Summer Vacation Project No. 1: Wedding Signs

A friend of mine from work, Shelby, is getting married on August 20th! Well, let me back up and give you a little history. When I first started working at the DOB, there were three other girls in my office that I quickly became friends with - Shelby, April, and Melissa. Well, Melissa moved to Houston and transferred to our DOB office down there about three years ago (maybe four? I can't remember). And April resigned about a year ago. :( So that left just me and Shelby in the Arlington office (and out of our office of approximately 20 examiners, there were only 4 girls, including us! So sad.). Well, Melissa moved back to the Dallas area last month, and she came back to our office! So, since the four of us have remained close, we try to get together for dinner every now and again. Which is actually harder than it should be since: 1) we travel out of town for work a lot, 2) April lives in Wylie, 3) Shelby lives in Grapevine/Trophy Club, and 4) Melissa and I live in Arlington/Grand Prairie. We always get together around Christmas for dinner, and then throughout the year, when our schedules come together, we schedule dinner!

Okay, so Shelby is getting married August 20th!! So the four of us decided to get together for dinner to see Melissa's new house and make wedding signs for Shelby. She was kind of going for the vintagey-chic look, so I started googling around to see how we could accomplish the crackle-finish on her painted signs. I figured we'd just crackle the paint and then use an Exacto knife to carefully cut out the wording she wanted and Mod Podge it to the signs. Easy enough, right? Well, that's when I came across this website. Use iron-on transfer paper for the signs?? That would be so much easier! Done! And I found this website that claimed that Elmer's glue would give us the crackled paint finish we wanted. Okay, so spoiler alert: One of these techniques worked amazingly well, and the other was an epic failure. So here's what we did:

These are our supplies: base color acrylic craft paint (black), top color acrylic craft paint (white), Elmer's glue, foam brushes.

Using your base color, paint the wood and let dry completely.

Then, brush on the Elmer's glue - not too thick, but not so thin that it dries immediately.

Then, when the glue starts to dry and get "tacky", you'll want to brush on your top coat of paint. The glue will kind of bubble when it starts to dry and just use your finger to see if it's tacky - you want it to be sticky, not gloppy like wet glue. When you brush on your top coat of paint over the glue, brush it on in one direction and try not to go over the glue over and over again. Just one coat should do ya. When the paint and the glue start to dry, you'll see it start to crackle, and you should be left with something like this!

Crackled paint!

Success! So, as you can see, Elmer's glue + acrylic craft paint = crackled paint success! Which leads me to the epic failure...iron on transfer paper to add print to the signs. I didn't even take a picture. They looked pretty terrible. We tried it on three of the small signs, and the text transferred blurry and weird for some reason. So I painted over them. April's going to use her Cricut to cut out vinyl lettering for them instead. So the painted signs will sit until April mails me the vinyl lettering (you know, since she lives all the way in Wylie). Oh well, live and learn! I still need to get some sandpaper and sand the edges, so they look more weathered, but I think they turned out really well!

4th of July Weekend

Our two week vacation from work started this past weekend! We don't have any real plans to do anything, except NOT go to work. Ha! We started our weekend on Saturday with a July 2nd shrimp boil at our house. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures, and our neighbor hasn't posted any (yet?), so I couldn't steal any from him. I did, however, steal this picture from Amy's facebook. We had two of the cutest little girls at our shrimp boil - Katie and Vaughn! Aren't they adorable in their red, white, and blue???

We boiled about 4 pounds of shrimp, 2 pounds of potatoes, and 7 ears of corn. We also grilled about 25 chicken drumsticks. I was secretly hoping that we'd have a ton of leftovers that we could eat throughout the week, but, we were only left with about 8 drumsticks! Bummer! Oh well. I guess that means the food was good! I also made fruit salsa and cinnamon chips, which apparently was a huge hit! I used strawberries, mango, kiwi, pineapple, and blueberries - sprinkled with just a bit of sugar and cinnamon. Delicious and refreshing!

On Sunday, we drove out to Argyle to Clay's mom's house to go swimming! It was about 100+ degrees outside...and the pool was a nice and cool 90 degrees. Haha! Clay had driven up from Austin the day before with his new girlfriend, Andrea. And she brought with her the most delicious homemade enchiladas, rice, beans, and HOT salsa! Everything was SO good!! I may or may not have eaten two plates of everything...

On Monday, the 4th, we hung around the house being lazy and then we went to the Ranger's game with our friends, David and Krissy. We stopped at Sherlock's first for a bite to eat and a couple of drinks. When the waitress informed us that they had Strawberry Malibu snow cones for sale, we just had to try one.

DELICIOUS. So good. It would have been even better if we could have taken it with us to the ballpark, though. ha! Luckily for us, we snuck onto the Lexus club level at the ballpark and got into the air conditioned Irish pub. We sat in there until about the top of the third inning, when the sun started to set.

After watching the Rangers soundly defeat the Orioles, we stuck around for the fireworks show!

The show seemed a little short, but I'm assuming that has something to do with the down economy and budget cuts. ha! Nevertheless, it was fun! And here's a fun fact - fireworks were first used to celebrate the 4th of July in 1777!! Who knew! They actually first used fireworks on July 8, 1776, but that technically isn't the 4th of July. :)

Last, but certainly not least, I made a 4th of July wreath for our front door! I found this one on Pinterest and LOVED it, but the girl made hers by cutting out over 500 felt stars. I'm sure that took FOREVER. So, I cheated and just cut 3 inch by 3 inch squares. Same thing only different once you cram them onto the wreath!

Hope you guys had a wonderful 4th of July!!

Texas Travels: White Oak, Texas

Yes, another Texas Travels blog post! I haven't had a stay-out in quite some time. Well, that's actually a lie now that I'm looking at my work schedule. I was out of town in May in a tiny town called Cooper, staying in another tiny town called Paris (as in Paris, Texas...don't be ridiculous. The State of Texas is going through a budget crisis, we can't afford to be gallivanting through France). Anyhow, this week I'm working in White Oak, Texas. Where is White Oak, you ask? I couldn't really even begin to tell you. I didn't drive out here. All I know is that I'm about 15 minutes away from Longview. I couldn't even tell you if I'm north, east, south, or west of Longview. But after doing a quick Google Maps search, it turns out White Oak is west of Longview. 

So what is White Oak known for? From the looks of it, nothing. I kid, I kid. But in all seriousness, I don't think White Oak is known for anything. Their official website tells me that the town is located 125 miles east of Dallas, has a population of approximately 5,600 people, and hosts something called the White Oak Roughneck Day Festival (I don't think I want to know what that is). Pretty much all I know about White Oak is that there is a state bank out here with THE biggest flagpole I have ever seen in my life. 

Truth be told, I didn't mind coming out to the middle of nowhere. Want to know why? It may sound ridiculous, but I was a little bit giddy knowing that I was scheduled to come out to the East Texas area...because of the food. Yes, the food. You see, on this job, we go to these small towns that we normally would probably never have gone to. And we get to sample the local cuisine. Now, White Oak doesn't have much to offer as far as local cuisine, but Longview...there's plenty in Longview. Such as...

Jucy's Hamburgers

Amazingly delicious hamburgers with patties bigger than the buns. The burger patties are so "jucy" that they literally fall apart and practically melt in your mouth. Avoid this place if you're on a diet. Everything in moderation, people.

Dudley's Cajun Cafe

Pretty decent Cajun seafood. I had the fried catfish, which came with more fries than I knew what to do with. If you go to Dudley's, you need to accept their offer for complimentary coleslaw before your meal. So good.

Random Sidenote: I took this picture at Dudley's - a basket FULL of saltine crackers. It reminded me of some of my coworker friends. While we were in Cooper, a few of us attempted the "eat 5 saltines in a minute" challenge. Have you ever tried it? Don't. Shelby opted for the 2-crackers-at-a-time technique. She realized her mistake after the first bite. Patrick also tried this technique and he ended up spitting cracker all over his sleeve. I was laughing too hard at the both of them to even finish one cracker. Epic fail.

Pizza King

Delicious, delicious pizza. Oh, so tasty.

Now these aren't the fanciest of dining establishments, by any stretch of the imagination. But they do serve some of the best food around. And, of course, no trip to East Texas is complete without a stop at the Country Tavern in Kilgore for some of the best ribs around!

Lastly, I just had to share this picture. This was my favorite part of the bank. And yes, I took my phone to the bathroom - that's what I call dedication to blogging.

Another One Bites the Dust

We don't have a whole lot of employee turnover here at the DOB. In the five years I've been here, only two people have actually quit (well technically three, but he was politely asked to resign).  Just recently, we had one examiner resign to go work for the Fed. Now, we have another leaving to work for a bank in Austin. We are all so sad to see him go - especially me, since for the last 4 1/2 months, or the last 7 bank examinations, we've worked side-by-side. I'm not going to lie, it's going to be a little strange not working with Brandon anymore. And as much as I roll my eyes and send disapproving looks his way for some of his red zone comments, I'm going to miss him!! So, while we savor our last moments with him at his last bank as a bank examiner this week, I thought it would only be fitting to bake some cupcakes! I found the recipe on my new time-suck Pinterest.  Sidenote: have you discovered the awesomeness that is Pinterest?? If not, browse the sight...I'd be surprised if you weren't hooked after 5 minutes. And if you'd like, I can send you an invite.  Anyway, back to the cupcakes: OREO CUPCAKES. 

That's right Oreo cupcakes. Oreos in the cupcakes and Oreos in the frosting. Can you dig it?  (Also fitting, as it was pointed out to me this morning by our  resident smart ass examiner - OREO in banking terms stands for Other Real Estate Owned...get it?). Anyway, here is the original recipe. I was feeling lazy running short on time, so I cheated and used a box white cake mix and just added Oreos to the batter.  And I didn't cut up whole Oreos like the recipe recommends, I just used the other half of the Oreo not used for the bottom of each cupcake. Also, for the frosting, I used a different recipe:

• 1 stick regular, salted butter, softened
• 1-8oz block of regular cream cheese, softened
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 1/2 cups (almost 1 pound) of powdered sugar

Then I just added some Oreo cookie crumbs to the frosting. I attempted to be fancy and pipe the frosting, but failed miserably (again), so I ended up just glopping it on each cupcake and spreading it around. It was 10:30 pm and I was in no mood to figure out piping. Maybe next time... Anyway, just FYI I used almost an entire package of Oreos for this. I think there might be like 3 cookies left in the package. Enjoy! And of course, we wish Brandon the best of luck in his future endeavors. Vaya con Dios, bro. Heh heh.

Surprise...Happy Mother's Day!

For the past month, David's been scheming with his dad and planning a surprise trip to San Antonio for Mother's Day. So last Friday, we headed southbound on I-35. We stayed in Austin for the night so that we could get to San Antonio first thing Saturday morning. We had such a good time in Austin!! We stayed with David's best friend, Clayton, and went out to dinner and drinks with some good friends! I love visiting Austin...such good food and such great friends!

We got up super early on Saturday and headed down to San Antonio. We knew that David's mom wouldn't be home, since she had alter guild. We showered and dressed, ran some errands, and then sat at the house waiting for his mom to get home. We figured she'd realize what was going on before she even saw us, since we parked David's truck in the driveway. We assumed that would give it away...

When David's mom finally got home, she walked into the house with her groceries as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Then we heard her say, "Whose car is in our driveway, Bob??" David and I looked at each other like, uh..really?? Then she came out of the kitchen and saw us sitting on the couch and put two and two together!! My goodness. She's never going to live that down. She didn't even recognize our truck!!! 

We had such a nice visit. Saturday afternoon, we went down to Pearl Brewery and visited the farmer's market and had lunch on a patio. Then we walked down to where the city was working to extend the Riverwalk. It was so pretty!! If you're ever in San Antonio, I highly recommend visiting this place!

Yes, my eyes are closed in this picture. It was bright!! And this was the only picture we took that day! ha! Saturday night, we went to dinner at Paesano's on the Riverwalk. I LOVE that restaurant. It's so good!!! 

Sunday morning, we all went to church and it was so good to see Chuck again! Chuck was David's minister growing up and he's the one who married us a couple years ago. For mother's day brunch, we enjoyed the buffet at the "old folk's home" (as David's mom calls it).  David's parents moved into a retirement community a couple of years ago and they're loving it! 

My eyes may be closed in this picture too. What can I say, not a good picture weekend for me! But even though our visit was short and we spent a lot of time in the car, we had such a great time!!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

At the end of last summer, David and his dad built me a raised herb garden.  We were finally able to plant a few herbs and vegetables earlier this year. So how's the growing going??

This is how the garden looked when we planted everything at the end of March.

And this is how it looks now!

We have a sufficient amount of parsley apparently, but most importantly...we have these little guys!

Tomatoes are coming!!! Our tomato plant is growing so well. We went and got a tomato cage last weekend to make sure everything stays up and off the ground! We also had to get some organic pesticide to get rid of a few critters. Can't wait until these babies are ready to eat and we I can make some caprese salad!!

April Showers Bring May Flowers...?

Apparently April showers also bring colder temperatures. Yesterday's high was only 54 degrees! David actually had to turn the heater back on. When I got home from work, it was 50 degrees outside, so I decided that was cold enough to use the fireplace again!

There's nothing better than a warm fire, glass of red wine, and a super comfy couch when it's cold and rainy outside! But not to worry, it'll be back in the 90's by next week. Crazy Texas weather!!