Friday, January 29, 2016

FRIDAY NO.3

IT'S FRIDAY!!!! And it's moving weekend! The movers will be at our apartment tomorrow morning to start loading all of our furniture up and taking it over to OUR HOUSE!! We are so excited and so ready to be in our home.

Matthew got home yesterday afternoon from being in Knoxville the past two weeks and he doesn't have to go back- anytime soon! Woo hoo! We celebrated him being home last night with Cheddar's...and because we don't want to buy a lot of groceries since we're moving lol.

I didn't get a chance it share my chicken taco's recipe this week, but will try to next week. I also have a delicious crockpot potato soup to share!


One of my Christmas presents from Matthew was this Rifle Paper Co. recipe box. I've been waiting to put this baby in it's forever home...our new kitchen. I KNEW it would look so good with the white back splash. I took it over the other night and just stood there and admired it for a few minutes. Seriously, I love it and all Rifle Paper Co. products.



Since Matthew has been out of town my best friend and sister came and stayed a couple of nights with me and helped me pack and move a few things over!
After moving some storage totes over we decided it was only right to treat ourselves to a small blizzard from Dairy Queen. ;) Awful quality but here's a picture of us waiting in line of our blizzards lol.
My sister came down a few times and helped me so much! We made three trips in one night with both cars completely loaded down. I could not have done it without her. The older I get the more I realize my sister is one of my best friends, and I'm so thankful!


Have y'all watched How To Get Away With Murder?!?! My sister wanted to watch an episode one night after we got back from moving a lot of stuff and I agreed to watch one episode to see what it was all about and before I knew it, it was almost 1 in the morning and we had watched THREE episodes! It was so good, and I can't wait to watch more.


The past few weeks at work have been crazy busy, and I don't think it will be slowing down anytime soon, but I like the work and enjoy staying busy- makes the day go by quicker!


Blog Posts from this week:

 - Coffee Bar

Thursday, January 28, 2016

COFFEE BAR

Last week I gave y'all a tour of our new house and today I am going to share a couple of ideas. We have the perfect little nook in our kitchen for a coffee bar. The picture below is our kitchen and the space beside the refrigerator is where we plan on putting it.

I'll be completely honest, it was one of the first things I thought of when I saw that space during our first walk through of the house but I didn't say anything. I'm not a coffee drinker and Matthew only drinks it every now and then, so I didn't want anything going to waste. A couple weeks later Matthew suggested making that space a coffee bar, again, I wasn't too keen on the idea, but the more we thought about it the more it made sense and the more I got excited to have a coffee bar. Both of our families drink coffee and all of our friends do, and we know we will be having them over often so we want to be able to offer them coffee without having to run out to Starbucks or somewhere to grab coffee when they do come over. We're looking into getting a Keurig so that there are tea and hot chocolate options as well. In the summer I'll probably add lemonade or different juices to it too since it's a pretty big space. Now that we're both on board we've been searching for ideas and I am so excited to see it eventually all come together!

Here are some pins from Pinterest that I have been looking at recently!

I NEED those canisters. They are perfect!




Where are these mugs from?! Too cute.

Love the idea of the drawer up under it being used for storage of extra coffee supplies. 

We have both agreed we like the idea of storing the K-Cups on a K-Cup Carousel. We found this one and love the way it looks. 

I've also been looking for cute creamer and sugar sets, but haven't found any that I just love, except the ones in the first picture ^ there. I'm hoping to find some at Home Goods for a reasonable price.

And here are some cute coffee signs I found


This one is just hilarious.



Do you have a coffee bar at your house? Anything we definitely need on there or don't really need? Also, any recommendations on what Keurig we need to get? We'll take all the suggestions! 

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

CROCKPOT SAUSAGE TORTELLINI

During our snowy weekend I put our crockpot to good use. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I LOVE MY CROCKPOT. Seriously, it's great.

One of the things I made...I mean my crockpot made is this Sausage Tortelloni recipe! I made it a few weeks ago and we both loved it so I thought it would be a good recipe for a snow day.


Ingredients:
- l lb of sausage or ground beef (I used ground beef)
- 20 oz Buitoni Frozen Three-Cheese Tortellini (I used Sweet Italian Sausage the 2nd time I made it)
-  32 oz Chicken Broth (I always buy the low/reduce sodium kind)
- 2 cans diced tomatoes (Basil, Garlic & Oregano seasoned kind)
- 1/2 t Garlic Powder (not pictured)
- 8 oz cream cheese
- Grated Parmesan (Optional. And not pictured) for topping


Directions:
Step 1:
 Take your cream cheese out of the refrigerator and let it sit while you are browning your meat.

Step 2:
Add the tortellini to your crockpot.

Step 3:
Add the diced tomatoes. I actually puree the two cans of tomatoes because we don't like chunks of tomatoes :)

Step 4: 
Add in the Chicken Broth.

Step 5:
Add in cooked meat.

Step 6:
Add in garlic powder and cream cheese in chunks and give everything a good stir.

Step 7:
Cook on Low for 3 1/2 - 4 hours or High for 2 1/2 - 3 hours. Stir occasionally.

Here is a picture of it when it was about half way finished

And here is a picture of it when it was finished

So easy and so delicious!

Monday, January 25, 2016

WEEKEND RECAP: SNOW EDITION

Hope y'all aren't tired of all the snow posts, if you are, well then just skip right over this post ;)

Let's back up to last Monday...about 6:30 a.m. I dropped Matthew off with one of his coworkers and they headed up to Knoxville for the week. One of their big clients is up there and they had to spend the week up there working on them. I spent the week packing up our apartment and watching One Tree Hill. Fast forward to Thursday... all day Thursday there was talk of a "big snow storm" heading our way. I watched the weather all day and I'm positive it changed back and forth at least 3 times. At first they were forecasting the snow storm to hit early Friday morning, then they changed it hitting late Friday afternoon, and then changed it back to the morning. I talked to my boss and she told me that if it's going to do what they say it's going to do then they will close the office. I got off of work and did what any other sane person would do...I went to the grocery store....along with half of Nashville. I didn't get milk and bread though...just milk and other stuff for crockpot recipes. ;)

Thursday night I decided to take a night off from packing and spent it parked on the couch. I talked to Matthew for a little bit before he said he was going to bed, and then decided I was going to watch another episode of OTH before calling it a night. I got a call from Matthew five minutes later saying they were leaving in ten minutes and coming home. They were going to come home Friday mid day but decided it would probably be best to come home that night. So I cleaned up and then ran back to the grocery store to get breakfast sausage (the store I went to earlier was sold out- told you half of Nashville was there too) for breakfast in the morning and then headed to pick Matthew up. It may have been midnight but I was THRILLED!!!!!! We got back in a little after 1 that morning and went to bed.

We woke up Friday morning a little before 6 and this is what I saw outside our apartment! We are SO thankful they decided to come back Thursday night instead of Friday mid day! 

And that was the start to our snowy weekend! It snowed, and snowed, and snowed, and snowed, AND SNOWED all day Friday. Seriously, I don't remember it ever snowing that much and for that long. We watched it all day Friday and couldn't stop talking about how pretty it was. We decided (I talked Matthew into it) to go outside and walk around in it so I could get some pictures of it and a couple of us! Had to document our first married snow day, duh ;) And I am so glad we did! Everything was absolutely beautiful. I doubt he would admit it but I think Matthew enjoyed seeing it all, too!

The walking trail at our apartment

 So much snow on our roof!


We were sad the pond didn't completely freeze over lol oh well, still pretty!


We got 8 INCHES OF SNOW!

Our apartment did a great job of scraping/salting our parking lot. (This was the before picture lol)


We spent the whole day watching How I Met Your Mother and lounging around. It was perfect!

Saturday the snow was still around most of the day. We lounged around most of the day and then decided to try and drive over to our house. The roads were still somewhat messy but not terrible. Our neighborhood on the other hand was still really bad. We are SO thankful our moving day wasn't this past weekend and is this upcoming weekend! 

OUR HOUSE IN THE SNOW!!

And our backyard! I can already tell we are going to love having a backyard! And yes, that's a trampoline in our backyard lol the sellers left it.

Friday morning I made our favorite sausage roll ups for breakfast and I made crockpot sausage tortelloni for a late lunch/early dinner, along with cheesy-garlic pull apart rolls. 

 Saturday we had cheese biscuits for breakfast and a stuffed crust DiGiorno pizza for lunch...we love them but try to eat them only every now and then so I figured a snow day was the perfect time for one! For dinner I made crockpot chicken tacos (one of Matthew's favorites) and Mexican rice.
I put our crockpot to good use this weekend! I'll be sharing both of those crockpot recipes this week.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

CROCKPOT BEEF ROAST - DINNER

Today I am going to share with y'all one of Matthew's favorite meals, crockpot roast beef!

It is probably one of the easiest meals I can make and my crockpot does all of it. I just fix a few sides to go with it and then it's time to eat! I also use crockpot bags so cleanup is REALLY easy. If you haven't discovered crockpot bags yet then get some the next time you go to the store and you can thank me later! 

Ingredients:
- 2-2.5lb beef roast
- 1 package of brown gravy mix, dry
- 1 package of ranch dressing mix, dry
- 1 package of dried Italian salad dressing mix
- 1/2 cup water


Directions:
- Place roast in crockpot
- Pour each package over roast
- Pour water around roast
- Cook on low 8-9 hours


I made this soon after we got married and Matthew has requested it multiple times, so I always make sure to keep those three dry mixes in our pantry. The ranch and Italian dressing mix both come in boxes of 4, and the brown gravy comes in single packs at .50 each. Can't beat that!

I usually fix mashed potatoes, mac & cheese and green beans with this roast, and we always have leftovers for a couple of days- which makes for perfect lunches! Follow along on Snapchat (shelbycoats), I'm usually snapping away while I make dinner, and I love following other bloggers to get dinner ideas.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

TOUR OF OUR NEW HOME

I'm so excited to share this post with y'all today! We knew the house was a little outdated in some some rooms and that if we bought this house we would have some work to do, but honestly that's exactly what we wanted. We wanted something that we could do some work on but not something that was going to make us the next Chip and Joanna Gaines. So with that being said, here is our house! We are so excited to begin working on our house and take it room by room.



The entryway
It's a two story entryway and Matthew's first words when he saw the entryway was "this is the perfect place for a 12ft tall Christmas tree." I was one proud wife! ;)

 Study and dining room
Around the stairs is the study. Some people use it as a formal living room, but we don't want to have a formal living room. So we decided to make it Matthew's office. 

Dining Room
Connected to the dining room and kitchen is the dining room. That wallpaper will be coming down within the next two weeks ;) I am in love with the wainscoting. So pretty!

Up next is the kitchen!

Again, this wall paper is coming down very soon! The kitchen and dining room are where we are going to do quite a bit of work. We are so excited to redo the kitchen!

Living Room
We plan on taking that half wall down so the entrance into the living room isn't so small.

So excited we have a fireplace, and I am loving those 3 big windows!! So much natural light pouring in.

Not pictured downstairs:
Around the corner from the kitchen is a small storage closet, half bath and a entrance to the garage.


Upstairs:

There are 3 guest bedrooms that all look just like this. We are so excited to have family and friends be able to stay with us now!! One guest bedroom will be my office and I will finally be able to put my new desk somewhere!!

Guest bathroom

Master bedroom



Master Bathroom
Double vanity, actual vanity, and water closet...I was SOLD.

Through the door on the left is our walk in closet! Woo hoo for having a bigger closet!













Not picture upstairs:
Linen closet and laundry room

Our backyard
It's a decent size yard and it's fenced in! The sellers left their trampoline lol.


And that's our house! We are so excited and so grateful for the opportunity to have a home of our own! We keep telling each other we can't believe we have a house, but we do! We feel like it was just yesterday he was picking me up for our first date and here we are almost 6 years later, married and just bought our first house! So incredibly blessed to be doing life with Matthew.