Southwest Pasta Salad

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start to summer. With summer comes trips to the lake, the pool, and road trips. Have a fun picnic this summer with a cool yet spicy pasta salad. This isn't your boring Italian dressing and some pasta pasta salad. NO SIR. This is a spicy pasta salad. A southwest pasta salad if you will. 

Ingredients:

1 box of tri color rotini

mini pepperonis 

shredded cheese - I had the fiesta blend from Kraft

Cesar dressing

spices - paprika, chipotel  powder, garlic powder, black pepper, chili powder

Directions:

Cook pasta according to directions on the box. Season the water with pepper and garlic powder while bringing to a boil. Cook to al dente.

Drain pasta and pour into bowl. Pour a fair amount of dressing on the pasta but not enough to drown it. Lighter is better. 

Season with the spices and mix together. Add pepperoni and cheese.

Chill in fridge.

You could also sub the pepperoni with grilled chicken!

Peppermint Foot Scrub

Pedicure are expensive. Let's be honest. I work full time, my husband works full time and I can STILL not afford to get one as often as I like. I mean, how awesome would it be to get one every other week, shoot, every week?

I like to treat myself to some pampering-me-time about once a week. I don't even leave my house to do it. I give myself a nice foot soak and scrub and paint my toe nails. And that's about all I have time to do or I just get super distracted. 

This foot scrub is not only soothing and invigorating but cost effective too. All you need is a jar, sugar, oil, food coloring, and some peppermint essential oil. Bam. Done.

I used about two cups of sugar to start with. I guesstimated that based on my jar size. I added in olive oil to get it to the right consistency, you'll know it once you feel it. It came out a strange yellow color because it was olive oil so I added a few drops of red food coloring. You can use mineral oil or coconut oil to not have a discoloration to your sugar. I added in enough peppermint oil to make it smell good but not too strong. And that's it! Easy peasey.

Memory Frame

     In light of Mother's Day and the recent tragic disasters in Moore, Oklahoma preserving memories captured through photographs becomes increasingly important. To those who lost everything in the tornado, even their loved ones' lives, our community is pulling together and praying for you.

    Photo box upon photo box can be found in my parents' house. Most of these boxes I had gone through while I was still in high school and were scattered and tucked away in my bedroom. Mother's Day weekend I spent hours finally cleaning out my room so my dad could have a "real" office free of all the girly decor I had left behind. Among my things that I shoved into drawers, I found these pictures of my mom's parents. One of my granddad and me and one of my grandmother and me. Mother's Day was also my granddad's 85th birthday! WoooHoo! He is old and opinionated but I think that's allowed. What made finding these pictures even more touching is that my grandmother died 9 years ago this year. I wanted to preserve the memory of her so that my future children can know who she was.

   To create this frame, I bought a picture frame from the dollar store and took out the happy smiling family and used them as a stencil. I traced out the size of the frame on scrapbook paper. I went online to find a quote about grandparents but all I found were so-so. So I made up my own kinda-sorta.  I printed it on another piece of scrapbook paper and cut it out from a stencil. I tacked the photos and the quote down with photo glue. On the quote paper I put brads on either end. I also painted the frame a different color because an ugly brassy color is never cute. 

    While I could have done more in the ways of decorating it, I think that the simplicity of it rings true to how my grandparents lived their lives. They are simple people who would rather spend a day with their grandchildren then spend a day buying lavish things. While my grandmother has passed, I see a lot of her in my mother. She is the inspiration for how I live my day to day life. 

Exodus 20:12 Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Wedding Card Box

     Guess what. I'm going to save all of you brides-to-be about fifty bucks. Yeah, that's right. Being crafty can save you so much money for your wedding! Trust me. Over the next month or so as my anniversary nears, I'm going to be posting all of the fantastic ideas and decorations I made and the money saving tips I've compiled. 

     When my wedding planner asked me about where I wanted all of the gifts to go, I knew right away where I wanted the table to be. But then she asked me about a card box. I'm fairly sure my reaction was "like the Valentine's Day boxes we made in elementary school?" 

     Instead of being in elementary school, I was getting married and I didn't think that a shoe box with a hole in the top was acceptable. My mom and I did some digging on Pinterest after realizing a cute card box costs about $50 and made a run to the craft store (for the thousandth time.) We bought a plain cardboard circular box, some scrapbooking floral decorations and a small wooden letter.  

     We cut a hole in the top with a very sharp exacto knife and painted the whole box white. I then took a stencil and wrapped it around the box and painted it in our wedding color. I then painted the wooden letter and sprayed it down with glitter spray paint. Yes, it does exist! I positioned the letter where I wanted then placed the flowers around it.  To make sure that people knew what to do with it, I cut out a tag from paper then stamped the word "CARDS" on it, tied a string to it and taped it neatly from the inside of the hole on the top. 

     It worked magnificently! It was so easy to just carry out the box after the wedding instead of worrying about grabbing all the cards. Another helpful hint from my wedding planner: designate someone to be in charge of the gifts. Have them take gifts that come with cards and tape the card to the box so nothing gets mixed up! It makes writing thank you cards so much easier.