40 and fabulous! Seriously.

This last weekend my sis in law celebrated the big 4-0! She had the most amazing party! Everyone was required to wear white. She went to a party while in the south of France where everyone wore white and she loved it :) It was the perfect touch for a night in the July heat. Just made it seem so much cooler!

This girl is a detail faareak!! Not one thing was missed :)

The food was deeelish!!

My brother is quite the guy in the kitchen. He made these scrumptious mussels in this sauce that I don't know what it was but I couldn't stop eating it!!

And here we are :) my big bro and my two sisters. Yes she's really blonde and yes we are from the same parents. And no, me and my brother are not twins :) I know, we look ridiculously alike :)

Oooooh I love this pic. This is my favorite room in her beautiful house.

Just look at my sweet hubby sitting there laughing and enjoying himself :)

And here's the group shot :) I'm LOVING all the white! It was such a beautiful party!

Oh and tonight? Yeah, me and my sisters and our hubbies get to go back to their house and enjoy the 20 lbs. of clams that my brother didn't get to cook cause everyone was already stuffed. Yippee!!!

** And Happy Anniversary to me!! 1 year of blogging and I haven't given up! (although I've seriously contemplated it!)

While the cats away...the moose will play!

My daughter Rio was OBSESSED with this moose head from ZGallerie the moment she saw it back in December. Soooo being the ever loving mommy that I am, I bought it for her for her birthday in January.
Weeeell, when her beautiful moose was delivered and she shared with her boyfriend where she wanted to hang her wonderful piece of art, he was slightly hesitant to say the least! A moose head in the kitchen Rio?? Trust me! She would say over and over.

The two of them have been working on their kitchen for a few months now. Her boyfriend made the cabinets and dining table and they were just doing things as they had the time. Fast forward to last weekend. Her boyfriend went out of town for a week, and Rio went to town!

She made the wood counter tops, painted the walls and pleaded with her dad to hang the moose.
Had she had time she would have made the missing drawer fronts too!

I love her sense of style and ability to find goodies anywhere and everywhere!

The little glass vase thingies and the broken clock are Goodwill finds :) don't know if she plans on fixing the clock, but I think it's kinda cool broken! Oh and her boyfriends reaction when he came home?? He loved it :)

In other news: my house is rolling full steam ahead!! Kinda scary! These are just some of the things going inside the cutie :) Insulation, sheet rock, roofing and stucco are just some of the happenings this last week! Hubbs is on a roll! We're hoping for an end of September move in!! YAY!!!!!

Simplify, simplify... :)

It's summer. And it's stinkin hot :( The thought of turning on the oven sounds about as fun as wearing a black sweatshirt and hot mopping a roof! (my brothers favorite saying!) So when I came across this yummy dinner made with one pot- that's right! one pot! I thought I should share it with you!

Rigatoni with Goat cheese. And these are the ingredients. All 5 of them! It cooks in no time and it's TASTY! As you can see I used Linguine because that's what I had, and I am the queen of making do!

I served it up with a salad of whatever I had in the fridge, which happened to be spinach and arugula dressed with olive oil and sea salt. Our current fav summer white wine Kono, a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand was perfect!

I think the hubbs enjoyed it :)

As always, Wallace was invited on hubby's lap after dinner and was sooo curiously wanting to smell the wine. Hubbs offer him a swig...

To which he replied "Comment osez-vous! Vous savez que je ne boire du vin francais!"

Well worth the wait :)

The windows are here!!!!! After waiting for what seemed like forever, the beauties finally arrived :)

The hubbs spent HOURS on Saturday scraping, scraping and scraping. The original windows on the front of the house had been painted and sealed shut :(

This front window was love at first sight for me. With everything else in the house completely destroyed by the all the "remodeling"' in the past, somehow these gorgeous windows survived. I wanted to replicate the same window for my kitchen.

Weeeeell, here she is. Can you spot the error???? Yeah, the pattern is UPSIDE DOWN!!! Such a bummer after all that waiting!! So hopefully the fix won't put us behind and we can keep on truckin!!

So now it's crunch time. I need to be picking tile, wood flooring, lighting, paint colors, plumbing fixtures etc. etc. etc!! And what do I do instead???? I buy these cute sticker roses and put them on my bathroom wall! (come on! I'm in a rental and dying here!)

The hubbs says it looks "granny". I don't care! It made me happy :)

Now I need to git to gittin!!! Do you find yourself doing mindless projects and totally avoiding what you really should be doing?????

Dresser redo #2 and a birthday too!!

This week in Cali was filled with crafting, fireworks and a birthday boy. I swear I do more things than redo dressers and cook yummy dinners! Who am I kidding? No I don't! I LOVE LOVE LOVE to find crap furniture and love it back to beauty :) I found this dresser at my fav Salvation Army for $50. Kinda expensive I know, but she had fabulous legs and suuuch potential! The poor thing had been stenciled to death and had those "onlays" hot glued to her. She was then finished with a fabulous coat of I don't know what, some sticky stuff that took FOREVER to sand off!

Soooo with the combination of some green paint, 2 vintage handles and A LOT of (the hubby's) elbow grease...

She's a happy girl :)

 My sweet son turned 20 yesterday, July 5th. I guess after living with a crrrazy mama like me, it would only be natural that he would end up with the same love of old used furniture.

He bought this chair for $10 at an estate sale and spent his birthday painting her.

She turned out like this :)

The happiest of birthdays Ryne!

I love you,

Pearl :)

Summer eats and DIY treats!!

I picked up this cookbook somewhere recently ( I seriously can't remember! Costco maybe?) and have found some reeeeally awesome easy recipes in it! I mean come on, it's summertime and 8 million degrees outside and all I want to do is GRILL GRILL GRILL!!!
This recipe for rum-glazed shrimp and mango was AWESOME!!

The sauce was sooo easy to make but I would suggest doubling it so there's plenty for pouring over the rice:) Then it's just cut up mango and skewer them and the shrimp, grill it up and VOILA!!

I served mine over rice and made a simple salad of arugula dressed with olive oil and sea salt :)

But the reeeal reason I love simple dinners so much? So I can do the things that I really love:) I bought this little beauty at The Salvation Army Boutique here in Cali. Yeah I know, It really has the word "boutique" in the sign! Which just means they can charge ridiculous prices for things that suckers like me HAVE to have :)

A few coats of paint and some flashy hardware and she's a stunner :)

Oh and that beautiful GLASS hardware? $14 freaking dollars a piece from Restoration Hardware. And when I bought it, the cashier made sure to remind me that whoever does the installation of this hardware must be verrry careful because they can break verrry easily. No problem I said! To which she replied, "well you know those construction men, they just man handle everything!" Hahaha I giggled, and went on my way.

Weeeeell, I'll have you know that not 2 minutes after I warn the hubbs about my fragile glass knobs....this happens :(

Yep, manhandled and broken :( His punishment? He has to accompany me back to Restoration Hardware tomorrow and buy a new one. Which if you know my hubby, is complete and utter torture :)

Green and white? Or white and green?

The house is FINALLY back on track! I ordered wood windows and it put our schedule back 6 weeks! The beautiful windows are to be here this week, so I'm realizing that I need to make some decisions on a few things cause after window install things are going to be moving fast! So this is my latest dilemma. I have wanted green cabinets FOREVER! But then I see white kitchens with green walls and I'm seriously confused!!

Green walls?

Or green cabinets????

The floors will be walnut if this helps in your decision making. Would love to know what you think????