March Happenings

I can't believe March is already almost over. I still feel like Christmas was just yesterday. This post is really random and basically just a collection of things that have happened so far this month.

We bought new tires at Big-O Tires for our Civic. The next morning, we went out to the car and this is what had happened over night.

David and I were furious! Brand new tires and one went flat over night. Unfortunately, this was Sunday morning so we had to wait until Monday morning. The manager claimed that they just didn't seal it right but that everything was fine. Needless to say, I will not be a repeat customer at Big-O Tires. The car drives a LOT smoother now so we are happy about that. The car ride had gotten so shaky with the old tires that on the freeway, your arms would shake and your voice would vibrate while you sang along with the radio.

On the 13th, David and I ran the Rex Lee 5k Run at BYU. This was our 2nd year together to run it and my 3rd year. The weather forecast called for snow that day so we were not exactly looking forward to the run. We didn't run as well as last year but were happy to just have finished it. And luckily it didn't start snowing that day until after the race. And then it snowed all day long.

David thought it would be funny to make the exact same pose he made last year for the Rex Lee Run. How he remembered they way he posed a year ago - I have no idea. I'm telling you - he has a freakish memory about the weirdest things. Gotta love that about him!

I didn't actually plan it this way but I ended up making spinach alfredo tortellini on St. Patrick's Day. I thought it was a great coincidence that our food was green! And I worked on my food photography skills before I took this. Much better if I do say so myself.

I also did a lot of decorating this month!! Now that I started, I seriously can't stop. I had to promise David that I would stop until after our trip to California in April but I am just dying inside! I keep thinking of all these really cool things I want to make for the apartment!!!!

Here is a picture I painted to put above our table. I bought a blank canvas from a craft store and then just used the paint I had left over from the frames above our couch. I actually copied this from a painting I saw on etsy.com. The lady wanted $150 for her painting. Seriously. It was just some lines and circles so I figured I could just do it myself. It didn't come out exactly like hers but it will do. It's better than just a blank, boring wall.

So here is the dining area. I also got that big frame on the right at the craft store (Roberts) for only $15! You can't tell from far away but it is black with hints of red paint showing and it has swirls. All the frames in my living room have swirls so I loved how it tied right in!

Here is our guest bedroom. Hotel Driggs is officially open! For real. I am dying for someone to come stay at our apartment now! The black bulletin board you see was actually another craft I did. I painted a rather hideous gold mirror black and then took out the mirror part. David sawed down an old bulletin board I had and we put it in the frame.

Here is the frame of the bulletin board up close. I really like the way it turned out - and the best part was everything was free! My grandma gave me the frame and I already had the bulletin board and the black paint!

Another shot of the room - I still need to organize that closet. I need a giant filing cabinet in there so I can get rid of the many boxes I have full of old papers, text books, and random things.

The only thing left to do in this room is decorate these two walls. I have a big black mirror and a bunch of black frames that I think I will put up above the bed. I kind of want to get one of those sticker wall quotes for the other wall. Roberts has a bunch for only about $14. We'll see. Oh and that is the memory foam mattress we got! It came in a pretty small box - about 7 inches deep, 3 feet wide, and about 4 feet long. We just pulled the mattress out and it magically expanded into a queen size bed! Pretty cool!

And last, we just celebrated David's brother's (Daniel) birthday yesterday up in Salt Lake. This is a picture of Daniel and Heather's dog - Einstein. He is so cute that I just wanted to sneak a picture of him in. He is such a great little dog and I love his argyle sweater!

So that is our March so far! We have had a really busy month but have had a lot of fun! We are really enjoying March Madness right now, too! Sadly, BYU lost yesterday and my bracket is completely ruined. I had picked Kansas to win the whole thing but they lost yesterday!! Crazy - but it definitely makes this year's March Madness so much more interesting!

$2.95 Shipping

I purchased a mattress from Overstock.com last night. That's right a mattress. And the best part of all - $2.95 shipping. They claim that no matter what or how much you order, you only pay $2.95 to ship it and they were right! Gotta love it.

So David and I had that extra box spring for our guest room. I found some bed rails on ksl.com for $10. Gotta love that, too! The cheapest I could find for new ones were $120 - and that was at DI (yes, they do sell new stuff, too). Then Target was having a sale on this bedding in a bag so David let me buy it. For $59 we got a super cute comforter, bed skirt, 4 shams, and 2 decorative pillows.

We set everything up in the guest room and for now just blew up our air mattress and put it on the bed. I mentioned to David that I had googled "mattress sale" and it pulled up Overstock.com. They had a Serta memory foam mattresses on sale from like $950 down to $300. I guess the excitement of me purchasing the bed rails and the comforter and knowing his brother and wife would be coming to stay with us over the weekend got David so excited that he actually gave me permission to buy the mattress. I was so sure we wouldn't be buying one for another few months. But we bought it! And now I keep our Overstock.com account up all day at work so I can monitor the progress of our mattress. I am SO EXCITED!

The best part is - well really two "best parts" - first, the mattress got really good reviews, which is comforting to know. And second, apparently memory foam mattress come rather small and you have to unwrap them and let them expand on their own for about 24 hours. I just keep imagining those little dinosaur things you put in water and they grow. I would be so happy if the mattress came in a little shoe size box and grew to a big queen size bed. I'll let you know how that goes.

And I'll post some pictures of the guest room soon. I am just finishing turning an old ugly gold mirror into a cute, chic bulletin board to put above the desk in that room. I seriously love that guest room. It looks way nicer than our actual bedroom. I promised David I wouldn't buy any more home decor until after our trip to California in April since I had bought so much lately. But as soon as May comes, our bedroom will be decorated finally!!

Yummy Chicken

Anyone who knows me knows that my favorite meat in the world is chicken! I love pretty much any kind of chicken - baked, grilled, nugget form, wrapped in bacon, whatever it may be. At work a girl gave me a recipe for New Orleans Rubbed Chicken. It was SO GOOD! (I wish I could have credited it to my new favorite chef - Pioneer Woman - but I can't). It was so delicious that David proclaimed it his favorite meat dish I have ever made for him! So I wanted to share it with anyone else who is looked for a really, really easy, really delicious recipe.

(The recipe is for 4 chicken breasts so when I made it for David and me, I just cut everything in half)

Ingredients:

- 1 Tbsp dried thyme

- 1/2 Tbsp ground black pepper

- 1 tsp garlic pepper

- 1/2 tsp cayenne/red pepper, to taste

- 1/8 tsp salt

- 4 small boneless, skinless chicken breasts

- 1 tsp EVOO

- 1/3 cup apricot fruit preserves

- 2 Tbsp spicy brown mustard

1. In a small bowl, mix thyme, pepper, garlic, cayenne, and salt. (I used the amount of cayenne pepper the recipe called for and the chicken had a nice spicy kick. If you like really spicy food, add more and if you don't like spicy food add less or take it out completely)

2. Place chick on a large plate. Drizzle with oil. Rub to coat the chicken evenly with the oil. Sprinkle the spice mixture over the chicken. Rub to coat evenly. Cover with plastic. Refrigerate for at least ten minutes to let the spices soak in. (I put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes while I made our side dishes. And I made David do this entire step because raw meat is disgusting.)

3. Meanwhile, spoon the preserves into a small microwavable bowl. Cook on low power in 15 second intervals or until melted. Stir in the mustard until well blended. Set aside. (I was nervous about making this mixture. I thought it sounded gross but you must make it! It made the dish a million times even more delicious than it already was! And I only had honey dijon mustard so I just used that.)

4. Place chicken on grill (or stove top) and cook each side for 3 to 5 minutes per side or until no longer pink. Serve each chicken with the Apricot/Mustard sauce spooned on the top.

Enjoy! It was really, really good!

Oh and here are the links to the two Pioneer Woman recipes I made earlier.

Hot and Sweet Drumsticks (and with the left over apricot preserves you can make the above recipe!)

Steak with Onion-Blue Cheese Sauce

And coming this week will be Pioneer Woman's Ranch Style Chicken. It involves chicken, bacon, and cheese. Can't get better than that.

HGTV Protege

Okay so not really. In fact not at all. I love watching HGTV and seeing how they decorate things, but I just get so overwhelmed when I try to decide how to decorate my apartment. Plus I don't think I'm really that good at it. So many of my friends are SO good at it, and I wish I was. But anyway I made my first attempt at a DIY decorating project. Originally I wanted to just buy a large painting to go over the couch, but in case you haven't looked at the prices of art lately, they are ridiculously expensive! I even thought I would check out etsy but no luck. Even the people on there charge at least $200 plus shipping for a somewhat large painting. Plus, in case you don't know David very well, he hates to spend money. Especially on girly, pointless things like art.

So here was my first project. Don't worry - I have a few more in mind to attempt.

I bought these frames from Ikea for only $2.99 each.

Then I painted them.

Then, following in the footsteps of David Bromstead (one of my favorite HGTV designers), I made little mini cut outs of the frames so that I could organize them how I wanted them. He draws cute little pictures of the rooms he decorates and lets the homeowners pick different couches and things.

After that David (David my husband that is - not David Bromstead) helped me by measuring the distance between the frames and making straight lines on the wall with his level and a bunch of other stuff that I never would have done. I definitely would have just eye balled everything and it definitely would have come out crooked. So here is the finished project! I pulled the three colors from three of the stripes in those pillows on the couch.

One project down, many more to go!

Why Today of All Days?

Just when you think this is coming:

This comes instead:

And of all days to come it comes on a Thursday. In case you didn't know, satellite TV and snow do not mix. So it is Thursday night and my satellite cannot find signal. And let me list all of the shows I will be missing because of it:

1. Project Runway (last weeks episode that airs again today - my DVR randomly recorded the wrong thing - don't even get me started on that)

2. Project Runway (new episode)

3. Models of the Runway (yes, I am admitting that I watch that dumb half hour show that comes on after Project Runway about the models)

4. American Idol Results Show

5. The Office - the baby episode!

6. Grey's Anatomy

All of this I am missing because it just had to snow today! It was nice and warm and sunny this morning. I didn't even wear my coat when I went out to lunch at work! And now everything is covered in snow!

Company Retreat

Last week my company had a retreat down to Arizona for three days. We flew down on the company plane Wednesday during a snow storm. That was a pretty frightening experience. The plane is just a tiny nine seater plane and you couldn't see anything out the windows. All I kept thinking was, "what if we fly right in to a mountain?"! Luckily we have an amazing pilot who knew exactly what he was doing.

The owners of the company recently purchased a new home in Mesa, so we went to stay there. The house was gorgeous! All the details in the house were just beautiful. I especially loved that the house was in the middle of an orange orchard! Each morning we had fresh squeezed orange juice with our breakfast! I never thought Arizona would be so green, but it really was pretty. The weather was amazing, too. It was 70 degrees, sunny and beautiful.

Each day we met as a company for about four hours and then spent the rest of the afternoons doing different activities. The first night we went to the owners' friend's house. He is an amazing pianist and actually performed for the Reflections of Christ church videos. He performed for us and then we watched that hockey movie "Miracle" in his theater room. The next afternoon afternoon we went to downtown Scottsdale to shop and then to a movie - I saw Valentine's Day (not so great. Big cast but I probably won't see it again). The last afternoon we went to a bunch of garage sales/swap meet thing - the owner loves garage sales.

One morning during our meetings, a stray dog came wandering in to the front courtyard area of the house. While sitting there, a thought crossed my mind that I should move my shoes. I had placed them in the garage to dry off because I had gotten them muddy when picking oranges. I just ignored it and stayed in the meeting. Afterward I went outside to check on them and one was missing! I was so upset! It was my Vans that David had just bought me for Christmas! About 15 minutes later, one of my coworkers starting looking around the outside of the house and found my shoe in some bushes! I was SO relieved! (And so was David because now he wouldn't have to buy me a new pair.)

Then we flew home Friday night. I sat in the copilot seat for the flight home. It was so fun to wear the headphones and talk in the little microphone. Our pilot showed me how everything works and told me some great stories about different flights he has had over the years.

All in all it was a great retreat and it got me really excited for the company! They are going to start letting me do more with the company and with analyzing investments and things. I am really excited for this next year!