We had a Clothing Swap at Stormie’s house this weekend, and it was fun!  Here’s how it works:

Invite a group of your friends to come to your house and bring all of their clothes, shoes, and accessories that they don’t want anymore (and that they would be getting rid of anyway).  Sort and organize all of the items and then tell everyone to choose items to take home….for FREE.  It’s a win-win for everyone involved because they get to clean out their closets, and also refresh it with new pieces.

Here are a few tips if you want to host your own:

Send out an invitation a couple weeks in advance.  This could be an email, Facebook event, Evite, ect…  Keep in mind the amount of space that you have, and how many women you can accomodate (we invited about 20 women).

Ask the invitees to give their items to you before the swap (depending on how many people, you may need up to a week to sort everything).  That way, you can make everything super-duper organized and cute before your friends arrive!

Stormie let us use her house for the swap.  We helped her get some of the bags sorted and folded and she did a great job of setting up, and organizing the rest.

You will need tables to put everything on.  You really can’t have too much space for this.  We organized items by category, and then size.

Make the items look attractive.  This is the fun part- instead of just throwing everything in a pile, lay out and arrange them in a cute way.  It’s fun to pair up bright colors and find unique ways to hang jewelry or hats.

In Stormie’s spare bedroom we set up 3 tables for shirts, pants and skirts.  Shirts seem to be the highest quantity item when we do these, so they needed the most space.  It was a lot of work to sort and fold all of these, but as you can see, it is much easier to go through and find what you want!

Oh!  I almost forgot the most important part – food!  We had our swap in the morning, and asked each of our friends to bring a small breakfast item to share.  The food was delish, and gave us energy to do all of that hard shopping;)

After eating and drinking lots of coffee – it’s time to shop…

It was so fun to watch everyone go through the clothes and take lots of new stuff home.  Nobody walked away empty-handed, and it was a fun morning to get together to chat, eat, and swap!

A few more thoughts on hosting a swap:

Everyone that wants to take part in the swap MUST donate items.  It’s the same principle of “Take a penny, leave a penny”

We chose to do ours in the morning so that it wouldn’t cut into other activities.  You could very easily do this in the afternoon or evening – whatever works best for your group.

Ask for help!  Don’t try to take on the duty of sorting and organizing all by yourself.  Ask a few friends to come over and help a few days before and it will save you a lot of time.

Don’t “pre-select” any clothing while sorting.  This may be hard, but don’t allow yourself or your helpers to pick items out before the swap.  Part of the fun is getting to experience the swap as a group, and if you’ve already taken everything you want, you’ll just be standing around with nothing to do while everyone else is having fun.

Give shopping bags out  to carry loot home.

Have a designated “Dressing Room” available for trying on the clothes they aren’t sure of.

Donate the leftovers.  You will definitely have items left at the end of the swap – bag them up and take them to the thrift store.  It’s a great way to give back.

Thanks to all of our friend for coming to the swap!  We hope that this will inspire you to have one!

Well, I’m still alive!  I am feeling much better than I was on Tuesday, and I seem to be on the mend – hooray!

January is officially over (did you know?), and I finally completed my January Photo-A-Day Challenge that I told you about.  I just finished today because of being sick, but better late than….well, you know.  Here’s the second half – enjoy!

Day16:  Morning

Day 17:  Water

Day 18:  Something you bought

Day 19:  Sweet

Day 20:  Someone you love

Day 21:  Reflection

Day 22:  Your shoes  (you can see another post on these photos here)

Day 23:  Something old

Day 24:  Guilty Pleasure

Day 25:  Something you made

Day 26:  Color

Day 27:  Lunch

Day 28:  Light

Day 29:  In your fridge

Day 30:  Nature

Day 31:  You.  Again.

Hope you liked seeing my Instagrams from this month.  If you have an iPhone, you can follow me (user name:  stephanie_may ) and see them much much quicker – I really like it, and tend to post…a lot:)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a trip I took to Taiwan in the beginning of 2010.  It could be because I constantly find myself wearing clothes I bought there (amazing shopping btw), or because my new tattoo idea stemmed from my thinking about that trip (as far as the scriptures go).  My time there was life-changing & it will forever be one of my favorite places for many reasons.

I went to Taiwan with my sister and brother-in-law to lead worship for a conference.  We were able to spend a little over a week there before heading over to Japan and I have decided that I MUST get back someday…hopefully sooner than later.  My sister and I have even tried convincing our family to go there for a family vacation (I’m still pulling for that).  Since it has been on my mind so much, I thought I would share a few of my favorite photos – enjoy!

The area that we were in – Ximending, Taipei – is a center for a very large population of young people.  It is amazing.

Scooters.

Every 7-Eleven should have food like this.  I don’t know that I would try it, but they should.

The Starbucks was less than a block from our hotel – lucky me.

View from Taipei 101 – now the second tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa was built in Dubai.

Hey, there’s me.

Throwing down some tunes outside for a group of people in Ximending.

By far my absolute favorite photo of my nephew.

Have a gorgeous weekend!

I know you are all just sitting there, at home, wondering what you could possibly do with your weekend.  You have absolutely nothing to do…don’t deny it.

Have no fear, I have just the thing!  Wouldn’t it make your weekend perfect to do some delicious cooking??  I knew it would.

{Tomato & Bell Pepper Tarts}

{Rosemary Garlic Chicken Skillet}

{The Greatest Sandwich Ever}

{Naan}

{Quinoa Patties}

{Gnocchi Mac & Cheese}

{Flourless Chocolate Hazelnut Cake}

{Apple Triangles}

Let me know if you try any of these — and don’t forget to invite me over to share some.

Kiss kiss!

Mexican food is the best.  That may be a bold statement, but I stand behind it 100%.  I could eat Mexican food everyday for the rest of my life and be completely content (this is probably thanks to my dad, who makes a mean Mexican meal and did so all of our growing up years).

Last night I made migas – and it was SO yummy.  Migas is super easy to make and there are so many variations (mine was more Tex-Mex than authentic Mexican because I had a lot of eggs in the fridge), you can literally put anything into that you want.  The main point, in my opinion, are the tortillas – beyond that, get creative!

(General) Ingredients:

4 corn tortillas (corn tortillas make me a happy girl)

2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

1 small onion (I only used about 1/3 chopped)

8 eggs (beaten)

1 small tomato (chopped)

1 avocado (chopped or sliced, however you like it)

1 c. monterey jack cheese

1 lime

cilantro

Step 1: Keep the tortillas stacked and cut them into bite-size pieces (or tear them, whichever you prefer).

Step 2: Put the 2 tbsp. olive oil in a skillet on medium heat and add the tortillas.  Cook these for 5-6 minutes until golden brown and turning slightly cripsy.

Step 3: Add onion (and whatever other “harder” veggies you want that need to soften a bit – peppers, fresh garlic, etc.).  Cook these 5-6 minutes until they begin to soften.

Step 4: Add 8 eggs, a little salt and pepper, and scramble

Step 5: When the eggs are almost finished cooking, add “softer” veggies like tomatoes, green chiles, mushrooms, etc.

Step 6: Last, add 1 cup monterey jack cheese – mix it in until it just begins to melt and take the skillet off the burner

Step 7: Squeeze a little lime juice over the whole pan, serve it up and add some avocado, sour cream and cilantro to your heart’s content.

Seriously…Yum.

What do you like to put in your migas?

& I don’t feel any different.
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance (in the distance).

So this is the new year
& I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let’s make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogues bleed into one

I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then I could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways
There’d be no distance that can hold us back.

There’d be no distance that could hold us back

So this is the new year.

{“The New Year” by Death Cab for Cutie}

Yes, there is more wedding talk today.  We are all still so excited about it (and SO excited for our sister), and honestly sad that it’s over so we can’t stop talking about it!

Our other sister (there are 4 of us!) has a large house with 3 bathrooms, so on the day of the wedding – all the girls took over and shipped the boys off to our brother’s house so we could get ready there.  My Grandma had my camera for the most part because I was busy trying to get ready in addition to helping two of my sisters (bride included) put on fake lashes.  Shhhh….don’t tell anybody they were fake.

Tredessa (the bride) and I checking ourselves out in the big mirror before the craziness began.

Before we did anything else, we first had to eat a delicious breakfast provided by our dear friends who came in from Minnesota to help with the wedding.  They are WONDERFUL!  Look, here they are doing the flower girls’ hair:

As Stephanie mentioned yesterday, the wedding was ’40s inspired so all our bridesmaid dresses were vintage and lovely.

It was SO nice having 3 bathrooms…seriously, look into it – it’s wonderful.

Stephanie was the Matron of Honor for the wedding.  I can’t remember if we’ve mentioned it on the blog before and I’m too lazy to go back and look but when we were young (so young I can’t even really remember when exactly) we sisters came up with the plan for our weddings.  The sister directly above you in age would be your Maid (or Matron) of Honor, so since I’m the youngest – I was the Maid of Honor for our oldest sister.  It works out quite nicely and I’m actually so grateful we decided to do it that way, it makes it so much fun!

This was not posed – for real – she is just that gorgeous.  All.  The.  Time.

We all had SUCH a good time getting ready together and being able to spend the whole day with our sister.  We are patiently (but anxiously at the same time) waiting on the professional photos to come back.  Eeeeek, can’t wait!  Here is a little peek at the photo sesh for funsies though:

We’re getting closer…

Love love.

Hi!  Today I have a yummy Buckeyes recipe for you.  I got the original recipe from Smitten Kitchen (she makes all the best food!), but I did make a few changes to it.  I made these last week for my sister’s wedding, and I didn’t even get to have one because they were gone by the time I got to the dessert bar.  But that’s okay because I secretly kept 2 dozen at home for my own dining pleasure:)

Ingredients:

Cream cheese – 2 oz

Peanut butter – 1 1/2 Cups

Powdered sugar – 3 Cups

Unsalted butter – 10 Tablespoons (melted)

Ritz cracker crumbs – 1/2 Cup

Graham cracker crumbs – 1/2 Cup

Vanilla extract – 1/2 teaspoon

Chocolate Almond bark – 16 oz

Start by beating the cream cheese and peanut butter together (normally I would have used my Kitchenaid stand mixer for this, but Tristan was using it for Thanksgiving bread making – yum!).

Add the Ritz cracker crumbs and graham cracker crumbs and stir.  *Note:  The original recipe only calls for graham cracker crumbs, but I had a feeling I would love the saltiness that the Ritz brings to these, and I DO!

Stir in the powdered sugar gradually and then add the melted butter and vanilla.  Stir till combined.

The filling might be a little bit sticky at this point, so I usually stick the mixture in the freezer for about 10 minutes to make it easier to form (also a good time to start the clean-up process).  Once the filling is firm, form it into small balls and put them on wax paper.

Melt the Almond Bark in the microwave at 30 second intervals until completely melted.  Then wait for 2-3 minutes before dipping.  You can use a fork, or wooden skewer to dip the balls in the chocolate, but I usually find that my fingers work best:)

Dip the bottoms and sides of the balls in the chocolate, and leave an opening or “eye” at the top.  Place the balls on the wax paper, and put in the fridge to set.  *Note:  the original recipe calls for dark chocolate, but every time I have used real chocolate, it doesn’t set up as nice as the Almond Bark.  It’s totally up to you though – whatever you like best!

I think that these are best eaten straight out of the fridge – cold, a little crunchy, and the filling melts in your mouth.  Seriously good!

P.S. – this is a great recipe for kids to help with – Gemma did a great job!

Today is like Friday because I have the next two days off from work.  Our sister’s wedding is on Saturday, so I took Friday off as well – which is fantastic.  Since it feels like Friday, the ‘cozies’ {co-workers} and I went to lunch to a place none of us had ever been before but had seen many times.

Place is AWESOME.  Such a chill atmosphere and incredible architecture {they even have a tin room with photos of ghosts – or so we were told}.  There is an opera house upstairs where they have bands play on a regular basis.

Food was delicious {albeit slightly on the expensive side}.  Don’t judge me for getting grilled cheese…thing had balsamic vinegar on it – definitely not a kid sandwich and it was the best grilled cheese I’ve ever had.

If you’re ever in the Longmont area, definitely hit up The Dickens Tavern.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Fall = goodness.

Honestly, everything about it.  It’s crunching leaves, it’s scarves, it’s warming up inside while it’s chilly outside, it’s drinking numerous amounts of hot coffee, it’s calm.  But the food…oh the food.  Apple, cinnamon, pumpkin, caramel.  Yum.

In addition to all of these other recipes and even more recipes I want to try – I am adding these to my list this year:

Leaf Pie Crust – the  prettiest pie I ever did see

Pumpkin Pie Milkshake – Just make sure you’re wrapped up nice and cozy in a blanket to drink this cold goodness

Apple Pie Cookies – Darling, and mostly crust – my favorite

Baked Apple Cider Donuts – Can’t really go wrong with cinnamon

Cranberry Scones – This wants coffee next to it.  Stat.

Salted  Caramel Chocolate Shortbread Bars – Above anything else, I HAVE to make these this year…have to.

So now you’re hungry?  You’re welcome.