President's Day Productive-ness

Jeff has been busy finishing up (starting..whatever) his divemaster class so I used the three day weekend to get a lot accomplished. I spent at least 3 hours (2 different trips) at Joann's Craft Store. It's no Hobby Lobby, but it does have a lot of great stuff! Pretty much everything was 50% off for the holiday weekend, and I had a coupon for an additional 20% off your entire purchase (including sale items!). I have been searching high and low for throw pillows for our new couches and finally just decided to have them made. So, 3 hours at Joann's, 20 phone calls to my Mom, 10 text message pictures to my Mom, and a trip to the downtown fabric district....I finally purchased the items I needed to have pillows made. I am super excited for them! Thank goodness for picture text messaging...I couldn't have made up my mind without my Mom's interior decorating advice!

Here is a little sample of how they will look:

 I also used the weekend to clean out my closet, take boxes of donation items to Goodwill, clean out my car (goodbye dog hair!), and bake very unnecessary but delicious cookies and the famous Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls. They are all addicting and my pants are already feeling tighter. You can find the cinnamon rolls recipe here.






These cute little chocolate chip cookies have a surprise inside!

 A double Stuffed Oreo Cookie! Find the recipe here.

 Or you can stuff s'mores inside! Find this variation here.

The s'mores were harder to do, and I only made four of those. The Oreo ones were pretty easy. They are very tasty. Now I have a bunch of sweets at my house and trying not to eat them for every meal :)

We also joined friends for dinner Saturday night at a cute little Italian place in Playa Vista. It was POURING raining, and normally we probably would have stayed in and watched a movie, but we had made plans with them ahead of time. We ended up sitting at the restaurant for several hours talking, enjoying the atmosphere and the great Italian wine.  We also watched Paranormal Activity 2...which was freaky, however, I think my German Shepherd would be a better guard dog than theirs :) All in all, it was a great weekend with a good balance of being productive and relaxing.