Prayer

I was going to include this in the last post, but decided to give it it's own post instead. On the topic of prayer, my cousin has just been diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. You can go here to read about it if you've never heard of it, but regardless, I just wanted to ask for your prayers for her. She was about to head off to college, and is now in the hospital, so if you think about it, please just keep her and her family in your prayers!
Thank you!

Before and After

Since I'm subbing this year, and the school year just started, I have had a little extra time on my hands. Although I have a huge test on Saturday that I should be studying for, I have decided to give my brain a break and give you a glimpse into the "finished" product of our family room, which I have been working on lately (with some major help from my sister-in-law!).

First, here's a couple pictures of the living room right after we moved in. The furniture we had in our apartment looked so tiny in our new family room!

And here it is today - new sectional, paint on the walls, curtains, and some new (read: re- purposed) decorations...

Although it is by no means a professional paint job, I am really proud of the hard work that Kelly and I put into it! We painted while Matt was out of town for work, and let me tell you, it was NOT easy to stand on the top rung of the ladder (the one that says do not stand or sit here) and stretch up on the tips of my toes to try to reach the high ceilings. If you are ever in my family room, please don't critique the edges too harshly! ;)

Now back to studying for my exam... if you think about it, pray for a miracle on Saturday!

More blog design

I just realized that, although I finished the design for my friend Allison awhile ago, I never blogged about it. So, here it is! She asked for blues/greens and earth tones and gave me the picture and text to use and I went from there! I created custom tags for her sidebar titles too which I hadn't done before, so that was a fun experiment! :) Thanks for trusting me Allison!

Here's a quick screenshot of the finished product!

Wedding Season

Matt and I just got back from Austin for the wedding of two of my college friends Chris and Lindsey. They got married at Villa Antonia - out near Lake Travis - and everything was absolutely beautiful! They actually used our same photographer, so it was a lot of fun getting to see Sarah in action again :) Here's a few photos of the wedding...

Chris and Lindsey are one of the happiest couples I have ever known. In college, if you ever couldn't find them, you just had to follow the sound of giggling. These two laugh more than you would think possible. It's contagious to be around!

Such a beautiful bride! So glad we were able to be there to celebrate with them!

Red Velvet Cake Balls

I discovered cake balls awhile back on one of the baking/cooking blogs I follow (I can't remember which one I actually saw them on first), and have been wanting to try them ever since. Thanks to Matt being out of town/working late yesterday, I finally did! I captured my first attempt in pictures...

The cast of characters (you don't really need 2 cans of icing - but I had one already opened, so I thought I'd use that one up before diving into the new one)

What your hands will look like during the cake-balling process

The cake-balls ready to go to the freezer:

And a close-up (I used a melon-baller to try to keep the size consistent)

And now for the almost-finished product...

I used toothpicks to get them out of the melted almond bark - and then removed them after the covering hardened. If I had been going for perfection on these, I would have completely re-dipped them in a separate bowl of almond bark, because the red velvet cake crumbs get all over everything. Obviously I was not going for perfection. Apparently I got a little bit of water in my first batch of almond bark and it seized up... see exhibit A

exhibit A

And, if you take the toothpicks out before it's ready - this will happen...

And if you get lucky, a couple of them will look like this!

These took ALL day to make (literally, I put the cake in the oven around 11:30a and I wasn't finished covering them until about 6:30p (and I actually ran out of almond bark, so I didn't even get them all covered), but taste-wise I think they turned out great! I would definitely make these again for a party or the holidays! You can make them in any flavor too - so it would be fun to experiment with different combinations!

Blog Design

Yesterday I finished up the blog design for my friend Amanda's baking blog. Here's a quick screen shot...

You can click on the image to be directed to her blog :)

Let me know what you think - and check our her delicious cakes!

Laundry Room Reveal

First of all, let's take a look at the laundry room before... this is right before we moved in, and they hadn't quite finished the trim yet.

After we moved in and had our washer/dryer delivered... I LOVE my Samsung washer/dryer!

And now after some paint...

I'd still like to add a few other touches in here -- like a big bulletin board/chalkboard with hooks on the wall that the washer/dryer face, and I'd like to get a black and white damask ironing board cover, like this one...

And last, but not least, the final result of my washboard project that I picked up in Canton...I couldn't decide where I wanted to hang it in my laundry room, so I just put it up on the shelf for now.

And a close-up:

After cleaning, scrubbing and sanding it down, I spray-painted the frame an ivory color, and after that was done, I went back over the top part with chalk-board paint (which is my new favorite - I've been walking around my house trying to find other things I can turn into a chalkboard!).

Now I'm off to finish up one of the blog designs I've been working on. I'll be back with a glimpse into the design later!

Overdue recap

This is about a week later than I planned, but I wanted to write a quick post about last weekend when my mom and sister came into town. Poor Matt -- the girls definitely took over the house for the weekend. Friday night, we stayed in and grilled brats (YUM) and hotdogs for Matt since he's not really a brat fan, corn on the cob, and had a ton of fresh fruit -- it was a delicious summer meal! Saturday morning, the girls woke up early and hit the road to Canton, TX (about an hour southeast of us) for one of the biggest market-trade centers EVER. We had so much fun sifting through all of the stuff there, and I know we didn't even see half of the booths. Apparently, if you were to walk through all of the booths there, you'll walk 26 miles. We only made it until about 1:30 before we were all exhausted. We did come home with some good loot, though!
Sorry the picture is a little blurry - we were definitely out in the country, and the guy who took our picture looked at my camera like it was from the year 3800.
A big part of Canton is basically like a giant antique-flea market, so I decided that I wanted to find something for a good project. I ended up finding an old-fashioned wash board that was covered in dirt, but actually had a ribbed glass center for the wash-board part, and apparently those can be pretty hard to find. I decided to grab it and make it a project for my laundry room. Here's the before...

You can see that it was pretty filthy... here take a closer look...

I don't think you're really understanding how gross this thing was.... here - look again.

So, I cleaned it off, scrubbed, sanded, and turned it into a fun addition for my laundry room. Here's a little teaser...

Finished product to come...

Also, while my mom and sister were here, they offered (read: I coerced them) to help me paint my laundry room. I'll show the finished product along with my project reveal!

Speaking of projects, I've had two other friends ask for help designing their blogs, so stay tuned for some new blog designs coming up!

Yes, I changed it again...

Hopefully the background is loading properly now... and hopefully this will satiate my need for change for awhile!

What do you think?

Guess I didn't really need the teaser for this...

Seeing as how it happened a little quicker than I imagined. Anyways, to follow up on my last post - my friend Liz got her blog up! I just wanted show y'all the blog design I created for her and share the link to her blog! She told me she didn't want to use an actual photo, and gave me a few color guidelines - and I ran with it from there. I think it turned out really cute! AND -- (way to bury the lead here) the most exciting part of it all is the actual reason why she is starting this blog -- drum roll please.... she is expecting! She and her husband Brian will be welcoming a new little one into the world sometime in February! Congratulations Liz!

In case that link doesn't work for some reason - here's the header I created for the blog:
And her blog is www.themcdermottbaby.blogspot.com :)

Changing her blog has me itching to change mine again...

Just a test

I've been playing around with the idea of adding a "signature" to my posts. This post is really just a quick test to see whether or not I want add this, or not! Feel free to comment - and who knows, this might change 15 more times before I actually stick with something.

On a side note - I just did a little blog design for a friend of mine who is starting a new blog. As soon as she posts something, I will add a link to it and show you the design :) Stay tuned!

Pie in the sky

How awesomely delicious do these look? I stole this picture from Bakerella, as well as this idea, but I thought I'd share my favorite idea of the day! She actually got this idea from another blog as well - (the link to that is in her blog) - and I think they are the coolest little pies I've ever seen! I think I want to try these out in the fall (it's still a little too warm in Dallas to spend a day baking) - and make them with all different kinds of filling! Pumpkin, pecans, blackberry, cherry, apple, the list could go on and on... YUM. I'll post again on these after I attempt to bake them!

Sorry 'bout that

If any of you happened to visit my blog between sometime last night and this morning, you might not have been able to read it due to the Photobucket message displayed all over the middle section. It should be fixed, and won't happen again since I'm using my own photobucket images now! Sorry about that! Also, this is a random thought, but if any of you bloggers out there would be interested in a blog makeover, I'm thinking about trying to work on other people's blog designs as well - since I have so much fun with it (and since Sarah suggested it -- by the way Sarah, you need to start blogging again!!) Let me know if you'd be interested by leaving a comment below!

My mom and sister were in town this past weekend, and we crammed quite a bit into just a couple days. I still have some pictures to upload before I post about it - just wanted to get my first post in for the month of August! I can't believe how quickly summer has flown by!