Playing catch up

Since I've fallen far behind in any way of updating this blog, and since I'm emptying many valuable (and many useless) pictures from my camera's memory card, I decided to load some of them here. This is what we've been up to since... uh, about December:

It was juuuuust dark enough so that I got to look at this beautiful courthouse every day when I left work from Thanksgiving until New Year's Day.

We got to decorate our first home for Christmas with a real tree, cranberry garland, plenty of colorful ornaments from friends and family, and the illuminated star topper we've had since our first Christmas as husband and wife. My favorite Christmas decoration was this pair of sweet papier mache gold leaf reindeer I purchased for $15 total at Michael's.

We treated our niece Katie Anne with a box full of dress-up playtime clothes. No matter its blurriness and color off-ness and light problems, this is my absolute favorite picture of Katie Anne. She's blurry because she's twirling. Her little foot is turned sideways like she's about to tip over, and the chef's hat is about to swallow her whole! She looks soooo happy, and that's why I love it!

I sewed my first-ever purse from a pattern. It's pieces of fabric sewn together and then quilted. And I did it all on my very own! It is Vespa's weekender tote and we fill it with her food and water and toys (and my knitting projects) for the road when we drive up to Cartersville for weekends with family.

I joined my first-ever knitting swap. It was a scarf swap, and the girl I was knitting for loves the color blue. She also lives in Portugal!!!! My knitting work has gone international now.  :)

In addition to the Barcalounger we purchased for Carlton, I've been slowly-but-surely settling into our home. I've bought little somethings here and there for hanging on the wall and accessorizing and furnishing the house. Our TV is now up off the floor, as are all the electronics associated with it! Like, up on a TV stand! And we've got some artwork and mirrors and sconces (like this one above) hanging on the walls. Slowly but surely, we're making it prettier.

I got my fingernails dirty the weekend of Valentine's Day. I planted about a million daffodil bulbs from Papa, and about a thousand bulbs from Vicki. Here's hoping I don't disappoint anyone!

Two weeks later, that's what we saw!

And as of this morning, we're rockin' these cute little bubbles of something colorful at the very tips of many of the pointy, leafy plants! (I'll keep you filled in as we make more progress!)

We have dinner parties here at the house on a regular basis! About once a month (or every six weeks or so, depending on whose turn it is) a group of 6-10 folks show up and I get to feed them. This was our latest gathering, a smaller group. We capped off the night with a game of poker and a homemade cheesecake topped with fresh whipped cream. Cool fact: The tall, blurry guy sitting next to Carlton (and his wife in red next to him) used to own our house!

I was reeeeeeeeeeally sick about a week ago. I vomited so violently that I burst all sorts of tiny little blood vessels around my eyes and all over my face. Looked like Carlton had beaten me after a couple of days! Feeling much better, thanks for your well wishes everyone!

And finally, our house is VERY ready for Spring to arrive. I hung these big, full ferns just a few days ago and they're loving it up there in the breeze. All we need for the front of the house now is a UGA flag for that flag holder. Oh, and to actually attach our 2-1-3 house numbers underneath the porch light. Oh, and of course, to plant the rest of those potted plants Vicki brought us!!!  :)

Make memories

I had written a very touching pretty-much-novel that related to this link, but I somehow hit a combination of two keys on this ill-forsaken laptop and deleted the entire thing. I just don't have it in me to repeat what I had already written, and I'd prefer to knit tonight instead of cry big, fat tears. So, please read the beautiful blog entry at this link and do one more thing for me: if you've still got her, be sure to make as many memories with, about, and of your grandmother as you can... because there can never be enough memories of a grandmother and her grandbabies.


Aaaaaaaaain't!

Out with the old, in with the... old?

When we moved into our sweet little green house with its wet yard and antique air-leaking sliding glass back doors and half-a-kitchen worth of cabinetry (love ya housey, I'm just stating the facts here), one of the projects we put near the top of our list was sort of a minor facelift for the interior.

While it was perfectly fine with us that every single doorknob in the house didn't match, and while it didn't bother us that all the doorknobs were brass (the light fixtures or kitchen hardware are that oil-rubbed bronze or brushed steel, but a doorknob is a doorknob), it really did bother us that the knobs were original to the house, which was built in 1986, and many of them were badly corroded. The brass had corroded off some of the doorknobs, and that made them look rather gross. And what made it even worse for me was that the nastiest-looking one was on the hallway bathroom door, the bathroom that everybody uses when they visit, and we use on a daily basis. Yuk! "Welcome to my home. Please, make yourself comfortable. Enjoy yourself. And, please, caress our disgusting doorknob. But before you do, be sure to wash up and dry your hands on the monogrammed hand towels! Then touch the nasty doorknob."

So, Carlton and I went to Lowe's and to Home Depot. We priced out the number of doorknobs that were in the house, putting into thought the number of closet doors (no locks), as well as bathroom and bedroom doors (locks, please!). It was outrageous how much money it was going to cost us just to replace this hardware... I tried to suppress the amount from my memory, but I think it was going to be about $400! Just for doorknobs. I would rather have more kitchen cabinets for that, thankyouverymuch!

Then I remembered all of the great spray paints that are out there on the market. My parents recently spray painted all of the kitchen cabinet hardware in a house they own and rent out. My sister-in-law Katie spray painted some plastic outdoor play equipment for our niece Katie Anne this past summer. And they make some really nice spray paints these days! I even used one type of spray paint with sand in it to spray onto the side of a to-scale model house I constructed in my college design classes. It was a really realistic brick effect!

The spray paint we found was perfect for what we were looking for. All we needed to do was take off the hardware, line it all up, and spray away. And, at about $3.00 for a can of primer ("highly recommended") and $6.50 for a can of the finishing "hand-hammered bronze" effect (yup, it's even slightly textured!), how could we not give this a shot? $9.50 in a test run sure does beat $400 of replacing doorknobs, so why wouldn't we at least try it first? And, if the paint chips or peels or rubs off, all we're out is a few bucks, and at least we tried it out!

So, here's what we did. It was really quick and really easy. We started at about 4:00 in the afternoon. First, we found a good, flat space in the back yard (not hard to find around these parts!), laid out a heavy painting canvas, and laid out all of our doorknobs. Next, we sprayed them with primer. Let that dry, flipped them, sprayed the other side with primer. Let that dry, sprayed them with the first coat of the good stuff. Let that dry, flipped them, sprayed the other side with the good stuff. After that last round dried we brought them in because it was getting dark.

After the doorknobs dried and set overnight, we checked them out in fresh daylight the next morning. Of course, there were a couple of thin paint places here and there, so we touched them up with a little spritz and let them dry some more.

Installed, the doorknobs look brand new!!! If you weren't told that they didn't all match and that they were actually old grody corroded doorknobs from the 80's, you would never know they weren't brand spankin' new!

The rest of our snow

So, while our snow down here in Moultrie didn't last long, it was a really exciting event. While I know they're not weathermen, the girls I work with at the quilt shop claimed that it hasn't snowed down here in 15 years! Sadly, some time around 9:30 or 10:00 pm the snow started melting from the yards, rooftops, and even our back deck  But here's what we saw later on that night:

Here is Carlton at about 7:00 showing off the size of these massive "snowflakes" that were falling all around us! (Shhh, I didn't tell him, but there was also one stuck to the back of his head like Katie's terrifying crazy eye!)

And this is our back deck at about 7:00, right after the back of Carlton's head thawed out (don't look too hard, Vicki, but I think as of the time this picture was taken I have officially killed the precious rosemary tree) :

 And, finally, at 8:00 pm through the glass door:

Ditto!

Hey y'all, it's snowing way down here, too! All day it's been dripping and drizzling rain, but about 30 minutes ago the snowy/rainy mix started. And now we're pretty much reduced to gigantic, fat, icy snowflakes. I know, it's craziness!

Kids in the house that backs up to ours have been screaming and yelling and celebrating for the past 30 minutes which prompted me to look outside and see what the big fuss was all about. Well, as of 5:30, this is what the excitement is all for:

Here's the view from our front door:

...and from the back:

...and from under the kitchen table, obviously the only safe place from snow in all of the house:

A Recipe for Pretty Home Decoration

So, quite a few years ago my parents went on one of their fantastic vacations to Italy, and one of the souvenirs they brought back for me has yet to be used. It's just been folded up, in a pantry or drawer or closet or up on a shelf with the dishrags and towels.

Recently, I got the souvenir out of storage, ironed it, and began planning out a pretty new home decoration. Whatever you want to call this thing: fabric recipe-book, or fabric poster, or dishtowel... anything you wanna call it, I love its vibrant lemon-yellow, apple-green, and touch of scarlet red.

I picked up two packages from Target for $9.99, each of which contained four black 8x10 picture frames. ("$9.99 for four whole entire picture frames!?!?!??" I hear you say. "Sure, I was okay with that price!" I might answer. "Even though the frame is plastic, the window is actually glass so they don't look very cheap just hanging there on the wall." Woohoo for cheap plastic frames from Target!) I measured the window of the frame and cut down my cloth to fit inside the frame. Then, before I put the cut-to-fit-perfectly fabric into the frame, I rolled each piece individually to be sure there was no residual lint or fuzzies on it. Because this has been in storage for so many years, it had quite a bit of yuk on it.

Then I put each piece into a frame. I mentioned above that each piece was cut-to-fit-perfectly behind the glass because I didn't want any of the artwork or words to be chopped off or hidden by part of the frame itself. You'll see why in a minute.

Here are all six framed pieces, ready to go in their respective frames. See why I didn't want any of the pictures or words--especially down the middle--covered by the frame? I wanted to still be able to read this, if I ever go crazy and decide to make my own limoncello. I doubt it, but I still wouldn't put it past me either.

Next, I flipped each frame over and pried off the little cardboard stand-prop-thing. Because these are going to hang on the wall, I didn't want the stand-prop-thing to make any of them hang sideways or lopsided.

Eww, look at that naked wall and that pitiful little half of our Mason cabinet. (We're calling it the Mason cabinet because my sister's fiance's mom, Marsha Mason, sold it to me for just $40!!! The top part, including a built-in flour sifter, is currently in our carport amidst paint remover and rags, undergoing some Botox.)

Annnnnnd, voila! Instant pretty on my dining room wall. And a recipe to boot! Now I need to find some whimsical and eye-catching little dishes or saucers or plates or platters to hang on the wall on either side of the frames. What do you think?

London broil, Part I: The Marinade

There was a day last week when I woke up, sent Carlton off to work, walked Vespa, and turned to my little dish on the kitchen counter for a... GASP!!!... no clementines left for breakfast? Or, lunchtime's dessert? Or, my infamous 4:00-snack-break-that's-not-really-approved-but-chuckled-at-because-they-know-I-get-cranky-at-work-when-I-get-too-hungry snack? Or, my before bedtime dessert (hey, it keeps me away from that bag of Nestle chocolate chips on the baking shelf, okay!)? No clementines at all and I just couldn't believe it.

So, after a quick Lean Cuisine lunch in the shop I jetted out to Winn Dixie to grab a crate of my littleorangedearlybeloveds and head back on into work.

Once I got there, I snatched up a crate and saw that they were putting out fresh boneless, skinless chicken breasts on sale for buy-one-get-one-free. This is not a story of their adventures in being cooked.

This is the first part of the story of half of one of the two London broils I purchased for the same deal--buy-one-get-one-free. It's a good cut of beef. I remember my mom making a London broil every now-and-then when I was growing up, and it was always a good meal, served with mashed potatoes or baked potatoes or roasted potatoes. My mom's a meat-n-potatoes kinda girl, so that's how I'm used to eating. Can't complain about that! That's pretty much all Carlton will eat at all, so dinner tonight should be golden.

So, without anymore gabbing, here's Part I: The Marinade.

You'll need:

Dale's Seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, spicy mustard, sweet wine, and fresh garlic:

Peel the skins off of two or three cloves of garlic. I chose three, because I really like it.

Chop the garlic until you're happy with how small it is. I think I got a little carried away because I'm enjoying using my ceramic knife (thanks again, Daddy!). Then just dump the garlic into your dish.

Add in 1/4 cup of Dale's Seasoning, 1 tablespoon of the Worcestershire sauce, and 2 tablespoons of the spicy mustard:

The next step was supposed to be adding 1/4 cup of the sweet white wine. Ours was a homemade bottle of (apparently peachy) zinfandel and when I popped the cork, GA-ROSSSSSSS!!! There was no way I was going to marinade with this. Thanks for the gift, but um, no thanks. I grabbed honey instead. Add 1 tablespoon of honey to the marinading dish:

Whisk it all about. Like my action shot?

Plop in the beef. Wiggle it around to be sure the stuff really gets on there. Flip it over and wiggle it around some more. Seal it up tight and place it in the refrigerator until it's time to start dinner, hopefully for a few hours!

I'll be back around later tonight to share with you Part II: Cooking, Eating, and Loving the London Broil with some potatoes to boot! Hungry yet?

Apple Cake in an Iron Skillet: a New Year's success!

Way back, when we were making preparations to celebrate New Year's Eve of 2010, I discovered a recipe listed on Pioneer Woman Cooks and just couldn't pass it up.  PW makes everything she cooks look irresistible.  But there was something about this gooey, sticky, warm, comforting apple cake that needed to be baked, presented, and eaten that night after our friends Erin and Ted (our house's previous owners) fed us all steak and chicken fajitas.  Shhh, stop thinking that an apple cake with vanilla ice cream sounds nasty after stuffing cheese dip and spicy chicken fajitas in your face-hole.  It was a warm and sweet and light and delicious finishing touch after dinner and before silly champagne toasts that seemed to go on for an hour, in a good way.

So, needless to say, I called Erin in the early afternoon of New Year's Eve and offered to bring dessert, tempting her with the gooey-ness and apple-ness and sticky-ness that this recipe described.  She sounded genuinely excited, so I got prepared ASAP.  The only ingredient I didn't already have in the pantry was some tart apples.  Actually, I had two apples, but they had gone a little shrively since my every-year's winter obsession with clementines agreed to let them die a slow death on the kitchen counter.  Since I needed more than two apples, and since the apples in the cake were going to be eaten, I scooped Carlton up, squished him into the car with me, and we headed to the grocery store for a bag-o-Grannies.

Then I got started.  Melt the butter, all 1.75 sticks of it.

(Believe me, it really, really, really was worth all that butter. Really.)

While the butter melted, I prepped my apple for the cake batter:

(By the way, if you don't own a ceramic knife, I strongly recommend making the investment.)

Then, I added my sectioned apples to the skillet:

(Apples cooked in loads of butter? Okay, where do I bite?!?)

Wait, I feel like I forgot something. Oh yeah, the sugar!

(What's that you say? Apples cooked in loads of butter and shovels of sugar? Double-OKAY!!!)

Sugar and butter melted together into a syrup while the apples seasoned it and softened in the process:

(Holy guacamole, the house now smells like pure sin.  Or, pure Heaven.  Either way, I'm lovin' it.)

While the apples fried/sauteed/tempted me to gobble one up in a heartbeat with no reservation about burning the fool out of my mouth, I made the cake batter in my beloved stand mixer in classic white:

(Would it really be worth it to eat one of those apples at this point? I'll save my mouth the blisters and burns and lick the cake beaters, spoon, and bowl per The Pioneer Woman's instructions instead.)

Once the apples were fork-tender, I plopped the batter on one giant spoonful at a time like a good recipe-follower would do. Instead of plopping on top of the apples like hers seemed to do, mine kinda plopped into the mixture. I just scooped it back up on top of the apples and smoothed it a little:

(I still don't know how I resisted the apples in the skillet. To this day, I think the smell is stuck in my nose. Or, it was just such a good smell that I remember it that vividly. Either way, yummo.)

This was the finished product before I flipped it onto a large serving platter.  It came out of my skillet in one piece with no stragglers left behind, what an accidental accomplishment!

(Still an enormous amount of willpower here, I waited until after dinner at Ted and Erin's house to share the gooey, cakey, appley goodness with everyone else.)

While I didn't get a picture of the final cake flipped out of the skillet on my platter (oy, tragedy!), I did get a shot of some of us (the girls of the night, minus one girl, plus one guy) after the warm dessert, along with vanilla ice cream (a MUST with this one, y'all), had been devoured:

Happy faces for a Happy New Year!

A Glimpse Back: Christmas Eve Night

(This is one of my last couple of "stalling" blog entries awaiting publication, so I'm finishing it up and putting it out there.)

It's really, truly way too bad that it never dawned on me to grab my camera from my purse once I got to Papa's house.  We had a good time all together.

On Christmas Eve night every year, it is tradition for my closest of family members to trek over to 35 Magnolia Drive for the customary ham and turkey sandwiches accompanied by that delish! onion dip/chips that go along with some deviled eggs, random other sides, and (if we've been good all year and if we're really, really lucky) a generous serving of Mama's beefy Velveeta cheese dip and corn chips (thanks, Leslie!). While nothing about this meal (other than the ham, although it is usually on a sandwich) belongs in a typical Christmas Eve feast, it is our family's Christmas Eve tradition and we like it just fine.

We gathered in the marquesina again this year like always... again, don't ask me where that word came from, I really don't know... an old family friend, perhaps?  Anyway.  We ate, talked, caught up with each other, laughed a lot, and then my aunt Leslie passed out named gifts.  We all ooooo'd and aaaaah'd over each gift as the paper was ripped and thrown aside.  Now please don't get me wrong... I loved all the gifts that I got.  Everyone on Christmas Eve was so gracious, and so thoughtful!  I got new clothes, "shopping supplies" for our 2010 making-house-into-home projects, soaps and lotions that smell absolutely delicious, and so much more!  But what I really enjoyed this year more than anything was watching everyone else open their gifts.  I watched Papa start opening before he was supposed to (and get in trouble for it), I saw my aunt open a beautiful kitty quilt, I watched my dad try to pick up and open a hefty new supply of ammunition for one of his prized noisemakers, and I listened in as Tommy scratched off the big-dollar lotto tickets we gave him (which paid for themselves by giving him a bit of cash and some more lotto tickets).

Once all of the "named gifts" were opened, loved on, and set aside for safe keeping, the numbered gifts came out!  Numbers 1 thru 10 (I think we had a whole 10 of us there, wow!) were drawn and picked from the pile (or from each others hands!) and the game was loud and fun and mean and sneaky.  Who would'a guessed that "As Seen On TV Windshield Cleaner" would be such a hit?  Or, an Ove Glove?  Hahaha!  Of course there were a couple sets of scratch-off lottery tickets that were stolen from the hands of a hopeful-and-greedy family member.  Scott was the lucky fellow who won big: an entire manicure/pedicure set complete with soaps, salts, and lotions... and complimented by a handheld back massage gizmo!

After we all finished cleaning up and packing the leftover food and gifts away in car trunks, it was time to say goodnight.  Santa was on his way!

Ah - HAH!!!

I found the entry I was looking for in my previous post!

See?  Mirror, with a teal frame.  Pretty white bowl on the right.  Pretty lamp on the left.  I
remembered the important details!

I love The Nester.  She's clever, witty, and thrives in an imperfect world that looks so darn good!

(Hey, you.  This is another blogger I have just shared with you.  Appreciate her!)

Shine your Sink!

One of my sub-categories in my new year's resolution includes being a more forward-moving, driven, motivated housekeeper.  In my previous blog entry, I explained a little bit about how I just can't get things done when I don't have the time to do them the right way... and then they stack up on me and I'm even further away from getting the job done than I originally was.

For instance: cooking dinner.  Let's say I want to make some chicken fajitas tonight.  I put the chicken in the fridge last night before bed so it could thaw out.  Got home from work, walked Vespa, got the chicken out of the fridge, and then I realize the dishwasher didn't run last night when I thought I turned it on.  Then, let's say, I clean a skillet and put the chicken on medium heat along with some lime juice, ground cumin, lime zest, and salt&pepper.  Now let's say I grab the veggies out of the fridge, reach to the drawer for a knife, and realize all the knives were also in the dishwasher, dirty as can be!  Clean a knife.  Out of their plastic baggy the bell peppers and onions come.  Um, where's the cutting board?  Oh yeah, dirty in the dishwasher.

See what I mean?  Totally unorganized, frustrated, re-doing steps that should have been done earlier, and forgetting steps that should be done first!  It gets annoying really quickly, and it makes it easier to just come up with an excuse for us to go out and grab Arby's or Zaxby's or Chik-fil-A or something that I don't have to prepare. 

And now we are fat.  :)

Well, throughout the year of 2009 I discovered a common theme throughout a couple of blogs I follow regularly:  a couple of ladies recommended that you Shine Your Sink!  (I can't for the life of me find the blogs this theme came from, but I promise that one of them shined her sink in a kitchen that had no windows, and put up either a mirror or a piece of reflective metal on the wall above the sink, and set up a tiny lamp on the left to give the sink a happier, brighter feel.  There was teal somewhere in the equation.  And a pretty white bowl.  Ah!  When I find it, I'll let you know.)  The website FlyLady.net is the dummy's breakthrough drug for conquering any strongly stupid ideas of perfectionism, OCD-ism, or over-committing-ism as far as housekeeping goes. (Because who really has the time, stamina, and determination to be perfect, OCD, and committed to cleaning house all the time?)  It's a "baby steps" approach to getting the house clean and organized one step... one minute... one day at a time.  She calls it "Living in CHAOS... Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome" and I think that's hilarious.  Now, instead of having to write out my own step-by-step list of specific goals to finish around the house and possibly overwhelm myself, FlyLady has already made the list for me!  The first day, I started off with shining my kitchen sink.  And every day after that, I shine my sink and add in a new task.  Some days, I get a break from all tasks other than shining the sink.  :)  FlyLady is giving me new habits.  Instead of looking around for that knife to chop the bell peppers for fajita night, I will have already put that knife back where it belongs... imagine that, what a revolution!  (Der.)

So.  Here's to a new year, with new goals and new ways of keeping my house a clean, organized, ready-to-cook-fajitas house.  And a very, very, very fine house it'll be.