celebrating life.

Happy Birthday Faith! 

Happy Birthday to you Faith! You are a joy in so many lives. We enjoyed time with family and friends and most of all celebrating you.

We love you very much! 

goodbye weekend...hello week.

Weekend you were so good to me.

-Starbucks coffee
-Pandora (hours and hours of it)
-Qdoba with my husband

-Finished my Quilt top
-Basted and started quilting it
-Sewing love

-Fresh laundered quilts off the clothes line.
-Dinner with my great aunt

-Lots of quality time with my husband and Stella
-Sleeping in

Hope your weekend was just as great :)

sense of accomplishment.

Awww... the sense of accomplishment has over come me. I love finishing projects that I have started. Well almost anyways. I have finished the quilt top. Tomorrow I start quilting it and hopefully I can get this whole thing done by the end of the week. 

hello beautiful, bright, fun colors.

I just couldn't wait to show you the quilt top. Hope you enjoy it :)

Progress.

This year I decided to try my luck with a garden planting my plants in pots. I am one happy and may I say successful gardener!

I have my very first ripe and ready tomato. Isn't it beautiful :)

Banana Peppers are getting ready and I also have tiny little cucumbers that have started. 

Can't wait to eat them.

Vintage love.

A few weekends ago my mom and I ventured out to a street fair with local artists and also to a vintage/antique store called the Traveling Trunk. I had never been, but fell madly in love and can't wait to visit again. I found some AMAZING things.

Including:
This great bird feeder. I decided to not fill it and have it just hanging in my tree.

Its probably my favorite find :)

Also my new soap pump.

Rugged old picnic basket with some character.

My red and white checkered canisters.

Antique platter.

And of course I found some buttons and couldn't live without them. It was exciting to sort through and see what fun and neat buttons were hiding in all of this goodness :) They now have a home in my sewing room.

After finding all of my great vintage antiques I decided that I needed to redo my kitchen as kind of a vintage farm house feel. Including my grandmothers old roosters, a fun strawberry and lemonade picture, and a farmers market sign.I love it. I will try and post some pictures of that soon.

happy life.

This weekend our lives were completely back to normal. And that makes me very happy :)

It consisted of lots of experimenting with cooking/baking, golfing with Matt, going on walks, quilting, cleaning, laundry and relaxing in our yard. Also my mom had this great idea to move one of our tables from the backyard to our front and we have loved it ever since. So thanks mom! We've had all of our meals outside and its just so quaint and relaxing.

My life has been great this week. I went back to work which just feels good to be back in my routine also I started back on Weight Watchers as I told you I was going to do earlier this week. I already feel so much better and free :) A couple of great finds this week at the grocery store was I found Jamba Juice smoothies you can make at home. For those of you that don't know about my addiction with Jamba you would have no idea the excitement I had! I could have done a happy dance. Also we bought tons and tons of fruit. The best find were cherries. They are my favorite :)

Below are a few new things I made the past couple days. Weight Watchers friendly and delicious. My husband approves. Ladies don't even tell your men because they won't even know its low cal.

Overnight Banana Fosters French Toast

-cooking spray
-10 oz. Challah bread, sliced 1 inch thick (I used Texas Toast)
-2 large eggs
-1 cup egg substitute
-1 1/2 cups fat free milk
-1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
-1/2 tsp cinnamon
-1/4 cup white sugar
-1/4 tsp salt
-1 tsp rum or rum extract

Banana Topping:
-1 tbsp light butter
-1/2 cup brown sugar
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1 tbsp rum or rum extract
-4 medium ripe bananas, sliced

Spray a 9x13 inch baking dish with cooking spray. Arrange bread slices in one layer in baking dish, squeeze them slightly to fit. In a large bowl whisk together eggs, egg substitute, milk, vanilla, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, sugar, salt and rum until combined well and pour evenly over bread. Cover and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight for best results.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and bring bread to room temperature. Bake uncovered, in middle of oven until puffed and edges are pale golden, 40 to 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, while its baking in a large deep saute' pan melt light butter over low heat. Add brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and rum and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add a few drops of water if needed and let sauce simmer about 2 minutes. Add sliced bananas and remove from heat. Keep covered until french toast comes out of the oven. When french toast is cooked top with bananas. Enjoy!

Points+: 8 pts/serving Servings: 8 Calories: 294.8 Fat: 4.9g Protein: 10.5g Carb: 59g Fiber: 1.6g

Ricotta Cheese Chocolate Chip Muffins

-2 cups self rising cake flour

-1/2 tsp baking soda

-1/4 cup light butter

-3/4 cup sugar

-3 large egg whites

-8 oz fat free ricotta cheese

-1/2 tbsp vanilla

-9 tbsp mini semi-sweet chocolate chip morsels

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix flour and baking soda. Mix and cream butter and sugar. Beat egg whites and add to butter/sugar mixture. Mix in ricotta cheese, then flour mixture and vanilla. Fold in chocolate chips and spoon into lined muffin tins about 3/4 filled. Bake at 375 degrees for 15-16 minutes and let cool. Enjoy!

Points: 5pts/serving Servings: 12 Calories: 195.4 Fat: 4.7g Carb: 34.g Fiber: 0g Protein: 4.9g 

Now I am off to share a bowl of cherries with my husband. He is the love of my life and my best friend.

What did you do this weekend?

love.family.

Just thought I would share this picture with you this morning.

Its like very rare as in NEVER since probably they were kids have they all been together for a picture. This needs to happen more often. I love them all very much :) My wonderful husband and great brother and sister in-laws.

Front to back: Danielle, Melanie, Brandon, Matt and Sheena

Oh and the men are apperently suppose to be planning our next get together. Somewhere centeral. We shall see if it happens..ha.

Simple Life.

Oh how I loved today. It felt so good to finally be back at work and in my day to day routine. I lead a very simple life but am completely satisfied by it.

Today I also decided to start Weight Watchers again. I normally don't discuss weight loss and ect but I just feel so excited and very eager to start this. I spent my evening cutting up tons of fruit and cleaning it. I love summer and all the fruit that comes with it.

Have a great week everyone :)

Happy 4th of July to all :D

Our 4th of July weekend went from planned to make shift. We started off unpacking and doing a complete clean in our house, we had a bonfire, roasted s'mores, went to the driving range with my husband and brother, my mom and I went to Art in the Park and also found a very cute vintage antique store and the guys golfed 18 holes, watched fireworks and most of all relaxed.

Darren and Stella

mmmm...S'mores 

Bonfire with the family :)

My amazing husband and I. 

Unfortunate times.

~This sign may not mean anything to most of you but when you have to evacuate your home and there are so many unknowns and then you come back and know everything is ok it brings so much joy in your heart~

I can't even begin to explain where I have been these past couple weeks and how blessed we have been as there could have been so many bad situations. We have been evacuating friends and co-workers and even ourselves from flooding, we also found out Matt's grandpa had passed away, we took a 22 hr road trip out to Washington with Matt's sister and brother-in-law, spending time with family and driving back and then unpacking everything up it has been a non stop whirl wind. So in the craziness of finding out Matt's grandpa had passed away and having a little over a day to mandatory evacuate from our home and leave on a road trip with Matt's sister and brother-in-law to drive out to Washington it has been mind boggling and very hectic.

Even though there has been a lot of hectic and stressful times we have been so blessed in so many ways. For one our house was safe from the flood and we were able to move back when we returned home.  Even in the unfortunate times of Matt's grandpa passing we were able to spend some very much needed time with family. It was so much fun and such a learning experience to road trip out to Washington with Matt's sister and brother-in-law. Its amazing the things you talk about and learn when you are locked up in a car with them for hours upon hours. I was also able to meet some more of Matt's family. We went a couple times to our favorite restaurant out in Lynden called Bob's Burgers & Brew and we also went to the infamous Wood's coffee and Dutch bakery. Matt's mom, sister and I spent some time together going to a local quilt shop.

Below are some pictures from our trip.

Tanna with Uncle Matt :)

I love Washington's beauty.

Matt and I.

Most of all I would like to give a big SHOUT out to some very special people:
I can say I have never been more proud to be from North Dakota then ever. We had many family members come and help us pack and even complete strangers who helped lift all of our heavy appliances.  A very special thank you to my cousins Wade and Kristi for helping us pack up our house and letting us use one of their trailers and also for letting us store our stuff out at the farm. Also for my other cousin Michael who drove 180 miles to get a trailer for us to load and also who helped load a lot of our heaving stuff. Even though you didn't have any sleep after getting off night shifts and most of all my parents for helping pack and unpack our things, buying us many totes, letting us store and stay at your house for a few days and most of all taking care of Stella when we needed to leave for Washington.

Even though we were very fortunate not to have any flooding problems there are so many people that are less fortunate. I can't even begin to explain the heartache when you watch the news and see all of these houses sitting in water and worst of all when you see it in person. It make me sick to my stomach. So I ask if you please take a minute out of your day and pray for all of the people who are dealing with the flood and for those that no longer have anything. They need our thoughts and prayers more than anything.