Parmesan Ranch Chicken

Winner winner, chicken dinner. I haven't posted a recipe in a while and I have so many yummy ones in the queue. Y'all...today's recipe will be a staple in our house for many years to come. It's one of those meals you can't help but to smile while eating and think "wow, I am a good cook"...yet it takes about 2 seconds to prepare. I have had my fair share of chicken- baked, fried, grilled- but this one takes the cake. 

Ingredients

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (uncooked)

3/4 cup corn flakes
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese (I used the shaker kind but shredded will work)
1 packet dry ranch dressing  mix
Olive oil spray

1.Crush up the cornflakes and mix in the Parmesan cheese and ranch mix.

2. Spray each chicken breast with olive oil spray (healthier than dipping in butter) and coat with the corn flakes mixture

3. Lay flat on a greased or foiled baking dish

4. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes

Last Fling Before The Ring

This weekend I hosted 13 ladies at my casa to celebrate our girlfriend Maggie's 'Last Fling Before the Ring'. Maggie is getting married in Mexico in a little over 2 months (okay I have a daily countdown going!) and Jon and I are both in the wedding. Ole!

I mean how gorgeous is this bride?!

The day consisted of games, a lingerie shower, girlie primping, dinner on the lake, a limo, Capitol City Comedy Club (where the comedian brought Maggie up on stage and asked her if she wanted to make out!) and 6th street. The past 2 weekends I've set records of staying up late since graduating college. And ya know when you get married, you don't really have girl sleepovers so it was fun!

I will let the pictures do the talking...

(yes there were creepy old men wanting to take pictures with us at dinner haha)

Yesterday was spent in total relaxation...after church we dozed on the couch, watched the Olympics, dozed some more, ate takeout...it was perfect! And if you're interested, here is the link to my bachelorette party :-)

Latterly

1. Church clothes

2. I love being able to wear shorts to work! Especially in the Texas heat

3. More Sunday's best...Jon loved my "jest" (jean vest)

4. $5 shoes from Target! Had to get 2

 1. I am an official blogger now...got me a bubble necklace

2. Loving my new stache necklace from Brittany

 1. Mr. Independent

2. Snaggletooth wanted to go to the dentist with us

3. "Come on dad, I am too old for this!"

 1. A face off for his "b"

2. Mornings at the Hart house

3. Ernie is excited for the bachelorette party this weekend (so excited his teeth got stuck)

 1. I should have been a teacher...laminated this sign for our recycle bin

2. Our housewarming gift from my grandparents

3. The guestroom is finished!

 1. Jon in my 82 year old grandpa's corvette

2. My new laptop!! It is the Macbook Air of PCs baby

3. We love checking each other for lice so Jon bought these online haha

1. Total blog husband...love him!

2. Dessert shots at PF Changs

3. Yes he subscribes to Paddle Palace magazine

4. I love being married to an engineer...comes in handy at Home Depot!

And some randoms for ya...

• This weekend I am hosting a bachelorette party at our house for a wedding we are both in in October! In Mexico :-). I couldn't be more excited
• We've had a lot of slow walkers and drive bys since House Hunters aired and I had the first person recognize me (and Ernie!)
• Jon's dad passed away 3 years ago and we are having his car shipped down here full of his belongings. I never got to meet him so I am excited to get to know him through pictures and momentos. It will arrive Tuesday. I will definitely be sharing more about this later, the mustang is a project car for Jon.
• I've been sleep walking a lot lately...and talking of course but that's not new
• Jon's latest nickname for me is shillelagh (sha-lay-lee) which is an Irish walking stick. I have no clue where he comes up with this stuff?! It's been shillelagh butt and smoochles
• Thank you for all the Facebook friend requests but I do keep my personal page for my friends "in real life" I hope yall understand! :)
• Yesterday afternoon my team had an offsite team building event at the lake. One coworker has a boat lease and we cruised Lake Austin, floated in the water and ate at Abel's on the Lake. Stuff like this keeps me sane. I love my city!

& leaving you with a pretty picture...my favorite part of our house

Home Tour Video

I was kinda bummed at how little they showed our house after we had moved in on the show. We spent so much time talking about the chevron wall during filming yet they barely showed it (I know some of you spotted it though!). We've actually done a lot since they filmed out house and I thought it would be fun to do a little house tour. I will apologize up front about my Blair Witch filming skills but I shot this with my FlipCam while walking and throwing the ball for Ernie. 

Hart Home Tour July 2012 from Ruthie Hart on Vimeo.

Here is the link to the video on YouTube

Our paint colors
Entry way and dining room- Behr Granite Boulder
Chevron and Jon's office- Behr Squirrel
Our bedroom- Behr Windwood Spring
Family room- Behr Southern Breeze
Front room/craft room- Behr April Mist
Kitchen- Behr Sea Kelp
Powder room- Color Place Diving Dolphin Gray
Guest room- Color Place...can't remember the name but it is a gray
 
Here are some links to different house projects we've done. Please email me or comment if you have any house/project questions (and be sure your comment has the email address attached, I'm bummed I can't respond to comments that don't have an email address)

Our house to do list
Chevron wall how to *guest post by Jon
Desk makeover
Silhouette canvas tutorial
No sew bunting tutorial


***One more thing, if anyone is interested in being on the show House Hunters, please let me know! I am happy to get you in contact with our producer, who is looking for people!

Thanks for watching!

6 month bump

Two weeks ago I got the pleasure of photographing my sister and her 6.5 month baby bump. My sweet little niece will be arriving the middle of October (possibly on my birthday on the 14^th!) and we are ecstatic to meet her. She will be the first grandchild and great grandchild on both sides and is already spoiled rotten in pink. I had lots of fun playing around with my camera and look forward to taking some of her and her hubby in a few weeks. And of course when her baby girl arrives!

Her intials

Whirlwind of a weekend

Hi friends, family and new followers, it is good to see you :). Thank you to everyone who tuned in to our House Hunters episode on Friday night, all I can say is wow! At one point, I looked around my living room and thought to myself, 'how did I get so lucky to have all these people in my life'. The texts, emails, tweets, Facebook and blog comments...we really felt the love! 

It was incredibly surreal seeing myself and Jon on TV. Watching it live, it didn't seem real and it flew by. We had people over until after 1am (and stayed up til 3 with my sister, record for us!) and it was on in the background throughout the night. It wasn't until late Saturday night Jon and I sat down and watched it again. I must say...Ernie stole the show. Was he not the cutest thing?

 1. Waiting on his friends to comeover

2. Sweet bloggers came to cheer me on

3. My sweet hubby

1. Getting swabbed for Be The Match (my girlfriend works there and swabbed almost all of our guests!)

2. Lots of screen shots but this is my favorite...sleeping Chunky

3. Hey I am on TV!

They showcased my blog quite a bit on the show (and disclaimer...they made me say "this would look great on my blog" a LOT! Cheesy yes but we had nothing to do with editing haha) and I wasn't sure what that would do for my blog. Like I said, the whole thing was surreal and people kept saying, check your blog stats! I love this picture Brittany caught of me looking at my blog. I am excited for what's to come for this little blog of mine!

I didn't have my camera but it was passed around during the night and it was fun looking through pictures people took. 

My 2 favorite pictures of the night

It was fun getting comments from people who happened to watch the show and search my blog. I hope you guys stick around :). I had a lot of questions about the show (and about my obsession with fixtures haha) so I thought I'd write a little about our experience...

• Our producer and crew made us feel so comfortable in front of the camera!! It was never awkward or weird. I can see it being weird to film in front of an audience but we weren't having to do any dramatic acting. Our realtor also kicked butt, if you are in Austin and looking for a realtor, you'd be silly not to use Johnny Henion from Outlaw Real Estate.
• I am not crazy. Lol! I mean guys come on, who doesn't want all their fixtures to match. They played up that story a LOT. Heck we bought the house with 3 different fixtures in the bathrooms and I am doing just fine with it. Funny thing is they filmed a lot about Jon hating pedestal sinks and it never made it to the show!
• We did not see the episode before it aired, nor had any idea what the story line would be
• Jon played competitive ping pong at Baylor in college and now plays at the Austin Table Tennis Club 
• The timing didn't work out for us to film at our old house so we filmed a lot at my parents house. If you want to see a video from our old house, check out this post.
• I wish they would have shown more of our house AFTER we moved in. Since they've filmed, we have done a LOT to the house. I am thinking of doing a video tour? Would you guys like that?
• I work in marketing for a software company here in Austin. It was kind of weird how they cut that off?
• Mine and Jon's faces are on our cornhole boards :-)
• When they filmed us in the car in Belterra, our check engine light had just turned on and Jon was paranoid it would be shown on the show. And yep, it did. Don't worry we got an oil change!
• Speaking of Belterra, it is about 45 minutes from Steiner Ranch to give you an idea of how far it was. It is kind of in the middle of nowhere. It would be an hour plus commute to work for me.
• The 90's comment...hahahahahahah

I am happy to answer any more questions you have about our experience! Now we wanna get on yard crashers for our backyard and room crashers for our media room! 

The best part of the whole experience was sharing it with YOU. Thank you for the love, support and being so dang excited for us! We love you!