Kitchen Progress

When we moved into our house it was "The Land of the Leaves"

Every Lighting Fixture...Leaves.

Every Cabinet Door Knob...Leaves

Ceiling Fans... Leaves

Walls...Leafy Green.

We are slowly but surely remove the offending leaves. 

Now to be fair the people who lived here when we bought the house had very traditional furnishings and the house looked great with their stuff in it. I'm not a traditional girl. I don't know for sure what I am but it's not traditional.

I'd fancy my style is retro/ urban/ cottage. 

That's probably not right but sounds cool to me.

Anyway my kitchen is one of the first things I've taken on.

Here is a before:

Here is another view of the leafy light fixture:

Here are some other shots of the kitchen and a close up of the leaves:

After we moved in our 3 first projects were

1. replace leafy bathroom-like light from the ceiling and install simple pendant

2. remove leafy door hardware and replace with simple polished nickel hardware.

3. Replace non working white dishwasher with new stainless working dishwasher. We tried to be frugal with the dishwasher since we still aren't sure how long we will stay in the area. We found a really well rated whirlpool for $400ish dollars. Perfect.

Then it looked like this:

It stayed this way for a month or so. Somewhere in there we redid the island. See this post to read all about the island.

Then one day while my husband was at work I decided this one cabinet had to come down...like right now. So I removed it and then worried about what husband would say.

He was fine...he puts up with a lot.

Cabinet Down:

After the cabinet was removed I painted the walls Subtle Touch by Behr.

It's a very pale grey. I might repaint it at some point because the shade isn't quite right to me. 

The next shade darker on the spectrum is Gentle Rain. I painted the breakfast nook and family room that color and I like it better but it will have to wait.

We installed floating shelves.

We also removed the chair rail because it was too traditional for me.

Here is the look now:

 I love my open shelves. My picture doesn't show it full because some of the dishes are in the dish washer.

Anyway I'll post a picture the next time all the dishes are clean and set up pretty.

The shelves are kind of temporary. I already had them and didn't want to buy something new while I decided whether I liked open shelves or not.

So mark installed them with special attention to hitting studs (they are just Lowes floating shelves) so they would hold some weight.

Now that I know I like it (a lot) I'll probably replace them with something with wood brackets.

We saved that cabinet I took down. In case we change our minds or move it can be easily reinstalled.

I haven't painted the main cabinets yet. Even though they picture ok, they are in pretty rough shape. See here for more on that.

I'll probably repaint them white but Benjamin Moore Fieldstone also speaks to me.

We still want new counters. They are now the very cheap white laminate. Even though I think it looks ok in pictures, in real life I don't like it one bit.

So there you have it.

Obviously that is not pictures of the whole kitchen.

My kitchen is rarely completely clean. I promise future pictures of the whole thing.

Making Bread

I made bread this week.

With the yeast and the kneading.

It got a little dark on top but I was pretty darn pleased with myself.

I'm definitely going to try again.

Recipe from here.

No Bake Energy Bites

I found this recipe on pinterest a few weeks ago and finally tried them.

They contain ground flax which seemed entirely to healthy to be good.

The chocolate chips and coconut and peanut butter made them yum.

My picture may or may not look kind of gross but if you click the link her pictures are much more appetizing!

Burlap Frame Fix-up

Started with a yellowed matte. 

It originally had this picture in it. It was from my first house over a decade ago.  It's weird to me that I was old enough to own a house 11 years ago. College still seems like it was 5 years ago, but no actually it was 12. Weird. Getting older is beginning to be a bummer.

Anyway back to the project...this is that Pates Baroni pic I remember fondly:

Cut burlap to size:

Stuck Burlap to front of matte with spray adhesive:

Cut and taped, all fancy like on back of matte 

 Added page from old atlas of Kalamazoo, MI (my old home):

I'm thinking I'm spelling Matte wrong...

Decade old picture made new for free.

Well not really free because I did buy the stuff initially but you know what I mean.

I was initially going to use the map as the matte but the sizing was all wrong. I like the way it turned out.

And the Map contains my first three towns (as an adult). Kalamazoo, Portage and Plainwell which is pretty neat.

Breakfast Crescent Casserole

 My mom makes a breakfast egg casserole that is awesome.

We have it every year on Christmas morning.

This isn't it.

It was still yum though.

because everyone wants to see pictures of raw egg.

Someone desperately needs a photography class. 

Ingredients:

1 tube crescent rolls

6 eggs 

Hot Breakfast Sausage (if you are a spicy food lover like me otherwise regular sausage would work)

1/2 cup half and half (I can't believe I actually had some)

1&1/2 cups of shredded cheese (I used a combo of mozzarella and cheddar)

dry mustard 

To Make:

preheat oven to 350 F

unroll crescent rolls in bottom of 9x13 pan (sprayed with pam)

Squeeze crescent roll seams together to get rid of holes (not sure it really mattered)

Brown breakfast sausage, drain and sprinkle evenly on top of crescent rolls.

Beat egg and half&half in a medium bowl

Add a sprinkle of dry mustard to egg mixture 

Pour egg mixture over the sausage

Layer cheese on top

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Dump Cholula hot sauce on your portion and eat up. 

If you don't like Cholula I'm sad for you, but it's still good without.

$1.99 at goodwill to dress up my open shelves = fabulous.

So lately I've been hitting up my local goodwill about once weekly.

I drop off the rugrat at preschool on monday and head on over.

Goodwill is one of those places that I always love in theory but then I get there and feel like a snob.

It grosses me out.

Or I should say it used to gross me out, but I've visited about 4 or 6 weeks in a row and found a treasure every time.

So I guess I'm not a snob after all... but I do want to wash my hands in bleach after I leave... so now I'm confused.

 This weeks treasure (well actually 2 weeks ago but I just got the pics of my camera today)

 Doesn't it make my corelle bowls look super fancy?

Yes it freaking does.

So anyway it was $1.99 and that same day I also found a "Frank Lloyd Wright" style mug (it says so right on the bottom) for $0.59. It's pretty.

I like Franks Lloyd Wright's design but I watched a show somewhere that said he was a jack ass of a father and husband. That detracts from my warm fuzzy feelings for him and his architecture.

Anyway Have a Great Day!