Bake A Wish

 I LOVE baking.  Those that know me or have read my blog know that a have quite the sweet tooth.  So when I heard about this organization, Bake A Wish, that delivers birthday cakes to neglected/abused/abandoned children and elderly/disabled in the Austin area who would not otherwise receive a birthday cake, it was the perfect fit. 

During college, I loved helping feed the homeless on Friday mornings by cooking and serving breakfast with friends.  I could rock out some mean pancakes.  Plus, you hear the best stories when you sit down and have a conversation with them.  I'd been looking for something to get involved in for a while and this seems like the perfect fit.  Now you don't necessarily get to see the kids/elderly/disabled that are receiving your cake, but I LOVE to bake (but rarely want to eat it all) AND get to sweeten up someones day that wouldn't normally get a birthday cake (who doesn't love birthday cakes??!?).  HOW FREAKING AWESOME IS THAT? 

Can you tell I'm really excited to be a part of this.  If you love the idea, but are not quite as passionate about baking, you can sponsor cakes.  Check out the site and see how you can get involved!  I delivered my first cake yesterday - will post pictures soon!  Love B

Starting Over

You would think I would have learned after training for my first half marathon to keep at this running business.  Well, that didn't happen.  Holidays and life happened, which meant I got lax on my running.  I told myself I wanted to keep at least running 5 miles on the weekend, ha! 

Okay, so seriously, I got talked into (thanks Katie!) signing up for the San Fran Nike Half in October.  Guess who's group got picked out of hundreds to run the race?  This girl's.  Who has been putting off training?  This girl.

Finally, this week, I decided to really get back in the training mode.  Although I desperately need new shoes, I started Monday.  Four days in and I'm doing pretty good.  So here we go again....

Love B

Best way to hang a plate

Over the past few months I've been collecting plates to display in my kitchen nook.  It started when I found this adorable gold antique plate at a shop up north.  I loved it's design and imperfections!  I began venturing out to the Goodwill's around me collecting pieces that I thought would fit.  I finally finished my collection today with a few plates from West Elm - the only two that cost more than 99 cents! 

I got lucky finding some great plates, and I just added a few small touches to 3 of them.  One had pink flowers that I changed to a lighter grey color with porcelain paint.  The two with text on them, I hand drew with a industrial strength sharpie. 

I'm not sure (now, of course) why I thought this was the best idea, but I use 3M strips for everything.  I actually hung quite a few (heavy even) items above my fireplace that stayed up for over a year.  I also recently hung some mirrors with 3M strips.  They are really a wonderful tool to have around the house!  Well, come to find out, not so good for plates.  The biggest challenge was the lips on the back of the dishes.  I had quite a few placed on there and, I thought it was a rather secure way to hang them up. 

Here is round one.  They looked amazing, I was loving the spacing of the plates and the coloring.  However, after about an hour, I went outside to finish spray painting, and I hear one hit the ground.  I knew it was bound to happen, but not so soon.  Although I liked the plate on top, I wasn't super worried about replacing it. 

The heart breaking one was my favorite plate, which broke in half after I tried to put it up a second time.   I push just a little too hard and it just cracked.  This was the very first one I found, ugh.  So of course, I had to find a new way to hang them.  After doing some research online, I read that hot glue was actually one of the best and easiest ways to go.  I was little weary, but my mom agreed that it should be pretty secure. 

I thought I might as well test my luck and used a ton of hot glue and a paper clip on each of the plates.  Just make sure your glue is really hot, so the hold will be strong enough.  It looks horrible, but feels really secure, so I placed them up with nails using these hooks.

Now you can see the new arrangement is a little different than the first.  I really liked the first better, of course, but this one is growing on me.  I was able to find a plate to replace the top, but I don't think I'm going to stumble upon the other plate any time soon.  I still feel that I need 2 more to fill in the bottom center gap and one more on the top left.  We'll see what I can find!

Here are two shots of the ones I wrote on with sharpie:

So, if you are ever looking to hang some pretty little plates from your wall, I'd suggest using hot glue.  Or you'll get to hang them all over again! 

Love B

Weakness

Darn you Target.  Went in today with my brother looking for him and I left with four of these.

They were just too cute to say no to.  These little funky coffee cups are porcelain, sturdy and have the perfect sized handle = hard to find!  Plus, always love me some chevron. 

I've also gotten a few cute projects under way on the house.  Should be posting some pictures soon.  Tired of all this rain.
Love B

Exterior Face Lift

The latest project in the Walker household has been trying to give our house a little face lift.  MUCH needed if you ask me.  I'm not loving the pinkish trim and can't wait to paint it!!!  Seriously though, it has to be the one rainy week this summer that we decided to get started.  So maybe next week we can start again. Here are some pictures from Sunday's work:

Not sure what he's looking at but thought he looked pretty cute in the pix - Super serious. You can see we are having to replace a bunch of trim and a few panels. 

Yep, D had to hang out on the top of the house to get the siding off.  I'm sure that's totally safe, right?

There we go.  Luckily we got this all replaced before it decided to pour Sunday night. 

Oh, and did I mention that I ripped up our dining room carpet since I wasn't much help outside.  I'm using a Dremel tool to cut off the nails that were put into the cement.  It was pretty fun!  I'm planning on pulling up all the carpet in our living room and possibly painting the floor until we can afford some nice hardwood. 

Now just waiting for everything to stay dry so we can keep working.
Love B. 

Recent happenings

Was I crazy to think that summer would be any less busy?  Yeah, not so much.  Who was I kidding?  At least we've been having a great time, and I've been trying to make a good effort of taking pictures.  So here is what we have been up to..

Bethany and I got treated to dinner at Roaring Fork before heading to see the live taping of Dr. Dog at ACL Live.  The meal, of course, was delicious, and the band was rather entertaining as well.  It was my first time in the ACL Live concert space, and you can see in the left picture, there is a pretty cool backdrop of the Austin Skyline. 

Not too long after that, we headed on a long road trip to see D's family in Louisiana.  It was the first time we had driven that route, so it was a fun drive.  We saw parts of the fire that went through Bastrop (top left), ran into some random presidents (top right), finally got out of Texas (really does the state have to be so huge? - bottom left) and went over about 50 bridges along the way (bottom right).  I loved the scenery.  It's just so different than what we get to see every day. 

We stayed the night in Hammond and then headed with his cousin to Gulf Shores.  It was another 3.5 hours from where they lived, but it gave us a chance to chat, not to mention drive through 3 states.  We wish we could have ventured into New Orleans, but we will have to do that on the next trip.

After fighting a little traffic,  going though a long underwater tunnel and a missed exit, we made it to the shores!  Isn't it gorgeous?  The sand is amazing and soft.  The water is mostly clear and blue.  Even with a storm coming in (top left) the ocean was gorgeous.  I could have stayed there forever.  I actually ventured on a morning run (right) along the beach barefoot and would have amazing calves if I did that every day.  Holy cow, ouch, they hurt the next day. 

 Is he excited or scared?  D, what is that face??  Not sure, but I do know he did like that he found this beer, since it's not sold in Texas.

We spent most of our trip lying on the beach, eating way more than we needed to, and just relaxing.  I did a horrible job taking pictures once we got there.  Mostly, it was because we were at the beach. Beach + water + iPhone = not a good combo.  So I didn't get a picture of the two of us, nor did I get one of all of us together - shoot!  I didn't realize until we got home. 

As per usual, our drive home (from any trip) involved some nice rain showers.  This time we were lucky enough to get that AND sit at a dead stop for 1.5 hours on the highway because of a wreck.  It was quite the drive.

America.  We celebrated this mid-week holiday the only way we knew how - with friends, drinks and good old BBQ.  D and I ended up going to our friends' condo downtown and watched the fireworks from their 24th floor patio = amazing.  The Austin show wasn't the best thing ever, but when you are right there, it's pretty freaking awesome.

The most recent shenanigans was my girls night out to see Magic Mike. Oh yeah, needless to say Channing Tatum sure can dance.  I am kind of surprised we didn't get kicked out, but hoots and hollers were a necessary to thoroughly enjoy the movie.  We ended the night with bar hopping on dirty 6th.  We had quite the time.  Love these girls.

 Love B.

Sweet girl

I'm such a mom, or at least that's what D said as we drove off from the house last Friday headed to the Gulf Shores.  Our poor little pup had to get yet another surgery done on her leg last Monday.  I, of course, left all worried about her and her still swollen leg.

This time the surgery was to remove a plate that was put in the last time.  She was doing great recovering, running around like a crazy head and pretty much back to her spunky self.  However, about 3 weeks ago, she started getting this sore on a section of her scar.  It was strange because it didn't seem to hurt her, but there was definitely some fluid in that area.  We took her in and of course there was not exact answer.  After it started leaking, we had to take her in again and make a decision between a course of antibiotics or just removing the plate (they thought it was rubbing, thus causing the irritation/infection).  In the end he said we would probably have to remove it, so we just bit the bullet and went for it. 

Here is Bella, post surgery on the day of (left) and the day after (right).  She has such a sad face when she is all drugged up.  Poor baby.  This time the recovery has been MUCH better, although, she still thinks she can run around and be crazy even though she's not supposed to for another week.  When we picked her up, they asked if we wanted to keep the plate and the screws that she had.  I asked D and he said we were going to frame them.  I am pretty sure he was kidding, but I went ahead and got them.  This was before I realized how much they had cost originally.  I decided since this little piece of titanium was so freaking expensive, she needed to sport it on her collar.  Show off her battle wounds.

I take so many pictures of this adorable little girl.  I could just eat her up.  She is SO sweet and has had such a hard 2 years.  I just hope that we can now put this knee behind us and she can go back to being her happy little self.  She did a lot of sleeping these last couple of weeks.  Sometimes she just has to hide her face, case in point, the far two pictures.  The bottom one is her sticking her nose in the corner of the couch.  The top right melts my heart, every once in a while, she will use her paws to cover her face.

Now, of course, she is super hyper.  She was so happy to see us come home on Tuesday, I thought that little nubbin of a tail was never going to stop.  Finally, I've got to leave you with her and Steel playing.  Bella was about even in height with him standing on the floor and her on our bed.  She was getting all excited, rolling around and pawing at his face.  They are just too cute to handle.

Love B.