Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down...

Unless I have them off! Yay for a relaxing day off work to clean the apartment, do the laundry and...

Who are we kidding? I did nothing of the sort. 

For the vast majority of the day, I did absolutely nothing. I literally sat on my butt on the couch watching hours upon hours of "Dance Moms." I love this show. I am not ashamed. 

During this time, I felt I needed something to occupy my hands, so I set to work untangling the mess of yarn that had been created when we left a certain puppy at home alone for *gasp* 4 hours. 

"But mom...I swear I didn't do it!!!"

(side note: I'm nowhere near done with this task and am seriously considering chucking it and going to buy some more.)

This is what 4 hours of unwinding a giant yarn mess gets you.
I decided to use the water bottle since it was so clear that I would need both hands to tackle this task.

(additional side note: Teaching oneself to crochet using YouTube videos and online tutorials is not working out for me. I will be needing assistance. Please help.)

Around 2:30, I decided that Cali and I needed to go for a walk. So we walked down to the leasing office, took our friends some cupcakes (that I had made the night before in a fit of baking euphoria...) and chatted for a while. But Cali was stinky so we made it short. 

Then we came home, made the bed, cleaned up the kitchen and watched more "Dance Moms." Then I started to feel a little sad that I hadn't gotten to eat one of my cupcakes. Last night and this morning, I had no desire to eat them, yet now, after they had all been devoured, I was consumed with regret. This always happens though. 

With applesauce in them, it's almost like eating fruit, right?
I'm gonna say yes. 

So what do I do? Start looking up fall cookies. I was planning on following my Apple Spice Cupcakes (see above picture) with some sort of pumpkin dessert. But nothing was striking my fancy. So I widened my search to sweet potato and marshmallow desserts. I mean, what is more fall than sweet potato casserole? But, alas I was not so impressed. Ok. Skip the fall themed flavors all together. Marshmallow cookies. 

Jackpot!! Browned butter dark chocolate and marshmallow cookies. It was as if Heaven was sent to me in cookie form. 

When Evan got home, we ate dinner and went to the store to pick up a couple of things I was lacking, specifically, the marshmallows and dark chocolate. Pretty essential stuff, I'd say.

I came home and got to work. I did change the recipe a little bit. Since I was making enough to take to my marketing meeting in the morning and for Evan to take to work, I doubled everything. But then I also halved the browned butter because the taste is so strong. I also used half whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour. Not to be healthy. Just out of convenience. Then I added a splash of vanilla extract because cookies just don't seem the same without it. 

7 dozen cookie balls. Oh these are going to be trouble!

All in all, this was a great experience! This was much thicker dough than I had expected, but it was SO YUMMY!

If you bake at all and don't have one of these stackable cooling racks, you're insane!
I absolutely love these things!

Evan gave them his seal of approval! (I had a picture for this, but SOMEONE won't let me use it. He claims he looked horrible but refused to take any more pictures. Lame.)

As always, there are some cookies that come out looking perfect and others that are just plain butt-ugly. Guess what? Butt-ugly tastes just as good as pretty and you don't feel half as guilty about eating them. 

The difference is clear. The taste, however, is the same.
Nicely done, Butt-Ugly cookie. 

The best part is that there are plenty for me to keep here in case I change my mind about trying them! Yum yum yum!

A Very Merry Unbirthday to You!

Well, I guess you can't really call this an "Unbirthday," but it definitely wasn't a birthday party. Then again, it wasn't a baby shower either.

I have been wanting to make an "Ombre" cake since I first saw it on Pinterest!
So happy with the way it turned out!

You see, this is my sister's third child, but it's her first little girl. I guess you could call what we had a "Baby Sprinkle." These are all the rage now. Since Brooke had lots of little boy stuff but nothing for a little girl, we thought it would be fun to have a super girly tea party so we could "sprinkle" her with love and goodies for her newest addition!

These were so much fun to create! I am glad I had canvases on hand! :) 

I feel like our apartment just works really well for a "Mad Hatter" Tea Party. 

Mom, the flowers were PERFECT!
(and by the way, Evan does not want them to die! He keeps watering them!)

This type of party embodies everything I love about little girls. We had tea sets all around, pink and green decorations, flowers everywhere, tiny tea sandwiches, cupcakes and a VERY pink cake!

AND I GOT TO BUY GIRL CLOTHES!

Ok. Slight confession here: Evan bought the clothes. I was so busy the week leading up to the sprinkle that I didn't have time to go by and pick up what I wanted to get my new little niece, Lila Brynn. I didn't go before this week because I knew Carter's was about to start their massive baby sale! I just love that place. Anyway, the morning of the shower, as I was putting the finishing touches on the bar back, Evan went to Carter's. Alone. And he picked out the cutest darn things ever. We are so in trouble if we ever end up having girls. 

This is my favorite thing Evan picked up! 

Brooke's friends got her some of the cutest things too!! :)

Monograms are so cute!

Almost too cute to use!

Precious little dresses! Girls are so much fun!

Mom found the pink chenille horse at the Yellow Daisy Festival!
It was made from old bedspreads! How neat!

While he was running errands for me, I was cleaning, organizing and decorating. My absolute best friend in the world (and I'm not just saying that so she'll come over and clean again, but I also would never refuse her if she offered that!!), Genesis, came over a little early to help. My mom also showed up and brought all the yummy goodies she and my Aunt Holly had prepared. We had yummy fruit salad, pasta salad, cucumber sandwiches and the tastiest punch I've ever had! I could never have gotten everything done in time if it hadn't been for them!

I used the fabric for Lila Brynn's nursery as my inspiration for the invites!

Mom did SUCH a great job with these banners!
I am wondering if I can use them again...

Brooke LOVES pasta salad! Mom and Holly made the yummiest I've ever had!

Confession: I did not make these. Evan bought them.
Sometimes convenience trumps creativity! 

Genesis made the lemon squares and I made the cake (of course!) and we had such a lovely set-up. We were so happy to have all Brooke's close friends and the ladies of the family!

I didn't make these either. That goes out to Gen! 

Ashley, our cousin-in-law, had her very own Lyla just 3 weeks ago.
She looks pretty amazing already! Way to set the bar WAY too high, Ashley.
(note: I will NOT look this good that early...sorry, babe.)

My best friend, my awesome sister and probably the world's best Aunt!
I am so lucky to have such wonderful women in my life!

You've always got to have an "eating" shot. This is proof they enjoyed themselves!

As always, I couldn't have done all of this without you, Gen!

The beautiful guest of honor! You do NOT look 8 months along!!

I won't bore you with all of the nitty gritty details! If you want details, I'll give them to you! Thank you to everyone who helped and I loved celebrating this exciting new addition to our family! :) 

Again, I must say, I cannot believe you are 8 months along.
P.S. Mom and Holly made this awesome headpiece for Brooke to wear at the shower
and for Lila Brynn to wear when she plays dress up! Sweet!

Lila Brynn, we cannot wait to meet you! 

If you build it, they will come!

Have I ever mentioned that my husband is pretty awesome? No? Well, here's a whole post on how amazing Evan is.

I love our dining room now!

When we moved into our new apartment, it was decided that I could decorate the guest room in the girliest of manners and he could have the dining room for his "man cave." I got straight to work painting the guest room wall a lovely shade of pale purple and decorating with my favorite books, old pointe shoes and sewing/craft supplies.

The dining room was stagnant for a while. Then we got the donated chairs and table I posted about here. And then we stalled again.

We had a lot going on. We were quite busy! Helping friends move, baking extravagant cakes, working really hard, helping friends get married, trying to catch up on sleep, holding babies...we are exhausted! But does that stop this girl from wanting to have her apartment all put together? Nope. I'm a little ambitious. (Let's hope Evan thinks of it that way!)

We originally discussed Evan mounting his TV in the dining room and connecting his computer system so he could play video games and be really awesome and manly in there. But he lost the power cord to his TV and, truthfully, I wasn't that sad. So then we were faced with what to do in there. I don't know if many of you know this, but Evan is a Home Brewer. He brews beer. It is tasty. He's currently going back to school to get a few credits so that he can apply to UC Davis to get his Masters in Brewing. Yeah. That's a thing. My husband is pretty damn cool.

While being cool is awesome, brewing comes with a lot of equipment. Most of that equipment is not really the aesthetic I was striving for in our grown-up apartment, but I know that Evan needs to have fairly easy access to it and thus it could not reside in the storage closet off the patio that is roughly large enough for a small cat and one medium-sized box of books. Don't ask how I know this. My cat is not good.

Our solution? Let's build a bar back to hide all of his things and provide a surface for us to put out Evan's rare beer bottle collection! I thought it would be particularly cool to paint the entire wall behind it with chalkboard paint so that I could make the dining room feel a little like Evan's very own brewery. Except we're going to have to call it a "brewing company" because I have a very hard time saying words that include one "r" followed too closely by another. This is why, growing up, I always called my friend Greer, Gweer. Brewery automatically turns into Brewewy or Bruurry.

I digress.

A few weeks ago, I came home from work and Evan had already painted the chalkboard wall! Score one for ambition! I could hardly wait to start working on it. Lord knows I love Pinterest...so I found some inspiration for my chalkboard wall. Here's the progress on that...

Love shots like these. Nothing attractive at all...

Shameless self-plug on Evan's wall. What?
My cookies and cakes are delicious. 

See what I mean? Beer stuff isn't super pretty. 

Messy but fun! :) 

Partially done. Getting better. 

After that, we kinda stalled again. When Evan and I are on the ball, we're very productive. But then we take a little while to finish. It's like we have bursts of energy and inspiration and then we go into creative hibernation for a while.

So nothing really happened on the bar back until the weekend before my sister's baby shower. Which is when we needed it done. Oops. Good thing Evan works fast! :)

He went out, bought lumber, borrowed a router, jigsaw and saw horses from our friend Ben, and got to work! He knocked that thing out in 2 days! And then he stained it, to boot!! Awesome hubs award!

I woke up to the smell of lumber in the morning!  

Cali was not happy she couldn't help!

We had originally wanted to put cabinet doors on the front and we may revisit that at some point, but we were short on time and cash and those things are EXPENSIVE. So our alternate solution was to put up a curtain of sorts with industrial strength velcro and plain cotton duck cloth. My mom handled sewing the edging and measuring things. Thanks, Mom! :)

Close-up of how we made it work! 

About one hour before the baby shower was supposed to start, I finally got the fabric up and put the finishing touches on the bar itself. :)

I had to display the glasses mom bought Evan from the New Glarus Brewery! :) 

You know you wanna tap that...

Every bar needs some good art...Dad found this watercolor picture at an arts festival.
It may be one of my favorite things ever! Ketel One and Crown? Thank you!
Oh. I also love the colorful straws. :) 

After all this work, we are so excited to enjoy this room now. Unfortunately, we're both too tired. Excuse us while we sleep for a week!