Taste of OBJ {Bacon Wrapped Filet Mignon}

This week one of the specials was Bacon Wrapped Filet Mignon! I had this awhile ago and it was literally the BEST steak I've ever had! What's for dinner? Beef! I'll get to that in a minute...

I chose one of the soups, Cream of Broccoli. I loved it! There is something so comforting about a warm, creamy bowl of soup! It was delicious! I could taste the herbs, even though I couldn't figure out which ones they were. ;)

I was SO excited to eat this again! It is served on top of sweet potato polenta, and topped with a tomato bearnaise sauce! This sauce is killer! It compliments the beef perfectly!

Just look at how beautiful that is! Seriously, when we try to figure out somewhere to eat during the week and we're in a hurry, we have the hardest time deciding! Every place in town seems to have the same old, same old food. Not OBJ!

I like my beef medium and this was PERFECT for me! SOOO juicy and tender...plus wrapped with their SMOKED bacon in every bite! Oh boy!

For dessert I had the chocolate trauma...my favorite! This turned out to be a beautiful picture if I do say so myself! ;) I recently bought a big ice cream maker at a thrift store and I made a chocolate ice cream recipe I found online...FAIL! It was "okay" but it only made me LONG for this! I was hoping it would even be somewhere in the vicinity of tasting like George's that I crave almost daily....nope! Check out the full menu, specials menu, concert dates, hours and directions HERE! You'll be glad you did!

Aqua and Orange Party!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of setting up a dessert table for a special 17 year old! My friend's daughter (and MY girls swimming teacher) had a birthday yesterday and I set up while she and her friends were at dinner. The only thing she asked for was cake pops, and the rest of it was pure surprise, even the color scheme. I bought this fabric after tracking it down online. It's Amy Butler fabric that Beverly's had on an apron display but had long since sold out of. I searched and searched and finally found it on fabric.com. I bought it awhile ago and couldn't wait to use it. So I knew exactly what to suggest for this party!

I had some remnant pieces of other coordinating fabrics that were aqua and the light orange, so I cut them into strips and made a fabric banner that I pinned to the front of the tablecloth.

The girls were going to stay the night so I thought it would be fun if they had a FULL dessert table to pick off of all night!

I found the perfect aqua colored rock candy at Michael's!

I made matching labels for all of the desserts. It just adds so much cuteness!

I just love using popcorn cones! This time I made White Chocolate M&M Popcorn! I popped Orville R.'s Natural popcorn and then mixed it with Wilton's white melting disks and topped it with aqua m&m's, then spread it out on wax paper to dry. I also drizzled some blue and orange melting disks on top as well.

I used my oreo molds from Spinning Leaf to make perfectly smooth chocolate covered oreos, and drizzled them with orange.

Michael's had their bags of chocolate covered sunflower seeds on clearance so I quickly grabbed the closest matching colors! :) They look cute served in my milk glass dishes.

I made cupcakes and created some toppers on my Silhouette software. She mentioned she liked the peace party I did last month, so I made a mental note. ;)

I used one of my chalkboards, and made my own tissue poms for 99 cents each! I bought the packs of tissue paper and followed the Martha Stewart tutorial online to make them. Looking back at the pictures, I wish I had propped up the chalkboard SOMEHOW to be seen better.

I asked her mom for a picture of Vanessa so I could make this pinwheel decoration. I love how it turned out!

I love this little aqua jar I bought at a thrift store and it was a perfect fit when I added white sand to it!

Here are the cake pops! This was my first time ever making them. They were a lot of steps and quite messy to make. I still haven't finished cleaning my kitchen! lol. I bought this plain white cake pop stand at JoAnns for $5.99 and put it together and added ribbons to the front with double sided tape.

I almost gave up on putting the pops in here because they kept tilting over. Finally I looked under the bottom layer of cardboard on each tier and saw they were scored to poke the stick through both layers! Problem solved!

I love putting together these group pics with my iphone apps! I had a great time creating all of this for a special girl! My daughters absolutely adore her and get so excited when it's swimming lesson day! :) I'm glad I could offer to do something special for her.

Taste of Orange Blossom {Mixed Grill}

I'm excited to bring you one of this week's specials at OBJ! First can I just say that the music last night was just perfect? Last night was piano and guitar and they were workin' their magic last night. The music reminded me of what they play when you're getting a massage...totally relaxing. Okay, onto the special! It was a Mixed Grill: Chicken and Ribs with BBQ Glaze! The special salad was the Asparagus Salad with Sherry Walnut Dressing. Can you say fabulous? I'm loving asparagus in salads right now! Everything in their salads is always at the peak of freshness, and you can taste it!

Here's the Mixed Grill. It's a grilled chicken breast and ribs with their own BBQ glaze! To say I loved the glaze was an understatement. I've never been big on bbq sauces {I'm weird, I know}, but I think it was the lightness of this glaze that made me love it over sauce! The ribs were so tender that the meat would literally fall off the bone when you bit it! You can almost see the moistness of the chicken!

It was served on a pile of mashed potatoes, and topped with thin, fried onion strings. You have NO idea how much I love onion strings. Love! It also came with candied carrots, sauteed kale, and a huge piece of garlic bread.

Ready for dessert? How about a Blueberry Tart with Bourbon Vanilla Ice Cream?! Our server told us it was topped with cheesecake sauce! I don't know what that is, but I know it was GOOD!! :)

Everything was delicious! Wanna see something cool? I used an app on my iphone to create this quad pic of last night's special. It's called diptic in case you're wondering. ;)

What are you waiting for, are you ready to visit OBJ? Check out their hours, directions, menu and MORE!

Giant Family Scrabble

I was on pinterest earlier today and I came across this idea on THIS blog. Check it out to read detailed directions, and how to avoid some problems she encountered. It was super easy, the hardest part was prepping the wood. I happened to have all of the materials already at my house! LOVE free projects! I cut a 4x4 post {which is actually 3.5 x 3.5 in case you didn't know that-don't get me started on that!} into pieces about an inch thick. I picked a reference point on my saw, since it is too short of a distance to reach the built in measurements. Cut your pieces, and sand the edges nice and smooth, as well as the front.

Grab your mod podge! I put a coat on the face and all sides and then let it dry, just to seal the wood.

Ok, back up. In the tutorial she did this on her computer, but I just grabbed a piece of paper and started working with the names. Once I found one that worked, I counted how many blocks I would need. Put your thinking caps on, you don't need the same number of letters in all of your names because some of those letters will get double-use, but you don't know which ones until you pick your pattern, so do this first. I actually thought it wasn't going to work, or I was going to try to add the word "family" and see if that would make our names work without touching in the wrong places and making the names run together. You could add different words if yours don't work right alone. {family, love, home, your last name, etc.}

Here are my pieces drying from the mod podge. I didn't take a picture of me placing the vinyl on the blocks, because that's pretty self explanatory. ;) I cut my letters and tiny numbers the correct sizes using my silhouette software. If you don't have vinyl, you could use black paper instead. After placing the vinyl where I wanted it, I put a layer of mod podge on top of them to make sure they stick. Some of them didn't want to stick to the wood very well, because it's the rough edge of the wood. Mod podge did the trick.

After they dried again, I hot glued flat thumbtacks on the backs of them. Just use one in the center top of the back. I wasn't sure if one would work, but it worked perfectly. ;)

When hanging, I started with Emma, and grew out from there since hers was kind of the center name.

Here's a closer shot of the tiny "score" numbers. I think this is SO cute! I LOVE how it turned out!

I have a niece who is a photographer and she's always posting pics like this one on facebook and I always thought you had to have photoshop to do this, but today she posted one of their dinner while they were at dinner, so I knew there must be an app I didn't know about. I asked her and she said she uses a combination of diptic and instagram. Diptic was $1.99 and instagram was free. I quickly figured it out and {yay!} now I can make cute pictures! Thanks Bree! :)

Summer Parasol Wreath

I originally saw this idea quite awhile ago, but finally got around to making it when I needed to take my patriotic wreath down. I bought the little umbrellas at Smart and Final. By the way, do you know how CHEAP you can get some things at S&F?! Lots and lots of deals to be had, especially for a party planner! Anyway....this couldn't be easier! I bought a foam wreath and pushed in the umbrellas. I actually let Cami help me do this and just kind of guided her on placement.I thought it needed something in the middle so I looked for a scrap block of wood in the garage. I sprayed it aqua and cut out Happy Summer with my Silhouette. I used thin wire to loop it through the polka dot ribbon holding the wreath, and finished the ends by swirling them around a pencil.

I think it looks very summer-y and by the way I LOVE my new font from Silhouette! In case you're wondering it's called SNF Marmalade. Happy Summer! {What's left of it!} :(

Dining Set Complete!

Welp, I did it. It's done. C'est fini. Yesterday I went to a couple of thrift stores on the hunt for my two final chairs and I finally found them at Salvation Army. Brought them home and OF COURSE I ran out of both cans of spray paint halfway through each chair! Ughh! I got more paint and finished them last night though! Missed how I re-finished the table? Click here to see the before pictures.Yesterday I went to Pier 1 looking for placemats and ended up finding chair cushions half off! You can see I have to buy one more today for the new cream chair on the end. I didn't want to buy more cushions until I found the chairs. One of the chairs doesn't need a cushion because it has a seat that I re-upholstered already.

This chair was a whopping $5.50. I unscrewed the seat and spray painted it Exotic Sea Spray. {Valspar-Lowes}

Now I'll show you the whimsical chair cushions I picked out...

They all have the aqua/turquoise-ish color in there somewhere so that they tie in. I love that it adds so many colors to the room and really turns up the fun.

Even the ties on these cushions are cute!

This one has beads on the bottoms of the ties!

I love the back on this one. It was my other Salvation Army find and it was $9.50 but it was on sale so it ended up being less than $7! I'll be picking out a cushion for this one today! :)

The chair from the beginning has a new life with some cute polka dot fabric!

I LOVE the way it turned out! My house feels so different now, and we have more room! The old table was great, but it just wasn't "us". If you read Cupboard Door Makeover, you know that I don't really do whimsy...until now! I think the trick is to not do TOO much whimsy. This will probably be as far as I'll dip my toes in the whimsical world of decorating. :)

Linked up to Lipstick and Laundry's Turquoise Tuesday Party.