Five On Friday: Lazy Days And House Projects

Hello, hello! I hope you all had a wonderful week and are excited to jump into another fun summer weekend (hopefully filled with yummy food and sweet time with friends and family).  After ten days of traveling, we spent this week hanging out at home and spending time with our KC family we hadn’t seen in a while.  Weeks like this make me so grateful to have a job with natural breaks for rest and recovery before starting up another year.  Just another great reason to be a teacher, right?

Anyway, here are five updates and other fun things from our week!

1) Gorgeous Couple Pics

When we were in California, we had the chance to do a quick couples photo shoot with my best friend and college roommate, Haley of Haley George Photography.  She posted the pics this week and I love love love them! She took pictures of me in college, photographed Jordan’s proposal and our engagement pictures, and has taken pictures of us in so many different seasons.  Thanks to this girl, our life will always be very well-documented! Thanks for some lovely pictures, Hales! You can check out the rest of the pictures on Haley’s blog!

2) SETTING BLOGGING GOALS (AND A LITTLE MILESTONE!)

After we got home from California, I sat down to think about this whole blogging endeavor and set some goals.  To be honest, I’m not usually someone who writes down goals (or even keeps a calendar), but I found this to be really helpful! I set some goals for social media growth, posting and general pageviews, and steps I hope to take toward building community with readers and other bloggers.  It was fun to dream about where this blog could go and the practical steps I can take to get there.  AND I hit a blogging milestone, breaking 1,000 daily page views when I published my post on the one thing to do after an argument with your spouse!  That might be small for some bigger bloggers, but I’m learning to celebrate victories and not worry about comparison.  So thanks to everyone who read on Monday, because you caused some major excitement and happy dances in the English household on Monday night!

3) Yummy Meals With Family

Jordan’s twin sister was in town this week, so we had all four English siblings in town and celebrated with a night of yummy food and silly board games (with a little bit of Royals baseball watching thrown in).  I made the delicious quinoa black bean stuffed peppers you see below from one of my favorite cooking blogs, Damn Delicious, and they were AMAZING! Full of so many veggies and flavor and a great vegetarian option.  In fact, we were so distracted by these delicious peppers that my two year old niece managed to grab a crayon and draw on 3 walls and a a chair before we found her and she promptly burst into tears.  We have so much to look forward to when we have kids! 🙂

Recipe and Photo Source: Damn Delicious

4) Movies, Movies, and More movies

One of our favorite things to do on our lazy days has been to watch movies.  Last weekend we went and saw Inside Out, which was so cute and had me bawling and remembering the pivotal moments in my own childhood.  It has so many great ideas and lessons about life and where our personalities come from, and would be such a great movie to see with kiddos! We’ve also watched a few movies at home, and our daily routine usually involves waking up, making some coffee, and finding a show or movie to watch (at this point hubby has already run 6-8 miles with the high school cross country team he coaches, so he’s earned the rest).  One of my favorites so far is The Good Lie, a movie about the Sudanese child refugees sent to the United States to escape the turmoil and violence in their communities.  It was poignant, funny, and such a beautiful story of hope and resilience in the midst of sadness and tragedy.  We’d definitely recommend it!

5) House Projects

One of the benefits of summer is the chance to work on some fun house projects.  We’ve pretty much woken up each day and said, “Hmm…what do we want to work on today?” So far we’ve updated the curtains on our main level (thanks, Ikea!), gotten about 95% done with the hutch I’ve been working on for an embarrassingly long amount of time, and set up the corner of our bedroom so my necklaces have a home instead of just sitting in a giant tangled pile on top of our dresser.  Setting up this little corner nook only took about 15 minutes, and everything in it is thrift store items, Target clearance finds,  or stuff we already had like that chair.  We’re hoping to eventually get a more cozy chair that will be good for snuggling kiddos or just putting on shoes, but for now, this $4 thrift store find in a World Market slipcover will do.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have wonderful weekends!

Head over to  A. Liz Adventures, Fitting It All In, Life in Leggings, Grace and Love Blog, Momfessionals Friday Favorites, and Running 4 Cupcakes for more Friday favorites!