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! :)