I can't be the only one who needs to hear this today...

"How He Loves"
- David Crowder Band -

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

Yeah, He loves us oh,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all

He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.

And we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

Oh how He loves us, oh
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves all.
How He loves.

Yeah, He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.

Yeah, He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.

The good, bad and ugly

Let's start with the good! My birthday is next week - and I got my first birthday card...




... from Antropologie. Because they heart me. How cute is this card?

The little candle you see is actually a necklace (the cord is on the back of the card.) I may or may not wear it on my birthday.... you know, as a reminder to everyone that it's MY DAY.

Other good news: My new bar stools came in on Tuesday - and I placed my order last Wednesday! So three big bar stools made it to my house in less than a week - with a weekend and a Labor day thrown into the mix. You can't ask for more than that. I debated between buying three or four stools... and I'm glad I stuck with three. They are kind big, and while four would have fit, it would have been a tight squeeze.


The Bad:
Chad (on accident) broke my hair straightener two weeks ago. Any girl with a professional hair straightener will tell you it's a fate worse than death having your hair straightener out of commission. Though my impulse was to run out to Ulta to buy another Chi for $200 (sigh), I decided to be economical and buy it off Amazon. Usually Amazon ships super quick, so Iwasn't too worried.

Needless to say, I've been sans straightener for two weeks now, and it's still not here. According to the shipper tracking, it's been in Charlotte since Monday. A horse and carriage should have been able to get it to me by now.

So if you're wondering The Ugly, it is without a doubt my hair:

{pic via}

Hoping I'll have it in the mail by the end of the week. My hair does too.

Master bedroom - final!

I kept forgetting to take pictures of our master bedroom ... now that we finally have drapes and the new linens.

So here you are!
And by the way, the linen sheets/duvet cover are wonderful... super soft and breathable. I now only want linen sheets on my bed! I want to get the matching quilt and throw pillow at some point... but at least we have a start!

Highs and lows

I blogged Friday about how I was going to make a special dinner at home for me and the mister. We started off the meal with some yummy La Farm bread, asiago fresco cheese and a variety of olives. Delicious!

Then, on to the main course - my Mussels South of the Border. The end product:

What was NOT shown in this picture was how horribly inedible they were. I had never made mussels before - so I did my time researching ahead of time how to clean, store and cook them properly. I was ready to roll. I stopped by Whole Foods Friday, and whadayaknow... they had no fresh mussels in stock... only frozen. However, the seafood counter guy walked me over to the frozen mussels, handed me a box and told me that they'd defrost in 20 minutes easy when sitting in a bowl of ice water. (Works for shrimp, so I figured why not.)

I get home, open the box to defrost my mussels... and I find out they're on the half-shell. How the heck will I be able to tell if they're cooked properly if I can't gauge it by when the shell opens. However, I read the back of the box and it suggests 5 minutes for thawed mussels, 7-8 minutes for frozen. I wait for nearly 45 minutes and my mussels STILL have ice on some of them. Some are thawed, but many are not. At this point, I'm certain this is going to be an epic failure. But I proceed with making my stock (which by the way, was delicious), and throw in my half-thawed mussels... and proceed to check on them every few mussels. After 6 minutes, there is still ice on the mussels and my cooking liquid has completely stopped simmering. I crank up the heat a bit, say a quick prayer, and give them a couple additional minutes.

The mussels are still barely warm to the touch, but I was scared to cook them even longer -so I pulled the pot off the stove. The pot smelled delicious - so I was hopeful. Unfortunately the mussels, like I figured, had at some point gone from raw to complete rubber. So Chad and I pulled all the mussels out of the pot and straight into the trash. So then we gorged ourselves on olives, cheese, and bread dipped in the cooking stock - which was very yummy... it had a lot of the mussel flavor (just no mussels.)

Oh well. I'm sure I would have been able to make them just fine if they weren't frozen/on a half-shell... so I might attempt again at a later date.

Soooooo... after that disaster, I was scared to attempt another new recipe... chicken and dumplings ---- from scratch. I was planning on making a big pot to take over to our friends Jerod and Angela who recently had baby Jacob (that I also blogged about last week.) It's one thing to try a new recipe out on yourself... it's another to be banking on serving it to a friend. Chad ALMOST convinced me to chicken out and just make chicken pastry using pre-made frozen pastry. But Sunday morning I woke up with a new resolve - I wasn't going to let a frozen mussel massacre bring me down.

So Sunday night/Monday morning I tackled chicken and dumplings. It was quite time consuming... and I was worried how my homemade dumplings would fare. I didn't want them to taste pasty or dry. The recipe I used also didn't mention how big to make the dumplings... but Chad mentioned he hates big ol' dumplings, so I made mine a little smaller than a ping-pong ball.

Here they are --- the cute little dumplings... with a little thyme and parsley. Ready for their bath!


The delicious stock - full of chicken (I forced myself to leave the dark meat in... though I don't usually like it, I know the fattiness was needed), onions, carrots, celery and fresh herbs.

The final product:
And if I do say so myself- it was ahhhhhhmazzzzzzzzzinggggggggg. Comfort food at it's finest. I dropped a small bowl off at my mama's (because what girl doesn't want her mama's approval on her cooking --- especially when said mom is an amazing cook) for her to bring for lunch today. She actually just got on gchat to tell me that she's adding it to her list of "the best things I ever ate." I'll take it! ;)

So don't let a bad turn at the stove get you down, dear readers... a masterpiece might be right around the corner!

Feeling the love

I'm not gonna lie - the last few months have been rough for me and Chad. We've just been really busy with work, activities, church --- and no doubt, fertility treatments. But, like everything, we push through it together.

So last night, I got home from work to find a house that was gleaming from head-to-toe. And a huge bouquet of stargazer lilies. And the sweetest card... one that, of course, sang "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch." Chad told me I better enjoy that card, because it was ex-pen-sive! So I promised to open the card often so make the most of it.

And after that, we got to head to dinner with our best friends, D&J... and our favorite little girl. She dressed extra fancy for us:
Tonight, Chad and I are going to have a nice night at home alone - just the two of us. I'm planning on heading to Whole Foods right after work and picking up all the necessities to make Mussels South of Two Borders.

And I will pick up a crusty loaf of Italian or sourdough... hopefully they have some fresh from La Farm Bakery (my favorite.) Hopefully the 99 degree heat will go down enough this evening that we can enjoy dinner together on the porch.

Sounds like a great way to start off Labor Day weekend. Hope you, my lovely readers, enjoy every minute of it!

Cool Stool

Finally, after a few months of searching (then a few months of waiting), we have purchased bar stools for our kitchen!

I'm so excited. Here they are:The best part - I got three $50 bar stools (in which shipping was originally around $75), for $96 total... with no shipping fee. Yippee! My sistafriend Jamie sent me a promo code and a $40 discount coupon to use. So what would have been $75 stools, I got for $33 bucks. You can't beat that with a stick.

Now I'm just crossing my fingers that they ship on time - and arrive undamaged.

Also, Chad and his dad (not me, I'm ashamed to say) have been hard at work building our kitchen table and benches -- which we're modeling after this one:

Chad's putting his foot down (since building this table was my idea and all... and I promised to help with it) and making me do the staining. So hopefully this weekend I'll go pick a nice stain color. If you have a good brand/color you love, please share! I think I'll do an dark walnut stain... but we'll see!

Last night I fell in love...

... again.

With the most gorgeous baby boy. Our good friends Jerod and Angela welcomed on Friday their first baby - the gorgeous Jacob Michael.

And we got to go see him last night. And snuggle him. And coo at him. And ohmygoodness we love this baby already. He has a full head of the most silky gorgeous hair and the sweetest eyes. And mom and dad weren't lookin' too shabby themselves. Angela - despite only being four days post-delivery and going off zero sleep - looked absolutely glowing. I, on the other hand, just look tired. Oh well - pay no attention to me... just stare at that sweet thang in my arms.

I commented on how handsome Jacob was, and Jerod -without a second's hesitation- said: "Um, well you did know he was my baby, right. What did you expect?"

Jerod is another one of Chad's friends from school - another guy he grew up with. It never ceases to amaze me how blessed I am to have gotten to be a part of those friendships. We're just one big happy family. In just over a year, we've gotten to welcome Annie, Maia and now little Jacob in the world. Our big family keeps expanding... and it's such a blessing to see.

We're looking forward to watching this little guy grow up in the years to come.

(And okay, even with that gorgeous baby in his arms - can I just say how gorgeous that husband of mine is? Those eyelashes and dimples get me every time.)