Update

First things first.  My bracket is about 85% busted at this point.  However, Ohio State is holding in there for me, and squeaked by Arizona by 3 last night to keep me alive.  My only other hope to win points is for Louisville to make it to the Final Four.....woo Cardinals! I must say I am excited about another weekend of great basketball!

Today I am back to the real world after a nearly week long hiatus from life.  We decided we needed to take a Spring Break this year and headed down to the Gulf of Mexico to spend some time with friends and family. It may not have been the warmest spring break on record (in fact it was probably colder than Destin 2010, which was pretty darn cold), but we certainly made the most of it.  Lot's of laughing, lots of family time, a little work thrown in (mostly by the boys) but mostly an all around good time.  I really was not ready to leave yesterday.  We prolonged it as long we could, and didn't leave until 5:00pm...thank goodness we only live a few hours away!  I will have a full recap next week, but I think I hear a second cup of coffee is calling my name.

Can I go back now?

Cagles!

Please be nice to me today reality, k?

Let's Dance

It's time.  That time.  My favorite time of the year.....it's March Madness!  My bracket is done and by the end of the weekend we'll be down to just 16 teams left.  The first 4 days of the tournament are my absolute favorite because it is non-stop basketball for 4 entire days!!!  I can't wait for the upsets to begin!

Based on how this season has gone, it's anyone's tournament.  I told myself I would not play favorites in my picks this year, but apparently if you were a Big10/Mid-western located team, I liked you this year.  So Go Buckeyes! (I can't believe I just said that.)

Weekend Recap a Few Days Late

The past few days have been quite a whirlwind around here. I was planning a weekend recap but life happened and now it's Wednesday and another weekend is quickly approaching. Since my week has been full of traveling for work and not much else, I figured I would do my recap today.

Clockwise from top left: 1) Friday night dinner-crab cakes and lobster/shrimp stuffed portabella mushroom; 2) the pollen is back....great; 3) me after my Insanity workout Sunday night; 4) puppy dog buddies; 5) St. Patrick's Day cookies....the extent of our St. Patty's Day celebration; and 6) As of March 17 I've had Sammie the Sonata for one year.  She's such a fun car!

We decided to stay in in Friday so I stopped by Fresh Market to check out their seafood selection. I adore Fresh Market. I worked at one my senior year in high school (and as a result know the names of many obscure fruits and veggies), and still crave their spinach and artichoke dip on a regular basis among other things. I picked up some goodies and headed to the house. We ate late and since Eric was going fishing, he crashed around 8 and I got caught up on my shows from the week.

Since Eric was gone Saturday morning, the dogs let me sleep til 6:30am. Waaaaaaaay too early in my opinion but I was out numbered 4-1, so I decided I would rather get up and let them out than have to clean up after them. Saturday night Eric wanted to grill some deer burgers so we had some friends over for a cookout. It was friends we have not seen in a while so we had a great time!

Sunday I got up early and headed to church, and then did my best to spend the rest of the day outside. It was so nice here all weekend...if we could just figure out a way to keep the pollen away we'd be in paradise. I knew it was springtime when one of the dog leashes brushed up against one of the pine trees in out back yard and it looked like someone was blowing chalk dust off of the chalk tray in school. I spent Sunday afternoon I getting myself ready for the week. I knew I would be traveling for work 3 days this week, so I wanted to make sure I was on top of everything BEFORE the week got started. We finished off the weekend visiting Eric's dad. He is in the hospital right now with an MRSA infection in his foot. They're having trouble treating it because he is a diabetic and has some blockages in the arteries in his legs which is reducing the blood flow to his legs and feet and is the reason his foot is not healing as quickly as it should. Please keep him in your prayers.

As I said I have been traveling for work this week. I went to Birmingham Monday and Tuesday and today I am in Mobile. It has been crazy around the house with 4 puppies running around (the Schnauzer belongs to Eric's mom.....his dad was taking care of the dog because his mom had a hip replacement 2 weeks ago and we have her now since he is in the hospital) I attempted and successfully walked all 4 of them AT ONE TIME yesterday. I think I may have a future as a professional dog walker, although I am pretty sure I was more exhausted than they were when we got back to the house.

Friday's Letters

We have a 4 alarm system at the Casa de Cagle this weekend  =)

Dear Friday, thank you for being so reliable.  You are right on time this week. I am looking forward to the last of our "unplanned" weekends. We've got lots of fun things coming up this spring!

Dear Eric, Thank you for buying me a new alarm clock after our dinner date last night.  You know you've been married for a minute when you get excited about a new alarm clock. P.S. have I mentioned how much I love my new laundry room?

Dear New Alarm Clock, I guess it would help if I set you so AM hours occur in the morning and the PM hours occur in the evenings. For once I was very thankful that Eric got up early to go fishing and woke me up.

Dear Eric, You should really consider getting up as early as I do every morning. It is so much easier to get up and get ready when I can turn on all of the lights and tv in the morning!  Or maybe we just need to install a tv in the bathroom....hmmmmmm

Dear Daylight Savings, I feel like I totally conquered you this week.  I was up on time every.single.day this week.  Take that!

Dear Hawk, Peanut, Hallow, and Ava (yes we have 4 dogs with us for the time being), it would be really great if you guys could refrain from destroying the house this weekend.

Dear Springtime, I think you are officially up on us as of today (just a few days early)! I cannot wait to enjoy the beautiful weekend you have in store for us!

Happy Friday!

Laundry Room Makeover

When we moved into our house we had a surprisingly short list of things that we wanted to change about it. Our house was empty for a year before we bought it so we bad pretty much a blank canvas to work with and we were very fortunate in that there were very few things we HAD to do when we moved in.  We painted our bedroom and the living room, and put in gas logs (best thing we ever did!), and moved in 2 days after we had the keys in our possession.  Like many homeowners, the longer we've lived there the more changes we've decided to make. In the three years we've lived here, we have painted the kitchen, hung the tv over the mantle, and painted the"hallway" from the living room to the other 2 bedrooms to match the living room.  I use the term hallway very loosely.  It's a square space that has 5 doors and one tiny wall that is not worth hanging anything on. This meant that as of last summer we were able to say that we checked off everything we wanted to do to the house. Yay!

But then we started thinking, and Eric started brainstorming (which means something is going to happen since he is not just a schemer, he is doer, and once gets and idea in his head it is almost always going to come to fruition). We decided that the laundry room could use a little face-lift.  Our laundry room not only serves as a laundry room, but also as an entry way of sorts since we rarely use our front door and our car port is behind our house. My only stipulation? Do NOT remove my laundry room door. He was convinced he would have to, but we were able to find a way around it. =)

Ok enough talking about the whys and hows...I am going to let the pictures do the talking. The pictures on the left are the "befores" and the pictures on the right are the "afters."

This is looking at the wall where we keep our keys and what not.  The door with the blinds is our back door and the other one is the door that I could not let go of to the kitchen.

This is the wall where the washer and dryer are. Cabinets = no clutter! 

The "other wall." This is what you see when you first walk in our back door.  It doesn't even look like the same room to me and I LOVE it! We moved the rack from the washer/dryer wall to this side so I'd still have a place to hang clothes dog leashes. 

I am still shocked at the difference the changes make in this room. And it makes me so happy every time I walk in the house. =)  I am so glad to be done with that ugly eggshell color on the walls.  Our entire house was that color when we moved in, but I am slowly but surely removing it one room at a time.  I picked out the paint color on a whim on Saturday morning, and am really happy with how it looks.

While the cabinets were going up my job was to stay out of the way, so I decided to see what kinds of decorating ideas I could stir up on pinterest.  Since I had no idea we were tackling this project until the day before, I really had not had time to think about decorating. I found a couple of ideas and ran with them and I really love what I ended up with.

The black signs are pieces of wood I purchased at Michaels and JoAnn's for less than $10 per board (with 40% off coupons!).  I painted them with chalkboard paint, and wrote the words on myself with chalk.  The pants phrasing I found on pinterest, but Eric was the one who suggested the sock phrase.  I love love love them!  I want to add a little container to the one with our name on it to put chalk in so people can leave messages like they used to do on the white board (see before pic above).  I hot glued white ribbon to the backs to hang them. The laundry sign and the giant safety pin were Hobby Lobby finds.  I saw some giant safety pins on pinterest and fell in love with them.  I was going to order some but decided to check Hobby Lobby first, and hit the jackpot!  I made the key holder myself last week, and the last thing I added last weekend was the rug.  Eric highjacked my front door rug a couple of weeks ago because our old back door rug bit the dust.  Not only did it not match, my front door was getting lonely, so I was excited to find one that matched so well. 

 I think the craziest part of this is that we did all of it (except for the accents which were finished up later that week) in ONE day. Paint, cabinets, reorganizing....done last Sunday.  I still can't believe we did it that fast, but I am so glad we did!

Now onto the next project.........=)

Weekend Recap

To say that it was a beautiful weekend around here was an understatement. It REALLY felt like spring time around here!  We took advantage of it for sure!

Puppy Dog walks on Sunday afternoon.  They got 2 in one day because I could not stand to stay inside! Yes I walk all 3 at one time.

1. The boys' double dog walker leash....the ONLY reason I can walk all 3 at once...thanks Mom!
2. Homemade Honey Whole Wheat Bread.....delicious!
3. via I couldn't get a good picture of Kitty Carter at the competition, but this is her in action with the DCCs!
4. Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos!  I completely forgot these came out on Thursday, so I took my happy butt to the border on Saturday and gave it a try, and now I want more.
5. FOOD!  Ahi Tuna steaks for dinner Friday night and Caprese Grilled Chicken for dinner on Sunday.  I love grillin' weather!
6. "I don't WANNA go, Mom!"  When Peanut does when he does not want to go where I want him to go, which is why he wears a harness when we walk. =)

Friday afternoon got here right on time.  Of course I had to run a gazillion errands on my way home, but I found our laundry room rug, a new remote holder that is (so far...knock on wood!) Hollow-proof, and stocked up on some Costco essentials. Since we both had busy Saturdays planned, we opted for dinner @ home...grilled ahi tuna steaks from Costco! and a movie.  We Redboxed Taken 2. It was pretty good, if you like action flicks you'll love it.

I spent Saturday morning putting around the house while Eric got his fish frying stuff ready.  He cooked fish at a Wild Game Cookout for a church in town. He's done it every year for the past 3 years (and loves doing it!).  Once I finally got myself together, I took the pups for a walk and swung by the church to taste test the fish...I couldn't let him serve sub par crappie!  It was superb, and once I'd had my fill I headed to Montgomery to watch some of our dancers compete at the Platinum Dance Competition. It really took me back being at a competition again.  It's been nearly 15 years since I've been to one, but they have not changed a bit. I know sitting in a theater watching dancers perform for 5 hours straight does not sound appealing to most, but I LOVE it!  Our girls did great!  They got both gold and platinum awards, plus a 3rd place overall and a 1st place overall in their respective divisions. One group got a special judges award for being the most "in character" act.  I just about fell out of my seat when I realized who was giving the award....Kitty Carter.  She's the technical director for the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, and a very hard person to impress, which is exactly what our girls did!

Once my butt was good and numb from sitting in the auditorium, I decided to head back toward home.  Eric called to say he was at a cookout with some friends, so I went to join him and had a blast! There's nothing better than a cookout on a Saturday night with good friends, good food, and good music!

Daylight savings tried to get me on Sunday, but woke up just in time to make early church.  After than it was cleaning time. Like my-house-is-so-covered-in-dog-hair-that-I-WANT-to-clean-it house cleaning.  I felt so much better once it was done, and spent the rest of the day outside with the puppies!  We took several walks and I even decided to start pulling out the remnants of last years flower beds.  I attempted doing some weed control but the 2 little dogs were going stir crazy, so I walked them instead. We finished up the night with some Caprese Grilled Chicken (delicious!) and a little basketball (for me....Eric watched the outdoors channel all evening), and I decided I was going to bed early.  Take that Daylight Savings!

I guess I outsmarted it this morning because I got out the door early on time!  On a Monday, the Monday after springing forward! BAM!  That means it going to be a good week, right?!

Friday's Letters

Oh Friday, it's so nice to see you again!  Unlike last weekend, we have several plans this weekend that for sure include a wild game cookout (guess who's frying the fish), a dance competition, and the search for the perfect back door rug for the laundry room.  Wish me luck on that last one, because I think I might be the pickiest rug picker-outer this side of the Mississippi, maybe the whole country.

Let's get right to it shall we?

Dear Eric, I love love love love our laundry room makeover!  Thank you for being so handy.  I am glad you are such a go-getter when it comes to stuff like this because if it were up to me we would not have even started yet.  P.S. Thank you for putting up with my request to leave the door. I know you wanted to get rid of it, but I really like being able to shut the door while the washer is running. =)

Dear Hollow, It's time for you to be done with your remote chewing shenanigans.  You've eaten 4 in the last 3 weeks.  Although if your Dad could remember to put them up out of your reach when he leaves the house that would help tremendously.  Apparently my notes don't always solve the problem.  I thought we had a solution but you Dad says that you pulled it out of the vase yesterday.  I will be investing in a taller vase this afternoon.

Can you guess which remotes still work from this picture?  The note is right by the backdoor so he has not choice but to pass by it on his way out. 

Dear Day Light Savings, Sayonara Sucka!  I am SOOOOOO glad that you are on your way out on Sunday.  Yes I will lose and hour of sleep and it will be dark when I get up in the morning for a few weeks, but it will be so worth it to have light after 6pm again!

Dear Peanut Butter, I heart you, but I think our love affair is a bit of an obsession for me.  I was cleaning out my desk drawer this week and found 3 nearly empty jars.  I think I need an intervention.

I don't discriminate between creamy and crunchy. 

Dear Insanity, I know I said I was jumping back on the bandwagon when we got back from the mountains, but I don't really consider 2 days a week "back on the bandwagon." I promise I will do better this week!

Dear Puppy Dogs, I am so glad you guys are enjoying your daily walks. Honestly I am enjoying them as well.  I promise I will not try to wait more than 15 minutes after I get home to walk you guys again.  You made it abundantly clear that the walk happens right after I get home and get changed. Point Taken. You guys know I can't resist the excitement you guys have when I put on my tennis shoes because you KNOW what's about to happen. In our household shoes = walk.

Being sweet boys.  This is the opposite of how they act when the shoes go on.  

Have a great weekend!

If you were really guessing which remotes in the picture still work the answer is the silver one and the black one right next to it, although the black one bit the dust yesterday.  It's the one that Eric says Hallow pulled out of the vase.  If in fact he actually did pull it out I am impressed, and I am also wondering if Eric stuck it all the way down in the vase....hmmmmm.

Hey Ma! The Meatloaf!

That has to be one of the funniest and quotable lines from one of my all time favorite movies.....Wedding Crashers. It's certainly one of Will Ferrell's finest moments, along with his performance in Old School, and of course as a Spartan Cheerleader on SNL. Ok so I like his comedic chops.....you get the point. But this post has nothing to do with comedy, and everything to do with MEATLOAF!

I will be the first to admit that I was not much of a meatloaf fan growing up. I was (and still am) a my-food-shall-not-be-touching-or-mixed-if-I-can-help-it kinda girl. I know I'm weird. Ironically I my brother and dad were all about mixing some peas and corn and mashed potatoes on the plate before they ate them......gag me! Eric on the other hand apparently loves meatloaf, but until last night I had never made it for him, because I tend to only cook things I like in my kitchen....one of the things I do enjoy about being an adult and running my own household. =)

The other night we were in our normal Monday night routine, watching Biggest Loser, and Biingo's mom made him some meatloaf to get him to eat some veggies. (Biingo is one of the kids on the show this season, and yes he spells his name with 2 i's.) The episode aired a couple of weeks ago, and apparently got stuck in the back of the recipe book in my head. The other night I was racking my brain trying to come up with something to cook for dinner and for some reason meatloaf kept popping up, so I decided to give it a whirl.

One Pinterest search and Publix trip later, I had the few ingredients I needed and was ready to give it a try for dinner. I was really surprised how easy it was to make, and Eric gave it 2 giant thumbs up. What can I say, the boy loves meatloaf. I was a little anxious about using turkey in stead of ground beef, but it was delicious! I used this recipe, but decided instead of an actual loaf, I made them in muffin cups because #1 they would cook faster, and #2 I think everything tastes better when it is in cute individual servings!

Ingredients
1.3 lbs ground turkey (one package...who knew ground turkey came in 1.3lb packages)
1/2 cup chopped onion and green peppers (I bought the already chopped Trinity Mix from Publix that had onions, peppers, and tomatoes because I was feeling extra lazy)
1 large clove of garlic, minced
Olive oil
1 egg
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (or any other kind of cheese)
Salt and pepper
Sauce:
1/2 cup ketchup
1 Tbsp mustard
1 Tbsp brown sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Sauté veggies in olive oil until tender. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant. Remove veggies from heat and set aside.
In a large bowl, mix turkey, veggies and egg. Add Worcestershire sauce, Italian seasoning, panko, mozzarella, salt and pepper and mix until completely combined.
Lightly grease 12 muffin tins. Place balls of meat mixture in muffin cups (do not overfill).
Bake in oven for 20 minutes.
While loaves are baking, combine ketchup, mustard, and brown sugar in a small bowl.
Remove loaves from the oven, place a dollop of sauce on each one, and put pan back in the oven to cook for another 5-7 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 160 degrees.

Like I said this recipe got 2 thumbs up from Eric, which in my experience is always a good thing because he has no problems telling me whether or not a recipe was worth the trouble. I think my favorite part was that I had nearly everything for it already in my kitchen.  I am sure this will be popping up again our dinner rotation.....for Eric's sake. =)

Laundry Room Project #1: Key Holder

I have always been a fan of creative key holders. Maybe it comes from the J key holder that has always been in my parents' house. Maybe it's because I am REALLY good at losing my keys if I don't have a specific place to put them.  If I have to have something to help me keep up with my keys it might as well be cute, right?

Hang 'em here!

When I moved out on my own I found a super cute key shaped key holder that I used, which I still think is super cute, but with our laundry room makeover I decided it was time to get creative and make something new. Plus 4 key hooks were just not enough for us. Ridiculous? Yes, but apparently we have a lot of keys!

For whatever reason, I had visions of a brightly painted chevron key holder that would really pop against our dark bluish gray walls. I had a cheap wooden picture frame that I bought in the Michael's dollar bin years ago. It's a large frame but only holds a 3.5" square picture which makes it hardly worth using to frame a picture.

I scoured Pinterest for chevron painting tutorials, and came across this one. It's for walls, but I figured I could just pare it down a bit so that it would work on my frame. I opulled out my ruler and pencil and got to work. Once I had the lines drawn I started painting my chevrons. It took several coats and my lines are far from perfect, (I am not the best line drawer or painter by any means.) but I was very pleased with the result.

I have quite a few bottles of craft paint from other projects and ended up recycling the green from an old project.  The yellow came from Wally World...a whopping 65 cents.  When I finished painting I decided it needed something in the teeny tine picture hole.  I toyed with the idea of hanging a "C" in it, because I loves me a monogram, but when I was at Michael's I could not find a C that I liked. I came across the key charm in the jewelry section for $3 and decided that I had to have it.

My orginal idea...I found a sketch app for my ipad and have fallen in love it! It's turned me into a doodling fool!

If I had purchased all of my supplies new I MIGHT have spent $10, and that's only because I would have had to purchase an entire picture hanging kit and a paint brush. Since I had those things, I only spent $3.65.

I called in the expert when it came to putting the hooks, and picture hanger thingys on the back, but then again isn't that what husbands are for? He was happy to help, and we had it done pretty quickly! The only mess up we had was only putting one picture hanger on the first time. It looked great but when we hung the keys it tilted to the side, so he took that one out and it 2 on the back the second time.

Not sure why the wall looks green, it's more blue in real life.

So there's my latest DIY project.  I have several more up my sleeve that will hopefully involve chalkboard paint and giant safety pins!  Have I mentioned how much I like to decorate?!

A Weekend Recap Full of Unexpected Productivity

You know those weekends when you have absolutely nothing planned but end up doing more than you thought you would have accomplished in 2 or 3 weekends? Yeah that was our weekend. I felt like I was still trying to recover from our weekend in the mountains and was looking forward to getting some sleep.

1. Bangin' Good Shrimp for dinner Friday night
2. Ice cream and hot chocolate for dessert =)
3. The HC Lady Hawks, not only made it to the NCAA tournament for the first time in program history, but also got just the 2nd NCAA postseason win for an HC team (besides gold because they're really good and win every year). They ended up losing in the second round but this team's accomplishment is HUGE!
4. Hawkey dog playing in the "snow." Peanut and Hollow spent the day curled up on blankets at home.
5. Our accumulation of white stuff!
6. Hallow watching White Fang with us. Every time they shoed White Fang on the screen Hallow ran up to the tv and barked like crazy!  We had to hold him for the majority of the movie so we could hear it.
7. I FINALLY beat Level 33 on Candy Crush.  I've only been stuck on that level for a week.  Yes I realize it's a pretty stupid game, but it's so addicting!
8. Eric touching up the trim in the laundry room next to our pretty new paint job!  Buh Bye yucky boring eggshell color!  

Friday night I came home with plans to make some bang bang shrimp for dinner and start a weekend of vegging by the fire because it was supposed to be COLD! When I got home Eric informed me that he'd spent his afternoon helping his mom move and that it would be nice if we could go help on Saturday morning, too. Ok no biggie. The only thing I had to do this weekend was clean the house and I will do just about anything to get out of that.

Saturday Eric was up at 6:30 ready to go. I told him he'd have to wait until at least after 7 before I was getting out of bed. Shortly after 7 he hollerd into the bedroom that he was going to pick out paint for the laundry room....wait paint?! I was out of bed, showered, and dressed in about 10 minutes. There was no way he was picking out paint by himself. Side note: we've been talking about redoing our laundry room for about a year and the process expedited itself unexpectedly this weekend.

After a quick trip to True Value, a gallon of Mackerel paint in our possession, and a trip to Hardee's because I told him I had to have some food if expected any work out of me, we were headed to his mom's house. While Eric installed her dishwasher, we made some real progress and managed to completely empty 2 of her rooms in about 4 hours in an Alabama snowstorm. Yes it snow flurried and sleeted on us all day while we were moving her and I don't think the temp got above 40 all day Saturday, in March, in Alabama. Global warming my foot.

Eric had his heart set on some seafood étouffée Saturday night so we came home that afternoon, cleaned up a little bit and he made some for dinner. I ate a corn dog since I barely eat seafood by itself, much less in a soup. Luckily we had some friends come help him polish off the soup.

Since I knew we were planning on working on the laundry room on Sunday I took it upon myself to clean out the laundry room Saturday night because that's the kind of crazy stuff you do on a Saturday night when you're married. =) I am so glad I did because it took a while and was much easier to do without Eric trying to throw everything away.

Sunday morning we were up and at 'em bright and early again. I went to early church so I could spend the rest of the day on the laundry room while Eric taped it off and took out the existing storage and washer and dryer. By the time I got home he had just started painting, so my timing was perfect! We put 2 coats on it before we went to his grandma's for lunch (and ate waaaay too much). When we got back Eric and his buddy got to work installing the cabinets, while I washed my car and made myself otherwise pretty scarce. My ultimate goal was to stay out of the way.

We  I finished putting everything up about 8 pm last night, and I am soooooo excited about how it turned out!!! I cannot wait to share some pictures! I have a bunch of before and after pics. It is really hard to believe that it is the same room. The paint and the cabinets make it look completely different. I have some major decorating projects to do in the near future. Since I was not anticipating tips room makeover happening for some time, I was not even thinking about how I wanted to decorate it, but now my mind (and my Pinterest boards) are moving a hundred miles per hour! Hopefully I will be able to accomplish the decorating this week! Now if I could just decide which projects I was to take on!

These are some of my favorites!

Chalkboard Frames                                 Giant Pins and Laundry Sign                                              Key Holder