This and That

I really would like to become a more regular blogger. I have lots of ideas for posts, and lots of pictures to share. I have never ever, since my first blog post at least 5 years ago, been good about it. Let's see if I can change that.

Anyway, it's just absolutely beautiful outside. We're having a hard time getting chores done on time, but as soon as we do we are heading out to pick green beans and tomatoes, and hopefully play with the puppy enough to wear him out a bit (yep, we have a puppy now). Then I have to figure out what to do with all the produce on hand! Someone gave us 12 ears of sweet corn a week ago, there's lots of veggies and fruits from the grocery store to eat up, and we have an abundance of tomatoes, yellow summer squash, green beans, basil, and peppers from the garden! If we could just have a few normal evenings and dinners at home it wouldn't be such a big deal but we've been gone or busy for quite a while now.

We actually decided to not go camping this weekend with our church, as originally was planned. We were really torn - it was so fun last year, and the weather is supposed to be a lovely 20° cooler this year. But stuff is just piling up around here, John will be on call - and we have been camping twice already in the past 3 weeks, with another trip later this month. So we decided it was more prudent to be responsible adults.

Sorry I have no pictures for this post. I'm out of time, plus our desktop crashed last week and we have yet to recover our files. But soon I hope to bring things up to date on what's been happening, including summer adventures, new puppy, the many things I love about our new home, and our latest almost-completed project!

PS - Trivia question: anyone know what the background pattern on my blog is called? I did some digging recently to find out as I'm thinking it would look great on a rug in our front room.

Boston Cream Pie

My birthday is in two days and I'm very excited because it gives me an excuse to bake something yummy for myself. All for me! And a few pieces for the other special people around here. ;o)

Some years I decide on a new recipe that I've come across in the several months leading up. Some years I go with an old stand-by. I really love cake and have many favorites but I don't think anything compares to Boston Cream Pie. I really just love that combo in any shape or form: eclaires, doughnuts, cupcakes....really any kind of pastry/baked yummy with rich vanilla custard pudding and a thick chocolatey glaze is just right up my alley. John always knows what to come home with when doughnut shopping for me. He doesn't have to ask.

This is the only recipe I've ever tried for Boston Cream Pie, because it's so good why mess around? It comes from the 1978 (and '79, and '81) edition of Betty Crocker's cookbook. My mom has a copy that no longer has the cover, and it's sort of falling apart. Lots of great classic recipes in this cookbook, and I was a bit giddy when I came across a like-new copy at an antique store last weekend. You can bet I snatched it up!

So here you go! It involves several steps but if you plan ahead you don't need to do them all on the same day, and each part is fairly simple on it's own. And best of all, you probably have most of the ingredients on hand already.

Dinette Cake

1 1/4 c. flour

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 c. milk

1/3 c. shortening (I use butter)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

Heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a round 9" cake pan. Beat all ingredients in large bowl, at low speed, 30 seconds. Beat on high for 3 min. Pour into pan. Bake until toothpick comes out clean, 35 min. Cool.

Split cake into two layers, and fill with Cream filling. Spread top with chocoalte glaze.

Cream Filling

1/3 c. sugar

2 Tb cornstarch

1/8 tsp salt

1 1/2 c. milk

2 egg yolks

2 tsp vanilla

Mix 1st 3 ingr. in 2 qt sauce pane. Stir in milk gradually. Cook over med. heat, stirring, until thickened and boiling. Boil and stir 1 min. Stir at least 1/2 of mixture gradually into egg yolks. Blend into hot mixture in pan. Boil and stir 1 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in vanilla. Cool to room temp.

Chocolate Glaze

2 sq. (1 oz ea.) UNsweetened chocolate

3 Tb butter

1 c. powd. sugar

3/4 tsp. vanilla

    About 2 Tb. hot water

Heat chocolate and butter over low heat until melted. Remove from heat. Stir in powd. sugar and vanilla. Stir in water, 1 tsp. at a time until glaze is of desired consistency.  

Winter Slumps

My brother asked me the other day when I was going to update this blog. So I guess it's time, although really - there's not much to say! We had to pretty much put everything at a stand-still while we save up mucho dinero to replace the garage floor and front walk. This would definitely NOT be top priority for us if we had our own way. We'd rather have actual light fixtures, instead of bare bulbs; paint on the walls; a larger dining room table; a comfier couch; nice floors....you get the idea.

But the last thing on the list of required repairs (given to us by the city when we bought the place - most of the listed projects were inexpensive and we've completed all but this) - is the uneven, cracked garage floor. And that comes with a hefty price tag. At the same time, we've had such an unusually warm winter that work by now has slowed down quite a bit for John. So the saving money part - a minor detail - is taking us longer than it normally would. Everything we would rather do and pay for is put on hold until that garage floor is taken care of. Sigh.

One perk of a warm winter is that spring is arriving so much sooner! And that of course means gardening is just around the corner. Seeds are ordered, and I'm excited to give Straw Bale Gardening a try for the first time. John even has my grow lights all set up in the laundry room! Be on the lookout for more happenings, posts, and pictures once my seeds and bales arrive. ;o)

Meanwhile, here are some pictures from Joseph's birthday party....

This post is purely for the sake of my Robots board on Pinterest.  :o)  My friend WendyP is a daycare provider and posted this on facebook a while back. I saved the picture promptly, because Connor has a thing for robots and for at least a year has been saving random finds in a box for when he makes a robot some day (anything and everything will do - including a bird skull).

Also, his birthday is a ways off, but I thought Robots would be a fun birthday theme! I started noticing all kinds of robot related pins on Pinterest so I created a board just for that. :)

Thanks for the fun idea Wendy!

We're HOME!

Loooong overdue here.... So, we moved in, and gradually unpacked. At first I didn't have internet, then I couldn't find my camera - yada yada yada. And THEN.....

I got huge:

And then Aubrie was here! Just like that! October 14th, 8 pounds 9 ounces.

Since her hat is covering up all her pretty hair, here's another picture. 

She'll be one month old on Monday. We love her. :o)


Anyway, as for the house - projects have slowed down since we moved in, but that's a good thing. It's nice to have somewhat of a life (well, after recovering from child birth that is). Of course we still have a LOOOONG list of things to do that should keep us busy for the next 5 years or so. So this blog ain't goin' nowhere!

Here are some pictures taken around the time of moving in. Keep in mind, these are of the "Keepin' it real" sort of pictures....especially the ones I took a week or so after moving in....

(notice the super hero underwear on top of the PJs)

We're still quite UNorganized in many areas, but it looks much nicer now. I will try to post more current pictures soon, but remember - I have 3 children now. ;o)

Home Stretch

Well folks, it's taken us longer than we thought it would - by a week or two - but even then it's hard to believe how close we really are to moving in! If we can get enough help, we should be able to finish up the last few crucial projects this weekend, and start settling in over the course of the following week. Whew! August was a crazy month with lots of things going on that took us away from house projects. But, we still managed to make lots of progress and here we are!

The bathroom tile is all done, along with the trim work (baseboards and 1 door). It looks superb and all that's left is paint, and putting it back together! 

We also bought the floor paint. Assuming we can get by with one coat, it has ended up costing us 1/3 of what we expected. This is a HUGE blessing because we just weren't sure how the cash flow was going to work in this last month.

We had some help last night with taping off baseboards and sweeping, so we should be able to sand the floors either tonight or tomorrow night, and start painting the floors Friday! That's really the only thing - again, besides the bathroom being put back together - that needs to be done before we move in.

And we are SO ready to be settled in. There will still be projects to work on, but the difference will be that we'll all be HOME together while they're getting worked on. No more back and forth between "house" and "home". No more rushed early dinners and late bedtimes for boys. No more single parenting. 

I must admit I'm dreading the actual moving process. I'm capable of so little these days. Either I get tired really fast, or am in pain from being on my feet too much. So packing and cleaning will be a challenge. One way or another it will all get done and then I just have to tackle the UNpacking bit by bit.

Here are a few pictures from last night - also happened to be our 8th wedding anniversary. :o)  Don't feel bad we were working though. We just got back from a long weekend at the cabin on the lake. It was very relaxing and refreshing, and we came back ready to go gung-ho on the last leg of pre-move projects. 

I will take pictures and post after the last couple things are done, right before we move in!

Bathroom update

We took about a week long break from going to the house, to prepare for and travel to a family event in Oklahoma City. When we got back, John's brother came over one night to get him started on laying the bathroom floor tile. This is John's first time doing tile so it was a fun challenge (I think?) for him. He did SUPER!!!! I love love love it. 

First though a few other updates....

 New hardware installed on the screen door, after the inside was painted to match the rest of the trim in the house.

 Bathroom vanity painted a nice glossy walnut. It was hard to find a paint color that was as dark as I wanted, but it turned out perfectly!. We will be getting glass knobs for the drawers and doors. Once again, here's my inspiration for the bathroom:

When I was Googling around for vintage/Craftsman era bathroom images, two things kept popping up: subway tile, and the really small bathroom floor tiles (in various shapes and patterns). Thanks to a heads-up from my online friend Rachel, we found out these two kinds of tile also happen to be very inexpensive at Lowes! I'm totally in love with the look, and as you can see John did a superb job! He's starting the tub surround tile tonight, which will be white subway tile with a black edge, white grout. 

We used charcoal gray grout. So perfect!

Since we had replaced a couple doors, we also needed to buy new trim for them. While the style doesn't match any of the other trim in the house, it's what will eventually be throughout. Inspiration from this blog. John loves working with wood, and it shows!

Note the new door knobs too. I really really REALLY want glass door knobs but was sad to find out they are PRI-CEY!! So for now it's the $15 oil-rubbed bronze look from Home Depot.

Sigh, it's already started. Surprisingly, this is the work of Joseph. I didn't know he could draw musketeers so well, but apparently he can.


Today when I was over at the house briefly to get these pictures, I also took the chance to paint the bathroom wall color samples (now that I can walk on the floor). Again, keep in mind my inspiration photo above. It's from a Pottery Barn catelog and I came across it several years ago. At the time, I envisioned using the wall color in a mud room or sun room or breezeway - in other words, a small room with lots of light, and a gardeny feel where I could put lots of potted plants. I even have some greeting card prints I've been saving to frame and hang.

Since this house has no such room, I'm using the look in a bathroom after all. It fits the bill nicely though - it's the only room in the house with a south-facing window so it gets lots of light and will be perfect for potted plants. I'm thinking maiden hair fern, coleus, and a geranium for a nice small pop of color.

Anyway, here are the two colors I'd narrowed it down to. After they handed me the samples at Home Depot, with the little dots of paint on the lid, I panicked a bit. They looked much lighter and brighter than I was picturing. But so far, after putting it up on the wall, I think they're very close to what I wanted after all.

This one is called Envy, from Sherwin Williams

And this one is Grasshopper, also Sherwin Williams

Envy on the right, Grasshopper on the left.

Envy in the middle and left, Grasshopper on the right. They are veeerrry close, but Envy is a bit more bright with more yellow in it. I haven't told John which one I prefer, and when he gets back tonight he'll tell me which one he likes. But, I will tell you all - I prefer the slightly more subdued Grasshopper. I think the room has enough light to not need the extra brightness, and it's pretty much exactly what I was picturing!