Who loves pizza?

Probably a rhetorical question because, duh! Everyone likes pizza.

Since I turned thirty I've been slowly trying to get my fat ass not so much. Five, almost six, weeks ago I joined an 8 week challenge which has a possibility of a seriously decent payout. I'm probably not going to win but I have definitely seen some major changes in my body since starting. 

And how does that relate to pizza, you're probably asking yourself. 

Well since I'm in the throes of this challenge and my kids asked for homemade pizza for dinner last night I improvised. 

Pizza...salad? 

Alright so I know it sounds a little...weird? But I swear it's good! The key is to use a flavorful marinara as your dressing. Hubs brought home a jar of Simply Nature organic Marinara. 1/2 c is 40 calories! I can definitely get down with that. 

So what you'll need for this interesting salad:

Bagged lettuce. (Or regular if you're not lazy like I clearly am)

Marinara Sauce

Shredded mozzarella 

And your favorite pizza toppings 

I did orange bell peppers, pepperoni, black olives and tomatoes. 

It's such a quick and easy dinner and it's so delicious! My plate last night was less than 400 calories and it was a huge salad and I was SO full! 

Give it a try and let me know what you think. 

Darling so it goes...

Some things are meant to be.

I've been stuck on the idea of using gas station letters for a wall art project for a few months now.  I scoured etsy and there are a ton of vendors who sell vintage/used gas station letters but most of them were selling for about $9/letter.  Cute, but not cute enough for the price.  So, I did a little google searching and realized that it would be cheaper - much cheaper - to buy a kit from a sign company.

I used one of my pinterest boards as inspiration and decided on some of my favorite lyrics.  Elvis, UB40, Ingrid Michaelson, whatever your pleasure, the song is beautiful and I love it.

After spacing out the letters and doing some fancy measuring with blue tape we picked up some 3M double sided foam tape and we were ready to go.  To be honest, all the credit for getting this up belongs to Paolo.  I was skeptical of his system, had a little bit of a melt down and ended up leaving him to his own devices to get it done.  

We still have other little things to get done in the apartment but it feels like things are slowly coming together.  Next up, framing wedding pictures!

-J

His & Hers

I've been married for 9 years last October. We'll be celebrating our 10 year anniversary October 22. That's a long time. The first few years of our marriage we never really had a place that was OURS. We had an apartment, we lived in my parents attic, his parent's basement but it wasn't until we moved to Iowa for medical school that we had to make our house a home. We moved into our townhouse sight unseen based on the help of some AWESOME people that I'd never actually met. It definitely served its purpose. It was a 2 bedroom townhouse in an income restricted neighborhood. It was perfect for us. Cheap considering our income was all of $0/year while we were medical students and lived completely off of student loans. It was then I realized I had NO idea who I was. What I liked. How I wanted my home to be decorated. It was then I started to find myself and figure out what from my past I wanted to incorporate into my new life. We lived in that townhouse for just a year and a half and moved the day my 2nd son turned 2. We moved into a house. It was absolutely gigantic in comparison. 4 bedrooms and 2 baths with a basement! It was there we welcomed our third son, Owen and I was able to decorate for the first time, a nursery! We lived in that house until we moved to our first home that we bought in Kansas City. I feel like a grownup now. I can paint the walls whatever color I want (and by I, I mean my husband). I can hammer stuff wherever I'd like. No landlord to stop me.
My room has been a butterfly in the year and a half that we've lived here. Starting off with nothing but basic old stuff from my previous places and transformed and changed into what it is today. A cohesive and peaceful place that I spend way too much time watching Sons of Anarchy in. (I mean Jax Teller. Need I say more?!)
Months ago my friend Jackie sent me a text with the following Etsy listing saying that I needed to make these. It was when I was big into embroidering so we'd thought for sure they would be embroidered.

Buy Pillows Here

I'm in love with the idea of his and hers pillows. They're romantic and cute but I don't say hello there handsome and he definitely doesn't say good morning gorgeous. (Bed head, yo. It's a real thing.)

I know the last time I blogged that I blogged about Matt Nathanson, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to be blogging about him again. There are other things I'm interested in, Jax Teller for instance....but today as I was listening to one of my favorite Matty songs I had a brilliant idea. It wouldn't go away so I present you with the CC&J spin on his and hers pillows. 

Here are the supplies you'll need. 

I bought a 2 pack of white shams from Walmart. I wasn't sure how this was going to work out so I wanted it to be cheap. I plan on buying better supplies (fabric paint vs. marker for one thing) and making them a bit more refined. But these work! And they were cheap. $15 for the whole project! The Fabric Paint marker was in the craft section of my Walmart. I bought the fattest one they had.
And Red Bull is optional. Unless you're in my life. Then it's a necessity.

First get your marker ready by shaking thoroughly and pressing the tip to get the paint flowing. Once it's flowing PRACTICE your writing. I practiced on my dog's pillow and also a box from my kids' crackers. I practiced mine twice and never practiced Barry's (big mistake, HUGE!).

Next lay your pillow cases/shams whatever out. I highly recommend pinning them to your carpet or otherwise securing them so that your fabric stays nice and taut. Otherwise writing with the marker is a bit of a biotch.

See I wasn't kidding about the Red Bull...delicious.

Then write your word or phrase.

Shove your pillows into the cases and then put them on your bed! Voila! Cute his and hers pillows. I can't wait to get my fabric paint! (Also, stunned looks jacked...sorry B.)

And then listen to this glorious and sexy song.

Kill the Lights-Matt Nathanson (YouTube video...seriously amazing performance)
Kill The Lights MP3

A Baking Story

I started baking about 3 years ago, nothing super fancy, boxed cakes, muffins, and brownies.  You know the stuff you secretly love but you're not supposed to use anymore because the internets is full of tutorials on how to do it from scratch?  That stuff.

Little by little, I started baking more and more from scratch and like the rest of the world, fell in love with cupcakes.  I found baking blogs and started buying cupcake everything.  I started with a whisk, graduated to a hand mixer, and finally after lots of sweat and tears because my buttercream wasn't fluffy enough, I earned my KitchenAid mixer.  In the process of baking cupcakes on a regular basis I acquired a ridiculous amount of stuff: cupcake pans, liners, pastry tips, sprinkles, food coloring, toppers, cupcake books, cupcake kitchen decor, so much cupcake stuff.  I had huge pans, regular pans, mini pans, and then all of a sudden cupcakes were too much.  They were too dainty or too much work or too sweet, basically they just weren't me anymore. So I stopped with the cupcakes and moved on.

I started making simple cakes and cookies, I stopped using all of the extra stuff and fell in love with a few staples.  A few cake pans, baking sheets, a sturdy rubber spatula, and parchment paper.  I'm still learning, I'm not an expert and on occasion I have massive baking fails that make me want to cry, but I feel more at home in my kitchen now.

We finally finished moving into our new place last week and I got rid of all that extra stuff and it was a GLORIOUS feeling.  I'm a huge fan of purging in general but something about purging in the beginning of a new year, in a new place, just felt right.

Lately, I've been stuck on this recipe.  I followed the directions but I used 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and added 1 vanilla bean, because. Vanilla bean.  Biscotti with a cup of coffee and a new book?  I'm in.

Also, my KitchenAid.  She's red and beautiful and her name is Lucinda.

-J

The time Matt Nathanson rocked my world...

Once upon a time, not so long ago, two friends embarked on an epic journey.

No for real though, a couple of weeks ago Carly came out to visit me. (For the record, I live in the frozen tundra of KCMO and she and Jenn live in Seattle. I'm a transplant to the midwest and frozen to the core.) I had a milestone birthday, 27 again, and Carly came out to celebrate. We had a jampacked weekend planned. First I'd pick her up from the airport and we'd head to Lawrence, KS to see my boyfriend/favorite singer/dreamboat Matt Nathanson. Probably grab some dinner but I'd purchased tickets to the concert in August maybe? And the trip was kind of centered around Matt & Hunger Games Catching Fire.

 Carly was familiar with the music Matt makes and thumbs ups his songs on Pandora but she wasn't familiar with the magic that surrounds Matty when he performs. Her face when he stepped on stage was seriously priceless. There's something about Matt that just brings you right there and makes you feel like the only two girls in the room. Anyway, the show in Lawrence was amazing. We were pretty close to the stage about 3 people back, smack dab between "heart hands", Drunk Lady yelling "Aaaaaaaaron, you're the shit!!!" and the short couple that cut right in front of us and then proceeded to make out the entire time. (PS they were my parents' age.) Gosh I sound like such a fan girl but he was making eye contact with us pretty much the whole show. I'm just saying if you haven't seen the dude live, well that's a mistake on you. His songs don't sound overtly sexual, I mean obviously there's a reference here and there that might clue you in but seeing him live just proves that every.thing. he does is sexy. Also once you see him live you can't listen to the songs he's sung for you and not imagine his hips. Lawd. Those hips.

After the concert we didn't feel the cold as we strutted to our car parked behind the Granada in Lawrence. As soon as we were safely enclosed in the four doors of my Accord I pulled out my phone and pulled up Matt on spotify.
"Oh, he plays in Tulsa tomorrow. I wonder how far away Tulsa is." I said innocently as I selected Some Mad Hope to listen to on the 35 minute drive home.
Carly pulls out her phone and types Tulsa into google maps.
"Huh, about 4 hours."
"Oh that's not too bad."
"Yeah..."
So we listened to about half of the CD all while musing about how not that far Tulsa was. Plus we'd never really spent any time in Oklahoma. And she was only here for a short time. My husband had already planned on taking care of our kids that day so that I could have a legit girl weekend since he had to work on Saturday. We were justifying the expenditure in our heads all while driving home. After the realization that tickets were only $20/each we bought tickets for the next night in Tulsa! And then we almost died.

After our brush with death I was a little nervous about driving 4 hours to Tulsa. We'd bought the tickets though, and remembering the way we felt Thursday night we decided to go on and go forth and drive to Tulsa. I mean we were driving south. It's warmer in the south. Right?

Have you ever taken a road trip with your best friend? Belting out music, crushing pink Rockstars, and eating jalapeno chips? If not I suggest one, STAT. For some reason the GPS on my phone took me on a two lane highway from The Plaza in KC to Tulsa, OK. I'm pretty sure there was a more direct and less boring route, but whatevs. My phone knows the way.

After being mistaken for twins not once, but twice, we finally made it to Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, OK. It definitely wasn't warmer in Tulsa. You don't know this about me, but I'm a shy person. I don't talk to people I don't know. I have a very bitch face. Nobody talks to me. For some reason, standing outside of the concert venue in 28 degree weather made me feel chatty. I talked to a really cool couple in front of us. They were there to see Joshua Radin who was the opening band. :yawn: and pass the dude some Red Bull. He needs some damn wings. We talked about our love for Matt and his hips and blah blah. So the doors opened and we were literally RIGHT THERE. I could touch the stage. Get spit on. Sweated on. Whatever! It was the most ideal position for the concert!

I kid you not, Matt stepped on stage and made a "hey! I recognize you" face at Carly and me. Probably at Carly. I mean obviously she's the hot one. So throughout the night Matty made eye contact again with us throughout the whole thing. I made him laugh when I fanned myself during Faster. (Seriously there's just something about a guy singing falsetto.) I sang "Can't stop thinking about the guy in the Make shirt." and he saw me. Basically I made a fool of myself for over an hour. He totally asked Carly what her tattoo says. Basically we felt like rock stars. We met the drummer, Chris. And guess what? He said he noticed us in the front row. WHAT?

So perspective, it's a funny thing. Matt and his friends rocked our world. They noticed us. Matt tweeted us and thanked us for coming to the show both nights. So for Carly and me it was one of the most amazing and memorable weekends of our lives. For Matt? Just another show. We're just some crazy fan girls with lipstick and teeth that drove 4 hours to be groupies. By now he's probably forgotten us (or has he?!)

Just in case he somehow finds this blog:

Dear Matty,
Thank you for the weekend full of memories. It was probably just as amazing as being tangled up in hotel sheets (with you). For hours. Over and over again. Or maybe not.
xoxo,
Sunshine

 --Christia

Holiday Party Pretty

Here's a fun little tutorial I threw together with ideas for holiday party eye makeup.  I know, I know, the rules say not to do eyes and lips at the same time, but if winter is good for anything, it's more saturated pigments, and I say go bold or go home! I paired this look with a deep wine red- my favorite Nars, Terre De Fue.

-Carly