My favorite Oscar moments

Hi y'all! 

As I said yesterday, during my Oscar Party post, I wanted to share with you a few of my favorite moments from the actual awards show. This is the first year I've ever watched them all the way through, and it was quite the event! 

I'm no famous critic, but here's what I thought...

Best Dressed:  Gwyneth Paltrow (I preferred her without the cape) and Cameron Diaz were my favorite. I think it's adorable that they got ready for the awards together too.

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There were some others I really liked too, but in the last 2 days, those were the ones that stuck out to me. I know a lot of people liked Angelina Jolie's dress, but I thought she looked pretty trashy with the leg out... then again, I still don't think I've over the Jennifer Aniston thing.

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Best speech: Octavia Spencer winning the Best Supporting Actress for her role in "The Help". She was so sweet, honest and funny in her speech. I was really excited for her and I think she accepted it beautifully.

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Best line: "Nothing can take the sting out of our tough economic times like watching a bunch of millionaires give themselves little golden statues." -Billy Crystal. 

Honestly, I hate that it's true, but it made me laugh and that's what counts today for this critic. 

Things I missed: Ryan Seacrest getting ashed. You can check that out here. All I can say, is that I'd be MAD. We didn't see it because we were watching a different channel. 

Anyhow, I know this is a short little recap, but I just couldn't write about an Oscar Party and not touch a little on the Oscars themselves! 

Hope you enjoyed this short little recap and have a great Wednesday! 

Oh, and Happy Leap Day! 

The Oscar Party

Hello Friends! Happy Tuesday! 

I'm sorry I was sad yesterday and didn't feel like writing about my Oscar Party. But, I have to say, Sunday night was awesome. Everyone had a great time, we actually watched the award show for the first time in my life, people won prizes and the food was great (if I do say so myself...). 

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Last week, I wrote about the menu for the party and some of my plans for the games. I wasn't entirely sure how to space out making the food. So Saturday, I did all the grocery shopping and then made the taquitos. I really felt like I have everything under control... and then Sunday morning I woke up and realized I wasn't even close to having enough serving dishes. I don't know how I didn't think of that.

So I went through the house with a pad of sticky notes and mapped out where all the food was going to go. My dining room looked like this for the better part of the day. 

I cooked and cleaned most of Sunday. Brian helped me a lot too, which was super nice of him since he wasn't even invited to my party. :) 

About 2 hours before people were coming over, I ran out of things to do... you know that moment when you've done as much prep work as you can? I didn't want the food to get cold, so I just sat down and chilled for a little bit. Then, of course, 20 minutes before people showed up, I decided to make some name cards for the food, using some "star studded" scrap paper I had laying around. 

As people showed up, I had hot food on the table. Along with the taquitos, we had this Chili Orange Popcorn (which people really seemed to like), kettle corn, veggies and hummus, chips and salsa, grilled cheese and tomato soup (in those little tea cups!) and these Southwestern Egg Rolls. 

I didn't get a chance to get a picture before food was eaten... it was almost impossible to have everything done and warm at the exact same time. Although I was pretty close, there was not a chance of me remembering to snap a picture in the midst of everything. 

There were 7 of us total. We talked, critiqued, ate, and voted on who we thought would win. 

Using this ballot, everyone filled it out ahead of time and we used the honor system to see who got the most... and it worked! It actually made us pay attention way more that I anticipated. After every award we all checked in on each other to see who was winning. For 7 people who are not invested in the Academy Awards, we quickly had our pride at stake! 

Filling out the ballot

I had prizes wrapped up and the prizes worked out perfectly. Everyone walked away with something. 

The trivia game was more fun than I thought it would be. I wrote out a bunch of questions and decided to see what people felt like doing. It was really going to be more of a filler game in case people were bored... but when we were done with the game, people were asking if there were more questions. 

Paige won a Turner Classic Movie water bottle for winning the trivia game. 

Franny won a TCM beach bag for 2nd place in the ballots.

Beth won a double movie feature for 1st place in the ballots. 

There were 2 other prizes, but (understandably) a couple girls had to leave a little early, so they took their unopened prizes with them. 

We all really enjoyed ourselves, and the girls said we should make it an annual affair. 

SURPRISINGLY, the clean up took about 10 minutes. Maybe that's because it was a bunch of girls, so everyone was pretty clean... or maybe it's because I did a load of dishes before people showed up. But seriously, the clean up was amazingly easy! 

Okay... so now you've heard all about the party. I was planning on writing about my favorite moments, dresses, etc., but I think I'll save that for tomorrow since this post is getting pretty long!

Did you do anything fun for the Oscars? Did you stay up and watch them all?? Did your favorites win?? I'd love to hear about it! 

Linking up:

A Sad Day

This morning, I was all geared up to write a fun post about the Oscar party last night. It was really fun and we stayed up wayyyy too late... so late that I had not 1 but 2 failed attempts at making coffee this morning. I don't know what got into me... I literally couldn't boil water. I think I may have been sleep walking.

Anyhow, I've edited all the pictures but I'll have to wait and write up a post tomorrow. I found a couple hours ago that my parents are putting our dog, Junior, down today, so I'm feeling pretty sad and extra homesick. Not the mood I want to be in to write about a fun party.

I'm actually not that much of an animal person... at all. But I really think that if you live with anyone (pet or person) for 10+ years, (he's almost 13) you're going to become attached.

We lost our other dog, Sammy (he was 10), at the end of last May out of nowhere. We think his stomach flipped (like in that movie Marley and Me), but we didn't know and he died within 18 hours of feeling sick. 

Below are 3 pictures I snapped right before I moved to Atlanta... my mom and little cousin were trying so hard to get Sammy in the bathtub, and he absolutely refused. Instead of helping, I reached for the camera and was crying from laughing so hard.  

This is Junior with my dad a couple Christmas's ago.

And this is where his favorite spot in the house was. It didn't matter how many people were over, he never moved out of anyones way. He loved being in the middle of the action, even towards the end of his life... Right in the middle of the kitchen, sprawled out on Christmas morning. 

My parents have had to put rugs and yoga mats down (as seen above) throughout the house because he's had so much trouble moving around on tile and wood floors in the last couple years. 

For Christmas, my brother drew this picture of a black lab for my parents. I'm telling you it looks exactly like Junior. (I showed you the one he made for us here.) Can you believe my brother drew that with a permanent marker???

Also a couple years ago, my brother decided that we should take a "siblings" photo with the dogs... he even made us wear matching clothes... 

It was IMPOSSIBLE to get one with all 4 of us looking. 

So by the end of the little shoot we were both laughing and we got the picture below. It is my very favorite picture of the 4 of us, even though only Spencer is looking at the camera. 

We started teaching Junior the day we got him how to get the newspaper, and he got it for us every single day, until his health could no longer allow it. AND both of these dogs were so trained to stay of out my room, that even after I moved out, my mom had to retrain them to come in! 

I may not be an animal person, but I loved these two animals in my own way. I think they knew it, too.

Thanks for letting me get a little sentimental today! I promise to write about the Oscar party in the next day or two. 

Oscar Party Planning

When I decided to have people over for the Oscars it seemed so far away... and now it's only 5 days away and I haven't thought about it much since I wrote my invitation poem.

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Some things I have to do is recover my new couch, which I bought red fabric for, but I think I may have changed my mind in the last 2 minutes after reading this post and use a drop cloth to cover it instead... oh my goodness. I'll let you know what happens.

Anyhow, last night I was at a Mardi Gras dinner and someone asked me what they could bring to the Oscar party, and I suddenly realized that I should probably figure out what our menu is going to look like.

I've been pinning some options (here), but the only real decision I've made is that I want everything to be finger foods, or easily eaten while standing or sitting on a couch.

So here are some ideas:

These baked creamy chicken taquitos that Brian and I love. I make them with corn tortillas, making them totally gluten free.

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And I thought mini grilled cheese and tomato soups would be cute and elegant for the Oscar theme...

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I got this chili orange kettle corn recipe from the Oscar website. It looks interesting. I think it's easy enough for a try. If we don't like it, I can always just pop up some regular buttered popcorn. 

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And these southwestern egg rolls look yummy too! 

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I think if I did all or a few of these and then a couple sweets it would be good spread. And the nice part is that I can do the egg rolls and taquitos early, so it'll be less stress on the day of. 

I'm getting pretty excited for the festivities! I have some prizes for people to win if they guess the award winners correctly. We're going to use this ballot from the Oscar website, and fill them out ahead of time. I also found some Oscar party trivia questions (here - if you're attending please don't click this link!) that I'll use for people to win a couple more prizes. 

I'm excited!! 

Linking up:

Couch Drama

Happy Saturday!

I woke up this morning at 6:30 am from having a dream that I was in Shameless. Do any of you watch that show?? Oh my goodness, it kills me! Anyhow, my dream was quite disturbing, so I was awake and ready for the day much earlier than normal on a Saturday morning...

Our big excitement for the day is getting a new couch. We've been borrowing our couch from a friend for the last 10 months and loved it, but she needed it back, so Brian and I needed to figure something out.

We were offered another free couch, but we couldn't get it for two and a half weeks, and we're having some friends for dinner tomorrow and I have the Oscar Party next weekend... so Craigslist or IKEA it was.

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We decided on this small futon for the time being because we don't want to spend a lot of money on furniture right now (we might be moving, but that's a different story for a different day slash I have no real information to share with you yet).

But then last night at 10:30 pm, I hopped on Craigslist and found this couch for $75.

We're a little skeptical about bed bugs, but I reminded Brian of a couch that I had in college that we picked up off the side of the road... it had a FREE sign on it and I think it's still in my brother's house 4 years later... and the only reason they're getting rid of this couch is because they're moving, so I'm hoping for the best!

Anyhow, so we're going to pick it up in a couple hours. And I'm stoked. There is just NO way I could look at this empty space for the next 2 weeks.

I've already started looking up upholstery tutorials! Hooray for a new project!


Oh, and since you can't smell the glorious smells coming from my kitchen, I'm making this granola recipe from Blissfully Content.

I hope it's good! I'm going to experiment with cooking it a little faster, so I'll let you know how it goes. Seriously, it smells so good.

Happy weekend friends! 

Decision Help!

Do you ever have luxury problems?? Like you have too many super fun options for Friday night, but you just can't decide??

Well, I'm having one of those problems. The woman I nanny for gave me a $100 to Timbuk2 and I'm customizing my own bag... it is awesome. So awesome, that I made two bags and now I can't decide. 

(I know, I know... I have such a rough life.)

Pictured below are the two bags I made. I can't seem to make the pictures any larger without it turning out super grainy. 

I really like the letters with the off-white, but Brian pointed out that white is going to get dirty. And the green with clover field pattern is really pretty, but I think it's a little more girly than I would want. 

Or I could do my third option - just buy Brian a bag! 

I'm super excited about this new bag! I have used a bag like this every day for over 3 years... it was a $20 Target bag that is still in pretty good condition, but it'll be really nice to have a great quality bag! Can you believe their bags have a lifetime guarantee??? 

Do any of you have a Timbuk2 bag? Can anyone help me with the decision between these bags?

Happy Friday!

My Special Valentine

Today is the day after Valentine's Day... It's also the 8th birthday of one of the kiddos I nanny for. The sugar is never ending!!

I made some cupcakes for the kiddo, and tried to make the frosting "Alabama Red" and they really turned out Valentine's Day Red/Pink. Big bummer, since he's a boy.

 

That's okay though. He was way more concerned about the sweet presents he got this morning and the Hibachi dinner we're going to tonight.

 

Over the weekend, Brian and I spent our anniversary at hotel here in Atlanta called The Georgian Terrace. It was SO fun! If you've never done a staycation, you totally should. I didn't really take any pictures, but our room and view (from the 14th floor) was beautiful! 

Then, yesterday Brian surprised me with a Valentine that was almost EXACTLY like the one he gave me 2 years ago, when we'd only been dating for 2 days. It made me so happy and honestly, I was a little surprised about how much he remembered from that day. It was delivered in the exact same way (on the windshield of my car) and said almost the same thing (that he's excited to get to know me better). It was so simple but super sentimental. I LOVE that he's not afraid to get a little cheesy from time to time. 

But, I have to tell you, the best Valentine I received was from the kiddos I nanny for. The mom wrote on the front "Happy Valentines Day" and then on the inside "We Love You!" But the real treat was the 8-year-old thinking of and writing his own little note.

How sweet is that?! Seriously, I think it's the nicest thing ever. 

When I told him how special it was to me, I said, "I think this might be the best Valentine I've ever gotten." And he said, "Well... until next year." Ha! What a cutie. 

Anyhow, we gotta start recovering from the massive amounts of sugar we ate yesterday.

How was your Valentines Day?! I'd love to hear if you received any special valentines! 

At Home Date Night

Good Morning!

I just wanted to take a quick moment to let you guys know about something I did last night. Brian and I had an at-home-date-night scheduled... which was quickly turning into leftovers and doing separate things in our home. That isn't what either of us wanted, but sometimes that's what at-home-dates turn into, ya know? 

Anyhow, I stumbled upon this idea on Pinterest (where else?) and knew I had to do it. 

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I was heading to Target anyhow, so I just added some soda and popcorn to the list. I wanted to get a new popcorn bowl and blanket too... but I quickly realized we didn't need that, so I settled on things we already had.

When I got home, I quickly cleaned up the house, ordered some Chinese food, rolled up a few blankets, and filled our popcorn bowl. 

Brian was so happy to open the door to this:

I got some kettle corn and some adorable Coca-Cola's... and now that I think about it, we have chocolate covered raisins at home (Brian's staple at the movies), and I forgot to put them in our bowl!!  

But that's okay... because honestly, we didn't even eat or drink any of it last night. So now, it can be the gift that keeps on giving and we can use it on our next at-home-date night.

Brian said that it didn't really matter that we didn't eat or drink any of it, because it was just the gesture and coming home to a date that really mattered to him.

So, if you need a quick and inexpensive way to show that you care. You should totally do this. The best part is that you can customize it specifically for the person you share it with!

This weekend, I'll be sharing with you some Valentines I made for my friends... and on Sunday, Brian and I are celebrating 2 years together! We'll be combining V-day with our Anniversary.... so hopefully I'll have fun stuff to report!

Happy Blogging!