Weekend Wrap Up-Productivity

We had such a productive weekend, it must be the warm weather. On Friday we both got home from work a little early and went to Olive Garden for dinner. A big storm was coming so afterwords we ran to Giant to get the french bread for the Crock Pot French Toast and headed home. So Friday wasn’t that productive but the rest of the weekend was productive.

Saturday we got up and enjoyed our crock pot breakfast with some grits and then we got ready and headed to the farmers market. Since I had not made my grocery list yet we just got some local honey to hopefully help our allergies. I’ve head that helps, have y’all? I then convinced Tyler to take me to Ikea for some picture frames for some projects I am doing. Well we came out with 7 picture frames and a new dresser. We have been wanting to replace our dresser for awhile and we finally did. It looks great, but more on that later. We had lunch at Panera and who knew? They have pasta now! So that pretty much made my day because if you know me, you know I love pasta. We then headed home and stopped on the way to do our grocery shopping.

Saturday night we had another delicious meal which I will be sharing with you all this week. We ate good this weekend! Tyler put together our new dresser while I FaceTime’d with my best friend, don’t you just love modern technology! We had an adventure getting that old dresser to the driveway, now it’s waiting for us to do something with it.

Sunday was church, lunch at Bob Evans, a few more errands then home for an afternoon/evening or organizing and cleaning. Our house is really coming together. We also got a beautiful mirror to go above our new dresser. I can’t wait to share it with you all! And Sunday was another delicious meal to share. Like I said, it was a productive weekend and I got ahead on my things to blog about so stick around, give us a follow and check out our Twitter and Facebook pages (whichever you prefer). We would love for you to follow us and keep coming back because some yummy, great stuff is coming up soon!

All of my pictures of the weekend are for future posts so for now enjoy this lovely picture of my precious Dolly Wolly, who was not so precious and got a hold of one of my favorite pair of shoes, sigh.

P.S. Did you guys get anything exciting done this weekend? Any spring projects in the works?

The 3rd Saturday in October

As a life long volunteer fan I bleed orange and white. What’s strange is I fell in love with a girl that bleeds crimson.. Yes the third Saturday in October at the Glover house is one in which the husband sits on the couch in silence and the wife says, oh another Touchdown, oh another touchdown, oh my is that another touchdown? Not much longer babe, Coach Jones is on a mission, and Tennessee is the waking giant the SEC had better pay attention too.

Yesterday was Tennessee’s spring football game, known as the Orange and White game. As much as I wanted to be there, we couldn’t quite make it happen this year. Being on such opposite sides of the SEC fence as we are means that Emily likes to keep the orange and white memorabilia in the back room of the house known as “my office”. Meanwhile, i use the idea of getting her a mini helmet autographed by Julio Jones as an excuse to go to the sports card and memorabilia show.

I hope to continue to grow our competing memorabilia collections, and Emily enjoys spotting her Alabama boys at the card shows. Here are a few shots of some of the gems we have stuffed back in “my office”

At the memorabilia show last year I met Jason Witten and Julio Jones and got them each to sign a helmet. On the the other side of the Julio it says, “To Emily, Roll Tide”.. I had to pay extra for the inscription. When Jason saw my UT sweatshirt, he said hey Go Vols! and inscribed his helmet Go Vols – I didnt even pay for the inscription 🙂

This rivalry fish was a present from Emily’s sister and husband last christmas. It now has a prominent place in the office, after Emily found it behind a Robert Meachem autographed mini helmet.. don’t know who could’ve put it there.

This is a ball signed by several members of the 1998 National Championship team that had a gala in 2008 in knoxville that my brother and I attended.. I know thats Al Wilson on the left, Cosey Coleman, Fred Weary , Jeff Hall, Will Offenhusel, and John Chavis – Cedric Wilson is also on there.

This is an Eric Berry jersey I had signed through the mail after my mom got in touch with his mom and they became email buddies for a while. He was nice enough to sign the jersey and send a few copies of a magazine he was on the cover of signed as well! Thanks EB!

Here is a Mark Ingram Autographed football card that Emily is very proud of, and I’m a Saints fan, so thats cool with me.

Here is the whole shelf!

We have a nice collection going and would love to see pictures of other peoples collections! Leave a link in the comments!!

Which Bread should I choose?

This was a question I started to ask myself the other day. I don’t know if you are like me but I LOVE bread. LOVE it. I have at minimum four pieces a day, toast for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch. And I don’t even want to tell you how much bread I used to eat. I’m really picky and so I generally eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch everyday during the week, boring I know. About 4 years ago I forced myself to make the switch from white bread to wheat bread. It was a hard transition but I found a bread I liked and was able to do it, thank you Sara Lee.

So along with my love of bread I really love to research when I have a question like that so I began doing some research because I wanted to know if the bread I was eating was truly healthy as far as bread goes. So I found what I learned to be very interesting and I thought I would share it with you. This is not a post to discourage the eating of bread, no no, rather one to help you when trying to pick out the best bread!

• The most important thing is that it is 100% whole grain
  -If it says “wheat” or contains “x” number of whole grains or multi-grain, chances are that it is white bread in disguise
  -On the front of the package you want it to say 100% whole wheat or 100% whole grain
• The world “whole” should be before any, or at least the first grain or flour, this can be seen on the ingredients listing. Something like 100% whole wheat flour or whole wheat flour should be the first and only flour listed.
• You want to have 2-3 grams of fiber per slice and pay attention to the serving sizes because often the serving size is 2 slices so then you have to halve the grams of fiber.
• You want fewer than 100 calories per slice
• You should aim for sugar to come in at ingredient 3 or 4 in the ingredients list
• Watch the sodium- try to get one with less than 200 milligrams per slice

So like in college I know to site my sources so they are below because obviously I didn’t just come up with this on my own. These resources that I gathered this information from were really helpful and also list some of the brands of bread that are healthiest so check them out! I was pleased to see that my Sara Lee bread fits a good bit of the descriptions, it’s not the best of the best but it is 100% whole wheat and does pretty good on the other requirements. I hope you all enjoyed this! Are there any other questions you’d like to see me research about and get the answer for? I’m always open to new ideas!

Fitness Magazine

Huffington Post

WebMD

Spark People

P.S. This picture is of a homemade loaf of bread I made and it isn’t whole wheat so shame on me!

Weekend Wrap Up- Old Town Alexandria

This beautiful spring weather cannot be beat! It is great because it is so nice to get out and adventure. Unfortunately, the adverse affect is allergy season which has Tyler home in bed today because when you combine that with a nasty head cold, well you can imagine it’s not very fun. But before Tyler got sick we were able to have some fun adventures!

Friday night we had a delicious dinner at Olive Garden because I forgot to have Tyler start dinner in the crock pot at lunch time. So an excuse to eat at OG, I will take it! We then did some shopping and that was our Friday night.

Saturday we were thinking about going into DC to see the cherry blossoms but then we decided that we didn’t really want to be in all that mess of people and have to take the metro etc. So instead we decided to go to Old Town Alexandria. We had both been there before but never together. We drove up, found parking and walked into town. It was a beautiful day and not very crowded at all. So we enjoyed the day strolling down King Street and checking out all of the shops. Then we checked out Christ’s Church which is where George Washington went to church! We had lunch at La Madeline which is a French bakery. It is kind of like an upscale combination of Panera and Jason’s Deli, that’s what we decided. We enjoyed a delicious quiche, soup and a sandwich. It was an enjoyable day! Then we came home to hang out with Dolly and eat a delicious crock pot dinner!

On Sunday Tyler woke up feeling not so good. We went to church, grocery shopped and then enjoyed Sunday afternoon naps. We then watched the very exciting end of the Masters! I don’t know why but I actually enjoy watching golf which is good since my husband loves to watch it! We had Zucchini Pie for dinner which if you have not yet, you should check out!

So now here we are again, Monday. Already ready for another weekend I am sure! What did you all do this weekend? Hope you had beautiful weather like we did!

P.S. These pictures are from my iPhone. Tyler got some beautiful shots which he will be fixing up and sharing with you all later this week. Get ready for some great shots because he takes good pictures!

Love, Pasta and a Tool Belt

We have a new name! Tyler and I decided we wanted something a little more creative for our blog name if we were going to continue blogging. So we thought and thought and tried to think of things that represent us. It’s probably pretty obvious to those of you who know us or who have been reading our blog but I will explain.

Love- well that’s obvious, we’re  married and we love each other. We love food and craft projects (more so me) and decorating our house which is all of the things we are blogging about.

Pasta- this one is for me. If you don’t know me then you don’t know that I LOVE pasta. Give me an Olive Garden Five Cheese Ziti over dessert any day. I live off of pasta. So I am constantly trying to find new pasta recipes and now healthier ones since I am feeding a husband too and not just myself. But don’t worry the recipes will be other things besides just pasta.

A Tool Belt- So Tyler works in construction as a project manager and well we all know he is going to be the one donning the tool belt in all of our home improvement projects. So the tool belt is to represent Tyler.

So the blog is still to Keep up with the Glovers, we just wanted a new name that was more creative and catchy. Let us know what you think of our new name! We will be working to update the site and make it more exciting looking. I am slowly learning to navigate the world that is blogging. We hope you are enjoying the blog as much as we are enjoying writing it.

Happy Monday!

Weekend Wrap-up- Man Weekend

I always go silent on the weekends but that is because we are doing fun things to blog about ha ha! We have had a very busy weekend. It wasn’t until this afternoon while eating lunch that we sat down and watched tv, that is unusual for us on the weekend.

Friday night we had Olive Garden, did some shopping (check the picture of the cute sign I found) and then headed to church for a session from the Answers in Genesis conference that was being held at our church. It was about geology and Tyler was so excited about it, I went for him but learned some new stuff so it was interesting. That was the beginning of Man Weekend.

Saturday morning Dolly had her first training session. She has some problems with meeting strangers and letting them into our house. We met the trainer outside and walked with her and Dolly immediately smelled all the treats she had on her. Dolly let the trainer come into the house and we learned a lot of good stuff about positive reinforcement and working to desensitize her to situations with meeting strangers. So we are now looking for test subjects to come to our house and let Dolly try out her new skills on you, Aunt Kay I’m looking at you!

After the trainer we headed to the card show. Now if you don’t know Tyler then you don’t know the boy loves his football cards. We have a collection of Robert Meachem cards that I would guess no man can match. Now Robert if you would please become a super star so I can get my Range Rover, that would be great! At the card show we bought tickets to have our picture made with Michael Oher, plays for the Baltimore Ravens and oh you know has a whole movie about him, The Blind Side. I was very excited but we had to wait until Sunday for that. Then we headed to the card store (remember I said this was man weekend). After the card store we headed to Lowe’s to get supplies for our newest project that we just completed and I can’t wait to share it with you guys. It looks so good, I am so excited!

Saturday night we enjoyed a delicious dinner with some friends at Texas Roadhouse. The rolls, YUM! Then we went for some late night grocery shopping.

Sunday, that’s today, we went to church and then rushed over to the card show only to find out that Michael Oher had cancelled. Que sad face :(. So we got our money back and to console ourselves bought some cards. I got two Dwight Howard cards and Tyler got one of someone from Tennessee. We finally got home for lunch after breaking the cardinal rule of going grocery shopping on an empty stomach because we had to grab some stuff for the new recipe I am trying tonight. If it turns out good I will share it this week! This afternoon we did the exciting project that I spoke of and will be sharing with you tomorrow!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Still a few hours of it left so enjoy it!! We are having beautiful weather here, yay warm weather! My daffodils are finally blooming, so pretty!

Oh and p.s. the most exciting thing about my weekend, they now bottle and sell Olive Garden salad dressing at Wal-Mart!! SAY WHAT? I was so excited! I can’t wait to try it. I hope it’s as good as Olive Garden, the only place I eat salad!

Yummy Pineapple Casserole

Pineapple, Cheese, and Ritz Crackers. Can you say YUM! That’s what I say whenever I think about this side dish. It is a family favorite and we had it the other night with our Poppyseed Chicken Casserole. I got this recipe from my mom.

Ingredients

2 (2o oz) cans pineapple chunks, drained
1 cup sugar
6 T. flour
6 T. pineapple juice
2 cup grated cheddar cheese
1/2 cup of melted butter
1 cup Ritz Cracker crumbs

Directions

1. Butter Casserole Dish
2. Mix together sugar, flour and pineapple juice
3. Pour into casserole dish
4. Spoon pineapple over mixture
5. Cover with grated cheese
6. Mix crumbs and melted butter together and sprinkle over cheese
7. Bake at 350 got 45 minutes

-This recipe can also be halved and baked for 25-30 minutes. I usually halve it when I am making for just Tyler and myself. It would be enough for 4 people when halved.

Easter Weekend Wrap-Up

We had a great Easter weekend! We had beautiful weather and were very productive. Friday I was off work and created my new spring wreath! We had Spinach and Ricotta Shells for dinner which I have shared with you all before. They were delicious as always. You can’t go wrong with stuffed shells. We caught up on some of our DVR shows Friday night and just relaxed.

Saturday, we had breakfast at Bob Evans and then headed to Lowe’s We bought everything we needed to finish fencing in our yard! You can read all about that on Tyler’s blogging post, his first contribution to the blog. And he is a good writer and funny so I will be having him do more posting. While Tyler worked on the fence I weeded my flowers and put up my new potted flowers and garden flag. I was quite excited about those and now our yard looks so cute and ready for spring!

After our yard work we got ready and headed over to the Twaddell’s for Easter egg dying, dinner, an inspirational egg hunt, cheesecake and Nertz. If you have never heard of Nertz or experienced the Twaddell’s playing it then you won’t understand my excitement about coming in 3rd place!! It is a game of speed and that is something the Twaddell family excels at, the Ballards and Glovers not as much. So I was proud to come in 3rd out of 7 people playing!

On Sunday we dressed up and headed to church for Easter Sunday. Growing up in a Southern Baptist church I just felt the need to dress up for Easter. When I was a little girl it was always so exciting to get our Easter dresses! It was a dreary and rainy day on Sunday so we came home and spent the day lounging on the couch and I also prepared us a delicious meal, Chicken Casserole and Pineapple Casserole, recipes coming later this week!

We had a great weekend and this morning it was back to the grind. I am not the biggest fan of Monday’s but I mean who really is? But this work day is close to over and then we are one day closer to the weekend 🙂 This coming weekend if the weather is nice we are hoping to go into DC and check out the Cherry Blossoms! Quick find the Zyrtec, hello allergies!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Dolly says “Happy Easter” 

New garden flag!

Front porch!

The Easter Bunny came!

Dying Easter Eggs at the Twaddell’s!

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Fencing in the newest member of the Glovers- By Tyler

Today we have a special treat! Tyler (my husband) has written a post about fencing in the yard this weekend 🙂 Enjoy!

If there is one thing that became obvious while playing with Dolly in the back yard is that the pup can run! Not that we were surprised that a greyhound / pointer could get around pretty well, but the energy level is rather intense. Emily and I had discussed fencing in the remaining 20’ or so of yard at the top of the driveway when we got Dolly, but that kind of got put on the back burner when Spring decided to have an identity crisis and snow in late March.

This past weekend was the first day above 60 since sometime in December, so we were roaring to go with the fence project. I built up some good will to get Emily to help me by making her some felt flowers for her wreath the night before. The next day I used that as leverage to get into Lowe’s for a spending splurge (Not that I ever need leverage to get Emily into Lowe’s, right babe?).

I ended up talking to an employee at Lowes for 4-5 minutes and had all the pieces and parts I needed for the fence project. We got 6 posts, 4 tension rods, 12 tension rod clamps, 1 Gate, 1 Gate hinge assembly, 1 gate latch assembly, 40 bolts / washers, a sledge hammer, 2 potted plants, and a kneeling pad. Now some of you expert fencers are laughing now, who gets 6 posts and only 4 tension rods??? Come on Tyler! Yeah, my bad. Also, forgot to get a longer bolt for the gate hinge, but in my defense, it wasn’t labeled on the color coded assembly chart. So 1 strike against me, and 1 against Lowes.

I got home and found the rubber mallet I had laying around, which I planned to use to get the posts started. I don’t care who you are, slinging a 8 pound sledge hammer above shoulder level and trying to have any efficiency is a losing battle. We got Dolly hooked to the shed somehow with Emily’s ingenuity. She loved just sun bathing and smelling each new piece and part I got out of the bag. Meanwhile, Emily has taken her new gardening gloves and kneeling pad around the front and begun weeding the flowers we planted a while back! She got all the weeds out and arranged her new potted flowers on the front porch to her liking, and came around back to help me out! In between straightening posts, or assisting in applying the clamps, she rested with Dolly and they enjoyed the 60+ Degrees! Woo!

Cutting the fence was something I hadn’t really planned for too well. However, my mediocre limb choppers eventually got the fence cut ha-ha. It was quite a scene. The movies make that look so easy! Once we finally got all the posts set and fence tied off and clamped together, we are only missing 3 pieces to be done! We need to get those last 2 tension rods, and a bolt for the hinge. All in all it was a great Saturday of fencing, and now we can let Dolly run as much as she wants back there chasing squirrels and cats (her new hobby); and not worry about her taking off across the street to meet the neighbor dogs, like she did a few days ago.. Bad dog.

-Mr. Glover