checking in with Pinterest!

If you're new here, you should know I LOVE Pinterest. I was mildly active before we bought our house, but now that we own a home and are deep into the routine of  married life, I find myself using it all the time! I refer to it for recipes the most, and I keep a running list of decor inspiration and fitness tips to keep me motivated! You can find my profile here or click the button to the left.

Here's what I'm pinning (and doing!) : 

I am pleading with Mark to let me repaint our main bathroom in this slate blue color (shown above and below). It's currently navy, which isn't far off, but we went wrong when we chose to use satin for the bathroom (according to recommendations). It's TOO shiny and a little too dark. Help me convince him!

These look SO good! My mouth waters just looking at them...

I've been dying to make my tiny laundry corner a little more functional, so I've been pinning lots of ideas for worksurfaces. Look for a blog post in the future if I ever get around to it!

We have explored 500+ options for our next backyard landscaping project. Right now I'm liking the below image, but the grass would be pebbles because grass isn't growing in the area we want to do this.

I've seen SO many people repin this and they look super yummy! I have a jar of Nutella in my pantry just begging to be turned into this...

I saw this picture and was like - YES - this is my style, to a T. Do you agree?

I made this baked cream cheese spaghetti last Sunday and it was pretty tasty!

I also had this chicken taco bowl recipe cooking in the crock pot all day Tuesday. It was really tasty, very similar to a chili I make in the fall, but I didn't serve it over rice because we didn't end up eating until about 9:45 that night! 

Love this print... 

...and this one too!

This California club pasta salad is DELICIOUS and perfectly light for summer. I didn't have avocados (oops) so I just put a tiny bit of ranch dressing in there, and it was SOOO GOOOOD. Seriously, this is going to become a staple recipe, which I don't currently have, other than desserts. :)

I'm still trying to come up with things to do for our trip to California in September. Santa Barbara is high on the list!

We've decided on pretty solid plans for our backyard, but now we just have to implement them! I'm thinking of doing a garden on one side of the house. I love this quaint one below! Looks manageable!

Happy pinning!

Five on Friday, 2014 vol. 5

-one-

I am trying to cook more so this week I made Turkey burgers from a recipe I found on Pinterest. They aren't just regular turkey burgers, though. They are turkey-spinach-feta burgers and the patties were only about 130 calories each! They were pretty good and husband approved!

-two-

Speaking of food, we have plans to meet Marks family for dinner tomorrow in McKinney. They have been raving about Mellow Mushroom so we are trying it out. It's an open air pizza place, so it has to be good, right? Have any of you tried it?

-three-

I've inundated you with my love for Pinterest so why not add it to the five on Friday lineup? Here are my top three favorite pins from this week:

This is one of the sweetest camera straps I have seen so far. I love it!

I had all the ingredients for these last weekend so I whipped some up when the girls visited me. Mark told me he ate 8 and Stacy said she had 5. They were gone by Sunday!

So simple. Love it!

-four-

My favorite times of year are Thanksgiving, 4th of July, and daylight savings. I am a summer-crazed Texan and I always have daylight savings in my calendar and look forward to it for about 3 months. It's coming up in a couple weeks and I can't wait!!! There is just something about having daylight until 8:30pm that makes me so happy!

-five- 

It's the time of year where things are slow and I'm looking for the next big thing to work towards. All I can think about right now is traveling! I have limited vacation time this year because I just switched jobs, so I need to spend my time wisely. We have talked about going to Europe and New York, but what about Park City, Utah, Banff National Park, or Mexico? I'm dying to go back to Kauai, too. Where are you guys going this year?

I'm linked up with Darci at the good life blog today for five on Friday. Happy weekend! ;)

New Year's Eve 2013

Welcome to 2014! 

Mark and I decided to host a semi-small New Year's Eve party this year at our house. It was the first 'big event' that we've had and I was super nervous about it! I didn't have the foresight to take the 31st off of work so we scrambled when I got home at 6pm to get everything ready. I might have said "oh good!" when my sister arrived early at 7:30, but all in all I was able to throw on my sparkly shirt just in time for the party to start. 

My sister Angela and her husband Chris.

We all know the food is the most important part, so here are a few shots...

I had these three refreshing juices on hand as well as some bubbly for the occasion, jazzed up with some sequins, of course! 

I've been saving wine corks for a long time and people have asked me what I was going to do with them. I found a great use for them to hold food labels, and I really like how they added to my theme!

I had s'mores ready for our fire pit outside, which was a success this time!

We had the A&M football game on for most of the party, which was perfect for keeping the guys occupied...

...while the rest of the crowd enjoyed talking or playing giant Jenga, provided by Kelly and her fiancé.

When the game was over, we started a fun game of celebrity! It's one of my favorite group games and always gets everyone involved!

It was neck and neck the whole way and we ended with a tie!

We turned on the TV right at 11:55 and counted down until midnight! There's me, skeptical and hesitant until it's EXACTLY midnight! haha

My cousins and their husbands joined us!

We shouldn't have given Courtney a device that makes noise...

This is a pretty candid photo, so I had to include it! I've known these boys since 6th grade!

This photo is horrible quality (thanks iPhone) but I HAD to share. Jimmy and Courtney traveled about 8 hours to be with us! (all the way from Arlington, which is only 50 miles...sarcasm is hard)

We had a fun night with friends, food, and fun and we count our first big event as a success! Can't wait to throw more of these parties in 2014!

Happy New Year!!!

Christmas 2013 : events

Now that I've shared my spoils, here's more of a peek into the days surrounding Christmas, and beyond:

We each had assignments for Christmas eve so Mark and I brought individually sized cheese balls and some crispy asparagus. The cheese balls proved hard to transport over 50 miles to Arlington, but they made it and were intact upon arrival!

Audrey got a play phone that closely resembled an iPhone for Christmas. Noah promptly pretended to 'take photos' of me with her 'phone'. Kids these days...

Sweet girl! They played a little Leap Frog bingo before dinner.

LOTS of gifts under that tree! Noah and Audrey had to practice patience and waited until after dinner to tear into all of those. It must have been TORTURE!!! ;)

Sweeeet baby.

Somehow, we managed to break the ancient Nintendo out....

...and quickly discovered that the Duck Hunt gun doesn't work with modern technology. The TV wouldn't pick it up!

We switched to Super Mario Brothers, which worked JUST fine! It was so funny reliving those memories!

On Christmas morning Mark and I got up and opened gifts with each other and Motley. She got a new beaver toy, some bones, and a pretty new necklace! Mark has complained all year about her obnoxious sparkly pink collar, so we traded it out for reflective orange and silver with a bone motif and a blue flower. I think it's lovely!

I managed to skip over all of Christmas day and Thursday, but it was a great time spent with Mark's family and then shopping and friend time on Thursday!

I went early Friday to the eye doctor to hear the fate of my eyes...I started having trouble with my contacts back in April and after a misdiagnosis from the Target doctor (I had no insurance at the time), I found out in August that I was allergic to my contacts. UGH! So almost 6 full months later and after wearing glasses 100% of the time, I was given permission to get back into contacts!!! My eyes haven't fully healed, but they might never get better. As long as these new contacts don't bug me, I'm free to get back to glasses-free life. AND I GET TO WEAR SUNGLASSES!!!! (Imagine living on the surface of the sun without sunglasses - that's summer in Texas without sunglasses, it was miserable!)

I planned a surprise dinner for Mark's birthday on Friday night since all of his high school friends are in town for the holidays. As I was cleaning the bathroom, I put something away in the medicine cabinet above the sink in our main bathroom and Mark's cologne came barreling down towards the sink. Despite my best efforts to catch it, it hit the sink at an angle and managed to make a GIANT crack in the sink, which turned into a giant hole when Mark 'gently' touched it. Don't worry, the cologne bottle is fine. hmph.

We headed to dinner later that night and SURPRISE, Mark's friends were already there. We had a great time eating and then came back to our house to catch up more!

Mark's parents passed down their fire pit so we made a sad attempt at a bonfire. It was warm for a few minutes! Overall, I think Mark had a great time visiting with his friends, and we were glad to have them!

Saturday was spent in the Grapevine area at my sister's sister-in-law's wedding. Our family is kind of a huge web and we love it and we had a great time at her wedding catching up with friends and family.

After the wedding we drove back to my parent's house and gave my mom her birthday present (unlucky birthday!).

Sunday we went to my aunt's home in Fort Worth for a Bennett family Christmas with my dad's side of the family. Here is a smattering of cousins and spouses, many of which were missing! It is always a good time with the Bennett family!

I hope you all got to spend time with your families over the holidays as well! Stay safe tonight and Happy New Year!!!