Exquisite Blooms got a new WEBSITE....YEAH!!!

From Exquisite Blooms

It's been long over due, as mentioned by my sweet sweet sister like almost every week! So I finally sat down and re-designed the whole thing. Now according to my sister it looks "REAL", hmmm thanks sissy! No but really she is right, it is now on a much higher caliber of websites and I don't mean to toot my own horn but I did the entire thing myself. Just like my logo, it takes me a few tries but I figure things out :). (Oh, another Sally thing...I HATE asking for help so I figure it out even if it takes me a year).

The Baked Chicken

From Sally's Blog-A Warm Conversation

Ok, so let me premise this story by saying that I consider myself to be a pretty good cook. I usually don't follow recipes unless I am making something special, I just get what I have and make something work. Wednesday night was a completely different story. What I made was very good but it was another Sally moment that ruined the meal. I was either going to fast or pulled another blonde-y...

So the setting was Wednesday afternoon, I had defrosted a whole chicken and was ready to pop it in the oven. Wait, lets back up a year or two...back in the mid 2000's while living on Trojan Avenue with my twin sista. I learned a valuable lesson back then, don't buy any kind of whole chicken OTHER THAN Foster Farms chicken. My sister once bought a generic brand whole chicken from Food-4-Less and it was practically a meat-less chicken, all bone. It was like the poor thing had been starved, well maybe that's an exaggeration but it was seriously lacking in hearty helpings of meat. Okay fast forward to early last week...I am walking through Albertsons picking up some groceries and see that they have whole chickens for $5.00. Now at this point the "sister" story is ringing in my head but how can I possibly pass up a $5.00 whole chicken? Exactly, I can't! Into the cart the chicken goes and then into the freezer when I get home. Okay so now we are back at Wednesday afternoon...so I defrost the chicken overnight and then I season it (lathered in butter and then sprinkled with lawrys garlic salt, kosher salt and pepper), put it in my Pampered Chef covered baker, add a few potatoes and carrots, a little water at the bottom and then pop it in the oven. About two hours later I pull it out and it looks heavenly, perfectly golden brown, smells delicious, just perfect...SO I THOUGHT.

Yeah, so I start to cut into the gorgeous chicken and my mouth is watering (I have already pulled off a piece of skin and it was very tasty) and what do I feel...BONE. "Its true!" I think to myself, "you buy a cheap chicken and you get a cheap chicken", there was no meat, all I felt was rib cage. Ha, ha oh well right? Miah comes in laughs as well and we pull what we can off the bones and eat, it tasted really good either way.

So by this time you are thinking, "Okay, why is this such a great story? Where is the "Sally moment?", it's coming. So we go off to Bible class, then to my parents house to visit with my mom and then we come home. The anorexic chicken is still sitting in the baker on the oven so I start to pull all the meat off that I can so that I can possibly make chicken salad for lunch the next day. I pull the chicken out of the baker and turn it over and Voila, the missing meat!!! Yes folks I had the stupid thing upside down the entire time and when I cut into the "breast" and felt only rib cage, its because the breast was on the bottom hiding from me!!! There it is, the Sally moment. I laughed and laughed because how could I mistake the bottom of a chicken for the top?!?!?! Needless to say I made a ton of chicken salad that I am still eating. So lesson learned, check which side you are facing up before placing in the dish. I am telling you though, I am not an inexperienced cook, I HAVE made baked chicken before. It was all very funny and I hope I am not alone in making some of these mistakes :). I am going to add this one to my pool of the "Semi-House Wife Tales".

Oh and about the weeping holes...I found them!!! Who ever installed the windows covered them up with the casing that was holding the windows in. I removed the bottom piece and the water POURED out of the window sills. Now we just need to replace the bottom casing with a thinner piece and we will have perfectly functioning weeping holes.

Rain Rain go away...

I sang this song with my niece this evening as we left Bible class and I half held her half splashed her feet through the puddles. She giggled the entire time and asked "can we do it again?". Well anyway, I don't really want the rain to go away, it is fun to be cozy and in sweats and Uggs all day but it is posing one problem...water leaks around the house. Now you are probably thinking "In the roof?", nope through the windows. You see we bought this adorable little 1943 cottage but along with the adorable 1943 cottage comes some "out of date" and "needs to be fixed" charms. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my 1943 cottage for a brand new home, I love all things vintage and a vintage home that I can make my own suits my style. However, I will say I was a little frustrated this evening to find water pouring into our master bedroom through the window sills. APPARENTLY, windows are suppossed to have things called "weeping holes" so that when the sills fill with water during rain storms (like todays) they can drain and the water just flows right out to the exterior. Our weeping holes are either backwards or non-existent!!! The water was collecting in the sills and then seeping through the walls making little pathways between the paint and the sheet rock and then eventually onto the wall and onto our floors. NOT A GOOD THING!!!! The little lumpy patches around the west facing window sills that looked like someone took putty to them but I couldn't figure out why they were there now make sense and I now know why they are there!!! Needless to say I have a lot to watch tomorrow since we are going to have more rainy weather and then hopefully soon we can get the weeping holes either drilled in or...I don't even know.

:(

Valentine's Day Craft

This weekend my sister, mom and I made Valentines wreaths for our front doors. Here is mine...

From Sally's Blog-A Warm Conversation

I was hoping to get a pic of all 3 but forgot :(. Anyone else make a valentine craft?

Leap Year or Romantic Comedy for that matter

From Sally's Blog-A Warm Conversation

So tonight my mother, sister and I went to see Leap Year and I L-O-V-E-D, loved it! I am a sucker for a good romantic comedy and this is definitely up there in my top 5 girl movies ever. I love the chemistry, the flirting, the fighting and then of course the ending where the guy gets the girl and this one had it all. You see, I am a romantic to the bone, I love the idea and excitement of a good romance. I love to watch a movie where a girl meets a guy, hates the guy and then falls head over heals in love for the guy, it gives me butterflies! Since I was a little girl my mom and sister and I have watch romantic comedies not just once or twice but over and over and over again. Give me French Kiss, You've Got Mail and Sweet Home Alabama (when SHA was in the movies I saw it 3 days in a row!) any day and I would be in heaven. This will be added to my DVD collection the minute it hits Targets shelves. Some movies are cute and really good and super romantic but there are only a handful that I can watch over and over and this is one of them. Of course I like other sorts of movies, but there is just something about a romantic comedy that draws me in. For example The Blind Side, now The Blind Side has been out for a while and everyone says that it is soooo good, and I am sure that it is and eventually I will see it. However, if you give me a movie ticket, I will 100% of the time choose to see the latest romantic comedy. I know that The Blind Side is supposed to win all kinds of awards and that movies like Leap Year and Sweet Home Alabama will NEVER win awards but I still choose romantics. I can't really describe it, when I was younger it was that feeling that you get when you see a romantic movie and you can't wait to grow up and someday have that 1st kiss with someone and fall in love. Now that I am older it is knowing that feeling 1st hand and having lived it which makes it all the more exciting to watch, just my opinion. It's the possibility of love and the truth of love that gets and has always gotten me. I love it!!! It's the fantasy of love, the enchantment of love and the butterflies of love that have me day dreaming for days after. Am I a freak? Probably but that's okay :).

Oh and it also helps that the male lead is always so cute and sexy and in the case of Leap Year Declan, the lead, is both cute (gorgeous rather) and sexy but with a hint of pain and small town boy (very similar to Sweet Home Alabama but Irish instead). Also, the lead in this one, Matthew Goode, I have loved since I saw him in a lesser known romantic comedy, Chasing Liberty with Mandy Moore, which I love love love as well.

Basically, go see it if you want a good, fuzzy feeling, perfect ending kind of movie where you walk out and want to run away to Ireland to find that gorgeous, brooding, bearded face, small village Irishman to sweep you off your feet (oh wait I'm married, just kidding Miah ;)). Plus who doesn't love Amy Adams?!?!?! Oh and Ireland?!?!?! I have to go to Ireland now :)

Crazy Sally

Ok, so I am a total BLONDE sometimes, I do things that are so dumb because I am so impulsive and do things so fast without thinking. My sister and Jeremiah call them "Sally Moments". This one is pretty "Sally-ish".

Ok so this is how it starts, my cousin Sarah who lives in Sequim, Washington (which happens to be just a few miles from Forks, WA the home of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen but that's another story and obsession for another time) just had a beautiful baby boy in early December. Since we (my sister and I) were raised with Sarah as practically our triplet it is a given that we would be traveling up to Sequim to see the baby. So last week my sister and I finalize our travel dates and decide that we will be flying to Seattle on the 16th of January and then returning late on the 18th. This is the perfect weekend because it is Martin Luther King weekend and a bank holiday which works perfect for my sister who have a bank job. Alrighty, so the date was set and all I had to do was go on Expedia and book the tickets. No problem right? WRONG! Anyway as the story continues, I log onto Expedia early last week and notice that the fares have started to go up. "Oh no" I thought I better book immediately because I don't want them to go up anymore. Soooooo, I hurriedly pick the flights (really crappy ones I might add because that was all I could find) click book, enter the cc info and "voila!" we are off to Seattle and then onto Sequim on the 16th.

I feel relieved and send the itinerary to my sister who calls me to tell me that the flights suck because we will end up being there for only 1 full day. She suggests that I call and see if we can leave one day later and she will take a vacation day on the 19th. "OK" I respond and log back into Expedia to see if I can make those changes. The answer as all of us travelers know is "Absolutely NOT" right? But you see, that is NOT the issue...the issue is that my itinerary says that our flights are for Feb. 6th through the 8th!!!!! Not even in the month of January!!!! I start to panic, look at the computer screen a million times to make sure I am reading it right and then immediately start calling Expedia and the airline company to tell them my mistake and that I desperately need to make a change before my sister finds out. What is the answer I get from everyone including 2 managers that I spoke to, "Well yes Miss Sally (I am speaking to outsourcing in Asia) you can change but it will be $150 per traveler". That is more than each round trip ticket cost!!!! After much pleading and practically crying they would NOT budge and so I had to call me sister and tell her what happened. Now, just as a side note...I was not afraid to call my sister to tell her because she is mean, but I knew she would make fun of me and say what a Sally move that was. That is EXACTLY what she did! She laughed and said "typical Sally, I am not surprised at all". So in the end, we are going to Sequim the 1st weekend in February and we have horrible flights.

I tried to take donations on Facebook but no one donated :(.

P.S. Did I ever tell the story on here about how I made Jeremiah and I miss our flight home from our honeymoon in Italy by like 8 hours??? That's a good story too. Filled with lots of crying and newly wed forgiveness from my sweet sweet and total understanding of Sally-ness husband.

Look what I Made :)

I made this for on of my living room walls. It will go above the new headboard bench I had made...picture to come after I make a seat cushion for it. I was inspired by a blog post on Jeune Marie but I wanted to use one of my own pics so after playing around with Adobe Illustrator I made this!!! It is a picture of my favorite door in Venice and will go perfect in my living room.

P.S. I also put up some photos from Venice above our sofa but again a picture of those will have to come later :).

From Sally's Blog-A Warm Conversation