ROOM REPORT CARD ... CLOSET

Well I guess to fully appreciate this, you have to get a little Family History!! My parents bought this lovely house that I have lived in for nearly 21 years while my mother was pregnant with me. The first project on the house was my room, since it was the nursery .... the projects haven't stopped since. When its all done, there won't be a single room in the house that hasn't changed. We started with a 1 story 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a den and kitchen. Now we have a 2 story, 3 bigger bedrooms and 2 that will eventually be upstairs, a den, dinning room area, kitchenette area, much bigger kitchen, 3 baths (1 will go upstairs), a carport, garage and a gardening shed. When everything is done, we will have added nearly 2,000 sqft to the house that the parents bought 21 yrs ago. 

ANYWAYS ....

This is the closet in all its new glory ... now lets all say a little prayer that it stays looking so pretty!!

I think I am going to get 1 or 2 more white bins, at least one to put linens in, as you can see I already have a blanket just hanging out on the bottom shelf. I think just one, so my exercise ball has a place to live too. I really love having all the little baskets for scarves, hats, belts, bathing suits, and some of oscar's things like his leash and sweaters. I was green too and reused the pretty victoria secret boxes from christmas to load full of cds and pictures too. 

NEXT UP:

Sand, Prime and Paint!!!!!!!

SUNDAY DINNER

I love to cook!! I mean I really really really love to cook ... I get this deep passion from my Maw Maw. Although she passed away 10 years ago a week ago, she definitely passed the cooking gene on!! Everyone on my dad's side of the family is a pretty amazing cook and I truly believe it is because of Maw Maw. She was always in the kitchen, and she would always get you to taste things and see what needed to be added or if you could pick up the different herbs, spices and other ingredients. I may have been too young to learn a lot of what she could of taught me but there is one thing that she taught me very well and that is the pleasure of feeding people. She loved having people over and feeding them (wayyy too much by the way ... you would take 2 bits and she would be filling your plate again!). She took so much pleasure herself in seeing people just fully enjoying her food. That passion to feed people and please them ... I definitely attribute to her! Especially being from New Orleans, food is a huge part of my life. New Orleans Seafood is surely my favorite to cook with. So I though what a good blog idea, since its one of my favorite things in the world!! So pretty much every weekend the family tries to do something new and different. A lot of times we go to a restaurant and we try something on the menu and become obsessed with it and have to figure out how to make it ourselves. This recipe originated from a tv show that we watched, Everyday Italian. We changed the sauce, and a few other things but the gist of it was from Giada. Not to brag but OHHH did it come out sooo good!!!!

CRAB AND RICOTTA CANNELLONI with CRAWFISH SAUCE

Cannelloni Pasta (I was able to make 8)

1 cup ricotta cheese

3/4 cup grated Parmesan Cheese, plus about 1/4 cup for sprinkling

1 egg yolk

1 pound lump crabmeat

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, once to a nice boil add cannelloni. Cook until tender but still a little firm ... this will make it easier to stuff them.

In a large bowl, mix the ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, egg yolk, crab, salt and pepper. I also added a little garlic and herb salt.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Crawfish Sauce -- 

1/2 pound Crawfish tails  

(I used a whole pound and I think that was a waste! 

So use your judgement)

1 sticks butter

2 tablespoons minced garlic

2 tablespoons onion powder

1/2 cup onions

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

2 tablespoons paprika

1/2 cup lemon juice

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

4 tablespoons Flour

2 cups milk

1 cup half and half

Melt  1 stick of butter in a large sauce pan, then add onion powder and onions. Saute onions until tender, then add garlic and cook for another minute (be careful, it burns easy!). Add in salt, pepper, cayenne, paprika, Worcestershire, lemon juice and crawfish tails. Cook for 2-4 minutes

Add flour and milk, cook for 3 minutes then add half and half. Let sauce thicken (when you start seeing the sauce stick to the sides, cook for just a few more minutes).

Fill the cannelloni with the crab mixture and pour the crawfish sauce on top, then sprinkle the extra parmesan on top! Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Since this was the first time, I really liked the sauce ... it actually came out wayyy different than I thought it would. My dad absolutely loved it to death and wouldn't shut up about it. But I think it would be good with something a little lighter also, and thats what I was going for but it came out very rich. I think it would of been good with something a little lighter and just good enough to give it some moisture and a little flavor because the crab stuffing was my favorite part. All in all it was really good and it tasted awesome. 

SCHOOL ... IT HAS ITS PERKS!!!

Since I finally got the pictures to work (thanks Jess), I can finally blog about all my fun and new desk items! Part of the getting organized plan and the number 1 reason I like still being in school .... SCHOOL SUPPLIES!!! I always get super excited when I go buy new school supplies!

This is a weekly desk calendar I found at Target, it originally had little note pads at the top that were cute and colorful .... but it was too big for my desk, so I got the handy dandy razor blade and cut it off and now its perfect! As you will see I have a ton of calendars/planner, but they all have a specific purpose. On this calendar I write down everything in my School Planner, such as what I need to read or bring for class, and some fun stuff too. This is my detailed Desk Calendar. I also got the notepad for a $1.00 at target and the little post-its. I am obsessed and can not wait to use the post-its ... I saw them and I thought they were so cute. They say, "Where I left off," "Study," and "On the Test." (they were also found at target) 

This is my monthly overview Calendar. I just put important things for school ... when projects are due, when I have test ... that kind of thing. This is all done so I don't forget! At LSU I had a lot of friends in class with me, and I would never forget because of them. When I got to UNO I found I forgot things more often, and usually did everything at the very last minute. So this semester I have a million calendars in hopes that this semester will be a little less last minute and a little less stressful. Next month looks scary ... lots of pink!

I couldn't leave out the School Planner since I think its so cute too ... got this at Barnes and Nobles.

Liz knows me all too well! She got me this little Desk Calendar and Journal for Christmas. I love journals, and try to keep up with writing in them on a regular basis. I love going back and reading them. The ones I have from High School now crack me up and I love to think in 30 years I can read them and be right back in my 16 yr old mind set. The Desk Calendar has to be my favorite thing on my desk! It is just tooo cute! For each holiday there is a little symbol for the holiday instead of the date, for example in the picture for new years there are two champagne glasses. Each month there is a picture of girls or girl doing something that is cliche for that month. January is obviously depicting everyone's need to get fit for the New Year. These were all bought at Scriptura, one of my ultimate favorite New Orleans Stores. They are located Uptown and in Metairie. They sell the cutiest journals, stationary, albums, pens/pencils, and so much more. I can't go in there much because I end up spending too much.

These I found one day strolling on Magazine Street. The store is called New Orleans Casting Company, it is right across from Frock Candy and The Nile Cafe between Eight and Ninth Street. It is owned by a lady who makes and sells the stuff. She makes the watermeter stuff, crosses, fleur de lis, and a few other things. I got my sister a little buddha from here when she finally got her driver's permit!! haha Anyways these are watermeter coaster. She does not normally make them unless someone asks, and I just so happened to ask. She sells them in a set of four. These are in the cream and bronze finish, she also does them in a black and bronze, black and silver, and a black and gold I believe. I got my cousin the a big black and silver Watermeter to go on her wall from here. I really want to get one of her crosses, she has so many and they are so pretty. Maybe when I start putting things back on the walls in my room I will go get one finally. Unfortunately she does not have a website though. 

The last and most important thing on my desk my awesome mac-daddy. Well now he got his name well before the girly sticker but anyways! This is my computer and my sister's. We found this fun website Skinit.com where you can order a sticker for pretty much anything an ipod, computer, cell phone and I am sure there are others. You can either pick from pictures/prints that Skinit.com already has, or you can upload picture(s) of your own. My sister and I uploaded these pictures we found on the internet. The sticker are very thick and heavy duty. They go on real easy but I would not advise to try and re-stick them ... so be careful your first time. My sister got a sticker for her ipod and she tried to move it and because the sticker is so thick and extremely sticky its hard to take off and re-stick. Although it does not leave your computer with any sticky residue. 

LEARNING TO RUN

Today began my friends and I's first real day of training for the Crescent City Classic and although it was cold and windy I think we did awesome!! In the summer I was in serious need of new tennis shoes and I decided to get ones that were nike+ capable, just in case one day I started my life long dream to learn how to run. Now when I say this people sometimes laugh and maybe its just because I am blonde and they think I am stupid .... I know how to run, but I can only run for a few minutes or if my life depended on it.  All my life I have ridden down St. Charles Avenue under the beautiful oak trees and seen men and women, young and old, running. They just look amazing, so healthy and that maybe for those few minutes they are running thats all that matters. I WANT THAT!! I want to be able to just take off and run. Run for hours if I wanted to. Maybe not hours but maybe for an hour at least, just non-stop running. I don't want to be the fastest or go the furthest ... I just want to run and feel what those people are feeling while they run. I know I love taking walks and they really clear my head, but just to imagine running and getting your heart rate up, and your endorphins going. Its a natural high, or it looks that way from an outsider. So I want to join the club. So I signed up for the Classic and I joined the Nike+ running nation!!!

 

This is the 2006 Crescent City Classic Poster ... They are all really cool and very New Orleans. I am really looking forward to seeing and getting this years poster since it will be my first time in the Classic. I chose this one to post because the blues brothers running in short in the front made me crack up!!

Nike+ has now become my new best friend ... this technology is AMAZING!!! I love it. So I got my shoes over the summer and I got a cute product(red) nano when I got my new mac. So I had everything but the hookup for my shoe and nano, and the motivation to use my cool new gadgets all together. So today I went and bought the little pedometer piece that fits into the sole of the nike+ shoes and the receiver that hooks to the bottom of an ipod nano. They come together and its only $29, and you can find them almost anywhere or at Nike.com. Today was only my first day using it all but I am already super impressed. It tracks distance, time, and then gives you an average time per mile. But you have to remember to end you workout immediately ... if you check my nike+ profile page, it shows you how "slow" we got towards the end and thats because we stopped and I forgot to stop the workout on my ipod. You can also plug in your weight and it will track how many calories you burn (which I did not realize why it wasn't tracking my calories but then I read up on it and realized that you had to enter your weight ... so that will have to wait for tomorrow). Then when I got home I plugged my ipod into my computer and from itunes it automatically sent all that lovely data to my nike+ account. 

So you can track my Classic Training progress. The nike+ software keeps a lovely log of everything for me!! 

KUNDALINI YOGA

My senior year of High School after one of my best friend's mom passed away from an almost 10 year fight with cancer, I started having really bad tension problems in my neck and shoulders. Sometimes I would lock up and could not move. When I saw my doctor he said that I did have an inflammation problem in my right shoulder, but it also had a lot to do with stress. He suggested I try yoga. I never got around to it, but this time last year (after everything that happened that fall semester and over the holidays), I put my mind to it, it certainly couldn't hurt. I decided that I didn't want to take a class, because I didn't know that much about yoga and I wasn't in good shape. So I started doing research and trying to find the best yoga dvd. Ravi and Ana kept sticking out, they were at the top of many "best yoga dvd" lists I was finding. There are still the number 1 on Amazon's list, and they have 5 stars and between the 2 dvds I chose there are well over 300 reviews. Then I read that their client list included Madonna, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Donna Karan. I was convienced. So I decided to get their Beginners dvd and their Fat Free Yoga dvd. 

The type of yoga on these dvds is called Kundalini Yoga. It combines different types of breathing, movement, stretching, meditaion, chanting and the science of sequence. There are two types of breathing used on the dvds. The first is long deep breathing, and the second is "the breathe of fire." The Breathe of Fire is rapid deep breathing. The comparison they use for this breathing on the dvd is panting like a dog. Which I promise the first time you do it, you will feel like the biggest idiot in the world. Even if you are alone, you will laugh at yourself and think ... "If someone walked in right now they would seriously think something was wrong with me." Once you get use to it though, you don't even think about it anymore. The Breathe of Fire is used to get your heart rate up and keep it up throughout a sequence. The dvds start with a breathing exercise, then some spinal warm-ups and stretching followed by a special set called a Kriya. A Kriya might focus on de-toxing the liver, boosting your energy, massaging your organs to get your hormones flowing correctly, or mastering your moods, and developing will-power. After each Kriya there is a relaxation for a few minutes, to consolidate your gains. Each dvd ends with a meditation. www.raviana.com 

     People have grown up to 3 inches in some cases because their spine was so compressed and yoga stretched and lengthened their spine. Yoga also prides itself on helping people with back problems. The exercises are intense but very low impact. They really work with you to make sure you get the exercises right. And ultimately it helps your work with stress. To me yoga is unlike any other exercise I have tried. It is not about getting big arms or a perfectly chiseled six pack. Its strictly about getting healthy, and making your body work for you the way it should. It won't take long before you start feeling the difference. 

HERE GOES - 2008 ... a year for change!!

Well I have been wanting to start a blog for awhile now! I know I love reading everyone else's blog but I never thought I was interesting enough to start one myself. But here goes ... I figured with the new year and one of my many resolutions being to try new things ... I would finally go for it. And I also thought it would help me track my progress on my many resolutions!

1. There is so much I want to accomplish this year. I know you are legally an adult when you turn 18, but for the past 2 1/2 years in college I feel like I have still been playing the kid card a little (and I probably will until I can not get away with it anymore). But I also feel like I need to straighten up on some things such as money. UGHH the word just makes me cringe! I mean there is only so much I can do, since I am still in school full time. Yet, I think since I am an accounting major this should be something I get ahold of. Since part of my career will be managing other people's money ... scary!! Since I am having trouble with my own. So resolution number 1 is born ... Saving More Money. So I read up on it, and there is a lot of get rich quick things out there. Well I am just starting slow, especially since I do not make big money, I can not save big money. But I was watching the Today show and the lady on there told me that if I saved $200 a month and put it into an account with a 20% interest rate, in 20 years I would be a millionaire!! Crazy huh! As much as that may or may not be true. I have decided to save $200 a month, which is only $50 a week. So that started this month and it is going awesome so far. The second part of this resolution is to go talk to my bank. I have talked to family and friends about money, credit and things of that nature. But I really want to sit down with someone that does this for a living and get them to give me a plan. So maybe when I get settled with school, I will make that appointment and hopefully get on my way to being a millionaire one day.

2. Last year I started working out and eating healthy and I was doing really well. But somewhere along the way I lost my way and went back to do all the wrong things. Especially with all my stomach problems from the past year, it is something I seriously need to do for my health. This time last year I started doing yoga on a regular basis and fell in love!! It was amazing, its just astonishing how much yoga does for your mind and body. In case you are more interested in yoga and what works for me I will blog about it later and give you all the awesome details! Anyways, it really started paying off a lot. Then the summer came and I started working 40 hrs a week, and have been working every minute I am not at school since. So I got away from yoga because I did not have time. Well I have decided that it is not so much that I don't have time, but that I don't make the time. I always come home tired from work, and/or school. But I have slowly started working out again and finding the time for it. It takes 21 days to make a new habit. I started this past monday so its only been 3 days but I am determined. One thing that gives me a lot of hope with this goal is that my friends are all determined to get healthier this year also. We all signed up for the Crescent City Classic that is March 22 in New Orleans. Which I advise anyone in the New Orleans area to sign up for, it is $20 if you sign up before Jan. 31st. It is a 10k race, but you are welcome to come walk with us. But the really awesome thing is that when you sign up you get a training schedule. So it is definitely worth $20, an awesome investment into your health.

3. This one is simple but hard. Getting organized. I am a very organized person, but since I moved back home and my house is still under a long and very annoying remodel .... everything is being changed. Which is so exciting and annoying at the same time. It is just hard because with school and work it is hard to find the time or energy to do it or get excited about it. But we have made some progress since the New Year. While I was away in Michigan, my parents torn down a wall in my room and added on to my room. Now we are working on paint colors, and a ceiling fan.

4. Especially with this year being an election year, I want to get more involved with what is going on in the government. Through the past few years I have learned how much one person can make a difference. As silly as this sounds, recently I got an email from a friend on facebook that started a group to save their dog. The guy needed $5,000 to save his dog and somehow had made a deal that if he got 100,000 people to sign a petition someone would donate the extra money he needed. Well needless to say the dog was saved. Anyways, I want to educate myself on all the presidential candidates and their views. I also want to educate myself on state and local officials. In seventh grade my teacher told me "if you don't vote, then you can't complain." Which make a big impact on me and I hold that statement very dear to me. To go along with that statement I need to educate myself on my officials and my government and what I can do to make a difference. Politics scare me and I am in no way looking to push my beliefs and values on others. I just want to do my part.

5. Trying new things ... this blog is my first! Included in this is to be a tourist in my own town. New Orleans has so much to offer, especially this time of year with all the festivals just around the corner!! I awful people ask me about things in New Orleans and I have no clue what they are taking about. I mean I have lived here all my life!! So that is a big goal for me ... to get to know my own hometown better!