Improvements on the Guest Bathroom

Over the past year or so, my husband and I have been doing work on our spare bathroom. There was nothing really wrong with the bathroom, but the vanity was a cheaper material and style, there was a hard plastic glued half way up the walls (almost like wall paper), and it just didn't quite fit our style.

This all really started when they had a vanity that I fell in love with on sale at Lowe's (roughly 65% off). I couldn't pass it up. After some difficulty (the whole for the drain was in the bottom of the vanity, the actual drain went through the wall), we installed our vanity. Then I decided I would just peal the hard plastic off the wall. Simple, right? Unfortunately, I managed to get the plastic off, but the adhesive was so strong, some of the drywall came off with it. So my husband and I patched the spots and sanded and then painted with some leftover white paint. The wall ended up looking pretty rough. Then came the next part of the plan.

We had leftover paint from our light blue living room, and decided to save money on new paint, we would just paint the bathroom that color as well. Then, on another Lowe's visit, we found the solution to our rough walls. They sold a nice tongue and groove paneling for the wall. Slowly but surely, we cut all of the boards, painted them with leftover white ceiling paint, and put them up. To finish it off, we some left over gift cards from our wedding and my birthday, we got a new light fixture and a towel bars. To add a little pop of color, we added a picture that I took of our magnolia tree in a nice simple frame, and voila, a nice peaceful bathroom that we love.

Before:

After:

Angel Food Cupcakes

Last Thursday my husband and I were tasked with feeding the 20 or so person "small group" that we're a part of. So we made the Stuffed Shell Lasagna that I posted a recipe for earlier, and it was absolutely delicious. For dessert, we tried something a bit different - Angel Food Cupcakes. Here's how they turned out:

Recipe (ok, so they weren't quite homemade): makes roughly 30...

Ingredients:
A box of angel food cake mix (we used Giant Eagle brand because we're classy like that)
1 small tub (8 oz.) of cool whip (or store brand) - thawed
1 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple (drained)
1 3.4 oz. box of instant vanilla pudding
Strawberries or fresh fruit for topping

Directions:
1.) Preheat oven to 350 deg F.
2.) Prepare angel food cake mix according to directions on box.
3.) Fill muffin papers approx 3/4 full with the batter.
4.) Bake cupcakes for roughly 16 minutes or until golden brown and fully cooked.
5.) Let cupcakes cool.
6.) Mix together the cool whip, crushed pineapple, and pudding (don't prepare the pudding, just the powder that comes in the box), and then frost cupcakes with the resulting mixture.
7.) Top with fresh fruit.

The Growing Season

So, a few weeks ago, in the middle of March, our normally still quite cold weather decided to be 80 degrees and sunny for about a week straight. This meant for a delightful week of long after-work walks with my husband, early blooms of spring, and just the happy feeling that the first sunshine of spring provides.

And then....

It froze and everything died! Ok, well not everything. But all of our beautiful blooms lasted a few days and are now shriveled or gone. I did however get a few pictures of our beautiful tree out back before the cold spell.

In addition to the spring blooms, the warm weather prompted my husband and I (possibly somewhat prematurely) to plant some seeds inside that we can later plant in a garden outside. We did this last year with cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes and were quite successful. We might have to replant again before putting outside this year, but we already have some promising looking plants.

So far we've planted:
Squash
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Pickling Cucumber
Green Pepper
Broccoli
Watermelon
Canteloupe

I thinkk we're going to need to thin them out a bit, but I've never planted any sort of melon before so this should be an experience. I also bought seeds to plant chives, cilantro, spaghetti squash, and zucchini. I'm pretty excited. :)