Friday is for Girls Weekend!

One
This weekend my sister-in-law is hosting some girlfriends at her grandparents condo on the beach as one last hurrah before her baby comes. I'm super excited to have some girl time and get some quality time in with Lauren before baby girl comes in October (eek it's getting so close!). There will be lots of games played and mocktails drunk. Speaking of which, I've been looking for some good mocktail recipes so let me know of any good ones you've tried :)

via

Two
I've been trying to cut back on spending money after buying the house but I got an email Wednesday for $10 shirts at Old Navy and had to see what it was all about. I found an amazing (and super comfy) shirt for fall. It will be perfect for layering, pairing with a scarf and wearing with booties. Gah, I can't wait for fall weather!

I really like this sweater with the shirt! I'm going to wait for it to go on sale then probably snag it since it's so lightweight. The shirt is originally $26 but right now it's on sale for $22.

Shirt | Green Jacket | Sweater | Jeans

Three
To continue on the fall outfits - I am swoon over all the fall outfits I've been seeing on Pinterest lately. I am obsessed over all of the riding boots, layers and puffy vests! Unfortunately, it's going to be 90+ degrees in Florida for a while so I will continue to look at all the pretty outfits online. I'm also resisting the urge to really blog about fall outfits (except for this rant and #2) but I went ahead and made a fall outfits board on Pinterest. Honestly, it's fall and winter but no one likes "winter" except for Christmas.

While going through my pins one by one and moving them over to the fall board, I was thinking there has to be a better way to move pins. After I finished going through 400+ pins, I noticed there is a "Move Pins" button in the top right corner. AMAZING! I was definitely annoyed I didn't see this earlier but am glad this function exists for future Pinterest organization!

Four

Stephen and I have been loving the fact that we now have a neighborhood that we can take walks/run in. There is an area where they're still building and the other night, Stephen found the creepiest thing ever! It's a life-size Ronald McDonald statue in someone's backyard. I am so creeped out and don't know how we didn't see this earlier. Sorry the video is sideways.

Five
If you're looking for a delicious dessert this weekend, make sure to check out this Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie

A few weekends ago, Stephen's parents came to visit and I knew I wanted to make something fun for dessert. I scoured Pinterest and decided upon making a Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie with vanilla ice cream on the side. It turned out super delicious and it was very easy to make - everyone loved it!

Ingredients

- 1 9" pie shell (I used a graham cracker crust)

- 2 eggs

- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

- 1/2 cup granulated sugar

- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar

- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) softened butter

- 1 cup chocolate chips

- Vanilla ice cream

Directions

1. Preheat the oven the 325 degrees. If you aren't using a pre-made graham cracker pie crust, line your pie dish with the unbaked pie crust.

2. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs on high until light and foamy. Add the flour and sugars to the bowl and mix until combined. Add the softened butter and mix.

3. Stir in the chocolate chips and then spoon the batter into the pie crust.

4. Bake for 50-60 minutes. Use a toothpick to make sure the center of the pie is cooked thoroughly. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Help: I noticed that every time I bake anything with chocolate chips, they always sink to the bottom. None of the pictures of the recipes I get them from look like that and I can't figure out why. This happens no matter which size chocolate chips I use. 

Linking up with Annie. 

Home Tour Tuesday | Living Room

I am almost done with my home tour (yay!). Our living room needs two big chairs - which is the main point of the room - then it'll be complete.

Below is my original idea for our living room - I wanted it to be light and inviting. I plan on (big emphasis on plan) keeping this room clean and put together when we have kids so that way when people stop by for a quick visit, they aren't over run by toys. I'm sure that will be going on in our family room. At first, I wanted two printed chairs but then I really liked the idea of a light blue rug and neutral colored chairs. I am being really specific with chairs in the sense that they need to be less than $300 a piece, have arm rests and have a bigger back to them. This is proving very difficult to find so I might have to save up and break down for some more expensive chairs later. 

We found our rug from Rugs USA for a great price (when they have 75% off) and opted to go for the 6x9 size instead of 5x8 - which I'm really glad we did. The color ended up being a little darker than I wanted but that's alright. I snagged the canvas for like $30 from Kirklands about 4 years ago and we've gotten some great use out of it over the years. I really like the colors for our living room and once we get the chairs, we'll hang the picture in the middle, above them. 

We knew we either wanted a bench or small table to fit under the cutout but couldn't pull the trigger on any one item until we found this table from Homegoods. I love the colors and design but what sold us is there are two leaves that fold out to create almost a full sized table. We thought this would be great to have in the future if we host bigger parties. Thankfully, I didn't have to spend too much time convincing Stephen because it looked good, was functional and practical. 

Don't worry, I'm on the hunt for a long, narrow bowl to put the greenery balls in

I also knew I wanted to do a collage on this wall. I wanted to get the square frames from Ikea but we figured it'd be a pretty penny trying to get pictures printed to fit and the frames were about double the price than the ones we ended up with. Yes, we still haven't filled the frames yet...

Rug: Rugs USA (we got Spa Blue but probably should've gotten Baby Blue)

Canvas & Small Lamp: Kirklands

Table, Curtains & Curtain Rod: Homegoods

Floor Lamp: Target (similar)

Picture Frames: Ikea

Master Bedroom & Bathroom
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Family Room
Dining Room

Weekending

This weekend was the perfect combination of productivity and relaxation. Friday after work we were able to squeeze in a nice walk in between the storms and then we finally watched a movie on our new TV. We haven't done that since moving in and it was so much fun. We decided to watch The Watch since it had Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill in it. We thought it would have been hysterical but it was a little rough... like straight to DVD rough.

Saturday we slept in and made breakfast - Stephen broke out the waffle maker and made some delicious waffles and eggs. Stephen changed his mind about bringing cookies to poker night and wanted to bring some cupcakes since we had some cake mix that needed to be used. I grabbed some icing from Publix on Friday and when I went to ice the cupcakes on Saturday I noticed that the expiration date was Jan 2015! I don't know how that ended up on the shelf... Needless to say, I returned it and got some that wasn't expired in 2015. I wanted to do some "fancy" frosting on the cupcakes so I whipped the funfetti icing with the mixer to make it fluffier and used a homemade icing bag (cut the tip off a sandwich bag) to ice the cupcakes. It worked out super well but I think next time I'll make the cut a little bigger since I had a lot of icing to spare.

I decided to leisurely walk around the mall while Stephen was at poker night. It was super nice to just stroll around and not be concerned about timing like I do when Stephen's with me. After the mall, I got to working on a gift for my sister-in-law's baby shower at the end of September. I wish I could show you what I made but I've got to wait since she reads the blog.

Sunday was an average Sunday - cleaning, laundry, naps and the like. I also realized that I super failed as a blogger and missed my 1 year blogging anniversary! 1 year and 9 days ago, I started this little corner on the internet and it was been a great journey! I'm so glad I jumped into blogging - it's been great being able to look back at all the things we've done and I've met some amazing people.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and a happy Monday!
Linking up with Biana.

Fri-yay!

It's been a long and rough week - I am so ready for Friday! We've been having a really big problem with bugs in our house lately. We tried doing our own pest control but after finding a few big spiders and some roaches in our room, we decided to call in the pros. I can't wait for the bug guy to come today and get these things out of our house!

One

Once or twice a year, my company hosts a health fair and yesterday they also brought in some people from Massage Envy to do mini massages. My friend and I had to get one done - it was great but only after I stopped laughing at how funny this was and after I stopped being scared one of our co-workers would see us. I definitely could've gone right to sleep afterwards. 

Two

Something exciting that happened this week was I won 2 Disney tickets!! My company partners with Disney so they always have mini Disney ticket raffles. I never win anything so I was super pumped to win them! We've been missing Disney lately and we are SO excited to go in a month and see all the fall decorations.

If you're ever making the trip to Disney, be sure to check out my tips and tricks to Disney

Three

So last week I mentioned that Stephen filmed a segment for CNN and that it would air yesterday at 8pm. Well we found out it was actually on CNN International and it was on in the morning and not during prime time. That was a little bit of a bummer and then when we watched the video, Stephen had 1 line... out of like 3 hours of filming and they completely cut out another one of his co-workers. Definitely disappointing but still neat to see! 

You can watch the video here. Stephen appears around 3:50.

Four
I kind of wanted to do a quick PSA about being a no-reply blogger. Katie brought this up a while ago and I had no clue I was a member of the no-reply blogger club! So a no-reply blogger is when you comment on someone's blog and they can't reply to you within an email. It makes it a lot harder for me to reply to your comments, which I hate not being able to do, if you're a no-reply blogger. To check to see if you are a no-reply blogger and to edit this, follow these easy steps.

Five
Stephen has a poker night Saturday night and everyone has to bring a dish. Stephen requested for me to make cookies. I'm going to make these delicious pudding cookies. I've made them a few times and they've always turned out fantastic.

Vineyard Vines Dress

A few weeks ago I went to Atlanta for a quick business trip and had some time after work to stop into the Vineyard Vines outlet. I LOVE Vineyard Vines clothes but they're always priced more that I'm willing to spend on clothes. I was so excited when I stumbled upon this dress on mega sale (it was originally $160 and I got it for $36!) so I snatched it right up! Summer is closing in quickly so I wanted to make sure I got to wear it at least once before I have to trade out my fun colors for darker ones.

Side note: I haven't done an outfit post in forever!! I love doing these but I'm too shy to take pictures in front of other people so I resorted to backyard pictures before church. Anyone else have this irrational embarrassment or am I the only one?

Dress (sold out) (Similar, Similar) / Shoes / Purse / Watch

Linking up with Annie.

Home Tour Tuesday | Dining Room

Our dining room is in the center of the house and it one of the rooms that still has a lot of work to be done to it. We're really enjoying what has been done so far but there's still a long way to go.

This biggest thing that needs to be redone is the table and chairs. My dad had that table in college... it's old but sturdy as a rock. There are even marks on it from where my high chair attached to the side of the table. Knowing it's been in my family this long makes it hard for me to get rid of it but it's not doing it for me - style-wise or size-wise. Stephen has graciously offered to try to build me a farmhouse table and even designed the whole thing himself. I'm not sure when he'll have time to do it, but it'll happen at some point ;) 

The size of the room is a little awkward since there is a pathway that leads to our room and garage. Stephen is planning on making the table big enough to fit 6 people and I'd really like to get a china cabinet to display all my wedding china. 

Stephen got me this unfinished monogram for my birthday. I painted it white and feel like it fits perfectly on that wall. We didn't want anything too overpowering since there's a big pictures on the adjacent wall. We found that picture at Kirkland's on sale and we love it! The size is perfect for that wall, especially with the chair rail. 

Painting & Red Containers: Kirkland's
Monogram: Etsy

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Family Room