Butternut squash soup recipe

I love butternut squash soup and now that the weather is starting to cool down and fall is approaching I got ambitious and decided to try to make it myself! Best part about this recipe is that it's fast, simple, and super delicious! Can't go wrong!

Soup: 

1 1/2 tbsp butter

3 1/2 cubed and peeled butternut squash

3/4 cups chopped carrots

1/2 cup chopped onion

2 1/2 cups chicken broth

1/4 cup half-&-half cream

1/8 salt (or to taste)

Garlic Cheese Bun on the side (Optional)

Bun of choice sliced in half

1 tbsp margarine

2 heads of garlic crushed

shredded cheese (amount optional. its cheese, duh!!)

Directions:

1) Place butter in pot and put squash, carrots, and onions in and sauté until slightly softened on med-high heat.

2) Pour in chicken base and bring to a boil and cover for approximately 10-15 minutes on lower heat. Check often to make sure veggies are not too soft, you don't want them to be too mushy.

3) Move from heat and pour in half-&-half cream and salt, stir.

4) Place mix into blender and blend until you have the consistency of your preference. I liked mine to be somewhat thicker.

5) Add salt and course ground pepper to taste (optional)

6) Add sour cream as garnish, it adds extra deliciousness to the mix!

7) For the garlic cheese bun as a side dish mix butter with crushed garlic and brush on buns, place shredded cheese over and broil for 5 minutes (or until cheese is melted)

8) Voila! Enjoy :)

I hope you guys like this recipe as much as I did. Like I mentioned it was very simple and quick to make and total comfort food! Try it out! 

Wall shelves

Just put up some cute Ikea wall shelves today on my "feature wall" (Ikea, go figure!) Was kind of sad to make holes on my beautifully new painted stripes but it turned out great!

I will also post a picture after I figure out what to put up on them...I got some ideas in mind!

Patio idea

The next thing on my list is to tackle my patio. I didn't think a little studio apartment would require so much work!!

I have some really cool ideas for my patio, stick around to see the before and after pics! It's a really long and narrow patio but it's got some potential!

Here's a picture I found on Pinterest as inspiration, love this idea and my patio is the same width...

Build a table with left over countertop

So I only need about 12 inch wide of a countertop and I'm thinking of building a cool table for my patio with the remainder material. Ill definitely blog about it and tmake pictures of the progress!

I think that'll be such a cool idea, especially if I decide to get the butcher block countertop! 😍😍

What to do with an extra mirror?

I had a nice IKEA mirror laying around that I couldn't figure out where I wanted to put, and my black coffee table that I wanted to get rid of... so I thought I would try putting my mirror on my coffee table to give it a cool effect and look like I have more space (which is what you have to keep trying to do in a studio apartment!) It definitely changed the whole look, which is what I was going for.

So if you have some mirrors kicking around, don't toss them because you could always put them to some cool use!

LED tv stand gives cool vibe..

I was going through my closet organizing and found nice IKEA LED lights I had no use for anymore. I thought it would be cool to put it in my Ikea bookshelf that I used as a tv stand to give off a cool ambient lighting effect when I sat in my room in the dark.

I went to home depot and bought a pack of little velcro attachments and used them so I could easily remove the lights whenever I wanted without ruining them or my bookshelf. Super easy and it turned  out really fun. Made the room really relaxing.

Make a room feel more spacious and inviting

After staring at my plain light grey wall in my little "shoebox" apartment, I thought what could make a room appear wider without spending tons of money on huge mirrors every where. Then I thought stripes! Horizontal stripes always make things looks and feel wider. What better way than to use the dark grey paint that I have been using to accent the rest of my apartment and kitchen with to make a cool feature wall!

Thankfully my boyfriend has every single tool you can possibly ask for, so when I randomly asked him if he had a laser that levels and gives you perfectly straight lines... of course he said yes.

So we measured out the height of the wall which worked out to be around 91 inches.
Then take 91 and divide that by 7 (because that's how many stripes I wanted).
So that means each stripe will be 13 inches.
So I used a ladder and placed the laser on each step with the help of stacking lots of books and DVDs to measure up to each 13 inch mark I had placed on my wall with Frog tape.
Make sure you already have your base color painted on the whole wall first (if that wasn't obvious already!)
Then I used the laser beam and used the Frog tape to make straight lines across the wall to make the 7 stripes, now the important thing is to make sure you are putting the tape along the base color and not on the side you are painting the stripes on (if that makes sense).

Now after I placed two coats, I gave the paint about 40 ish minutes to dry to peal off the tape (away from the paint) gently. I did not want to wait until the paint was fully dry to avoid ripping and pealing off my beautiful new stripes! And voila! I got crisp, beautiful dark grey stripes on my wall. It made me love the room so much, I honestly could not stop staring at it for hours. It made the room feel so cozy and inviting and I just love sitting in this room. It made it feel bigger and more spacious.

Hope you guys love it as much as I do!!

Before...

After!!