the filling makes the bottoms cook faster.  I cook mine on about medium heat and I listen for when the cheese gets so melted that it starts to run out the sides (it makes a different kind of hissing noise) to know when to pull them off.

Step 6) Sprinkle with a little salt and enjoy!  P.S. Cut it with a pizza cutter.

Quesadilla nights are some of my favorite evenings spent with my hubby.  For one thing, he’s usually with me in the kitchen, lurking around for the moment I pull one off the sandwich press so he can snatch it up.  Also, it’s quick and easy and they can be made 100 million different ways (chicken bacon ranch are still top of the list I believe).  It’s totally informal.  In fact, we are usually done eating before I’m done cooking.  I made a few extra for Josh’s lunch the next day.  He shared with his boss, who asked him what restaurant they came from *shoulder brush* so yeah, they are that good.

Have you been in the kitchen lately?  What have you been cooking?  We’ve been taking advantage of this gorgeous weather most nights this week and grilling out… not super exciting to blog about, but we love it, especially since we weren’t allowed to keep our grill at the apartments we lived in before.  Boo apartments!

Run, Forrest!

As you may remember from this post, I had knee surgery a little over three months ago.  Thankfully, this one was very minor, but still, two knee surgeries in one year (I had my ACL replaced in March of 2012) is enough to frustrate anybody.  I have begun exercising again in an effort to avoid yet another clean up job on that knee.  As an incentive, my dearest friend Allison and I signed up to run in a Color Me RAD race last weekend.  We had too much fun.  But I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Pre-run happy faces.  We are still clean!

Mid run… not so clean.

Mid-run deuces.  The hat made me feel gangsta’.

Post-run. We were gross.

Post-run rave = more deuces.  And duck lips…

Anywho, the run was an amazing experience!  I’m less-than-convinced it was a true 5K.  Allison and I both thought we turned around at about the 3/4th mile mark.  But who cares?  The point was to get covered in food-coloring-saturated-corn-starch, not run a marathon.  We ran about 10:00 in the morning, which was perfect because it had warmed up (those who ran at 8:00 ran covered in goosebumps and/or hoodie).  Also, I should qualify, I wore the hat to protect my blonde hair from being semi-permanently tie-dyed as well, I’m not really going gangster…

What was really neat was that it was almost exactly one year after my first knee surgery.  It’s amazing the difference one year can make…

Swiper, NO Swiping

Not gonna lie, this post is about to be a little pat-myself-on-the-back moment.  I have accomplished a goal, and I’m pretty proud of myself.  As of today, it has officially been a week (or more) since I last swiped a debit or credit card! WOOOO HOOOO!!!  Now, as you may have surmised, I am the penny pincher of the family.  Not that Josh isn’t frugal, but I’m the one who frets and worries over every. single. dime we spend.  So while he was out of town this last week, I made a determined effort to live as cheaply as possible.  And while I wanted to allow the world to share in my little celebration, I also wanted to analyze HOW I accomplished this goal and see if I could pull some day-to-day life truths from what I’ve learned.

Step 1) Eat what you have.  This is not always easy.  Particularly for a grazer like myself.  I’m very much an “in the mood” kind of eater.  But while Josh was gone, I decided to eat what I had and/or mooch off my parents, grandparents, etc., basically anyone who would feed me.  This means that I have eaten eggs.  Lots of eggs.  I’ve pulled out a couple of unused giftcards.  Finished off the lasts of several things lurking in my pantry.  It’s a good way to clean out and start over on the fridge and pantry stockpile.  If you bought, you eat it, and then you aren’t throwing money in the trash when the food goes bad.

Pros:  Eggs are healthy.  So that’s good.

Cons:  It sucks to eat things you aren’t in the mood for.

Step 2) Don’t go anywhere.  This is one of the disguised perks of living in a small town with limited entertainment venues, it actually takes effort to go out and do things (and about 90% of the time, things cost money).  Every now and then, it’s really nice just to enjoy your home and try to clear out your schedule for some down time.  Also, not going anywhere means that the little fuel light doesn’t come on nearly as often.

Pros: Not going anywhere doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be boring.  I’ve cleaned house a little, done a hair mask and a facial, exercised a whole whole bunch, caught up on my favorite girly shows that Josh always makes fun of, fun stuff like that.

Cons:  Sometimes you get the urge to “see and be seen,” and you can feel like an old granny if you never get out and do stuff.

Step 3) Pick up an extra shift/hours at work.  In conjunction with the not going anywhere thing, if you are working, you aren’t out going places and shopping/entertaining yourself.  Not to mention you have the added bonus of making extra money.  With Josh gone, I worked as much as I could so that I could earn/save/not spend easier.

Pros: Money.

Cons: Fatigue.

Step 4) Mix and match to make a new outfit combo.  When I’m feeling in a fashion rut, my first instinct is to run out and buy something new.  Mixing up your existing wardrobe can give you some fun fashion refreshment while keeping the bill at $0.

Pros:  Sometimes my favorite outfits have come about because I was bored and broke and I paired two things together I never would have imagined looked good together.

Cons: Your clothes wear out faster.

Now, having said all this I have a few points of clarification.  First, You can’t go forever living like this.  You have to get out and do things and you deserve a new outfit every now and then, but sometimes it’s good to just put a hold on things and enjoy what you got.

Second, money HAS ebbed and flowed from my account in the last week.  You can’t forgo paying the light bill, the tithe check, etc. just because you are fasting from spending for a week.  Still. Pay. Your. Bills.  My one “splurge” was taking Harley to the vet… again.  For which I wrote a check.  Expensive little mutt.

The older I get, the more I realize that balance is absolutely necessary.  If it weren’t for Josh, I would be inclined to live like this for weeks on end.  I can see myself now sitting in a cold dark house eating stale cereal simply to avoid spending money unnecessarily.  But that’s not the point of life.  Money is a means to make life enjoyable for yourself and for others, it isn’t meant to be in total control of your life.  It’s a tool.  Finding a balance between your instant and delayed gratification is an absolute necessity.

So what about you?  Could you go a week swipe-free?  It’s a challenge for sure, but it definitely helps give some discipline and a great big lesson on contentment.  If you wanna know more about my philosophy on saving and money, you check out this post.

P.S. Harley lost her first tooth this week.  I’m both a sad and proud puppy momma.

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

Muffins are my new thing.  Seriously, I make them about once a week.  With my newfound habit of exercising (I’ve been getting up at 6:15 every morning since the last week of January and exercising.  That’s 2 whole months!  Woot!) I’m finding myself hungry ALL. THE. TIME!!!  Josh and I were both blessed with extraordinarily high metabolisms.  Which is great on the waistline… not so great for the eating habits.  My preferred eating schedule is snacking… that’s it.  All day long.  The problem with snacking is that I end up eating JUNK!  Chips?  My fav.  I can down a can of Pringles in one sitting, no problemo.  So I’ve been working on keeping healthy, or at least healthier, grab-and-go foods around the house (see more healthy-ish recipes here, here, and here).  This means a little more work for me, as healthy snack foods are either A) Insanely expensive… as in like $5 for 4 granola bars (which, when you start reading the labels are still usually not that healthy) or B) homemade.  Which is where muffins come in.  I can make a batch of muffins one night and they will last us the better part of the week as breakfast/snack foods.  These are half-wheat, so they aren’t as healthy as 100% whole grain muffins, but they taste WAY better.  (P.S. this is my adaptation of dear ole’ Betty’s version).

3/4 c. milk

1/4 c. vegetable oil

1/4 c. agave nectar (or honey)

a handful of brown sugar, about 1/8 c.

1/4-1/2 c. plain yogurt

1 egg

1 c. whole wheat flour

1 c. all-purpose flour (I swear by White Lily)

3 tsp. baking powder

1/2. tsp. salt

3/4 – 1 c. frozen blueberries

brown sugar and cinnamon (for topping)

Step 1) Cream together egg, milk, yogurt, sugar, agave, and oil.  I would say the yogurt isn’t a must, but, in my opinion, it’s a must.  You can use vanilla if you don’t have any plain on hand, but it helps make them super moist and spongy.  Not to mention it’s good for you!  Also, the brown sugar isn’t a must, but I’m Southern, and I’m still very suspicious of anything without at least a dash of sugar in it…

Step 2) STIR (do NOT beat) in the flours, baking powder, and salt.  Beating will give you dough, believe me, I’ve done it.  But stirring will give you batter.  You are going for slightly-thicker-than-pancake-batter consistency here.   If it gets too thick, you can add extra milk and oil until you get the consistency you want (that’s how I saved my beaten-not-stirred muffin batter the other day).  Another note, be liberal with the baking powder, especially if you are like me and just dump it without measuring.  Whole wheat flour is very dense, so to get the fluffy rise that you want, the baking powder is your friend.

Step 3) Stir in blueberries.  I like fewer blueberries in mine, but if you are a fan, feel free to load them up.

Step 4) Pour batter into 12 greased muffin cups.  The cups will be almost full and it’ll make 12 hugely gorgeous muffins.  If you want smaller muffins, just make a couple extra.

Step 6) Stir together some brown sugar (about 2 tbsp.) and cinnamon (about 1 tsp.) and sprinkle it liberally across the top of each of your muffins.  If you want a crumbly sugary topping, you can leave it like that, but Josh and I both got irritated at how easily the topping crumbled off all in your lap.  We like them better swirled.  (Once you get the sugar on top, take a butter knife and twirl it through the batter until the sugar is slightly mixed in but not blended).

Step 7) Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

I’ve already made about 5 batches of these in the last couple of months.  They are amazingly moist.  The yogurt helps balance out the density and dryness of the whole wheat flour, so I barely even notice all the healthy stuff going down the hatch when I eat these!  Plus, the whole wheat sticks to your ribs (yet another good country saying) better than just “fluffy” (aka bleached) flour.   Additionally, this is a super easy base recipe to make any kind of muffins your heart so desires.  Strawberry?  Raspberry?  Out of frozen fruit?  Just add a little cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice and you have yummy spice muffins.  I’m guessing eventually Josh and I will get tired of blueberry and begin branching out, but so far, we are just basking in the purply-blue goodness.

What about you?  Are you a breakfast eater?  Growing up, my mother made a hot breakfast every single morning.  (Yes… seriously, stand in awe of her super mom-ness for a moment).  But Josh isn’t so lucky.  This makes a great screeching-out-the-door-pop-one-in-the-microwave-for-20-seconds breakfast, which is the best my family is gonna get for a while.