Ghosts and Ghouls

It’s beginning to look a little Halloweeny around here!  This weekend, the decorations were busted out, made and put up. In an effort to save some cash, I made some ghosts to hang in our palm tree outside. They’re super cute, super easy, super cheap (it only cost around $3.50 for materials) and they look really cool when the wind blows the palm fronds and they whip around J

So, here goes nothing! I started out with these three things, cheese cloth, heavy starch and Sean’s coffee to-go-cup-thingy. I used it because it was tall and it had a round top. You can use whatever you want to make that shape; this is just what I had on hand that would work.

I started by wrapping the cup in cellophane so I wouldn’t ruin the cup. I later found out that a plastic grocery bag worked much better.  I. Hate. Cellophane. And it hates me.  I then rolled out the cheese cloth and separated all the layers and cut it into strips about 14-16” long. The ghosts turn out really cool looking if you lay the strips of cheese cloth like a cross, it gives it some dimension.

After those steps, I draped the cheese cloth over the coffee cup.

And now, we spray  J   I took it outside for this step and sprayed the heavy starch reeeaaalllyyy generously all over the cheese cloth. To the point of where the whole thing was a foamy white because I sprayed so much haha.

After that, you just leave it to dry. This first one that was photographed took hours to dry, and since I’m impatient, I decided to take the blow dryer to the rest of them to hurry the drying process. That worked like a charm!

Once I had my form, I took a Sharpie marker to draw some eyes and a mouth on it. I then ran some fishing line through its head so it could hang. Here’s one all completed!

Super cute right? Here is what the front of the house looks like, with the exception of the pumpkin that’s hanging from my mailbox, I totally forgot to squeeze him in the pic.

Not too long after I took that picture, a storm rolled in... In fear that the rain would totally ruin my project, I took the little guys inside and hung them in our Ficus tree. They look kinda cool with the glow of the tv!

I carried the Halloween theme inside, as well, with some table décor. I found this awesome table runner at Michaels and made the centerpiece out of a wine glass, candles and some Candy Corn. If it’s looking a little scarce on Candy Corn, it’s because I cant stop eating it… Oops.

We were also given this creepy looking little dude from Sean’s mom. He lights up and weirds everyone out that comes in the house.  But that’s what Halloween is all about, right? He kinda looks like Casper with a little bit of Michelin Man mixed in there... You can even see a faint line of a training bra, do you see it? What a weirdo!

What are you doing for Halloween? Are you decorating your house?

Gwen Stephonics!

This sh** is bananas! B-a-n-a-n-a-s! Ok, so, I have a habit… I buy bananas with the intent to eat them every morning and I always end up leaving the house without a nanner in hand. A few days later and they end up looking like this:

Ew!

In an effort to not be a waste case, I put them to good use and made banana bread! So, instead of forgetting to bring a banana to work, I can now forget to bring the bread to work, ha!

Here’s the recipe I use to make my banana bread J

3 Bananas (mashed)

1 cup Sugar (I was just shy of a cup so I used a heaping tbsp of brown sugar)

2 Eggs (beaten)

½ cup Vegetable oil (I used coconut oil)

1tsp Baking Soda

½ tsp Salt

Checking to make sure you have the ingredients needed is usually a good idea, but if you’re like me and you don’t even look, just pray you have other things to improvise! A way to make this a tad bit healthier would be to use Stevia instead of Sugar, Coconut Oil instead of Vegetable Oil, and Wheat Flour instead of White Flour.

The next step is to mix all of the ingredients together and put it in a greased pan. I skipped that step because I have a stone baking pan from Pampered Chef that doesn’t really require that. Then you plop it in the oven at 350* for one hour!

Your house will soon smell uhhhhmazing, then when the dinger goes off, pull it out and let it cool! Check out that yumminess!

After it cooled for a bit, I cut into it to sneak a piece. It was awesome!

It was so fluffy it reminded me of this awesome chick:

Yes, that is a Despicable Me reference. I stooped that low to make you giggle, hopefully it worked ;) 

Well folks, that’s all for now. We’ve got a fun, exciting weekend ahead! Its Sean’s birthday Saturday, but we’ll be celebrating tonight. I planned a surprise dinner for him, hopefully it’ll work out! Then Saturday, we’re attending our friend’s Trevor and Jesica’s wedding at the Florida Aquarium! I’m so excited J



Concrete, breakfast and bad outfits

What a busy weekend! I left off Friday with a picture of Sean tearing up our yard with a bobcat… About three or four months ago I came home for lunch and found him and his friend clearing out our side yard, what a mess!

Throughout the next few weeks we prepped the area for concrete. I had some wire mesh and rebar delivered to the house from my work and everything was ready to go! We did a cool free form pattern connecting the slab to our back porch. You can kind of see from the picture how it carries into the back yard, it looks really neat!

So seven in the morning on Saturday, this big guy showed up. A loud concrete truck to wake up all the neighbors; who definitely hate us now… Sorry!

Everything went pretty smoothly once we got going and we definitely had a good crew of friends to help finish the slab.

Now, let’s pause for a second to discuss Sean’s choice of outfits… I know this picture below is blurry, but do you see this hot mess? In his mind, its practical; board shorts to rinse off, rubber boots to rinse off as well, and no shirt, because it was freakin hot out, but really? He will never dress our children… Mark my words.

As the work went on, I continued to fill up waters and I also fed the boys breakfast. More on that in a little bit.

Later on in the day, as the concrete dried, we used a quick cut saw to cut lines in the slab. This is done so that the slab doesn’t crack. Normal people would use proper safety gear such as safety glasses, ear protection, steel toe boots, and pants. But, not my boy. He wore safety glasses and ear protection, but still had on his board shorts and by that time had kicked off the rubber boots and threw on some flip flops. OSHA would have a field day with this one, but I guess two out of four isn’t that bad… ha!

I'm happy to report that all ten toes are still attached :)

Also, since no one wants to wake up ridiculously early on Saturday morning, I thought I would make it somewhat worth their time to come over and help, so I made breakfast. When it comes to making breakfast for 8 hungry boys, the easiest way to do it is to make breakfast casserole. So I took all of the wonderful breakfast items that everyone loves and through it all together. It makes for fewer dishes, which I most definitely appreciate. I started with a 9x13 glass dish and lined it with hash browns, kind of like a pie crust. I used the southwest style hash browns for some extra flavor.  

I then took a pound of cooked bacon (that I cooked the night before) and chopped it up and put it on top of the hash browns. It was actually less than a pound because Sean found it in the fridge and ate some... Dangit.

Next, I cracked 12 eggs and whisked them up. I threw in a bunch of spices, salt, pepper, garlic, parsley, Cajun seasoning, and a dash of cayenne pepper for some bite. Once that was all mixed up, I poured the mixture into my hash brown and bacon lined dish. I tossed it in the oven at 325* for about 20 minutes.

Once it was all cooked, I took it out and sprinkled 2 cups of Colby Jack cheese on top and placed it back in the oven for about 3-4 minutes to get the cheese all melted. Here’s what it looked like when I pulled it out, check out that cheesy masterpiece, yum!

 

And here’s what it looked like 5 minutes later…

Apparently they liked it!

All in all, Saturday was a successful day and we are very thankful to our helpful and dedicated friends. We now have a slab to park the trailer for the lawn maintenance business, which Sean started today! September was a whirlwind of a month, and we couldn’t be more excited for our future. Let’s hope the rest of the year is as exciting and full of good news like September was!

We bought a...

Zoo! Just kidding, we bought a Lawn Maintenance Company! Big Huge things have been happening in our little Dockerty household lately and I’m so excited to spill the beans.

Small recap: Sean and I both started our new jobs at around the same time last year, him working for Bright House and me working for HD Supply. I love my job, meanwhile; he wasn’t so fond of his… Sean is such a hard worker and he is so driven and has always wanted to be his own boss.

So, when the opportunity came along to buy the business, we looked into it and examined how our lives would change (home life, finances, etc.) and decided that this plan was totally feasible. Now, he’ll have more time for side jobs, Haulin’ It, LLC (the other company he currently owns and runs), time with me and the fur-kids, and, my personal favorite, more time to get stuff done around the house! Yippee!!! Not only that, but he’ll be making more money. For our little family, this plan is a win/win and we couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities that are to come our way.

Without further ado, here it is!

So proud! Do you like the celtic symbol? Very Irish for my Dockerty boy :)

Today is actually Sean’s last day with Bright House Networks, which means no more free cable and internet (sad face!) but we couldn’t be more excited for him to start his latest endeavor. Please keep us in your prayers as we go through this huge transition, it should, (in theory) be a smooth one, but you never know what can happen….

As for wedding updates, most of our guests have received their wedding invites and we’ve gotten many compliments, which definitely makes the hard work of assembling them seem worth it! And, my wedding dress is officially altered! As well as my future sister-in-law’s dresses and Sean’s tie! By the way, it’s much cheaper to have a tie made than to buy one, plus you get to pick the perfect fabric for the occasion! Just a lil tip for ya, no need to thank me ;)

Also, this weekend there are big things happening to the house, I’ll be sure to upload some pictures and fill you in on the madness. Here’s a quick pic to hold you over, ahhh!!!

Who's that hunk driving? Oh, it's just Sean... Destroying things around our house... No big deal.

Holy Ravioli!

After Erin got some much needed rest from running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off (the shower was a little stressful for her), we got together on Sunday to make some tasteful Italian dishes! I’m going to start today with how we made homemade raviolis that were delectable! Definitely worthy of making Grandma Guggino proud. So, let’s begin.

The recipe we use is quite simple to make the homemade pasta:

2 cups of flour

2 eggs

1tsp salt

4 tbs milk

That’s it! You then mix it until all of the ingredients are blended and it looks like this:

Next step is to roll it out!  Since we were a little scarce on counter-space, we rolled it out right on the flat top! Be sure to throw down some flour before hand; this actually worked really well for us. We made it in to a ball and rolled it out from there.

After it was all rolled out, leave it to dry. The best way to do this, as taught by Grandma Guggino, is to lay it on a towel and leave it alone! So, in true Italian style, we put them on the bed in the spare room haha; welcome house guests! Please excuse our fresh pasta drying on your bed. We made 5 batches that day.

In the mean time, we got started on the meat that we were going to put in the raviolis. Here we have a pound of ground chuck with some parsley, garlic, salt and pepper.

We browned the meat and drained the grease. After that, we mixed in some fresh parmesan and some of the parmesan dressing from Carrabbas that we had from the shower the day before. Their house dressing has amazing flavor and it made the meat mixture taste sooo good!

After the pasta dried for about an hour, we laid it across two cutting boards and it was time to cut! We started with this little cutting tool, but we later learned that you could just use a wine glass like you would a cookie cutter. It worked perfectly!

Then, it was time to stuff! A teaspoon of meat was really all that we could stuff into our lil raviolis (with enough space to pinch the sides closed), so we quickly got to work. Well, Erin did most of the stuffing; I was busy getting our wedding invites prepared to send out! Eeek!

We were going to be good girls and wait ‘til dinner to try our little creation, but we were way too excited! So Erin plopped some into an oven safe glass dish, through some mozzarella cheese and some sauce on top, and in the oven it went for 15 minutes. The outcome? Absolutely delicious!!! I wish I had after pictures, but we ate them all… Best part? The boys loved them too. You could cook them in the sauce like we did, or you could boil them like regular pasta. Either way works, the only part you have to cook is the pasta. Next on the list, homemade spaghetti sauce! Stay tuned kiddos!

September Showers!

What a great weekend! I started off Saturday by getting a much needed mani and pedi and then got ready for my bridal shower! I can’t believe we are finally at that point of where the parties start, the invites get sent and the planning comes to an end, where did the time go?!?

My wonderful sister-in-law-to-be, Erin made me feel so special (you can find her blog here, she has some great recipes!). She planned and carried out my bridal shower at her lovely home on the inner coastal. It was adorable! The theme was nautical, and boy did I blend right in! I wore a new dress that I got from Hollister and an anchor necklace, complete with shorts on under my dress (because I don’t trust myself in short skirts/dresses, haha!). Here I am with my friend Bri! You can check out her blog here :)

Here is the invite that my lovely ladies received. Uhhhh-dorable!

Let’s start with the food. Oh. Man. It was amazing! My other lovely sister-in-law-to-be, Megan, was able to get some fabulous food from her work, Carrabbas! We had Italian Salad, Chicken Brian, and pasta with Pomodoro sauce, yummy! My friends also pitched in and made some delicious apps too. Nobody left hungry, that’s for sure.

One of my favorite things about the shower was that the theme was carried throughout everything! From table décor to take-away gifts it was all theme oriented; loved it!

The gifts that everyone received were these awesome totes that Erin had made for each guest. The screen print had an anchor with a piece of rope and a saying that went a lil somethin’ like this, “If love were water, I’d give you the sea.” How cute is that?!?

Now for the gifts that I received… I am so blessed to have such amazing friends and family. I literally got a boat load of gifts!

As I said, the theme was literally carried out into almost every aspect. I got some great stuff for the house too! I spent many hours last night washing and putting away our new dishes, cookware, gadgets and utensils. Check out this cute little sign Brittany got me! It dons my soon-to-be-new-last-name, Dockerty!

The best part? Receiving a pair of Double D’s!!!!!!

Just kidding, they’re only hand towels… But I proudly showed them off! And they're already displayed in our lovely abode! J

Overall, it was a fantastic day! A lot of food was eaten, many gifts were opened, and many fish died in the making of the centerpieces… PETA hates us… Sorry fishies!

Also, big shout out to the awesome photographer, Sarah! Be sure to check out her blog where she enlightens us with her adventures and random trips. And now, I shall leave you with random pictures from the party, hope you enjoy!