Kitchen Refresh Part 4: Unexpected Kindness
I am still making headway on the kitchen. As of last night, I had FINALLY finished sanding the remaining 5 cabinet doors. That means I only have the cabinet frames on one section to sand down and then we’ll be in the home stretch! Considering that it took 35 minutes to sand this ONE SINGLE door front and back, I will be happy to be done with the down and dirty sanding phase of this project. Oh, and I wasn’t messing around. I used 40 grit sandpaper to get through a billion and one layers of paint on this door and it still took that long. Then I had to go back…
Strawberry Time
As a girl who was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, I am still flabbergasted that I can pick beautiful, sweet, ripe strawberries in mid-April in Georgia. God bless the sunshine! I’d been on “strawberry watch” for a couple of weeks waiting for my favorite Georgia farm, Washington Farms, to have ripe berries. Last Thursday I was just home from preschool drop-off and happened to check Facebook in a last ditch attempt at procrastinating on sanding the kitchen cabinets. The farm was having a pick 2, pick 1 gallon free deal that day. So, I jumped in the car and hustled over there (it’s an hour drive) to pick some…
Shine Wood Floors Without Refinishing
Carpet freaks me out. There. I said it. When I see how much dirt I sweep or vacuum up from hardwood floors on a daily basis and think about that dirt settling into a carpeted area…ugh. It grosses me out. I’ve lived with carpet – old and brand new – and I survived, but it’s not my favorite. Hardwood floors, on the other hand, are my jam. I don’t think I’ve met a wood floor that I didn’t love. Sometimes though, they can look a little sad. A little dull. Like they’ve lost their sheen and sparkle. A friend recommended a product to me to give our wood floors new…
Kitchen Refresh Part 3: Be Prepared For Anything
I didn’t make as much progress on the kitchen last week as I wanted to. Apparently real life can’t stop for labor-intensive DIY projects. Say what? Plus, the labor-intensive part of this project multiplied a little this week. Haha! Joke’s on me! If I haven’t said it before, I will say it now. (And I will use some all-caps typing to drive home my point.) When you are doing ANYTHING to an older home be prepared for ANYTHING to happen. Seriously. There are all sorts of crazy things hiding behind the walls of your home just waiting for you to open them up. Then they jump out and yell “GOTCHA.” So,…
I’m Food Trendy and I Didn’t Know It
Is anyone else a huge fan of The Pioneer Woman? *raises hand higher* Every recipe I’ve tried of hers has been fantastic. Plus, her writing is pretty entertaining. Since I grew up in the country on a ranch, I can relate to some of the antics of country life. I, however, cannot relate to the antics of famous blogger/Food Network star/author life. Eh, you win some, you lose some. On Monday I was eating my breakfast while checking out her blog when I about fell off my chair from what I read.  Do you know what her food post on Monday was about? Eating TOAST in Los Angeles. Yes, toast. I about choked…
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Coatrack from a Wine Bar
Before we had kids we spent money on things like furniture instead of nerf guns and Pokemon. It was so long ago, I barely remember. At least we purchased some long-lasting pieces that I still love like this wine bar cabinet from Pier 1. We use the piece, but not to hold wine. That goes in the wine fridge. đ The back of the cabinet had a wood ledge on hinges that you could push up to act like a real “bar” area if people wanted to sit there while you poured a drink from the other side. That never happened. The wine cabinet has always been pushed up against the wall and…
Kitchen Refresh – Part 2
I made a little bit of progress on the kitchen project this weekend. I always seem to invite friends over when I’m smack-dab in the middle of a project. “Hey! I ripped my kitchen apart! Come over for a BBQ!” Good friends don’t judge. They just bring wine. So, that meant there was more fun, but less work happening! Not really a bad thing, in my opinion! If you recall, I said we were going to try a few different methods of getting our cabinets ready to paint. We started on the bottom half of the cabinetry because I had a plan in place for that section. The plan for…
Kitchen Refresh – The Beginning
I considered calling this post “Putting Lipstick on a Pig,” but I thought that would confuse the Google search algorithm. Our kitchen needs a major gut job. What it’s going to get is a little glamour session. Is it warped that I’m slightly more excited to see how little or much we can transform a space with just elbow grease and minimal dollars spent? Probably. #noapologies So, this is the disaster I’m working with: I’ve actually seen worse. I’m sure I’ve lived with worse. At a minimum, the plan is to paint the cabinets and figure out some sort of backsplash, since there is no backsplash to speak of. I’ve already…
Banana Blackberry Muffins with Vanilla Orange Glaze
They say necessity is the mother of invention. I say two black bananas sitting on your counter mocking you is the mother of invention. Tomato, ta-mah-toh. And, really, I just adapted a recipe from good ol’ Betty Crocker, so it’s not like I’ve gone out on an extreme culinary limb here. It was a delicious limb though. So, here’s the deal with me and muffins. If I’m going to add fruit to them, then I prefer for them to be mainly fruit with some muffin dough to hold the fruit together. Anyone else with me? *crickets* I used frozen blackberries that we picked last summer, but frozen blueberries or raspberries…
Dave’s Killer Bread – Updated CopyCat Recipe
I’ve been making a copycat version of Dave’s Killer Bread at least once a week for about a year now. Holy smokes. My 20-something self would never believe I’ve become so handy in the kitchen. My 30-something self hardly believes it either! I am in no way an expert on all things related to bread making. I’m learning as I go and sharing the journey. Case in point:Â this bread incident. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to get my fix of the real Dave’s Killer Bread while visiting the Pacific Northwest. Since then, I’ve been tweaking the recipe ever so slightly to try and get it even closer…
