HAPPY FRIDAY

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One

Oh my goodness, I can't believe it's finally Friday!! This week has been ROUGH for both of us. Stephen's executing one of his new projects and has been working 12+ hour days the past few weeks and it will continue for another month or two. I finally finished my project management cram class this week - SO.MUCH.INFORMATION. It's basically a crash course for the Project Management certification exam; I was studying PM the entire day for 3 days straight. I'll just say I'm exhausted and my head hurts lol Thankfully, I feel a lot more prepared for the exam because I was having some MAJOR anxiety about it over the weekend. Unfortunately, my work isn't done because I have to study hard for the next two weeks and then actually take the exam. 

Two

I am so excited because my little sister is coming to town today!! I got to see her for a hot minute when her friends came down to Disney last month but this will be the first time since Christmas I get to actually spend time with her. On the schedule: grilling hamburgers & Downtown Disney. I can't wait to get done with work ;)

Three

Another exciting thing this weekend is our first supper club!! One of Stephen's new co-workers wanted to start one so Saturday will be the first one at their apartment. We are both so excited and hope that it sticks (it's so hard to find good friends in an area of tourists and retirees).

Four

For this past week's Bachelor bracket, I knew Ben would send Amanda home... listen, he's not going to take a mamma of 2 girls into the fantasy suite on TV especially if he doesn't have an uber strong connection with her.

Here's my quick recap of the hometown dates:
Amanda - not ready to be a dad quite yet - bye Felicia.
Lauren B - love her family but when Ben cried to her sister... I had the feeling that wasn't genuine. Am I alone on that one? Still think Lauren's the winner.
JoJo - her family was a HOT MESS and not very nice to Ben. The whole date was weird - no fun activities? just crying and telling him about your ex? then heading right to your parents? Also, why were her brothers so weirdly protective of her? I did about DIE when I saw her mom drink straight from the wine bottle... mamma's stressed.
Caila - the fact that her dad is CEO of a toy factory is so fun. The fact that they built a toy house is so fun. I mean, I could've spent hours in that factory learning about the processes - so fun! I don't feel a huge connection between them but girl has some of the most amazing hair I've ever seen #MAJORhairenvy.

I did fall asleep right before the rose ceremony and was super upset I had missed it - I'll have to go back and catch up on the promos for next week's episode. 

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Five
I'm going to bail out on this one... time for some relaxing after a week of PM. Teen Mom finale, here I come!

This was me yesterday when I passed my practice exam...

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I hope everyone has an amazing weekend!

Weekending

We had a great weekend and I'm sad to see it has come to an end. On Friday, we enjoyed a lazy evening after a long week. I caught up on a few Teen Mom episodes and then after dinner, we watched a movie.

Saturday, we slept in a little, I made muffins and then we got to work around the house. I got to cleaning inside and Stephen cleaned the gutters and worked a little on the yard. After cleaning, I studied a little for my upcoming class tomorrow (I decided to get my project management certification through work and I have an intense 3-day class starting tomorrow. They've provided 35 hours of online training and I've gotten through 10-15... it's rough. I don't know how any of y'all went back to school after getting an undergrad.. it's like the worst thing lol) and then we headed out to run some errands before heading to Orlando. We found pillows for our new chairs and I'm still deciding if I like them. I wanted a fun color but Homegoods didn't have what we were looking for so we ended up with some light tan pillows with some gold threading. We really like the lighter color and the fun surprise of gold - I'm thinking of monogramming them with a fun color so that might fill my "color" want.

Please excuse the fan, we're trying to get the new chair smell out

We ran by Chick-fil-a for a quick dinner before heading over to Orlando for Adult Night at the Science Center. We were really excited because we never get out and I've never seen the exhibits at the Science Center. Well... we got there and there was SO.MANY.PEOPLE. It was seriously crazy - worse than Disney. We waited in line for about 45 minutes then decided to call it a night. We met up with friends at the Science Center and then headed over to a nearby bar with ping pong tables and amazing music. It was a lot of fun hanging out and catching up and we were glad that we found a solid plan B. I was even surprised by a friend from high school who was there celebrating her birthday!

 

I had to laugh because Stephen said my shirt looked like the Haunted Mansion outfits at Disney... kind of true

Sunday we did the usual, church, Publix and laundry. I spent more time studying while Stephen washed his car.

Due to this PM class I'm taking this week, I'm going to be MIA. I've been told the class will be from 8am-5pm and have 2-3 hours of homework every night which doesn't include the hour commute... it's going to be a fun week. On the plus side, my sister is going to be coming down for the weekend which will be a lot of fun!

I hope everyone had a great weekend and has a great week :)

Linking up with Biana.

Five on Friday

One
We are so excited because we finally got our living room chairs delivered on Wednesday! They weren't supposed to be delivered for a week or two so I was really surprised when they said they were coming Wednesday. We love them and are so glad that we chose these - we feel they match perfectly! Now I'm going to be honest, they're not very comfortable but I want to get some big, colorful pillows so hopefully that will make things better.

The last steps for this room is to get a little table for in-between the chairs, get some fun pillows and we'd like to build a bench for the other side of the wall (not pictured). I'm so so glad we finally have some furniture in here and the room is almost complete!!

Two

Someone must've gotten a laugh yesterday - after complaining about my commute in my confessions post yesterday, what usually is a 50-60 minute drive home turned into a 2 hour drive. Along the only road to get home, someone had a back wreck and they had to shut down the road... it was awful. It wouldn't have been AS bad but for the first time like ever, we had plans to meet another couple for dinner!! Nothing like adding salt to the wound. Thankfully we still made it for dinner (30 min late) and had a great time. 

Stephen's been having to go to work early this week so I decided to buck up and wake up and hour early with him so I'll (hopefully) miss all the morning traffic. We'll see if less sleep is worth it... 

Three
On our weekending post, I mentioned that we made baked brie (our favorite!) and some of y'all were asking for the recipe. I did this post last year but since, we've removed the honey and added ~1/4 cup of brown sugar. I might try it with some honey on top, next time. Stay tuned, I'm going to try to make it next weekend and do another post (hopefully with better pictures).

Four
In case you missed it, here's a delicious and easy breakfast that would be fantastic for this weekend: Cinnamon French Toast.

Five
This weekend, Stephen and I were supposed to go to a Science center over in Orlando for "adult night" - no kids, drinks and exhibits but looks like Stephen's going to have to work. Instead, I'll be relaxing, catching up on things around the house, catching up on my sleep and so-forward. I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend but I feel bad Stephen has to work :/

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!

Confessions

I confess that I've never done a confessions post before - we'll see how this goes!

I confess that the teaser from the Bachelor messed up my bracket this week. After seeing Emily say she met his parents, I thought he'd keep her. I knew he wasn't that into her but I kept her and now I'm currently in 5th place...

I confess that we installed our back porch screen to keep the little bugs from the lake out... well they can fit through the screen

I confess that the 1+ hour commute each way to work is taking its toll on me

I confess that I've been seeing some articles online (who knows how legit they are) that the whole small headed baby is caused by a chemical they put in the water to kill the mosquitoes in Brazil and not Zika virus - has anyone else seen anything like this?

I confess that I love watching Tiffany's vlogs! Who knew watching 20+ min of someone carrying a camera around with them could be so engaging!

I confess that I enjoyed doing a confessions post!!

Linking up with Jessica & Annie.

Easy Cinnamon French Toast

One day I had some Pepperidge Farm cinnamon bread and thought "hey, this might be good as french toast" and then a delicious breakfast was born. I'm sure I'm not the only one to ever think of this but it is literally the easiest way to make cinnamon french toast (and it is oh, so delicious too!).

Basically, you take a slice of bread, dip it in your egg mixture, place it on the pan and let it cook! See, could not be easier!!

Our BIL & SIL got us a griddle for Christmas and we love using it! It's the perfect size for making breakfasts like this. We won a drawing from doing our registry with Bed, Bath & Beyond and got this neat hand mixer. I really like using the whisk attachment to mix the eggs and milk together so that it has a very even consistency.

Ingredients - Makes 6 pieces of french toast

- 2 eggs

- Milk

- Pepperidge Farm cinnamon bread

- Syrup

Directions

1. Add eggs and some milk (depending on the consistency that you like will depend on how much milk you add) and mix together until well blended

2. Dip your bread into the egg mixture, making sure the entire slice of bread is covered

3. Place on your skillet and cook until all the egg is cooked through

4. Add syrup and enjoy!

Linking up with Jessi.

Valentine's Weekending

We had a fantastic weekend and squeezed every minute of it out that we could, hence the Tuesday weekend recap.

Friday after work, I headed home to see the progress of our new screen!! The guy had finished the frame and was coming back the next day to install the screen. Shockingly, the porch looks so much bigger with the screen! We're so tickled with how it turned out and we're so glad we decided to move forward with this project. Can't wait to get some outdoor furniture and a fan out there.

Before

After

It was so nice outside on Friday that we decided to take a quick walk before it got dark. There's one area in our neighborhood that's building new homes, so we like to stop in a walk through them before they put the doors on - one of the kids wrote Star Wars quotes on the beams to his room. We also finally finished The Office... there is definitely a hole in our lives now. Sunday we had some time to relax and we were like, crap what do we watch now!? Stephen wants to watch LOST next and I want to watch Downton Abbey... Stephen's going to win this one.

Saturday, I made us some cinnamon french toast (recipe coming this week) and then Stephen went back to work on the screen with the contractor. While they were working on the screen, I went shopping. Old Navy was having a BOGO on their jeans and Stephen needed another pair so I graciously obliged while getting myself the "free" pair. I also snagged this shirt for 1/2 off and plan to add a small monogram on the chest. I also stopped by World Market to get a sushi kit (I bought a single kit but they didn't have it online) and by Homegoods to get my SIL a birthday gift.

We decided to run to Lowes after lunch to get some items to make a wooden, white board for some pictures (still in progress). That day, I was having some real good success with my embroidery machine until I almost broke the dang thing while trying to thread a bobbin. It took Stephen and I an hour and a half (or more) to get it un-wound and back to working order.

After that big ordeal, I made Stephen some Valentine's Day cookies. Every year I make him some kind of sweet treat and this year, I decided to put my Valentine cookie cutters to the test. I was planning on making special royal frosting for the cookies but Publix didn't have meringue powder (I don't even know what that is) so I decided to just use Stephen's favorite - funfetti icing.

On Sunday morning, I convinced Stephen to go to Dunkin Donuts for some V-day pre-church donuts. For some reason, he thought there was a BOGO deal and kept saying how we needed to leave super early because there would be a huge line. We get there, there isn't a big crowd and that's when I found out he thought there was a Valentine's deal. I just wanted a fun heart donut since we didn't want to make breakfast before church but turns out all the heart donuts are all filled - gross! So we ended up with a vanilla and strawberry donut - still a win :)

After church, I got to work on cleaning the house and Stephen worked on cleaning up the porch. He also told me he had to run to Lowes to pick up some tape for the shower pipe but went to Publix instead to get me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and my favorite chocolates - Reese's Peanut Butter Hearts.

Later that afternoon, our friends invited us over to see their Victorian style house that they're restoring. It was amazing! I've never been in a house like that before and it was so fascinating - I can't wait to see it finished! While chatting in the driveway, a romantic Valentine's Day carriage ride drove by and I had to get a quick snap of it.

We headed home after seeing the house to get to work on our V-day dinner - baked brie and sushi!

The baked brie is becoming a V-day staple; I made it for our picnic last year

We didn't want to make sushi with raw fish and I'm allergic to shellfish so we made chicken teriyaki sushi. It wasn't too bad to make but we probably won't make it again to be honest. Our $7 sushi from Publix doesn't break the bank but was fun to try something new and it turned out pretty good (I like Publix sushi better lol).

I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day weekend (or Gal-entine's)!

Five on Friday

One
We are so excited because today we are getting a screen put in on our back porch. We love our back porch area - the view is amazing and there's tons of space for entertaining but unfortunately, we live in FL and there are so many bugs. We decided to screen it in so we can actually enjoy the space and have some fun cookouts. We're a little bummed that the view will be hindered a little but the pros of having the screen vastly outweigh the cons. This is going to be our first big (and expensive) project we've done to the house and we can't wait for it to be done :)

Two
Speaking of house work, my friend Meridith recently started a blog. Her and her husband are currently building a custom home and she is documenting everything on 32789 Design. If you are looking into building custom, want to get some amazing house decorating ideas or just want a fun blog to read, I suggest checking it out!

Three
Have y'all seen this HYSTERICAL Peyton Manning Blind Side spoof? They're calling it The Dark Side and it's an absolute riot.

Four
Since it's the middle of February (already!?), I've decided to up my game with working out. We really don't ever work out since by the time we get home, it's basically dark and we're pooped. After a few months of not working out, I can tell I don't look the same as when I worked out on the regular. I'm going to hopefully finally suck it up and do workouts - even if they're quick. I've really been enjoying the Tone It Up series on Youtube and hope it whips my butt into shape.

Five
Stephen gave me a scare yesterday when he though he was going to have to work all weekend... thankfully he doesn't because we've got lots of projects in store! I need to work on a wood-working project (more to come later) and for Valentine's Day we want to celebrate by making our own sushi (we won't use raw fish). We figured homemade sushi is something we wouldn't usually do and would be something fun to try.

What do y'all have planned for Valentine's Day?