Sunday Football Week 6: Breakfast!!!

My absolute favorite food "theme" for our Sunday football gatherings is BREAKFAST!  I could eat breakfast for every meal of the day for the rest of my life and be totally fine with it.

I made a really yummy French Toast Casserole. It's made from those refrigerated cinnamon rolls - super duper easy!  Here's the amazing recipe.  My friend Tisha was really excited about this dish :)

Of course we had mimosas for our breakfast week too.

And a sausage and hash brown breakfast casserole.

I wish I would have gotten a few more pictures, but breakfast week was simply amazing as usual!

Past Weeks:

Week 1: Appetizers

Week 2: Taco/Nacho Bar

Week 3: Italian
Week 4: Oktoberfest

Next Week:

Halloween!

Upgrade those cheap plastic storage bins!

Let me begin by showing you the incredibly embarrassing photo of what my crafting area used to look like:

I decided it was time to clean up and organize this area!

I started with this 5-drawer organizer I picked up at Target for about $15.  But it was so BORING!!  I decided to kick it up a notch!

I started with this plastic primer.  It's just a clear primer that should be put on underneath your colored spray paint.  This primer will help keep your color from chipping or scratching.

Simply remove all the drawers, spray on your primer, then spray on your color!  Make sure to follow the directions on the primer.  I believe this brand was ready to paint in one hour.

That's it!  It's a very simple change that makes a huge difference.  I'm considering doing something with the drawers too - maybe glitter?!?  I'll let you know!

And if you're asking yourself "I wonder what Melissa's craft area looks like now??" Well... more on that to come... let's just say it's an ongoing project :)

My First Arts and Crafts Show

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This past Saturday I was a vendor for the first time at an Arts and Crafts fair!  I have been crafting and creating for most of my life, but only seriously for about a year.  I've started selling many of my creations on Etsy, but decided it was time to take the plunge into the Craft Fair world.

I'm glad I did.  It was fun!  I learned a lot and I can't wait for my next show in November!

Here are some pictures from the show over the weekend.

Oh, by the way... I'll have many of these items on Etsy in the next day or two.  I had to take it all off the site for the show, so I'm still in the process of reposting everything!

Half of my booth

Part of my display

Handmade canvas and framed art

Bookends

More bookends

Mr. Right and Mrs. Always Right mugs (my top seller on Etsy!)

Plate stands
Great for jewelry, candy, or cookies~

Coaster were a big seller - sold all 12 sets!

Pots and planters

Fabric earrings

Baseball Bracelets

Onesies

Sunday Football Week 4: Oktoberfest!

In honor of all the delicious Oktoberfest beers that are out right now, our food theme this week was also Oktoberfest.  Which basically means all things German!  Like these sausages cooked in sauerkraut!

Arguably the star of the show: pretzels.  We ordered these delicious pretzel bits from A Taste Of Philly in Indianapolis.  We had a yummy hot beer cheese dip and some spicy horseradish mustard from our local German restaurant, The Rathskeller.

Sausages were quite popular.  We had knackwurst, kielbasa, and cajun sausage... oh my.

Authentic German Potato Salad made an appearance too.  German potato salad is not made with mayo, rather it's got a ton of bacon grease, a little sugar, and vinegar.  Sounds weird but trust me, it's delicious!  Not too hard to make either.  Here's the recipe we used: German Potato Salad.

Here's the Schnitzel, which is a thin, breaded piece of pork.

Of course we had a German Chocolate Cake (store bought - don't judge!)

And Apple Streudel (try this simple recipe that uses puff pastry sheets).

The day was topped off with Sun King Oktoberfest beer.  Too much food and beer leads to nappers:

Past Weeks:

Week 1: Appetizers

Week 2: Taco/Nacho Bar

Week 3: Italian

Next Week:

Breakfast

Sunday Football Week 3: Italian

Week 3 ended up being a light week - lots of our friends were traveling so it was a small crowd.  We decided on Italian as the food theme.  It was perfect for the small group, but could have easily been adapted for a large crowd.

In addition to 2 kinds of lasagna (one vegetarian for me!), we had a delicious variety of olives.

And of course some Ciabatta and Focaccia bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Dessert was Tiramisu. I found a super simple recipe that uses frozen pound cake and cream cheese (in place of mascarpone, which can be expensive and hard to find).  Give this a shot - you won't be disappointed!

Check out our past weeks:

Week 2: Taco/Nacho Bar
Week 1: Appetizers

Organize your t-shirt drawer

 

I'm not good at folding clothes.

I'm even worse at putting them away.  I mean, I do it... but it's more like "stuffing" rather than "putting" away.

For example, here's what my t-shirt drawer used to look like:

... A big stuffed wrinkly mess.

Here's what it looks like now:

I can see everything now, the shirts come out (mostly) wrinkle-free, and I saved space!  Not only did all of my t-shirts fit perfectly, but I had extra room on the right side, so I moved all my tank tops to that side (leaving me tons of room in my underpants drawer where they used to be!)

Apparently it's time to go shopping now that I have all this free space in my drawers.

Here's the video on how to fold your shirts to fit them in this way.  It will change. your. life.

Yearly Anniversary Photo

I realize this post is about 4 months overdue... my 1st wedding anniversary was in May. 

We went to Riviera Maya in Mexico to celebrate - it was amazing.

We're young newlyweds who are madly in love and I wanted to start a sweet tradition to document the progression of our relationship.  I've seen several anniversary picture ideas, but since we were traveling abroad, we kept it simple.

The plan is to take a picture just like the one on the right on each anniversary (the picture on the left is from our wedding in Key West).  The chalkboard will show the date and where we were at the time.  The chalkboard was about $5 at Michaels - good investment!

We're hoping to take a yearly vacation over our anniversary each year, so hopefully the location in each picture will be different.  But if we have it take the picture in our back yard, then that will be fine too!

I have a large canvas print of this wedding picture.  I think I'll make a canvas of our 1st anniversary picture and hang it next to the wedding picture.  Maybe create a wall of anniversary pictures over the years?  I'll post an update after our 2nd anniversary in 2013!!

We actually renewed our vows in Mexico - I'm not sure we'll do it every year, but we got some sweet perks at out resort so we did it :)  I'd like to do it every few years.  Anyway, just because I can, here are a few pics from our vow renewal ceremony.  For some reason we decided to do it at night, so as you can see the lighting wasn't very good so, sorry the pics aren't the greatest!

Do you have any anniversary traditions?