Five on Friday!

I can't believe this week is already over! Stephen and I are going to enjoy another weekend relaxing and working on our second bedroom. I can't wait to finally finish it up!

One
We just booked another family weekend at Disney World in April for my sister's birthday. To say we're all excited is an understatement. We can't wait to be reunited again at the Happiest Place on Earth! I am very thankful that we will be visiting in April instead of August this year. We also said in August, that was our last trip until kids are in the picture... apparently we're not good at sticking to our word when it comes to Disney.

Two
There's a Starbucks right across the street from where I work. You'll often find people walking over there during their lunch breaks or to grab an afternoon pick me up. I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but it was super enjoyable to run over there and grab an iced coffee (obviously, I had to document this event).

Three

Last weekend Stephen and I received a wedding invitation for our second wedding of the year. We're super excited to go (hopefully if Stephen gets off work)!

How pretty are their invites?!

Four
Stephen and I picked up Publix's It's Your Birthday Cake! ice cream last weekend and I have to say, it's a shame we haven't gotten this in so long. IT.IS.SO.GOOD. You have to try it! (This Five on Friday is turning into all food... goodness)

I think it's so great that the blog where I got the picture from, is an ice cream reviewer blog. How funny!

Five
If you missed my post on Wednesday, I talked about some amazing blueberry banana bread that went down last weekend. You can find the recipe here.

Linking up with Christina, Natasha, April and Darci

Blueberry Banana Bread

I decided I needed to make another bread this weekend since I hadn't made one in a while. I found this blueberry banana bread recipe from Mix and Match Mama and wanted to try it this weekend. After getting home from the grocery store, I realized I had forgotten to pick up some condensed milk so I had to scratch her recipe and decided to make it using this recipe. This one is my go-to recipe for banana bread - and it has chocolate chips, easy choice! Instead of adding in the chocolate chips, I added a few handfuls of blueberries and used blueberry yogurt instead of plain yogurt. This bread turned out great and was gone in 2 days (oops)!

Ingredients

- 1 cup all purpose flour

- 1 tsp baking powder

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1/3 cup butter, at room temp

- 1/4 cup honey

- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar

- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

- Roughly 4 mashed bananas 

- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

- 1 egg

- 1/2 cup plain yogurt or sour cream (I used blueberry Greek yogurt)

- A handful or two of blueberries

Directions

1. Sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.

2. Put the butter, honey, sugar, salt and cinnamon in a bowl and mix together with an electric mixer. After this is mixed, add the bananas and vanilla and mix until smoothed together (you can leave some small banana chunks). Add in the egg. Once the egg has been mixed in, slowly add in the sifted flour mixture. When there is no more flour, add in the yogurt. After everything is combined, hand mix in the blueberries.

3. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes. Check to make sure the bread is cooked through with a toothpick. Once the bread is cooked, cool the bread in the pan for 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack. 

Valentine's Day Goodie Ideas

We officially have 3 Tuesdays until Valentine's day! I can't believe how fast it's coming - which means it's never too early to start planning gifts or goodies to make. I've decided to do 3 posts (one every Tuesday) about Valentine's day. This week, I'm going to cover goodies you can make on Valentine's day. After looking through my Pinterest board, I realized I have enough Valentine's day pins to last every meal of the day! So here's a little something you can do for your loved one for every meal - hopefully all these ideas end up being easy to make!

Bacon is the way to a man's heart! 

This is so adorable! I know if I made this, it would not look like this - you're amazing if you can make this

This is super adorable! Maybe I'll try to make these and the heart shaped bacon..?

These donut holes are so cute! Perfect breakfast that's quick and easy

Heart shaped meat and cheeses are the perfect lunch - even better if you take it on a picnic ;)

I love this idea! I'm not sure about writing on the pear or apple but I love the cheesy sayings!

Heart shaped ravioli is the perfect dish to wrap up the Valentine's day meals with! Even better, make it a romantic night and cook together

Nothing says Valentine's day more than chocolate covered strawberries! Take it a step further and make them heart shaped

For a little easier route, these brownies on a stick are fantastic! They look super delicious

2015 SAG Awards Fashion Faves & Fails

This weekend was one of those I-wasn't-productive-but-I-did-get-a-lot-done weekends. I feel like I wasn't productive because we really didn't go anywhere but we got a TON done around the apartment. Friday, we had plans to sign our lease then watch a movie. After an hour of reading our lease and signing it, we ended up just hanging out and watching music videos from the early 2000's and laughing at our high school years. It was super fun! 

Saturday, we slept in, made breakfast, relaxed then headed over to a local gym to check it out and decide if we wanted to join. Super fail... so we went to a park to go for a run. I wore my new monogram jacket that my mom sent me - cute workout clothes really does give you motivation to work out (or at least change out of my PJ's for once)! After our run, we decided to do the only thing you can do in our small town to kill time - browse the isles of Target. It's going to get a lot harder to walk out of there without purchases when Target debuts its new Lilly line. When we got home, I decided to get a jump start on redoing our second bedroom/garage/office. I'm so excited with how it came out and can't wait to share it with everyone! 

Sunday was super busy with going to church, cleaning, baking blueberry banana bread, redoing the bookshelf in our second room, researching St. Augustine (ultimately we decided not to go), cooking dinner and watching the SAG awards.  

Had to show off my new workout gear

My mom is outfitting me in monograms!

After all that rambling, let's get to my 2015 SAG Awards fashion faves and fails!

I have no clue who this is but Joanne Froggatt looks so pretty and classy in this dress. Her hair, makeup and jewelry is so simple and perfect! 

Julie Bowen is stunning in this dress - it is so flattering and the color looks great on her! Once again, the simplicity of her hair and jewelry really makes the outfit.

Not going to lie, I'm not a fan of her hair but Keira Knightly looks amazing and so happy. Definitely a big step up from the Golden Globes.

Once again, Reese Witherspoon can do no wrong when it comes to fashion. She is stunning every.single.time.

I don't even know what Laura Carmichael was trying to do with this look. The dress is a mess and the hair is as equally a mess. 

Laverne Cox's dress reminds me of a gladiator princess... It just isn't doing it for me and looks very unflattering.

Wax Lips. That was the first thing that I thought of when I saw Melissa Rauch. This dress just looks awkward to me. 

Not really sure why someone like Julia Roberts (or anyone for that matter) would want to wear something like this. Super unflattering - the length of the front zipper, the pockets on her hips, the length of her pants and the fabric crossing on the top of the "suit"

I got all of these pictures from E!.

I'd love to hear what your thoughts are! Do you have any other favorites or fails I didn't talk about?

Happy Friday!

I am so thankful it's Friday! This week seemed to FLY by! Stephen and I have no agenda except relax and catch up on sleep. Stephen's been working the last few weekends so it'll be nice to have a full weekend together. Now onto my Friday five...

One
My mom had two free monograms from a boutique in Raleigh so she was so sweet and got me a 3/4 zip workout jacket and a long sleeve tee. I love them and can't wait to wear them! (too bad these aren't dress code for work)

Two

A while ago, I found this pizza from Christina and had to try it. It's been a huge hit in the Hirst house and it's our favorite go-to meal. We usually get a ball of dough from Publix (I HATE trying to roll it out and shape it), this time we found pre-rolled out dough! We had to snag it and it was amazing! We will definitely be buying this kind from here on out.

Three
Stephen and I have been wanting to visit St. Augustine for a while now and decided to look into going over Valentine's Day weekend. We'll be doing some research this weekend and try to find some good rates on hotels. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for things to see, places to eat or good hotels to stay at.

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Four
Stephen and I have a two bedroom apartment. Right now, the 2nd room is being utilized as an office/storage room/garage. It's a HOT MESS. This year, I want to work on redoing this room and getting it more organized. I'll do a post on some ideas for this room as well as what the room looks like not and what we end up doing with it. Stay tuned!

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Five
I love making delicious breads - strawberry, blueberry, banana, pumpkin, etc. I haven't made any breads in a while and stumbled upon Mix and Match Mama's blueberry banana bread. It looks delicious and I'm thinking about making it this weekend. We'll see if I can get myself to Publix before Sunday...

New Year, New Reads

Two of my goals for 2015 were 1. crack down on my daily devotions 2. read books to help better Stephen and I's relationship. So far, I've been doing good with working on these 2 items (only after 3 weeks... such a great feat).

For my daily devotionals, I went to my local Family Christian store to browse the isles. I decided to go with Live Faithfully: A Study in the Book on James by Lenya Heitzig & Penny Rose. In high school, I did a few of their other devotionals and really enjoyed them. I decided to grab this one to really study James and strengthen my faith. These devotional books are broken out into weeks (this particular book is a 12 week study) with 5 days of devotionals. This is really nice because if you miss a day, you have 2 extra days to catch up - or you can power through the weeks and not utilize the 2 days off. Since James is a smaller book, each day covers 1-2 verses which really delves into the book and breaks each verse down. So far, I'm really enjoying this study and can't wait to see what the Lord teaches me!

The other book I decided to pick up was Team Us by Ashleigh Slater. I haven't gotten too far yet, but it's great so far! Ashleigh talks about how in marriage, we need to set ourselves aside and focus on becoming a team. She writes stories about her marriage (her hubby interjects with things from his point of view too), other friend's marriage stories as well as stories from the Bible. I'm really excited to continue this book and focus on putting myself aside and focusing on US. Once I finish it, I'll write a review of it.

*I was not compensated for this post. All reviews are my own opinion.