2013 Goals

1. Organize one room per month - Kitchen, Bathroom, Office, Storage Room, Laundry Room, Bar, Kids' Room

2. Pay off one school loan

3. Save to build a shed

4. Save to put in new windows

5. Build garden in back corner of yard

6. Paint drink station

7. Paint trim of one room per month - Kitchen, Bathroom, Kids Bathroom, Office, Bike Room,

8. Paint Play Center

9. Make an outdoor rug or get a cheap plan one and paint it.


Source












10. Paint outdoor chairs and varnish

11. Make a gallery wall up the stairway

12. Make a frame like this..

2013 Backyard Projects

1. Plant a wildflower garden by the firepit.

Echinacea 'Julia'

Compact and citrusy! 'Julia' is a bright orange coneflower that's a member of the Butterfly Kisses series of dwarf varieties. Ideal for tight spaces, this pumpkin-color flower grows just 15 to 18 inches tall.

Sedum 'Pure Joy'
Sedums are a joy of gardening -- they are easy-care, drought-tolerant, and come in a wide range of foliage and flower colors. This new upright sedum offers all that and a bit more. It changes looks every season: In spring, small blue-green serrated leaves emerge, growing into a perfect low mound -- a great asset to the front of the border.

Echinacea 'Supreme Cantaloupe'

Absolutely the color of a slice of ripe cantaloupe, 'Supreme Cantaloupe' coneflower is gorgeous for bouquets. The young brown-eyed flowers with a frill of double petals resemble gerbera daisies.


2. Make drink station out of Baker's Rack

3. Paint a porch rug from a canvas drop cloth.

 

Source



HGTV Painted Canvas Rug

4. Nurse your lawn back to health. 

5. Paint Chairs and Poly

Look at Young House Love to see how to use this varnish on chairs after painting.

6. Replant vegetable garden. Look at This Website to see how to mix soil/compost and mix eggshells and water for not so hot peppers and tomatoes.



Recipes to Try

 Zesty, Juicy Vegetarian Summer Sandwich

Ingredients

Serves 4
1 pound (scant 2 cups) fresh ricotta
Zest of 2 lemons
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus 4 teaspoons for drizzling
2 pinches coarse kosher salt
1 pinch ground black pepper
4 long, even slices of very good bread
2 large, perfectly ripe avocados (approximately 18 ounces), at room temperature
1 pint mixed-color grape tomatoes, cut in half horizontally (you won't use quite the entire pint)
8 red pearl onions equaling 2-3 ounces, thinly sliced into rounds (or equivalent in thinly sliced red onion)
4 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
Skin of 1 preserved lemon, flesh removed, finely diced
½ teaspoon toasted poppy seeds


Directions
Mix the ricotta with the lemon zest, ¼ cup olive oil, and salt and pepper, and set aside.
Arrange slices of bread on a cutting board and divide the ricotta mixture evenly among the four slices. Spread into a generous even layer.
Split the avocados, remove the pits, and slice each half into even slices without cutting all the way through the leathery skin. Then, with a soup spoon or a flexible rubber spatula, release the flesh and arrange the slices neatly and evenly among the bread slices.
Artfully and attractively arrange the tomatoes by nesting them into the soft avocado. Then arrange the red onion slices over the tomatoes.
Garnish each sandwich with the sesame seeds.


 

 Maple-Glazed Salmon

Makes 1 lb of fish
1 pound wild salmon filet, de-boned
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
pinch cayenne pepper
salt and pepper
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a small bowl combine maple syrup, cardamom, paprika, cayenne and a bit of freshly ground pepper. Whisk until mixture is smooth. Adjust to taste.
2. Arrange salmon filet on a cutting board. Remove the bones (if your fishmonger hasn't already) and cut into pieces, size as preferred. Brush syrup mixture evenly over the salmon filets. Place a large cast iron skillet into the oven and allow it to heat up for about five minutes while the salmon rests.
3. Place the salmon in the preheated skillet (scale-side down) and cook for about 10 minutes. Brush more glaze onto the salmon and cook for an additional 3-5 minutes until the salmon is cooked to your liking

Overlays

SUPERimpose

This charming chest is an "upscaled" rendition of this.....

$69 IKEA 3 drawer "Malm" chest.

A month ago I sent out a "heads up" to some of my followers concerning the release of the latest issue of  House of Fifty magazine online.

I recently found the time to check it out. It's a great issue. One of the articles I enjoyed the most (pg.66) was a piece on business partners, Danika Herrick and Cheryle Rhuda, co-founders of O'Verlays. 

After using vintage fretwork panels on a piece for a client, the two were so impressed with the outcome that they decided to pursue a venture manufacturing their own fretwork designs. 

With their online store, O'verlays, offers many patterns, varying thicknesses, and panels available in sizes of up to 4 by 8 feet. They offer custom designs as well. 

I particularly love the idea of using this product to affordably update an older home.

Before:

Pattern, Gracie:

After:

These 60's / 70's sliding closet doors look amazing.

We've all seen some version of this heavy pine bed. O'verlays takes it to a new level.

I'm the first one to say that I think that some of this trend can be "o'verdone". That being said, with a little imagination, a little O'verlays goes a long way.

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So after tearing out ALL of the plants from my back garden I am finally finished. It only took oh...2 MONTHS! We are on our way to having pretty flowers if only  I can remember to water... we won't talk about the flowers in the front yard. Well it's all done and now I can tell you how it all came together

About a 2 months ago I had the random idea to search Craigslist for "limestone" and was lucky enough to find an ad on the last day it was up there for a cattle ranch out by Eldorado. We made a trek there one saturday and with one blown out tire later we finally made it home with a ton of limestone.

Well after raiding Walmart yesterday I was able to find some great flowers and even some vegetable plants. Here is how it all turned out.

And here's a little close up action...

And after all of that prettiness I had to put something in that was actually useful other than just looking at it. So I put in some big and cherry tomato plants, bell pepper plants, and some cucumber and squash. That is what was left of them once Autumn was done with them.

So there you have it. A project that was bound to happen the day that we closed on our house 1-1/2 years ago and started 2-months ago. It is now finished!

Wedding Week 2010 - The Paper Goods

I am so lucky to have a talented cousin that is so willing to help me out. She actually is the head of the Graphic Design department at Wyoming University. She helped me out by designing all of my paper goods that went out for the wedding.

Our colors were red and orange. Here is our invite inspired by a fancy letterpress company in New York City.

We then had a details card that was included with the invite.

And of course we had our rsvp card to be sent back.

Then came the programs for the ceremony

Then to make the place settings look nice we had a menu made up at the reception

And last but not least we had thank you cards printed up for me to send out for all of our gifts.

These were printed so that some of the design would be folded onto the back of the card.

So there you have it. That is almost all of our paper goods for our wedding. I was so happy that I was able to coordinate all of the items together and it cost so much cheaper than if we would have ordered some from an invitation store. So thanks goes out to my wonderfully talented cousin, Jenny.

Wow! I have been married an entire year now! How did that happen? Last night  after a blissful weekend we asked each other if you could go back and redo anything about our wedding what would it be?~ I didn't have anything. I am so glad and amazed with how wonderful it turned out that I could not think of one thing that I would do differently. Ben said he would just like to go back and relive the day, "It was alot of fun and I just want to go back and do it again."

I just can't believe that we didn't have everything come crashing down on us. Everything seemed to come out so smoothly, and I still can't remember how my bag for the wedding night ended up in our car. And NO ONE was stressed out! Everyone was very cool calm and collected and we all just had a great time. I will never understand why people just don't spend the money if you have it to be able to enjoy yourself. I wanted everyone including my family to have a great time. I am so lucky to have a great job that I can afford the ability to make that choice.

I just wanted to go back and look at some of the items that made that day absolutely perfect.

So first off is the most important part of the deal...THE DRESS!!! Any girl knows that the dress pretty much solidifies the tone of the ceremony. Everything always seems to be brought back to the dress. I wanted mine to be a little different than everyone elses. So first I went with GOLD! Being so pale white on white just wasn't the most flattering option. And I love that they are coming out with so many options these days.

I loved the back of the dress. And since that is what most of the people will be looking at when they're looking at me that seems to me to be a key factor. You can't really tell but what is joining the draped top to the lace bottom is a beautiful beaded flower pattern. But not like any tacky roses or anything, I think it was like a beaded lily pattern.

The front was awesome too. SO FLATTERING! Anybody who dogs on draping has not seen a well made dress. This dress made me look like a toothpick, which is never something to complain about. I loved the old time antique feel  of the lace and the moderness of everything else.

It was perfectly different than the other ballgowns I had seen too many of the summer prior.This set the stage for everything else at the wedding from the invites, to the cake, and everything in between. I was so amazed that this was the third dress I tried on.

Home Projects To Do List

Based off of my Home Projects Calendar I have very little time to make a list of the projects I want to complete in the year of 2010. I figured I'd better get started, so here we go.

1. Make a console table for basement - Something like this ...

with plans from http://www.knockoffwood.blogspot.com/

2. Make an entertainment center for basement - Like this one that's a knock off from Pottery Barn's Logan collection

3. Make shower curtain for guest bathroom. - This is a work in progress. I will post when it's done, so stay tuned
4. Make curtain for guest bathroom - This one will match the shower curtain.
5. Find/Make curtain for office - Not sure what I want for this yet
6. Make surround for fish tank - Hopefully it will come out like this...

7. Paint fish tank base - Hopefully it will look like the center base above.

8. Find pictures for my new frame gallery in basement - I need something to fill these...

9. Fix shingles that blew off of porch yesterday

10. Redo front gardens

11. Redo back gardens

12. Make a stone patio with a fire pit

13. FINISH painting trim
14. Organize our master closet
15. Make a craft closet out of the guest bedrooms closet
16. Paint our master bedroom and bathroom

Well that's what I have for now. I'm sure that I will add a million things to this as the year goes on.