Running in the Footsteps of Legends

Happy Sunday! We hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend. We're sure everyone is looking forward to the next week. Or not. Our weekend was pretty amazing, I must say. Today's post isn't a crafty one, but we felt the need to share! We spent the weekend down in Eugene, Oregon. Now, for those of you who don't know, Eugene is home to the University of Oregon. It is also home to the legendary Hayward Field, Steve Prefontaine, Bill Bowerman, the Olympic Trials, and pretty much anything else that has to do with the world of running!
We went down there on our trip two summers ago, but didn't see much of the school. We kind of did a drive by of the track, but not much else. This morning, we ran in the Eugene Marathon. It was pretty amazing. On the bus ride to the race, we saw their 'Student-Athlete Academic Center'. Let's just say it was no room in the basement of the library. During the race, we ran by their football stadium. We're pretty sure our entire college campus could have fit in the stadium and parking lot. The entire campus is ginormous! So, skip (or run) ahead 26 miles and the race finished on the track. This was the best finish to a marathon. The track is definitely the best track to run on- it's so squishy! It was probably the fastest 200m we've run in a long time! And then they show you on the big screen at the end of the track. It was such an awesome experience!

And, of course, we had to wobble our way to the entrance of the track to get our picture in front of it. It may not have been our best times, but they weren't our worst, and we were able to find each other in the end, which has been a problem in the past. Except for the uber bad chub rub and my phone dying at mile 22 (which meant no more music) this was the best marathon we've done. It's also the only one (so far) we would think about doing again!
Thanks for stopping by! Now it's time to go ice, eat, and go to bed!

Happy Birthday, Bro!

Good Friday morning! We hope everyone has had a great week! We've been keeping uber busy here, but unfortunately it hasn't been by working on projects for our blog. Between school, work, invitations, and our parents coming to visit us this week (which was awesome, even if they left the next day!) there's been more than a few long nights this week. However, we do have a card to share with you today!

It all started way back when, 33 years ago. Today is our oldest brother's birthday. He's getting pretty old, if we do say. Apparently we decided to go with the sea creature theme this year for our cards. The turtle is perfect for the inside greeting, which is perfect for him.

 He's goes around saying movie quotes and things like that, and this reminds us of the turtles in Finding Nemo. And he once made a hippie-style poncho in Home-Ec, which just seems to fit :) So, here's to a very happy birthday, big brother! (Oh, and no worries, the card is in the mail!)
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a great day and a wonderful weekend!!

A Little Brightness for a Tough Day

Today's post is a little hard to write. I've been sitting here for the last fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to start it. As runners, it's hard to imagine something like this happening at a road race. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected.

Anyway, today's project can hopefully put some sunshine and light into today. Since Easter is now over, this is our new welcome wreath for our front door. 

 

It's nice and bright, which is always a good thing in a sometimes-dreary place. As I write this, it looks like it's about to start pouring, with what sounds like some rumbles of thunder. Or it's the neighbor's dog. Either way. The wreath is full of (what's supposed to be) Gerbera daisies. These are, by far, our favorite summer flowers. They are so colorful and bright, and they always catch our attention when we see them at stores. 

 

Here is a close-up of the flowers, and the little butterfly resting on the flower. The little guy is attached to a thin wire, so he comes out of the wreath a little bit. We also added some little green 'fronds', to add just another small touch. 

We have a  few more projects for this week with daisies. We're trying to get all of our decor matching, and fortunately, they can be left up for spring and summer!

Thanks for stopping by! 

April Showers Bring May Flowers!

Good afternoon! We hope everyone is having a fantastic week so far! On the bright side, tomorrow is already Wednesday :) So, anyway, as the title of today's post suggests, our project has a little bit of rain and sun, something we are quite familiar with now. Today, like the past week, it's rained a little, but then the sun came out. As they say, we've had "sun breaks", which is kind of a silly saying. If the sun breaks through the clouds, wouldn't it be a cloud break? A break from the clouds? But I digress.  Back on track. We spent a few hours this afternoon going through our sites and updating our images and this is one header we're super excited about!

Along with changing up our blog, we also updated our Etsy shop and our Facebook page. It covers both the months of April and May, so we won't have to worry about changing it up next month. The colors came out a lot duller than they are actually are, but it looks much better this way. The birds from 3 Birds-on Parade are great because they are so easily changed to fit the season. From there, it was easy to add more cuts and images to build a scene. And the best thing, a few months ago, we spent hours and hours and hours trying to get everything to fit right, today's update only took 90 minutes, without anyone getting upset. It was a truly successful afternoon!!
Ok, I know it's not too exciting for most people, but it's one of those small events that just make everything better! So, thanks for stopping by and hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday workday!

We are entering our new design to a few challenges:
PaperCraftingInspiration: Rain Challenge
Bitten By the Bug 2: April Showers Umbrella Challenge

A Great Start to the Week

Happy Monday! We hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. We had pretty non-exciting weekend. It rained all weekend, but today wasn't too bad. The sun peeked through at times, which is always nice! But, now it's time to get back to work after a much needed Spring Break. So, since it's back to work, we don't have much time for our own crafts, unfortunately. On top of work, we have two sets of wedding invitations to do, which is super exciting!
Anyway, since we're trying to get back in the groove, today's post is different than our usual posts. This is what we had for dinner tonight, and it was just so good, we had to share!

It's not the best picture (I thought the smudge was on the front of my phone. Turns out I was wrong). Anyway, this is our Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Shells, and it is amazing! We were first introduced to this buffalo dip by our Aunt, who refused to give us the recipe. Luckily, everything is on-line, so we were able to come up with our own recipe. The dip by itself is delicious enough to have for dinner (which we've done!) The stuffed shells idea came to us last night as we were perusing Pinterest. I don't remember exactly how we came up with the idea, but it seemed like a genius idea. And, of course, everyone and their mother has already made them. Oh well. We made ours a slightly-lower fat version.

Here's how we did it:

1. We cooked 3 large chicken breasts and then cut them into chunks. Some people shred theirs, it's more of a personal preference.

2. As the chicken is cooking, start cooking the pasta shells. We didn't stir them too often, so they wouldn't break. (We cooked about 20 shells, but had enough dip leftover to fill another 4-5 shells)

3. As the chicken and shells are cooking, we mixed together the rest of the ingredients: 

     * 8 ounces (1 box) cream cheese, softened (we used reduced fat cream cheese)

     * 1/4 cup both ranch dressing and plain Greek yogurt

     * 1/2 cup both buffalo sauce and shredded mozzarella cheese (more or less cheese...)

4. Once the chicken is cooked, mix it in with the buffalo mixture. Take the mixture and begin filling your shells. Place them in a greased dish, keeping some room, just so everything gets warms evenly. When all of the shells are full, bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for 20 minutes, or until the cheese is melty.

5. Enjoy! We had three each, but I'm sure a few more could have been devoured. We needed to save some for tomorrow's lunch!

Well, I totally recommend making this dish! It is so good! And now it's time to get ready for another work week! Thanks for stopping by!

Continuing With Our New Bags

Happy Friday! We hope everyone had wonderful work week. Our vacation is coming to an end, which means that we have a lot to catch up with everything we didn't do this week. A rainy day is a good day to do so. But, before we do that, we wanted to show some more of the princess bags we designed.

These are four of our new bags. Like the ones we had yesterday, these are also embellished with some glitter and embossing. Like we said yesterday, these are much more fun to make. Can't go wrong with glitter, or little rhinestones. Tiana is now my favorite- her necklace is just perfect, in my opinion! We have a few more that have to be completed, but we'll share them with you when we're finished.
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful day

How We've Been Keeping Busy

Good evening! We hope everyone is having a superb week so far. We have been on Spring Break this week, which should mean that we have a lot of time to work on new projects. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, we've spent a lot of the week working on Etsy orders. We've had quite a few orders, some pretty large. Most of them have been for our Superhero party favors. We also made a few princess bags, but they haven't been quite as popular. So, we decided to change them up a bit, and hope that they become 'popular'. We'd rather make princesses than superheros- they're so much prettier and more fun. So, here is what we came up with:

This is the first set of redesigned bags. We had a lady who was interested in these four characters. Rapunzel may be my favorite ever! Each bag has been slightly embellished, either with glitter or embossing, to add another dimension to them. We have some more characters to share with you, but we'll save those for tomorrow!
Thanks for stopping by! 

April Fool's Day is...

I can't believe it's already April! Since today is the first, and better known as April Fool's Day, we have a fun little card to share with you.

The card says, "A Good Day to be a Little Goofy," which is a great description for today. All of the cuts are from Mickey & Friends. I hope you didn't get tricked too badly today!

Thanks for stopping by!