Signs of Spring...

Lemon blossom

A House Finch family nested in my ferns

Crawfish and Strawberry beer

Fresh mint

beautiful weather for pond fishing

and a little Easter decor!

Sweet Friends

Elliott and I have the greatest group of sweet friends in Baton Rouge! We are so blessed that our friendships are so effortless and not only do all us girls get along so well, but our husbands love hanging out too!  This weekend was nothing short of great, with a few fun events lined up but we can also have the best time just hanging out at someone's house or on the patio at Zippy's!

On Thursday night we met for dinner and drinks at Zoila downtown before going to the Avett Brothers concert at the River Center.  Dinner was great-Zoila has a tapas menu and we were all very impressed with all the dishes. The concert was amazing! Although I have no musical talent, I am amazed by those who can play instruments, sing, read music, etc and I just loved their style! We had to leave early because Elliott had the first portion of his Master's comps, but we enjoyed every minute of the evening!

We decided to take it easy on Friday night in anticipation of St. Patty's day which started around 8AM at Lee and Brad's for brunch. They live off the parade route right around the corner from Meredith and Todd who hosted St. Toddrick's Day, an annual crawfish boil after the parade to celebrate Todd's birthday.

After an accident boiling crawfish ended with four friends visiting the ER, we managed to keep spirits up and create a few memories that we can (hopefully) laugh about next year...

After all, in good times and bad, thats what friends are for!

Elliott's Birthday

Elliott's birthday was February 23rd.  I love birthdays and try to make them extra special! It turns out that my version of extra special isn't the same as his! You'd think I'd figured this out by now, but apparently it's taken several years...
I started the morning by waking up early to cook him breakfast. He loves Red Velvet cake so I thought I'd try out these Red Velvet pancakes...

http://www.thatssoyummy.com/recipes/red-velvet-pancakes-chocolate-chips/

While they were good, they weren't as "red velvety" as I'd like and we both agreed regular buttermilk pancakes with chocolate chips would have been just as good!

As for his "birthday cake" I decided to go with a Chocolate Chip Cheesecake with a cookie crust.

http://www.inkatrinaskitchen.com/2011/05/chocolate-chip-cookie-cheesecake.html

It was a no bake cheesecake recipe that was made of cream cheese, whipped cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla...easy enough! However with just a cookie crust, the pie wasn't enough...I'm definitely a fan of a baked cheesecake! Needless to say, this was the second birthday fail.  I was able to salvage it, however, by adding chocolate pudding on top of the cheesecake layer with some Kahlua added in and topping it off with more whipped cream. An adult version of my Mississippi Mud Cookie Cake found here: http://www.scroggsland.blogspot.com/2011/08/summer-sweets.html

So, that was Thursday, February 23.  Despite my efforts, he still had a great birthday and was very kind to me in my "birthday fails!"

On Saturday, February 25, we hosted "Earz and Beeps 7th Annual Birthday Bash" at our house.  In years past we've done crawfish boils, fish frys, etc, but this year the boys decided they wanted to roast a pig.  This meant they would have to build something big enough to roast a pig. And they did! So, they bought a WHOLE pig, built this contraption, and roasted it all day. (I'll spare the early photos while it was still pink)

They made a vertical-like rotisserie and rotated it from top to bottom and side to side for even cooking.

 It was delicious and went fast! Everyone was grabbing meat as soon as he could cut it! 

 Knife skills

Of course, we didn't just have roasted pork! We had all the fixins' including baked beans, cole slaw, and rolls and of course lots of appetizers. My favorite is the all too easy Baked Brie.  I cut the top only off the Brie and topped it with Kahlua, brown sugar, and pecans. Bake on 350 for 10-15 minutes or until the cheese is soft and almost runny. Serve with Pita Crisps. SO GOOD! 

And we all know you can't have a birthday party without birthday cake...or cupcakes in our case! 

 Me and Kim getting ready to sing to our Birthday Boys! (notice how tilted my cake stand is)

 (I may have lost a few cupcakes from all the excitement)

Elliott's wondering where the rest of his candles are and Liza's waiting for me to drop more!

and Blake, mid bite.

I decided to go with good ole yellow cake since that is my birthday boy's absolute favorite. Since I couldn't bear serving an all-out-of-the-box cake/icing, I went with homemade chocolate buttercream made by my sister in law Claire who whipped it up in no time as all things baking are her specialty!

So my lesson learned this year: The boy just wants yellow cake out of the box but does appreciate home made icing. I can do that. It is his birthday, after all.

paint, paint, paint, oh my!

I found the most delightful paint color

but it doesn't have a name 

and I'll never be able to get this same exact color again

so I bought a gallon for $7 on the mess up rack at Home Depot.

Best $7 I ever spent on paint!

It's a beautiful dark blue gray...At first I thought it may be too blue.  Once I started painting, I thought it was too dark. After two coats and the right lighting, I am very pleased!

I went a little crazy and painted more than a few pieces of furniture. All were things that I wanted to paint, but hadn't found the right color for.  And I was getting bored while Elliott was laying floor and there wasn't much for me to do...

 The desk was my dad's. I think he used it in college.  It was a sage green color. I didn't remember the desk until Ashley painted it white and took it back to LSU for it's second life...a few years later, I layered on another coat of white paint and used it in college as well. I've had it ever since....just a good solid wood desk.

 ...given a new life!

I also had a shelf that was black so I painted it to match!

Then there is this old nightstand. Originally it was plain wood and pretty ugly so I painted it a light blue but gave it an upgrade with the new paint color!

and then, the curtains!

 I hate that the lighting is so bad in these pictures!

I don't sew, so painted curtains sounded like my kind of job!  I bought the grommet canvas curtains from IKEA awhile back and wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with them until I saw some chevron painted curtains on Pinterest! I do love chevron right now and after reading the tutorial it sounded easy enough. And it was!

I saw these first from this blog:
http://kfddesigns.blogspot.com/2010/10/chevron-curtain-diy.html

and then these:

from this blog:
http://thehuntedinterior.blogspot.com/2011/12/hot-trend-of-2011-chevron.html

I followed the directions from the first blog but modified the dimensions because I wanted more chevrons. The first and probably only time I'll ever iron curtains:

I folded them in half and ironed that seam and then folded them in half again to get a line where my points would be. The tutorial said to measure and tape it but my lines were crisp enough so I skipped that step.

Since I wanted more "chevron" I measured mine 12 inches apart (the others were 20.5 inches and only had 2 colored portions). I started from the top so the tip of my points are the ends and center of the panel and the dips are in the 2 other creases. It sounds confusing but really is easy.
Then the fun part...painting

I originally thought I wanted to do navy since that seems to be my favorite color but after finding this great color I decided to give it a shot!

When you tape, you have to remember which parts will be painted and account for that by either taping "inside" or "outside' the lines. It makes the unpainted part look smaller but the tape I used was 1.5 inches and once you pull it off, it's even!

The hard part was making sure I measured the second panel exactly like the first so they will be symmetrical! After letting them dry overnight I hung them and was able to see a few spots I missed (even with 2 coats!) but touch up was easy!
Some tutorials mentioned a fabric medium you can add to paint to make it washable, but as mentioned before, I don't really see myself washing and ironing curtains so I wasn't worried about that. The panels hang very nicely and aren't too stiff which is something I also thought about with painted fabric. I made sure my tape was very tight on the fabric to prevent the paint from seeping through which seemed to work well.

So, there you have it, painted chevron curtains...I hope this trend lasts awhile!
So glad I found such a great color and was able to update a few pieces, too!