Although this post is not about the magical movie, The Brothers Bloom – waffles always make me think of it and I would like to eat an entire plate of waffles while watching it.

We all know that would not be good for my figure…but carb and sugar free waffles?  Bring ‘em on!  Stephanie May and I are getting ready for our sister’s wedding soon so we’ve been doing our best to not overload on carbs and sweets.  One treat that Stephanie turned me on to and I have made a few times and love more each time are these carb/sugar free waffles..SO yum.

Ingredients:

2 Eggs

1/4 C Ricotta Cheese

1 T Splenda

1/2 t. Baking Powder

1/2 t. Cinnamon (I love cinnamon so I usually do more)

Directions:

Beat the eggs until light and fluffy.  Add all other ingredients and mix until smooth.  Spray waffle iron with cooking spray or butter and fill bottom of waffle tray.  Cook as usual.

This recipe is for one Belgian waffle size but I made a triple batch the other day and it actually made about 5 waffles…so you do the math.

I know it sounds weird with the ricotta but they are seriously so good – they almost taste just like real waffles.  Add some sugar free syrup and a cup of coffee and it’s as healthy as you can get for eating waffles.  How awesome is that?

Happy birthday to our sis-in-law, Jovan…you make Halloween SO much sweeter – we love you!

Laundry detergent.  Is too expensive.

Last weekend I made powdered laundry detergent for the first time and I love it!  Plus it was so cheap, which is a major bonus.  Stephanie May is also going to make her own laundry detergent soon but she will be trying the liquid form, so maybe she’ll post a DIY of that too.

Easiest “recipe” ever and all ingredients can be found at any grocery store, Target or Walmart:

1 Cup Borax

1 Cup Washing Soda

1 Bar of Grated Soap(Fels-Naptha, Zote, Etc.)

Mix them all together in an airtight container and use 2 Tbsp. per regular load of laundry and enjoy.

You can also add drops of essential oils to give it different scents but I didn’t have any on hand and I am actually enjoying the fresh almost-non-existent smell of my laundry soap.

*One tip is that a bar of Zote soap is more like 3 bars of Fels-Naptha so when I used the bar of Zote I actually used 3 cups of borax and 3 cups of washing soda.

Minus the amount of time it took to grate the soap (which felt like FOREVER), this was so much easier than I thought it would be and I will definitely be doing this from now on.  Stephanie’s husband, Tristan, had a great idea about using the grater on their food processor to do the soap instead of by hand.  I will try that next time for sure.

Have a safe weekend friends!

I hope you are ready for another huge-giant-photo-loaded-post!  On Tuesday we showed you photos of the food and drink at our sister’s Bride’s Party, and today (as promised) you will get to see the decorations.  Three things you need to know before I start this:  1.  The theme of the shower was white, white, white!  2.  Our family can’t do anything on a small scale.  3. We are really really excited for our sister to get married.   Ok ready?  Let’s go!

I got the inspiration to a have a white-themed party, and we went all out for it!  Our parent’s were kind enough to let us use their house for the event, and we went about decorating every nook and cranny.

On the front porch we had shimmery fabric draped with “cup-lights” made by Stormie (they are little white plastic drinking cups!).  And of course, a white floral wreath on the front door – a must.

I asked my sister Tara to be in charge of the gift-table, and it turned out so cute!  She decorated it to look like a vintage desk, and filled it with a typewriter, globe, birdcage (for cards), and a white lamp.  She also made a sweet doily garland to hang above it, and streamer decor for the front window!

“You give me the kind of feeling people write novels about.”

The next big element was flowers.  Tons and tons of them.  Our mom really went to town making these out of paper, and she did a beautiful job of draping them over the bannister.  Seriously, it was GORGEOUS!  We did however have to gently force her to stop making them.  Once she got going, she couldn’t stop! :)

The hosts!  Tara (oldest sister), Jovan (married to our brother), mom, me & Stormie Dae

Stormie made an adorable paper heart garland that we strung across the back door.  Jovan made some white on white art – so cute!  She also made a white floral mobile, but sadly, I couldn’t find a photo of it!  It was breathtaking.

Tredessa (the bride) had requested that no games be played at the party (hooray!), but we did have photos of her and her fiance that people could write advice, congratualtions, ect… on the back.

This part of the decor was my labor of love/hate.  I came up with an idea (in my head) to have a white “ruffled” paper ceiling that was back-lit by Christmas lights.  Even though I LOVED how it turned out, I will never attempt it on such a large scale again.  440 sheets of legal size copy paper, a hole punch, and yarn.  The whole thing only cost me $1.50 to make, but it took about 6 hours to create it.  Whew.

The guest of honor!  Every bride needs a flower wall to stand in front of…don’t ya think?  She looks gorgeous!

Mom, thank you so much for all of your hard work!  You made 90% of the food, cleaned, made paper flowers like there was no tomorrow, and infused your great style into so much of what the party turned out to be.

Tara, thank you for heading up the gift table at the last minute and for being so willing to help with/try so many of the decorations!  I loved how the gift table turned out!

Jovan, your decorations were beautiful!  Thank you for jumping in to lend a hand to me at any given moment!

Stormie, I really can’t imagine doing an event without you!  You were a photographer, decorations creator, bread maker, coffee bar designer, food label artist, and videographer.  Is there anything that you can’t do?  :)

And of course, Tredessa, thanks for finding Ryan and falling in love so that we could throw this amazing party for you!  I hope that you know how much we all love you and wanted it to be a night that you would never forget.

*There are 2 more people who need to be mentioned because they helped so much and weren’t even invited:

Thanks Dad for all of your help with the ceiling, lights, cleaning, climbing ladders, and searching for our supplies!  You are always such a great help to us all!

And thank you to my husband Tristan – you saw that I was going to have a stress-induced meltdown when the ceiling was taking longer than expected, and you volunteered yourself to help me get it done.  Thank you SO much – I literally could not have done it without you!

I love you all!

And that concludes my longest post ever.  Hope you liked it:)

It’s the first snow of the non-season and as much as I am not a huge fan of snow, it is really pretty outside.

One great thing about today is that I got to pull out one of my many ponchos.  I am accumulating a collection of them and can’t wait to wear them all this season.

Do you like how I just got gradually closer to you?  Spooky, huh?  In reality, I just like how this side of my hair turned out today.  Some days it gives me near perfect waves – and when it does, photos are necessary – otherwise it’s like it never happened.

Hey Colorado, it’s still Fall…so hold up on the snow after this for awhile, okay?

Since it’s still here though…

Hi!  Are you ready for a big-giant-photo-loaded post?  Here we go:)

Stormie Dae and I (along with our sisters, Tara and Jovan, and our Mom) co-hosted a Bride’s Party (aka bridal shower) for our sister Tredessa last week.  Tredessa is getting married next month, and we are SO excited for her!  She and her future husband have opted to have an intimate wedding with their family and closest friends, and we wanted to keep that same feel for the Bride’s Party.  Since I am her Matron of Honor (yay!!), it was up to me to head the party up, which I totally loved doing!  I chose a “white” theme, and we played that up…pretty big:)

Since we have SO many photos of the night, I thought I would split it into 2 posts – today I will show you the food/drinks that we did, and on Thursday I will talk about the decor elements.

Mom made these delicious cake pops!  I may or may not have had 4 of them…and a tummy ache because of it;)

It might be hard to tell from the photos, but this vegetable lasagna was big.  HUGE.  We also had some yummy salad for the health nuts (made by Tara), and meatballs for the meat eaters.  We aim to please.

This of course, was my favorite part – the coffee bar.  Stormie and I were in charge of it, and we loaded it up with lots of confections that go well with coffee.  Peppermint sticks, vanilla cinnamon cream, regular cream, caramel syrup, and flower-shaped sugar cubes.

Cream cheese mints, Mexican wedding cakes, and fudge brownies with white chocolate.

Water, iced tea, lemonade, and white sherbet punch (LOVE all of these giant glass containers!).

I love how large our “coffee” sign is.  And I think it’s funny that we went all out with the coffee bar because Tredessa doesn’t even drink coffee…BUT, her fiance Ryan does, so we will just pretend that is why.

Green beans from my Mom’s garden, and Stormie’s famous foccachia bread – yum!

Hot chocolate with marshmallows and hot tea for the non-coffee drinkers.

Pumpkin cream cheese muffins.  I have a slight addiction to them.

See?  Flower-shaped sugar cubes made by Stormie!

On top of all this, we also made spinach artichoke dip (Mom’s specialty), fresh fruit and caramel sauce (by Jovan), cheesecake, tomato-basil skewers, and shrimp cocktail.

Lots of food, but more importantly, there was lots of love at the party.  It was such a fun night, and I can’t wait to show you more photos on Thursday!

…………………………………………………….

I told you a few weeks ago about a new musical venture that my husband Tristan was working on, and I am SO excited to tell you that they are releasing their first single today!  The band is The Thought Process, and the song is called Movin’.  It. is. amazing.  I have listened to it so much, that now my kids have memorized the words.  Tristan is an incredible drummer.  So proud of him:)

You can listen to the song (and buy it!) here & here.  Go right now and listen – I know you’ll love it!

Sometimes weekends are crazy, and for me they typically end with a busy Sunday where I ruin the end of it by thinking about going back to work the following day.  This Sunday, however, didn’t feel like the end of the weekend at all and Stephanie May and I went bowling with our friends Elise and Kaylee to celebrate Kaylee’s birthday…which was in July.  Life gets busy, right?

I always forget just how much I love bowling.  I took a class in high-school but don’t get out to do it as often as I would like and I fall in love with it all over again every time.

I’m just too fast for Stephanie to get a good photo.

Stephanie May and the birthday girl, Kaylee.

Is it bad that I am sore today?  To give myself a little credit, we did a “trick” game where every frame had to be a different odd bowl including lunges, laying on the ground and pushing the ball and bowling backward.  I’m blaming that.

Maybe a little too quiet on the blog this week.  Sometimes life is just like that though, right?

Stephanie May and I have been so busy this week – shocker.  We had a photo shoot scheduled for this weekend so we can get some new products up in our shop, but we decided to cancel that because of the insane amount of ‘stuff’ we have been busy with all week.

This weekend I have meetings, a birthday bowling celebration and a few other things – but I also have a good amount of free time to do…nothing.  I hope.

Saber and I are still bonding so I’ll be hanging out with her as much as I can and possibly getting a jump on the millions of home projects I have floating around in my head.  So exciting!  Maybe I’ll even finish the chimney exposure someday…ha!

Happy weekend!  Do something fun and don’t cram too much in…that’s what weekDAYS are for.

After decorating a Cinderella-themed classroom door this morning, I am ready for something with a bit more “spook” factor to it.

I can’t wait to make some of these – so cute!  I plan to use this easy template from Country Living, but I need to buy some black paper first:)

I would like to steal this outfit from Keiko Lynn:

Is this not perfection?

                                                {source}

Feeling a little pulled in different directions today (which is totally my own fault for over-scheduling), and decided to stop everything and think about my fall to-do list!

I want to do all of the above, plus roast pumpkin seeds, DIY some cute Halloween costumes, make an autumn wreath, and buy some nice thick socks to wear while watching a movie.

What’s on your list this season?