So Pretty... Can't... Look... Away.....

How about some eye candy?

Um, prettiest basement ever? Yeah.

Cozy.

 Looove the paint color.

This looks like a vacation home on the beach. I need to go here.

Bright and airy.

Ah...

Pantry!

Well, I got 7 inches of snow at my house Sunday night and it has yet to melt. It's very rare for to see snow like that so I've been delighted to have it. Couldn't get in to work on Monday and didn't get in until 10 today.

But my pantry is organized (nice segue there, huh?).

It started like this:

 I guess the philosophy was to pretty much just throw stuff wherever there's room...

Here's my lunch bin. No I cannot explain why I had 5 containers of peanut butter...

It was high time to organize that bad boy with organizing rule number 1) group like with like.

I finally organized the cereals into thes awesome Oxo containers. Woah, that's a lot of Cheerios....

After:

The pantry makes it look like I'm going to die of starvation, but hey, I'll die of starvation with the pantry organized.

This isn't the prettiest labeling ever, but it works. In these other Oxo containers I keep all-purpose flour, self-rising flour and sugar. I just cut the labels off the bags they came in and stuck them inside to keep it all straight.

I grabbed that tin from upstairs and used it to hold any sauce packets or small packets. The blue box below it holds oatmeal packets and bags of popcorn.

Feels good to have that taken care of!

Packing it Away

I finally found the strength to put away the Christmas tree and such. It was my first Christmas in this house and so it was super hard to get rid of everything! The tree made the house look so cozy, but alas, it was time. I had bought these green bins at Target a few weeks back and I used the under-the-bed size to pack away most of the Christmas decor.

 I just took the ornaments off, removed their hooks and then placed them into the bin.

Then I took off the lights and wrapped them up then they went in as well. I separated some of the ornaments into plastic bags since I used them for other decor in the house.

I also have a bag for extra lights and a bag for ornament hooks.

So there it is all packed up. Sad to see it go, but glad it's all packed away so nicely.

The Murder Mystery Partay!

If I haven't revealed this already, I love hosting parties (well I guess I just love parties in general) and this one was really fun for me. As I mentioned before, we hosted a New Year's Eve party last Friday and it was a Mardi Gras themed murder mystery dinner party (say that 10 times fast...). I had bought the kit for my friend Kelly's birthday last year and we finally got around to using it for this event.

Here's a picture of the house decked out for the event. We bought plenty of Mardi Gras beads and masks for everyone.

The kit was great in my opinion; it included a party planning guide to explain how to structure the night's events, recipes, decorating ideas and costume ideas for each character. The kit also had a "police report", clues, name tags and a character booklet for each person. Everybody dressed up as their character and really got into it so that made it much more fun.

Here's my sister McKenna and I. I was Elise St. Gresch, the maid and she was Connika Gothika, the eccentric novelist from next door.

 Out of the recipes included with the booklet, we made 2 of them. The garlic bread on the left and the jambalaya on the right. As the jambalaya included meat I didn't have any, but everyone else said it was really good.

We made this vegetarian gumbo for myself and I loved it. It was spicy enough to give it flavor, but not too spicy and all the vegetables were really tasty. It made a TON though, so if I were to do it again, I would definitely halve the recipe.

This is the beginnings of a King Cake, a Mardi Gras must in my opinion... ;-)

A few of us decked out in our masks! From left to right, Melissa DuPre - the wife, Alexis DuPre - the daughter, the maid, Cayenne Pepper - the chef and Bourbon DuPre - the jazz musician

The completed King Cake. It doesn't look like much, but we made it with a lot of love and it tasted great anyway. =]

 Here I am with Stephen J. Peek - the attorney and Bourbon.

I don't want to give it all away in case anyone decides to play the game themself, but it was definitely a lot of fun trying to solve the mystery and getting all into character and everything. We also played New Orleans jazz music the whole time and having the Mardi Gras themed food certainly helped us get into character.

Happy New Year!

Hope your New Years was fun too! =]

Dear Head, Please Stop Spinning

I have so many things to post about and so many things going on lately. My head won't stop spinning! I'm preparing for the big New Years Eve party tomorrow. It's going to be a murder mystery dinner party so I've been on my toes all week getting ready for it, but I'm really excited because I love throwing parties and I think it will be a lot of fun. =]

For now, I leave you with this:

My co-worker ripped both of those phone books in half. With his bare hands. It was very impressive.

Party Time!

My best friend's birthday was last week and we threw her a party on Saturday. Usually for my friend's brithdays, we'll get together and bake them a cake, but I wanted to do something different. I decided on Bakerella's oreo truffles! Here's a pic of the setup right before the party started. You also get a glimpse of my Christmas tablescape. I used one of my scarves as a table runner and simply set out some of my ornaments in my color scheme. But back to the truffles....

I had so much fun making these and they turned out pretty cute.

My friend's favorite color is blue so I picked up some blue candy melts to add some of her favorite color into the mix.

I took ziploc bags and filled them with the extra chocolate/candy melts and then cut a little hole in a corner and used that to drizzle the chocolate over the top of the truffles.

This was the first time I'd ever had these and I thought they tasted delicious. The birthday girl liked them too. =]

And here we all are after filling our bellies with truffles and pizza (and doing the Cha-Cha slide in my kitchen)! Good times!

It's Curtains For You

Cheesy title? Check.

I finally got curtains up and it completely changes the feel of the house! I mentioned in this post that I had bought these chocolate brown curtain rods at Ikea. I hadn't bought curtains yet because I was still trying to figure out what I wanted. I was thinking I wanted white curtains, but I hadn't made up my mind yet. I also knew I didn't want to spend a lot on them (story of my life). I finally decided I wanted floor-length, white, grommet-top curtains and after looking around and seeing the median price, I was extremely disappointed. Well, my love Target came through for me again! I found white, grommet-top curtains that were floor-length for $27 (and some change) for a pair!! I was so excited. I took them home and washed them and then after drying and hanging them up, I discovered the truth: they were too short!

How could this happen to me? I thought my dream had come true! Oh well, I got over it fast and came up with a solution. I took a seam-ripper and ripped the seams on the bottom of every single one to extend them to their original length and then I took some $2 Stitch-Witchery and added it to the very bottom and steamed it on. After steaming the Stitch-Witchery onto the bottom of the curtains, I ironed them and we put them up -- again.

Here was my setup as I ironed the Stitch-Witchery on.

The whole process was so much easier than I thought it was going to be.

The final product:

So there they are! My floor-length, white, grommet-top curtains at a price I can agree to. Yay!