$50 Kitchen Face Lift

Our kitchen has needed a bit of a face lift and I've been lusting after fabulous backsplashes lately (have you seen the backplash that my friends over at The Fix-Its just installed? Love!).

See how sad things look? Blah and boring. Unfortunately, our budget was a little blah when it came to this project and as you may know, a backsplash definitely doesn't come cheap. So, I turned to my friend Google and searched for cheap backsplash options.

I landed on a favorite blog, Young House Love, and a project one of their readers had submitted. Check out the quick and easy backsplash they did in a kitchen that looks JUST LIKE MINE! It was meant to be.


After I made Steve bust out the measuring tape in the kitchen, I went on over to Amazon and ordered some Handy Wall Tiles.

$45.96 and a few days later, our tiles arrived. And check it out: As seen on TV - you can't go wrong with that.



We grabbed some heavy duty double sided foam tape after reading some reviews of the tiles. I'm glad we did, as the flimsy little sticky squares that come with the tiles don't give you a lot of confidence in the product.


The tiles are about the thinnest pieces of aluminum possible. They dent and bend easily. However, they are also fairly easy to cut using a sharp pair of household scissors.

Needless to say, it was an interesting project. My fingertips were sliced with tiny little cuts from the tiles, my manicure was completely ruined, and I became a pro at prying tiles off the wall with a butter knife because I didn't stick them on there quite straight enough. But the end result was...


...awesome! Overall it feels so much more polished, pulled together and just complete.


Here's a close up of the tiles. So shiny and new!


For roughly $55 and a few hours, I was able to give our kitchen a fancier feel. While it doesn't rival a professional job, it definitely will do for now.

Summer Shoe Love

We are finally seeing warmer weather here in Chicago - hallelujah! - so I kinda sorta feel comfortable putting away the cold weather clothes and busting out fun summer dresses and flip flops. I absolutely live in flip flops during the summer...but they don't, you know, look very dressy. And any pair of "nicer" flip flops I buy just aren't comfortable.

So a couple of weeks ago I was hunting around in Piperlime for a new purse, and decided to check out some sandals. I came across the Pierre Dumas Devora...not only did the sandals have great reviews, but they were on sale for around $20!

I decided to buy them in "Whiskey" because I figured that would go with everything. And, of course the day after I bought them I realized they would not go with everything...specifically, they would not go with the super awesome dark brown sun dress I just bought from Anthropologie. Hmph. I called Piperlime to see if they could switch out my order, but sadly they were already set for shipping.

Two days later, the sandals arrived and I slipped them right on my feet at my desk and walked around the office. They. Are. Amazing. So comfortable and cute! But they just don't match my new dress.

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So, what's a girl to do? Go right back online and buy them in gold, too!

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The gold are just as fabulous as the "Whiskey" color and between the two, I can tackle any summer outfit.

Do you have a summer shoe love?

Roastin' a Chicken

I have a confession: I'm a bad blogger these days. I have so many things I've cooked/made/bought that I want to share, but things just don't make it on the blog. I'm vowing to myself that I will get better!

I was skimming through photos on my computer tonight and I came across a roasted chicken that I made last fall. Something so simple was ridiculously delicious - I just had to share.

For Christmas one year I bought Steve Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef - it's a great book featuring classic, delicious recipes that really focus on featuring great ingredients. His roasted chicken was exactly that: simple and delicious.

I started off with a 4 pound organic chicken from Whole Foods (people often scoff at Whole Foods prices, but you can shop there on a budget...this chicken was less than $10 and it was a couple of meals for the both of us).


The first step was to cut off the joint at the end of each wing. I've prepped a turkey before, but never a chicken, so this was new territory for me.


Turns out, the joint has a TOE on it. I'm not embarrassed to say that I jumped away from that creepy toe as fast as I could.


Since dinner must go on, so I had to go back to my chicken friend.


See the toes?! Creepy! And I have no clue what's up with the random feathers.


Once the wings were clipped and the toes completely out of site, it was time to stuff this bad boy with some rosemary.


I also seasoned it inside and out with salt and pepper.


The chicken then needed to be trussed. See how good it looks, like a happy little chicken package?

Don't worry if you don't know how to truss a chicken. I had no clue, so Steve grabbed my laptop and we found this super helpful video on YouTube.

Instead of just popping it in the oven right away, Colicchio has you brown it up on each side. I used our dutch oven which was the perfect size for our chicken.


The smell of our bird was just ahhh-mazing.


Once it was browned on each side, it was time to put our chicken into the oven. We also threw some carrots into the pot, but I think they didn't turn out very well (too dry? I can't remember).


We served up our roasted chicken with some make-shift bruschetta and homemade mashed potatoes. The chicken was incredibly juicy and the flavor of the rosemary was perfect. We made this dinner for less than $20 (including the sides), all organic and super delicious!

My Dog is a Nosy Neighbor

Charlie has recently discovered windows. With the set up of our condo, there is only one window that Charlie can look out of and actually see something interesting. Earlier this winter, he started putting his paws up on the window ledge and watched people and dogs go by.

In the past couple of weeks, he has started sitting on an ottoman that we have by the window. Yes, our dog makes himself at home on his little "chair" and spies people like a nosy neighbor. This morning while we were still asleep, he actually got up, left our bedroom and went to his window, apparently to see who was out and about at 5:30am.


Have any of your pets picked up any, err, odd habits lately?

Cake Pop Adventures

Have you heard of the fabulousness that is Bakerella? If not, get thee over to her site to learn all about the beautiful and bite-sized baked goods she has created. You will drool over all of the sugary food p*rn she has to share.

Needless to say, when our neighbors Rob and Jill bought me Bakerella's Cake Pops book (completely out of the blue and so nice - thank you again!), I was thrilled. I knew all about cake pops, but had never attempted them or even looked into the process of making these yummy little treats. I ended up having so much fun with a whole lot of sugar!

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Bakerella suggests you use a cake mix and a can of frosting for your first cake pop adventure, as the proportions are perfect and box cake mix lends itself well to the project because of the texture. I generally don't use mixes because, well, it's easy to make cake and frosting from scratch and I like knowing exactly what is going into my baked goods. So I opted to use the yellow cake recipe from her book as well as the vanilla frosting recipe. Loved them! Both were super tasty and the cake baked up beautifully.

The fun part is that even if the cake was horrendously ugly/flat/wonky you just crumble it up after it cools anyway. I do wish that I had made the cake a day in advance, as the cake would have been a little dryer in texture. I also with that I hadn't added all of the frosting at once! Less is more, people. Less is more. I ended up with some, err, squishy balls. Once you have crumbled the cake, it looks like you have such a large quantity of cake crumbles that you will need all of the frosting, but you definitely don't.

Fortunately, my balls firmed up well enough that I was able to work with them, but the texture of the final product wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. But no worries, they were over-the-top tasty in the end.

Bakerella's book gives you a million different cute cake creations. I opted for the classic cupcake pop. Super cute but slightly stressful as you have to dip with two different colors of candy coating. Fortunately, the candy coating dries super fast, so there isn't a lot of lag time between dips.

{Photo by Steve Koo Photography}

Because I was taking these into work, and didn't fancy myself setting up a huge display in the office kitchen, I only made a few as actual "pops" and the rest were left as little cupcake balls that I could put on a cute plate.

{Photo by Steve Koo Photography}

The pops were both delicious and fun and I can't wait to have a fun event / party / basically any excuse to make these again. Yum!

Adventures in Lap Swimming

Let me preface this post by saying that I rarely - if ever - post about my complete and utter social awkwardness in certain aspects of my life. So, for the first time, welcome to my world of awkward and unfortunate events...

A couple of weeks ago, Steve got it into his head that we should start swimming laps at the gym. We are fortunate enough to belong to a city gym that has two lap pools that we've never used in the 2 1/2 years since we've been members. While I have always liked to swim, I haven't swum laps since I was a 7-year-old on the swim team.

At the beginning of last week, I knew Steve was serious when he started asking me what size bathing suit I wear. Ummm. I knew he wasn't going to give up on his dreams of us swimming laps side by side, so I conceded and I told him what size I thought I might be (editor's note: I do own plenty of bathing suits, but not a sporty one). He ordered me this one from Amazon:

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I didn't really think much of it - a suit's a suit, right? And I had him order a size up from what I thought I would wear just to be safe.

Three days later, the suit arrived and I tried it on. Let me just say that the model in that picture must have a 100% fake body. Because once I pulled that sucker on, I knew I was doomed. I had two options for how I could wear it:

1. Yanked up super high in the front so that I had a precarious case of camel toe and hip bones hanging out. Why would one do this? Oh yes, to cover up the immense amount of hip/back fat hanging out the back.
2. Worn semi-normally on the front which in turns causes the aforementioned back fat situation.

So, basically I would either scare people coming or going. I immediately knew I could NOT wear this in public. Steve, on the other hand, immediately reassured me that it looked great. Hmph.

Last Friday, the day after the "no way in Hell am I wearing this" debacle, Steve was still dead set on us swimming laps that night. I sucked it up (and in!) and finally agreed. However, once I reached the locker room the anxiety level began to rise. Since I never use the locker room, I don't have a standard 4-digit combination to use when locking my locking. This will come to bite me in the ass.

I revealed to the world (or at least the ladies in the locker room) my sorry suit, shoved my clothes in the locker, closed it up and punched in my 4-digit code. Immediately after it beeped at me that it was locked, I realized that I had no clue what combination I had entered, except that it started with a "1." Crap!

After punching in a million different possible combinations, I decided I just needed to walk away from the situation. Certainly I would remember my combination later. So I gathered up my goggles and miniature towel provided by the gym, and walked my sorry self over to the pool. Steve was already in there getting ready to swim, but since he was sharing a lane with someone else, I would have to share a lane with a fancy fast swimmer stranger. After standing there awkwardly in the water for awhile, fancy swimmer man made it to my end. Here's our conversation:

Fancy Man: Circle or side?
Me: Ummm..?
Fancy Man: Excuse me? I can't hear you.
Me: Umm, I don't care.
Fancy Man: Ok then...

Fancy Man swam away from me as fast as he could. Fortunately, Steve's lane freed up so I was able to join him. We swam our laps and quickly realized how exhausting of a workout it is.

Fast forward to 30 minutes later when I decided I was done. I grabbed my mini-towel and flip flops and plodded back to the locker room. After entering about 30 different 4-digit combinations, I knew I was in trouble. So I took my mini towel and wrapped it around my waist, fortunately covering up the back fat / camel toe situation and shamefully walked to the front desk. I'll be honest, I felt like I was in a dream where I showed up to school naked.

Finally, they sent someone back to open my locker. I threw my clothes on as quickly as possible, met Steve at the front and we headed home. Just when I was finally relaxed, I looked in the bathroom mirror.

Every day I wear pearl earrings that Steve gave me when we first started dating. Yep, one was definitely missing. So not only was I the anxiety-ridden, squeezed in her bathing suit like a sausage, combination-forgetting girl at the gym, I was also very obviously sporting just one big pearl earring.

Sigh. Some days, you just can't win.

The Koos Take Kauai!

We were so excited about our recent trip to Kauai...after all of the snow and cold we've had this winter in Chicago, a quick trip to paradise at the end of February was exactly what we needed! Ok, so the real reason behind our trip was so Steve could shoot a wedding, but we got in plenty of r & r.

Thursday, Day 1
We took a 7:30am flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. Which meant an early morning. After that 4 1/2 hour flight, we basically walked straight onto our flight to Honolulu. I was disappointed we didn't have a long layover so we could grab a bite to eat, but I was fine with it after I saw...

...the empty seat next to me! I was so excited I had to take a picture. Since it was a 6 hour flight, the empty seat was perfect. Since our flight was basically full, many people gave us the stink eye as we spread out over all 3 seats.


And, 6 hours later we were welcomed with a gorgeous view of Honolulu. The airport was all open air, and it was amazing how lush and tropical everything felt.


After a short layover in Honolulu, we board a small plane to Kauai. It was about a 30 minute flight, and we opted to fly go!Mokulele because they were the cheapest carrier. More on them later. We picked up our rental car (a must in Kauai) and drove to our hotel, which was just north of Lihue/the airport.

We stayed at the Kauai Beach Resort. Again we went with what was the cheapest. At around $100/night we didn't expect much, but the hotel was actually great. Friendly service, clean room, awesome new bathroom, and a nice pool. Because we were on the east side of the island, the beach was basically unusable, but with so many great beaches on the island this wasn't a negative for us. We'd easily stay there again. Note to any future guests - wifi is only free in the lobby, and the best reception you'll get is right by the elevators. Kind of ghetto, but not a deal breaker.

By the time we had checked into our hotel, it was early evening so we were ready to eat! After a little searching online, we headed up a little further north toward the town of Kapa'a and went to Monico's Taqueria. We were so glad we found this place!

Of course the picture is blurry, but below is my fish tostada. The fish of the day was ahi and there was so much ahi on here it was ridiculous! Yum. Steve ordered fish tacos, which were huge and amazing. We also ordered guacamole which was the best guacamole I have ever had. I'm still dreaming about it!

Both of our entrees, the guacamole, and two beers came to under $50 (including tip). Love!


Friday, Day 2
We drove up to the north side of the island and enjoyed the awesome views. We ended up in Hanalei...isn't Hanalei Bay gorgeous?!


Steve really wanted to take surf lessons, so I gave in and we signed up. There are a million places you can take lessons through. We booked our lesson with Hawaiian Surfing Adventures, located right by the bay. With the semi-private lesson, it was just the two of us at $75/person it included our boards, rash guards, a 1/2 hour lesson and 1 1/2 hours of surfing with our instructor Tatum. It was so much fun! I wiped out a million times, but it was so fun actually riding some waves. Even though I never advance to paddling into my own waves (Tatum kindly pushed my board for me each time so I could gain momentum), it was a lot of fun. Hanalei had calm waves that won't knock you down too badly.


After surfing we wandered around the Hanalei area a bit. We grabbed fish tacos at Tropical Taco. They were ok, but nothing compared to what we'd had the night before.


For dinner that night, we went to Oasis on the Beach. They're located at the Waipouli Beach Resort in Kapa'a but hard to find (park at the hotel, walk through the lobby, follow around the outside of the pool, go through an exit, walk around the side of the hotel...strange!). The menu is 85% local and is all small plates. Everything we had was fabulous (sorry, no pictures!) but we ordered WAY TOO MUCH. We were stuffed.

Saturday, Day 3
Saturday was the entire reason for the trip - the wedding! To start off the morning, we went to this awesome little bakery/coffee shop Icing on the Cake. We were lured in by the fact that they brew Blue Bottle Coffee and we ended up hooked on their baked goods!

Steve had an awesome time shooting in Kauai! The bride and groom chose to go to Poipu Beach for pictures, considered one of the prettiest beaches in the country!


Sunday, Day 4
After another trip to Icing on the Cake, we headed up to the north side of the island again and wandered over to Kalihiwai Beach. It was kind of out of the way and was very quiet. Compared to the bigger beaches that are filled with tourists, this felt very local. The waves were bigger here, so it was fun to do some wave jumping and watch all of the kids on the boogie boards.

Oh, and it was fun just laying in the sun! This also shows just how fabulously empty the beach was.


On our way back down the island, we stopped off at a little fruit and craft market north of Kapa'a. We found someone who brews his own kombucha so we sampled away. He was so incredibly passionate about kombucha!

I bought a beautiful shell bracelet while we were there and we looked at tons of exotic fruits.


Since my birthday was the upcoming Tuesday, we celebrated on Sunday night. We headed down to Poipu for dinner at Merriman's. Poipu is a bit of a hike from our hotel through some dark, winding roads.

We had a 7:30 reservation, which if anything is early for dinner. Not in Kauai, apparently. We were one of the last couples seated and closed the restaurant down when we left at 9pm! I know it was a Sunday night, but still. I had an amazing sesame crusted opah over purple sweet potatoes. These potatoes changed my life...loved them! In fact, I took a picture of them at the grocery store, I loved them so much.


Monday, Day 5
Steve was obsessed with skydiving on the trip! I. Was. Not. So I called and we eventually got him a reservation. They go up in groups of two, so they have to find someone else to jump with him. He was the first jump of the day, so we had to leave bright and early for the south side of the island to make his 8am jump.

We stopped off at a McDonald's for coffee because we were running ahead of time. Have you heard that there are roosters ALL OVER Kauai?! They cock-a-doodle-doo all day long. This particular parking lot was full of them...they're basically like the pigeons we have here. I got out of the car and they all started heading toward me!


We made it over to Sky Dive Kauai right on time. They're located by Port Allen Airport and have a little white trailer as their home base. Steve and I took one last picture together before the big jump!


They got him suited up, and then the plane took off! I just had to hang out for awhile, and then right before he jumped, they took me out into the field and I saw his shoot deploy. I had to stay far away from the landing spot until he and the other jumper landed safely. All went well and Steve loved it!


Check out Steve's skydiving video!



After Steve was safely on the ground, we drove up to Waimea Canyon. We did the abbreviated version where we only really stopped once to look out at everything. The drive was plenty gorgeous.


Look how beautiful!


Oh, and typical of Kauai the roads were incredibly winding! Steve even took a little video as I was driving around all of the curves.



For our last dinner, we checked out a little hole in the wall place, Pau Hana Bar & Grill. We had tried to find it earlier on our trip, but Google Maps are horrible in Kauai! For businesses, it would often lead you in the wrong direction. So, FYI, Pau Hana is in the same shopping center as the Safeway in Kapa'a.

Pau Hana is known for its fish and chips. These were amazing. Hot, incredibly fried (of course!) with the best waffle fries ever. Love. Steve and I split these and an order of fish tacos (good but not amazing). We were stuffed at the end. Sadly, I'm not used to eating a lot of fried foods, so I wasn't feeling so great later that night...but the waffle fries were worth it!


Tuesday, Day 6
We were so sad to leave the island! We loved our time in Kauai. Everything was gorgeous, we had amazing food and loved the relaxed island life. Unfortunately, we had to leave. Sigh.

We checked out of our hotel and headed to Lihue Airport to catch our 10am flight. Unfortunately, they had canceled our flight. Sad! As I'd mentioned above, we had booked the cheapest airline. So they had no other flight for us until 12:07pm, which got us into Honolulu at 12:45pm. Our next flight boarded at 1:00pm. When we landed in Honolulu we were at gate 81 and we had to run like crazy people at gate 18. I guess when you choose the cheapest, that's what you get sometimes. BUT Mokulele's customer service was great. So that's a plus. And we did end up catching our flight - whew!

From Honolulu to Los Angeles it ended up being a quick 4 1/2 hours. We had a two hour layover in L.A. and then hopped on the red eye to Chicago, landing at 5am on Wednesday morning.

We loved, loved, loved Kauai and would go back there in a heartbeat!