kitchen progress

The kitchen is coming along. Last time I posted on it, only the cabinets were moved around. Now, the ceiling is done, attic access is in, and it's ready to be primed and painted.

 

it's beginning to look a lot like a kitchen remodel

So I started a list back in October of all the projects I want to get done around the house. The list is long, like really long; and keeps managing to get longer. It's a detailed list, so it makes me feel better when I get to cross stuff off it.

 

I've decided to share the kitchen portion because last weekend we started the kitchen remodel.

 

wooden photo plaque

I made this as a wedding shower gift and can finally post this blog post without ruining the surprise. 

I made this wooden plaque for Evan and Kari's (2nd) wedding shower gift. 

It was quite a hit. Everyone thought that I bought it on Etsy; nope I made it! I had to explain it a few times to people, so this is my last time explaining it.

pumpkin carving alternative

There are so many creative ideas out there as alternatives to carving pumpkins. I've never been good at actually carving pumpkins. I always end up with a normal looking jack-o-lantern or trying to get creative and having it fall apart before Halloween.

 

This year I decided to try something creative against my better judgment. For once, my [limited] creativity worked out.

bbq veggie burgers

I'm not a fan of frozen, processed foods. The only thing currently in my freezer is frozen fruit and some popsicles from when I got my wisdom teeth removed (don't ask how long ago that was...). I think there might be some frozen hotdogs and chicken patties, but again, don't ask how old those are. Trash day is tomorrow and I might finally get rid of them. I normally forget because I rarely even open the freezer; this is a reminder to myself to go through the freezer when I get home!

 

Anyway, onto the real reason for this post, because it's not to remind me to clean out my freezer. A couple of weeks ago, Eric and I tried out hand at making veggie burgers. It actually turned out pretty well. I think they probably should have baked a little longer so that they weren't as gooey inside but live and learn.

 

sweet pepper pasta w. kale

In my last blog post about the kale chips, I said that the whole reason we made kale chips was because we had leftover kale that we didn't want to go to waste. This recipe here is the reason we bought the kale in the first place. I originally found the recipe here, on All Recipes. We changed out the yellow pepper the recipe called for with green pepper and used a lot more kale that the recipe called for so it was super packed. Below is the recipe as we prepared it with our changes.

 

kale chips

We had some leftover kale from a pasta salad we made earlier in the week and didn't want it to go bad, so we decided to try our hand at kale chips.

 

stir fry stuffed peppers

Our meal planning kind of went by the wayside this week... One day we didn't feel like cooking so we just had leftovers. This left us a day off with meals so we decided to improvise and boy am I glad we did. We ended up with these delicious stir fry stuffed peppers.

 

chilly football sunday meal

This here is a perfect chilly football Sunday meal because you can prep it and let is sit on the stove or in a Crockpot cooking while you're watching football, or doing other things like I usually am.

Last weekend Eric and I decided to try our hand at homemade bread and thought vegetable soup would go perfectly with it. We made a whole wheat bread using the recipe that can be found here with the only change being we used whole wheat flour instead of white.

better than Campbell's tomato soup

Being sick is no fun, but this tasty homemade tomato soup can really help. I've been sick for about 4 days now with not much motivation to do anything, so I am going to try to catch up on blog posts. The other day Eric made me homemade tomato soup; like farm fresh, no gross additives soup or out of a can soup, and it was really simple. 

So here's what he did, with a little help from me.

stroganoff - the meatless way

I always thought stroganoff had to have beef it it... That was until we made this Vegan Noddle Stroganoff. My god it was delicious. We didn't use the Crockpot because we didn't have enough time so we just adapted it to be a stove top recipe.

I don't have the greatest photo because I was literally so excited to eat it that I didn't take a photo until the next day or so when we had leftovers. FAIL. Regardless, it's awesome. 

killing weeds & takin' names

I've seen Pinterest posts with "recipes" to kill weeds naturally and decided it was a good time to give it a try, seeing as my driveway looks like a path in a forest and there is poison ivy growing up the tree by my back porch. I luckily (knock on wood) don't get poison ivy, but since Eric mows the lawn not me, I felt it would be a good idea to get rid of it so he doesn't get it.

The "natural" recipe for weed killer is really simple.

1 gallon white vinegar

1/2 cup salt

few squirts of dish soap

lovin' me some eggrolls

Meal planning is pretty great. I like having a plan even if sometimes it's a hassle to put the plan together.

 

On the meal plan for Wednesday of this week was eggrolls. I was a little nervous because the potential for an epic fail was there, but everything went off without a hitch. I found a veggie eggroll recipe on Pinterest by For The Love of Cooking and decided to give it a try because who doesn't love eggrolls?

 

I removed the corn starch from the recipe because I didn't think it was necessary and it's not exactly good for you.

 

red lentil soup

Fall is coming! Cozy sweaters, boots, fires, cuddles. I love fall.

 

If you live in Michigan like me, we've had our fair share of fall weather this "summer". The temperature literally can range from 46 - 96 degrees. Insanity.

 

This recipe here is a perfect chilly weather recipe and it's REALLY good, like really (if you couldn't tell by the CAPS).

 

I found it on Pinterest and we adapted it from a crockpot recipe because I only use the crockpot when I am going to be home all day, and that's pretty much only on the weekends, maybe... The crockpot recipe can be found at kalynskitchen.com. Below is "our" recipe. Some of the spices were changed a bit for what we had on hand and obviously ours cooked on the stove instead of the crockpot.

 

It's real simple & real good.

more dairy free "ice cream" desserts

I posted some dairy free "ice cream" desserts about a month ago and I've got some more tasty dairy free ice cream recipes for you.

 

Last night I made two more cold treats.

 

Cake Batter Ice Cream

 

frozen bananas

sprinkles

vanilla extract

agave nectar

 

I found a recipe on Pinterest that also adds a few other ingredients (baking soda and almond butter extract) but I didn't go by the recipe when I was making it so these were not included in my final product. Basically you just food process all the ingredients until they are a nice smooth soft serve like texture and enjoy.

reclaim, repurpose, reuse

"You're writing about a cutting board?" you ask. Why yes, yes I am.

 

BECAUSE. 

 

Just look at this beauty!

 

 

 



 

taco (mock-o) "meat"

Guess what I made last night? If you can't guess by the title, I'll just tell you; TACOS. Do you want to know the best part? They tasted (for the most part) like a regular taco BUUUUUUUT there wasn't any ground beef to be seen for miles! It was different than ground beef, but not in a bad way, or in a way that would make me prefer beef.

 

Inspired by Pure Mamas blog, I decided to make walnut taco "meat." I didn't have every spice that her recipe called for and I think I would like to make a few changes here and there to perfect the "meat," but it was pretty tasty. Mine didn't quite look as meaty as hers.

 

orzo summer salad

I know, it's been awhile. I have no excuse. Just haven't felt up to posting anything lately. Last week I was in a terrible mood for no reason, and while work has been a little trying this week; overall I'm in a much better mood. Today, not only was I in a good mood, but a very productive mood at that. Work was non-stop and I didn't stop once I got home surprisingly. Had to stop at the grocery store to get a few things for dinner (didn't get them Sunday because I wanted them to stay fresh).

Usually when I get home from work I don't want to do anything but veg out and relax with the doggies. I don't know why today was different, maybe it's because Eric had to work late and I didn't know when he would be home or maybe the "get stuff done around the house" bug hit me... Who knows! But I accomplished a lot tonight. When I got home from the grocery store I went to work making dinner (I'll get to the recipe in a bit). While making dinner I thought to myself, "I'm not cleaning up, Eric gets to since I made the whole dinner by myself," but by the time I was done that "bug" had hit me and I got to work cleaning up. First I cleaned the dishes and the kitchen, then did laundry (I even put away laundry that has been piling up on the table because I hate putting laundry away), and swept. It might not seem like much to you, but let me tell you, dinner required lots of chopping and that takes lots of time. Clearly as you can tell by the title of this post, I made an orzo salad.

So here's the recipe.

easy peezy raw apple pie

Raw apple pie you ask? Yes raw. AKA no baking, minimal time required. 

Found this recipe and followed it exactly (except I used less apples) at The Real Meal because we had a surplus of apples and needed to use them in some recipes. It's literally the simplest recipe ever. Very few ingredients. & to quote Eric "best apple pie ever."

oh she glows inspired week of meals

Last week's meal plan was mostly inspired by Oh She Glows, which is a blog by Angela Liddon. It's a great website with TONS of vegan recipes and all the meals we made last week, with the exception of our veggie pizzas, came from Oh She Glows. If you're looking to make healthy, meatless meals check out Oh She Glows first. Trust me, you'll find all sorts of goodies.

dairy free ice cream dessert

Sunday when we made quick easy pizzas I decided we needed a quick easy dessert as well. I knew I wanted to try to make ice cream with frozen bananas to keep it dairy free. Earlier in the week Eric chopped up bananas and put them in the freezer for me so that I could make my dairy free "ice cream." I'm really excited about this because you can make all sorts of flavors and concoctions with very few ingredients. Sunday I made 2 flavors; chocolate peanut butter and rasberry chocolate.

quick veggie pizzas

These are a favorite of ours. They are quick and easy so we can throw them together when we are cramped for time. If you have read my meal plan post you know that we made pizzas on Sunday. Eric had a late afternoon softball game so we wanted something that wasn't going to be a spectacle.

 

Currently we don't make the pizza dough, which is why it is so quick and easy. I would like to try to make pizza dough some time, just haven't had the chance yet.

meal planning + keeping track of tasty recipes

Meal planning has really helped us with our time management. As I have discussed, Eric is trying to work out every day, and planning our meals really helps us have the time to do things we want to do after work. Instead of stopping at the grocery store on the way home from work multiple time a week, I have been going to Trader Joes with Heather after yoga to get most (if not all) of the groceries we need for the week. Heather has been meal planning for awhile now, so she is quite the pro, and you can see more about he take on meal planning at her blog Confessions of a Wannabe.

even healthier strawberry banana muffins

So last weekend I had some strawberries that I needed to use up before they went bad. They were a little dried out, so I didn't really want to eat them.... Of course I decided to refer back to my Healthy Strawberry Banana Muffins. However, since Eric and I are eating a more vegan diet (not totally vegan for all of you that might freak out with me saying that!), I decided to remove eggs and Greek yogurt from the recipe. I was a little hesitant and frankly didn't know what I was going to get coming out of the oven... But let me tell you, they just keep getting better! They were awesome, as usual, and completely vegan. So there's that.

for the love of technology

If it wasn't for technology Eric and I for sure would not be where we are today. We probably wouldn't even know each other. So I have to say, I am pretty grateful for technology. This post isn't going to be me going on and on about how great computers are though, so don't worry!

 

This weekend Eric and I sat down to work on organizing our lives a bit. Was it necessary? Probably not... Some may even think it a bit ridiculous. Trust me, I did at first when Eric mentioned it. I thought to myself (or maybe said out loud), we're happy, we do what we want, why mess with it? I was wrong. It's not about messing with something that's already good. It's about perfecting the good, making it better, making yourself better and I am already starting to feel the benefits after 2 - 3 days!

dill pickle roasted chickpeas

Are you looking for a delicious healthy snack? Well I have just the thing for you.

Adapted this recipe from Kid Tested Firefighter Approved and it is quite tasty.

It's a two step process, as the chickpeas have to be "pickled" for 12 - 24 hours.

more plants, more problems (aka mulch)

As you know (well only if you read my blog regularly), my mom and I love to go to the farmers market. We went this weekend and of course, I bought more plants. The best part, I only spent $20!

 

Here's what I got:

 

1 large flat of annuals

1 6 inch potted curry plant

2 6 inch pots of some curly grass

 

With this I was able to finish the garden area in the front of the house, so that made me pretty happy. Last night I went to Lowe's and got some more mulch.

 

guest post from confessions of a wannabe

Here is my first ever guest post on my blog. Makes me feel so established and special. Hey, she may be my best friend and you may say it doesn't count, but I say screw you. I've mentioned her blog before so you should check it out. I read every post of hers and always get a good laugh. Here is Heather's contribution to Nailed it or Failed it. Enjoy!

father's day breakfast - dad's new favorite

My Dad shared with us that he had some amazing pancakes at Big Boy, so we thought, what better breakfast to make for him for Father's Day. He said "I didn't even have to put butter or syrup on them, and you know how I love butter." I was up to the challenge and decided to search out a comparible recipe that had all the goodies that the Big Boy pancakes had.

 

We found this recipes here to be the most comparible (grain and nut whole wheat pancakes) and made a few modifications.

a little bit of landscaping

This will be mostly a picture post. Not much to say. We started some landscaping on the side of the house around my birthday and yesterday I finally got some wood chips to finish the job. We also got the glass block windows installed last weekend which look 1000X better than the gross old basement windows we had before. Exciting stuff people!!

 

Got the hostas at Meijer and the red grass at Lowes. Mulch came from Home Depot.

 

meatless meals

I believe I've mentioned that Eric and I are trying to eat better (less animal products like meat and dairy) so I've been finding all sorts of tasty recipes to try.

 

I've got 3 that we recently made that I would like to share with you guys.

 

get a barkbox, bitches love barkbox

Barkbox is great. It's a monthly subscription delivery service that sends you a variety of goodies for your furry friends.

 

falafel fail?

Fail may be a strong word... Let's just say it wasn't a complete disaster. It looked like a hot mess, and I didn't particularly like it, but Eric liked it and ate both his and most of mine.

 

Here's the story...

 

anybody out there?!?!

Hi. Hello. Yo. Holla. Howdy. Bonjour. Salut. Hey.

 

 

 

Anybody out there? Seriously... When I log into my Blogger I see hits, a lot actually, considering I've only been blogging for 5 months now, but does anyone actually read what I post?

sprucing up the back deck

As I said in the last post, I forgot (or didn't think about it, because I am lazy and according to everyone go on too many vacations) to post about the deck and staining it.

I bought the stain probably a year and a half ago, no joke... Sad I know. Not sure why I didn't stain it last year. I can think of plenty of excuses if you really want to hear them, like:

the deck needed to be power washed & I don't have a power washer

or

I just graduated and just wanted to enjoy my summer

or

I'm just lazy

or

the deck is kind of old and a piece anyway so why bother

I could go at this all day, but I will spare you...

plants plants plants plants

I have an abnormal obsession with plants, like seriously... Every weekend in the summer my mom and I go to the farmer's market and I buy more. I always have plants in the house, even during the winter and normally I have a garden outside in the summer. This year is different because with the possibility of moving, I didn't want to start something that I wouldn't be around to finish. So I am going to hold off on a big fancy vegetable / herb garden until Eric and I get a house, and can do it right.

That being said, I've not let it stop my obsession with buying flowers, herbs, and vegetables.

make veggies your bitch

We all know veggies are good for you, and a lot of us probably don't get the amount that we need. I mean seriously, veggies are unbelievably good for you, and a lot of us tend to not eat them with our meals. So how do you make veggies your bitch you ask? Read more to see.

Eric and I have been attempting to eat healthier. Not that we ever really eat bad, but trying to be better. Less meat, more veggies. You get the point.

 

Eric actually bought me this really interesting book to read about cancer and it's correlation to eating animal products (meat, cheese, etc.) I'm pretty excited to read it, maybe because I am a science nerd, but I am pretty sure I know a few ladies that might be interested in reading it once I am done. It's called The China Study.

 

But back to the point, VEGGIES!

 

rocky road cookies for the sweet tooth in all of us

Who's in the mood for some delicious-ness?

 

These cookies are awesome and relatively easy to make with minimal ingredients.

 

I found them on Pinterest, with a link to Fifteen Spatulas. I actually followed their recipe to the tee, except I kept mine in the oven for a bit longer, so I am not going to repost the recipe. You can find the full recipe here: ooey gooey rocky road cookies.

 

I did however decide to put mine in the freezer after they were done cooking because ooey-gooey exactly what these cookies are. They have to sit for quite awhile to set even if they get put in the freezer.

 

I put them in a container, seperated by parchment paper, in the fridge to store them and they are still ooey-gooey when I grab them out of the fridge when I am feeling like chocolate. We all know chocolate is a necessity and these are VERY chocolatey.

 

Shit's delicious. Try em'.

a place to put your feet up

Melissa, where have you been you ask? I wish I had a reasonable excuse to give you but I don't. I've just been lazy. We've made a ton of super yummy recipes and since I didn't take any picture, I didn't post about them. I might still post about them at a later date with links to the recipes that I used, but that is not what this post is about.

Awhile ago I posted about a project I was working on, an ottoman for the living room. I didn't want to post about it until it was fully completed and it took me awhile to paint the legs. We had a little mishap and two of the legs broke, so we had to fix those first.

 Enough of a back story... Here is how I made an ottoman out of a half pallet I got from work.

bruschetta for everyone

Game of Thrones night = tasty food + Game of Thrones with Eric's sister, brother, and brother's fiance; Stacey, Evan, and Kari respectively. Stacy got Eric season one for Christmas and I bought him season two for Valentine's Day so we get together and watch a few episodes and usually eat lots of yummy foods. Stacey and Kari wanted sushi but since I don't do seafood, Eric and I decided to cook. We made our chicken and green beans that can be found in the previous post, nailed dinner tonight, along with two different kinds of bruschetta. The first was just a normal bruschetta and the other was a strawberry bruschetta that I found on Pinterest. I can't post the original link at the moment because Pinterest is currently hating life and giving me strange errors but below are the two bruschetta recipes we made.

happy st. patty's day

Apparently I am old and boring because I spent my St. Patrick's Day at home; running errands, doing laundry, cuddling on the couch, playing candy crush on my phone, and cooking/baking. Judge me if you want to but it was a lot more enjoyable than going out and dealing with a bunch of drunks. Plus, I got to see all those drunks posting nonsense on Facebook, so it's like I was there!

As posted in the previous post, I made strawberry muffins today which will be Eric and my breakfasts for the next few days. 

redemption

Redemption is bitter sweet, or in this case, just sweet.

Exactly one month ago I posted about my complete blender failure in you can't eff up box brownies. I am here today because redemption has been achieved! 

Since Eric bought me a new blender as a belated Valentine's Day present we've been testing it out with some different smoothie combinations. Just yesterday we made delicious mixed berry spinach smoothies for lunch and today I decided to make my healthy strawberry banana muffins minus the banana.

nailed dinner tonight

Tonight we made a killer dinner. Literally, it was absolutely delicious, not to brag or anything. I had cut a recipe out of the paper for grilled lemon chicken with lemon feta green beans a few weeks ago and we decided to give it a try. We also made mashed potatoes. So this blog post will not contain just one recipe but three!!

you can't eff up box brownies

This week was a long week, especially with Eric down in Ohio. I was a little upset that he wasn't going to be home for Valentine's Day, but I made the most of it and planned a nice relaxing night with myself.

When I got home, the first thing I decided to do was make my healthy strawberry banana muffins; which I have made before and posted about on the blog. I was pretty excited to make them so that I had a healthy breakfast for the next morning. I got started combining all the ingredients in the blender and had everything all blended up, or so I thought... I was about to start dispensing the mixture into the muffin tins when I realized I forgot to add the sugar. Looking back, I probably didn't really need to add sugar, I mean there was a whole container of strawberries in the thing, which should be plenty of sugar; but... I decided to add the sugar in and turned on the blender. Everything was going well, the blender was starting to mix up the sugar, but then all hell broke loose. My blender decided to unscrew itself and blow out the bottom, not the top, like you would think would happen. IT UNSCREWED ITSELF and I could not catch it in time. Alas, this is the mess that was made:

barley turkey chili

I mentioned that Eric is working in Ohio during the week. This basically means I don't really cook much during the week because I don't particularly like cooking for one. So today I decided to make something good seeing as he eats out during the week when he is on the job.

We decided to test out our new crock pot that we had gotten for Christmas from my parents and make some chili. I've made chili before but not turkey chili. I'm more of a red meat kind of girl, but in a effort to be healthier, we decided on turkey chili. We looked up a few different recipes to see what people usually included in their turkey chili and decided to take a little bit from each of the recipes that we looked at.

does tuna fish count as seafood?

If you know me well, you know that I DO NOT like seafood of any sort; but I will eat tuna fish (from a can). I know, very strange, but I feel like it doesn't count because I slather it in mayo so that there isn't an ounce of fishy taste or smell to it.

When I was little, I didn't have the aversion to seafood that I do now. I'm not really sure what changed, but all I can tell you is even the smell of some seafood makes me want to vomit. I'm not allergic, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be telling you about the delicious tuna pasta salad that I made the other night for dinner.

Eric has been working nights, in Ohio, and isn't home during the week. Needless to say, he has been eating out A LOT. So, the first thing he said to me when I asked him what he wanted to do for dinner was, "Anything as long as we don't go out to eat." Normally, I would sit at work and research via Pinterest to find a delectable recipe for dinner, but with my new found responsibilities at work I just didn't have the time. I was tired and didn't really feel like cooking, so I racked my brain for something easy to make. 

I knew that I didn't want to stop at the grocery store so I tried to think of what we had at home; and it's very slim pickins' around here... I knew I had some tuna in a can , so I figured "hey, let's use some of that." On Eric's way home from Ohio he stopped to get a few things I knew we would need.

picture frame remod

I have been working on cleaning up my house and getting rid of clutter lately. This little project is a result of that...

This picture frame came from my grandma, it had a deer picture in it. Since it was pretty old the back started to fall off and the glass and picture could no longer be held in. I decided to use it for something useful. I saw something on Pinterest or Tumblr or some sort of website that I follow and decided to give it a try with my broken picture frame.

relapse of lazy

My little mini-vaca was super fun. The weather was slightly warmer in NYC than it was back in Michigan so it was very nice to get away. However, life in NYC is WAAAAAYYY different than life in Michigan and it was a little harder to get back into the swing of things; mostly cooking my own meals and being non-lazy.

The trip allowed me to relapse back into my lazy, TV watching self instead of the cooking DIY'er that I have been striving to be. Eric and I have yet to cook a meal for ourselves since being back... We returned late Tuesday night... Yeah, pretty bad. We've gone out to eat every day since our return, but I promise to find some sweet recipes or think of some good dinners to make this week for the blog.

I did work a bit today on one of my DIY projects so that post is coming soon; as soon as I get it hung up and can take an "after" photo. I promise it will be soon. I will try to bug Eric into hanging it for me tomorrow. 

With that being said, I would like to share about our trip and what we did while in New York. The city is amazing and crazy and an all around different life for us. We are both self proclaimed "non-people people," so we were both pretty excited to get back home to our "kids" (2 dogs & a cat), but we had a blast while we were there.

healthy strawberry banana muffins

I was feeling all healthy-like yesterday and wanted to make something with all the bananas we had sitting around before they went bad, so I got resourceful and went to Pinterest. Since as we all know I have a gazillion pins on my Pinterest, it wasn't very hard to find a recipe (or recipes) to make and since I had to stop at the grocery store to pick up stuff for dinner it all worked out and I was able to pick up a few of the ingredients that I didn't have at home.

Eric wanted a banana muffin recipe and I wanted strawberry muffins, so as usual I combined 2 recipes to make my own. I had originally planned on making 2 separate batches, but this is what I ended up with...

kitchen updates

I literally have a bazillion things that I want to update in the kitchen. Slowly but surely things will get done. A lot of the stuff I want to do has to wait until it's warmer out because windows need to be opened to allow proper ventilation. 

If you've been to my house you know that my cabinets are not normal solid wood cabinets, they have wood trim edges but are mostly laminate. So, in addition to redoing my counter tops with Rustoleum Countertop Paint I would like to also do my cabinets. My back splash is currently also laminate and I would like to simply tile the back splash to stand out a bit. I already have the sink I want to put in the kitchen (it came from my parents kitchen, before they redid theirs), but I definitely need to do the counter tops before I put in the new sink. 

vacation momento

This little guy here is a Pinterest inspired creation that I thankfully found before we went to Punta Cana in November. I'm very happy with the result and would have never thought of it on my own, but I am very glad because now I have a very creative way to enjoy my vacation and remind me of the beautiful beach and great times we had.

chicken enchiladas

I found a recipe for Easy and Creamy White Chicken Enchiladas awhile back and Eric and I finally decided to give them a try. To be honest we didn't really look at the recipe online except to figure out what kind of ingredients we should include (and then we proceeded to add much more than the recipe called for) and to figure out how long to cook it for. So this is our take on the white chicken enchiladas.

greek chicken salad sandwich

This is what we made for dinner tonight. It's our own little concoction that we came up with awhile back. We were feeling lazy and decided not to go to the grocery store today (spent most of the day cleaning the house & basement) so we had to use what we had in the house. Normally we would include a few more things in the recipe and use a different kind of bread but OH WELL.

smoothies for lunch

Yes. I had a smoothie, well more like frozen yogurt, for lunch.

A lady I used to work with told me to buy frozen fruit to make smoothies because then you don't really need to add anything else to the smoothie. I've been doing it her way ever since. Eric (the boyfriend) has a Costco membership, which is excellent. We just go to Costco and buy large bags of frozen fruit to make smoothies. They even sell organic if you want to be all healthy and such. 

so... what do you like to do for fun

I hate when people ask me what I like to do for fun or what my hobbies are. The answer is usually along the lines of: "Oh you know... stuff" or "Well, I don't really have time for much," because lets face it, telling people I like to sit at home, watch TV, eat, and sleep just makes me look like a lazy, fat-ass. That's where this blog comes in. It's my attempt at making myself not such a lazy, fat-ass. I used to have an excuse for not having hobbies because school consumed my life, but now that I am done (graduated May 2012) I need to get it together and do something.

One of my best friends, Heather Stern (confessions of a wannabe), recently started a blog as well. She is a self-proclaimed wannabe, meaning she wants to cook more, DIY more, be healthier, exercise more, be a great mom to her unborn baby girl, etc. You get the point... I was telling my boyfriend about how awesome her blog was, how every post literally made me laugh out loud (seriously check it out, you'll laugh so hard you may pee your pants), and how I thought it was such a great idea because let's face it... WE ARE ALL WANNABES, of some sort, and can all do something to better our lives.

The boyfriend thought Heather's blog was a great idea and pushed me to start my own blog, so here I am. We came up with "Nailed It or Failed It" because I may or may not have a slight Pinterest obsession. I have approx 17 million things pinned on my Pinterest that I either want to buy, cook, DIY, etc. Plus I follow a few other home design/DIY blogs. Not everything that I plan to blog will be DIY or cooking related, but that is probably where I will start. We're going to NYC in a few weeks, so I am sure there will be a blog or two about the amazing time we have there. I love to travel and appreciate when people offer their honest opinions about different places and would like to do the same for anyone that may read my blog. We have also been looking at houses so I am sure if we buy one my blog will become inundated with pictures of the house before and after work being done.

So here's to 2013, the beginning of my blogging life! Happy New Year! Hope you enjoy.

NYE w/ the Burger Family (boyfriend's family)