Cute Cupcake Wishlist

How cute are these??

Pink Cupcake Apron

Sassy Half Apron

Cup My Cake Halter

Could these be more perfect for me? Especially the top two. Love them all!

{Disclaimer: I haven't ordered from any of these Etsy stores; this is not a recommendation for these sellers. I'm just admiring their adorable cupcake cooking garb.}

Deliciousness

Can't wait to make this again. Here's what's in it:

I used iceberg lettuce because that's what we had on hand...you could use whatever. I'd prefer mixed baby greens, so next time, that's what I'll use for the base

 Mushrooms (use your favorite kind), washed & sliced 
Snap peas

A small tomato, diced

Half an avacado, diced

Crumbled bleu cheese

Half a sliced bbq pork cutlet

Poppyseed dressing

For the cutlet, I marinated it in Paula Deen's apple cinnamon BBQ sauce before grilling it. Oh. My. Gravy. So freaking good. I loved the combination of apple and pork (porkchops & applesuace, anyone?). The sweetness of the bbq and the blue cheese go perfectly together. I'm kind of proud of myself for coming up with this one.

Mike used ranch dressing on his, he said it was kind of like a cobb salad, minus the hard boiled eggs. So, that's cool. And another way to go.

The awesome thing about this salad is that I can use whatever veggies I have on hand at the time. Whatever comes out of my garden, I can put it in this salad. It will still be yummy. I have a feeling we'll be eating a lot of these types of salads all spring & summer.

Spring Colors

I can't get enough of all the signs of spring, all the pretty colors. We spent at least 4 months under snow, looking at the same two colors: brown and dirty white. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin if we didn't get spring soon, and now that we finally have it, I feel like I have to take in every moment. (I'm sure you're sick of reading about how happy I am that it's spring.)

So, I'll shut up, and share pretty colors.

One of these days, I'm going to fill this with red tulips.

Like this.

Weeds, again.

Pretty.

I saw my tiger lillies starting to sprout up in the front yard the other day. Can't wait to see that orange. And whatever colors are out there that I can't remember :)

Patio: The Before

I got it in my head a couple of weeks ago that we needed to build a patio. Fortunately, after all this time, Mike is almost used to my spur of the moment, ridiculously random ideas. I'm willing to bet that even he would admit that most of these ideas ultimately turn out to be awesome and just what we needed :)

Fast forward. Here are the before pictures:

Pretty much everything you see will be patio in the near future (fingers crossed). We need to remove pieces of sidewalk up to the taller set of stairs. The edge of the patio will be even with the bottom step on the taller set of stairs. We're obviously pulling out the two dead bushes (plus a tree stump you can't see in the picture). We're moving the rocks elsewhere...possibly lining the stairs from the driveway or to build up a wall that's already existing in the yard. We'll see.

Here's the brick we're using (1550 of them got dropped off in the yard on Saturday):

So, in total, the patio will be 326 square feet. Huge. I love it. It will be an on-going project, I think, for at least a couple of years. We'll use what we have for patio furniture for the time being, and I'll keep my eyes open for a great deal. I'm looking to make this an outdoor living room, so I want really comfy patio furniture. Eventually, we'll probably put up some sort of covering for shade, and I'd like some additional lighting.

I can easily see myself sitting out there during a rainstorm and taking pictures, or reading a book I can't put down til all hours of the night. Mike is excited to light the fire pit and listen to a Royals game with a cooler of beers beside his chair. Sure, we have different goals for the space, but at least we'll be together :)

Oh, and here's a pretty picture of a weed:

Apparently, I'm willing to crawl on the ground to take pictures of weeds now. Hmm.

Disappointment

I'm the type of person who honors their commitments. If I promise to do something for someone, I will do everything in my power to do it. If I can't do it, for any reason, I'm up front about that and apologize and do whatever I can to make it up to the person. This is multiplied if I'm charging someone for something...a service, a product, my work...whatever.

I can't go into details here, because I refuse to publicly badmouth someone in print, even if I believe they deserve it. But, I will vent.

 When someone advertises a specific service performed in a particular way, I expect them to deliver that service. I understand that certain things can't be helped, but when there's nothing limiting a person from performing that service, I will never understand why it isn't performed. It's completely unethical and just plain lazy.

I will never have this particular instance back. There's no way to recreate it, no way to make up for what we've lost.

Promising someone the highest quality and delivering mediocrity is not fulfilling a commitment to them. Doing a job is different than doing it well. Why don't people strive for excellence anymore?

Molly & The Moos

(That would make an excellent band name...)

So we got new cows. Molly loves cows. Absolutely adores them. She loves to play with them, chase them, bark at them, and immitate them. We often say she wrangles them, because she really does. It's cute to see an 18 pound pug leading cows to behave the way she wants them to. Cows that easily weigh 20 times more than she does.

Here are some photos I took the first night we had them. I'll explain as we go...

These are most of the cows. It's tough to get 8 animals to stand still and together, so I never actually got a picture of all of them at once. Oh well.

Pretty self explanatory here. Cows. Doing their cow thing.

Little pug, always part of the action.

Molly, asserting herself with the cow. Love the blur of his face (he's about to stand up and dance around).

Molly: 1, Cow: 0

Eating a victory dinner, bovine style (I told you, she really does think she's a cow, especially when others are around.)

And she's finally sick and tired of Mommy taking pictures of her and her friends.

So nice to feel like we're on a farm again. Have I mentioned how much I love spring?

Love This

Saw this quote on Ali's blog this morning. Seriously, swoon.

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." (Emerson)

I'm pretty sure I'm going to make a wall hanging out of that or something. I (we) could definitely benefit from that reminder everyday.