Wardrobe Wednesday: Thrifted or Grifted + Pleated Poppy Winner + the September Giveaway!

Oh boy, today’s packed with goodies!

First up on the docket, I know all of you are practically drooling on your keyboards in anticipation of finding out who won last week’s fabulous $25 credit to The Pleated Poppy shop.

Since I don’t want you to be ruining your keyboards or anything, I’ll tell you that the winner is…#76 (chosen by random.org), Ashley Dubose who said, "I really want a cute sunnies case!” Well, shoot me a quick email using the button on the sidebar, and we will get you a sunnies case, girl! : )

Next up: Thrifted or Grifted. If you missed last week’s inaugural round of T or G, here’s a recap of the concept:

I post two similar outfits—

…one 100% Thrifted: (adj.): previously loved and therefore ridiculously cheap…aka Secondhand.

…and the other 100% Grifted: (adj.): swindled or cheated…aka Retail.

(Disclaimer: No, I don’t actually think that you’re getting ripped off every time you pay retail, but I do believe that if you can’t tell the difference, you shouldn’t have to pay for it).

Last week, the majority guessed wrong. So, let’s see how you fare this time around!

To spice things up, I’m asking you to leave me a comment telling me why you voted the way you did (you don’t have to, though; if all you want to do is click, I’m good with that). Feel free to be creative, silly, outlandish, funny, or dry-as-a-bone.

I will choose my favorite explanation (a completely subjective, 100% NON-random choice : )) and award that person 5 automatic entries into The September Giveaway (the first of a new monthly giveaway series I’m starting), which will include five fabulous items to start your fall season off on the right foot—one of which will be this 13 piece ULTA cosmetic bag filled with all the fun loot you see below in your choice of 1 of 2 color options (this one, which is warm, and its cool-toned equivalent):

If the person I choose has also shared about today’s Thrifted or Grifted post in any way (blog, fb, twitter, etc.), she’ll receive an extra entry for every action she takes (just include that info in the comment explaining your vote).

Make sense? Leave me a comment telling me why you voted the way you did and if/how you shared today’s post, and I will choose one lucky commenter who will receive 5 automatic entries—+1 for every sharing action—into The September Giveaway which starts tomorrow (because tomorrow is Sept. 1st! Holy Moly!).

The best part is that this lucky duck can also enter through all of the usual channels once the giveaway opens, thus giving her a bucketful of chances to win some pretty awesome stuff!

Speaking of which, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out the specifics of the awesomeness when I reveal the other 4 items (besides the ULTA bag) on 5 Things Thursday.

If I’ve confused the tar out of you with all of this commenting talk…leave me a comment about that too! : ) I’ll do my best to clear it up for you.

And now for the pictures:

Exhibit A

So, whaddya think? Am I the thrifted one?

Please don’t let the fact that there are four photos in this as opposed to three in the other affect your vote. I just wanted to show you a close-up of the gorgeous bracelet my sweet hubby bought me as a wedding present. (I’m wearing it in both photos, which kind of makes it the Switzerland of jewelry, doesn’t it?)

Exhibit B

Or is this chick the cheap-o this time around?

Which outfit is 100% thrifted?


Happy guessing and commenting! I'll reveal the answer tomorrow! 42 comments
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Try-it Tuesday: Easy Pesto Chicken Pasta + another guest-post!

I think I was still a little out-of-it from all of my exercising/stomach-bugging yesterday because I completely forgot to mention that on Monday, I guest-posted for Rachelle of Fingerprints on the Fridge—a more detailed version of my Goodwill Hunting tips that I posted for Lindsey last week at The Pleated Poppy. Make sure you stop by and pay Rachelle a visit!

For today’s Try-it Tuesday, I thought I’d share an original recipe that combines some of my favorite ingredients: chicken, pasta, tomatoes, purple onions, feta cheese, and pesto. As Sid the Sloth would say: “Yum-mo!”

We don’t eat out very often (although lately, we seem to be on a much more prolific restaurant streak than usual), but when we do, my husband and I both prefer locally owned, unique restaurants over chains.  The closest town of any significant size has an abundance of restaurants, but most are chains, so we have quickly narrowed down our favorites for specific types of food/times of day. 

For lunch, we love a French/American restaurant called Currents. It’s a bit pricey and refined for our chicken-obsessed taste-buds at night, but their classy lunchtime fare is just right for us and fairly reasonably-priced as well. 

They have a dish called Mediterranean Pasta that I love the simplicity of so much that I decided to clone it. 

Over the past several years, I’ve added my own twists, but it still remains a favorite around our house.

And the best part? It’s super-easy and quick to make, but you could still serve it as the main course for a dinner party because it seems much fancier than it actually is.

Yummy and schmancy with minimal effort? Sign me up.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

• 2-3 large chicken breasts. You can sauté yours while you cook your other ingredients, but one huge time-saving technique is to pre-cook/season your chicken and then just cut it up and warm it through with the rest of your dish (if you’re not sure how to pre-cook chicken, check out my bestie Mandy’s quick and easy tutorial for making/freezing batch chicken).
• Jar of pesto sauce.  I get mine at Sam’s because it’s cheaper than elsewhere, and we use it in a lot of meals.
• Salt (to taste).
• Dried basil (to taste, but I’d start with 1 TBSP).
• 1 lb. angel hair pasta.
• Feta cheese (again, I buy mine in bulk at Sam’s and freeze the containers I’m not using until I need them; I buy the fat-free version, and, while it’s drier, it still tastes great and is much lower in calories than the full-fat version).
• Purple onions (those are two mediums, and I used 1 1/2 of them).
• Tomatoes (I prefer Romas for this dish, but these were what I had on hand). I used all three because their juice makes up the majority of your “sauce.”
• Olive oil (I never can fit my ginormous Sam’s bottle in the picture).

1. Peel/halve your onions, then cut them length-wise into short, thin strips, like so:

2. Chop your tomatoes into approximately 1” chunks. Uniformity/consistency of size doesn’t matter too much.

3.  Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a large skillet and add your onions. Sauté for about 3 minutes before adding the tomato chunks, salt (at least 1 tsp to start), and basil (this picture should give you an idea of how much basil I put—a very healthy coating):

4.  Allow your sauce to bubble on low-medium heat while you cut up your chicken (this is assuming that you have precooked/seasoned your chicken—I used Lawry’s Perfect Blend Seasoning and Rub for Chicken and Poultry…also from Sam’s). First, halve the breast…

…then slice it thinly with the grain of the chicken.

5. After your vegetable mixture has simmered for at least 5 minutes, prepare the angel hair pasta according to the package directions.

6. While your pasta is boiling, add the sliced chicken to your veggies, and mix everything together well.

7. When your pasta is ready, add 3/4 of it directly to the skillet and set aside the rest (you may need more of it). Now add 1/2 cup of Pesto sauce to your skillet.

8. Now comes the feta…1/2 cup of that as well. 

9. Mix everything together well, and do a taste-test to see if you need to add more salt, basil, or even black pepper (I didn’t include it in the ingredients because I’m not a big fan, but fresh-ground pepper would be a nice addition). This is also when you’ll determine if you need to add more pasta.  This dish is not “saucy” (meaning the liquid, not the hands-on-the-hips, variety), so you really only need a coating of pesto/tomato juices. There will not be excess in the bottom of the pan.  If you prefer more liquid, add more pesto sauce or even olive oil (your dish will not be nearly as healthy if you do, mind you!)

10. Plop it on a plate, and, if you’re a feta-freak like I am, sprinkle some more on top. Now, chow down!

If you’ve precooked your chicken, you can get this entire dish on the table in under 20 minutes if you really hustle.  The ingredient amounts I gave you will yield between 6 and 8 hefty portions (because different people have different definitions of “hefty” : )) and the cooked pasta keeps well in the refrigerator for about a week.

*Sorry about the not-so-great nighttime pics, but we took these as I made this dish at 10 P.M. the night before I left for my Les Mills exercise weekend so my hubby would have something to eat while I was gone.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow and vote for Round Two of Thrifted or Grifted! I’ll even have a super-fun perk (think ULTA) for the best/sassiest comment explaining the reason behind your vote, so get your smart-aleck engine revved up!

Oh, and today is the last day to enter The Pleated Poppy giveaway, so if you haven’t already, get after it!

See you tomorrow!

 

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Move-it Monday: Les Mills Q + bugs

Well, it was touch and go for a while there, but I survived my big weekend of exercising!

Why touch and go, you ask? I mean, isn’t this kind of your thing, Abbie?

Yes. It is, although more than two classes a day on a regular basis is definitely not the norm.

But there is a difference between exercising your heart out and loving it, even through the soreness, and exercising your heart out and loving it while you’re chucking your cookies.

That’s right, folks. By the end of Saturday, the niggling nausea that had started around the end of lunch had turned into full-fledged upchucking. Oh the joy.  Still, it turned out all right in the end, and I’ve spent most of my Monday taking recovery naps, so a girl can’t really complain.

Before I show you any pictures, let me briefly explain what this whole shabang was about. I teach Les Mills classes, which simply means that I have certifications through the Les Mills family of group-fitness classes to teach Body Pump (strength-training) and Body Combat (mixed martial arts/kick-boxing). Every three months, I get a video in the mail with new choreography and music that I then proceed to memorize and then present to my members. After we’ve done the new stuff for several classes, I reintegrate older “releases” (routines) so that they don’t get bored with the same music/moves.

Well, this last weekend was kind of the mother of all fitness conventions if you’re a Les Mills instructor. Why? Because the people who teach us our moves for our various programs hail from New Zealand, but at this particular quarterly, they had come all the way to the Big D so we could take classes with them in person, and, if you were lucky enough to stalk see one in the hall or be one of the first ones in line at photo-ops, take pictures with them. 

95% of the world wouldn’t have a clue or care who they were, but to us Les Mills’ fanatics, it was kind of like going to a U2 concert and getting your picture taken with Bono.

Make sense?

Hope so, but either way, here are the (MANY!) pics:

Here are Mandy and I, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (I think we’d had a whopping 8 hours of sleep between us) right before the first class of the day (it’s actually already in progress behind us) at 8 A.M. Nothing like driving to Dallas to exercise with your bestie in the dark of the morning. I’m not sure what I’m doing as I seem to be lunging toward the camera. Ready to get moving, I guess.

This is a small portion of the team that we trained with when we got certified in San Antonio for Body Combat. It was fun to reunite over a year later! Note to self: Try not to pose directly next to the tannest person on the planet when you are the whitest.

Getting excited for the first Body Combat class on Saturday. We were prepared to fight for a spot at the front.

Of course, here are all the other locos ready to do the same thing.  This is just for one class, mind you. And it wasn’t even starting for another 15 minutes. We’re nuts!

I literally grabbed Mandy’s hand, and we sprinted to the front as soon as the doors opened. We would have gotten second row spots, but a rather snotty girl informed us, “Um…this is where the second row is, and you’re not in it.” Ooookay. Third row’s good too (it didn’t matter in the end; by halfway through the class, we had worked ourselves front and center : )).

Mandy’s ready…

…and apparently, so am I.

This is our first glimpse of Rachel Cohen (aka Rach), the female half of the married couple program directors of Body Combat. I don’t usually use terms like “girl crush,” but I might make an exception for her.

That’s her husband, Dan, on the left of her, and he’s equally cool. They’re both from the UK and have these awesome accents that up their radness factors considerably.

Not a very interesting photo, but you have to understand that every time I ran up to the front to grab my camera, I risked losing my spot and getting booted all the way to the back. These people were serious. At one point, Dan made a joke about how fanatical we all are and how if you touched somebody’s elbow during the push-up track, you got growled at.  He wasn’t even kidding!

Not an attractive picture, I realize, but I had to steal this from Jen’s (fellow instructor) facebook page. Her caption?: “Abbie jacked up her mani fighting for her place in combat!!!!! LOL.” : ) You can check out the before of my nails from 5 Things Thursday.

A sea of Combatters crunching it out.

There were something like 20 of the best of Combat instructors from around the nation + Dan and Rach presenting for us. As you might able to tell from the size of the room and all the lights, smoke, etc., it was quite the show.

Our cheesy posed photo-op with Dan and Rach, with my white legs representing yet again. Cheesy or not, it was fun! I’m pretty sure I told Rach I loved her when we got up there.  She told Mandy that she reminded her of the red-haired vampire villainess from Twilight. Never having seen the movie or read the books, I had to do an imdb search when I got home, and I came up with this:

Curly red hair..fair skin.  Yeah, I can see it.

Of course, then, some guy came up to me and said, “Has anyone every told you you like Kat Von D but without the tattoos?” I had to struggle to think if I knew who Kat Von D was or what she looked like. 

Here’s what I found when I did a search:

Whaaaaa? Really, dude? I mean, really? Please, please, please say you disagree. I mean, she’s not unattractive in a punkish/skunkish kind of way, but I’m pretty sure the resemblance is less than zilch.

Most of the Les Mills team from our gym + some of our most hardcore participants (apparently, I’m reeeeally excited to have missed the all-black memo. Guh!).

I know this is the world’s fakest-looking pouty-face, but I really feel terrible in this pic, and I’m feeling sorry for myself that I’m having to miss out on the second round of Combat (I made it through 4 tracks before starting to shake and feel nauseated…again) on Sunday after coming down with the bug on Saturday (of course I tried it, are you kidding? : ))

I took a nap on the bathroom couch and woke up feeling better but still pretty cruddy and didn’t think I would be able to do Body Pump.  But after another sprint to the front (quit shaking your head at me...crazy is the new sane), apparently, I got just the burst of adrenaline I needed and felt almost normal through the entire class.

I made it to abs!

Happy we’re done! This was considerably fewer people than on Saturday, but it was still a pretty full house.

After being unable to eat almost anything all weekend long, a blended coke float was the only thing that sounded appetizing on the drive home. Unfortunately, that expression on my face = my opinion of the drink.  Blended coke floats are not supposed to slosh, folks. Oh well. I drank it, and it stayed down, so it’s all good.

And that’s it! Although, the fun just keeps on coming since I’m about to go teach another Combat class!

Hope you enjoyed the picture tour of my crazy workout weekend.

I have something yummy all ready to show you tomorrow for Try-it Tuesday.

P.S. For the super-observant, you might be wondering why my post title references “bugS” plural. Obviously, one was the stomach bug. But the other was maybe the largest roach I’ve ever seen…in our hotel room. I’m not going to name the chain or anything, though, because the room was ridiculously neat and sparkly clean (seriously, we were commenting on how crazy clean it was as soon as we got in the door and checked everything out), so I’m just going to chalk it up to an overzealous critter who really liked air-conditioning. Let’s just say it didn’t do a thing to help with the nausea.

P.P.S. Thanks for all your prayers. Adelaide did really well…no crying jags or refusing to eat or sleep. Praise Jesus!

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Feature Friday: Entryway Reveal + Guest post for House of Hepworths

Okay, so in case you haven’t noticed, this has been the week of the guest post around here at 5D5W. Not that I’m complaining, mind you!

This afternoon, I’ll be guest-posting at Allison’s:

Allison’s site is awesome for quite a few reasons, not the least of which is that she likes creating thrifty DIY projects like I (and so many of the rest of you) do. Throw in the fact that she hosts one heckuva link-up party (crafts, projects, food…you name it) every Thursday AND she’s a seriously funny lady, and you’ve got one fantastic blog. I am so honored to get to introduce myself to her readers. Hop on over and check out my post, but make sure you stay a while and have a look around. Lots of eye-candy, great ideas, AND a huge Dremel Multimax giveaway in progress (which reminds me…I haven’t entered yet!).

In other exciting news, Roeshel of The DIY Show-off is featuring a few of my projects after already making a big deal of my closet makeover a few weeks back. I am seriously feeling the love today! Stop by and check out the awesome DIY projects that she creates and highlights on her helpful blog! (She also hosts quite the link-up on Mondays in case you’ve got something you’d like to show off!)

And now for that little reveal I promised yesterday when I also unveiled the results of the Thrifted or Grifted poll (if you haven’t seen it yet, you might be surprised).

Today, I’m showing you the first thing you would encounter if you came over to my house for a visit. Since most of you can’t actually do that, just imagine knocking on my front door and my opening it to greet you with a smile, releasing the mouth-watering aroma of fresh-baked banana bread as I do so.

Now, imagine my looking a bit frazzled and holding a pair of mismatched socks, the rest of which are strewn about the living room floor, and you’ll be much closer to reality. I am making banana bread tomorrow morning, but only because I let the bananas get too mushy and will have to chunk them otherwise (please, please, please never assume that, because the pictures I am showing you are pretty/neat, that the rest of my house/life looks anything like that because, 95% of the time, it doesn’t).

But I digress.

And before I get the urge to hop off on another tangent, let me show you some pictures of my entryway (nothing like visual aids to keep me focused);

The wall color is Sherwin Williams Quietude (which I used the leftovers of to paint my French doors). I bought the hall tree at the local barn sale I also mentioned here and here (I find the best stuff there!) for less than $100.

The vintage phone booth was bought from another local spot (I think I talked him down to $15), and I used a sample-sized can of that pretty turquoise (whose name I do not remember) to spruce it up (definitely one of those don’t-look-too-closely pieces which took a boatload of paint-scraping to make look half-way decent…I was just a sucker for the lines). That phone you see there was a $7 Goodwill find and would be so much more practical if it were actually hooked up (we were assured it worked). 18 months isn’t a long time to have something just sitting around uselessly, is it? (Please say no). I painted the cream-colored section and used the last few dabs of the same turquoise that is on the phone booth to highlight the scroll-detail.

I bought the tin doorknob hangers as a set from JcPenney on a major sale (Maybe $30 for all 5) after stalking them for a while online. The clock is a church garage sale find (complete with the original tags from World Market) for $2.

The big urn was a $10 purchase from a curio shop in my hometown, and the hydrangeas were 90% off at Michael’s.

I would love to say that I took all of those pictures and that they mean something specific to me, but the truth is that I bought them from a stand at an open-air market in Sydney, Australia (someday I’ll post about it), and, although the lady who ran the stand did take them in various locations throughout Australia, I have no idea about any specifics or significance. They are special to me, though, because they remind me of the mind-blowingly amazing trip that my husband and I got to take (while our respective parents took turns watching our two boys…Della wasn’t in the picture yet) over New Year’s 2010.

The boys were taking turns “helping” me press the button for the pictures. Of course, then Simon decided the shot would look so much better with him in it and popped up out of nowhere for a cameo. Hey there, Doodle-bug.

He’s pretty cute, but I figured I’d leave you with one last uninterrupted entryway shot. Hope you enjoyed this little come-on-in tour, and I wish that I really could have you all over for banana bread tomorrow because a) I like you and b) we’ve got lots of mushy bananas around these parts!

As I mentioned yesterday, I will be spending my weekend exercising my fanny off with my fellow Les Mills-junkie instructors. 2 whole days of nothing but sweat and adrenaline. I know that sounds like medieval torture to some of you, but I’m crazy excited.

If you think of it, though, would you say a prayer for this little girl?

Notice the maniacal, “I’m on the stairs, and I have Mama’s shoes” gleam in her eyes.

She’s never been away from me for more than 6 hours, and she’s a ridiculously huge Mama’s girl. This could be tough on her and her sweet daddy (oh, okay, and me too). I’m kind of nervous.

I’ll be back for Move-it Monday with loads of fun (sweaty) pictures to show you. Just be glad there’s no such thing as scratch-and-sniff blogs.

P.S. If you haven’t already, get yourself on over to that cute little giveaway button on the sidebar, and win yourself $25 to The Pleated Poppy!

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