Updating pics for the House Tour

September 19, 2016October 3, 2016 / Winnie / 2 Comments

I have made some slight adjustments in each room over the course of the past months. After seeing my recent images in contrast to what I have on the House Tour tab……I need to get those updated. So here are some of the things that are different.

Living Room

the happy crazy house living room entry way

Archer photobomb!!! and I still haven’t gotten Dave to help me with the corners of our entry – fail.

The Dining Room

The Kitchen

The Master bedroom

and seeing the curtains I have up in these pics, just convinced me to change them out. Seriously!

The Library

Here is a sneak peek at the changes I have made in Jane’s room.

I have a bunch of small items to touch on going forward: master bedroom curtains, entry paint touch up, library clean up and art revamp, replace black fridge with a white one, etc.

That should keep me busy for a bit. 🙂

Busy Week

March 4, 2015November 1, 2016 / Winnie / Leave a comment

This past week was pretty busy, but very rewarding.

Top of the list:

I got to have my friends 1 1/2 year old little girl, Charlotte, stay with me….cause my friends were at the hospital having twins! Mama, Daddy and twins are doing well. I loved having little Charlotte stay with me…Jules and Jane doted, fought and loved on Charlotte. So cute.

Here she is in all her little cuteness.

Charlotte did so well in a new place, away from her Mama and Daddy. Miss her little face already.

While Charlotte was with us, I took on a couple of canning projects.

Recipes to come – but we did dilly beans, strawberry jam and crushed tomatoes.

And then this happened…..

We introduced a new kitty into our family. Our last kitty, Lillian, died about a year ago and the girls have been pretty persistent in their requests. We picked this kitty up from the Yellowstone Animal Shelter, where she was being held as a stray. I do not know much about her history, only that she is 3 and was living under a front deck for about a month before Animal Control was called to pick her up.

We named her Harriet the Cat, or HarryCat. She has come when called a few times….but it seems to be more of a coincidence. We are working on it. HarryCat is so docile and sweet. She has been very accepting of the kids and dogs.

Crap! I almost forgot. Dave and I had our Birthdays as well. Obviously, there was not a lot of time for birthday exploits….but we will celebrate at a later date. 😉

Homemade Fruit Leather

February 18, 2015November 1, 2016 / Winnie / Leave a comment

Last week, I found myself with 60 apples. I was pretty positive that we couldn’t eat them all before they went bad, so I decided to make some apple fruit leather.

I started by prepping the apples – washing, peeling, coring and slicing.

I did about 30 of the apples to start with. The sliced apples were put in the largest pot I own and I added just a bit of water to assist with the cooking process. I brought the water and apples to a boil and then let it cook for about 15 minutes. This made mashing up the apples easier.

I then put the cooked apple mash into my blender in batches to get a good puree. I then put the heat on the pot again and started taste testing. I did not want to add much sugar so I ended up with less than 1/3 cup. I would add a bit in, stir and taste test until I was happy.

I lined my lipped pans with microwave safe plastic wrap and then put the apple puree filled pans into the oven at 170 F overnight (12 hours). You know its done when it is not sticky anymore but is not crunchy.

I let the leather cool in the pans and then pulled them. To store I rolled them up and put them in the fridge. With the 30 apples I ended up with 4 9×13 pans and 2 9×6 pans.

Yummy!!

Details in the new White Kitchen – Using Contact Paper

January 27, 2015November 1, 2016 / Winnie / Leave a comment

As seen in my previous post (click here), I painted my lowers white. I am working on the long game for the kitchen and narrowing down my design choices for its future. I have a lot of ideas swirling in my head and quite frankly its hard to get a grasp on all the things I want to do. Fancy stove, restaurant style reach-in fridge, island with drink fridge, new pantry….the list is long and funds will definitely not stretch that far. I think I should distract myself from the long game…don’t you?

Yeah! Distraction time.

I had some left over chalkboard contact paper from the Bathroom project and I decided to use it on the inside of one upper cabinet.

turned into this

As you can see, I had a rough time cutting off the bottom edge but otherwise it was an easy install. I then used some command hooks to secure my measuring cups.

Another contact paper project – was just your standard lining of our drawers and cabinets.

More pretty distraction!

The contact paper was an easy and quick project that really cleaned up the kitchen. Our cabinets are the old 1979/1980 dark wood style that seems to suck the light away from you…so getting those insides painted out and lined really helped lighten everything up. I kept the chalkboard contact paper on the inside of only one door so I did not negate all the good the other contact paper did.