Home Improvements - Able to walk in the guest bedroom again

I can't believe I'm about to admit this to everyone... but our guest bedroom was AWFUL... seriously... you could open the door, but couldn't really walk past there.

We had a fair warning on the door...
This room has been the dumping ground for just about everything... don't believe me...

On my last AWS day, I started to tackle this beast of a room... and lucky for me Chad began to help. We ended up with about 6 garbage bags of clothes to donate.
And made other piles of 'like' items

After that we neatly put some stuff back in the room and other stuff when to the basement. The room is by NO means complete. I'd like to make this into a very pretty guest bedroom for all the guests we have (haha... more like the drunk-os spending the night.) But this major clean up/de-cluttering/getting rid of made this room so much more manageable. Want to see the after pictures?

How much better is it now? Like almost a million?? Stay tuned for more improvements to this room... oh one more thing about cleaning out this room... we found things we thought we had lost. I know for me, I found a brown cardigan I had looked every where for... and some tweezers I was wondering where they ended up... I felt so happy to get this started!!

Home Inprovements - Photographs

Down the front hallway I've always thought would be our photo collage wall... and we've finally started it. Awhile back I went through all the pictures I had on my computer and created a 'printable' folder. I waited patiently for Snapfish to run a special and finally they had one and I ordered away.

When we got married almost 2 years ago, we got some picture frames... that have sat in a room... gathering dust (go figure). When I got the pictures in the mail (I printed about 111 pictures) I pulled out the frames and Chad and I went through and picked our favorites. We didn't get all of our favorites up on the wall yet, but it's a start.

As I did with the living room wall I set all the frames out on the floor and picked the arrangement I liked best. But when we put it up on the wall it all changed (stupid intake vent...) but I liked the set up we came up with.

The tall frame has pictures of just Chad and me... mostly ones we took ourselves. The frame to the left of that is all of our pets. The frame directly to the right is just random pictures. (what I've found with those collage frames is finding enough pictures that are taken the "correct" way (horizontal or vertical... most of our pictures are taken horizontal.) The small frame was taken on our anniversary last year when we went to the ballgame. We brought our friend Sam and Liz - so we have a picture of Chad and Sam, Me and Liz and Chad and I. I'm excited to watch these pictures grow and grow.

Home Improvements - Living Room Wall

We added something else to our living room set up. As you may recall we have already hung art of two of our walls. I had some items to hang on our third wall (we still have one blank wall, but we'll figure that out at some point...)

I got the items out that I wanted to hang on that wall and played around with them on the floor. I first came up with this arrangement.
But I didn't like that it was horizontal, horizontal, vertical, vertical. So I moved it around and got to this, which I liked a lot.
The next step was getting someone manly to help me hang them up on the wall... this is where my awesome husband steps in. And voila - it looks awesome

And here's a close up/explanation of what's on the wall

This is a photo print I bought from an arts and crafts fair in Soulard earlier this summer.
Next is this lovely painting I bought from the same guy I got the photo print from... I really enjoyed a lot of his work.
All of the shelves we registered for when we got married and they have been sitting in the basement gathering dust. Finally got them on the walls!! On this shelf you can see above in a silver piggy bank that came from The Container Store. Below you can see what sits on the top... A Golem and The Holy Infant - both were purchased in Prague.
I bought this print while I was in New Orleans. I got it at a gift shop, so it's nothing special. I frame this print and the print above myself. I bought the frames from Hobby Lobby during a 50% off sale - when you shop at hobby lobby you should always wait for a sale, everything will go on sale about once a month and it's usually sales like this 50% off.
Above that on the shelf is another New Orleans find. It's a 3-legged pig that I got at a VooDoo shop... it's suppose to bring good luck.
On the big shelf I have some salt and pepper shakers. On one side it says 'before' and depicts a pretty couple on their wedding day. And when you flip them to the 'after' side you get an unkempt couple (sorry this picture is so dark!!)
And finally above that is another canvas - this one was painted by yours truly. It was my first try at oil painting, and while I'm not completely sure I was doing it correctly, I love how it turned out.
I'm hoping to continue to add to these shelves... maybe more art as well, but right now I'm really digging the flow of the wall. One of my ideas is whenever I go on vacation I'll pick up a small figurine like the ones from Prague and New Orleans... For all of my work trips I get a magnet that I keep at work.

Home Improvements - End of Hallway

I have envisioned the end of the hallway for awhile now. It seems like I can work well decorating small areas, but when I want to do a whole room it starts to get overwhelming... anywho, when the mirror finally got hung up. I was ready to finish that area up.

What I was picturing in my head was this set up
From far:
And close up
And I do like the above pictures... it just wasn't practical in our house. We play fetch with Rowdy and throw his toy down this hallway... and as you can see we have hardwood which he tends to slide on when he's going to quickly... so this was just too much of a disaster waiting to happen. So we decided this set up.

From far (can you spot the kitty?)
And close up
This is much better, b/c everything will be more stable. Plus it leaves the bottom of the table open, which the cats love to sit on.

Contents of the table:

• That vase I think I got from my mom (or maybe accidentally took from her??) I bought that fake plant from Hobby Lobby during a 50% off sale (cost me about $5 I think) I love that the orange in the plant and the orange in the vase pop on the purple walls. (Slightly off topic but Chad refuses to have fake flowers in the house... this was me testing the waters with a fake plant that was not flowers... and turns out he likes it - score!!)
• That rock is from Africa. I friend of ours went to Africa on a mission trip last year and I told him to bring us a rock back... and he did. He also got us a very cool wedding present too)
• The picture is of me and Chad dancing at a wedding.
• And last but certainly not least is a box that my mom gave us at our engagement dinner. It's one of our favorite items. It says 'The Story of Us' on it... we have some random things inside it... it's a handmade box and to put it bluntly it's awesome

So what do you think?

The Competition - Week 1

We've completed an entire week and thankfully both of our numbers actually went down... yay!!

As a reminder here's where we started:

Chad: 210
Jenn: 178

After week 1:

Chad: 208.5
Jenn: 177

And percentage of weight lost:

Chad: 0.71%
Jenn: 0.56%

Which means Chad has won this week... but it's close... I'm just happy our numbers went down.

Oreo Cheesecake Bites

Last Monday we had a food day at work for a couple of birthdays. I thought it was a perfect time to try out a new recipe. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of StumpleUpon... but you can put in your interests and hit a button and it will take you to a random website. I collect a lot of tasty recipes this way that I bookmark away to bring out at a later date. So I went through all my saved recipes and decided to make these.

So first you line the cupcake pans with liners
And then you add a whole oreo to the bottom (that's right!! these have a whole Oreo as crust!!)
Then you work on the ingredients. I've never made cheesecake before - so once I realized that the cream cheese needed to be at room temperature (like it clearly states in the directions...) we were good to go.
Then you add in all those other ingredients and mix... and when you're arm gets tired b/c the standup mixer is just sucking all the cream cheese into my mixer thing and you have to use your hand-held mixer instead and your arm gets really tired you call in the hubby reinforcements.
Don't forget your pinch of salt
Then you add in some chopped up Oreos (although you can't quite seem them here)
Then you fill up your pans - nearly all the way up
Half full
All the way
And then you bake for about 22 minutes and get these lovely things
As Rachel Ray says... Yum-O!!!
The recipe says it makes 30... I was able to make 33 and then I ran out of Oreos, so I baked an additional 3 without crust just to see how that would go. I probably had enough left in the bowl to make another 1... but I let Chad lick the bowl.

The taste kinda like cookies and cream... very yummy. People at work liked them and since we're trying to lose weight Chad took the rest of them to work with him on his first day back last Friday... this is a keeper

Here's the full recipe:
42 Oreos (~1 package), 30 left whole, and 12 coarsely chopped
2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
Pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners or grease well with non-stick baking spray. Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each cup.

2. With an electric mixer on medium high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually add sugar, and beat until combined. Beat in vanilla.

3. Drizzle in eggs, a bit at a time, beating to combine and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies by hand.

4. Divide batter evenly among cookie-lined cups, filling each almost to the top. Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Refrigerate at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.

The Competition - Starting Stats

Well folks, the time has come for the official weigh in... you may have thought we wouldn't post our actual starting weights, but we are... both of us have agreed to put it out there for the world to see.

Starting Weight:

Chad: 210 lbs
Jenn: 178 lbs

And so the competition begins!!

Weight Loss Competition

Lately Chad and I have noticed just how much weight we have gained... we keep talking about doing something about it, but we haven't. I think our biggest problem is motivation and accountability... so we've decided to have a little competition. This will be a very friendly competition. We want to motivate and encourage each other to get back into the shape we want to be in.

So without further ado here are our official rules:

1. There will be a weekly weigh in every Monday evening.
2. Numbers will be compared based on percentage of weight lost. There will be two totals a weekly weight loss and total weight loss.
3. Every other week we will measure our midsection to see inches lost. This will not be a competition factor, but purely for informational purposes.
4. The winner each week can designate any one household chore or meal to be made.
5. Monthly winners (meaning every fourth week) will get a weekend of pampering or the equivalent.
   
6. As of now we will set a session one end date of 12 weeks.
7. Rules may be altered or added to as this competition progresses.
8. No leeway or exemptions will be granted.
9. We can weigh in early for a good reason (i.e. will be out of town on night of weigh in)

Join us back here Monday for us to get this competition going.

11/25

I picked up this book at Walmart when I bought My Sister's Keeper and Chasing Harry Winston. Sometimes I have good luck just picking up a random book and other times it doesn't work out so well. I did like Hope in a Jar better than Chasing Harry Winston, but it's still not a book I want to pass along. I enjoyed the going back and forth with characters and the past/present. It's a light, easy read and for the most part it kept me hooked... just not as "must read" as my Emily Giffin books.

PS I promise to be back later this week with more exciting home improvement items... be excited.

10/25

I saw this book at the store when I was buying My Sister's Keeper to read. It is by the same author who wrote The Devil Wears Prada. So I thought that I could enjoy it. Overall, I didn't really love this book. Toward the end I got more drawn into it. It's about 3 almost thirty friends in New York City.... and living in a more wealthy atmosphere. I had a really hard time connecting to the characters... they just felt distant and not relate-able what-so-ever to me... While I've been passing on a lot of these books I've read to my friends or mom... I will not be passing this book along.