Technically, I've been a homeowner for the last 7ish months, since I got married and moved in with my husband. People have asked me, at various point along the way, if its felt like "my" home or "our" home, since lived there 3 years previously. I've told them it has and I meant it. Living here felt like home pretty quickly. It probably helped that I was only in my previous residence for 4 months and it wasn't long enough for it to truly feel like home. Though, I think it really has do with the fact that we spent the first month or two re-organizing all the rooms. We unpacked my things and moved some of his around. Here's the thing, I'm an organizer-I like things to be organized and to have a place. Of course, my living space doesn't always reflect a high level of organization and things don't always end up in their place....but they DO have a place to go! Regardless, organizing for me is much more about the act of doing the actual organizing than it is about keeping things organized. [Have I sufficiently confused you?] Anyways, I say to only to point out that I really have felt at home here since the beginning.
In the last few months, my home ownership has including organizing, painting the kitchen, putting a few frames up (and letting a bunch more just sit in a box waiting to be put up), and a very sad attempt at yard work.
However, I think it was last night when I experienced what it really means to be a homeowner. What is that? well, our washing machine broke...more specifically, the hot water line broke to the washing machine got a nice hole in it.
Here's what happened- We sat down after spending the evening painting our dining room to watch our latest netflix movie (Prince Caspian, in case you were wondering). P had put a load of wash in just a few minutes earlier and I realized it sounded REALLY loud. I figured he had just forgotten to close the doors and thus, it was just louder than normal (upon reflecting back, it sounded like a waterfall gushing). I went upstairs, saw the doors were closed and almost turned around to go back downstairs, figuring I must have been mistaken. Then I saw it. Water seeping onto the carpet. I turned the light on to see if that was really what i was looking at and then opened the doors a few inches to confirm that water was in fact spewing quite forcefully from the back of the washing machine somewhere. I called for Peter and he began the mad dash of trying to turn the valve off at the machine (which wouldn't turn off) and then running downstairs to turn all the water off.
So there we were, with the water off, no movie watching going to happen and a desperate attempt to clean up the water that encompassed the entire floor of the washer/dryer closet, about 2 ft in front of the closet in all directions, and a 2 ft square in front of the guest bathroom. I started pulling out towels to clean it up, and being the good wife I am, started with they older, "yucky" get dirty towels and the beach towels....and then went to the nicer, but we don't actually use them towels...and then went to every stinkin' towel and hand towel we have in the house. Finally, it was relatively cleaned up and at least not sopping wet anymore.
I sit here today, listening to a box fan that is blowing over the still damp area and am aware of the towels I wrung out earlier to day and strung over pretty much any available surface upstairs hoping to dry them out. I'm also remembering that I need to have Peter show me how to turn the water off. I can only shudder of what would have happened had he not chosen to do that load of laundry last night and I had been doing it today when i was home alone. Ack! Thank goodness for good husbands, right?
So even though I've previously painted, patched, cleaned, organized, weeded, cooked and baked, I think this is what sealed the deal. I own this place and I'm responsible for it thankfully not by myself and I have my awesome resourceful husband who already has 3 years experience of house maintenance under his belt.
September 2, 2011
August 30, 2011
Cupcakes!
When I made my cake pops, I had to buy a few decorating tips. I had not previously used decorating tips, so I really didn't know how it would go. Well, since then, I've been itching to use them again, mainly to decorate cupcakes or a cake. Well, this weekend was going to be the time! I made cupcathe cupcakes friday (with my new mini cupcake pan), bought a couple more tips at Michaels (since I had previousy been on the search for ones that would make tiny decorations for the cake pops and now I needed bigger ones), and got to work Saturday!
I wasn't sure how different it would be using homemade icing versus store bought icing, so I decided to try both. Both worked pretty well, though I had a little trouble with the homemade frosting keeping its shape or structure. I kept having to putting it in the fridge to make it workable. Whereas, the store bought was a bit easier too work with. I ended up with nice cupcakes from both though. Upon tasting, both were great! I've had multiple tasters/cupcake eaters confirm the good taste as well.
I made a batch of pink homemade frosting and then used food coloring to make the white store bought yellow. Then, disaster hit (ok, that could be some *slight* exageration). I had about 8 cupcakes left and no more frosting. I was curious to see how much frosting I would use since I had grand ideas for icing my cupcakes, and I used quite a bit ;) For the last few, I figured I would just make one more batch (or actually half batch, which is what i did before) of homemade frosting and color it blue. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, only that something did. It ended up grainy looking and not holding shape well at all-even after it spent a few minutes in the freezer. I'm guessing I either didn't get the butter soft enough before making the frosting or my husband's finger swipe of butter before I added the other ingredients messed up (he thought it was frosting and it wasn't until after he ate a fingerful of butter that he asked what it was! oops!). Anyways, I learned a lesson and it wasn't a big deal. I just have a few sad little blue cupcakes that had icing spilling all over the edges since it wouldnt hold when I tried to build the icing up.
A few pictures to make you hungry :)
I wasn't sure how different it would be using homemade icing versus store bought icing, so I decided to try both. Both worked pretty well, though I had a little trouble with the homemade frosting keeping its shape or structure. I kept having to putting it in the fridge to make it workable. Whereas, the store bought was a bit easier too work with. I ended up with nice cupcakes from both though. Upon tasting, both were great! I've had multiple tasters/cupcake eaters confirm the good taste as well.
I made a batch of pink homemade frosting and then used food coloring to make the white store bought yellow. Then, disaster hit (ok, that could be some *slight* exageration). I had about 8 cupcakes left and no more frosting. I was curious to see how much frosting I would use since I had grand ideas for icing my cupcakes, and I used quite a bit ;) For the last few, I figured I would just make one more batch (or actually half batch, which is what i did before) of homemade frosting and color it blue. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, only that something did. It ended up grainy looking and not holding shape well at all-even after it spent a few minutes in the freezer. I'm guessing I either didn't get the butter soft enough before making the frosting or my husband's finger swipe of butter before I added the other ingredients messed up (he thought it was frosting and it wasn't until after he ate a fingerful of butter that he asked what it was! oops!). Anyways, I learned a lesson and it wasn't a big deal. I just have a few sad little blue cupcakes that had icing spilling all over the edges since it wouldnt hold when I tried to build the icing up.
A few pictures to make you hungry :)
August 20, 2011
Painted Kitchen!
To be honest, we painted out kitchen a couple months ago, but that was pre-blog days and so I thought I'd share about it anyways.
When I met my husband and was at his house the first time ever, probably over 2 1/2 years ago now (long before we were dating), it was for a pumpkin carving party. We (those of us who were there) got the tour of the house. I remember noticing then the wallpaper in the kitchen and how I didn't like it.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take pre-paint pictures, but I have some in progress that let you see what the wallpaper was like. There was a border around the top of the room as well.
So here we are, 2 1/2 years later and I'm married to the guy, moved into his/our house, and could finally get rid of the wallpaper! Yay!
After looking through an entire book of paint chips and choosing 3 samples, we picked a color.
We probably finished the project sometime in May/June, but it was in early July I think that I was able to go back through and do all the touch-up work that I wanted. Unfortunately, these pictures are not that great and don't do the new paint job justice at all :( Pre-painting the kitchen also had mini aluminum blinds which neither of us really liked. We added nice new, white, faux wood blinds as well. In the 2nd picture you can also see the nice, big curtain in front of our patio door that we recently put up. It is a much needed and much liked replacement for the vertical slats that used to cover the patio door!
Here's my new kitchen!
When I met my husband and was at his house the first time ever, probably over 2 1/2 years ago now (long before we were dating), it was for a pumpkin carving party. We (those of us who were there) got the tour of the house. I remember noticing then the wallpaper in the kitchen and how I didn't like it.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take pre-paint pictures, but I have some in progress that let you see what the wallpaper was like. There was a border around the top of the room as well.
So here we are, 2 1/2 years later and I'm married to the guy, moved into his/our house, and could finally get rid of the wallpaper! Yay!
After looking through an entire book of paint chips and choosing 3 samples, we picked a color.
We probably finished the project sometime in May/June, but it was in early July I think that I was able to go back through and do all the touch-up work that I wanted. Unfortunately, these pictures are not that great and don't do the new paint job justice at all :( Pre-painting the kitchen also had mini aluminum blinds which neither of us really liked. We added nice new, white, faux wood blinds as well. In the 2nd picture you can also see the nice, big curtain in front of our patio door that we recently put up. It is a much needed and much liked replacement for the vertical slats that used to cover the patio door!
Here's my new kitchen!
July 28, 2011
Crock pot failure
Considering I shared my success with cake pops, it seems only fair to also share my failures in the kitchen as well. Particularly, ones involving my crock pot. Crock pots seem like a great idea in theory. And I'm sure, once I find a recipe that actually works, they are great. Currently though, my crock pot and I aren't exactly friends. It's failed me twice. OK, lets be real, either I failed me or my recipes have failed me. I prefer to blame it on the recipes. Other bad cooking, I can totally blame on myself-but for a crock pot? come on! Tonight, it was a roast, last time it was chicken. Both seemed like a good idea pre-cooking. And in theory, they were a good idea. However, while both were edible, they certainly weren't that appealing and definitely not the kind of dinner where its worth saving the leftovers. The idea that you can stick stuff together in a crock pot, leave it for hours and then have it ready to go is genius. However, something has gone wrong and I'd like to chat with the people who wrote or came up with both the recipes. One was from an iphone app. The other-none other than Betty crocker herself (or her cookbook actually). I really just want to ask them-Did I really manage to screw up so few ingredients? Or do you just have crazy taste buds that actually thought that was good enough to publish for others?? For the first (aka, lemon chicken failure), I'm pretty sure it was the latter suggestion. After I made it, I went back to the app and actually read the comments posted for the recipe (which I learned, I should do BEFORE I make something) and many other posters had a similar reaction that we did. too lemony. too sour. too SOMETHING
Unfortunately for tonight's dinner, I had only Betty crocker to consult and no trustworthy comments to let you know if it actually works or not...though maybe I should have been suspicious when they recommended that you also make horseradish potatoes on page something or other as a side dish. After all, who Really wants to make horseradish potatoes?
I'm not giving up on my crock pot yet, but maybe next time, I will try to stick with something that seems like a more "typical" crock-pot meal, a soup or stew or something.
Unfortunately for tonight's dinner, I had only Betty crocker to consult and no trustworthy comments to let you know if it actually works or not...though maybe I should have been suspicious when they recommended that you also make horseradish potatoes on page something or other as a side dish. After all, who Really wants to make horseradish potatoes?
I'm not giving up on my crock pot yet, but maybe next time, I will try to stick with something that seems like a more "typical" crock-pot meal, a soup or stew or something.
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