Happy Easter!

Sunday was Easter, and we hosted both of our families at our house, which was a blast! Lots of food, fun, and installing exterior lights. A future Easter tradition? (I don't think so...)

We had several pounds of leftover ham, but it was delicious, so I'm not complaining! Adam and I have been eating it for lunch every day at work. Mmmm...

In the interest of sharing a few more favorite recipes, our menu included the following:

Fig-and-Orange-Glazed Ham
Parmesan Scalloped Potatoes
Almond Green Beans
Arugula Salad
Pasta Salad
Grilled Zucchini and Squash
Deviled Eggs
Strawberry Shortcakes
Chocolate Trifle

After we finished eating, Adam and the dads went outside to install two exterior lights on either side of our garage door. We also needed to replace the light right outside our front door -- we had a big storm earlier this month, and our (former) storm door got pulled open in the wind, smashed into the light, and was completely broken. We're super grateful to our parents for helping us out with the new lights!

The new lights on the garage look like this:

And the front view with all three lights:

It's hard to photograph... looks way better in person!

DIY Chandelier

We've been thinking for some time about replacing the light over our kitchen table. The one that came with our house was fine, but was more of a ceiling mount deal (below) than the chandelier you might expect over the main dining area in the house.

We had looked somewhat for a new light, but hadn't seen anything too exciting. I decided it would be fun to try and redo one that I found at our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I am in looove with ours... cheap house-ish stuff! So cool! It's like a thrift store for your house. My plan: buy a light fixture with a shape I liked, then paint it whatever color we wanted. We picked out this gold one:

We picked out RustOleum Dark Bronze Hammered spray paint for this project. We used the black color, same brand, for our patio set and really liked it. I hung the light from the garage ceiling so I could spray it from all sides. I was going for an "oil rubbed bronze" look, but got more of a gray instead. Actually though, I really like it -- it doesn't match everything else in our house, which makes it look unique.

But, to skip back a step, we had never hung a chandelier before. It took us a few minutes to figure out how to shorten the length; basically, remove the chain links you don't want (they aren't solid, so you can pry them apart with pliers), and then pull the cord up and trim it. Here's Adam in action with the pliers:

But, the very, very best part was the PRICE. Everything at ReStore is used (and generally donated), so it is very inexpensive. This light had been there for a while, so it was marked down to $7.50. The spray paint was about $6.50. So total cost for this lamp: $14! Amazing. Because of that, we ended up splurging on the light bulbs. I wasn't sure what kind I wanted (it came with a couple different, non-matching bulbs, but we didn't like any of them). Then we saw these at Lowe's and had to have them! They were almost $4 apiece, so that brought our total light fixture cost up to $34... still not bad!

One thing we should have considered: since this hangs over the kitchen table, the cats can reach it. And Jack loves swatting it... uh oh.

Delicious

Readers, so many apologies for our lack of posts last month (and so far this month...) !

We have lots of projects on hold at the moment for two financial reasons: we owed lots and lots of money on our taxes this year (boooooo) and are saving up for a trip to the Florida Keys in June (yay!!!).

That said, I have lots of ideas running around my head, and it probably won't be long before one comes bursting out despite budgetary constraints. I'm hoping to paint both of our dressers black this spring/summer, so that'll probably be my next project, once the weather improves enough that paint will dry while furniture is in the garage.

My current "project": cooking lots of bad-for-you food. Like desserts. Like on a daily basis. Probably a bad idea with an upcoming vacation that involves bathing suits...

Links are below if you'd like to try some out yourself.

Quick/easy:
Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie: Soooo good, if you love peanut butter
Chocolate Trifle: I made this for tonight, so haven't tried it yet--but looks promising!
Too Much Chocolate Cake: This is my go-to cake. Super rich.
Raspberry Crisp: You can use any fruit for this; I made the same recipe with peaches. Delish.

Challenging (for me, at least):
Lemon Meringue Pie: Have you heard the story about how we traded a lemon pie for our kitchen table? It was this one.
Apple Pie along with homemade crust: I hate dealing with dough (rolling it, etc.), but this pie rocks.
Cheesecake: Still perfecting my technique, but I made a fairly successful one this month!

Note on AllRecipes recipes: Read the reviewer comments at the bottom of the page (at least the first five). There are usually some recommended changes that make the recipe much, much better than as written.

Ceiling fan switcheroo

On Friday night, we found ourselves at Home Depot picking up a few things (this is usually where we are on Friday night). We happened to walk by the fans, and decided that this weekend might be a good time to finally update our master bedroom ceiling fan. It had these can-type lights that blocked off lots of light, so it made the room really, really dark. Adam had installed a ceiling fan once before at his grandma's house, so we were confident we could do it!

Here, we've already removed the old fan and Adam is about to open the box with the new fan (which we got from Menard's... Home Depot didn't have a huge selection of fans, we discovered.)

The wiring was a challenge, since one of us (me!) had to hold up the fan above our heads, while the other (Adam) had to do all the electrical work. Here it is completed--with much more light than before!


We decided that the fan we took down should go to replace this ugly one in the guest bedroom. It has tacky gold accents, and people who've stayed in our guest room complained that it made a loud wobbly noise:

This was a bigger challenge, because we didn't have directions for installing this fan. And two of the screws that held it up in the other bedroom didn't work here, which frustrated us to no end... But finally, finally, we got it up and working!


Up next: replacing two more interior doors? Painting the bathroom? Decorating the office? Starting the trim? So many options...

More painting!

Saturday morning, we got up and decided that it would be a good idea to paint our guest bedroom. This is why:

Formerly a child's bedroom, it was all decked out in dark blue and bright orange (not sure if he was a Bears fan or an Illinois fan...) We weren't sure what color to go with, but ended up going with "Chocolate Froth" from Behr. It's definitely a lot more neutral than before:

We've now painted almost every wall in our house. Still up: the bathroom and the office, both of which are OK colors. But I think we'll still paint them :) No more orange walls left, though! Whew.

Shelving and Snow

Sorry for the last of posts for the last couple of months. We haven't had any major projects going on, although we did install wire shelving in our linen closet (photos below) and replace another door (no pictures of that).

We forgot to take pictures for most of the beginning... we tore out the old MDF shelves, patched the holes, and painted the whole thing (it smelled funny, which is what prompted this project). Here I am installing the clips for the shelves:

And, of course, here are our furry friends "helping" with the measuring tape (their favorite!):

And the glorious finished product:


This morning we woke up to a winter wonderland! Adam cleared the driveway, while I took pictures :) We're considering ourselves lucky that we got all our Christmas lights up last weekend!

Front yard:

And back yard:

Refinishing a Kitchen Table, Part 2

The kitchen table is finally finished, and moved back into the kitchen tonight! Here are photos from the rest of the process. After stripping off the old varnish and stain, I was down to bare wood. Then I sanded and stained. These two pieces below are the two leaves; the one on the left has the stain already wiped off. On the right, it's still waiting to be taken off.


After two coats of stain, I did two coats of oil-based polyurethane over the top. You can see it below, where the tabletop is shiny! Next, I primed the legs and sides of the table that I was planning on painting black. I used oil-based primer, too, as water-based products can "raise the grain" of the wood. (Shout-out here to YHL, whose furniture painting tutorial provides much of my inspiration for these types of projects!) As they point out, you can totally use a latex paint over an oil-based primer.

I used Behr's paint/primer combination paint for the legs (we've used this stuff a lot on walls, and it's fabulous). The color is actually Black Onyx from Glidden. But The Home Depot will mix up whatever you want for you, so you can switch back and forth with their brands, which is nice. After a couple coats of paint, I put on a coat of water-based polycrylic finish to make the rest shiny... and here's the finished result!

The cats enjoyed checking it out... it was sort of like they totally forgot what a kitchen table was. Guess it was out in the garage for too long! :)

We're glad that we are now going to be able to park in the garage, too--just in time for cooler weather!