Housewarming Party

Happy Friday friends!  The first weekend in June, we hosted a Housewarming Party at our new house.  It was great motivation to get projects done, and it was a lot of fun to have the opportunity to celebrate our first home with so many friends and family.  We each invited our co-workers as well as friends and the whole family. We had a full house, and it was wonderful to get to use the house to host people we love just as we envisioned when we bought it. 

Because who doesn't love details, here is the spread!

Mom came over early (with perfect mirrors that were a last-minute find for our bathroom in tow as I shared in the last post) to help make a few little flower arrangements and put the finishing touches on things.  Fresh flowers just make my heart happy!  For the record, JW thought we were ridiculous for doing flowers, but they add so much, don't they?

I love to look back at party menus for inspiration, so here's what we served:

Drinks- Peach Tea, Red Sangria, White Wine, Beer, and Water

Food- Guacamole, Salsa, Fruit, Artichoke Dip, Texas Caviar, and Baked Crescent Roll Brie with Blackberry Preserves

Dessert- Southern Chess Squares, Brownies, and Lemon Crinkle Cookies

Of course, I put some recipes at the end of the post for you!

We had such a great time.  It feels good that our house is feeling like home and we have been able to use it to entertain and make memories with friends and family.  Here are some of those recipes I promised.  Enjoy!

Texas Caviar

Ingredients:

•  2 (15.8 ounce) cans black-eyed peas, drained
•  1 (14.5 ounce) can petite diced tomatoes, drained
•  1 (15 ounce) can of chickpeas, drained
•  1 (16 ounce) bag frozen corn, thawed
•  2 fresh medium jalapenos, stemmed, seeded and minced
•  1 small red onion, diced
•  1 green bell pepper, diced
•  1 red bell pepper, diced
•  1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
•  6 tablespoons red wine vinegar
•  6 tablespoons olive oil
•  1/2 teaspoon salt
•  1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
•  1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
•  1 teaspoon dried oregano
•  1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

Directions:
Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl; cover and refrigerate 2 hours or up to 2 days.  Taste and adjust seasoning if needed before serving.

Baked Crescent Roll Brie with Blackberry Preserves

Ingredients:

• 1 can crescent rolls
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup blackberry preserves (or any other preserves you'd prefer)
• chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
• 8 oz. block of brie cheese

Directions:
Unroll the crescent rolls all in one piece on a baking sheet.  Press together the perforations to form one piece of dough with no breaks or tears.  Place block of brie in the center.  Spread the preserves on top of brie so that it runs over the sides and sprinkle with either pecans or walnuts.  Fold the edges of the crescent roll up over the top so that the brie is covered.  Pinch together the dough to seal.  Place in the oven at 350 degrees and bake for 15-20  minutes until the crescent roll shell is golden brown.  Serve warm with crackers.

Mom's Famous Artichoke Dip

This is a recipe my mom started making several years ago.  It's always a raving success and people always want the recipe.  I think almost every woman in our family has it in her repertoire now.

Ingredients:

•  8 oz. can artichoke hearts, chopped
• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 8 oz. block of cream cheese, softened

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and then spread in a shallow ceramic dish.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, until browned around the edges.  We always serve warm with Wheat Thins.

Southern Chess Squares

Ingredients:

• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
• 3 eggs
• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
• 4 cups (1 lb) powdered sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees and spray a 9×13 dish with cooking spray.  Mix cake mix, melted butter, pecans, and one egg to a soft dough.  Press into the bottom of the pan.  Mix powdered sugar, softened cream cheese and remaining two eggs until smooth, about 1-2 minutes.  Pour on top of crust.  Bake at 300 for 40-50 minutes until top is golden brown.

Home Improvement- inside edition

For Memorial Day, my office closed Monday and Tuesday of last week.  I went ahead and took off Wednesday through Friday so that I could really focus on knocking out some of the projects around the house I wanted to get to before our party on Saturday.

First up... some drapes in our living room that were too short.  I bought these new drapes after the curtain rod had been hung according to the length of other drapes.  Instead of moving the rod, I decided I would sew a fabric trim onto the bottom.  My mom was free on Tuesday so she offered to come over and take me to one of the fabric/trim stores she goes to.  We found the perfect fabric for the curtains and trim we wanted to use on a bench (more on that later).

Curtains that were too short

When we picked out the fabric, I didn't fully think through what a challenge it would be to sew it.  It was sheer with a striped texture to it and it easily frayed.  My sewing was a little rusty, so I pulled out my sewing book and was reminded how to do a french seam.  I practiced on a scrap piece of material and got everything measured out and cut just perfectly.  It took me a full day to sew the fabric on four curtain panels.  I was pretty grumpy by the end of it, but am sure I'd be quicker next time!  I did enjoy getting to spread out upstairs and put my craft room to use for the first time. :)

The finished product

Living Room complete with new curtains, pillows, rug, and chairs

So, I mentioned my mom came over to help me shop and get trim for a bench.  I've had this bench at my dining room table since my sophomore year in college. It's made it through five moves and over seven years, but the tassel trim on the bottom looked a little rough so we had ripped it off.  It then hung off the ground too far and needed a new trim on it.  My mom had pre-shopped for trim, so we picked the sample we liked best and went to purchase it when we got fabric for the curtains.

Sewing it on was the challenging part.... Oh how I wish there would have been another person home to video this!  My mom pinned in onto the bench while I fired up the sewing machine and got rid of the cobwebs (both on the machine and in my head related to working it). 

Dakota of course wanted to help and was in her face most of the time since she was on the floor.  Mom was a trooper.  

I don't know if you can get the full effect of this setup from the pictures, but since the part we were sewing the trim onto was attached to the bench we had to get creative.  I put the sewing machine on a chair and sewed with my knee on the pedal instead of my foot while my mom held/slid/maneuvered the bench.  It was quite interesting and challenging positioning for both of us.  I whined and mom cheered us on.  I'm glad she was there to push us on this one.  I don't think I would have done it otherwise.  It looks great though, so I'm glad we did!

The finished product

It looks like it was made that way all along doesn't it?

Another one of our projects since moving in was mirrors for all the bathrooms.  I've shared with you before that none of the bathrooms had mirrors, towel bars/hand towel holders, toilet paper holders, or cabinet pulls/knobs.  We got most of that purchased and installed when JW's dad came over to help awhile ago.  We got a few of the mirrors picked out and hung too, except for the mirrors in our master bath.  Wow, have those been a challenge!  The space there is very tight and quite an unusually sized space apparently.  We've spent a lot of hours shopping for the right mirror and have just been functioning without one for the whole time we've been in the house. 

Until... about 3 hours before the party, on her way to our house early to help me arrange flowers, my mom stopped in a Tuesday Morning and found the perfect mirrors!  She bought them, loaded them up, and she and JW got them hung less than an hour before our housewarming party started.  Love it! :)  Go mom!

Master Bath

Upstairs Bath

Downstairs Guest Bath

Our house is really feeling like home.  We've gotten a lot of the bigger and more immediate projects on our list checked  off, and it feels really good!  I told JW that we need to have a party every quarter so that we have the motivation to knock some things out and get the house in tip-top shape.  We feel so blessed that we get to call this house our home.

Home Improvement- outdoor edition

We scheduled a housewarming party for June 1st, and it was great motivation for us to get lots of house projects checked off our list!  I shared with you that our yard needed serious work when we moved in.  We finished the landscaping in the front and are really pleased with it.  The backyard was a bit more challenging, but we got it done and are enjoying it as well.  There were sections of the yard that needed to be leveled and have new sod put down.  The previous owners had put down winter rye in patches that was dying and looked terrible.  You wouldn't believe how much work shoveling dirt and hauling sod can be!  Whew!  It was worth it, but I hope we don't ever have to do this again. 

Now we are just watering the heck out of it everyday.  I'll be really glad when it takes root and is a little more durable!  I don't even want to know what our water bill will be this month...

The beds up against the house also needed some work.  We decided that with our two dogs we wanted to get rid of the dirt and to not plant things in the ground that they could rip up.  We ended up doing two rock beds with potted plants in them.  The small black rocks we chose were called Black Star gravel and then we went to a rock yard and handpicked a Chopped Blue Ozark stone for the border.  We are really pleased with the way it turned out!

The pictures really don't do it justice, but here are a couple of the final product.

We also had the trim and a few accents on the outside of our house painted.  We wanted to do black gutters, so decided to have the trim painted before we get those installed.  Here are the before and after photos.  The black really makes it pop and we are loving how sharp it looks!

Before:

After:

trim changed from white to black and white shutters changed to black

Before:

After:

trim changed from white to black and siding around back door and upstairs window box painted tan

The last project I had outside was planting some bulbs.  I love ranuculus and anemone flowers, and one day while I was shopping at Sam's Club I saw that they a box of bulbs for those two flowers.  I bought a couple and put over 100 bulbs in the ground a couple of weeks ago.  But, recently I've been finding little holes in my flower beds from what I suspect is a critter digging them up.  I'm really upset!  They are summer blooming flowers, so we'll see in the next couple of months if any of them make it.  I guess next time I'll have to plant in containers first and transplant when they start growing.  Weird looking bulbs, huh?

More on some of my inside projects later!

Working Weekend

Happy Easter!  He is Risen!  We had a great day celebrating Christ's resurrection with family.  Jenn was in town and came with us to church this morning.  We love our church and it was neat to celebrate our first Easter back in Houston with a church family that means so much to us.  Then, we went to lunch at Momma Hance's house.  She cooked a yummy meal and even did an Easter egg hunt with fun prizes.  After that, we went over to my parents house for dinner.  Dad his his all-famous steaks and baked beans.  It was delicious!  We are full and TIRED!

This weekend, we were pretty ambitious with the house projects.  We decided to tackle the flower beds in our front yard on Friday.  JW had off of work for Good Friday, and I only worked a half-day, so we had big plans.  Thursday evening after work we went to the garden center to stock up on all the plants we wanted to use.  I had done a lot of research and knew what we wanted.  It barely fit in our two cars, but we made it home with everything.  We went over to Momma Hance's Thursday night too to pick up some of her yard equipment to borrow.

Here are our before pictures.

 The beds were in bad shape.  Mostly hard clay, so they needed to be tilled up, cleaned out, and re-shaped.  JW looks good behind a tiller doesn't he? :)

Then, we had to move the bad dirt, add in some good soil, till again, and smooth it out to start planting.  Jenn came over in the afternoon and was a great help! 

We ended up covered in dirt, sweat, and black mulch, but it was well worth it.  We are very happy with the finished product.  It added so much to the front of our house.  We picked hardy stuff that will mature and grow fuller over the years.  It was neat to do all this work and know we were adding value to our own home.   Here's the finished product!

Saturday morning, bright and EARLY, we had a garage sale!  We had half of a garage full of things we needed to get rid of and family contributed as well.  We listed it on Craig's List Friday afternoon and put out a few signs.  People were in our driveway by 7:15 a.m. Saturday morning before we even had everything out.  It was a successful day, and we ended up making enough to cover the cost of our yard work, so it was worth it!  Our bodies are feeling pretty beat, but it sure was a productive weekend!

Where did March go?

Hi faithful blog readers... if you exist anymore.  It's been over a month since my last post!  I hate that, but we've been staying pretty busy.  So, here's my attempt to capture what's been going on.

We moved!  At the end of February, we were so blessed to have the help of friends and family to move us a few blocks down the street to our new house.  Moving is A LOT of work! I didn't do a great job getting a picture of our whole crew, but here are a few.

Jenn came down to help us on the first weekend we had the house.  Adam let us borrow his truck and we made a big dent in getting stuff taken down to the new house.  She was a huge help!

JW and Dakota making a trip.  

We had some great friends and parents help us make the big move the following weekend, and by the end of Saturday, February 25th we had everything in!

I mentioned how much we didn't like the indoor-looking palm tree plants that were planted in the front and back beds, so our moms pulled them right up and put them on the curb.  Love it! :)

Joey's dad came over the next weekend and helped us install cabinet hardware, add towel bars and toilet paper holders in the bathrooms, install smoke detectors, outdoor light fixtures, and hang curtains and things on the walls.  He was a huge help and we learned a lot from working with him.  He's moved a bunch of times so had a lot of helpful tips.

One weekend in March, I baked some small loaves of banana bread and we took them around to meet our new neighbors.  We have enjoyed getting to know them so far!

Since moving in, we've had some issues preventing us from doing laundry...  

 We had to have an electrician come out to install a new outlet for our dryer to be hooked up.  We realized when we tried to hook it up for the first time that there was only a gas dryer hookup and not a large enough outlet for an electric dryer.  That got fixed finally last week, but we've since discovered that there is something wrong with the drain that discharges the dirty water from the washing machine.  Our garage flooded this weekend when we tried to use it. I haven't been particularly thankful our washer and dryer were in the garage until this happened.  Oh home ownership!  We did a few loads of underwear and other necessities at my parents' over a week ago, and our fingers are crossed that the plumber coming tomorrow can get us up and running  pronto!

We did some fun stuff in the month of March too that was unrelated to the house or moving. 

We celebrated my dad's birthday with family dinner and a mini bundt cake tower for dessert.

Taylor came in town for a weekend from Lubbock.  It was fun to hang out with him and to go watch part of Hunter's baseball tournament together.

 Our Harley girl turned 3!

We took Hunter and a friend on a tour of Minute Maid park as a gift we gave him for his birthday.  They were cute and we had fun spending the morning with them.

We saw Tim McGraw at the rodeo with some sweet new friends from church.  The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo is a pretty big deal and a lot of fun.  We grew up going every year, but hadn't been in years.  It was a blast!  

 JW also started playing in a men's baseball league with Adam.  They had a scrimmage a couple of weeks ago that Nana and Papa came to watch with me.  I hadn't watched JW play since high school.  I still have a crush on my man in his baseball pants.  It will be fun to go to games this spring.

We sure haven't sat still much over the last month since we moved, but we are loving our new home and are so thankful.  There are a lot of projects, but we've come to learn that home ownership involves a lot of work to get settled but is very rewarding.  Here's to hoping I can do a better job updating more consistently in April!  Thanks for sticking around!