Yes, I wore my hat the entire game, and I was wishing that I would have brought a blanket.  Luckily I wore my boots.  I am a wimp when it comes to cold, it's true.  The Stampede won 6-2.  Woo woo!  We had a great time.  Actually, I enjoyed it way more that I thought I would!


In other news, I was out at a Show Choir competition on Saturday which is why I didn't blog.  But hey, we made finals and landed 3rd place!  This is VERY exciting for us, because the choirs that got 1st and 2nd definitely deserved it.  Go team.

And that, folks, was my weekend.  All that plus an epic 3-hour nap, necessitated by aforementioned Show Choir Competition.  Ugh.  Time to face another week!

My hubby and I like what some people would call "fancy" food.  The problem is, a lot of what I'd call fancy food involves shrimp, scallops, or some other unsavory sort of sea creature.  I grew up in a state that is completely landlocked.  I could not live anywhere else in the country and be further from the sea than I am now.  Neither one of us grew up eating fish or seafood.  Yes, I've tried it time and time again over the years.   (I even lived in Japan for a year and was forced to eat it on many occasions.)  I want to like it, I just don't.  I sort of disappoint myself.


(For the record, I do eat tuna from the can/pouch thing.  That's it, though.)

Anyway, one of the fancy foods that I've always wanted to try is paella.  I think the concept sounds fabulous, and it always looks really tasty.  However, there are usually large chunks of sea-dwelling creatures floating in it.  No thanks.  That is, until T, Betty Crocker and I discovered Betty's recipe for chicken paella!


(We've already devoured half of it, as you can see!)  It involves lots of paprika, rice, peas, raisins, chicken, and chorizo!  Num num!  We didn't know we liked chorizo until we tried this recipe.


T picked up a loaf of tasty french bread too.  Yum.  I'm so glad that my hubby can cook!  And, it's safe to say, you can make delish paella without seafood!

Am I the only one who wishes that they could force themselves into liking seafood?

I had a funny realization this afternoon:  the subtitle on my blog is "A modern girl's guide to living fabulously." Yet, the last few posts have had absolutely nothing modern in them.  I guess I should update the subtitle to include my love for all things mod vintage!

Anyway, I wanted to share with you a new little collection I've started.

I am so excited to share with you our latest project.  I saw this awesome chevron bar tutorial on curbly.com  over Christmas break and was dying to try and duplicate it.  I


The makeover was inspired by the show "Mad Men" and T and I thought the bold chevron pattern was perfect for our style.  I even had the perfect spot planned out in our basement.

On Super Bowl Sunday T and I decided to make a quick stop at Goodwill before we went to my parents' party.  I thought it might take us awhile to find a cabinet that would work, but I was wrong!  We walked in the door, saw this beauty and were out again in less than 5 minutes.


It was a no brainer!  This is actually the finished product.  The early stages weren't quite as lovely.  T and I think that somebody converted it from an old TV to the cabinet that it currently is.  You can kind of see the two light circles on the left panel where it looks like there would have been speakers.  There was even a little tag on the inside telling you how to change the vacuum tube!

We made quite a few adjustments ourselves!  First, we pained the top black.  It was an originally an icky brown mock-wood color and it just didn't fit.  We then decided to paint the bottom shelf black to match.  There's actually caning on that shelf but it was a nasty gray color that didn't match the side panels.  Trust me, it's much better in black!  We added the black felt on the inside to give it a bit of class, replaced the knobs on the glass (there were none, originally) and added the little golden medallions.


There are two little random holes in the caning and there were two wooden plugs that went inside them.  I'm guessing that was originally something for the speakers for the tv, but really we have no idea.  In any case, they needed to be covered.  I wanted something vintage, but Hobby Lobby does not carry many vintage-looking medallions.  I found these in the bead aisle and thought they at least matched the gold on the glass doors.  So, after a good scrubbing, some paint, and a little elbow grease, our treasure is complete!

We're still in accessorizing mode, but so far we have picked up a few treasures.  We got these retro coin glasses for $3 total.  They're kind of hard to see, but they have coins from different countries all over them.


We also got this fun little guy:


I had my eye on that baby for awhile before I finally talked T into buying it at Savers earlier this week.  I even left the price tag on it.  It came with the original warranty and directions!  I love it!  The only sad thing is that it's missing the lid.  Oh well.



So, although our bar ended up looking nothing like our inspiration, we love it.  Any thoughts on accessories we should add?

I didn't have school yesterday so I decided to get down with my domestic self.  I had adventures in the kitchen!  Allow me to share with you.

First of all, do you know of this fabulous website called Supercook?  You enter in all of the ingredients you already have and it searches a bunch of recipe websites for recipes to make!  It even has a feature where you can highlight an ingredient you know you want to use and it will focus on that ingredient.  (I highlighted chicken, for example.)  I've used this website several times for ideas but I've never actually made anything until yesterday.  It was all very exciting!



While searching through the approximately 2,000 recipes it returned, I found this beauty:  Baked Paprika-Parmesan Chicken.  Oh my dear goodness, it was HEAVENLY!!!



Then I decided to be super-ambitious and make a dessert too!  We had seriously about 3 bags of frozen blueberries in our freezer (guess who likes blueberries in her waffles?!) and so I decided to give this recipe a try:  Blueberry Upside-Down Cake.  Oh my goodness, not only did this smell delicious, it tasted even better!  There is nothing better than hot blueberries straight out of the oven.  Mmmmm.

Seriously.  I'm almost drooling just thinking about it again...I might have to go get a piece!

Did I mention that it's even more delectable with a dollop of whipped cream?!

Hi everybody!  I'm back!  Well, at least, I'm going to try this whole blog thing again.

So you saw our new house, and now I'm pleased to say that we're all moved in and I have been working on projects gallore!  But today, I wanted to show you my favorite room of the house, the living room.

Remember this post from a few months ago with my inspiration room?  I absolutely fell in love with this room, and T did too.  I so badly wanted to include the honeysuckle pink chairs, but T said no.  I suppose it would have been a bit too girly for him.



Here's the before that we had to work with.  This picture was taken while we were touring the house for the first time.  (That's the realtor on the left.)  I thought it just seemed dark in there.  And, perhaps a few too many clocks, no?  Maybe they were world travelers that needed a clock for 4 different time zones.  Who knows?


Last time I posted I was trying to talk my mom into the idea of a turquoise room.  Here's what we ended up with:


Ted spent about a half hour trying to convince me that the turquoise would be ok.  I was convinced it was going to be neon and would burn our retinas every time the sun came out.  Not true.  I actually love the brightness!  Notice the fireplace?  It's fake.  Who puts in a faux fireplace in a 1932 house?  Oh well, at least it hold candles quite nicely.  Also, I give you permission to drool over our crown molding.


You'll notice that we ripped up the carpet and had the wood floors refinished.  You can barely see it, but we have a zebra rug!  It's not in the inspiration room, but I couldn't resist.  See the photo hanging on the wall on the right?  It's a T original.  We found the frame at a garage sale for $5 and painted it black.


This is by far my favorite room in our new house.  Want to see more "before" pics?  Click here.  More project updates to come!

Tell me what you think!  Is the turquoise too bright?