I must brag about Jasmine for a moment...

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting Jasmine, she is an awesome dog.  We rescued her when she was about 9 months old & had been in her foster home for about 6 months.  Her original owner was deployed & his elderly mother was unable to care for her.  She was surrendered to a "kill" shelter where animals are euthanized if they are not adopted in time.  Thankfully Jasmine was pulled the day she was going to be put down.

Jasmine was very well socialized by her foster mom & gets along great with our cats as well as other animals she encounters.  She has never hurt another dog but has had her own fair share of cuts, scrapes, & wounds.  She is extremely smart & she just fits perfectly in our little family.

Okay, so on to the bragging... The daycare where Jasmine goes was having a fundraiser for the SPCA, so of course we had to attend.  Food is provided & dogs are welcome.  There are also various raffle drawings & local doggy bakeries come with lots of samples for the pups.  I want to say that there were at least 50 dogs that showed up + all of the owners.  We got there very early in the evening, grabbed some snacks, & went to sit down at a table to eat.

Well, there was a couple who had 2 very misbehaved dogs who sat down at a table near us.  The one dog positioned himself underneath the table & every time another dog would walk through the door, he would aggressively bark & charge at the dog entering the room.  There were a few times when fights started to break out.  We were about 5 feet away from the dog & its owners.  I said that we should finish eating & then go elsewhere because I did not want to get caught in the middle of this.

On our way out, the owner of said dog stopped me and said "thank you for judging my dog.  He's a rescue and I am just trying to socialize him."  I was dumbfounded!  The invitation clearly stated that this event is only for extremely dog friendly dogs as there will be a lot of dogs in a small area.  What I really wanted to say was "I am not judging your dog, but rather I am judging you and that clearly your energy has been well fed to your dog as he is looking to pick a fight just like you."  Rather than saying that, I mustered something about how I feel bad for her dog & it does need to be socialized, but this is not the situation.  Perhaps they should look into a behaviorist.  She made some sort of hand gesture when I left, but I wasn't looking, so whatever.

We ended up leaving & having dinner at a local German restaurant that is dog friendly.  While there, there were a few different people doting on Jasmine & saying how well behaved she is.  We were even told that they thought she was a therapy dog and no one could believe she is only two and a half!  : )

Oh and to top it off, I won the grand prize which is a year of free boarding!  How awesome is that?!?

Of course I have to end this post with a couple of Jasmine photos.

Marmalade Wings

This recipe is so good I have to share.  I actually found it in my Princess House Cookware recipe pamphlet.  You can definitely make it even if you don't have the PH cookware.

Marmalade Wings:
1 1/2 lbs chicken wings
1 12 oz jar orange marmalade
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 6 oz bottle soy sauce
2 Tbsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix marmalade, brown sugar, soy sauce, & lemon juice together.  Cover chicken wings with mixture & bake for 1 hour.

My notes:
1)  I have no idea what the actual package size of the chicken is.  I just buy 1 package of chicken wingettes & call it a day.  Yes, I learned after my first purchase of chicken wings, not to buy the package called chicken wings.  They were the whole wing & had to be cut at the joint.
2)  Definitely make the marinade the night before & then let the wings marinate overnight.
3) I have never found a 12 oz jar of orange marmalade - it is always 18 oz.  I just use that & increase the brown sugar to 3 Tbsp.

Enjoy!

Makeup Organization

I don't know about everyone else, but finding a functional way to organize my makeup has been almost a lifelong process!  : )  I love makeup & use it everyday, so it is inevitable that it will be out on the counter.  I have tried various baskets, caddies, organizers, & have never really been happy.  Things would get messy, I'd still be digging through the basket, caddy, etc in order to find that one perfect eyeshadow.  However, I now have a system that I love & it has worked well for the best month & a half!  (That's a major win in my book!)  Without further delay, here is my new makeup organization method:

I am now using one of my bathroom drawers to organize.  The 1st basket is hair ties & bobby pins, the 2nd one is for eye creams & special face creams, & the 3rd basket is for samples.

Here is a side view of the upcoming makeup organization.  I love my toothbrush holding ballerina.  I have had the ballerina since I was 4 or 5 & it always makes me smile.  :

Frontal view of organizer.  (Those are my new pink, Sigma brushes on top which I love & will discuss later.)  This is just a 5 drawer organizer which I purchased for maybe $10 & it is just the perfect size.

The top drawer is called my "face" drawer & is for foundations, powder, blush, bronzer, & concealer.

The second drawer is my eyeshadow drawer.  I don't think that needs further explanation.

I call the third drawer my "eye accessory" drawer.  This contains mascara, brow stuff, eyeliner, sharpeners, etc.

I call the next drawer my lips & stuff drawer.  It has my lip gloss, lipstick, lip liner, as well as my compact, & eye palette.

The final drawer is my misc drawer & it contains, you guessed it, the miscellaneous stuff, including my eyelash curler, tweezers, chapstick, & false eyelashes.

I am all about functionality & this new method is extremely functional.  It is compact enough that C is okay if I leave it on the counter & the drawers are not too deep so things don't get lost.

Master Bath - Before & After

Let's just get into the photos!

I didn't take a whole lot of "before" photos because there wasn't really a lot going on. It's just the normal double sink, mirror, bathtub situation. But here are the before photos:

Here is a picture of our towel rack before. Again, it's pretty standard.

There were a few things I wanted to change:

1) COLOR! I wanted something that felt clean & relaxing.

2) I wanted the bathroom to have a "clean" feeling.

3) I needed to find a way to deal with the towel situation. Our linen closet is on the other side of the house which is quite annoying.

4) C doesn't understand the point of having towels for decoration, so I wanted to remove the towel rack that was used for towels that we don't use.

5) There were no towel hooks/racks/whatever by the sink so our hand towels were always laying around (which would lead to towel that got stinky fast!).

So here are the after photos:

First, the color is Bay Mist by Valspar. It was a little different than what I wanted, but I now love it!

Here is what I did to solve the towel situation. The storage unit is actually a wardrobe from Ikea. It fits perfectly where our old towel rack stood.

I also purchased a new shower curtain in white. The new color theme is aqua & white, which I feel gives the "clean" look I was going for.

This is the hook I also purchased at Ikea for us to hang our wet towels on. I love that it is right next to the shower.

We framed the mirror to dress it up a bit & also installed the towel rings so our hand towels now have a home. I purchased the rings from HomeGoods for about $7 a piece.

I am happy to have a master bath that I love & is now functional!

Sewing Projects 1 & 2

My first project was to make the curtains for our master bedroom.  I decided to make them myself for 2 reasons.  1-I had an idea in my head for what I wanted the curtains to look like & was unable to find this in the stores.  2-It seems ridiculous to pay $90+ for 1 lined panel curtain.

Here is the final project.  I am really happy with how the project came out.

I also made a dog bed for Jasmine.  Here is Murphy modeling for me.  He is quite fond of all of Jasmine's beds.

I found the fabric that I wanted from fabric.com.  I had a couple of issues with the fabric.  There were multiple tears like this:

I ordered 15 yards of fabric.  I ordered 5 extra yards because I wanted to make pillows & a dog bed.  I am quite disappointed with fabric.com.  In order to give me the 15 yards of fabric, the fabric was stitched together (see below).  I had these in 5 different spots!  Thankfully I ordered enough fabric that I was still able to make the curtains while working around the fabric deformities.
Here is what the fabric looked like beforehand.  (Just proof that I actually did this myself!)

Master Bedroom: Before & After

I have finally started to make our townhome more of a house by decorating.  (Yes, I know it took me more than a year to start!)  The first room I tackled was the master bedroom.  Part of the reason that I have waited to begin decorating, painting, etc is that my taste changes constantly.  I probably have 10-15 duvet covers for our king bed.

Before:

Before 2:  (Please excuse the paint supplies on the floor & the white squares over the headboard.  I tested the paint before I made a final decision.)

After!  Jasmine wanted to model as well.  I really wanted something sophisticated with a pop of color which I think I achieved.  The paint color is Silver Dust by Glidden.  It can best be described as a lavender grey.

After 2:

I still need to find things to put on the walls & I will also change the lampshades.  It's funny, now that we added the curtains, the room feels larger & the walls more empty.  Oh well, more for me to do!