Brunch -- The perfect mix of breakfast and lunch.

It is good to know that even though I am almost 20 years old I am not too old for an Easter basket!

I woke up bright and early to shower and begin cooking for our lovely Easter brunch. I cut up all the fruit for our Honey Lime Fruit Salad. I figured letting it marinade together while we were at church would be a perfect touch.

Then we headed off to church.

After church, and a quick stop at Tim Hortons (Got another winning Roll Up The Rim!), I returned to my kitchen. I covered my new dress with my Starbucks barista apron I got for $1 at Goodwill and got to cooking. Aside from the fruit salad, I made ham, hashbrown/egg baskets, fresh strawberry muffins, and Easter sangria (for those of age!). 

  

 

Check out my Easter Brunch Pinterest page with some of these recipes -- Easter Brunch '13

The afternoon was full of sunshine, egg hunts, delicious food, family and friends.

I feel like this photo is a perfect photo to describe the afternoon. :)

After our family headed home, Nick and I were off to family party #2, with the McIntosh family!  We ate delicious desserts, played Corn Hole for hours on end, and even found time to watch a movie and hangout before the day was over.

As always, I hated saying goodbye to Nick last night, but I know I will be seeing him again in a few weeks.


And then for today...
I found out I am going to be an RA on 2nd floor Brazell and am happy to say that I am going to have the best suitemates, Jes and Ashley!

That's all for now.

Goodnight

XOXO

Easter Eve

There is a certain sense of pride that comes with replicating something you see on Pinterest. Tonight I want to share with you one of these moments.

Nick, Jilly and I were babysitting Ian and because it is the night before Easter, we decided to decorate Easter eggs.  After carefully mixing all the dyes and doing a few solid colors I thought of something I saw on Pinterest. The instructions said to crack the shell and then dip-dye it. After the color dries you peel off the shell but leave the inner membrane and it is supposed to make a patterned egg.

I took an egg, smashed it all up, set it in our green dye for about 10 minutes to really let the color set in, and then pulled it out to dry. I waited about 10 minutes again to be sure it was really dry and then began to peel away the shell. It is one of the best eggs I have ever, in 19 years, decorated!

You can see all the little tiny pieces of shell I had to carefully remove..... !

Ahh... the pride of a job well done.

Ian was also very proud of all of his eggs and can't wait for Mommy and Daddy to come home and see them.

Now thats a happy boy if I've ever seen one... :) 

I hope everyone has a very hoppy Easter! I will be doing most of the cooking for our family brunch so look forward to another post that is food-based tomorrow! 

Goodnight

xoxo

Good deals on Good Friday.

So first of all, yesterday one of my favorite people came home for the weekend! (See photo below.)

This morning we set off on a shopping adventure, mostly because I had a site-to-store pick up at the mall and because I had a chauffeur to take join me, and also because it was a beautiful day. It is crazy how the other day I was complaining about snow and today it was 55 - which if youre from Michigan, and it is March, might as well be 75 because everyone acts like it is.

 We came across some ridiculous deals and sales that I wanted to share with you.

This photo was from when we were driving around today  - windows down, radio up. Nick thought he would look good in my sunglasses..... You can be the judge of that.

Anyways, deals. So first off we were going to pick up my pair of cool mint (seafoam green) skinny jeans I got for just 8 dollars on JCP.com with free shipping since I had it sent to the store. (I saw an opportunity to go to the mall - obviously.)  We arrived at JCP with another coupon for $10 off a $25 purchase. There were clearance racks galore.  I was able to pick up a light blue dress for Easter and a white and black striped basic shirt for just $15.

Then we went to Bath and Body Works where I had a coupon for "free travel item of your choice." Since there was no purchase necessary  that was all I got.  I also went there yesterday to redeem a coupon for "free hand sanitizer of your choice." Thanks for all the freebies Bath & Body Works!

After that we headed to Goodwill. I am a big fan of thrift shopping, especially for home products and things I can re-purpose.Today was all yellow tag items half off. I got a lovely tartan scarf for just 99 cents and the big deal of the day... a set of 4 mugs, that are a really pretty black white and red pattern, brand new, that rang up just 25 cents a piece... meaning I got the whole set for $1! I walked out of there with 5 new things for only $2.

We then headed to babysit two of the cutest little kids in the whole wide world, my cousins Charlie and Ruby.  We took them on a walk because it was so nice outside and then returned them home and went on our way.

We had to be back at my house by 4 because Comcast was coming to finally fix my broken TV and internet, which I am happy to announce was fixable. We spent two hours outside with my sister playing tennis and volleyball. Nick even taught me how to longboard - its a work in progress.

Towards the end of our outdoor fun I took a volleyball to the face and have had a pounding headache ever since. All three of us ending up falling asleep for over an hour because we were so worn out from the beautiful weather.

Then, just when I thought I wouldn't have anything else adventurous happen tonight, the best deal of all happened. We stopped at Kroger to get a movie from Redbox, which we got for free thanks to the promo code - DVDONME. (Give it a try!) We decided to go inside and get some sort of snack food to watch with our movie. We noticed near the front of the store that there was a sale on the good Pillsbury cookies, you know the ones with the holiday shapes that are ready-to-bake....

These ones!

 They were marked 10 for $10 and thankfully at Kroger, no matter how many you buy that means just $1 each. We picked up 4 boxes and noticed that each of them had a manufacturers coupon attached that read "$1 off two boxes." Meaning with this coupon, and the sale already going on, each box would be just 50 cents. We grabbed a few other things and checked out. When we got home we looked at the receipt and realized that one of the boxes of cookies rang up at full price - $2.69. Long story short, I have had it happen too many times so I took time to learn the "scanner law." When a product rings up wrong you not only receive the difference back but you also receive a "bonus bounty" of 10 times the difference up to 5 dollars. So $1.69 was the difference, plus $5 = $6.69 we got back for the one box of cookies. We essentially got all 4 boxes of cookies for free and got paid another $2.69 to take them from Kroger. What a good deal.

Now we are settling in to watch out free Redbox movie - Undercover Bridesmaid, enjoy our cookies and bask in our thriftiness. Goodnight!