ATTENTION! Labor Day weekend is upon us!  Summer is winding down and I'm most certainly looking towards fall!



{ONE} So Long Summer Giveaway:  If anything screams fall, its the release of pumpkin items at Starbucks!  Pumpkin spiced latte, Pumpkin spiced Frappiccino, Pumpkin Spiced Bread... sigh, I'm in heaven... To celebrate the release of all these goodies I'm doing my first giveaway with my BFF over at Charmed and Southern.  We wanted to share our Pumpkin Starbucks obsession with you all by having a giveaway for a $25 Starbucks gift-card!  The So Long Summer Giveaway will run all labor day weekend.  So I gotta say it... SO LONG SUMMER!

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/c6d07b0/

{TWO} Decked out Doormat:  I was alone in the apartment this week so I spent my time catching up on my crafting.  I was finally able to complete some of the projects I wanted to.  My favorite project of the week was upgrading my ugly old grey door mat.  No longer ugly and grey... I'm instead greeted at my door by TEAL and ugly grey.

{THREE} Sex in the City: I love Sex in the City.  Always have, always will.  Hence why I've begun re-watching the entire series.  I'm on season 5 already.  Blows my mind Carrie met Big in the first episode by the way... This morning I actually considered wearing pearls, because Charlotte wears pearls.  Is that weird?  I've recently decided I need to quit wearing sweat pants and wear more makeup, so watching the show certainly inspires me be fashionable!

I'm so excited to share with you my favorite recipe today.  I've always loved sun dried tomatoes and after combining recipes I've been able to come up with the perfect Sundried Tomato Chicken and  Pasta.  The recipe has quite a few ingredients, but throwing them all together takes no time at all!  You can certainly impress your man with this one :)



What you need:

• 4 chicken breasts
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tsp minced garlic
• 1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes (drain the oil)
• 1/3 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1/2 cup chardonnay (or any dry white wine)
• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 1/4 cup coconut milk
• 1 tbsp chopped basil

Last week I shared with you all some crafts I was looking forward to.  Well last night was most certainly a crafting night, complete with a viewing of Bridget Jones' Diary.  (By the way I'm so excited for the third book to come out!  Just another thing I'm looking forward to this Fall!)  I was able to complete my upgraded doormat, tin can pen pots, and my cork board!

My door mat was originally just plain gray, boring!  I upgraded it with some cool teal paint.  I had a very hard time cutting out a stencil for my "welcome" in the right hand corner, so I just winged it.  The "welcome" by itself didn't seem like enough color so I also painted the border of the door mat as well.  Overall, I really like the color I chose to go with the gray.  Not to shabby!


These Pen pots from Carolina Charm are SO easy!  Like the easiest project ever, BUT they look absolutely amazing!  I am so excited to put all my colored sharpies and pens in these when I use them at work!  All you have to do is use the can label as a template when you cute out your scrapbook paper choices!  You can find the full tutorial HERE!


My favorite project of the night though was most certainly my new corkboard.  I've had this black and white fabric for quite some time now and never knew what to do with it.  And I even have enough extra fabric to make a small pillow to go on my office chair! Yipee!  Since I decided to stick with a black and white theme for my office this was perfect!  Pushing in all the pins did take some time, but it looks very sharp! This is another project from Carolina Charm and the instructions are HERE!


Now... what crafts shall I attempt tonight?  Any ideas!?

XOXO Taylor

Can I just say yesterday was a very tough day to work but Nsync is what got me through.  I'm sure you all know they reunited for a brief 30 seconds at Sunday's VMAs.  Following 20 minutes of AMAZING Justin Timberlake (big fan here!)  Well its been NSYNC- NSYNC - NSYNC ever since.  Their first album came out in 1997 and I still know ever single word of that album.  I think that says alot about their legacy... But anywayyyyy.

Pumpkin-Spiced items are now available at Starbucks, so I guess its time to think about my fall outfits.  The money I spend on clothing has changed drastically over the last year.  I used to be a shopaholic.  The money I racked up on credit cards was astronomical and I was so scared to ask for help.  Luckily I have a great man in my life who helped me through that time and I am now very proud to say I am on a budget.  I know I have plenty of clothes in my closet and I make what I have work, only buying something when I really need it.  So here are some fun fall outfit combinations I'm going to work out with what I have.  (Everything I show here is totally affordable as well :) )

Summer is winding down... even though we live in Tampa.   You can feel it and all the school supplies and fall clothes in stores make it known. But moving on with my weekend.  Friday night we did something we hardly ever do... STAYED IN! As soon as we get home from work we typically run out to meet up with friends on a Friday night.  Instead we stayed in and watched a movie.  And honestly, I had a great time :)  We watched Drinking Buddies, the one with Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson (the guy from New Girl).  I enjoyed it, but its definitely an indie-ish movie. 

Saturday morning was spent poolside reading Ender's Game.  I had to take a legs pic... have ya'll seen "legs or hotdogs", just think about it.  Are these really my legs or are they hotdogs?


Saturday afternoon we went to our favorite place, Ybor.  I love to go to New World Brewery and just grab a few beers with Dill.  As a bonus, they have Simpson's Pinball there.  I am absolutely TERRIBLE at Pinball, but when I keep the ball up for more than 20 seconds = success!


Sunday was the best day of my weekend.  We started off the morning with a bacon weaved breakfast taco.  Did you know you could WEAVE bacon?  If you're ever making breakfast for your man, this will most certainly impress him.  I didn't take pictures of the actual process, because honestly I didn't think this would work! You'll need thick cut bacon...


1.  Preheat your oven to 425
2.  Weave you bacon on a cookie sheet, we had to use our whole package of bacon, least its Paleo
3.  Throw your weaved bacon into the oven for about 15 minutes.
4.  Pat your bacon dry with some paper towels, we used almost a whole roll!
5.  Put a big baking bowl on top of your bacon and use a pizza cutter to cut out your perfect circle,   cook for a few minutes more. **Make sure your bacon is beginning to cook together before you complete this step, if not... cook longer
5.  After your bacon is cooked together but not hard yet, get two glass cups and kabob sticks.  Take the kabob sticks and let them sit ontop of the glasses with some space in between.  Then you need to get your bacon circle and hang it from the sticks... so its forms a taco shape.
6.  Turn up the heat in your oven to 500 and let it cook a little longer.  We cooked it a little tooo long and set off the smoke detector in our house :-P
7.  Once you take your taco out, let it sit for a few minutes so it sets into its delicious taco shape.

Eggs and peppers were our taco stuffing.  Like I said, want to impress your man?  Wake up early and surprise him with this!  It is most certainly a "Manly Breakfast."

We spent the rest of Sunday at the Dunedin Brewery.  They had an apricot peach beer, a perfect way to round out our summer. :-(

   

 How was your weekend?

XOXO Taylor

This has been such a great week I didn't even mind it!  But nonetheless my favorite day remains Friday! I love that feeling around 4:30 at work when you know you are heading towards two full days of freedom.  Without further adieu, here are my top favorite things for this week!



{FIVE} 80's Movies: We don't have cable so I spend a lot of time of Netflix.  And I'm happy to say Netflix is currently streaming Pretty in Pink AND The Breakfast Club AND Ferris Buller's Day Off! Mom introduced me to Pretty in Pink when I was in high school and I was hooked.  What can I say, I'm a sucker for those Brat Pack movies.  Emillo Esteves in the 80's... what a guy.  I was like, "EMILLIO!" (That was a Night at the Roxby Reference, yes I know I'm a dork)...

I've decided that next week will be a crafting week!  I've seen some great ideas online lately and am excited to tackle them!  Doing it myself makes my new items so much more special.  And I think they typically turn out looking better than if I'd bought them... AND CHEAPER!  So here are some of the projects I plan on doing...

I absolutely LOVE Carolina Charm's site.  Her posts are always interesting and she has a great layout.  I think her Pretty Pen Pots are so lovely!  Its a great way to add some color to an office setting :) Head over to her site to see her great tutorial on how to make these pen pots!


Sticking with the office theme, she has another great office DIY!  If you have a lot of notes/papers you need to always be looking at when you're working, a cork board is a necessity.  Hence this DIY fabric cork board!  Click HERE for the simple how-to!