May, 2012 | Little Bits of...

Mushroom Beef and Broccoli

May 31, 2012 By Kelsey 2 Comments

So I think it is about time I tell you about my view on food. I love it. I love pizza, I love candy, and I love beer. But in my everlasting journey to be supermodel skinny, I have found that I can’t eat those things as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Being an athlete most of my life I haven’t really had to eat incredibly healthy, and could maintain a normal (ish) size. But it has been a year since I have played a sport and have tried a few methods to keep in shape. My mom and I did P90X in the fall of 2011, and it was great! We both lost about 10 pounds and felt great, but then the holidays came around and we thought it was time to reward ourselves with 5 pounds of sugar cookies, lemon curd, and Chardonnay.

BUT, the new year brought on more healthy eating and dance cardio DVDs, which has helped maintaining weight, but hasn’t shed any extra poundage. So a week and a half ago, on May 20th, my sister thought it would be a good idea to embark on a biggest loser challenge against my mom, my boyfriend, and myself. IT IS ON! We will be doing it for 6 weeks, and final weigh in is July2nd, just in time for the hot dog holiday! So between the devilish treats I display here, I will share my healthy dinners and journey to become that girl you scowl at on the beach.

Cut to – beef tips. This recipe was actually found by my mom on a website full of healthy weight watchers recipes.

She pinned it. It got 96 repins. I have pin envy. Pinvy? Totally.

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Filed Under: dinner, Recipes

Pop of Color Sweater & Shoe

May 30, 2012 By Kelsey 1 Comment

By: Lindsey

As a lover of all things fashion and believer in all things Kelsey McGinley, I decided to succumb to her invite into the addictive world that is Pinterest. As those of you who have an account know (all too well), it isn’t until hours pass and your knee-deep in tab after tab of random websites each pin you took a ‘liking’ to led you, that you realize “am I actually going to buy any of this sh*t?!” Well, I am proud to say that I have purchased my very first Pinterest-inspired piece of clothing and I couldn’t be happier. I took a particular liking (that quickly turned into obsession) to a neon yellow and neutral beige pull-over sweater from Madewell (Pinterest post that got me below!) and within a couple of days I threw up my hands (and my wallet) and made the purchase.

Style tip: Buy a piece of clothing that speaks loudly, but can be worn with many different things. The must-have wardrobe staple right now is color, so buy something eye-catching (like this sweater) and don’t be afraid to pair it with another (more subtle) pop of color. Check out how I wore it with a pair of rolled up skinnies and bright blue flats. I also wore it over a fuchsia dress with neutral heels and bag to Mother’s Day dinner and it was a hit!

FYI: I will be contributing to Little Bits Of… weekly, but my own website is COMING SOON, so stay tuned and get excited.

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Filed Under: Fashion

Key Lime Pie

May 29, 2012 By Kelsey 1 Comment

Oh Tuesdays. I haven’t quite figured out if I like you yet. I feel like my attitude towards certain days of the week changes frequently depending on how cute my outfit is that day, or what I had for lunch. This is probably the reason my friend/co-worker, Lindsey, and I like to try to be as fashionable as we can throughout the week. Wearing a cute outfit can lift your mood like nothing else. I cannot wait for you to hear all about our wonderful office wardrobes from Lindsey herself, who will be the fashion expert here at Little Bits of.

You want to know another thing that can lift your mood?

PIE!

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Filed Under: pies, Recipes, Uncategorized

Pallet Headboard

May 28, 2012 By Kelsey 41 Comments

As spring has sprung and summer is approaching, the sun and warm weather make me a very happy girl. Not to mention that tomorrow is a very special anniversary for me and a boy I really like! Isn’t love a wonderful thing? I adore love stories and hearing about how people get together. Want to hear one? No, not about me, but about my sister. My dad tells this story to random women in the paint department of Home Depot, so I might as well share it with the world.

I have two older sisters and they are both THE BOMB. Like really awesome people.

Moving on. One of my sisters met a boy at a wedding last summer in Colorado, where she was living at the time. They met, danced, and had a great night together. But he lived in Montana. So for the next few months they talked on the phone and the next thing you know they were spending Thanksgiving with his family and Christmas with our family. We met him, and we loved him! A few months later she moved to Montana!

So, like any good family, my mom and I jumped on a plane and headed up to the big sky country to help her decorate her room. For the whole month before, we were dedicated to pinning ideas for her room, and insisted that my mom, sisters and I to make a special board for the occasion. We decided the focal point of the room would be a pallet headboard!

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Filed Under: DIY

Healthy Chicken Marsala

May 25, 2012 By Kelsey Leave a Comment

I have a pretty basic routine down these days.

Wake up

get ready

go to work

talk with Lindsey about wanting to live with our boyfriends

have everyone else in the office tell us to wait till we are 30

either go home or to the gym (ha)

make dinner or dessert (or both)

watch TV with my fam

go to bed

It is a pretty great routine, but sometimes it can get a bit monotonous. But luckily some genius invented a little something called “Happy Hour”. Don’t know if you have heard of it, but it is pretty great.

Ha! The little things in life, I tell ya…

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Filed Under: dinner, Recipes

Justin Bieber Cake

May 25, 2012 By Kelsey 4 Comments

Fun Fact about me: I love where I work. I have great co-workers and they all support my love for baking. And I’m sure only 80% of that is because I bring them delicious treats. My office is the perfect group of guniea pigs to try out new recipes on, and it helps to have somewhere to bring my treats so they don’t sit at my house slowly expanding my waistline.

They also have recently discovered that I love making elaborate fondant cakes. The one up there ^^ I made for a friend at work for her birthday. Another fun fact about me, I love the color combination of yellow, gray, and white. LOVE. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: cakes, Recipes

Rosemary Garlic Bread

May 23, 2012 By Kelsey 3 Comments

My next project I had started thinking about last week when my sister asked if I had ever made bread. I had never done so because my style of cooking and baking boils down to the fact that I want delicious food, and I want it now. NOW! The whole idea of waiting for dough to rise was never appealing to me, and knowing how to make bread could be very dangerous.DANGER DANGER! —- Warning! If you are watching your carb intake this could be a slippery slope…. but so worth it. And the wait was not a problem because I was still working on my mixer (remember how cute that was?? ^^).

Without further adieu, let me present to you: Rosemary Garlic Bread.

That’s right, it was so good I had to use italics and bold.

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Filed Under: dinner, Recipes Tagged With: bread

How to: Paint Your Kitchen Aid Mixer

May 21, 2012 By Kelsey 18 Comments

I love Saturdays. Don’t you? Saturdays with nothing planned, when you can look around your house and think, “what should I do today?” Today was just that kind of day, and I have already done 2 things I’ve wanted to do for a while. This first thing I did was paint my old Kitchen Aid mixer. This mixer is over 30 years old and works like a champ. My parents got it as a wedding present and it reminds me of my childhood. Then my mom got an awesome, huge, sturdy Viking mixer and it went into storage. I rediscovered it when I got an apartment in college and it became my mixer. Now, this mixer was cute, and I was lucky to have it, but who doesn’t want a colored mixer like Monica had in friends? Just me? Well either way I hadn’t even thought about painting it until recently, and now its all I could think about.

Therefore, an open Saturday meant I could finally paint it. AND a perk of living with the rents is that they had paint and supplies galore, so it cost me nada. My mom had recently bought some “john deer yellow” spray paint, and it was perfect.

I apologize in advance for my lack of before pictures, and a couple of steps throughout, but I was in the zone! I started out by cleaning it the best I could (30 years of baking can really build up). Then I took a hand sander to it and buffed it just so there was no shine, and took off all parts that I could.

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