LEGO Business Card Holder

We are getting ready to have a HUGE garage sale this weekend...well, at least we were. The forecast is now saying that there is a 50% chance of rain. :( Anyway, when we have our sale, I plan on setting up a table for my craft shop. I don't expect to sell a bunch since they won't be garage sale prices but I am hoping that it will at least be a good advertisement and people may come back to shop later or start following the blog.  

Grandma's Lemon Lush

This recipe is kind of like the one for Chess Cake: it has been around for decades and lots of people make it but call it by a different name. I got this one from my grandma and the name is a little misleading because you can actually make it with any pudding flavor you want. She always made lemon because it was grandpa's favorite. It is also amazing with chocolate which I have seen some people call Chocolate Cream Cheese Delight. Someone else made it with coconut cream pudding and called it Texas Delight. We aren't from Texas though so I thought about calling it Southern Delight but in the end I decided to go with my grandma's "Lemon Lush". 

Cake Batter Cookies

A couple of months ago I tried a recipe for cake batter cookies that included pudding mix. They were okay but I thought the pudding made them taste overly processed so I continued searching. This recipe turned out to be exactly what I was hoping for! Full of cake batter flavor but in cookie form. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE this cake batter craze? :)

Getting Settled In

As promised, I am back with pics of our new place! I actually had everything unpacked two days after moving in but we have spent the last week completing the usual moving errands: new bank account, new driver's license, new library cards, getting internet hooked up, etc. We have also been spending a lot of time just relaxing and hanging out with family and friends. 

Slow-Cooker General Tso's Chicken

I love using my slow-cooker in the summer and I'm sure many of you do too. You don't have to heat up your kitchen and you can toss everything together in the morning and then go out and enjoy the beautiful weather. This recipe is particularly great because it has the awesome General Tso's flavor but is way healthier since it isn't breaded and deep-fried.

PBR Man Burgers

My husband came up with this awesome recipe (with just a couple of tweaks by me) so he got the naming rights. Well, actually he named them "Shelby's PBR Man Burgers" but that seemed a bit narcissistic (and confusing since he has a girl's name but calls them "man" burgers) so I shortened it. ;) These are seriously the best burgers I have ever had! We have made them two weeks in a row and just thinking about them makes me hungry again. 

Now this is the story...

"...all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down."

Do you have the Fresh Prince theme song stuck in your head now? No? Hmm...

"And I'd like to take a minute just sit right there. I'll tell how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air."

How about now? Yeah, you're welcome. :)

The last few months have been CRAZY around my house! I have been waiting to talk about it because there were some things that needed to be straightened out and people who had to be told in person and I didn't want to be one of "those bloggers" and allude to big news that I couldn't actually talk about yet. Anywho...Remember when I talked about how we were purging and simplifying? Well, what really kicked that into high gear was our upcoming move! 

Yep. We are moving. Again.

The answer to your question is: Yes. We have lost our minds. Lol!

Monster Knee Patch

A couple of years ago I saw this Monster Knee Patch and thought that it was awesome! Unfortunately I didn't have an opportunity to try it out because by the time Jer gets holes in his jeans, he has already outgrown them so there is no point in patching them up. It's kind of funny how disappointed I was that my son *didn't* get any holes in his good jeans. ;) It finally happened though! I hole appeared in a pair of jeans that hadn't turned into high-waters yet. So I surprised him with this fun monster patch and he couldn't wait to show it off to his friends at school. 

Simplify

That is my current motto. Simplify. While I am trying to keep this in mind with how I spend my time - my main focus at the moment is on "stuff". All of the crap sitting around our house that we don't really need. We started purging a couple of years ago and each time we get rid of a big batch of stuff our house feels so much lighter that it makes us want to get rid of even more! I swear, it is like a freaking clown car or Mary Poppins' bag. We keep finding more and more crap that we don't really need and it makes me wonder how we ever crammed all of it in to begin with.

Lately we have been talking about building a small house in the country and by small I mean that my latest sketches are less than 500 sq ft. Not only will a house this size be cheaper to build and maintain, it will also force us to evaluate our belongings and determine what we really need because there just isn't a bunch of extra space to store the useless junk. We aren't getting rid of everything that would be considered "unnecessary" we are just going through all of our stuff with a more critical eye than before and only keeping the things that we really enjoy or that are used frequently enough to justify the amount of space that they occupy.

If you have spent much time around here, there is one area affected by the purge that may come as a shock: 

Guest Post: Tetris-Chic Mirror Make Over

Hi Everyone! My name is Sarah from Sewing Parts Online and I'm thrilled to be sharing a fun and inexpensive home decor project. My fiance and I are moving into our very first home and, in true first time home buyer fashion, the budget doesn't leave much room for decorating. Let's be honest; it leaves no money for decorating. But, a happy wife is a happy life, and the old man agreed to a $10 'splurge': Thirft store mirror for $3 bucks and a tube of cheap ceramic tiles. Score!