Real life

No posts lately means not much is going on around here or the fun of real life has crept in and I've been doing things like laundry and cleaning and dissertation and contract work. Ooh. But fun things have been swirling around in my head and so I thought I would share. On our house to-do list are Master Bedroom updates including a DIY headboard and complete half bath redo, which will be done in stages.

Here's what I've been thinking about for the headboard:

Lonny Magazine

Lonny Magazine

Lonny Magazine

I like the curved better than square. I've been looking at these for awhile but just can't decide on the fabric. Going for a mostly gray room with accents of yellow - I like the subtle headboards with neutral fabric but I also like the punch of color in the last picture. We'll see how this turns out!

The first thing on the half-bath list is a vanity/sink combo. I'm not so interested in buying pre-fab vanities from the local hardware store so I'm trying to convince Chip that we need to DIY a vanity!  These pictures give the general idea. Now to find the perfect (small) piece of furniture to turn into a wonderful vanity!

DIY vanity from Southern Exposure

Design*Sponge

 And on another random note - we're heading to the SPCA Saturday am to see if we can find a fourth family member! I'm super excited - we'll keep you updated! :)

Weddings

Today is our two month anniversary! :)  I know, I know. It seems silly but whatever - I know a couple that has celebrated their anniversary each month since they got married more than 20 years ago. Super cute.

Anyways, that's not what all of this post is about. Chip and I are heading to Wilmington, NC tomorrow for my good friend Melissa's wedding. I love weddings - I've had some of the most fun in my life at weddings. And there is something so spectacular about seeing people you care about get married. Almost nothing beats it in the world. So happy-almost-wedding-day Funke - I love you and I think Chris is awesome (even if he's a Patriot's fan). I'm so excited to be a part of this special with the both of you!!!

Busy busy week

Sorry we didn't have any posts last week but we were surprisingly busy. I worked on finishing two small projects during the week which took pretty much all week. I rushed to get the projects done because we had dinner guests Saturday evening. And in true Hodges/Shilling fashion, we also put a ton of time and effort into cleaning and preparing for dinner that night. So needless to say, it was a busy but fun week. Here's a recap:
Project 1: Photo wall - we saw a display in a furniture store (of all places) of multiple horizontal shelves on a wall with various pictures propped on the shelves. We have a huge living area, which includes a really long wall that has very little purpose. We thought, how perfect to cover it with shelves and pictures?  So thanks to Ikea, we put up two shelves a few weeks ago and purchased a few more picture frames to go on the shelves. This week I went through all of our pictures looking for ones we would be happy to have on the wall and that would be meaningful as well. It took longer than expected but turned out well (I think). We especially appreciate some great pictures taken by my brother and his fiance at the wedding.

Project 2: DIY striped curtains. I saw a few pictures on some blogs of plain curtains turned into much nicer curtains by adding ribbon stripes. This seemed a manageable project and so I went for it. We bought Ikea curtains (yes, Ikea is good for a lot of things if you can be a little creative with there stuff), and I decided on a ribbon color and went for it. I didn't have specific instructions so a lot of the week involved trial and error - regular iron on hemming tape doesn't work with ribbon and who knew you would need so many yards of ribbon and iron adhesive to get the curtains done. Anyways, I thought about diagramming how much driving around I did to find enough ribbon and iron on adhesive but thought it might bore you. Suffice it to say I'm familiar with a few other small suburbs of Houston that I never knew existed! But the curtains are done and they look a lot better than the plain white ones. For a first DIY experience I thought it went pretty well.

 Before and after - the curtains aren't that shiny but thanks to lots of rain and a not so great camera, the stripes look very shiny!

Dinner: We had Chip's boss and his wife over for dinner. I really like his wife and its nice to talk to another female in person! We served homemade pimento cheese, flounder with bread crumbs and sauce gribiche (awesome sauce somewhat like a tartar), gratin of asparagus, onions and mushrooms, and a chocolate tart with fresh whipped cream and raspberries. The first three recipes came from Frank Stitt's Southern Table and the last came from Donna Hay's Modern Classics. It turned out really well and I would recommend all of it - nothing was too challenging or time consuming. And Chip only had to make three trips to the grocery store for forgotten ingredients! :)  Oh, and I also made a chocolate souffle you can freeze earlier in the week (for dinner Saturday) but decided I wasn't sure it was right for the night - although it was pretty good. And how nice is it that you can have a chocolate souffle in the middle of the week by just taking it out of the freezer and putting in the oven for 40 minutes?  Great recipe from Cooking Light!

I'm trying to get to work on dissertation this week so there will be less fun stuff. But, we may be getting a new dog in the upcoming weeks so keep checking back! :)

Holy horseradish

Chip occasionally works from home and he did so yesterday. As he has not been feeling 100% this week, I have been more wifely and made his lunch several times. We'll see how long this lasts. Any how, his lunch of choice was a roast beef sandwich yesterday, as it was Monday. I bought a new horseradish sauce and put it on his sandwich Monday. He reported back that he couldn't really taste it. So yesterday I put a little (really, only a little) more on his sandwich and the report from the other room as I made my lunch was "Holy horseradish Batman." Amusing no less. I have had the horseradish and well, its just ok. My mom has a kind that is hands down better than what we have. (Here's where I complain about our local grocery story again). Unfortunately, the HEB (our local grocery store) is huge, but of the things I seem to need offers only two or three options and is usually out of at least one of them. Alas, this was the case with horseradish sauce. Not to be undone by the HEB and sub par horseradish sauce I decided maybe I could make my own. Whoa. The first recipe I come upon (on a blog) involves a technique very similar to one used to make aioli. Oh no. We and I mean we have not mastered aioli or anything requiring a technique used in aioli. Yes, all the websites say it takes time to master this and yes we have only tried it once (it uses a whole bunch of expensive olive oil and so we have not decided to waste more large quantities of olive oil). Oh well, it appears that horseradish root is uncommon as well. So it looks like we'll be eating sub par horseradish sauce for awhile. (Except that I did find other recipes that do not involve the above challenging technique.) I'll update if we do decide to make horseradish sauce and when we do master aioli - if we ever try again!

And just for fun - we'll be painting this room (picture from when previous owner lived here - although same bright yellow still there) this weekend!

Have a great weekend!

Money matters

We did a little budget review this weekend and well, little projects will be about all anyone sees for awhile around here. However, I have applied to too many jobs to count now and hopefully something will come around soon. In the meantime, doing a little contracting work (sounds way too fancy), and have a few ideas up my sleeve to help the job outlook progress. Wish me luck!

In the meantime, I could seriously look at blogs all day long. I am prone to exaggeration at times but this is not one of those times. I found a really fabulous site today while reading blogs: Rollip.com. On Rollip, you can pretty much customize any photo you own in any way possible - I used a few of our engagement pictures to see how it worked and we will most definitely be using this to create some great wall art. (A little side about the site - you have to buy 15 credits to start playing around with the images but its only $2.99 and you can try out as many images in as many ways without spending any of your credits until you're ready!).

Cooking light

This past weekend I went through two notebooks of printed recipes I've acquired over the last 7 or so years. Most of the two notebooks are comprised of recipes from Cooking Light and Everyday Food. Reviewing these renewed my interest in Cooking Light - in my post college days I cooked quite a bit from Cooking Light. I wanted a few easy, quick recipes this week and so I made a Prosciutto and Fontina Stromboli last night. I substituted fontina b/c gruyere is out of control expensive. Simple and good. Definitely not fancy but a nice combination of some yummy ingredients and a quick dinner during the week.  As our local grocery store seems to always be out of at least one of my grocery list items, I had to substitute the french bread dough with pizza dough but turned out well! I had cucumber and tomatoes on hand from a local farm so I made a cucumber-tomato salad as a side.

Here's the recipe:

Prosciutto and Gruyere Strombolis
courtesy Cooking Light
1 (11-oz) can refrigerated French bread dough
2 oz. thinly sliced prosciutto
1 cup trimmed arugula
1/2 c. (2 ounces) shredded Gruyere cheese
1/4 c. chopped fresh parsley
Unroll dough onto a baking sheet; pat into a 14×11 inch rectangle (the kind I got didn’t unroll, so I precut the dough into quarters and rolled it out as thinly as I could with a rolling pin). Cut dough into quarters to form 4 (7 x 5.5 inch) rectangles. Top each rectangle with 1/2 oz. prosciutto, 1/4 c. arugula, 2 tbsp. cheese, and 1 tablespoon parsley. Beginning at the short side of each rectangle, roll up the dough, jelly roll fashion; pinch seam to seal (do not seal end of rolls). Arrange rolls 4 inches apart on a baking sheet. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes or until rolls are slightly browned. Serve warm.

Makes 4 servings. Each serving has: 275 cal, 8.5 g fat, 14 g pro, 24 mg chol, 158 mg calc, 754 mg sod, 1.5 g fiber, 2.3 mg iron, 34.4 g carb, 6 WW points.