Quick & Easy Shrimp Salad

We've been trying to eat healthier around here lately in hopes of losing some weight without compromising what we eat. This hasn't been very easy! So tonight I decided to combine my 3 favorite items into a bowl and made a shrimp salad! Takes no time at all and tastes amazing! I didn't take any pictures of the diced tomatoes, avocado or shrimp but I did take an iPhone pic of the final product (before I devoured it).

Note- I realize that I do not add any actual measurements to my recipes, but that's because I really don't take or remember measurements. Make enough to make yourself happy!!!

Ingredients:
Avocado (diced)
Tomato (diced)
Shrimp (I used regular shrimp, grilled it and let it cool, but you can use salad shrimp, obviously you'll need to cook it)
Lime Juice
Salt
Pepper
You can add onion for an extra kick, but I'm deathly afraid of raw onions so I didn't add any to ours.

Mix the diced tomato, diced avocado and shrimp together, salt & pepper to taste an add a few splashes of like juice (keep tasting to see if you need to add more seasoning). And that's it!!

Bon Appetit!

Mini's Mini Room Makeover

My daughter is a girl after my own heart! She loves to dance, loves to cook, shopping is her hobby, dancing is her passion and she is heavily into design. We are practically twins! Anyway, every year or so she asks for a room "update". This normally means new paint, new bedding and every now and then she'll want new furniture. Since buying new furniture wasn't an option (she doesn't need new furniture), we decided to give her existing furniture a little update.

As you can see from the image, she had a pretty standard bed, a wooden frame, box spring and mattress. Her bedding was something she picked out at Target a few years ago. She was happy with her soft pink walls, but is now thinking she wants it fuchsia (talking her out of it). So we set forth to get some new bedding and to make her a new head board as phase one of the upgrade.

Since she is a PB Teen shopper these days, she had a whole room designed for me to order (nice life huh?). Unfortunately, everything she wanted was on back order! So, I found a great striped duvet they had available and some fun sheets to compliment them and keep it youthful. Sadly, I'm still waiting for the striped shams to come in.

Originally I wanted to make a tufted headboard, but realizing that she would be making another change in a year, I decided not to put too much work into the headboard for our first try.

For the headboard, we took a trip to home depot and purchased 1/2" plywood (the size depends on your bed and how large you want it), then to Joann Fabrics for 2" thick foam, polyester batting to cover the entire piece, white fabric and spray adhesive.

First step was to adhere the foam to the plywood. Then we used my air compressor and staple gun to adhere the batting to the plywood and secure the foam in place. Last step was to use the staple gun again to attach the fabric to the entire thing, and voila!

 

Here's a close-up: 

Mini was pleased with the turnout. Next step is to rearrange the room for the millionth time, hang all her accessories to the walls and I think we'll finally be done! For now.

New Year, New Possibilities!

Happy New Year! I meant to come up with a New Year post that just said Happy New Year, but after I made one for my business blog, I got distracted with the festivities and totally forgot, so HAPPY New Year!

We are really excited about the new year in the Snyder house and all the possibilities it brings. Already today, I booked a new 2012 client for my wedding planning business, made Mini a headboard (post to follow) and the house is still clean from top to bottom (we cleaned before the New Year cause of an old wives tale). I also made 2 dinners for this week, and Mike and I made sure to eat some pork (another old wives tale about the New Year). Additionally, I've already written 5 blog posts for this week and have decided to spend more time blogging for both my blogs. I don't know if anyone is reading them, but, I will write anyway, maybe someone cares.

Now, onto last year. Last year was a year of many different challenges and tons of highs and lows. For those that know me personally, they know that I made a MAJOR life decision early last year, and I haven't had any regrets since. I traveled to London, Ireland and Germany with Mini for some personal time and to plan a wedding (promise to blog about that sometime soon). Mini started middle school and has had a FANTASTIC year so far! My bff (shall remain nameless) became pregnant, we find out this week what she is having (I know this isn't my personal "triumph", but she's my bff and I happy for her). I planned a lot of great events, was published in a few publications and blogs (you can read about them on my business blog) and capped off the year by decorating a celebrity home for the holidays (I decorated for LaLa and Carmelo Anthony - thanks Mindy for referring me), which is one of my biggest passions (interior decorating), so it was exciting for me. All in all, we had a great year in our house. We had some lows as well, but why discuss them, they are the past, and we don't need to bring them up.

I am excited about 2012 for SO many reasons, but mostly because I feel it in my bones that this will be a good year for us! Not to say we've had a lot of bad years, because we have our health and we have each other, so I'm not complaining. But 2012 will be great. I am going to work on pursuing my interior decorating passion a bit more (in my spare time), and I am REALLY going to work on sharing it all with you. I have a lot of home projects that I am doing my best to capture on camera (regular and sometimes iPhone), we have TONS of recipes to post, Mini will REALLY start blogging and we are going to share a bit more of our personal lives with you. We hope you enjoy and stick around for the ride. With that, I have to work on tweeking our blog post for tomorrow and get Mini ready for bed. So good night, and I really hope that you have a WONDERFUL New Year. I hope today was just a glimpse of the year for you, if it was spent relaxing, I hope you relax all year. If it was spent eating, I hope you eat all year. If it was spent with family, laughing and having good times, I hope you have those good times ALL YEAR!

2012 will be OUR best year yet!