Yippee!!!

I scour the Etsy Finds email every day always looking and hoping that I will spot a card or set of stationery from my shop. Usually, it winds up in disappointment. Sometimes it causes jealousy. Especially during Valentine's season when one particular card was in Etsy Finds EVERY day for like two weeks. And don't worry Andrew never heard the end of it every day when I opened that email and groaned. I even started these conspiracy theories about how Etsy hated me or that artists were paying them off. Or how maybe my cards were actually super duper crappy. Yup, my jealously was pretty ugly. But yesterday did not end up in disappointment or jealousy because there I was!

Woooooohoooooo!!!!! Yippppeeeeeee!!!!!

And if you are in love with this Mother's Day card just as much as Etsy was yesterday afternoon, you can find it in my shop here. But for now, I'm going to savor this and enjoy it going into the weekend.

P.S. Thank you ALL SO MUCH for your encouragement on yesterday's post. You were all so truly kind and made me realize that I'm not the only one who is camera shy, or that maybe sometimes I should just step out of my comfort zone and everything will be all right. I may just go for it again in the future. ;)

An Irrational Fear

I have an irrational fear of being in front of the camera. I want to be behind the lens, but not in front. I take the pictures, not you. You may have remembered me telling you about this before in my Eleven Things. Here is my reasoning.

1. No matter what I could ever possibly do, my hair will always be a frizzy mess. I could just let it air dry, or I could spend an hour trying to make it look nice. It doesn't matter.

2. I am usually making a weird face.

So bare with me people, as I try to conquer an irrational fear.

Shirt: Blonde Peacock / Jeans: Worn / Shoes: Nine West

The Cool Club

I would be lying if I were to say that I wasn't looking forward to this moment. Or that I've felt a bit uncool up until now. I'm used to being out the outskirts. I was always the quiet kid not the cool kid. In school, sometimes I felt left out, but I would remind myself that in order to be cool I usually had to make some kind of sacrifice, and it was usually a sacrifice that wasn't worth it. But now I laugh at the cool kids because now I'm cool too! Ha! So there!

via

What the heck am I talking about? It's called Instagram. I love photography, but because I have an Android phone, I couldn't enjoy the super awesometastic benefits of Instagram. But worry no more. As of yesterday I have joined forces with all that are awesome when they introduced the app for Android. So if you're an Instagram lover, hop on and follow me @heidishenk (same as my twitter account for those of you that follow me there!). I promise my phone photo capabilities won't let you down! ;)

Gary Clark, Jr.

If you haven't heard of Gary Clark, Jr. yet, you've been missing out. I was first exposed to Gary Clark, Jr. when we went to the third Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2010. He's even more recently been making a name for himself and by all accounts has to be bringing back the blues for younger generations. Hailing from Austin, Texas, his guitar style is raw and crunchy and his voice is soulful. He offers something new and fresh for the music scene while still sticking to blues roots hints of the likes of even Jimi Hendrix or Robert Johnson. Think I'm talking this guy up too much? Decide for yourself after taking a listen. I'll leave you with two videos today which were my first glimpse of Gary Clark, Jr. at Crossroads.

Stay-cation

Last year at this time, I was in sunny Florida, enjoying the beach after a near miss with a tornado, and sipping on a pina colada on the balcony of the condo we had rented.

Unfortunately, this year has not worked out to be the same. It is Spring Break yet again, and I am in my house in Baltimore. Andrew has a deadline on Friday at work and will most likely be working long nights this week to get the blueprints done. Sadly, I probably won't even be able to spend some relaxing time with him in the evenings.

So now I'm back at square one. What do I do to make this still feel like Spring Break despite being on my own for the entirety of the week? I'll most certainly be thinking of a few things to do to pass the time and make this feel like an official vacation.

What would you do if you had an entire week off with no agenda, and you weren't traveling anywhere? I'm curious to know what you would do. I have a few ideas in mind so I'll be sharing my stay-cation with you as the week goes by.

Santa Fe Black Bean Salad

For those of you that missed me the last few days, I am officially back! I took a quick trip up to New Jersey and New York City to visit a friend and attend a bridal shower of another friend. I had promised that later last week I would share the recipe to my black bean salad that so many of you requested. Obviously, I failed tremendously at getting it posted later that week. A busy week leading up to Spring Break plus our quick trip all led to me having no time. So what better way to get back to my blog than to finally share this recipe you've all been waiting for. And I can also now officially say that I'm on Spring Break for the entire week! Woohoo!

Santa Fe Black Bean Salad

2 15 ounce cans of back beans, drained
2 cups whole kernel corn
1 small onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp chopped cilantro
1 tsp salt
1 avocado, diced
1 tomato, diced

Combine and toss ingredients, adding avocado and tomato right before serving. Serve with tortilla chips.

This is one of the most simple, yet flavorful recipes that I've made. I absolutely love making this when we have barbeques or backyard parties in the summer. It is perfect for a quick snack as well. The flavors really set in even more so by the second day, so I often quickly make it the night before I plan on eating it.

Year of the House - Half Bath Update, Part 2

By now we should be done with our half bath, right? Wrong. Seems there was a little measurement issue that I may or may not have warned Andrew about. And that measurement issue may or may not have turned out to be as I had suspected. Thus, our toilet did not fit back into the half bath and was off by a quarter of an inch. Crap. (Did you think that pun was as funny as I did?)

There was also the small part about water leaking from the sink water hookups under our new cork floor. And the part about a fan air drying it for a 24 hour period. And so Andrew was back at square one, re-hooking up the sink, with not a minute left in the weekend to start worrying about moving the pipe for the toilet.

Now the sink is back in its place and we have been leak free for another 24 hour period of time.

Andrew is now busy fixing the piping under the toilet, so that we can finally move the toilet out of our living room and back to its proper location. First, he moved the drain collar over about 2 inches, which meant doing a little cork floor patch for the adjustment as well. This is what it looks like in the bathroom:

And this is what it looks like in the basement in our laundry room:

Yes. That is a gaping hole in the drywall that had to be opened in order to get everything back to working condition. So as I traipsed down to the basement to do some laundry the other night, I found Andrew sitting on the dryer with some PVC pipe in hand, getting some serious work done. And by serious work, I mean making a telescope out of PVC pipe.

Finally, after the fun was over, he got back to work. Lilah decided it was best if she stayed out of this mess this time around and opted to be lazy in her bed instead.

Hopefully all will be finished in the next few days so that we can finish up the rest of the original project, which was to install the horizontal wood panels. Here's to hoping that the next time I update you, the half bath is at least back in working condition with little left to be done!