Just a Canary Bird...

This is our 3rd a final dessert of the week from Chelsea's shower this weekend!  Let's recap. We had the Cherry Limeade Cupcake! It was a lime cupcake with a cherry buttercream. Then we had the Dulce de Leche Churro Sticks. It's pie crust filled with dulce de leche and they were rolled in the cinnamon sugar! Our final recipe this week is the Cake Ball Truffles! Cake Ball Truffles 1 box of yellow butter cake, plus the ingredients listed on the box 1 container of vanilla frosting chocolate almond bark This is the type of recipe that once you learn the process you can change up all the flavor combinations. Just make your boxed cake mix according to the instructions. I always add an extra teaspoon of vanilla when I make a boxed cake mix. I baked mine in a 9 x 13 pan. After it's baked, you want to let it completely cool. Then once it's cool, you just want to destroy the cake. You can use the food processor or just use your hands to make it ca...

We are back with recipe #2 from Chelsea's bridal shower! I am a sucker for anything remotely caramel flavored. When I saw Cookies & Cups post a recipe for these churro sticks I was pumped! I thought this is something a little different for the shower. This recipe is pretty simple and the possibilities are endless! And honestly, who doesn't like anything rolled around in cinnamon and sugar?!?  Dulce de Leche Churro Sticks 1 box of refrigerated pie crusts 1/2 can dulce de leche 1/2 cup granulated sugar 2-3 teaspoons cinnamon 1/3 sticks butter, melted Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. I floured my counter and rolled out both pie crusts.  Then I took about half my can of dulce de leche and spread out all over one pie crust.  I covered the first pie crust with the second and used my pizza cutter to cut strips. I then placed the strips on my baking sheets and used a fork to seal the edges of the sticks. I baked them in...

This past weekend, we celebrated my college roommate, Chelsea, getting married. I was on desserts for the shower and it turns out they were a hit.  I'm so glad I didn't have to bring a single leftover home.There is nothing worse for a low carb diet then desserts, but I'm proud of myself. I didn't eat one thing! Well if you don't count me having to taste everything while I was baking (who serves something they haven't tried!?! Not this girl.) This week I will go over the 3 recipes that I created for the shower! So we will start the week out with a bang and a Cherry Limeade Cupcake. In college we would hit up Sonic for happy hour. I would always go with the orange slush and Chelsea always got a cherry limeade. I decided to go with her favorite drink flavor profile for a cupcake! Cherry Limeade Cupcakes Lime Cupcakes 1 box white cake mix, plus ingredients indicated on the back of the box 3 limes 1 teaspoon vanilla Cherry Buttercream 1 c...

In our Monday catch up, I talked about living in our house for 4 years. My sister had been living with us for the past year, so when she moved out into her own apartment, I decided to decorate the guest room. Let's just say the room before was pretty boring! It was a hodge-podge of hand me downs. I decorated and updated the room for under $35. I think it looks awesome! I used a leftover gallon of paint from when we remodeled our rental property. Check out that post here . I didn't do a whole lot when it came to decorating, but I found a couple things at Goodwill, like the lamp, the black vase, and the little bird all for under $8. I spray painted the lamp base and bird and I hand painted the lamp shade. It was in rough shape, but now you would never know! Don't mind the frame without a picture in it! I haven't decided if I will put a picture or saying in it yet. I redid the dresser a couple years ago, so I choose to decorate the room around the b...

The Hubby and I have been together 8 years. The one thing we have consistently argued over for those 8 years is the question, "What do you want to do?" I consider us to both be intelligent adults, but when that question comes out of the other persons mouth its like we become fools and have no thoughts. Our common answer is "I don't know" or "I don't care".  Well I found something to fix that problem. Our date night jar! I saw the idea on Pinterest (where all ideas live of course) and decided it was an inexpensive, crafty solution to our problem. All you need are Popsicle sticks, markers, a jar, and your list of activities you want to use. Both the Hubby and I brainstormed ideas in the categories of free dates, cheap dates, more expensive dates, and plan ahead dates. Here is our example list: Making the list was the hardest part. There are a lot of online links for date ideas. Just cater your list to your tastes and preferen...

The Hubby and I are determined to set ourselves up for the future. Times have changed and raises are hard to come by now. We want to plan for our future, which requires some effort and planning on our parts. We set a goal to have a rental as one of our future investments. Now we can check this off our list. We are officially done with the rental property....well I say officially, but we still have a few things left to do, but our renter moves in tomorrow. The other changes can wait. This has been a long journey. I feel like the house now reflects the potential we saw in it. When you walk in the front door, you enter the living room. A reminder to what the house was before: smelly, dark, musty, and dirty. No we went for modern, fresh and clean. Once you are in the living room, you will see the connecting dinning room. You still had the dirty carpet and dark paint. Once you are in the dinning room, you can walk directly into the kitchen. The kitchen had old ...

I love this time of year. It is full of holidays, fall weather and family gatherings. I love to decorate our house to reflect the current holiday season. I am gearing up for Halloween. Each year I try to catch stuff on clearance to use for the next season, so after I got out my Halloween stuff, I realized I still needed a few things. The Hubby and I headed out to the Dollar Tree and I set out to find a craft project. I have always seen on HGTV or in magazines the bowls on the coffee tables with ornamental balls that match the room decor. Well if you have ever seen those at the store each ball can cost $7 and up. That is crazy, so I decided to make a Halloween version with googly eyes. Is googly a word? I'm not sure, but lets just roll with it. This project is super easy and inexpensive. I used three packs of googly eyes, three golf balls and two wiffle balls. I got the craft eyes and wiffle balls at the Dollar tree for a total of $4. I stole the golf balls from the Hubby'...

We purchased the property right next door to our house back in the summer as an investment property. We have been in full renovation mode since. The house was a beautiful stone home, built in 1950. The curb appeal was where the beauty stopped.    This was a foreclosure home, so we knew before we even looked at the house that there would be some issues. However, the house was a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom home with a good layout. It also had a attached one car garage, a detached two car garage and a fenced in backyard. So to us it was a great investment and why not start with a house right next door to your own?!? We saw the "for sale" sign posted on a Friday and made an offer on Monday. We got our offer accepted, s o the renovations began! The house was very dirty and smelly on the inside. The previous home owners obviously had gotten used to the smell. It was a mixture of smoke, pet odor, pet urine and musty/wet smell. Let me just tell you that the hubby coul...

Hello, my name is Kara. I am an avid blog follower. I follow several cooking and DIY blogs. Blogs just seem so silly since you are reading tips and tricks written by a complete stranger and that they become so addicting. After you read for awhile, you get to a point where you feel like you know the blogger and you are freinds. Then when they haven't posted in a week you are wondering what happened!? lol. I guess that is a sign of a good blog, a good writer and devoted readers! So I decided that a blog might be a great way to document some of our adventures as a married couple. We are in our twenties, but we are wise beyond our years. My husband, Joe, and I do not think like most 20 somethings! We are trying to start our married life out on the right foot. I may be biased, but I feel like we live a frugal lifestyle in an unbelieveable fashion, so I hope to use the blog as kind of a living album of adventures in our life! Until next time! Kara