Have I told you that I am trying not eat out in the month of November? Well, I am. And I have even given a cute little nickname...."No Fast Food November"

The month of October was a wreck on my personal eating habits, I blame it mostly on being too tired and of course the St. Louis Cardinals post season. I just wanted to come home with some Jack in the Box or Wendy's or McDonald's or...you get the idea, and veg out in front of the tv. And while the fast food wreaked havoc on my body (why, hello extra five pounds) it also took a sizable chunk out my income...to the tune of almost $230! To be fair, my fast food trips were usually feeding Christopher and myself. But still...OMG.

Here enters No Fast Food November.

And so far it is has been delicious and on track, I have only eaten out for a school lunch with my co-workers and a bachelorette party this weekend.

Some ways I am staying on track included buying a Crock Pot. People at work couldn't believe I didn't have one. I made a delicious pot roast with potatoes and carrots last night. Swiss Chicken on Friday night. And tonight....Houlihan's Potato Soup.

I followed the recipe I found on GroupRecipes.com and I kid you not, it is the exact same as Houlihans. It was heavenly! Chris had never tried it before and easily ate up two huge bowls. My man was impressed.

It did take some time to prepare though. The recipe says 40 minutes, but it was more like and hour and a half from start to finish. This was mostly due to the fact that I added bacon (which is shown in the picture, but not in the recipe. Trust me, spend the extra time and add the bacon, it's worth it!) Luckily, I had the good sense to bake the potatoes yesterday. But it was a fun, Chris helped cook and it was a nice little Monday night.

Did I mention there were leftovers? I now have my lunch for tomorrow, score!

So far, I have spent more money on groceries, but I feel better about myself for not hitting the drive thru and hopefully I will be able to keep my promise to myself. Something to aid me in my plan will be next when I spend the WHOLE WEEK with my students in the woods. Yep, it is Outdoor School time. And there is no fast food in sight. Thank goodness!

What about you? Cook anything good lately? Or have you fallen into a fast food rut?

It has been really exciting around St. Louis lately. Did you hear? Our St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series! Chris and I were lucky enough to attend Game 2 but weren't lucky enough to see a winner that night :(

Post season baseball has consumed the last month and half of my life and now I feel a little forlorn...like now what am I going to do? Oh I know! Grade the papers I have been avoiding like the plague, clean the house, put away laundry, cook dinner, online class work, basically everything was put on hold during the post season. Oops.

But I don't regret it. It was thrilling to see our team come back and rally so many times. I damn near had a heart attack during Game 6 watching David Freese tie the game in the 9th and win it with that walk off homerun in the 11th.

Chris and I (plus my mom, dad, and sister) went to the celebration parade yesterday for one last hurrah with the team.








I am already looking forward to opening day in April, go Birds!

Finally! I'm back with an update. Last time I wrote, Chris and I had just painted the front door and pulled everything out of the ivy flower bed outside. Well we have been working our butts off to check off each and every item on our outdoor to-do list that I made a couple of weeks ago. Well we got through most of the list, some of the other things (like curtains) I still haven't made any progress on. I am just a teeny bit indecisive when picking things for the inside of the house. But, I do plan on staying in the house for awhile, so I guess it's ok to take some time.

Let's revisit what the outside did look like as of about 3 weeks ago, courtesy of Google Maps

I've already listed my complaints about the red awning, shutters, bannister, and door. So without further ado, here it the updated exterior.
 Ta-freakin'-da! I am in the love with the rich navy blue color we chose for the door, shutters, and bannister. It really pops!
 In a five second project, I cut some 4.25 inch numbers out of white vinyl from my Cricut and stuck them on the door. There is no way anyone  looking for my house will get lost with these eye catching numbers.
Another full frontal (haha) shot that includes some Halloween decor I scooped from Pinterest and the the cute flag came from Micheal's after an insane coupon deal. My aunt scored me a friends and family 40% off your entire purchase coup about two weeks ago. My loot included three decorative pumpkins, a 24 inch wreath, the flag, flag holder, ceramic pot, Spanish moss, tacky glue, and a 3M decorative wreath hook for $35. I may have felt a little high walking out after those savings....discounts make me a little euphoric.


There are plans for a new awning at some point, but those be pricey. So we are saving our sheckles here and there and hopefully will have one made that both is the right size and color.

Bannister after being sanded within an inch of its' life (I swear I almost sanded through some parts), spray primed with a rust inhibitive primer, and then two coats of Krylon navy spray paint.
Mums! This is all the boyfriend's work. These make me smile everyday when I come home, so bright and cheerful.

What doesn't make me cheerful are the damn squirrels that like to root around in the mulch! We did some research on the interweb and found out that sprinkling a little chili powder around the plants can help deter our bushy friends. So far, we have had fewer squirrel sightings but it hasn't completely gotten rid of them.I know if I got a nose full of chili powder I would definitely think twice before heading back for more!

We got this porch light at Lowe's on the cheap for around $29. It was pretty easy to install once we waited for daylight. What? You don't install outdoor lights at night? News to this household. The boyfriend decided to dismantle the old light at around 8:30pm last Wednesday night...let's just say more curse words were heard than at a hip hop concert. But once we were able to see, it went up in about a half hour. Yay for not electrocuting ourselves!

We definitely love the new outdoor updates and working slow and steady over the course of three weeks taught me a valuable lesson: it takes time for your house to come together, it won't happen overnight. That is sometimes so hard to remember when I come inside to blank walls and the pillows that came with our furniture. But it does make me look forward to adding things over time to see how everything will come together.

I will be back with another project later this weekend, once it is completed. It has been a little more labor intensive that anticipated but it will look good so I am excited to get it finished!

Back with more updates to the outdoors, this one courtesy of the boyfriend. When we moved in, our flower bed/retaining wall was pretty sad looking...overgrown ivy, a stumpy looking hosta that didn't bloom for 3 months, and a bush that turned out to be an azalea. There was about a two week stretch in the summer where it looked half way decent but the rest of time it was a sad sight.

Here is the state of things as of Saturday afternoon. Eck. We probably could have kept the hosta and azalea which would bloom next year but the ivy was strangling just about everything. We tried to pull just the ivy on multiple occasions but we wanted  to pull our hair out after about 2.2 seconds of wrangling it. So like Borders, we decided EVERYTHING. MUST. GO.





There isn't much to this story except the roots to everything were deep and the boyfriend's back hurt afterwards. You would have thought that he was digging a hole to China for how long it took him because he kept getting distracted by things like finding just the right song to dig to, shiny objects a snake, etc.
Of course I had to take a pic of the tiniest snake ever that had made its home in the ivy. Sorry my slithering friend but it ain't yo' home no mo! Check it out...

We plan on putting some colorful mums there this weekend for the start of autumn or at least I hope we do, I don't really know anything about flowers so I am assuming we can still plant something for it to look pretty through the fall.

Is it the weekend yet? I am ready to get back outside and tackle the rest of my projects!

Chris and I took to the outdoors on Saturday for some much needed TLC to the ol' casa. Unfortunately we were only able to tackle three of the things on the to-do list instead of all of them due to weather and time constraints. Turns out I am a pretty slow worker and have the strength of a two year old, so when it came time for things with muscle I had to wait for Chris to help me...womp, womp :(

I started with the front door first thinking that it would be simple to remove all the hardware and slap a couple coats of paint on it and call it a day. Apparently I am a pro at removing locks, handles, and the like...just look at my pile of brass.

 Most of it still had a pretty good shine to it with the exception of the storm door handle. Le yikes.
I am a bad blogger because I didn't snap any pics of the process with my knobs and handles until they were back on the door. So you'll just after to wait about 4 more pictures to see the oil rubbed bronze spray paint I used on them.
Here is the door pre-paint, sans hardware. I wiped it down with a cloth, cleaning off the dirt and other what not. Then sanded the area around the door knob holes and couple other spots that were a little rough. Lastly, I used a liquid deglosser that I picked up from Home Depot to remove a little bit of the sheen from the previous paint job (All the great tips I got from Sherry @ Young House Love)  From what I can tell this door has been through more costume changes than Lady Gaga. I have seen evidence of dark red, hunter green, seafoam green, and a Pepto Bismal pink.

The latest shade is a striking shade of navy blue. It doesn't have a name besides navy blue because I had it color matched to the spray paint I will be using on the shutters and metal bannister. It is Behr exterior primer and paint in one.
I tried my best for thin, even coats of paint using a two inch angled brush and small foam roller. After coat #1 I was a little nervous about the coverage with how much red was still showing through.
 Coat #2.
Surely after coat #3 I would be finished or so I thought but I could still see brush marks and some red near the bottom of the door. So on I went to coat #4 and that is when I finally called it a night.
Notice it is now dark outside in the picture above. I mentioned that I am an ace when taking door knobs apart but apparently I am not so hot when those knobs and locks have to be re-assembled. May have taken the better part of an hour to get everything back into working order. But now you can see the ORB hardware. I love it! However I wish that I could make the inset glass into the center of the door match. I am thinking that I am going to try some frosted window film to try and cover it up.

It is rainy today so I haven't got to take any pictures from the exterior yet. It is amazing how sore I am today just from a little afternoon painting, these old bones just can't take too much manual labor. This week we are supposed to have some good weather so hopefully I will be able to finish up the shutter and bannister to make everything match.

Yay for being a weekend warrior!