mrs. lavespere

I guess it's been a while.

2012-04-10T23:14:00.001-05:00

So I haven't posted anything in over a year. To avoid chasing a rabbit, I'll just say that I got scared off. I had a psychology professor in college who said I had 'self-sabotaging' tendencies. Getting a little personal with you guys, I'll say that I feel like I live in a constant fear of completely screwing up, and that fear sometimes paralyzes me. I am notorious for doing this when I start getting any sort of positive feedback on something. Heck, I tried to break up with my husband right after we started dating because it was just too good. Then later, tried doing it again the very week that he would be proposing because I was sure that whether in one year or ten, he would leave me because I was just too crazy for him to handle.

I freakout.

I quit.

I bail.

I give up.

But I don't have to.

For now, I'm back. I fully plan on sticking around for a while, but a little encouragement from you guys would super duper help with that. I'll share more about what's been going on in my life and what the Lord's been showing me and doing through me as we go, but for now I'd love to just show you some simple things I've been working on.
Before I left, my BFF and I had both started getting into doing graphic design stuff. She, being much braver than I, started doing blog design jobs and has really done awesome at it! I'm serious! Go check out her work! At first, I tried venturing out and offering services too...but a few things happened that scared me off. (surprise!) Although I'm not so sure I'm ready to try that again, I still love doing graphic design fun stuff. So, I think for now I might just be posting things that I make. I hope you like them!

I made this a few months ago after my husband and I moved and started a new chapter of our lives together at the beginning of this year. I know I'm not capable of anything outside of Christ, but it's a reminder that I need.

This one's a little more personal. I just made it today, but I think the quote resonates with just about everyone.

And this awesome little piece of work is currently my profile picture on Facebook because, as you guys may know, Hubby & I are both gingers...and some people just don't get it.

There you go!

What do you call your Hubby?

2011-01-12T10:48:00.000-06:00

Obviously, I call mine Hubby. If you've ever read another entry of my dear little bloggity-blog, then I'm sure you know that. I love petnames. Hubsters & I come up with random names for each other in all kinds of situations. That's sooo not meant to be dirty. haha.

Hubby when he's mad at something silly: Grumpy Bums.
Hubby when he comes home from work and I haven't seen him all day because I didn't wake up when the first alarm went off and I follow him around the house poking him: Cute Butt/Chubby Bums.
Hubby when he's being *ahem* and I'm just really really tired: Lil' Man.
Me all the time: Baby.
When he's being flirty: Cutegirl.

My blog's name even...came from a petname. Back when Hubby & I first started sort of pre-dating, he came to see me in this little one act play I was in...a mutual guy friend helped him sneak in a bouquet of dark pink tulips & tiger lilies into the dressing room. The community theatre group I was involved in had a social afterwards. People clustered into the front lobby drinking wine (or coke for some of us) while solos, duets, or trios would jump on the piano and play a random song, of the broadway kind of course. I swear this group was so much less cliche than I'm describing them to be right now!
After that wound down, we went out for a really late supper with a couple of friends, then back to their house for a movie. Hubby had been incredibly sweet, courteous, & gentlemenly the whole night. I wasn't a little teeny-bopper or anything. I was 21! But I'd never dated anyone before (thank you Jesus). While we were watching the movie (of course, I have no idea what it was because I couldn't even concentrate!) Part way through, Hubby reached over and very nonchalantly took my hand. Once again, I was 21....but inside I was freaking out like a little 10 year old getting her first non-cootie-cheek-kiss on the playground!
Once the movie was over and we got in the car for Hubby to take me home, he reached over again and took my hand. I'll never forget I said, 'I think I like you, Mr. Lavespere'...and he very sweetly replied, 'I think I like you too, Miss Page'.
I know, I know....it's not even February yet and I'm getting all sappy blah blah blah gag gag smooshie mooshie. So what.
A little bit of me knew that night that I realllly one day, wanted to be Mrs. Lavespere.

And now I am.

So. What do you call your Hubby?

And to celebrate all of our mutual sappy blah blah blah gag gag smooshie mooshie-ness, I made my very first piece of Subway Art. What do you think? If you like it, feel free to grab away! Just click it once, then right click & save the larger copy that pops up. It's a nice 8" x 10" piece.

Enjoy!

You Won! You Won!!

2011-01-02T22:17:00.001-06:00

I REALLY love winning giveaways. I've only won one myself...but I just love the concept of giveaways and making someone's day by telling them, 'You Won!!' I just love it.

I am sooo sorry for not announcing this yesterday like I said I would! Hubby & I went out of town to stay the weekend with his sister & her hubster & kids and got back yesterday afternoon but were wiped and ended up going out with Courtney & her boyfriend (pop the stinkin question already, Skyler!!!) and a couple of other couples to our newly opened local Buffalo Wild Wings last night.

So, to not dilly-dally any longer....

the winner.......

of a custom design wall art

is........

Amie Amie Amie Amie!!!!

In case you DON'T know, that's Amie from Kitty Cats & Airplanes!!
If you don't know who that is, you should jump over & check her out at her adorable blog which my bff, Courtney helped her design!

Ok Amie, I'm gonna email you in 2 seconds so be looking for it!

To everyone else, thank you sooo much for supporting my giveaway and
please please please keep reading!!

Have a Happy Whole Year!

100 Followers Giveaway!! Closed

2010-12-10T22:11:00.003-06:00

Alright Ladies (& Gents)!

For quite some time now I've known exactly what I would do for my very exciting 100 Followers Giveaway. Some of you may remember a certain ModPodged piece of wall art I made for a friend earlier this year.

Remember Jaimie Paris?

And Hubby's ManCave Sign?

And my dear sweet friend Michelle's abolition plaque which is currently living overseas with her?

Look at those ridiculously goofy grins.

Well, if you haven't quite figured it out yet, I've decided to create a custom made piece of Wall Art with pictures, words, paint, paper, or fabric or whatever you'd like up to maybe 11" x 14" or up to 3 smaller coordinating pieces. Does that sound good?!

Alright. How to win.

1. MANDATORY! Be a public follower of Mrs. Lavespere. because....this is a followers giveaway...ya know. However, new followers are welcome to join in.

(2 entries...woohoo!)

Sample: 'I follow you, yo!'

2. Follow Mrs. Lavespere on twit-twit-twitter.

(1 entry)

Sample: 'I follow you on twit-twit-twitter!'

3. Grab any of my past or current buttons and post them anywhere on your blog.

(1 entry)

Sample: 'Check it out! I have your button!'

4. Blog or Tweet about this giveaway.

(1 entry each)

Sample: 'I blogged / tweettweettweeted about your giveaway at plainjane.blogspot.com / @plainjane.'

Now that's a total of SIX possible ways to winnn!!

Make sure you leave a separate comment for each thing you do! I'll be using random.org to choose a comment number as the winner!

The giveaway closes December 31st, New Years Eve!!

And a Winner will be announced on the First day of 2011!!

There you have it! Enter away!!

*Open to only blogger friends currently living in the U.S. I can't ship around the world, you know!*

Framed 3D Christmas Tree

2010-12-10T00:40:00.000-06:00

Ok so I made this tree for our house over a week ago, but have been busy with work and never got around to working through my pictures to make a post. I have to tell you, I am sooo super stoked about it! I knew I'd been wanting to make something like it, but never really tried yet.
If you want to jump to the end to see it, go ahead...but if you'd like to blindly follow me through my crazy tutorial, I'd LOVE to show you how to make one too!

You'll need:

A frame, the size of your choosing (hopefully thrifted, like mine was)

Coordinating scrapbook paper of your choice

Roll or sheet of foam double sided tape

Scissors (of course)

Paint color of your choice

Oh, and the use of a computer & printer

Pick your paper:

I chose 4 different patterns for:

background

tree

& two for the ornaments.

Next, you'll need to find a tree pattern online, or create one if you'd like.

I found this one:

Source

With your fave snazzy chosen tree paper, print out this pattern. Make sure you put your paper in upside down so that the pattern will print on the blank side. I used photoshop to edit the size of my tree so that it would be nice & big to fit in my frame & I also grayscaled it so I wouldn't be wasting any pretty ink.

By the way. Don't you love my great new printer?! It's an awesome wireless update of the old hp all-in-one I've had since college...hubby got it on sale for $20 at Staples because they'd used it as a display! 20 bucks!!

Cut out your tree. Doesn't it look good against the background paper already? Now, I don't know if this would work with any pattern you find, but I chose mine so that I could do this:

Fold it like so.

So that it jumps out a little like this!

Once your tree is pretty, you'll need to find an ornament pattern. I found a great set of 3/4...

Here

I picked out 2 different paper patterns for my ornaments...blue winter swirls & red polka dots. Print your pattern and cut out whichever ornaments you want.

Use your foam tabs on the back of each and scatter them over your tree pattern.

Then do the same to the back of your completed tree and stick the whole thing to your background paper.

If you hadn't had a chance to already (I didn't necessarily make this in the nicely organized order I've made up here)...grab your frame and fix it up a little bit.

$0.10 woohoo!

I painted mine bright red!

Now, once everything's foam tab covered & painted, put it all together. I chose to not put my glass frame cover back on to let the tree stick out. I also had to trim my background paper a little bit to fit snugly in the frame. All done?! Me too.

Here's mine!:

Do you like it?! I love it's simplicity.

I'm also in the middle of making a mini gingerbread style one too! I'm just also in the middle of making 15 million Christmas presents so I'll get it up as soon as I can!

I hope you like it and might try to make one too! If you do, please let me know! I'd love to see it!!

Thanks for any new friday followers! Don't forget I'll be announcing a

super duper 100 Follower Giveaway this Saturday!!

Happy Friday!!

Just a....

2010-12-08T23:43:00.034-06:00

Supppper quick post to let you know that I am doing a little construction around the place...it may be messy, but it's sweepy time. I have work in the morning but will not leave it looking like this for long.

Also, I've got a post nearly finished about some Christmas-y things that have been going on around the house.

And I'll be announcing my 100 Followers giveaway THIS Saturday! Woohoo! I hope you guys like it!! It's from the heart!

Love

Yesterday...

2010-12-03T22:12:00.000-06:00

I got a new mug.

I like it.

Do you?

Hi Friends

2010-11-15T20:27:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to say really quickly that I just love you guys! We're almost to 100 followers and I'm just soo super excited....I think I'm going to have my first ever giveaway once we reach that marker! Woohoo! *Mind beginning to whirl with all the wonderful possibilities*

I also wanted to let you guys know that I try so very truly truly sincerely really hard to reply to everyone's sweet comments! I'm encouraged so much by all of my blogland friends and love hearing from you guys. The sad part about having so many new followers is that it gets harder to keep up with that. BUT I'm going to continue to try!

Ok, that's all. Hope everyone's Monday has been better than Monday's tend to be. : )

Christmas-ifying the Place

2010-11-14T22:39:00.000-06:00

Well, if it looks like I made a few changes around here, I did. Not quite done though. I still have a little tweaking to do....but I'm not feeling so great this weekend.

My bff, Courtney and I had a girls' night last night since my hubby/her boyfriend (who needs to flippin pop the question already!) have Man Nights although I like to call them 'Boy Dates'. We constantly fight with the boys on Date nights about going out for Mexican vs. going out for Pizza, so when we're out on our own we allllways go to the same place. This great Mexican place in our town. We loooooove it. I don't even have to peak at the menu because I always get the same thing: chicken chimichanga with rice, no pico de gallo, extra guacamole and sour cream. While driving back to our house, we passed the boys on the highway which resulted in a bit of a race. We beat the boys home....muahahahahahaha. I haven't been hiding the fact that I'm super ready for Christmas and have been wanting to start decorating already. Courtney feels the sammmme way, but alas her Mom has refused to open a box until after Thanksgiving so we thought it would be fun to pull out all of my stuff and start decorating before the boys got there. We were literally throwing stuff.

Our tree skirt my sweet mommy made for us and new ornaments I picked up after Christmas last year.

Court whipped out her rockin Christmas album on her phone...we blasted it.

The first thing Court went for was the tree. Then we discovered half the string of lights was out...bouge. And that's when I started feeling...ill.

We couldn't do anymore with the tree, but we finished just about everything else.

The saints stocking I made last year for Hubby, center snowman & green Christmas candle I got on sale after Christmas from Hobby Lobby & Walmart, and our Jones Soda bottles we toasted with when we got married.

After our night of fun was over, Hubby & I got ready for bed and watched snl....then at 12:54, our beloved cat, Link messed with the tree for the first time this year. It'd only been up for 3 hours at this point and he'd already pulled it down, popped it in half, & knocked half the branches off. Yay.

Hubby taught Sunday School on his own and I stayed home in bed all day...I did manage to get up to make a Coffeemate Peppermint Mocha latte drink thingy:

So, a full two weeks early our home is very close to being completely Christmas-ified. sawweeet.

In The Last 24 Hours...

2010-11-11T00:33:00.001-06:00

My poor hair has gone:

No one else may be able to see the big difference...but believe me.

So, I'm naturally a ginger...semi light orange type ginger. I've recently fallen absolutely positively in LOVE with Dallas Bryce Howards & Julie McNiven's darker red hair. So I did what I normally do and ran to the store and bought a box. Because, of course, it's always been fine before. I've always always always been happy with my hair dying. But not this time. In case you can't see, it came out a purpley completely fake red bright blah. I hated it. So, I pulled out my trusty One n' Only Colorfix (my total bff when I want to get rid of color), stripped it out and tried again...this time with something a little more substantial from Sally's. I went with

L'Oreals Mega Red line

This stuff is so mondo awesome! But it is soooo strong! It's professional quality so it burnt my poor little scalp a little and made my eyes water. But not bad. I promise.

I looooove it.

Oh yea...I went ahead and did my eyebrows too. Mine have never even matched my natural color anyway. It's not hard, you just can't be stupid about it.

Thankful.

2010-11-06T01:45:00.000-05:00

So, I've recently been not great. Bummed. Nearly un-motivated. Frumpy. Not valued. Under appreciated. Feeling the start of panic attack season like last year. Blahblahblah.

Very long story short...a few months ago, a raise was suggested about me at my job that I don't love at all in the least amount. I didn't ask for it, it was suggested by one of my bosses. We recently moved the store and I worked a LOT....52 hours in a week. My manager will be out for a serious surgery for about a month or so in a few weeks and that's what the raise was intended for....hard work during the move and being in charge while she recovered....I'd be sort of acting manager along with our asst. manager.
Earlier this week, my manager went to our owner/real boss to 'nail it down....$1 or $2' which were both much higher than I expected. And you know what? He said no. I didn't deserve it. I....didn't.....deserve....it. At one point, he apparently said he'd let me have one if he could 'take half of it back when she got back from surgery'. Really?!

I know what you'd say. But I can't quit now. It would leave an 18 year old punk who thinks he knows better than anyone and two very sweet but young girls to run the store with our assistant manager. My manager might have to cancel her surgery that she's already been putting off for far too long.
We're also considering a move so that I can go to grad school next year and hubs and I decided it would best to not quit and try to find another job here that I would then have to leave as well for the move. But, I've also thought about another grad program that wouldn't require us moving.
We've decided officially that if things don't change, I'll definitely finally walk away from this job after our manager comes back. Moving or not.

But you know what happened today? After possibly the worst week of my entire year? My wonderfully Almighty, loving & just, uncorrupted by greed or selfish desire, ever providing Father God gave me a blessing. He gave my wonderfully loving and provider of a husband his own raise. Completely unexpectedly. He was given a raise earlier this spring for getting an additional license for his job. We weren't anticipating another one for at least another year.

I'd love to sharpie-marker my arm up everyday with 'be content'. It's the strongest thing the Lord's speaking to me now. Be content. I will provide for you. I will give you what I know you need. I will carry you through. And in it all, I will be glorified.

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.

that's all I've got.

It's One of Those...

2010-11-04T20:12:00.001-05:00

Pull it out of the box...

Throw it in the oven.....

And it eat - kind of day. Not bad, just full and tiring.

Oh, and let's not leave out spilling it out of the dish and all over the inside of the oven door and having your husband rush over & come to the rescue and clean it alll up for you.

Yep.

Inside the Craft Crate, 1st Week of November

2010-11-04T19:37:00.003-05:00

Blog World, meet Craft Crate. Craft Crate, meet Blog World.

I usually keep all of my supplies for current projects in here. I go over to my bff Courtney's house every week for Glee night with her & her fun mom, and this sometimes tags along with me....there & a few other places.

I thought I'd start a weekly-ish post about what's in here.

This week:

I'm trying to finish this project tonight...I had a bump in the road and had to gggggrrrrr.

So. As soon as it's all done, I'll let you know!

EeeeckkkkkChristmas!

2010-11-03T20:42:00.000-05:00

Ok. I'm not un-Thankful. I swear, I love Thanksgiving. But at 11:59 pm on October 31st......I got soooo stinkin excited! I looooove Christmas! And these are officially the first sign of it around our house this year:

I loooove b&bw.

I love Christmas.

2010-10-30T00:12:00.001-05:00

Well I WAS going to write a fun post tonight, but the internet here at the house is being comPLETEly uncooperative!

Moving Day(s)

2010-10-14T23:05:00.000-05:00

I am sooooo sorry for the current inactivity! Our store is moving to a new location and it is just a huge sha-bang. We have people from FOUR other stores here helping us. It's going well so far and I finally got to see the new place today. It's great. Full pictures when we're all done.

One thing I am bummed about .... I was going to be making reallly cute restroom signs. I know. Sounds strange. But really, we're a teacher & parent school supply store and our colors are generally red, yellow, & blue...we have a yellow smiley face & red apple in our name. Adorable. Really.

My signs looked like this:

Each separate (duh), on wood, blue with painted letters like my Jaimie Paris, Man Cave, & Free the Slaves designs. It was mine & my managers idea. We didn't want to buy those dumb brown bathroom signs. But today when we got there, we found our owner had already put them up.

Blah.Blah.Blah.

And the dumbest thing? Each of these signs cost $12-$15. I spent ten on both of them. Together.

Dumb.

Ok, I have to go to bed, so I can get up in the morning and go look at these dumb signs. Dumb.

Somebody Got New Earrings

2010-10-06T22:51:00.001-05:00

Well, made them at least.

I apologize I haven't posted many projects the last week or so, I haven't had much time to finish some projects. (sad face).

But!! I did finally get to garage saling this past Saturday! Courtney could go because she had nursing school clinical at one of our local hospitals (bouge), so her Mom and I decided 'what the hayday?!' we'll just have to go without her. It was loads of fun...I'll post about all of my wonderful treasure finds later. What I really wanted to post about were these:

I found really cute jewelry accessories on cleeeearrrance!!

After garage saling in the morning, my Mom-in-Law (I'll bet mine is better than yours ; ) asked me to have lunch with her and hit up Hobby Lobby. I said sure...we ended up being able to eat with the husbands, which always results in a lot of laughs. Later at hl, I was helping her find good beads that she makes beautiful jewelry from...when I found some things for myself. I've only made post/stud earrings so I didn't have any hooks. Mom D hooked me up (haha) with the pieces I needed, I stopped on my way home to pick up jewelry pliers, and 10 minutes after I got home I had these!

I like the green ones, sure sure....but I LOVE the blues!

Do you like them?!

Makin the Blog Cute Part 1

2010-10-06T10:45:00.001-05:00

I've had a few people ask questions about the scarythreateninglooming tedious work of blog html. Sooo, I thought I'd try doing a series of how-tos. I'd kind of been not doing it for a while because my real-life bff, Courtney over at Not So Homemade has done quite a few and I told her I didn't want our blogs to be the same or me run a tutorial after she already had, blahblabla. But the truth is we both know enough about coding and we do have slightly different blog friend circles, so I feel ok about it now. ohmylanta.

As somewhat of an intro, I thought I'd talk about programs first. There are a ton of free programs that you can access to help you do everything to make your own blog, your own-completely unique. I also have a few preferences I'll share.

Web Browsers.
   You might ask what the hayday a web browser has to do with how you blog, but I personally think it makes a difference. Let me tell you, I heart Mozilla Firefox big time! It has been my technical bff for years! It has super awesome gadgets (known as plug-ins/add-ons) like Ad-Block Plus(I love watching missed tv shows sans those annoying little car & cellphone commercials), Personas & ColorfulTabs (hello! we're people who like for things to look cute!), Fireshot (allows you to take screen shots of the browser, perfect for making step by step tutorials), and one of my personal favourites...Colorzilla, which places an eyedropper in your bottom left corner that you can click on at any time to pick a color from any web page. This will make coordinating colors on your blog a piece of cherry pie! You simply hover over any color, grab the Hex Color Code and plug it in to any program you're using to create fonts, backgrounds, banners, buttons, or whatever! Firefox is superb, but don't just take my word for it....go get it! It's the first step in making your blog cute.

Image Manipulation/Editing/Creating Tools.
   Ok, I have Photoshop CS3 Extended, BUT only on my laptop. I don't have a cd for it anymore so I don't have any way of getting it on mine & my husbands desktop. So, if I have to be on the clunker, I have a few more options:
   To do just about anything cs3 can, I go with Paint.net and sometimes Gimp. They're awesome generics. If you're as jealous as I am of people with 24" Cricuts that can print out anything they can plug in from their computer...just....for....Photoshop....instead, try these out. You can download them to your computer in minutes and they also have an impressive amount of plug-ins comparable to cs3's. There's another that I just heard about a couple of days ago, Pixlr. It doesn't look like you download it directly, but do your editing online. I honestly don't know much about it, but it's always nice to have options.

Simple Photo Editing Tools.
   Once again, Photoshop is great for everything...but for really easy super user friendly free editing you have a few more options. Back in college, a friend introduced me to Picasa by Google. Like Wal-Mart and Apple, Google seems to just be taking over the world--but that's not necessarily a bad thing--they put out some great stuff (except Chrome, I hate it). I always use Picasa to at least paste my blog name on all my pictures (so nobody up & try to steal em!). You can pull out text to whatever size you want at whatever angle you want onto a photo. You can also adjust hue, saturation, shadows & highlights, & make a photo b&w or sepia toned at the touch of a button. Another editor I frequent a lot is Picnik. It's online based, so you simply register, choose the free version or the professional (I think it's something like $24 a year). The free version is definitely still great though. It basically allows you to run 'Actions' you may have heard of in Photoshop lingo. They're preset adjustments to make your photo look softer, gritty, film grainy, night vision, like a movie screen, or my personal favourite: like a 60's photograph, plus a ton more. They also have holiday themed edits...right now they have super sweet halloween edits.

Alright...there you have a picture of my web building arsenal. Try out all of these, I promise you'll love them!

In Part 2, I want to talk about all of the things you want to have on your blog focusing on color/font/theme coordinating your site. Check back later! Peace & go Make Your Blogs Cute!!

All Done!

2010-10-06T01:36:00.001-05:00

Ok, it took two evenings, but I've got the site just how I want it! I had a 3 column template before and thought it just looked too scuntched and desperately wanted to de-clutter it. I've been feeling bad about not being able to host all the buttons of all the wonderful blogs I'm inspired by on my main page...and wanted to give a shoutout to everyone altogether.

At first, I layed everyone's buttons out on my new 'Blogs I Love' page (that only took me forever last night), but it just didn't work and there were still a lot of wonderful blogs that just don't have buttons! So, now I'm working on making a linked list there instead (that'll take me more forever) AND I've added a linktool to the bottom, so please add yourself if you're new!

Also, please check out my new 'About Me' 'I Party' & 'Contact Me' pages!

Oh goodness...

2010-10-04T22:05:00.001-05:00

So sorry if the site looks a little strange for a while...doing some work.

Happy.....

2010-09-29T23:47:00.000-05:00

1 year, 2 months, 3 weeks, and 4 day-iversary Le Hubby!

Love, cutewifey.

Not So Sustaining Sunday School but....

2010-09-26T19:16:00.001-05:00

I've had a killer headache for the last few days. Why? We found out 2 years ago that I have a C in the bottom of my back-scoliosis. Boooouge. It stinks. I saw an mt on Friday so it helped some, but this morning I couldn't drag myself out of bed to make it to church.

So Le Hubby threw a batch of biscuits in the oven and taught on his own today. He came home with an empty plate so I'm glad the kiddos at least got something for breakfast. We'd even just bought a griddle to cook yummy hot pancakes for the class today. Alas, maybe next week.

I did want to post something today, so I thought I'd write about our Saturday Date. We'd been wanting to try out this new restaurant. It's called the *PurpleNurple* Seafood & Steakhouse. Ok, not really. I changed the name so no creepy psycho stalker can come find me, baha. Anyway, they serve sushi, fried rice, & egg rolls but no other oriental dishes, along with American favorites like burgers, steaks, and yes, fried fish. It's great because Le Hubby is soooo not cultured and doesn't really do foreign food very well (I very playfully pick on him about this often. He's getting better.), and I couldn't have enough of it! The inside of this place is very strange too. They're sort of trying to make it fancy yet still have very Waffle House type salt & pepper shakers and sugar on their tables. Strange.
Anyway, I was suppper excited about gettin some sushi! I ordered Miso Soup (yummmm), with very basic California & Philadelphia rolls (my favorite thing to have in almost anything is cream cheese). Le Hubby ordered a 3 piece fried fish with french fries that came with a salad. Our table looked so odd.

My favorite part of the entire meal was the price! My sushi came with 8 rolls each instead of just 6, and our server brought Le Hubby a SIX piece fish platter instead of just 3, and the pieces were huge! Needless to say, we were well fed. When we got our ticket, I had a random 50% discount on one of my sushi rolls, and Hubs was only charged for a 3 piece. We paid $19.72! Woohoo! So excited!
So how was your weekend? And have you ever had something like this happen? Yay for cheap hot dates!

So ready for...

2010-09-21T17:13:00.002-05:00

Easy Peasy Chicken Cheesy Enchiladas!

2010-09-20T23:05:00.002-05:00

So, tonight I randomly thought, 'I wanna make enchiladas for supper!' I've never made them and I know they're not the hardest things in the world to throw together, but I got realllly excited!

Let me tell you (in a completely non-egotistical I'm the best cook in the flippin world way), they were deeeeeelicious!!

You'll need:

2-3 boneless/skinless chicken breasts (they're the best!)
6 tortillas of your choice
salsa (we prefer Picante, mild)
cream cheese (whipped in our household)
lotzzarella cheese
mild or sharp cheddar cheese

To make:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Boil your chicken...I really prefer this over saute-ing because it obviously doesn't dry out. You can defrost and cut it into bite sized pieces, then boil them if you'd like, but tonight I just dropped all three pieces straight out of the freezer into the pot. I was too tired to do it any other way.
While that's boiling, shred up your cheeses (about a small bowl of each should do), and start spreading the cream cheese on one side of the tortillas.
Once the chickens cooked and chopped, put a sensible amount down the middle of each cream cheesed tortilla, spoon on a sensible amount of salsa, then pile on the lotzzarella.
Wrap each tortilla and place in a casserole dish, seam down.
Sprinkle the cheddar all over the place and toss in any extra lotzzarella you have.
Place in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the cheese is especially gooey.

Then eat!! Hope you enjoy!

Yummmmmm.

Yo ho! Sustainin' Ye Ol Teachin' of the Yeng Scallywags th' Gospel! Arr!

2010-09-20T22:45:00.002-05:00

ooooorrr....Sustaining Sunday School! haha. It's Talk Like a Pirate Day!

So, that was technically yesterday. I'm a day late. We had a youth trip to another church out of town yesterday afternoon, and I didn't have time to finish my post after lunch. Here we go now.

For the past two or three weeks of Sunday School, I've made extra food because I assumed some of the boys might have two of something, but evvvvvery time I've had a lot of leftovers. I told Le Hubby today that there was no way I was bringing more than one batch of Cinnamon Rolls....annnnnd kids were fighting over the last piece. Ridiculous. Simply ridiculous. haha.

Anyway. I never got a picture in until:

Yum....the Hubs and I didn't even get to have one.

The lesson was titled 'Different from the Rest'. Last week, we talked about being created for a relationship and this week, our bible study focused on them seeing how that covenant relationship is different from others in their lives from Genesis 15:1-21.

Le Hubby even talked about Twilight. Haha. Our lesson brought up that Rob Pattinson was constantly attacked by crazed fans and gets a little overwhelmed by it, but that God initiates a covenant relationship with us despite what we've done not because of it. Our kids are constantly barraged with the idea that they have to be a certain way or do certain things to be accepted and sometimes even loved. But they don't. We went on to talk about how God takes on the responsibility for our covenant relationship and that he is continually faithful to this relationship with us. There are few things in life that we can fully put our trust into...but especially at this time in their lives, we realllly want our kids to understand that the Lord is faithful.

My favourite quotes from the lesson:

Abram believed God, and it was credited to Him as righteousness. Without fully understanding all the nuances and consequences of following and trusting God, he believed. God, in sealing His covenant with Abram, forever pledged His loving, redeeming relationship with His people.

Our relationship with God is completely based on His faithfulness. There is no amount of “good” that we can do to deserve it or fully hold up our end of the bargain. We must trust that He is sufficient to satisfy His own requirements. Freedom to follow God will never come in your life until you stop trying to deserve what you already have.

It was good....really good.

That's all I've got. : )