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Saturday

Saturday Sip + Shop




Sip:

5 Orange Cocktails for Halloween:

6 Orange Cocktails for Halloween: 
Recipes HERE from Williams-Sonoma
I think the papaya and lime agua fresca
and the clementine campari sound the best!


Shop:


Rope Trim Floppy Felt Hat

Rope Trim Floppy Felt Hat
$28 HERE and available in two other colors
I love the look this fall of a felt floppy hat
with skinny jeans and boots!

Friday

Five on Friday

It's time for another edition of Five on Friday and I do hope you'll join along!

Remember, all you have to do is post about five things on your mind, add our logo (found at the bottom of this post), and join the party using the linky tools below. Easy, and a great way to find new blogs and be found. :)

Thank you to everyone who links up with us each week! And a big hug to Five on Friday cohostess Christina who has been on everyone's heart and mind this week. WE LOVE YOU!

O N E  
Last night was our monthly Supper Club, and we had a wonderful time! I am still dreaming about the chocolate dessert that Lori made. I am going to get the recipe from her to share it here. Divine.

Some of you had questions the last time I mentioned Supper Club about how we structure ours. I wrote a little about that in this post, if you are interested! We've been getting together montly since 2004 and we just love our nights together. I typically don't see these girls between supper clubs which really makes for great catch-up times together. 



T W O
Speaking of supper, one of my favorite busy weeknight meals is this simple soup. Broth, slices of sausage, thinly sliced onion, rinsed white beans, and spinach, added at the very end. You just let it simmer for as long as you need. I served it with these parmesan crisps on Monday night and it was an easy dinner that also made plenty of leftovers for lunch.


...i have a friend who says this phrase ALL the time...and i believe he truly believes it!:

T H R E E
We had concert tickets Tuesday night to go see Modest Mouse, but it was an outdoor show and it was just cold, miserable, and rainy. We ended up ditching them on Craigslist and we had a date night instead at Nan and Byrons in Southend. I went with the beet burger (which actually had no burger patty at all -- just crispy beets) and Ian had a delicious hanger steak. Mine was good, but HE WON.


F O U R
We only have two music classes left, and I will definitely miss this Thursday activity! Look at Camille yesterday, prancing around! She loves when the scarves come out. She goes right up to the pile and lays right down in the middle of them. I just love this photo.


F I V E
Just a quick reminder that tomorrow is the last day to enter to win the $100 Visa gift card! Details can be found on this post. I know that if you are like me, that would really come in handy this time of year. :)

Lastly, HAPPY HALLOWEEN to you all! Stay safe and have fun!

Halloween decor:


TGIF y'all, and hope you will join in on Five on Friday this week! Cheers to the weekend!




Thursday

Italian Caper Chicken Recipe (My Go-To)


If you ever want to make chicken piccata (my FAVORITE chicken dish) but just feel "meh" about all of the steps involved, and maybe a lack of multiple lemons is holding you back, then I have a recipe you will likely get excited about. 

This dish is for caper lovers. That's your warning. If you could snack on them by the handful, like me, then prepare to jot this recipe down!

Italian Caper Chicken
serves 4

2 whole boneless skinless chicken breasts, split into halves
1/3 - 1/2 cup capers, drained
juice of one lemon*
flour for dredging
olive oil or butter for pan-frying

Cut each chicken breast again to make eight thin pieces. To do this, place your palm onto one and then, with a large, sharp knife, butterfly the chicken breast until you get two thinner pieces. Heat a wide frying pan with just enough oil or butter to cover the bottom of the pan. Dredge each piece of chicken in the flour and pan fry in the oil, on medium to medium-high heat, turning until each side is golden brown. When the chicken is almost done, toss the capers onto the chicken, sprinkle the lemon juice on top and cover until the chicken is completely cooked. 


You may notice that I added an asterisk above to the juice of one lemon. When I decided to make this Sunday night, I didn't even have ONE lemon on hand! I did have some pulpy orange juice, however, so I subbed a few tablespoons of that instead, and it gave the dish the perfect citrusy flavor.

This is definitely a favorite chicken dish in our home, and I hope you'll share your thoughts with me if you decide to make it as well!

Wednesday

Reworking Our Rooms ... Making Space For Baby!

Recently I had that dream where you discover rooms in your house that you never knew existed.

How cool would that be? Entirely new rooms to decorate and ... SPACE. MORE SPACE.

Can I just stream-of-consciousness-style write a little bit about what we're working with now? Okay, here goes.


We are in a one-story, three bedroom home. Currently, we have the following setup:

+ Master bedroom

+ Camille's room

+ Home office with a desk (primarily for Ian) with laptop/printer, small side desk with my sewing machine on it (not used super often, but I like having my own creative space), and pullout sofa/side chair/coffee table area. The pull-out sofa is nice to have for visitors, although the visitors are typically our moms, and they just sleep on the couch. Crazy, but it's suuuper comfy and only moderately comfy when properly used as a pulled-out sofa. It's also nice to have this if one of us is sick/coughing and wants to sleep in a separate room.

The new baby's arrival in April is going to come quicker than we know, and I'm a procrastinator by nature, but I'm trying to get a leg up on switching home stuff around so that I'm not moving furniture at 38 weeks pregnant. Not that Ian wouldn't help me, but I'm guilty of the "I'll just do it myself now" mentality. :)

So here's our plan ... 

+ Camille will move into the current office because that room is bigger. This way, we can eventually have two twin beds in the room (that makes it usable for a guest room if we really needed it, she could be in a pack and play or cot/sleeping bag in our room). The room will house her larger toys, and hopefully the play kitchen I want to give her for Christmas. I want a lot of her bigger, more obnoxious (ha) toys to navigate from our current living room to her room. It will make the living room nicer-looking, and this will also give us a place to play in her room when Ian's working in the new home office ... more on that later. We will move her current crib over, and we will need one more panel of her beautiful floral drapes since her current room has one window and the new room has two. The room is presently a light, mossy green so it will need to be repainted.

This is the kitchen
I love from Amazon - so cute!
$138 currently - found here


Camille's drapery fabric

+ The new baby will be in the smaller room -- Camille's current room. The changing table will stay in there ... Camille doesn't really need one any longer, too wriggly. We will need a new crib in this room. Since we likely won't find out the gender this time around, it will stay pink for now and get painted a different color if needed after baby has arrived. Not gonna stress about that right now! The bookshelf will stay and new, gender-neutral drapes will be needed. The crib skirt and changing pad skirt are green and white, both will stay in this room.


Current changing table skirt -- crib skirt in same pattern

+ Our dining room is becoming a home office! Pro: A room that we rarely use these days will now become really usable, livable space. Con: This room is smack dab in the center of our house and right off of the kitchen and living room -- both loud areas. Ian uses a home office quite a bit, so I do have anxiety about staying at home with the children and not disrupting him too much. That's another reason why I want room for big toys in Camille's new room. I need to sell the dining room table, move the china cabinet and another small table out, and focus on STORAGE in this room. We will need it to house office necessities like computers, books, a printer, office supplies, et cetera ... and not look sloppy since it's a very visible room. 

We are going to have a French door installed where there is an open doorway that currently leads right into the kitchen. I'd love to have two back-to-back desks in the center of the room (centered mainly to justify keeping our chandelier in the room and not having to put it in storage). My question here is what to do about all of the wiring/cords since the desks will be floating. I don't want them to be a danger if they are run across the floor (even covered with a cord concealer) to the outlet. I want to have a network guy to come out and install everything so that it's done properly and neatly ... not like the messy current situation we have going on. 


Ideally, a desk like this
with storage on both sides.
Two back-to back, his and hers.
$220 currently - found here

Other than that, there are a few other follow-ups ... if our new baby is a boy, do I move the royal blue and white rug in the den to the nursery? It would look cute with the emerald green. Then the black and white rug in Camille's nursery could go out in the den and our coral/blue den would turn into a coral/black/white den. That would also mean a new rug for Camille's big room.

So, the truth is, I wrote this post more for ME than for YOU because I am sure it was an absolute snooze to read.

If you made it this far, you likely are in a similar position with your home and were somewhat interested. If you just scrolled down to the bottom and are reading this sentence now, I don't blame you!

I'd love to hear advice from anyone who has made these sort of changes. Help me not lose sleep at night, ha!

Tuesday

... In Her Halloween Jammies

Okay, so what is cuter than toddler pajamas ... gracious, not a whole lot comes to mind?

I was so excited to join the Little Ghosts and Goblins pajama party linkup this year with my sweet Camille and her skeleton pajamas! She points to them and says "BOH" for bones. Melt my Halloween-loving heart.

These photos were snapped last night after bath and before stories, so the pictures are a little dark -- but a good and accurate depiction of what my nights look like from 6:45-7:00, if you are curious :)



I mean, stopppp. 

I bought these jammies from a girlfriend who no longer needed them. They are from Old Navy. And did I mention that the bones, or BOH, glow in the dark?

I did hook my little girlfriend up with a small bow before the next photos. We don't sleep in bows, obviously, but her bangs are so long nowadays and I didn't want them to tickle her for the photos. Added bonus, extra sweet cuteness. 





This last image is what I get to see every night. She is so opinionated these days on what we read! And, most nights, I am able to decipher whether her urgent request for "MOWH" means "moo" (Noisy Farm), "meow" (What A Good Kitty), or "mouse" (Just A Kite).


(Oh, and PS, our favorite Halloween book that we read on repeat daily is this Elmo book that I purchased so cheaply on Amazon. I don't know why she loves it so darn much, but it seriously gets read at least five times each day. It's Prime eligible if you want it to arrive before Halloween!)

Thank you to the hostesses for letting me show off my very favorite skeleton. I can't wait to see the rest of the cute kids! If you linked up, let me know in the comments so I can visit your blog!

Monday

Weekend Recap + Gameday Belles Scarf Winner

We enjoyed a weekend at home (aren't those nice!) with not a whole lot on the books (even nicer, am I right?!).

Okay, before we get into weekend details, two things to mention first:

The winner of the Aztec scarf from Gameday Belles Boutique is:

///////
Love the orange and gray - and they should add some Carolina blue to the shop!!
///////

Congratulations, Kristen! Please email me! :)

Also, Thursday evening my mom and I took Camille to the little Halloween festival going on at Morrison shops. It was so cute! I wanted to share these quick photos from the event.




Okay, so Friday night was pretty low-key, and you may know that we do pizza most every Friday night we are in town. We started with a quick trip to the mall to pick up a few things and then let Camille play at the Lego store and the outdoor playarea. Then Ian picked up the pizza while I got the baby fed, bathed (tub disinfecting time once again ... no words), read to, and down to sleep. That night we just kicked back and watched Rosemary's Baby. We are getting a kick out of these old scary movies this time of year! Last weekend we watched Poltergeist

Saturday we took a walk as a family and conquered some tasks around the house. We also had a great lunch out at Maverick Taco on Montford. Lunches out are pretty much the only meals we attempt in public these days, you know? But Camille was 97% well behaved and the tacos were 100% amazing, so ... SUCCESS. 

That evening we joined some friends for a neighborhood block party...


... and then I cooked beef stew and cheesy mashed potatoes for us for dinner (a Blue Apron meal!) and we watched Dateline outdoors on the patio with dinner since the weather was so nice.


Sunday, our friends had a little fall shindig over at their home. We enjoyed catching up with them and attempting to get the little one on the pony. My girlfriend knows this really sweet lady who brought it by to say hello to the kiddos, such a fun idea!



Camille would get close and then "no, no, no!" and back into the safety of our arms. 




Oh well. At least we got some adorable photos of her in the pumpkin cutout!


I hope you had a nice October weekend at your home as well!

Saturday

Saturday Sip + Shop: PUMPKIN




Sip:

pumpkin spice whiskey cocktail:

Pumpkin Spice Whiskey Cocktail
Recipe HERE from Dishing Up The Dirt
Someone, please make this and tell me how sinfully good it is!


Shop:



Nest Pumpkin Chai Candle
Found HERE and Amazon Prime eligible,
so you'll have it on hand before the
trick-or-treaters show up at your door.



Friday

Five On Friday

It's time for another edition of Five on Friday and I do hope you'll join along!

Remember, all you have to do is post about five things on your mind, add our logo (found at the bottom of this post), and join the party using the linky tools below. Easy, and a great way to find new blogs and be found. :)

O N E
I just have to say, I have so enjoyed my time at home with Camille. It's not always easy -- she's a very normal toddler (screaming, hitting, other fun things) ... and when we are reading What A Good Kitty for the seventeenth time of the day and I want to chuck it out of the open window, I do know that this is exactly what I want to be doing. Exactly what I want to be doing.

Seeing this face at the park? Worth all of the sacrifices we have made to make this decision happen. She is just funny, funny, funny and we have had a great week!


T W O
I get asked quite a bit if I am still doing the jewelry subscription box (Rocksbox). YES! I love it. Here is a peek in my latest shipment. I received a trio of Kendra Scott studs, a Perry Street rhinestone statement necklace, and a Loren Hope cuff. 

The way this box works is simple. You take an online style survey. You receive a box of three pieces valued around $200. You return the jewels in a prepaid envelope (no trip to the post office necessary -- mail from your home mailbox) as often as you like, and you're sent three new pieces.

Plus, if you love an item, you can keep it, and you are offered a nicely discounted price on it. 


Yep, I'm totally adding this Loren Hope bracelet to my jewelry box. Way too cute not to keep -- it would look great stacked with other bangles and cuffs!

If you'd like to try your first month free, just visit www.rocksbox.com 
and enter code ALIZADVENTURESXOXO



T H R E E
Thank you to everyone who sent your Mexican Lime soup recipes to me earlier this week! I ended up using a blend of almost every recipe after seeing that many of them contained the same ingredients and instructions. I made a great soup for us using boneless chicken breasts, chicken broth, thinly-sliced onion, the juice of an entire lime, a can of green chiles, cumin, some salt, oregano, garlic, jalapeno slices, and chopped tomatoes. We garnished with sour cream and broken-up tortilla chips.

Um, it was awesome. My husband and I both had seconds!

F O U R
Do you ever use a makeup product, then stray from it, then find it at the bottom of your makeup bag and wonder why you ever stopped using it?

Well, that happened to me with undereye concealer. I still really like my Maybelline version, but lately I've fallen back in love with my Hard Candy heavy duty concealer (on Amazon here). I have it in Light. A little goes a lonnnnng way, so it has lasted me forever. Like, years. Definitely happy that we have been reunited.


F I V E
Just sending some love to this guy, who will never see this post, so I guess I'm sort of just shooting it out into the universe. We had a CATEGORY FIVE BATHTIME EMERGENCY on Wednesday ... a #2 in the tub, a #2 in the tub! (Oh gosh, it was Camille, not one of us -- I should probably point that out).

This hero of mine gloved up and handled the business. For that, I love him just a wee bit more.

Babe, you rock.



TGIF y'all, and hope you will join in on Five on Friday this week! Cheers to the weekend!



* affiliate links used

Thursday

Our First Trunk Show

I felt really honored when our shop, The Tipsy Bunny, was asked to join two other awesome local vendors, Tender Love and Cloth and Teal House Collection, at a trunk show last week. Our girlfriend so graciously hosted this event for us ... opened her beautiful home to friends and strangers alike for four days! 

I haven't been part of a trunk show for years and years -- back when I was making jewelry. I forgot about the excitement of hearing the door open and chatting with people who are looking to shop local and find some great deals!


Since the trunk show started on Wednesday, I drove over to my girlfriend's house Tuesday night after putting Camille down to sleep. I did a quick and simple set-up that I had already planned out on our dining room table (this made it a little simpler to all come together). 

My friend had the lamps and table -- I brought the tablecloth, the dress form, a homemade wooden stand for the carseat toys, and the display I was most excited about -- bonnets on small pumpkins, held up on clear glass vases. The pumpkins were only $1.50 each at the farmer's market, and now I have them at the front door for Halloween decor.



Since we carry children's beaded necklaces in our Etsy shop, I also had several of these displayed on the same table where custom bonnet orders could be submitted. My sister Laura makes these necklaces (her shop is here) and a lot of the moms loved that they could contact Laura to get a matching necklace to coordinate with their baby. Lots of folks seem to be into the "Mama and Mini" trend now.




The bonnets did really well -- we sold several pre-made bonnets and also took orders for custom colors and sizes. Mom and I have a good amount of work ahead of us now, all in time for the holidays!

One very sweet holiday bonnet that has not been snatched up yet is this reversible red corduroy bonnet. One side is solid red, and the reverse side has little embroidered scottie dogs on it. It is sized 12-18 months and can be found in our Etsy shop if you know a little girl who needs a holiday bonnet for meeting Santa, a holiday tea, or family photographs!



I am so thankful to everyone who came out to support us and say hello! I hope we will have an opportunity to join up with one or two more trunk shows before the craziness of the holidays. If you are looking for a bonnet for a little gal in your life, my mom and I would be delighted if you would keep The Tipsy Bunny in mind. Having an Etsy shop again has definitely inspired me to be better about shopping local and supporting fellow businesswomen!