Make a Quilt: Check

I finally finished my first quilt! well it's not completely finished- but my awesome sister-in-law Cynthia is going to actually quilt it for me :) But 8 months later it is fully pieced together, I'm just excited I still like it after looking at it for so long. Our guest room will hopefully be finished by the end of March. yay!

Easy Peesy Headband How To

Wednesday night I had sewing night at my house and Krista came wanting to make a few headbands. After looking at one I had I came up with this easy peesy way to make an elastic headband! it literally takes a total of 15 minutes. Seriously if you have a sewing machine you can make this! I got so motivated by how easy it was that I started cutting out pieces like crazy. Look at the stack below...

One of the best parts about this project is that if you are a crafter you probably have a scrap of fabric somewhere big enough to make this headband- I cut this entire stack using fabric from my scrap bin! how great is that...

Materials:
1 - 6" piece of elastic
1 - 15"x 4.5" piece of fabric
Step One:
Fold your fabric in half, with the right sides together. Sew together at 1/4" seam allowance.
Step Two:
Turn it right side out and iron it flat, with the seam in the center.
Step Three:
Place your elastic in the center of the fabric- On the right side (opposite side of the seam)
Step Four:
Fold each edge over the elastic, and put on pin through the center. Do to both sides of fabric/elastic

Step Five:
Sew the folded edges down at 1/4" seam allowance
Step Six:
Flip right side out.
Step Seven:
Hold folded edges flat at the point that you choose- about 2", and then iron flat.

And Voila! you are finito! a cute headband for you :)

Classic Coup in the News!

In February Her Magazine there is a feature on Classic Coup! When i was home for Christmas they did the photo shoot in the Nashville Public Library- one of my favorite buildings in Nashville. You can read the article HERE. You can buy one of our awesome shirts HERE.

The photos are of Me and Cindy McCain- the brains behind the operation... :)

The ultimate goal, McCain says, is “to make the most of the time that we’re here. The whole purpose of reading the classics is not just to entertain you with a good story — though that’s great — but it works out your brain, it’s critical thinking, and you’ll find that it relates to your world. As human beings, we are the same as we were back then. Times change, but what really matters to us, our struggles and our joys, stays the same.” And unlike in Catherine and Heathcliff’s time, we can now wear our hearts on a T-shirt.
Excerpt from the Article.

Vintage Valentine

I LOVE these adorable Vintage Valentines Images.
The best part about them is that you can download them for free!

HomeMade Ricotta

A few weeks ago i received my January issue of Bon Appetit and like usual flipped through all the recipes to see what i wanted to make. I was intrigued by their article on how to make your own Fresh Ricotta Cheese, so i tried it. They also had a recipe that went with it- you turn the fresh Ricotta into Gnocchi.
I thought the process of making the cheese was suprisingly easy, however i felt it very wasteful. It takes half a gallon of milk, but once you get all the curds the milk will produce you are left with more than half of the boiled milk still left. I guess to decide if it's really worth it i need to look at the price of ricotta and milk and see how they compare.
Also to make the full recipe of the gnocchi you need to DOUBLE the ricotta recipe- instead of using a gallon of milk i just halved the recipe for the gnocchi- and it was just enough for two people. We really liked the gnocchi, the sauce was really mushroomy, we probably wouldn't eat it again, but i am going to try making the gnocchi with store bought ricotta next time and see how it goes, because it was delicious!
The Recipe for the Ricotta is HERE and the Gnocchi HERE

You have to line a colander with cheesecloth...

And then once the boiling milk & lemon juice produces curds you scoop them into the cheescloth

Mixing the ingredients for the gnocchi...

rolling it out into little pastas..

Also this whole process took FOREVER, since you have to put it in the fridge after EVERY step it seemed like, i started at noon that day!

Pupdate

So i had to post these photos. Jill HATES wearing her coat- but i feel it necessary when it is like only a degree outside. She walks so funny- like she can't bend at her "knees" and walks all stiff legged, its quite hilarious. As soon as you take it off of her she bites at it like it's been torturing her and she wants to rip it apart. The tee i put on her during Christmas in the bottom picture seems to be more tolerable. :)

LOST is Back!

We are big Lost fans around here and amazingly enough we are not alone! My friend Brandi had a LOST party last night to watch the season premier of the, can you believe it, FINAL season! After last night's premier i am undoubtedly "Lost", how appropriate. But supposedly all the big questions WILL be answered! i just can't wait to watch the entire series start to finish sometime after it's all finished. Super LOST weekend at my house!

Brandi's cake... SO CUTE!

Alisha & Orson looking so cool in their Dharma jumpsuits!

"Dharma Beer"

All the girls..

Getting ready to watch!

I am so glad we have friends that like Lost as much as we do, Great party Brandi!

Love These Girls!

I forgot to post these photos that were taken during our Christmas visit in Nashville, probably because they were on my phone. Our family is predominately girls- my brother is the only boy in our generation- and we always have fun together. Since my aunt, uncle & 2 cousins have always lived 10 minutes away we have grown up together, which i think is a really cool experience. From babysitting them during the summer to now watching their high school basketball games and eating dinner every Sunday at my Grandmothers house who also only lives a few minutes away. I am the oldest by a lot but now that these girls are in high school its even more fun than it used to be. I am working on Alex's prom dress and i made Dani a dress last year. My sister Hollyanne is the youngest and now Alex & Dani return the babysitting i did for them to her, together we always have fun. Here's to family :)Dani, Me, Alex, Hollyanne

Alex & Hollyanne

The Filling Station

Saturday we were out and about and we decided to go to another recommendation from the eat.shop guide that I love. We just wanted something inexpensive and fun for lunch. We decided upon The Filling Station. It is a coffee shop, located downtown, that has a full menu and a juice bar. The juice was SO good! it tasted just like juice we got in Rio, and the food was yum as well. I had a grilled cheese on foccacia and Matt had a turkey wrap. Its a funky little place that we will likely visit again, if for nothing else but the juice! The juice we ordered was called "Liquid Sunshine"
You can go to their website HERE.

Tea Time...

I am in love with Republic of Tea's Red Chai. My first cousin Tracy works at Republic of Tea and over Christmas i was telling her that i had tasted Chai and i loved it, but i don't drink white or black tea so i was looking for an herbal version of Chai, which i thought wasn't really a possibility. Well it turns out there is a miracle herb from South Africa called Rooibos that they are making tea with and her company makes an amazing herbal Chai!

So just if you were wondering, the perfect steeping time is 5 minutes, add 1 teaspoon of Agave nectar and 1 tablespoon of cream/milk and you have the perfect winter morning wake me up.

What to Wear Wednesdays

Today I bring you an etsy seller that i stumbled across via the Oh Joy blog.
I think her clothes are super fun and inspiring, but more importantly i LOVE the styling and photography!
You can view Ouma's Etsy Store HERE.

Photography Credits to:
Steph De Saga:http://www.spraygraphic.com/ViewProject/395/normal.html
Galaxie Andrews: http://galaxieandrews.wordpress.com/
Andrew Coppola:http://www.mezzomind.com/

Lighter Sesame Chicken

Last night I decided to finally cook a recipe that i tore out of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine over a year ago. It will definitely be cooked again. It was light and delicious, and I was out of eggs so I omitted the egg whites and it still turned out delish! It would have been a super fast meal, but brown rice always takes forever for me to cook, any tips anyone??

You can see the recipe HERE. Enjoy!

Cute Shirt to Help Haiti

Matt's favorite place to buy tees is Threadless.com, hence why i get their almost daily emails. I think it might be the best place to find cool tees and they limit how many are printed, So you can be sure that you won't be spotting a twinner when you wear your's out on the town... Anyway, yesterday i got an email that they had a new shirt that 100% of the proceeds are going to Haiti Relief.

The shirt reads: "Men anpil chay pa lou" (Translation: "Many Hands Make the Load Lighter") You can go HERE to purchase.

by Thomas De Santis and Ivan Tarrazo Sanchez

We and some friends of ours have come together to support sending relief to Haiti. We’re donating 100% of proceeds of the sale of "Many Hands Make the Load Lighter" to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund

It IS a Magical Kingdom!

All i have to say is "it really is a Magical Kingdom" :)
no but really, i love Disneyworld. i am pretty sure i loved it more than my 10 year old sister, and maybe alot of the kids that were there. I guess it just takes me back to old memories of fun adventures and beloved movies. There was some fun additions and of course timeless favorites to enjoy.

We stayed at Disney's Boardwalk hotel, which was so Nantucket Chic!

We started our magical journey at Disney's Hollywood Studios (formerly known as MGM) I have always loved the great movie ride, the tower of terror & the little mermaid experience, but the new additions were super fun such as the Rockin Roller Coaster, The American Idol experience, and the Toy Story interactive game ride. The Fast Pass is a great new Disney addition- it allows you to go to the ride, swipe your ticket and it prints out a new fast pass ticket that tells you when to come back to the ride, which is usually around an hour later, so for instance we went to tower of terror and picked up our fast pass and then got to watch the Beauty and the Beast show, right after the show we ate lunch and then went back to the tower of terror- with the fast pass you are able to get into a different line that seriously shoots you right to the front. such a genius idea!
In the picture below you can get a feeling for how excited i was :)

Being the planner that i am, i mapped out our entire day so that we could maximize our time and see everything! We didn't leave until the park closed...

We saw characters...

guess what i'm going to be for halloween this year... how did i forget she was so cute!?!

We saw Broadway quality shows...

rode fun new rides...

went upside down...

and didn't even stand in lines for that long...

We got lost in the Twilight Zone...

and rocked it out with Aerosmith..

and felt like we were actually in Hollywood...

Day 2: Magic Kingdom

The Magic Kingdom was considerably more packed, maybe it was because it was Saturday, maybe it was because it is summer in South America and those people we saw advertising Disney in Copacabana, Brazil succeeded in getting the whole of south america to visit disney this weekend, i don't know, but it was crowded. However, thanks to the fast pass, we really didn't wait in any lines. we shot strait to the front of Space Mountain after visiting the Carosel of Progress, which i'm pretty sure i'm the only one that enjoyed it, and the new Monsters Inc. Comedy show that was hilarious! After that we headed to the back of the park and to our dismay splash mountain was closed! another new highlight of the day was the 3d movie Mickey's PhilharMagic, it was really cute and included all your favorite disney classic characters and songs.
At about 3pm we could hear that the parade was starting and had us bolt for where an area we could see it, at first it looked like it had just ended and i looked at Matt with a very sad expression on my face. Thats about the time that he laughed at me and typed this into his facebook status:

"Loving that Ang is more excited then 99.4% of the kids at disneyworld"

What can i say, i love disney. and their parades are fabulous!

We also wondered when the parade started when they initiated these harnesses for the characters on the floats? did Mickey go flying before they realized they needed to hold him down??

We Saw Jiminey Cricket!and Snow White..

Aladdin

Alice and Peter

And all the princesses...

don't forget my favorite, Ariel!

ok, so this picture is at the end of the day and my hair needs help, but here we all are!

and yes, it is a Magical Kingdom :)

Checking Out to Sunshine & Magic

About now we are on a plane to Orlando. I can't wait to see these guys :)
Have a great weekend! I'll say hi to Mickey for you.

Cute little Craft

Since the renovation of the downstairs started i have used one of the empty bedrooms upstairs to stash all the decor items i have and the pick and choose where to put everything. The room has become, as you might have imagined, a big mess. another item that has been collecting in this decor room are loose photos from all corners of my house that i want to be framed or displayed somehow.

After checking out Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of crafts (such a great reference book btw) i was flipping through it and came across the page with fabric covered photo mats. What a perfect idea i thought! So off to JoAnn's i went (giftcard from Christmas in hand) and i found a cute black&white print to cover some Mats. i did these three in an hour- they are super fast projects. i have the supplies so i thought this would be a great project for February sewing night! (even though it involves no sewing)
If you want to do this at home the Martha article is online you can find it HERE.

where is the sun?

Dear Missouri,

WHY do you hate the Sun? It is Soooo de-motivating to wake up at 7 and feel like it is 2 am.

Did i mention that the fog hasn't lifted for over a week? literally.

Seriously, please let Mr.Sun come out to play- i might go a little crazy if you don't.

Your temperatures haven't been so awful, but it's not so nice to be so damp all the time --

and it's really not fun to give my dogs a bath every time we come inside because they are muddy.

Dear Missouri, i do love you, but you really need an attitude adjustment.

Love,

Angela

and also weatherchannel.com you are such a tease.

you say it will be sunny every day and then. its. not.

I am SO looking forwarding to landing in SUNNY Orlando tomorrow night!!

Disney world here i come!

The Golden Globes

So i totally missed the golden globes! i am so bummed about it because 1. i love award shows and 2. they don't happen that often. So when i found out yesterday that we missed them- between choir practice, sealing the counter-tops, games at Chad & Amber's & then catching Jack Bauer in action, i went promptly to style.com to see the best of the red carpet. Below are my favorites :)
and in case you missed it like me here are a few of the Big Winners
Glee won best television series
Up won best original score
Best Actor in Comedy or Musical went to Robert Downey for Sherlock Holmes
Meryl Streep won Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her performance in Julie & Julia
The Hangover won best motion picture: comedy/musical
and Sandra Bullock won Best Actress in a drama for the Blindside,
and if you go HERE you can see a video of her press interviews after the show- she is so humble and sweet, and it sounds like she now has a bakery in Austin TX? can i make a trip please?!

And now for the dresses....

Great choice Tina Fey- i love this Zac Posen on you!

Some Project Runway alum made it on to the red carpet!
below is a gown by Christian Siriano

Julia always looks stunning.

And oh our little singing star. you are so cute in my fav- Oscar de la Renta

Christina was looking super glam.

and who knew Amy Adams was so Preggo... she looks chic!

why does my hair never look as good as Jen's?? it's like a perfect tousled mess.

and don't you just love him?

One of my favorite dresses, January Jones looks fabulous!

Cameron always looks radiant. i am particularly fond of this gown.

and Chris March from P.R made Meryl's gown!

Here's to a man who was not afraid of standing up for what he believed in.
Dr.King your prophetic voice has lived on.
Here are some quotes you may not have read before.
Happy MLK Jr. Day

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measures of Man, 1959.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Detroit, Michigan, June 23, 1963.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

It always feels good to finish a project!

The counter tops are finished! YAY! our kitchen renovation is now complete and i am so happy with it. I think we made a great decision to replace the counter tops, the butcher block counters really balance the color of the room.

Here are some tips of how we did it in case you are thinking about doing something similar.
For this project we had a few tools that i were indispensable including our little black & decker mouse sander, we had to sand every surface of the cabinets before painting, a jigsaw was used to cut out the outlet hole on the beadboard, and Matt got handy dandy new compound miter saw that we used to cut all the trim along the floor. We bought the paint from Zeke's Paint on North Oak and they were SO helpful. We used an oil based primer and then the paint they reccomended, it was expensive but it went on like a dream. The wood counters we purchased at Ikea and then once they were cut (which we found an awesome carpenter who came to our house to do it, if you are interested i'll give you his info) we had to put wood filler in a few places, sand where there was rough edges and then seal it with a Poly-Eurathane coating. All in all the project took us about 4 days to do all the painting and then the counters another 3 days. Here are the before and afters!

BEFORE:AFTER:




I love our new picture of the SanDiego Temple! Matt's mom gave it to us for Christmas. It's even personalized with our wedding date in the top right corner :)