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Just made this new blog button using picnik.com.  Very cool free photo editing website.

Gallery Wall

I adore our wedding pictures.  I think our photographer did such an awesome job.  They look like they belong in an art gallery, which is why I'm creating a gallery wall in our living room.  I've started collecting frames and printing pictures little by little.  This evening, my handy husband helped me hang what we have so far.  This is not a finished product, but I love it so much that I wanted to share it.  So here is the beginning of our gallery wall, with more pictures to come as it expands.

Welcome home, gift wrap!

Our home is overloaded with gift bags, tissue paper, bows and wrapping paper since the wedding.  I did some research on the web and found some beautiful "gift wrap stations" which I would love to have.  However, I do not have the space for that in our cozy apartment.  We do have an enormous basement that is not pretty finished, but is perfect for storage.  So I took an existing shelf and turned it into our own gift wrap organizational center.  It didn't take much: a few nails, hangers, and lots of time sorting and folding tissue paper.

Here is where we started

Bags sorted by size and occasion

Pants hanger holding tissue paper

bows and ribbon

So there you have it.  It's not ideal, it's not gorgeous, but it is organized and handy.  We finally have a place for all of our gift wrap.

Cucumbers: Fresh From the Garden

My green-thumbed mother recently gave us a load of cucumbers straight out of her garden.  I love love love cucumbers.  I could eat them plain all day, everyday.  This may not be so great for my stomach though, so I needed to think of a way to use them up before they get mushy.  So I went to my go-to site for recipes, Food.com, and searched for cucumber recipes.  What I got was a gaggle of recipes for cucumber salad.  Now, I like some cucumber salads, but not all cucumber salads.  I chose a recipe that I thought I could make using what I have on hand.  I started following the recipe and decided to change it up to fit our tastes.  My hubby is a pretty picky eater so I wanted to make sure he would like the final product.  Here is what I came up with and, if you ask me, it is gooood.

Ingredients:

3 medium sized cucumbers

4 Tablespoons your favorite vinegar (I used white wine)

2 Tablespoons mayo

1 teaspoon sugar

Celery salt to taste

Parsley to taste

Garlic Salt to taste or Regular Salt if you prefer

Pepper to taste

1.  Slice cucumbers very thin.  (I used the mandolin that we got for our wedding.  Easy. Quick. Handy.)

2. In a separate bowl (use one that has a lid), whisk together vinegar, mayo and sugar.

3.  Add seasonings to taste.  This is where you make the recipe your own.  If there is an herb or spice that you love, throw it in.  Just keep tasting until you think it is delicious.  I like celery salt and Hubs lives for garlic salt so I knew I had to add these two. 

4.  Add cucumbers, put on the lid, and shake up.

5.  Refrigerate until cold (at least 2 hours).

6. Enjoy!

She Was Running

I in no way aspire to be Forrest Gump.  I am never going to get up one day and just run for the fun of it.  I do not enjoy running.  But for some reason running seems to be my go-to workout.  I've tried many different things: aerobics, spinning, weight-lifting and yoga.  It's all great for a while, and I do really enjoy each type of exercise in some way, but I always go back to running.  I've given this some thought and I've come up with several reasons why this could be:

1. It's easy (in a non-complicated way).  I never have to worry if I'm going to trip over a step, using enough weight, or posing correctly.  All I have to do is run, which I've been doing since I was just a tot.

2.  It's free.  I don't need a membership or any special equipment.  I am lucky enough to have a sweet friend who just gave me her clothes collector treadmill.  Even before I had the treadmill, all I had to do was go outside.

3.  It provides variety.  There is such a range of goals I can set for myself: Today I want to run x minutes.  I'm going to run for x miles today.  I want to reach x speed at x incline today.

4. It's private.  Now I do enjoy getting together with a good friend for some quality time, but if I want a serious workout it helps when I can run in MY basement, in MY outfit of choice, and listen to MY music.  I don't have to worry about other people's opinions of my workout.  The music part is especially dear to my heart because for some reason it seems that everyone LOVES to put workouts to techno music.  NO. I do not like techno, especially not for working out.  Why? Because techno is the same, never-ending, four beats over and over.  Just when you think the song is going to end, it rises back up and starts again.  There are no words and it forces you to focus on the burn in your muscles and your inability to breathe.  Give me some Rhianna or Gaga any day.  Anything I know the words to so that I can focus on that and let my body do her thing.

5. It's iPhone friendly.  Anyone who knows me knows that I  LIVE by my iPhone.  In fact, I had a nightmare dream last night that I lost it, and I had no idea what to do with my day.  There are gobs of apps out there to support your running habit.  I just downloaded one called "Get Running."  It guides you on a nine week schedule from your couch to a 5k.  Not that I have plans to run a 5k, but I needed something that started out slow.  I had surgery about 3 months ago and my body has not been the same since.  I know I have to start from scratch and this app allows me to do it.   There is a nice British girl who guides you through each workout, "In 30 seconds you will run for 1 minute."  It's running for dummies.

I'm sure I could think of more reasons, but I think you get the point.  So while I do not enjoy running, it has its benefits that just keep sucking me back in.  Now I shall go shower off this post-workout "glow."  

Gourmet Gadgets

We had friends over for dinner last week so we could try out some of our new loot from the wedding.  The menu included:

*chips/pretzels with three types of dip (french onion, roasted garlic hummus, and pimento chip dip).

*flying saucers (sloppy joes with cheese made in the triangle sandwich maker)

* frozen peach champagne cocktail

* Nutter Butter Frozen Peanut Butter pie

It was delicious and so I'm going to share some of the recipes with you.

First the pimento chip dip.  It doesn't sound very good, but I love it and so did everyone else.  It is one of the recipes I got from my Aunt Lynn at my first bridal shower.

Ingredients:

8 oz. Cream Cheese

1 jar Pimento Cheese

1 Tbsp. Minced onion

1 Tbsp. Chopped Olives

1 Tsp. Olive Juice

Mix together and enjoy!

Next up we have the Nutter Butter Frozen Peanut Butter Pie.  I found this recipe on Food.com  Here.  It was delicious and cool on such a hot day!

Ingredients:

Crust

• 24 Nutter Butter sandwich cookies
• 5 tablespoons butter, melted

Filling

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1 (8 ounce) container Cool Whip, thawed, divided

1 To make crust*, crush the cookies in a zipper style plastic bag with a rolling pin, or in a food processor.  I used my new food processor and LOVED IT!

2 Mix cookie crumbs with butter.

3 Press into bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie plate.

4 Mix cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended.

5 Gently stir in 1 1/2 cups whipped topping.

6 Spoon into crust.

7 Freeze 4 hours or overnight until firm.

8 Let stand 1/2 hour or until pie can be cut.

9 Garnish with remaining whipped topping and additional cookies if desired.

10 Special extra: Just before serving, drizzle chocolate flavored syrup on plates.

11 *If desired, omit Nutter Butter cookie crust and use an oreo crust instead.

Yumm!

I have no pictures of the cocktail, but it was tasty enough that I'll share the recipe anyways.  I also found this recipe on food.com.  It is a Rachel Ray recipe and you can find it here  We decided to make this because we wanted to use our Magic Bullet.  However, after we made our first cocktail (a test run before the guests even arrived) the Magic Bullet wouldn't work anymore.  We were so disappointed!  I don't know if we're going to return it or what.  So we had to finish the cocktails in the blender (boring).  At least they still tasted good.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup sugar, to rim glasses

1 pint peach sorbet

2 (1 1/2 fluid ounce) shots triple sec, Grand Marnier or 2 Cointreau liqueur

750 ml chilledchampagne, 1/3 bottle or 750 ml sparkling wine, to fill blender 1/3 bottle

Blend and drink up!

A Place for Mail

Next to the desk, the area of our home that tends to be the most unorganized is our kitchen table.  This is due solely to accumulating piles of paperwork/mail.  I had these two hanging organizers in my old classroom and decided that instead of moving them to my new school, I would keep them for home.  I got them when I worked at Pier 1.  They were marked way down and by the time I added my employee discount I couldn't pass them up.  I had my lovely husband hang them on an empty wall in the kitchen next to the table.  Not sure if I love the location yet, but it seems to be working.  So I started sorting the paperwork into the six pockets provided by the organizers.  All was good and the table was clear of mail.

  However, while I knew and could remember what each pocket was for, hubs could not.  I pondered for a while how I could label the pockets in a neat and functional manner.  Fabric marker?... not neat enough.  Stick-on labels?... will eventually fall off.  That's when I stumbled across these Avery printable iron-on fabric transfers at Wal-Mart.  Perfect.

 I spent about an hour online searching for FREE printable customizeable labels.  I finally settled on pantry labels that I found on Better Homes and Gardens website.  I added my text (Aaron, Ali, Bills, Coupons, File, and Outgoing) and printed them off.  The Avery fabric transfers came with WONDERFUL printing and iron-on directions.  Make sure to follow them to a T.

Printed Labels

Cut around the labels

 

Iron on lables

Finished Product!

 So there it is!  There is now a place for each piece of mail that comes in or goes out of our home.