Weekend Recap

The Berg's had another low key weekend here in PA.

We are loving that the snow gives us an excuse to do nothing. :)

Before I get to the weekend, I am going to show you oh few but faithful readers, what I got at TJ Maxx on Friday morning.

The yellow was a gift from my MIL from Anthropologie.

And the gray I found at TJ Maxx for $16!

Same brand, same material, same style.

Aren't they both presh??

I love that store.

And I have been looking for one of these for forever..

and I should have known I would find it at TJ M.

I am not sure yet where I will put it, but I love it! (And Lick wanted to show y'all his cute face I guess, because he was posing for that pic.)

Ok, on to the weekend...

Friday night consisted of heading to my least favorite store ever. 

WalMart.

Boo.

I dreaddd going to this store everytime I have to.

But this time I came away with a bookcase!

It was only $99, but def doesn't look like it.

 After WM, we picked up Chili's and headed home.(We had to drive 30 minutes there and 30 back just to get to it! I guess this really isn't Texas, since there isn't one on every corner.) 

Once we were home LB VOLUNTEERED to set up my bookcase!

I didn't even want to ask him since he had just worked all day, but his sweet self just started working on it.

And these 2 had fun helping playing with him.

It took them 5 minutes to figure out how to get around to LB on the other side. 

Crazy pups.

This is where Trig sat the rest of the time.

Yes, that is my little tub I put blankets in.

Selfish.

It's not like he doesn't have his own bed! I promise he does!

Here is the finished product!

It needs to be filled up a little more, but for now it looks ok.

 (I semi-made the B, by buying a plain wooden letter and some scrapbook paper that I liked, tracing the letter onto the paper, cutting it out, and gluing it on!)

 The next picture looks a little crazy and kind of makes the bookcase look larger at the top than the bottom, but it's obviously not!!

Thanks hub! You do good work.

Saturday, we lazed around most of the day.

Started out the morning with some yum chicken minis from Chic-fil-a and watched movies.

Later, we went to the grocery store like usual and grabbed some more movies.

I finally saw the Social Network!

I enjoyed it and Landon surprisingly did too.

If only I had been the one to invent Facebook.

But I do good just to upload pictures onto the computer. :)

Sunday, we just wanted to go to Settler's Ridge, run a few errands, and enjoy the day, before Landon went back to work today.

We started out getting Landon a haircut at Sport Clips. Ha.

I waited while him and 10 other little boys got haircuts.

I was just sitting there, putting on some of this awesome lotion

when I noticed..

!!!

See the little BLACK area on my wedding band????

One of my diamonds somehow fell out!!

I almost lost it in my little fake stadium seat.

I seriously almost started crying.

Sad.

I have no idea how it happened, but until it gets fixed, it is sitting in the safe.

After I quit freaking out a little bit, we walked through the shopping center to one of my FAVORITE stores.

Barnes and Noble!

And picked up these

It seems like everyone is doing Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace Planning, so Landon suggested we jump on the bandwagon.

We are supposed to have a really bad storm tonight, so I plan on starting it tmrw while I am snuggled up on the couch!

Next we walked over to Panera Bread and ate some hot tomato soup by the fire.

Perfect day.

We concluded our little outing with a trip to the mall, anxious to use up some of our Christmas giftcards.

Y'all remember this skirt..?

 Well I walked into Gap, just to look around, and guess what I found in black?

And want to see what's even better than that??

I know it is crooked, but can you believe it???

Of course that would happen to me after I just ordered it online.

But you want to see what happened when I got to the checkout...

$4.78!!!

For a skirt?? 

Are you serious???

And you want to know something I totally forgot about??

NO SALES TAX on clothes in PA!

How awesome is that.

Now, we are once again enjoying Chic-fil-a and waiting on the bachelor to start!

Hope everyone had a blessed weekend and Happy Monday!

This Week's Obsession.

This week I have been mildly obsessed with Emily of Jones Design Company.

No words can explain how extremely talented this lady is.

She does design and also sells art prints.

I love the fact that in the art prints she sells, most have bible verses on them that are so so cute!

I really can't say anything else about her to really get you to understand how super cute everything she does is, so just go to her blog!

Jonesdesigncompany.com

I have copied many of her tutorials and plan to start another in our bedroom soon! 

And as soon as my fingers hit publish post I am off to buy this from her site!

(p.s. Emily has absolutely no idea who I am, but that fact that I am doing a post solely devoted to her does not bother me in the least! :) )

Oh Happy Day!

Finally finally finally after 3-4 weeks of waiting, 2 beautiful things happened today!

1. We have DVR!

We had it in Texas and decided we could live without it to save some money.

Well, we realized we were getting ripped off by the cable company and were paying a TON for basic channels and no DVR. Plus, I had really gotten used to recording all of my shows and it was KILLING me to miss some.

So we switched:)

Now we have more channels, DVR in 2 rooms, and are paying less!!

Yay!

The only downside would be that the installation guy was too stubborn to take my help on moving the dresser in our room when I offered it. Well, this wouldn't be a problem except that I know how heavy the dresser is and he didn't so this is what he ended up doing to it.

Awesome.
Don't even know how someone manages to do something like this.
In fact, if I didn't see it happen, I would have thought it happened while we were moving.

And despite the fact that when it happened all he said was "oh", he was nice enough the rest of the time and it was worth it.
It was a hard 3 weeks without DVR!

(Plus, I'm sure superglue will just fix that right up, won't it???)

2. We FINALLY got our debit cards in the mail!

We have been debit card-less since we moved here, since we regrettably had to switch banks once we moved out of state.

Can anyone believe there is no Chase Bank in PA? 

Only weird Pennsylvania banks.

That are TERRIBLE apparently since they lost our first cards, had to order new ones, and we just NOW got them.

But, that's ok because now this beauty is coming my way and will be here in 3-5 days:)

Isn't she precious?? And, because we haven't had our debit cards for such a long time and I had to wait to order it, it is now on sale for $24.99 at Gap instead of $59! So YOU should get one too!

I also was FINALLY able to order some cute little Valentine's cards for us, so get ready, because you just might get one!
<3<3<3<3<3<3

Landon's Favorite

I know I know, 4 recipe posts in a row.

I can't help it.

It's what I do when I'm stuck inside.

Chicken spaghetti is Landon's all-time FAVORITE.

He always, always wants me to make it for him.

I haven't found a recipe that I really like yet that doesn't call for Velveeta, so I just kind of threw in a bunch of stuff usually found in chicken spaghetti and added shredded cheese (I used the "Mexican" mix and Parmesan).

(I like Velveeta in queso, but for some reason I just don't want to put it in any other food.

Maybe it's the weird texture?

I don't know.)

Chicken Spaghetti

2-3 chicken breasts

1 16oz box of spaghetti noodles

1 can of cream of mushroom soup

1/2 onion

1/2 bell pepper

1 can of rotel

2-4 c shredded cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375.

Boil water. Add noodles. Cook chicken anyway you like (I just cooked it on a skillet) and then shred it.

Once noodles are cooked, drain the water.

Add soup, rotel, onion, pepper, and cheese (add as much as you like! we like a lot!) to the pot with the noodles. Add chicken.

You can eat go ahead and start eating or you can put it in your preheated oven for about 15 minutes, or until your cheese is bubbly on the top!

No Gym Today

Today was supposed to be the day.

The day that I jumped back into my workout routine.

As I was getting ready to go this afternoon, I looked out the window and saw this..

I know that I am going to have to get used to this, but as for now

cold weather=staying inside.

Instead, I jumped on the chance to get some use out of the new cooling rack I picked up at Target last week.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 c butter, softened
1 c white sugar
1 c brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp hot water
1/2 tsp salt
2 c semisweet chocolate chips
1 c chopped walnuts

 

Preheat oven to 350.
Cream together the butter and sugars until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water I didn't do this! Instead, I just added the baking soda with an extra tsp of vanilla and 1 extra tsp of water. Add salt. Stir in flour, chocolate chips, and nuts (I left out the nuts too!). Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned. 

 

Let me tell you, these really are the BEST chocolate chip cookies. 

I would have been happy just eating the entire bowl of dough.

This batch made 20 cookies and I had a bunch of dough left over that I froze!

 Doesn't this look better than the gym??

(recipe via allrecipes)

 

 

Here is a tip: using less white sugar and more brown, gives the cookies a richer flavor. I used 3/4 c white and 1 1/4 brown.

Chicken & Rice

Here is one of my favorite family recipes. I'm not sure where the recipe came from, because I just have it written on an old index card, but I love it!

My parents would always make this for me when I came home from school or on most Sundays.

I made it for dinner last night and it was just as yummy as I remembered.

Chicken & Rice

1 c raw rice

1/2 c chopped celery

1/2 c chopped bell pepper

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 pkg dry onion soup mix

3 c water

bone in chicken

1/2 stick of butter

Preheat the oven to 375.

You start by using either a 9x13 dish or 14x10x2. 

Spread dry, uncooked rice in your dish (I use brown rice and it tastes just as good as white). Melt 1/2 stick of butter and pour over rice.

In a separate pot, mix soup, water, dry onion mix, celery, and green peppers (I also throw in onions!).

Bring that mixture to a boil.

Once the boiling has started, pour over the rice/butter mix.

The mixture will be really soupy at this point.

Add your chicken on top of the soupy mixture (I usually buy a pkg of chicken legs only because the dark meat tends to stay more moist. Plus, then you won't have to mess with cutting a whole chicken!)

Bake for 1.5-2 hours or until soup mix thickens up.

This makes a TON and even better leftovers (except not in this house, because the 2 pieces of chicken that were left are now in Landon's lunch at work:)). It would probably also be pretty good if you threw in some porkchops instead of the chicken!

(I am not sure why it looks so green in these pictures? Maybe just a weird light, but I promise it doesn't look like that in person!)

Apple Pie

 Last weekend, Landon and I went to Sam's.

This is dangerous in itself, but considering we had a giftcard and were all hopped up on free samples, it was VERY dangerous.

We somehow came home with a 5 lb. bag of apples. 

I love apples and I have eaten most of them, but I didn't want the rest to go bad.

So why not make an apple pie right??

Apple Pie

1/2 c sugar

1/2 c brown sugar

3 tbsp flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground ginger

7 c thinly sliced apples

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 pastry for double crust pie

1 tbsp butter

1 egg white

In a small bowl, combine sugar, flour and spices; set aside. In a large bowl, toss apples with lemon juice. Add sugar mixture; toss well to coat. Line a 9-in. pie pan with half the pastry. Place apple filling into crust; dot with butter. Roll out remaining pastry to fit top of pie. Cut a few slits in top. beat egg white until foamy; brush over pastry. Sprinkle sugar on top. Bake at 375 degrees F for 35 minutes. Increase temperature to 400 degrees F and bake 10-15 minutes more or until golden.

(The recipe was found here. I just copied and pasted it, because it is pretty straight forward!)

The Strip

This Saturday, Landon and I ventured downtown to the Strip.

As you can see it was verryyy warm out! NOT. 

And yes that is 1.8. (the 72.3 is how warm it was inside!)

The Strip District is pretty much 2 parallel streets in downtown Pittsburgh with little markets and shops that are open on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

We started off by just walking around, snapping pictures, and taking everything in before we went into any stores.

(We didn't want to have to carry a bunch of stuff around in the cold!)

The streets were jam packed full of cars, people, and tons of Steelers gear.

The pictures don't really do justice. I was rushing with every one of them, because there were so many people speed walking around, coming at you in all directions.

PLUS, my camera died after only a few pictures.

AGAIN.

I got a few pics, and then it would die, and then work again for a couple of pictures and then it died for good!

So I am posting what I have.

I need some help here.

I just put in new batteries last Saturday, so I am not sure what's going on. 

Any advice??

Is there some kind of special batteries I should buy?

Anyway, our first stop was the Pittsburgh Public Market.

It was basically a big open room where stores come and set up shop on the weekends.

The Pittsburgh Marshmallow Factory was my favorite!

They had SO many different flavors of marshmallows.

We got coconut, vanilla, ginger, bananas foster, and honey.

We passed on the Scotch Whiskey and Beer flavored. Yuck.

Landon, who makes friends with everyone, of course made a friend with the man working at the Marshmallow factory. It somehow came up that we had just moved here and so the man said he would throw this in as a welcome to Pittsburgh.

I'm not sure if I'll eat it, but it sure was nice of him! 

Next we walked over to the Fudgie Wudgie shop.

Yes, the name is Fudgie Wudgie.

But look at all those different flavors!

We didn't buy any though, since we had just loaded up on marshmallows.

Next time Fudgie, next time.

And, you know we would never leave out the pups.

They got something too.

From Four Paws Barkery!

The red and green are peppermint treats and the yellowish is pizza!

They love them.

And Landon tried them for some reason and said they taste pretty good.

(Don't be grossed out. The owner personally makes the treats and uses only wheat flour and flavoring.)

Next, we headed over to Penn. Mac. Co.

I didn't get any pictures inside, since my camera had already died at this point and this picture was taken when we had just started our journey.

This place had the most delicious homemade breads, cheeses, olives, and meats.

We spent about $30 on cheese!

But it was worth it.

The stuff melts in your mouth.

I also got some blue cheese olives. YUM.

And apple rings!

Our last stop was Parma's where we picked up some breakfast sausage.

Landon's dad said it was supposed to be really good, so we thought we'd try it out.

We were frozen by the time we finished up with Parma's, so we headed back to the car and made our way home.

This was the last picture we could sneak in before the camera was dunzo. 

Yes, I know I look similar to the Michelin man with those arms, but I was layered up! And yes for some reason I am still smiling even though my face is covered. Hence the chubbier than usual cheeks:)

Strip, you were fun, but next time we come visit will be in the summer. And I WILL pack extra batteries this time.