Random Mondays!

Today's Random Monday emoticon:

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Item in question:

My wonderful hubby bought me a new purse (not) for Valentine's Day this year, and have been battling the "crap, I keep losing my shit in this bottomless pit" due to the constant shift of purse contents. It's rather annoying. Enter Purse Bling. They totally have it together in regards to this bottomless pit issue! Purse organizers - brilliant. Absolutely. Brilliant! Now all your crap belongings have a home. A pocket for the cell phone, sunglasses, pens, meds, etc. According to Purse Bling, there's even a special pocket for business cards. I'm totally in for one, but now I can't decide which one to get! So help a home girl out will ya? Which do you think I should get??

The Purse To Go Original:

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It has 8 pockets and a "bottom"

The Joey Junior Purse Organizer:

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Has 6 pockets and wraps around the interior of your purse.

Which do you like/prefer? Once y'all help me decide, I have to decide on which color. Oi vey! This is way too many options for totally indecisive moi. Feel free to recommend a color too if you'd like!

P.S. The owner of Purse Bling, Jerilyn, even personally emailed me to help me determine the proper purse organizer size for my purse. Talk about customer service! Love it!

House Renovation: Exterior

Our house is getting some major face lift. You see, we bought an established home with desire to fix it up via DIY projects because we were young and thought it would be the best thing ever! Oh who am I kidding, we bought the house because the lease on our apartment was up soon and we didn't want to pay the month-to-month rent which was double the current rent. Plus, we were tired of house hunting (4 months) and getting out bid.

While we regret purchasing this house (now), our first home will always be our first home. With the poor economy refraining us from putting it on the market without accepting a huge loss, the hubby decided we might as well move forward with our initial vision and plan to renovate the house to make it ours. And be proud of living there!

You already saw the beautiful landscaping we've done to the flowerbed so the next thing on the list was to repair the exterior (Masonite). I'll let the pictures show you why they were begging to be next in line for an upgrade.

I'm so embarrassed... Apparently there were termites

back there too. No bueno!

Evidence of rain and harsh Texas weather

Warping Masonite

Weed eating damage. Not from us! We inherited this.

Lucky us!

Thanks to an awesome customer of ours, he hooked us up big time with the materials and labor. Thanks Josh! So down comes all the Masonite and up goes hardiboard. Since everything was torn down, the hubby decided we should give the house a complete makeover by choosing a different paint color. What an awesome idea right? Well, I'm Mrs. Most Indecisive Person Ever and deciding on a damn paint color scheme was a total nightmare! We perused our neighborhood for ideas, but nobody else had Masonite. Fail. We went to Home Depot and Lowe's to check out paint chips and exterior paint suggestions, but nobody had the design we had. Sigh.

Thick design boards

After a week of contemplating and numerous petty fights (sorry love!), we called our friends, Vandrew, over to help us make the executive decision between the three choices we narrowed it down to. 

Beige walls with dark brown trim

Beige walls with burgundy trim (BOOMER SOONER!)

Light grey walls with navy blue trim

And the winner is....

Beige walls with dark brown trim

Looks like a brand new house huh? With the exterior of the house done, it was time to move to the back. Up next: the pool deck.

What color scheme would you have chosen for our house?

Random Mondays!

Today's Random Monday emoticon:

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Item in question:
Last Friday, I exaggerated the 105 degree weather, but the car reading corrected me later that afternoon. It was higher. With the heat index, the air was a scorching 116. I could literally feel the sun rays burning holes into my skin.

Yup, it's almost 7pm and we're still rocking

100+ degree weather. It's not even August

yet, which is THE hottest month - ever!

How's the weather where you're at?

5 second Banana Ice Cream!

Not only does it take 5 seconds to make it, you only need 3 ingredients AND you can make it without an ice cream maker! *Gasp* Hold onto your hats folks because this thing is legit!

I totally didn't take any pictures because I was just goofing around, but y'all. It turned out delish! I made a small single serving, but wish I had made a larger one. For myself. Don't judge. I told the hubster about this ice cream a minute later and he said wanted a bite. Um. I totally devoured it in the kitchen. Out of the food processor. My feet never left their spot from start to consumption. So there was definitely no sharing going on. I said, Don't. Judge! Sheesh! Y'all are horrible listeners. At least y'all are awesome readers! <3

The recipe below is for 1 serving, but you might as well go ahead and double your intended serving size because let's be honest. You'll want more than just one serving. Now, let's (attempt to) cool off from this 105 degree weather. Darn Texas heat!!

Banana Ice Cream
I can't remember where I originally saw this recipe, but if you know, let me know so I can give appropriate creds and props to em!!

Ingredients:
½ ripe banana, sliced and frozen (you can use any fruit or a combination of them)
1 tsp vanilla extract
A splash of soy milk (or whatever milk you prefer)

Directions:
1.  Peel and cut your banana into ¼-½" slices. Place banana slices in freezer until frozen.

2.  Place your frozen banana slices, milk, and vanilla extract into your food processor. I used a mini one we received at our house warming 3 years ago and it was the perfect size. Feel free to use the big momma one you received off your wedding registry because it might be collecting dust and is crying to be utilized. Or if you don't have a food processor, a blender works just as good I'm sure! Pulse the food processor/blender until everything is smooth and well blended to the consistency of your liking. Add more milk, if desired.

3.  Scoop, top with toppings, if desired, and serve! Or if you don't feel like sharing, consumption straight out of the food processor/blender is completely acceptable also!

It looks a lil something like this!

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Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies - Ever!

My parent's were in town 2 weekends ago and since my dad is a rock star in doing numerous house repairs for us, I thought I would make him is favorite cookie - peanut butter! Since making the cookies were a last minute decision, I didn't have all the ingredients to make the traditional peanut butter gooeyness (i.e. no shortening which is muy importante). Then I recalled a recent blogger making peanut butter cookies with only 5 ingredients and took little to no time at all. Perfect!

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
replicated from life after lobster from FoodNetwork's 5 Ingredient Fix

Ingredients:
1 cup peanut butter
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, lightly beaten

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 350F. Place rack in upper middle of oven. Prepare a baking sheet with silicone mat.

2.  In medium bowl, lightly beat egg. Add peanut butter, sugar, and vanilla extract and mix until well combined and batter forms a dough consistency. If mixture is too loose, add a bit of sugar.

3.  Spoon one tablespoon of mixture onto baking sheet making sure cookies are about 1 inch a part. (I love how non-sticky the batter was and rolled up into a ball with ease!) Flatten peanut butter mounds with the back of a fork to make cross hatch lines. Sprinkle coarse salt, your favorite type of jelly, chocolate chips/peanut butter cup, or whatever your heart desires to the top!

4.  Bake until edges are golden brown, about 10 minutes to get slightly chewy in the middle texture. Halfway through baking, rotate sheet to ensure even cooking. Remove from oven, allow to cool about a minute on baking sheet before transferring to cooling rack.

And because I my family devoured them all

so quickly, I have no final picture. But this one

is pretty darn accurate to mine!

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Easy peasy right?? You have any super simple/minimal ingredients recipes? Do share!!

Random Mondays!

I know, I know, I know. I'm a horrible blogger. While I previously mentioned blogging would be light, I didn't intend it to be one post a week. Last week was our summer vaca (I might or might not blog about it), so I did horrible job of scheduling posts for the remainder of the week. I only did my Random Monday one. Lame, I know. So if you're over me, I totally understand. Redemption is never easy and I'm not making any promises to because well, under promise and over deliver is always a better philosophy than over promise and under deliver right? Right! Moving on...

Today's Random Monday emoticon:

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Item in question:

During our summer vaca last week, our hotel, Farmer's Daughter, in West Hollywood was across the street from the Farmer's Market. You can bet your money that the Farmer's Market was on my agenda for breakfast every day. Why? Because when there's the freshest fruit galore available, I'm all over it baby.

The variety was endless 

Pre-sliced fruit. They were so sweet with

none of the work. Heaven!

What do you look forward to at the Farmer's Market?

Random Mondays!

Today's Random Mondays Emoticon:

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Item in question:

The city's informal town hall is held every Saturday at our shop. These guys crack us up and are like informal door greeters to all our customers (because they literally know every single person in town). It's also becoming the place to meet up! For example, the town's football team has breakfast at our place every Friday. It's the place to grab breakfast before any sports games/meets or even for church on Sundays. And most recently, we're the convening place for boy scouts! How cool is that! I couldn't be more proud of what our "mom and pop shop" has become and am excited to see what's in store next. The people here are what really make it what it is. Plus, the hubster is such a social butterfly and is somewhat a local celebrity, but I'll let him tell you that story!

There's more of them, but they couldn't all sit at the

already extrapolated table without violating the fire code!

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Happy 4th of July everyone!! Thank you to all our men and women in the service for all that you do for our country! Hope you're all enjoying some good ole BBQ and spending quality time with your loved ones!