Chris loves Julia likes a house.

A lot.  It's only 7 years old, but needs some love.  Good thing love IS our middle name.  We have been through this twice before, and this one is a short sale so we are trying not to get too excited until we have the keys.  But we are getting a little excited.  Right.  Now.

How could we not, right?

Hot and Cold

Two days ago, it was warm and sunny.  I opened the windows in our house.  I cleaned until things squeaked.  Greta and I went outside.  We met Chris for lunch.  When the weather is warm, I get the urge to exercise and highlight my hair a la Penelope Cruz or my awkward self circa 2006.

 When it's sunny, it makes me skip dinner and have a jamba juice instead.  It makes me want to go house hunting.  It suddenly piques my interest in all-things-grilled.  I want to whiten my teeth so they glow when I get tan.  I want to wear perfume and long necklaces and no coat.  I want to blow dry my hair straight so I can feel my long locks on my bare, coat-less, sweatshirt-less arms.  It all feels so good.

This morning, the warmth and sun were nowhere to be seen.  We woke up to inches of snow and it is still falling.  Meh.  Instead of my dreamy summer's breakfast--an egg white omelette with spinach and tomatoes--I had oatmeal.  And it exploded everywhere in my squeaky-clean microwave.  Why does that ALWAYS happen?  Today, I am still in my sweats.  I haven't showered or blow-dried my hair.  Our sushi lunch plans have been canceled because I get nervous about driving in these conditions.  The grill is hidden under a blanket of its enemy.  All I want is carbs and my own blanket--the warm and fuzzy kind.  It makes me want to stay in and play a board game.             

.....But we're still going house-hunting.  After a lot of prayer and thought, it starts again.  

5 birds on wire.

It's my latest painting that I thought I finished this morning, and even blogged about it.  And posted it (you quick readers may have got a glimpse at the first "finished" product).  And then I saw the post and it didn't feel right.  So I deleted it.  Put more time into the painting and it feels right now.  It has texture and depth.  It feels almost dark--I like that.  There's lots of layers of paint there.  I'll let you take a glimpse at what I believe to be the bottom layer:

It's true--this humungous canvas was a thrift find.  Only $7.  It had cat fur and dust bunnies all over the canvas mat.  Mustard trim surrounded a 70s-looking painting.  I was in love with the potential.  So, I took it home and painted that mustard--black.  I vacuumed the mat and put more layers of paint over all those autumn colors (I think the 70s were obsessed with autumn.)  Lots of layers.  I added real wire for my birds to perch on for a special touch and hung it in our living room. 

(And because I know you are curious.  

Here's what my original "finished" product looked like:

So glad I put more time into it. )

Checking in with our 2011 goals

We're nearly two months in and instead of waiting for the end of the year, we thought it would be good to evaluate ourselves more frequently.  Remember when you were 9 and your goals were grow your hair out, stop biting your nails and brush your teeth every day?  Just me?  Those were easy to forget about until December 31st and then just check them off and feel accomplished.  Now?  I can already tell this is gonna be messy.

A+ for brushing our teeth, babe. 

(You can see the breakdown and explanation of our goals here.)

1.  Family Dinner.   I give us an F on this right now.  We have tried a couple times and failed or got sick of eating while the babe is crying.  Greta is just so cranky come 6pm and she is READY for bed.  Chris works out 3 times a week.  Those nights, he puts Greta to bed and then does the elliptical and THEN we eat, because eating and then "ellipticizing" would not be fun.  We have accepted the fact that this may be a year-long process before Greta's bedtime gets pushed back a smidgen and is more apt to eating whatever we give her AND I get better at cooking (I do cook some nights) and we are all eating together.  Maybe make that an F- right now.  

2.  Family Home Evening.  We are about 60% on this right now.  Eeks.  Does that mean a D?  I feel like that means like a C.  Considering where we were.  We have had some fun lessons.  Greta always smiles when we pull out a picture of Jesus and then she wants to hold it and we get all tense like, "ahhh please don't crinkle it to bits!"  We have family time every night, but getting a song in (or three because they are Greta's fav) and a little lesson is a bit challenging.  I think this, too, has to do with Greta's bedtime.  But we're working on forming habits here.  Promise.  

3.  Baby number 2.  ......kep.   Moving on.  Hah! 

4.  Money makeover.  We are moving on this actually.  I'll give us a B- because there is definitely room for improvement...and less going out to eat.  We did pay off our Best Buy credit card last week which feels really good!!!   Student loans are always looming, but they will be gone soon enough. Can't.  Wait!  To be out of debt.  

5.  Teach Greta to do laundry.  D-.  She does help me take the clothes out of the washer...

We got work to do for sure.  February is almost over (whoa!) and I have never personally had a bad report card.  So, you can expect all A's by the end of the year.  :)  How are you measuring up to your goals?

After-we-painted bedroom tour.

Before

After

Ha!  While you may not be able to see a huge difference in the above pictures--trust us, it looks very different in person.  Soft, warm, relaxing...all things a bedroom should be.  Not convinced?  I'll show you a few more pictures as I give you a tour of our in-progress bedroom (Oh, and those panels are DEF getting new fabric):

Now you can see it, huh?  The pic on the left is before we added Valspar's Notre Dame to the walls, as seen in the photo on the right.  Lowe's wouldn't color match it to Olympic's no-VOC paint like they did when we painted our front area with a Benjamin Moore swatch (probably because Valspar is Lowe's signature line and they don't want to take business away from themselves).  At any rate, the coverage was great and we only had to do one coat, but the fumes were/are bad.  Right above our bed, we're planning on a large shelf with a painting hanging above it and our oversized "C" and "J" letters propped on the shelf.  

This is the view from across from our bed.  The TV and dresser (I found at the ReStore for $20) used to be on the wall on the right there.  NOT comfy to watch television constantly looking to your right,  so we remounted it on Saturday after we were done painting.  We still need to hide the cords (no worries) and refinish the dresser--which will happen as soon as the weather gets warmer.  

This is the view from over by the desk (see top picture) looking out of our room into the hall.  The far door, next to the penguin, is Greta's room.  You can barely see it from this picture, but the paint color in the hall and our room are close, however, Notre Dame is a lot warmer than Whitestone, which was the plan all along.  Now bring your eyes back into our room.  To that wall where the TV used to be.  Where a large mirror, some form of art will be soon.  I have a lot of walls to fill.  Which is a good thing because I have about 6 different ideas bouncing around in my head of things I can fill them with.  This is the fun part.  Creating and decorating on a budget---so it doesn't LOOK like I was on a budget.  Let the fun begin (as soon as Greta wakes up from her nap. :) )!!

"What makes you happy?"

I asked Chris this question as we were finishing up dinner.  He said:  

"You.  

Watching Greta learn new things.  

Being with family.  

Providing for my family.  

Making a good meal.  

Those few minutes before we go to sleep when we cuddle.

Relaxing."

And then he asked me.  And I said:

"Well besides those, You!

Making our house look nice.

When the laundry is done.

Sleeping.

Getting ready for the day.

Exercising."

Cheers to being happy.  Excuse us while we cuddle and watch The Phantom of the Opera.

New Coat

We're talkin' paint, here.  Painting in progress and Notre Dame is not letting us down.   After pictures to come.  Standby, friends!

Hot Pockets. Not Special, Home-Made Ones Either.

That's right, we actually had microwaveable hot pockets for dinner one night this week. See the menu on the right side of this page? The one that Julia so fervently updates each week? Well, it usually ends up being about 75% accurate. Maybe less. See, I'm a realist. No matter how much planning you do on your menu, there's always something that comes up to throw you off, and that was the story this week. Sometimes it's as simple as, "I know that last Saturday I wanted to make omelets for dinner on Wednesday, but I don't want an omelet now." Well shoot, don't force it! Eat something that actually sounds good to you, yeesh!

Grilled chicken thighs were planned for Tuesday. I got home from work and Julia and I tag-teamed everything that needed to get done- feed, bathe and get Greta in bed, laundry, mop the kitchen floor (Greta thinks it's hilarious to throw bananas on the floor- love the phase she's in), and watch Glee. About halfway through our to-dos, we remembered that we hadn't taken out the chicken to thaw. Yikes. We took the chicken out and started the speedy thaw process, which, contrary to popular belief, does NOT involve a microwave. The unfortunate thing is, we didn't start this process until about 8:30 at night. Even with our expedited procedure we were looking at a 9:30 dinner time, and that cuts into my "do nothing" time way too much. So, we postponed the chicken to Wednesday, nuked a couple hot pockets, threw together a salad and satisfied our hunger. Sometimes, you just gotta keep it simple.

As ghetto as hot pockets are, postponing our chicken dinner one night ended up not being a bad thing. Sure, I had digestive issues the following day thanks to that jalapeno steak and cheese filled little number, but Wednesday more than made up for it. While I was waiting for our hot pockets to cook, I put the chicken in a zip top bag with a little oil and a lot of seasoning to wait until the following night. I think that one of my top 3 favorite seasonings for bone-in, skin on chicken is curry powder. Yeah, the cheap stuff you get from the grocery store. Something to know, curry powder is pretty much useless for curry. Basically, some British folks went on a trip to India, returned home to their bland food and concocted curry powder in an attempt to mimic the Indian flavors. Unsuccessfully, in my opinion, but they did however create a great chicken rub. So that's what I used; curry powder, a little extra garlic powder (most curry powders already have garlic powder in them) and some kosher salt.

Chicken after marinating for a day

Because we postponed the dinner, that allowed the meat to finish thawing in the fridge, soaking in the flavors of the spices- and let me tell you, it turned out awesome.

So, I don't typically marinate chicken. Especially thighs with the skin on, because they stay really juicy by themselves and are not shy on flavor. But we'll chalk this up to a happy accident, because it turned out delicious. Usually, I would grill this, skin side down for about 10 minutes, then flip and finish cooking for another 5-10 minutes. Unfortunately for my pallet, we had an ice storm come through last night and I was not in the mood to step outside. So we ended up baking the chicken. Preheat the oven to 375 (place an oven-safe saute pan in the oven while it preheats), cut up a quarter of an onion, remove the pan from the oven once it's heated thoroughly, add some oil, then the onions, and place the chicken right on top. Cook until internal temp reaches 145, then kick on the broiler until the skin browns and internal temp is 165. If the skin is browning too fast, just remove from the oven and finish cooking on the stove top. 

onion, mushrooms, jalepeno (seeds and ribs removed) yellow squash and red pepper

Again, we're still trying to eat healthier, so we just paired it with some vegetables.

Sautéed these veggies in our wok with a little salt and pepper, and some of the oil from the chicken- loads of flavor.

never use a metal utensil in a non-stick pan, fyi

That was it. That's definitely a meal anyone can get down on, because it's so quick and easy. Even if you don't let the chicken soak in seasoning for 24 hours, you'd be surprised at how quick the curry powder will get into the meat and really bring the food to life. If you're really watching your weight, just toss the skin AFTER the chicken is cooked (skin helps it stay juicy). Either way, you can feel good about a meal like this and you won't feel like you're missing out on anything.

el fin

What do you use to season your chicken? There are a lot of great options out there and I'm always looking for some new ideas. Let us know, so I can give it a try.

Enjoy.

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Psst.  Congrats to twocuff for winning Miss Kajsa Virka in our giveaway.  If you aren't twocuff, don't fret--we have plenty more pretty giveaway items to hand out in the future.  

Something you want OVERSIZED

Last week, when I finished the hallway with Mr. Poppin, an Ikea canvas, and an original piece, my mom called me up and said, "It's just so easy for you, isn't it?"  I had to laugh, because although the hallway wasn't difficult to put together--other things are.  It definitely isn't always easy for me.  The last 48 hours I have been working on a project that I would put in the "challenging" category.  I just could NOT figure out how to execute the oversized letters I fell in love with at Anthropologie.  Good news, it won't take you 48 hours, a case of carpal tunnel, burned fingertips or even the $98/letter Anthropologie is asking.  I have to thank my sweet hubby, Chris, for being such a mastermind.  He thought of the final solution and we now have our own 25" tall, 2" thick HUUUGGGEEE letters to prop above our bed:

Pretty, huh?

But let's back track (just for fun) so you can see the mess I went through before getting to this point.  First, I thought of cardboard.  I had a bunch of boxes in our storage closet, but only two were large enough to fit a 25" letter.  Welp,  I only needed two.  Victory.  I thought, "Wow, this is going to look awesome.  So easy."  I was taking pictures a long the way to show you how I was doing everything.  I burned my fingers a hojillion times trying to hold the pieces together while hot-glueing (not recommended).  I got this awesome spray paint that Rustoleum makes that is a "hammered metal" effect--perfection!.... .... ....until it seeped THROUGH the cardboard leaving it just solid silver and looking very cardboard-y.  Blah!

disgrace

So, day two rolls around (yesterday) and I went out and got foam core.  I figured if I made the front and backs of the letters out of something smoother, then I wouldn't get the texture showing through the spraypaint.  I was also crossing my fingers that the sweet spray paint I found would actually stay on top of the surface--I didn't get that far.  Once I cut out the "J" using a box cutter (I don't know if that's what it is technically called, but it has a different name in my book now.   I blame my carpal tunnel on gripping that sucker for too long.)  and glued the sides to the bottom (more burns) I realized, the top wasn't going to fit exactly.  Arrrgggghhhhhhh!! AAAAAHHHHH!!  I was so close to giving up.

A mess

And then I called Chris and told him my sob story and he suggested using something that was already 2" thick, like wood, and a jig saw (which we didn't have...yet :) ).  Brilliant!  He stopped at Lowe's on his way home and called me while he was there so that he could talk me through everything he was seeing and I could choose (so sweet, huh?).  He found a jig-saw for $40 and it is something that we will use often, so he got that.  Then he went over to the wood.  They don't make 2" wood that is atleast 25" long and 20" wide.  They just don't.  We started talking about perhaps glueing two pieces together for thickness, yada yada.  Then he spotted insulation styrofoam.  A BIG sheet for $15!!  It was 2" thick and smooth.  My voice was getting higher and higher with excitement.  He brought it home.  

He cut the letters out with the jig-saw and I sanded the edges a little.   You can't spray paint styrofoam, so I put a coat of black acrylic paint on this morning:

The light is shining through my hair--looks faareaky!

followed by drybrushing Plaid's Acrylic Craft paint in "Metallic Silver Sterling":

And now we have zinc-looking oversized letters of our very own!  Once the styrofoam was in the house, it was easy-peasy.  I would totally do it again, in fact, I might.  Maybe a future giveaway or something.  We still have half of the insulation board left and I know at least one person that would love a big ol' letter:

 

....maybe a "G?"  :)

(psst...see how it all turned out here)

ENTER TO WIN A PAIR OF LETTERS FOR YOURSELF HERE!

Anthro-apology

When we were on our weekend getaway--shopping, we stopped in Anthropologie.  That was the first bad idea.  There's nothing in there I don't love, but there's also hardly anything in there that I feel okay spending THAT MUCH on.  You know what I mean.  "Oh em gee, loooovvvvveeeee those mugs (or dress, or cardigan, or coat hooks) but whoa--I can't justify spending that on that."  Then I came upon oversized zinc letters.  These ones:

They weren't crafty looking, they were modern and I totally snapped a picture (second big mistake...I was getting hooked) and now the picture is nowhere to be found!  I have checked our camera, and both of our phones.  These puppies are BIG.  25" tall.  Anthro had them laying on their side and standing like they were all hanging out and I SO wanted to be a part of the cool kids at that moment.  So, I made my 3rd major mistake and picked up a letter.  It was big and thick, but surprisingly still light.  A "C" and a "J", perhaps laying on her side, would look so cozy propped on a shelf above our bed in front of a painting.  I was hooked.  I had to haa..... $98!!  Nooooooooooo!  Okay, I wasn't that surprised, but I was that hurt.  Those letters have been haunting me ever since.  Here's where my apology comes in:

Sorry Anthropologie, I'm makin' my own!  Or, I'm trying to.  I have been trying for over 24 hours now.  After two failed attempts and now that carpal tunnel has set in my right hand/wrist--I'm giving it one, last valiant effort tonight.  Third time's a charm, right?  Stay tuned for all the failed glory details and (hopefully) the 25"-J-and-C-they-are-all-mine goodness, too.  

To the bedroom...

Bowchickawahwow.  We're moving this painting party to the bedroom.  Now that we have had several days to recover from painting the front area of our house and the hallway, we are ready to revamp our master with a little bit of color on those walls...and art...and new pillows and maybe larger printed paneling for those room dividers to jazz things up, too.   Whew, our bedroom needs A LOT of help and I am so excited to get started.  Let's take a look at what we're working with and I will try to talk you through what I'm thinking for the space:

What you can't see are the blank walls above our bed and across from our bed.  For the wall above the desk, I am thinking of DIYing something like this on my computer. 

 Not necessarily in those colors, maybe, but definitely in something bold because I love color, duh.   For the art above our bed, I will most likely paint over what I have been working on, and keep it abstract to tie into the rest of the vibe going on in our home.  Light, brush-strokey, with a splash of bold color to coordinate with the art above the desk.   The painting will also serve as a backdrop to a special project I have been working on today.  I definitely want to spill all the deets about it, but I am holding my tongue until the reveal--hopefully tomorrow, if I can get it right....don't hold your breath.  

As for the wall color, we picked up a tester today and painted squares all over our bedroom.  We're sold!  We will be sleeping among Valspar's Notre Dame by the end of the week:

It's gray and neutral, but warmer than Benjamin Moore's Whitestone.  Cozy, for sure, AND it gives me the perfect excuse to sing, "the beeellllllsss, the very bellllssss offff NOOTTTREEEE DAMMMMEE!" pretty much anytime I please.  And I'll "please" frequently.  

As for the room dividers, I'm definitely going to wait until everything else is in place before I decide to change them to a large printed fabric.  I'm thinking something like this (or any one of Ikea's large printed textiles) :

Who knows, the subtle, cream-colored, patterned panels may be just what the doctor  designer ordered after the art, pillows and paint is in place.  We'll see....I'm in no hurry to redo those panels, can you tell?

Other things that are on my to-do list for the bedroom:  refinish the desk and the dresser under our tv (not pictured above), move our mounted tv in front of the bed, sell the big, leather chair that's currently sitting with the desk and downgrade to something less.....large (any takers??  We'll sell it to you for $40!), and make a few more pillows once I finish the aforementioned art. 

.....so yeah, I'll we'll be busy for the next little while and promise to let you in on every detail of the transformation.  "SLEEPOVER AT OUR HOUSE!!"

I love US.

Instead of sharing my latest project around here, I decided to let you peak in on our early Valentine's celebration this weekend.  Chris planned the ultimate Valentine's getaway for us on Friday night.  He planned where we were staying, what we were doing and who was going to watch Greta overnight (my first time away from her!) all behind my back.  When he spilled the beans about his surprise getaway, I was freaking out at the thought of leaving my baby, but knew that this was exactly what we needed as a couple.  Brandon and Stephanie (our go-to, reliable, awesome family/sitters) came over Friday around 4 and we were off.  We didn't go far, just 40 minutes north to the heart of Salt Lake City.  It was perfect.  Not too far from home, but far enough to get totally absorbed in our overnighter with just us.   

We shopped:

We ate amazing food...sitting on the same side of the booth.

We went swimming:

(Isn't Chris's face on the left hilarious!?  Love him.)

Our room was on the 11th floor, we woke up to a view of the whole city:

We went to breakfast before heading home:

He gave:

(the Incredible Push Up by Victoria's Secret--I just got done nursing and this was the PERFECT gift--a must-have bra, and my favorite perfume)

She gave:

(Remember when I shared that one letter he sent me while I was on my mission?  I made a book of ALL of our letters we sent back and forth.  Shocker...I DIYed a gift.  Feel free to look around inside.)

Love Letters by Julia Marcum | Make Your Own Book

Have a Lovely Valentine's day.