Cardstore Giveaway!

Have you ever stood in the greeting card aisle in a store, picking up card after card, trying to find the one with just the right message? On some you like the design on the front, but the words aren't quite right. On others, everything is perfect except for one little sentence that's just odd. When you finally find one with a perfect message on the inside, it may not be pretty on the outside. So you end up spending ten minutes reading card after card until you find one that's good enough and call it a day. Jeff and I have big families (lots of birthdays, anniversaries, Confirmations, etc.), so I do that way too often.

But the Internet has a solution! I love the new trend of personalized greeting card websites that are popping up. I wrote about Treat a while back, and today I'm back with another one - Cardstore! These websites allow you to choose from a giant gallery of cards (without ever having to go to the store!), and then you can edit and tweak them to make them just right for your loved ones! Add in photos, names, personalized messages, etc.

I gave my dad a card from Treat for Father's Day, complete with photos of him with his kids over the years, and I think he liked the card better than his actual gift! For Mother's Day, I was finally able to get my Gran-Mom and Gran cards that said "For my Gran-Mom" and "Gran" rather than "Grandma" or "Grandmother." Personalized cards = so fun!

 

Cardstore offered me a free card so I could try out their website as well, and of course I took them up on the offer! I ordered a birthday card for my little sister, Karoline. Her birthday is still a while away, but I don't think she reads the blog, so we're safe! 

The Front

The Inside

She's going to be a teenager!

Personalized Message

Cardstore had lots of cute designs to choose from, and the website was easy to use. Plus they have a whopping 15% cashback with Ebates! The print quality and paper thickness is great, and I think Karoline will love her card! 

I had mine mailed to me, but you can also have them mail the card for you directly to the recipient!

And now for the fun part... one of y'all gets to win a free greeting card from Cardstore (free shipping too!)! Use Rafflecopter to enter below! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pin-spired Chicken, Potatoes, and Green Beans

I'm sure y'all have seen this one going around Pinterest. You just dump a bunch of stuff in a dish, stick it in the oven, and it ends up being an entire meal! Well, I was curious as to how this actually worked, so I decided to give it a try, and it actually turned out pretty well! 

Overall, this was a SUPER easy meal to prepare. It's not the most delicious thing I've ever cooked, but it more than makes up for it with how EASY it is! The potatoes were really quite tasty, and the green beans were good as well. The chicken was a bit bland, so I think next time I'll marinate the chicken breasts for a while first. We try to keep a low-sodium diet, so this isn't something I'd make often (canned veggies and dressing mixes are full of sodium), but when you need a really quick simple dinner, this recipe is great to have on hand!
I originally found this via this pin on Pinterest, but ended up adapting the recipe found here.
Ingredients: 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts 4-6 red potatoes, cubed 2 cans green beans 4 cloves garlic, minced 1 packet Italian dressing mix 1 stick of butter, melted salt and pepper to taste
Directions: 1. Layer chicken, potatoes, and green beans in a casserole dish. Top with garlic.  2. Sprinkle dressing mix on top. Pour melted butter evenly over the entire dish. Add salt and pepper to taste. 3. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. 
(layering the ingredients in the dish...)
(this is the dressing mix I used)
(topped with dressing mix)
(ready for the oven!)
Ta-da!
Enjoy!

Organizing Under the Bathroom Sink

With my March Spring Cleaning project, the area I was least looking forward to tackling was under my bathroom sink. When we moved into the house, I just kind of dumped all my stuff there and planned on organizing it later, and then I just never got around to it. So for two years, it looked like this:

Yeah. Not good.
But after about an hour, I had it looking like this:

MUCH BETTER!

The first thing I did was take everything out.

There was a lot of stuff under there. I buy toiletry items a bunch at a time when they go on sale, so I have a lot of "extra" shampoo, deodorant, etc. 

I cleaned out the cabinet and lined the bottom with shelf liner, which gave me a nice blank slate.

I knew I needed more surface area than the bottom of the cabinet allowed, so I bought this awesome under-the-sink mesh shelf thing from Bed Bath and Beyond:

And then it was just a matter of throwing away things like old lotion and stuff I don't use, and putting everything back in! 

The top left is my "face" shelf. All of my extra make-up goes in the little crate (my everyday stuff lives in a drawer, but this is all the stuff I don't use on a daily basis), and face moisturizer and sunscreen live there too.

The top right is my "nails" shelf. All of my nail polishes, files, etc. go in the blue box, and nail polish remover behind it.

The bottom left holds my travel toiletry bags, and some hair products (I put the stuff I use most often in the front):

Having a pre-packed toiletry bag is a godsend for me. We travel fairly often, so this saves me so much time! I keep these items stocked and ready to go in a travel bag:


My liquids and gels stay in a Ziploc so I don't have to worry about it if we're flying:

I keep the smaller bag inside of a larger one (if I'm going on a longer trip and need to add a few things, I just dump all the contents of the smaller one into the larger one), along with my jewelry organizer pouch. When we travel, I just throw in my brush and glasses and we're ready! 

The bottom right side is where all my "extras" live. Deodorant, facewash, shampoo, shaving cream, razor blades, etc. Now I can easily see how many I have of something, so I know when I need to start looking for a sale to stock up!

I've been living with the new system for about a month, and it still looks just like those photos! It's so easy to put everything back where it belongs now, and it makes me feel less stressed in the morning when everything is neat and organized under the sink! I can't believe it took me two years to get around to it! 

Roasted Zucchini with Thyme

I made a New Year's resolution for 2013 to cook and eat more vegetables. I've actually been sticking to it, and I've discovered that I LOVE roasted veggies. It's so easy to cook vegetables on a foil-lined baking sheet (easy clean-up!), and the flavors are so delicious! Thyme makes the zucchini SO tasty, and I just love this recipe!

Recipe adapted from here.
Ingredients: 3 zucchini, quartered and cut into 1 1/2 inch chunks 1 small onion, thinly sliced 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp dried thyme 1/4 tsp salt 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
Directions: 1. Cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil and lightly spray it with olive oil spray.  2. On the baking sheet, toss zucchini and onion with oil, thyme, salt, and pepper. Spread zucchini into a single layer. 3. Roast at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring and tossing halfway through. 
(combining ingredients)
(ready for the oven!)
(out of the oven)
Mmm, roasty zucchini-y goodness! 
Ta-da!
Enjoy!

Spring & Summer Monogram Wreath

AKA, the Easiest Wreath Ever.



So I needed a wreath for the Spring and Summer. I wanted to make something that could last from after Easter all the way until the Fall. And then I found this green wreath on sale at Target, and after that it all happened very quickly and now I have a pretty little wreath! You can have one too because it's SO easy! Here's all you need to know:
Supplies: Green leafy wreath Large chipboard letter White paint Thin green ribbon Hot glue gun
First, paint your letter white (or you know, any other color) and let it dry.

Next, cut two little strips of ribbon and hot glue them to the top and bottom of your letter. You really don't have to do this step (you could just hot glue your letter directly to the wreath), but I wanted to leave myself the option of removing the letter later, so this way you don't mess up the wreath itself at all!


Then get out your wreath...

... and tie those two ribbons to the top and bottom of the wreath (just pick some branches to tie to). You'll want to attach the ribbons slightly higher up than it looks like you should because the letter will "sink" a little when you hang it up (gracias, gravity). 
And then you're done!

Enjoy your cheery monogrammed front door!

Five Things

It's been a while since I did a Five Things post, huh? I guess I was just saving up my "things" until I had five good ones! So here we go... 
1. I Love Free Flowers! Spring is so great. Everything in our yard is blooming, so I have plenty of fresh flowers, and they're all free! 
Irises from our backyard!
Knock-out roses from the front yard!
Lantana from the front yard!
I'll be so sad when it gets hotter and everything stops making beautiful flowers! 
2. Summer Recipe Features Some of my recipes have been featured recently by a couple wonderful bloggers, and I just wanted to give them a shout-out here! Sober Julie just did a feature on frozen desserts (sorbet, gelato, ice cream) and included my lemon ice cream!

And The Saturday Evening Pot just did a feature all about lemons, including my lemon pound cake, lemon berry trifle, lemon tarts, and lemon cake with lemon buttercream (along with lots of other lemony recipes I can't wait to try!).

That lemon & eggplant risotto is calling my name. I love risotto!
3. Simple Produce Wash I'm horrible. I usually just rinse my fruits and veggies with water and call it a day. And I don't like to pay extra for the organic stuff, so my fruits and veggies are probably covered in pesticide and scary stuff. We haven't died yet, so I guess it's not that big of a deal, but I decided I ought to be doing a better job with the produce cleaning.
So now this is my method (based on this website): Plug the drain in the sink. Put a cup of vinegar in the sink. Fill the sink halfway with lukewarm water. Mix it up. Put the fruits & veggies in the sink. Let it sit for 10 minutes. Rinse and dry everything.


I do it whenever I go to the grocery store and everything gets washed all at once and it's super easy. For stuff like green beans and berries it's helpful to stick a big colander in the sink so you have something to scoop 'em up with. :) 
4. A Visit from Blog/Real-life Friends! We got to see our friends Caitlin and Adam when they visited Humble a couple weeks ago! 

Caitlin is an example for me of how blogging can be so wonderful. I actually met her on our Engaged Encounter retreat (they got married on the same day as us), and we talked a bit but I never would've ever seen her again if we hadn't found each other through blogging a few weeks later and realized we had so much in common! And here we are, three years later, about to celebrate our third anniversaries. :) 
5. Moving my Sister's Stuff  I love my family for lots of reasons. One reason is that we're always there for each other and willing to help make each other's lives easier. That's why my parents moved my sister's stuff home from college and we unpacked it (heavy furniture and all) entirely without my sister because she was still in Fort Worth finishing up a summer semester (but not in her unfurnished apartment anymore).
This is the outfit I wear when I come over on a Sunday after church and don't know we're about to move a bunch of furniture.
I also love my family because they're just so funny and they make me laugh. And that's why we took a picture of just how exhausted we were after hauling all of my sisters stuff out of the U-Haul to send to her while she was in Fort Worth not helping.

Haha! Love you, Kristen! 
And that's it! Is anyone else guilty of just rinsing the produce with water and calling it done? What about painting an entire room with two coats before realizing you bought the wrong paint? Here's hoping I'm not the only one... :)