Touring Our Master Bath

Howdy ya'll!  It's been a LONG week with lots of crazy stuff going on.  Despite everything that's been on our plate, I thought I'd write a quick post sharing our master bath with you. 

Here she is in all of her green and goldness (IMAGINE THAT--MORE GOLD!).

I think there are several things that stick out in our bathroom as being hideously ugly. Number one being the GOLD shower and towel rod. Barf.  Number two being the green and white tile floor.  Some might not mind it, but we are not huge fans.

 

Oh look, more GREEN and GOLD.  Notice a trend?  Those green blinds and the window treatment came with the house.  I'm pretty sure the only reason why we still have them up is for privacy purposes (that and we haven't gotten around to replacing them yet).  The gold jets in the hot tub are old and need to be replaced (any suggestions as to where to buy new jets or how to install them would be VERY helpful!).  The last time we used the hot tub, the jets had black gunk coming out of them.  If you look up at the ceiling in the above picture, you will notice a hole.  We have a sky light, which we like, but don't like.  We like that it provides natural light in the room, however it also makes this room very hot with the sun beaming in during certain parts of the day.  

This isn't the best picture, but it shows our one modern looking piece in the room.  We imagine that the people who lived here before us were in the process of updating the bathroom, but didn't make it too far.  We hate that the vanity doesn't match anything else in the room, but one day it will.  The one nice thing about the vanity is that it has so much storage space.  That light fixture above the mirror has GOT TO GO though.  Eck.

Meet our master loo.  To the left we have a giant closet where we house our towels, shower supplies, etc.  

So there you have it.  You have officially met our master bath.  At some point in time, I will write a post about our to-do's for this bathroom.  We have quite a few ideas as to what we think we want to do in here, but we haven't set anything in stone.  If you have any suggestions as to how we can modernize this bathroom, don't be afraid to leave us a comment in the section below. :)

 

Whip It Up Wednesday: Glazed Lemon Zucchini Bread

This past weekend Eric and I took a trip back to our hometown to visit our parents.  My mom shared with us that she had some zucchinis in her garden this year.  She had already baked 16 loaves of zucchini bread and still had TONS of grated zucchini left over.  I told her that I really wanted to make Glazed Lemon Zucchini Bread, so she offered me some of her zucchini.  I gladly accepted the zucchini and planned on making the bread for none other than Whip It Up Wednesday!  You can find the original recipe here.

Glazed Lemon Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

2 c. cake flour (for those of you that don't know, cake flour is different than regular flour--it has more of a powdered sugar texture)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 c. canola oil
1 1/3 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1/2 c. buttermilk
1 c. grated zucchini

(Note: the original recipe has the zest of 1 lemon.  I did not have a lemon, so I did not add this)

Glaze Ingredients

1 c. powdered sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. milk


The How To:

1. Set oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9x5 loaf pan.
2. In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.  Set aside.

3. Next, whisk eggs in a large bowl.  Mix in oil, sugar, lemon juice, and buttermilk (if you are adding
    the lemon zest, do it here) until well blended.

Whisked eggs pictured above.

Oil and sugar added to whisked eggs.

Lemon juice and buttermilk added into mixture.

4. Fold in zucchini.

5. Little by little, pour the dry mixture into the wet mixture and blend together.

6. Pour batter into greased loaf pan.

7. Bake bread for 40-45 minutes.

8. While the bread is baking, mix the Glaze ingredients together.

9. Spoon the glaze over the bread while it is still warm.  Let the glaze set for a little while before cutting into the bread.

10. Enjoy!!! It is mighty delicious! :)

Do you have a favorite kind of zucchini bread?  Tell us about it! :)

Making Ohio Sparkle

Remember when we shared this wall collage inspiration?  Well I finally completed our first piece of symbolic art to put on the striped wall.  Hooray!  I wanted to craft a piece that showed where we reside.    We love the city we live in--it has so much beauty and character.  So why not share how much we love it by making it sparkle?

The first thing I did was find an outline of Ohio.  I printed it out on copy paper.

Next, I cut around the outline.

Instead of framing a plain piece of paper, I decided to glue my outline of Ohio onto the back of a pizza box.  I used super glue to glue it onto the cardboard.  I wanted it to be sturdy and raised from the background.  After gluing it to the cardboard, I cut around the outline a second time.

The above picture may not be too pretty, but I promise the end result is worth looking at.  The next step was to paint a heart where Dayton lies in the state of Ohio.  I used a toothpick and teal blue paint that I had on hand.

Then came the fun part!  The part that made me say, "Oh la la!" and of course it involved glitter!  I used a Q-tip to apply glue to the top of the paper outline, making sure to work around the heart and not on top of it.  Then I sprinkled gold glitter on top.  LOTS OF IT!  

After shaking off the excess glitter, my sparkling state looked like this:

In order to make the background for my frame, I took a coral colored envelope and cut it to size.

My envelope was 5 inches tall, so I made a mark with my pencil next to each inch.  I then took gold chevron washi tape and ran it along each of the four lines I made with my pencil.

Next I glued my glittery outline of Ohio onto my background.

The final step was to put my sparkling beauty in one of our IKEA frames.  This particular frame measures 5 x 7" and is from the RIBBA collection.  

I believe this will be a nice addition to our wall once we get it all pieced together.  

Do you have a gallery wall full of homemade art in your home?  Share it with us!  We still have lots of work to do before our gallery wall goes up, but we are already excited to see what it'll look like when it's finished! :)

Gallery Wall Inspiration

Yesterday Eric and I had a long trip to our nearest IKEA.  While in the car, we started talking about our front hall and how we have taken a break from it.  Now we are ready to get back at it!  Eric is anxious to put up crown molding, baseboard, etc. I on the other hand have been dying to put up our photo gallery wall.  Not sure what a gallery wall quite looks like?  Check out the pictures below that we are using for inspiration.

Found here

Found here

Found here

From my favorite blog YHL

Found here

Imagine a fabulously white and bright gallery wall on our striped wall in our front entryway. Thinking about making ours just gets me in the mood to jump up and down over and over again.  Ahh!!  In order to get started on ours, we needed some frames.  Guess what we ended up getting at IKEA yesterday?  Frames!  We got a few different sizes and plan on playing around with them to figure out exactly how we want them situated on our striped wall.  Here's a snapshot of the frames.  They are all a part of the RIBBA collection.

My one main goal for this wall is that I want it to hold special meaning to us.  What I mean by that is that I want to incorporate things like our wedding pictures, lucky number, map hearts of where we were engaged, married, and honeymooned, etc.  I fully expect that this wall will take us awhile to complete, but I can't wait to see it done.  

Do you have a gallery wall in your house?  What kinds of things do you have in your frames?  Tell us in the comment section below, or better yet, send us a picture! :)

A Quarter of a Century

Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially a quarter of a century old.  That's right, I'm halfway to 50.  That seems crazy to think about!  Today has been a busy day full of fun: a doctor's appointment, a trip through IKEA,  and a romantic dinner at an Italian place that just so happened to have a pianist playing beautiful background music.  Hubby took the day off of work to hang out with me.  He is the best!  He threw me a little pre-birthday celebration party last night with some of our closest friends.  He surprised me with a chocolate cake that he made himself (let me just throw it out there that I am the cook and baker around this place, so it really made my heart smile when I saw this cake).  Here's a picture of the awesome cake he made me:

Isn't he amazing?!  I sure think so!  Here's a picture we took before going out to dinner:

In honor of my birthday landing on a Thursday this year, I figured it'd be fun to close with a few "Throwback Thursday" pictures. :)

What did you spend your Thursday doing? Fill us in! :)

Whip It Up Wednesday: Cinnamon Applesauce Pancakes

This past Sunday Eric and I overslept and didn't make it to church, so thankfully we were able to watch the service online.  As Eric turned on the service, I was making breakfast.  We were out of basic ingredients like milk, eggs, bread, etc. so I had to figure out something to make that didn't require these items.  I quickly found this recipe and decided that we were going to have Cinnamon Applesauce Pancakes for breakfast! :)

Cinnamon Applesauce Pancakes

Ingredients:

2 c. flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 c. water
1/2 c. cinnamon applesauce
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

(Sidenote: If you would like to make waffles instead of pancakes, add 3 Tbsp. of oil to the batter)

Topping:

cinnamon, to taste
syrup, to taste


The How To:

1. Mix all dry ingredients together. Slowly add wet ingredients and beat together.

2. On an oiled pan, spoon the batter by Tbs. to make your pancakes.  Wait until you see bubbles on top and then flip pancake.  Cook for around 2-3 minutes or until golden brown.

3. Remove pancake from pan.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and add syrup to the top.

Hubby had his pancakes without cinnamon on top and he said they were kind of bland.  I agreed, so I put cinnamon on top of mine and they were great!  This is for sure an easy recipe if you are without basic ingredients and just haven't made it to the store yet.  Easy pancakes when you are in a pinch!


I feel like I've made pancakes in so many different ways.  Do you have a special pancake recipe that you favor?  What are your favorite pancake toppings?  Tell us below! :)

A Date to Donate

Yes, I took myself out for a donating date.  You see, this Thursday (the 24th), I will officially be a quarter of a century old.  The one thing I wanted to do for my birthday this year was donate my hair to Locks of Love.  I have donated twice before and I find it to be such a great cause.  All my life I've been told how beautiful my hair is, so why not give something beautiful that I have to someone who is beautiful and in need?  It breaks my heart to think of all of the children and adults out there who are ill and have no hair.  I cannot imagine the pain those individuals go through on a daily basis.  If my hair can be made into a wig for someone to wear, then by golly I'm going to do it.

I thought it would be fun to share my previous donation pictures before my current one.  Here's a little back story to my first trip to donate.  Ever since I was a little girl, I've had seriously long hair.  I'm pretty sure there were a few years when my hair quite literally touched my behind.  My parents always took me to get my hair trimmed, but never allowed me to get it cut off.  The older I got, the more I'd beg my parents to let me get it cut off the way I wanted to.  I hated how hot I'd get in the summer with my long, thick hair.  I'd sweat, my hair would get frizzy, and then I'd always look like a hot mess.  Well finally my parents made me a promise after hearing me complain for 8 years straight.  They told me, "Mary, you can get your hair cut off however you want on your 18th birthday."  It seemed like FOREVER before that birthday came, but when it did, I was SO HAPPY!  Here are some pictures from that day:

It is hard to believe that 7 years ago, I donated my hair for the first time.  After this year (2007), I continued to get my hair trimmed, but couldn't quite work up the urge to cut it off again.  That is until last June.  I got the "donating itch" again. Here's a before picture from last year:

All of those years letting it grow back out, and it was almost down to my behind just like when I was a kid!  Crazy!  Here's the picture I took after donating my hair the second time:

Believe it or not, it was still long even after cutting 10 inches off! Unfortunately I didn't let my hair grow as long this time around.  I thought it was time for a change.  This morning I didn't think twice about going and getting it cut.  How can you back out when all you can think about is the smile on a child's (or an adult's) face when they put on the wig made with your hair?  Without further ado, I present to you a before and after of my current do:

I forgot to take a before shot of myself, so I had to find a picture that was current.  This picture is from the end of last month.  Here's my after shot!!!!

And here's me excitedly showing off my pigtails that will be sent to Locks of Love:

I'm still in shock at how short my hair is.  This is the shortest it has ever been and I am SO pleased with it!  I'm in donating heaven!  :)

Have you ever donated your hair?  How long was it before you cut it?  Have pictures?  Show us!!! :)