A weekend of Pinspiration - Part 2 - Menu Board

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday - we're just getting back from Memphis with my mom's side of the family - great weekend of food, family and fun!  Pics to come soon!

But first, back to my weekend of Pinspiration - I've been dying to come up with a solution for my weekly menu planning.  If you know me even slightly, you know I'm pretty obsessed with spreadsheets.  Usually, I try and make a menu plan every Sunday - I do this out of sheer necessity (so don't be too impressed) because I'm not creative enough to come up with something on the spur of the moment with ingredients I have - if I haven't planned ahead, it probably means we're having a Moe's night  :)  This has also been pretty essential in getting healthy - I find that if I plan in advance, its much easier to eat healthy dinners.  So, normally, my spreadsheet would be fine.  The problem was that we buy a lot of stuff frozen so we can buy in bulk and I'd forget that morning to set out food to defrost.  Sometimes, a meal also requires that we grill extra items on one night so I have it for later.  Well, all that planning goes out the window unless I remember to do the prep.  So, a menu board it was!  And I decided I needed a giant board right by the door to my garage, so there really would be no way to forget.  I was loosely inspired by several Pinterest pins (including the one hyperlinked below), but really Lisa and I came up with this one all on our own!

Chalkboard menu planner

So, Friday morning, bright and early, we headed to Lowe's (our first of 4 trips) and Hobby Lobby to get supplies.



We started with one of the unfinished frames from Hobby Lobby - they were 50% off and this one ended up being about $40.  We thought about trying to use trim pieces from the hardware store, but couldn't figure out how to make it flush (since a frame already has routed edges to drop in a piece of glass), so I decided this frame was worth the extra expense.  We ended up picking the frame we liked the best and didn't worry about the color - spray paint is cheap! 

Step 1:  Spray paint unfinished frame with white spray paint

Finished frame

We also bought a sheet of plywood from Lowe's and had them cut it to fit exactly into our frame.  The whole sheet was about $10 and we used less than 1/2 - we saved a few smaller pieces and gave one larger piece we couldn't fit in the car to a stranger  :) 

To create our chalkboard, we first tried chalkboard spraypaint that we found at Hobby Lobby - total fail, I wouldn't recommend.  Granted, I probably didn't give it a fair shot - after about a 1/2 a coat, I waived the white flag - it was getting drip spots, the coverage was very uneven (didn't cover the grain of the wood) and it looked like it was going to need a TON of paint.  I think this may have been created for use on a slightly smaller projects - not 40x30 pieces of plywood!  Either that, or perhaps its user error.

So next, we turned to chalkboard paint that we applied with a roller.

Step 2:  Paint plywood with chalkboard paint

See the difference?  We did end up doing a 2nd coat of the paint as well, just in case.

Lastly, we had to figure out a way to attach the plywood to the frame.  We wanted to make sure the plywood was held very tightly in place so it wouldn't wiggle when I tried to write on it.  The plywood wasn't quite as thick as the opening for the frame, so we had to get creative.  We ended up buying these metal thingys (which is the technical term - I checked) and screwed them to the frame so it would hold it.  Lisa slightly bent them so they would have more pressure on the plywood.  Apparently she was a little too strong for her own good - she ended up breaking the metal once, so take caution!

Step 3:  Attach plywood to frame with metal fasteners

Close up shot of our hardware

Then - our menu board was ready to hang!  We used picture hanging wire on the back and screwed two screws into the wall.  We added some chipboard letters we painted black to spell out "Menu" and....Ta-Dah!

One stipulation I had was that I did NOT want to use regular chalk to write on the board - I hate how dusty it gets and I knew I wouldn't want to deal with that.  Lisa recommended these:

Crayola Dry Erase Crayons

They write just like crayons and they do erase off my chalkboard as long as you use a little water.  I'm also thinking about getting a chalkboard marker, but we'll see.  Tim and I used our board for the first time last week (even though it was a short week b/c of Thanksgiving break and meals were basically just a hodge podge) - it was a great reminder to me that I needed to make the pumpkin pie cheesecake swirl dessert I brought to our family meal. 

I'm looking forward to meal planning today just so I can write it on my board!

A weekend of Pinspiration - Part 1 - Painted Curtains

When Lisa comes into town, I can always count on her to do a little home improvement with me.  Last year, she helped me tackle several projects in my living room to make it look a little bit more completed including adding shelving/accesories and a picture wall.

Picture Wall - Lisa's '10 visit

Floating shelves & accessories - Lisa's '10 visit

This time when she came, I was prepared with a handy list of inspiration from my favorite website, Pinterest.  One of the projects I really wanted to tackle included the following:

Painted curtains

I saw these curtains and couldn't believe when I clicked on the link that she had actually PAINTED them.  In her blog, she uses some cheaper Ikea curtains, but I actually got some velvet white drapes from Lowe's (would have been even cheaper if I had found some good drop cloth - I've seen some great curtains made out of drop cloth) but I wanted them to be a little thicker and make sure they blocked most of the light.  After a few quick measurements, we decided we wanted 10" stripes, knowing that the bottom stripe would be about an 1" or 2" wider (which was okay with me).  We moved the dining room furniture, laid out a drop cloth, and started measuring!

Blank canvas!

I didn't feel like marking any measurements on the curtains because I was lazy wasn't sure how it was going to come off.  So instead, we marked 10" with a tiny piece of tape on each side and in the middle, then laid one long strip across so it lined up with all three.   



Marking our tape pieces

Taping was the only challenging part of this project - we had to keep remembering which part would be painted and make sure that the tape was on the OUTSIDE of that line.  Then, when you measure the next one, make sure you measure from your true line (which is sometimes the top of the tape and sometimes the bottom of the tape depending on whether its a painted stripe or not).  We ended up putting a smaller piece of tape to remind us which stripes we did NOT have to paint - see how they look smaller because the tape is on the inside of each line. 

From there, we just rolled on my wall color with a normal paint roller - be warned, this soaks up a LOT of paint.  We only bought one quart and definitely had to squeeze out the last few stripes, even though there were only about 8 stripes total.  I probably would have bought a gallon next time to be safe.  Plus, I don't think it would hurt to do 2 coats, but more on that later.

Remove the tape while still wet - no bleeding!

While we were at it, we bought some oil rubbed bronze spray paint and spray painted my curtain hardware.  Look how pretty it looks...

Coolest spray paint ever...I see why people are obsessed

And now, the finished product...

Not too shabby!  Word to the wise on this one though - I didn't read all the way through the blogger's post.  When the paint started to dry, there were some spots that soaked in a little more than other and Lisa & I went back and touched them up.  Those touch-ups didn't dry uniformly with the rolled on paint, so I'd caution against doing this - probably just roll on a second coat.  A few people have asked if they're "crunchy" - and since these are velvet, they weren't exactly the blowing in the wind to begin with.  If these are going in a high traffic area or you have kids that might play with them, you might be disappointed, but for my purposes I thought they're just fine.  The dark color actually looks a little like suede in person.

Hope you're moved to tackle some Pinterest projects soon...stay tuned for the other 2 projects we tackled this weekend!

Weekend in Collage

A little over a week ago, Lisa made her annual trip to Birmingham to visit!  Once a year, we send our husbands to Nebraska for their hunting trip and we have a girls weekend!  No men, no kids, no agenda, and usually no getting out of our pajamas  :)  I am working on a full recap of all of the home improvement projects we completed, but for now - I thought I'd give you a brief summary of the weekend in picture collage. 

How we spent our time:



We also were able to have some great catch-up talks, order pizza (not once...but twice), and watch a girly movie.  A wonderful Thanksgiving week!

Vulcan 10-K

Some of you may know that a little over a year ago (Sept 25, 2010 to be exact - I only remember b/c its my dad's birthday!) I decided to get into a healthier lifestyle.  I have thought about blogging about it for a while now, but haven't had the nerve b/c I didn't want to sound too preachy or like I had it all figured out (I've already taken too much grief for my "motivational" pins on Pinterest!).  Stay tuned to see if I decide to share. 

So, as part of this "get healthy journey" I started running.  Last September, I couldn't run a lick.  I did my first workout which was the Couch to 5k program, as described here.  My first workout, I did 30 minutes on the treadmill, with only 8 of those minutes being at an actual jog (and at a very slow pace, might I add).  I only share my running history to give you a little perspective - a few weeks ago, I ran in my second ever race - I ran a 10-K! 

Now, prepare your gag reflex here - I actually enjoyed it.  Now, I CANNOT say this is the case for 99% of my runs - I like the results and I like the way I feel after, but I never thought I'd be one of those people who just enjoyed the run itself (and in the spirit of honesty...I'm not sure I've enjoyed a run since this run).  But, there was something about all of the people, working towards a common goal, enjoying the weather, etc.  I also liked this one much better than the 5-k - something about the distance was right.

I mentioned in a previous post that Emily Ann was trying to talk me into running the Vulcan 10-K - I decided last minute that I'd suck it up (even after my massive b-day dinner at Sumo).  I did have to do a double take when I picked up my race bib and it said my age was 28 - you have to put in your birthday and they calculate your age on race day.  Guess I'd forgotten I'd have one more b-day before race day!  :)

Vulcan Run - 2011



WAY too early - and it was really cold!



The route started and ended downtown and was pretty flat

Emily Ann and I ran together the first four miles of the race - her knee was bothering her a bit and we separated for the last 2.2 miles, but having her with me was great so I knew how to pace myself.  She has a Nike plus watch that tracks your pace while you run and that really helps - I tend to run too fast and then get winded early.  We still ended up finishing pretty close together - and they even had frozen yogurt from Yogurt Mountain at the end of the race - yogurt at 9:30 in the morning?  Don't mind if I do!

We did it!

Being new to the race world, I didn't realize they'd post your time on the Internet for all the world to see.  I might have run a little faster if I'd have known that  :)  All in all - not as fast as I was planning, but the important thing is that I did it!



So, I've sort of gotten the bug - there's a 10 mile race in January that I'm thinking about doing.  I know most people say to do a half marathon next, but 1.  That seems like a big leap to me and 2.  The timing is not as good - (mid Jan - March are really busy at work).  Again, putting my thoughts out there to have some blog accountability!  We'll see!

Birthday weekend and the great case debate

This past Friday, I turned the big 2-8.  Thanks so much everyone for your cards, calls, texts, tweets, facebook messages, etc.  I felt very loved!  It is always fun having your birthday fall on a Friday (even if it means you have to work...boo) - because then you can REALLY stretch it out all weekend long!  The celebration started on Thursday night when Emily Ann, Caroline and Caroline took me to Chez Fon Fon for dinner.  Look what they even got them to bring!

Sweet and Salty cake from Highlands (next door sister restaurant)

Thanks for taking me girls!

On the big day itself, Tim woke me up with the chipmunks singing me happy birthday (he played the you tube video on his phone) - how can you not have a good day when you're woken out of a dead sleep by singing animals!  :)  I couldn't help but laugh.  At work, my incredibly sweet co-worker McCauley brought in an Edgar's cake which we cut into after a long lunch at The Pita Stop.


Positively sinful!

That night, Tim and I met Justin and Nichole at Sumo (a Japanese steakhouse) for some dinner.

We tried to use the self-timer - didn't turn out so hot, but that's okay!

The dinner was a lot of fun - I must have a face that says "Please, pick on me!" - we didn't even tell our server it was my birthday,  but of course, he still decides to flick shrimp tails at me, try and have me toss an egg into his pocket, etc. (but he also gave me extra fried rice, so I wasn't complaining!)

Good dinner with good friends 

It seems I must have been a pretty good girl this year - I mostly asked my family for $ for clothes this year (I know, boring, but so necessary!)  But, I did get these -

Running socks - which I broke in on Saturday when I ran my first 10-K (recap post to come soon)

Gift card for some clothes - I'm really liking these navy pants from Express...I'm into navy right now.  Would also love to find some winter white pants.

AND.............

Ipad!

I'm SUPER excited!!  See, I love to read...generally not anything intellectually stimulating and I won't be deconstructing novels here on this blog, but I love my guilty pleasures - mysteries, girly fiction, teen series (Harry Potter & Hunger Games...haven't gotten into Twilight yet), etc.  But, I'm also pretty cheap and not about to shell out $15 bucks for the newest James Patterson.  I'm patient - I just wait for books to come out and I reserve them at the library.  I've had a library card in every place I've lived since probably junior high.  When I go on trips, you can bet that at least a corner of my suitcase will be stacked high with books.  I borrowed my mom's Kindle on our Aruba trip just to see - I was holding out - I'm a little old school and there's just something so comforting about holding an actual book.  Plus, I just like that library smell (wow, huge nerd alert).  I enjoyed the convenience, but if you add the cost of buying a 2-3 books a month, I still wasn't sold.  So, when the Kindle Fire was announced, I did some research and figured out I could check some books out from the library to my Kindle app on my phone.  BINGO!  So, I asked Tim for the Kindle Fire - I thought it would also be nice to surf the web plus I could save all my recipes and use it in the kitchen - right now I have them saved to my favorites and I just pull up on my phone, but the screen is so small.  Well, I'm happy that Tim went above and beyond and got me the ipad which I know I'm just going to love.  And I know part of my birthday $ is going to be spent buying a case, but I'm torn on exactly what I want.  I've heard the apple cases aren't all they're cracked up to be.  I want something VERY lightweight that I can leave on all the time and isn't too bulky, but with a good enough amount of protection.

I thought about getting a snap-on case for just the back (similar to what I have on my iphone now and love) and then getting a cute case for travel and when it's not in use.  I particularly love this Etsy one...

BUT...I'm afraid I'm going to miss out with not being able to prop it up to view - I think this would be especially nice in the kitchen.  I just feel like all of those type cases (the leather ones you slide the ipad into) are so much bulkier and cover up too much of the front screen.  Plus, I got a white ipad and I'm weird and don't want to put it in a black case which most of those type cases are.  I probably just need to do some more research, but anyone have any suggestions?  Pros/cons?  I'm all ears!

Adventures in Cooking - Green Chile Chicken

In case you missed it, we kind of like Mexican at our house.  We do some variation of tacos, Chicken Tamale Casserole, or breakfast burritos weekly (and that's usually in addition to our Moe's runs...don't get me started on that obsession).  This recipe is SUPER healthy, SUPER cheap, and SUPER easy.  All pluses in my book!  We keep frozen chicken on hand and I've stocked up a few cans of green chilies, so as long as I've remembered to defrost, this is an easy go-to in a pinch.

Smothered Green Chile Pepper Chicken recipe

(Recipe found from Cooking Light)

Step 1 - Cover chicken* with lime juice and taco seasoning



*The recipe calls for chicken thighs, but we used chicken breast - leaner and it ends up being very moist

Step 2 - Split chilies in half and cover chicken, cover with foil & bake for 30 min at 400 degrees

Step 3 - Sprinkle cheese on top and bake uncovered for additional 5 min  - I also turn the broiler on the last minute or 2

Step 4 - ENJOY!

I like to serve with black beans

Hope you give it a try!

CureSearch Walk

Last weekend, we attended the first annual Birmingham CureSearch walk benefiting children's cancer research.  Will & my dad were hoping to be able to make the trip to walk with us, but last minute my dad had some back problems that prevented them from coming - I know they were walking with us in spirit! 

Will to Win team - Joey, Lydia, me, Tim (Thanks guys for coming!)

Lydia & I

The event itself was a success - over $12,000 raised!  Starbucks, Chris Z's and Birmingham Beverage Company provided coffee/breakfast/water for all of the participants and the opening ceremony kicked off around 10:00 on Saturday.  Jim Steiner (the CureSearch representative) lead the ceremony with guest speaker, Dr. Berkow from UAB Children's Hospital.  Jim called up the top three teams who had raised the most $ to date (excluding amounts turned in on walk day) - and I'm proud to report that thanks to all of your generous donations the Will to Win team came in third!  The only slightly embarrassing part was that they made the team captain or the child the team was supporting come and accept a goofy looking hat to wear during the walk.  With Will being a few states away, I had to wear the hat and felt a little silly! :)  Lydia, Joey & Tim made me wear it for one lap and then we passed it to another team....

The ceremony also called up all of the children in attendance who were survivors of childhood cancer and they got to wear a medal.

We also had a moment of silence and remembrance for the families that had lost their child to cancer.  Those families were given a white balloon to release.  That part of the ceremony was really tough and a reminder of the devestating impact of this disease.

The walk itself was about 2 miles (6 laps around the course).  The day could not have been more beautiful - temps in the mid 70s!  Around the course they had a sign for each team, which of course we had to stop and take a picture of our team sign. 

We'll just have to MAKE Will wear the hat :)

 They also have a banner that the teams sign to show the reasons we walk - this will be displayed in Children's Hospital for the next year.

After the walk, they had a prize drawing - we all received a ticket when the walk started and they selected a ticket for several prizes - Tim McGraw autograph, Faith Hill autograph, restaurant gift certificates, etc.  I ended up getting picked for a $50 gift certificate to the Fish Market which was a nice surprise!

Thank you again for your support of the Will to Win team.  I know the walk will continue to grow over the years and we truly are making a difference.  The website (Will to Win!) is still up and running for anyone who wants to make a donation! 

Now....tonight..............GO RANGERS!