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9.21.2011

Feet! Shoes! Germs!

I do not like feet!  I never have.  The gross me out!  Thank goodness my husband's feet are ok (for feet at least).  They are better than mine, ha!

But I have this thing...with feet...and with germs.  Shoes.  Think where your shoes go.  I can't even say all the places your shoes go because quite frankly, it just grosses me out!

I have for a very long time, very much enjoyed the tradition in a lot of European and Asian cultures, of removing your shoes when you enter a home.  I LOVE this idea.  It keeps yucky germs OUT of the house that you work so hard at keeping "clean" so often!

Sean and I take our shoes off in our house.  The only time our shoes make the trek through the house is if we are going from the front door to the back, or the shoes we want to wear are in the back closet and not by the door where we last took them off.  But that's not really ok either!

How do you tell guests when they come over to please take off their shoes?!  My mother, for one, hates to be barefoot!  My sister-in-law is Russian, and when we have get-togethers at their house, we take off our shoes and kindly put on a pair of slippers.  They have a ton of extras and provide them for whoever wishes to wear some!    It is just custom and it's what we expect.  They don't even wear them from one door to another!  AND...here is the real kicker...if they leave, and then have to run back in b/c they forgot something...you guessed it...the shoes come OFF before running back through the house!  I should ask my sis-n-law if she would even do this with hard to get on and off winter boots?!  Hmm..

How do I enforce this in our house?!  Shoes are SO GROSS!  And I just cringe at the thought of having a baby crawling around on these floors with all the yucky shoe germs on them!

Do I need germ therapy?!  

9.09.2011

Labor Day Weekend.

Perfect weather  and perfect company.  That describes my weekend.  Friday, my parent's drove in from AR.  We had a big weekend of football and eating planned.  While at the grocery store Friday morning, I spotted this gorgeous bunch of sunflowers.  I decided not only did I have to have them b/c they were LSU gold, but b/c what screams fall in a flower more than a SUNflower!  {I agree, not much!}


These put such a big smile on my face :)


My parent's were due to arrive around 5pm.  Around 4, the doorbell rang.  I of course was hoping they were fibbing and it was going to be them at the door an hour early :)  Nope :(  Instead, it was another great surprise!  They sent flowers to help get ready for the LSU party on Saturday we were hosting at our house!  My mom said they had to call 4 different florists in our area for PURPLE and GOLD flowers!  REALLY?!  The florist they found nailed it!!

Geaux Tigers!!
On Friday, Sean and I prepared our favorite "go to" recipe for company.  Chicken Enchiladas from Skinny Taste.  DELISH if you haven't tried them :)  My Uncle Jim and Suzanne came for dinner!  They were in town from Shreveport for the game on Saturday at the insanely large Cowboy Stadium!  I must say, dinner was a huge success.  I even made strawberry pie for dessert :)  (and no, I did not make the crust from scratch!)  I forgot to take a pictures of the finished pie, whoops!  But it looked so pretty in my new Emile Henry pie plate :)


Not the best picture, but I think it looked pretty :)

LSU kicked off the start of NCAA football for the season against the Oregon Ducks on Saturday.  Sean and I had lots of family over for the big game!  15 people I think to be exact!  Sean decided he wanted to attempt to smoke his first brisket!  We started the marinade on Friday evening after dinner.  By 9am, it was definitely ready for a slow and low day of smoking.  We had brisket, mac 'n cheese (my grandmother's recipe!), corn, potatoes, salad, and lots of yummy desserts (yea, carb overload)!  Check out this stadium cake my aunt made!


The game was a huge success!  Our tiger babies whooped up on those ducks!!!!  We were never really that scared ;))

Cousin's all for one team!!
It was a late evening, but well worth it.

Sunday morning, my dad got up and made us his famous french toast sans butter {cough cough}.  Regardless, this stuff is A-MA-ZING!
NO!  of course that's not BUTTER!
After trying to get the bacon smell out of the entire house, Sean went off to sell a house, my dad made it to the sofa for a movie, and mom and I headed out the door to shop :)  They had to leave around 1 that day to go to Shreveport to visit my brother Adam.  He had to work over the weekend and had to miss the game watching party with us :(  The rest of the day for Sean and I was spent napping off and on.

Monday, we were up and ready to conquer!  We first attacked the garage.  It needed some serious organization.  It is SOOOO nice in there now.  We hung our bikes, hung a tool organizer, and cleaned out a few things.  The weather was perfect so we decided we should celebrate with a bottle of champagne!

Cheers to an organized garage!

By 3pm, we had ants in our pants!  The weather was so nice and if you have ever lived in Dallas you know that only means one thing....what patio and when?!  We loaded up and drove to UpTown to meet up with a few friends at the Gingerman, followed by our favorite... Primo's.  We were home before the sun was down.  

I hope everyone had a nice relaxing Labor Day.  It was a perfect weekend, indeed :)