Redecorating

Since moving 3 months ago, I have been in a slow process of redecorating. The sad part is, I only have 1 room to redecorate. And it's taking... Three... Months. Ugh.
The Before & After pictures even now are pretty great. Just painting the walls was a pretty drastic change. But I'm not done, and I refuse to create official "Before & Afters" until I've finished everything. But everyone has already seen this, so who cares...
I wanted some really funky, bright, and unique artwork for the walls. This wall was especially in need if this because it's so dark. I know I picked a really dark color, but it's all part of the plan, I swear!
I still need to paint one or two more pictures, hang some other things I picked up, buy (or make!) some curtains, and hang a couple of small shelves. THEN... I can make official Before & Afters. Maybe in like... 3 more months. :)

Ribbon box

This morning while watching Rachel Ray, I was put in a crafty mood. There's been something I've been wanting to make for awhile, but for one reason or another just haven't done it. I saw some reallyyyyy cute ideas for making this particular project in a Martha Stewart magazine at my mom's a few weeks ago and again thought, "why haven't I made this yet?!" Well Martha, enough is enough! Today, my ribbon box is born.
I've bought a few spools of ribbon here and there at work. Partially because it's cute, but mostly because it's on sale :) I bought it not having a real plan for it, but knowing I would find a use for it somewhere. And I have, here and there on little things. And anyways, who doesn't need a good stock of ribbon around? It's good to have! It's also good to have an organized (and cute!) way to store it and access it.

Here's how you do it.

Start out with a shoe box. Any size will do.
In the front of the box, cut small slits. The width of the slits depends on the size ribbon you plan on putting in your box. You can also try round holes using metal eyelets. I'd like to try this idea next, but I don't have any eyelets, and I'm not sure how I feel about squishing my ribbon when I pull it through the hole.

Spray paint your box!
I started with a satin brown, until about 3/4 of the way through when I ran out. I then had to switch to a gloss brown, which I actually ended up liking a lot more than the satin.

Here's my box, upside down. I think this picture was taken when it was still the satin brown...

I wanted a little more color on my box. I thought about writing "Ribbon" in nice bold letters across the lid of the box (how original, right?) but I didn't have any paint brushes. So I chose splatter paint instead :) We have about 5 or 6 little cans of different colored paint in the garage that we used on a short-lived splatter paint experiment a few months back. I don't think it's any surprise as to what color I chose...
I used a straw to fling my paint onto the box. Worked out just as good as a brush if you ask me.

Once the box is dry, attach a wooden dowel (I stole one out of my cake supplies) across the inside of the box. You don't want it stuck in there permanently, so don't glue it or anything... you'll need to be able to take it out when you switch out your ribbons later. As it turns out, the wooden dowel I used was exactly the width of the shoe box I was using, with just a tight enough fit to keep the dowel in place.


Tada! Just in time for Christmas gift wrapping! Time to stock up on my ribbon supply.
Working in a craft store is really getting the best of me.

Cake Pops!

I've been in the mood to make cake balls (aka KURFs) lately, and decided to switch things up a bit and try some "cake pops". They're just cake balls with a lolly pop stick stuck in them. They're much cuter to package up to give away as gifts, and you don't get a flat bottom from sitting while drying. Lovely! But even more exciting, I was finally able to use all of my new goodies that my mom brought back from the Miller farm in Ohio. The Miller farm is an Amish farm near my grandma's house that I love love LOVE going to. Anyways, here's what my mom brought back for me...
Yay! I love them :)
72 cents? Yes please!

So I didn't have a real plan on how I was going to decorate. I really just wanted to plan with sprinkles :) So here's what I ended up with...
A little bit of everything. We've got some fall, some christmas, even some patriotic.


I love the silver & gold balls in the front. I saw these a few years ago at the Miller farm with my mom, and have been wanting to get my hands on them ever since I started this whole baking nonsense. I FINALLY HAVE THEM! :) I told myself I wouldn't use them until Christmas, but I could resist today, I had to try them out... just on a couple :)


I made a bunch of pink ones and packaged them up. I have a hair appointment tomorrow and Shannon (she cuts my hair) is having a little girl in just a few weeks! What better way to celebrate than with some cute pink cake pops?
Mmmm. I'm going to try really hard not to eat all of these today, but I make no guarantees :)

Happy Halloween!

I'm trying to sit here and think about what has been going on the past week, and I honestly can't remember. I had to look through pictures on my camera to figure it out. How sad!
Last weekend, Jeff had plans to go home to his parents. I'm not a big fan of staying home alone, and I didn't have to work until 4:00 on Sunday, so I figured it was a good excuse for me to get to spend the weekend in Titusville. I stayed with my mom for the weekend, and went to dinner at my dad's on Saturday. Sunday was Uncle Roger's funeral, and immediately after that I had to go to work. I was an hour and a half late, and really didn't feel like being there at all to be honest. But that's life.
Jeff had a 6 day "mini vacation" from work. Monday he drove to Miami to pick up his new birthday present that he bought himself.
A 2006 Yamaha Midnight Warrior. I'm in love.
On Tuesday, Jeff turned a quarter of a century old! :) I had to work until 3 that day (was NOT excited about that, but again... life). I took him to Mezza Luna for dinner. Of course we rode the bike there :) Then we went out for ice cream afterwards. We've been really good about not eating out lately, which is great, but it was nice to go out for a change.
Wednesday was the 2nd attempt for the Ares launch. We got to the beach at 8:00, only to have the launch pushed back again and again and again. Jeff forced me to try surfing again while we waited, which I vowed I would never ever ever try again after I almost drowned the first time. But the waveswere teeny tiny... the kind you can walk through without getting knocked over. I like those :) Anyways, I managed to stand up. Twice!
There goes Ares behind me!
Let's ignore the fact that I've gained a good 10 pounds in the past year, shall we? It's so easy to put it on, and so hard to take it off. Sigh.
Also, if you notice... I look naked in these pictures. My poor bathing suit has faded so badly, you can hardly tell it's there anymore. I knew it was bad, but jeez. Needless to say, I bought I new bathing suit this morning.

Later, we went out on the boat (it's finally fixed, yay yay yay!!!) for some much needed wakeboarding and over to Squidlips for an early dinner and drinks.

Our tv in the living room is dead. Jeff ordered a new bulb that will be here sometime mid-late next week. In the meantime, we have been forced to enjoy each others company! Eeeek! :) It's a good thing though, really. We actually sat at the table and ate dinner last night. We eat dinner in front of the tv every night, and it was actually really nice to each without it for once. Hopefully we'll make a habit of doing it more often, whether our tv is working or not. I also got bored and made 7 layer bean dip. Yum! I worked on my scarf that I'm crocheting, and we even cleaned up the garage this morning. Jeff is working on his list of projects, and I'm enjoying the weather in the backyard while I blog. I'm about to go tear into that bean dip, and eventually we'll make our way out for some wakeboarding. I'm kind of glad we'll be without the tv for the next few days.... DVR will be recording all my shows in the meantime anyways, I can catch up later :)

Happy Halloween!

wedding cake success

I'm proud to say that I've completed my first wedding cake! :)
Making my first wedding cake was a learning experience, to say the least. It took a lot more time and work than I had originally anticipated. A lot. It didn't help that I was called into work for a 9 hour shift on Thursday, ruining my plans of baking all the cakes that day. Everything ended up being pushed to Friday... all of the baking, assembling, covering, and decorating in one day. I was sure I would be done by the time Jeff got home from work on Friday (around 6:00)... I stayed up until close to midnight working on the cake and woke up at 5 a.m. the next morning for some last minute finishing touches and loading up the cake to be in New Smyrna at 9 a.m. It was so much work, but so worth it in the end, and I can't wait to make my next wedding cake.


On a side note... I have lots of new fun things in the kitchen that I'm loving.


This little beauty is our new island from Ikea. It was inexpensive, and perfect for what I need it for. It's on wheels, so I can roll it to where I need it and move it against the wall under the window when I'm not using it. The drawers open from both sides, which I love love love. All that's left is to find 4 cute baskets to put on the shelves underneath to hold kitchen goodies :)

I snagged these little babies from work on clearance for 50 cents a piece. Killer! I also grabbed a set of pink measuring cups. Adorable :)
I also picked up a couple new cake pans (needed them for the wedding cake) - a 14 inch and a 12 inch. Not sure how often I'll get to use them, but they are great to have regardless.
Tomorrow I'm going to Titusville, where I'll be picking up all sorts of baking goodies that my mom picked up for me on her recent trip to Ohio with my Grandma. I can't wait!

The weekend before last I made a cake for my friend Bethany's baby shower. The cake was made to match the bumble bee themed invitation and I loved the way it turned out! I did a yellow & white bee cake for mother's day earlier this year, and was so happy to get to try out another version of it.

The more toys you have, the greater your chances of having to spend your weekend fixing one that broke

Saturday's wakeboarding adventure was relatively normal. Except for the cops that were pulling over anyone who looked like they were having too much fun... they of course deserved a ticket for something, right? They made me nervous, and I didn't like driving the boat right in front of them while Jeff was wakeboarding because I'm really good at not staying in the channel, and God knows I can't keep track of where all those manatee zones start and end.
At some point during the day, Jeff made a comment about the steering feeling stiff... or loose.... or something :) Obviously, I shrugged it off, thought nothing of it, and went along my merry, tanning way.

We came back home for a couple of hours, and eventually went back out for more wakeboarding. We even decided we would let Naish have a little fun and let him come along with us. Jeff let me go first. What he doesn't know is that he really didn't have a choice anyways... the sun was going down soon, and there was no way I was going to wait another 15 minutes and get into that black, dirty water at sunset, because, in my mind, that's when all the hungry alligators come out and roam the river looking for small, defenseless girls bobbing around in the water, ignorant of the 26 gators swimming not 2 feet underneath them, waiting to take a bite. NO THANKS! So I went first... I'm sitting there, holding the rope, ignorantly bobbing in the water waiting for Jeff to go when I feel a bubble come up underneath me. Not a little bubble... a 3 foot wide there's-an-animal-underneath-you bubble. This is when I yelled to Jeff, "Okay I'm ready!" He was fiddling with something... something not nearly as important as his girlfriend who was about to become dinner to the swamp monster. Then there was another bubble. And another. Followed by about 4 massive ones, which at this point I just knew was this animal opening up its gaping jaws ready to take a bite out of me... which would have been tragic considering I was wearing my brand new pink life jacket that Jeff had just picked out for me earlier that day, which of course matched my pink bathing suit, and my pink board... a board that I had already figured out I would be using as a weapon against swamp monster attacks. What a waste of perfectly good pink attire. Anyways... so at this point I'm screaming, literally screaming something along the lines of, "JEFF! I'm ready... I said I'M READY! Go! JEFFFFF there's something underneath me GO! Go Go Go." And then all I can think is... I better calm down, because when that boat starts moving and I'm still freaking out, I'm going to fall right over and become dinner. So I wakeboarded for awhile... longer than I really wanted to at that point because I knew that letting go meant bobbing the water waiting for the boat to come back to me and I really wasn't looking forward to that. But my legs were tired, and the sun was going down, so I called it quits. And so did the boat. Did it circle around to me? No. It didn't. Jeff threw his hands up in the air and yelled something about the steering going out. Great. I swam as fast as my little legs would let me, making sure to splash and make lots of noise along the way. Swamp monsters are afraid of splashing.

I made it safely back to the boat. But now we had no steering, and we had to get home somehow. You know those little emergency paddles that are stored in the boat, in case your engine dies or you... oh I don't know, lose steering? Well ours got to make it's debut! But we didn't paddle... scratch that, Jeff didn't paddle... I was never a factor in this paddling equation, okay? Never. Instead, we slowly made our way back across the swamp monster infested river with Jeff sitting on the back using the paddle as a rudder and steering us home. And I must admit, he did a pretty darn good job. I was impressed. Somewhere along the way home, Jeff made fun of me for "always freaking out" when there's a "manatee" (SWAMP MONSTER!) near me in the water. It's not the fact that there's a harmless manatee probably 6 inches under my rear end, it's the fact that there's SOMETHING there in this dirty, black water where I can't see anything 3 inches below the surface, something that I can't see and don't know what's it doing or where it's going. It's like having to walk down the hallway at night when it's pitch black, and you start to panic a little bit because you can't see anything. Is there a serial killer standing 2 inches in front of your face waiting to kidnap you? Probably not. But the fact that there COULD be and you wouldn't know it until you ran into him is the scary part.

We made it home, all limbs still attached and all pink life jackets still intact. All day Sunday was devoted to this...
Working on the boat! Booooooo. And Jeff's newest invention... the LED coat hanger...
It was a completely necessary and ingenious invention, and the only way we were able to get that stupid cable through that stupid pipe. Jeff is well on his way to having a fully operational boat again... or at least one you can steer :)