Pinterest: I Challenge you to a Duel!

This is sort of like the Pinterest Challenge that Young House Love did a while back but a little different. I'm taking on two of my 18 pin boards and I thought i would share it with you (mostly to hold myself accountable) and invite you to join.

The Duel

To make everything on my board about desserts and everything on my board about other foods.

That's a total of 35 items!

I know, I'm stoopid.

This is sort of an unofficial challenge to myself and there are no deadlines to complete this, so it's not very stressful. Stress is not the goal here people! I gave myself this challenge before thanksgiving. This is the perfect time of year to do something like this too. So many parties, potlucks, shindigs and hootenannies to attend.

So here's how its going:

I have made a total of 8 things. Not too bad!

First up, desserts.

Double chocolate loaf with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Spread

This. is. retarded. good.

I've made it twice now and both times it has surprised and delighted guests. The directions say to bake for an hour but I only needed about 40 minutes. Not sure if I used a bigger pan or my oven is just shitty so if you make this keep an eye on it. It's pretty easy to make too and not too messy.

Golden Grahams Smores Bars

Another super easy one. I took this to a game night and everyone loved it. It's made with golden grahams cereal, no baking and stayed fresh for a few days aka just long enough for me to eat too many and get sick of them.

Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Muffins

So  many favorite things in one muffin. I didn't make the spread to go on top. I just didn't feel it needed it. I also added dark chocolate chips to mine. It DID need that, at least I thought it did ;)

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

This was my dish for thanksgiving. They turned out awesome. I didn't read the directions very well and put the cream cheese mixture in the fridge instead of the freezer, oops. It was fine, i just had to scoop it out with a spoon as opposed to slicing off a nice frozen circle to put in the center. Otherwise, a great recipe. These are really sweet so I think they're more of a dessert than a breakfast item, which can be interchangeable if you ask me!

Now for the entrees and apps:

Cheesy Mashed Potato Balls

Ok these were good. But they were really hard to make and time consuming and they didn't look pretty. So I probably won't be making them again. There were a lot of steps and it was really messy. One of the steps is to, duh, make the mashed potato mixture into balls. Well, it's fucking mashed potatoes so it's totally not going to form into a nice little ball in your hand. They ended up being more like mashed potato splats but they still tasted good.

Jalapeno Cream Cheese Poppers

These are so so easy to make. If you need something quick to bring to a party, this is it. They are very tasty and you can make them ahead of time and just bake the day of. Can't get any easier. And only needs a few ingredients.

Spaghetti Casserole

This is probably one of the favorite things I've made (non dessert, of course). I substituted the beef for fake meat crumbles, which took out a cooking step. It's very spicy, which can be adjusted to taste. I seriously ate this for lunch and dinner for three days, it reheats well and I didn't get sick of it. The french onion is perfection.

Gluten Free Mexican Casserole

I made this for a lunch celebration for a co-worker who is gluten free. I enjoyed it but my husband did not. The main ingredient in it is cabbage, a flavor that is not for everyone. There's a tomato mixture as one of the layers, I didn't feel there was enough of it so if I made this again I might double that. This recipe was a bit time consuming, there is a lot of chopping, simmering on the stove, and then baking. It took a bit too long for my taste. Also, because of the layer of corn chips on top, it didn't reheat very well which was a shame.

So that's all I've made so far. I will be making several more things for our party this weekend. The only problem with this challenge is that I keep finding more things to add to the boards, and that's ok.

Do you have a board challenge you would like to do? Perhaps a DIY board or a recipe board of your own. Join me!

See all my boards here.

Quick Change Friday

I think perhaps we should host a party once a month maybe. It's an amazing motivator for getting things done around the house. I have about 8 days to finish things up. In a perfect world lots of things would be done before then but I'm trying to be realistic.

I got the second coat done in my new office.

It's looks black in photos but it's really not. The color is "Gray" by BM. 

I will be adding some molding to these doors, and possibly painting said molding black.

I got some vintage fashion prints my mom gave me forever ago framed and hung finally. The frames from Ikea of course and I just mounted the art onto some gray paper to fill in the gap since the mat wasn't big enough. I think the gray adds some nice dimension to it.

The article on the top piece is funny. It was written in 1927 and the first line of it is "Collars are back!".

This wall is begging for something. I'm going to make a large painting for this room but I'm not sure if it will go here or not. Lots of details still to figure out.

This is my temporary solution to not having curtains.

Ghetto fabulous, no?

I am considering ordering this fabric for the curtains. I fell in love with it a long time ago and came across the swatch and thought it might work in here. It's a nice off white silk base with velvet flocking and a sort of painted on color. 

What do you think about it for curtains? Yes or no?

I hung this awesome vintage light up in my breakfast nook. I saw it at an antique store a few months ago. I snapped a pic and could not stop thinking about it. It was $200 which I thought was too expensive. Finally I decided I would go and see if they would let me put it on lay away and the whole booth was 30% off. Score! I bought then and there.

It's not really long enough but I decided to hang it as is for now. When we get our built in banquet it will be off center so I plan to put it on a chain and swag it lower over the table. Can't wait!

Have you finished any projects lately?

Happy Friday!

House Tour: Two Artist's Holiday Horseplay

I saw this house tour in this month's issue of D Home and I had to share with you all! It's such a cute place with so much color and personality. I'm happy the magazine broke out of their usual comfort zone of expensive chic and stuffy Highland Park homes, not that I don't enjoy them. It's just nice to see some colorful people around conservative Dallas!

The couple bought the home in Vickery Park earlier this year.

Alicia and Adam Rico both have backgrounds in art and now run the amazing floral and event design company Bows and Arrows.

The map above the hearth is an homage to where they met in Brooklyn, NY. 

I really love the built-ins and the fabric on the chair on the left.

In love with this tree!

They handpainted a tree trunk to act as a side table.

A perfect holiday table, and so easy to replicate! I love attainable design.

The walls are a hand painted mural done by Adam.

They added the bathroom, doesn't it look like it always belonged in this house? Perfection.

One of the cutest child's rooms I've seen in a while. The prize ribbons and yarn mobile are such an unusual touch.

Another mural painted by Adam. The Ricos balk at the typical term "eclectic" to describe their style. They prefer the term "horseplay". Suits this to a T right?

Read more about them and their house here.

All images courtesy of D Home.

I hope you enjoyed this tour as much as I did. I literally squealed when I first saw it. So cute!

Home Office Progress

Lots of things are happening around the house these days. We're having a holiday party this year and the pressure is on to finish a few projects before then.

I hung the vintage chandelier in my office instead of in the bathroom, because I'm a rebel like that.

It's looks soooo good. This room needs the bling factor big time.

You may have already noticed that I painted. It looks black but it is very very dark gray. Apologies but you guys are going to have to suffer through a lot of night pics for a while. It gets dark at like 5pm now and I don't get home before that so it is what it is.

Still needs a second coat but with some glossy white furniture, colorful fabrics, gold pretties, it's going to be great.

I went shopping in my bordering-on-a-problem swatch collection for possible curtain and upholstery fabrics. I chose the floral one on the bottom left for curtains. It's from Mood in NYC. It's not listed online so I called to order. Then a nightmare happened.

I remember it being about $25/yard when I picked up, like pretty clearly remember it. But when I sent the associate the photo of the swatch she said it was $50/yard. I need 10 yards. 

I. Am. Crushed.

Swears were spouted (in my mind) tears were almost shed, feet were stomped. I picked out my wall color thinking this was going to be my curtain fabric. I know, I should have planned better but I didn't. My second choice is the on in the top right but I'm pretty sure the place I got this doesn't carry it anymore. I'm going to check it out this weekend. If that doesn't work I'm pretty much back to square one and I reeeally wanted to get these curtains done before our party. Not to mention the fact you can totally see in this room at night from the street, not cool.

Anything crossed of your list lately?

New Photos of My Home

I mentioned before that I had my good friend Monica use her excellent photog skills to take pictures of my home to enter a contest. Here are some photos of the dining room you didn't see before and some new ones of my foyer. These are the only two rooms I consider "done". And most of you design-files know that a room is never truly done but is simply a room that doesn't have a laundry list of projects still to be done!

The dining table is from Pier 1, on clearance for only $300.

The light fixture is a generic one from Lowe's. I simply slipped a large drum shade over it and tied it up with wire.

The China cabinet is vintage, purchased at a garage sale for a song.

The bar cart was purchased at Canton Flea Market for $50. 

The paper on top is from Paper Source, I glued it on with spray adhesive.

I had a lot of questions about this vase. It's from a flea market. And I use the term flea market generously, I bought it from a lady that basically sells garage sale rejects out of a shack in the middle of nowhere. Lucky break I guess!

The paper in the back is from Paper Source.

Curtain fabric is from Mood.

The chairs were purchased on Craigslist for $100 for all 6. I painted them and the black and white stripe is from High Fashion Home.

All the large mirrors are vintage. The two small ones are from Target. The bench is another Canton purchase which I painted and covered in an outdoor fabric. The hatboxes are also vintage.

The console was a Target purchase from college. Just repainted it with glossy black and white paint.

The cup is a 50cent Goodwill find.

I purchased the mask in Venice, Italy on our honeymoon.

The knobs are from Anthropologie and the lamp was a sample from my old job that was never picked up.

I hoped you enjoyed the tour!