adventures in homeownership >kitchen!

BEFORE

AFTER

We also replaced a lot of light fixtures, so here are the ones in the kitchen! the previous ones were horrible!!

tasty tuesday

as the holidays approach, that means i'll be planning dinners and snacks for before those dinners. last year at christmas and for every gathering we have, i generally have chips, buffalo chicken dip and shrimp cocktail. so for this week's tasty tuesday, i'll share my BCD recipe!

Buffalo Chicken Dip


10 oz. can tyson chicken
3 8oz packs of cream cheese
1 cup franks red hot


tear the chicken cubes apart. then i just dump everything in a huge mixing bowl and mush it all together with my hands. that's honestly the best way to do it. you can add more red hot according to taste. heat up in the microwave as needed!

simple, huh? i serve mine with crackers and nachos!

adventures in homeownership > family room before and after!

BEFORE

AFTER

let's see. we didn't really do too much to this room. we took down those hideous drapes and put up nice curtains. we didn't put in new carpet or lights, and we didn't paint. so i guess this room wasn't very fun!

as for life, i worked so much last week! but it's really paying off. i had an accounting test and a macro quiz today and tomorrow i have a psych exam! sheesh. 

our housewarming party wasn't really a hit. only NINE people came. wowza. but then on thursday, craig, steve, gina, and chelsea came over for some drinks, beavis and butthead and the league. the boys left and joe went to bed, but us girls stayed up and pretty much just gossiped like schoolgirls. it was nice, though. it's nice to find genuine people that you can really be friends with.

i've also decided that in regards to my christmas animal charity fundraiser, i'm going to put it on hold until february and make it valentine's-themed. i came up with the idea too late and haven't had much time to plan and make things for my etsy shop. i feel guilty, though!

speaking of animals, joe and i have decided to get our new puppy sooner rather than later. i found like, four ads in the cleveland plain dealer offering schnauzer puppies for sale; so stay tuned!

till death thursday ; our fall decor!

well we just put away our halloween stuff (which i'm totally sad over). however, here's a look at the rest of our fall decor! it's not ALL of it, that would require so many pictures.  these are my favorites!

(ew! this is so dusty! i didn't even know. thanks, flash.)

thankfully, we are lucky enough to [mostly] agree on decorations and have the same vision for what we want our home to look like. a lot of couples just have the female decorating everything. i don't think that's right at all. it's like the line in Juno "she gave you one room in the whole house to put your stuff? she's got ya on a long leash there, mark!" (or something like that). it's your home. together. let him pick out a freakin' panel of curtains!

fall inspirations

we have a vast amount of woods behind our house. so yesterday while i waited for joe to get home, i explored a bit with my camera!

this is actually yesterday morning. we had crazy fog until like, 11 am!

super pretty, right? i'm so lucky to live here!

today i had a macro test. i got 105.5 on the first one, without even studying. i figured the second one would be similar to the first. but, TOTALLY BOGUS study guide, and super lame problems = i left a few things blank and sucked at life on the rest. but even if i get a 50% on this bad boy, i'll still have a B in the class. Even if i get NONE right (which i know i got a few), if i do well on the final, i'll still get a B as my final grade. bazinga.

as for the remainder of the day, i work tonight. until then, i will be working on something really awesome that i've been planning for a while. it involves december/christmas, animals and blogs! watch out!

tasty tuesday ; samhain feast! (with photos!)

happy belated halloween! moving has been so crazy! i tried to make sure i had scheduled posts up for the week of our moving but that totally didn't happen. my bad.

but anyway! last night i made a traditional celtic samhain meal so i thought i'd share it with you for this week's tasty tuesday.

Limerick Ham


3-5 pound ham
apple cider to cover the ham
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp mustard
20 whole cloves

in a pot, cover the ham with cider, bring to a boil then lower the heat. keep the liquid barely simmering 20 minutes for every pound. remove from heat and allow to stand in liquid for 30 minutes. then remove it from the cider and skin it. stud with whole cloves. mix the sugar and mustard and rub well into the surface of the ham. bake in a pre-heated oven for 10 minutes for every pound at 400*


Irish Holiday Potatoes


12 medium potatoes, peeled, cooked and mashed
2 eggs, well beaten
8 oz cream cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter
pepper
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup sliced green onions

mix potatoes with remaining ingredients. do not whip. place in greased 9in round casserole dish and bake for 45 minutes.*

*i assume it's supposed to be preheated to 350* for the potatoes? i just skipped baking them in the oven so i don't know.

homecoming blast from the past.

with the end of homecoming season nearing i thought i would post some homecoming pictures from my high school years. however, with the move, i'm pressed for photos! so here's one.

very strange, huh?

till death thursday ; our wedding

on monday, october 24, 2011, i will have been married for ONE WHOLE YEAR! yowzaaaa. so for today's till death thursday, i'd like to share a bit more about our wedding!

i honestly don't remember how we decided we were going to get engaged. all i know is, we did.

i just realized that i explained our engagement in my how we met post. well, here's the excerpt from that post!

"on my first black friday shopping trip, i picked out my ring. i pestered him constantly about when was i going to get it. there was an incident around christmas where i was bugging him about my presents. he told me to go upstairs and not come back down until he told me to. he told me to put my hand inside of a box. i thought, oh my god, it's going to be my ring! nope. he was just trying to teach me a lesson about snooping for presents or something. naturally, i was really upset. i know he didn't mean anything by it. but when you get your hopes up for something like that, it's intense. 

he's a browns fan, i'm a steelers fan. that season, i knew my team was doing very poorly. when the two were playing each other, i sensed we were going to lose. he insisted we wouldn't. so we made a bet. if the steelers lost, he had to propose to me within a week. well, they lost.

a short time before christmas, we wanted to spend a night together alone and drink and just relax. since we both lived at home, our only choice was to get a hotel room. he proposed that night! the rest is history. i planned our wedding all by myself. we're still happily going!"

planning my wedding by myself was a big deal for me. i had to prove to myself and my family that i could do it. i found cheap invitations, DIY centerpieces, and didn't use real flowers among about fifty other things that help to cut the costs. during this process, i found that i really would enjoy a job as a wedding planner. there was dumb drama and annoying people but that day was awesome.

although we aren't religious, we had the ceremony at the church i attended when i was young. i was so afraid that i was going to trip because of the heels and the dress! 

our reception was at a place called the davis center, located in the rose gardens at mill creek park!

our first dance was to "chasing cars" by snow patrol. i really wanted "i will follow you into the dark" by deathcab or "as lovers go" by dashboard! (i swear my music taste isn't this bad) 

my second favorite part of the reception was this thing my sorority does. at wedding receptions, the bride and groom are in the middle of a circle made up of your sisters and they sing a song from our preference ceremony. it's really touching. after that we did my favorite cheer. DEE DEE DEE DELTA ZEE ZEE ZEE ZETA! sorry. it just comes out. 

joe loved shoving the cake in my face!

however he was super embarrassed to do the garter thing. i basically beamed my bouquet at the ceiling. that was a total fail.

as i think that i said before, we did our honeymoon in cleveland just to get away and relax. i took him to the ocean for his first time the summer prior to the wedding so we kind of got two!

seeing all the gifts and cards and support we got really overwhelmed me, i was so touched. i love everyone in my life!

trip to target!

i had a managerial accounting test on friday. part is online and part is written. i missed 7 questions in the online portion. i'm pretty disappointed about that. i second-guessed myself on some of them. and of course the right answers were the first ones i had. after that i headed to target to get a wedding card and gift card for tomorrow. i decided since i sucked at my exam, i'd do some retail therapy. i found that a lot of cute things i'd seen before in the jewelry department that i'd liked were on sale!