Hot Stuff's parents just left today after being here two weeks.  It was such a nice time; however, I figured after being allowed a mini break from painting, cleaning, blogging, and pretty much everything else in my life, I'd better start my life back up again and post a few pictures from the past, oh, couple  months or so :)

I was so insanely excited when I made these homemade funfetti cupcakes! They looked and smelled SO good...until I took them out of the oven and realized they were super dense :( I frosted them anyway and took a picture because even though they tasted terrible, they were super cute :)

Near the end of July, my brother and his family came up for a few days, and he had a book signing at our library :) I'm so proud of him! I finished his book in two days. It was awesome. He's already got a second book (not in a series) finished, just waiting for someone to publish it! He was always such a great story teller growing up-as weird as it sounds, I could imagine him reading his book out loud to me :) You can buy his book on Amazon :)

My friend Heather and I met up for dinner after work recently. We went to James St. Station where they have $3 appetizers! We were so excited :) We got deep fried pickles, deep fried beans, chili cheese fries, and santa fe chicken wraps...all super bad for you and SUPER yummy :) I absolutely love hanging out with her!

We walked downtown where there was some sort of festival going on, and House of Flavor's was handing out FREE tubs of ice cream! It was awesome.

I was reading a great blog, This Heart of Mine, the other day, came across her rhubarb crisp recipe and knew I had to try it. I didn't add enough rhubarb (I accidentally didn't buy enough); but even without enough rhubarb, it was super yummy.

This came in the mail a while back-doesn't it sort of look like a horror movie? haha

This was at a family reunion...

Rebecca, Micah, and I went blueberry picking about a month ago :). So much fun! Micah especially loved eating the plants haha! It wasn't super hot or anything, but Rebecca and I both got major sunburns (not Micah-we took great care in making sure he was covered)...

He's so stinkin' cute. It was getting pretty hot when we were done, so Rebecca and I got some waters; Micah LOVED licking the water droplets off the bottle haha!

Today I got out of work early due to having to stay late twice. It was perfect timing-first day Tim's parents are gone, and both of us are able to be at home, relaxing. I'm watching Grey's Anatomy (I'm in the middle of part 2 on hulu-so suspenseful!!!) and Tim's playing WOW. Surprise surprise haha. The rest of my night I think I'll spend finishing up book 5 of Harry Potter, writing up some blog posts, and watching Iron Man 3 :)

I've heard a lot lately about how good apple cider vinegar is for you-helps with indigestion, allergies, weight loss, gerd and whatnot. I've tried drinking a teaspoon of it...it's not awesome. This morning I had the bright idea of adding the vinegar to water, thinking it would mellow out the flavor? Um, no. It was so disgusting I almost puked. Then I threw my water out. I did see a few recipes where you add honey and orange juice and some other stuff-I'll probably try that next time.

I've been nonexistent in the blogging world for the past month because....DUH DUH DUH DAH!!! We closed on our HOME!!!

Apparently this is the only picture of the outside you get to see right now because it's the only one I took haha! 

I'm super excited to start posting our renovations because Lord know the house needs some!

The hardest part for us so far has been money...lack of it...our closing costs ended up being almost $1000 more than we anticipated, then we bought a stove ($150 at a yard sale-It was practically brand new! The oven was never even used!), add a couple trips to the Home Depot, then buying Tim's books for the semester...all in three weeks? Yeah. Renovations will happen slowly but surely! If anyone has ANY tips, please let me know! Or if you've had any mishaps, please share so I don't make the same mistakes :)

Random

The past couple of days I spent on Pinterest cleaning out my boards. I am happy to say my likes are down from 1200 to under 100, my "get in the closet" pins are down from 450 to under 200, "home" is down from 350 to something...etc...and I feel so much lighter! Isn't it weird how something online like Pinterest can stress you out without realizing it?

Tim and I went to a baseball game a while back with my employer...have you had one of these ropes before? They're terrible. 

Tim and I love living on Lake Michigan. We love taking walks.

We also love acting stupid. :)

Bath time with Micah!

 He's so stinkin' cute.

I tried posting a video of me doing a so called flip, but it didn't work for some reason...Tim's flips are much cooler anyway.

 I swear, this is the cutest moomoo I've ever seen.

My second time ever playing golf. My employer thought it'd be fun to play 18 holes...it took us 5 hours. Never again. Maybe 9 holes.

Can you tell he's played before? I look pretty stupid when I golf.

Came home to this in the mail. I love days like this :) And I've read both the books since getting them. "Eat, Pray, Love" is a GREAT book. I didn't care for the movie the first time I watched it; but because I liked the book so much, I ended up buying the movie. I watched it for a second time, and it made much more sense after reading the book. I highly recommend it. "My Life in France" is a also great read. Much of it was in the movie "Julie & Julia", which I also recommend :)

Random much? :) Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

farmer's market

My parent's have a HUGE garden, and they sell many of their produce at the farmer's market on Saturdays. I went down there a couple weeks ago to see what the market had :)

 nasturtium flowers and leaves (edible flowers) and radish pods

 All different kinds of lettuce/kale

 Cherries :)

 snap peas

 My mom and all her delicious food :)

 so good

 I bought some delicious fruit :)

 and proceeded to make some yummy waffles...which my brother loved :)

Is there anything better than bacon? I think not.

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Almost our entire town was without power for a day...wait, let me say that again, it was the HOTTEST day this summer (at least it felt like it) when we were without power. I got home from work and STUPIDLY decided to work out-I practically died I was so hot after working out for about 15 minutes. I seriously had sweat dripping from practically every pore of my body. It was disgusting. Anyway, Tim and I realized there was no possible way we could stay home, so we decided to drive to the next town over for dinner. And some air conditioning. 

 Yum yum! They had trivia cards at each table-SMART! What a good idea to keep people's minds off of the wait for food!

 We drove past the library, and they were having a FREE book sale! Nothin' better than a FREE book sale...well, except for finding books you actually want haha. It must have been a couple days into the sale because there was absolutely nothing good. Oh well.

 We ended the night out on the deck. It was great. Our power finally turned on at about 12:30am.

 Love watchin' him play. He's so good.

 Some friends invited us to hang out with them at the beach. It was so much fun! And how cute is their son?

Mr. Muscle Man ;) Seriously. Look at his muscles. What the heck. Why when I work out all the time does nothing happen to my arms, and yet he can barely work out and look like that??? Not that I personally want to look like that, just more toned, but still. Not fair.

We then went to House of Flavors for ice cream :) Avery had to try each person's ice cream :)

We haven't had too many things planned this summer for fun, so it was nice actually getting out of the house :) I've still got plenty of activities to do and places to go on my list for this summer; considering it's August already, I think Tim and I need to get crackin'!