Define: Behind

I have meant to write a blog so many times in the last month, and just haven't gotten there.  Partially because my laptop won't work unless it's plugged in, and Jamin keeps stealing borrowing my cord.

One of the few that I actually remember is about putting up curtains in our bedroom.  Our house is heated by radiators.  Big, tall radiators.  In our bedroom, the radiator is right in front of the windows.  I had been searching for curtains for a while, but my length constraint was making things difficult.  Finally I decided to just make my own.

In the interest of getting them made quickly, I ended up buying a tablecloth at Target instead of real fabric.  I know I'll go that route eventually, but we had these awful roll up blinds that didn't really work and smelled like b.o., so...tablecloth it was.

Also, it was $11.18!

I cut it down the middle and hemmed the edges.  Simple enough, but I swear this happens to me every time I try to sew something.  It is totally avoidable (obviously I am just not careful enough) and so frustrating!

Anyway, I finished and put them up!

Last week I took them back down again to paint some stripes on them.  They were kind of boring.  Probably because they are a tablecloth.  The stripes also helped to block a bit more light, which is great!  The streetlight on the corner shines in at just the right angle to be obnoxious and the stripes really do help.  It's also nice for the days we get to sleep in.

I don't know if it's weird that they go with the stripes on the wall, but it works for us.

While I had them down, I decided to redo the way I was hanging them.  I had just sewed two lines down the top and slid the pole through it, but it was hard to open them since there was so much fabric bunching up.  I cut a few rectangles and sewed them onto the back, which helped a lot.  They don't look very pretty, but no one is going to see that part, right?

I have managed to keep up with my recipe a week from Pinterest!  I don't remember what order I made them in anymore, but it's going down as a win in my book because I remember what I made.

Strawberry pizza was one of them.  And it was delicious.  I've actually made it twice now, and used the crust and cream cheese sauce to make a fruit pizza for potluck at church.  The ingredient list calls for cream cheese, lemon juice, and vanilla for the cream cheese part, but when you get to that part in the directions it says to add the sugar.  I just added sugar until I liked the taste, which I think is one of the best ways to cook.  I was also lazy about doing the "cutting in" for the dough, I just cut up the butter and threw everything into my mixer.  It never really got a great dough consistency, but it tasted just fine!

Another one I tried was this pot roast.  We'll definitely be having this one again.  I wasn't sure what kind of meat I was supposed to use (I'm still not sure, which makes me feel really stupid...), and I don't think I ended up using the right thing, but Jamin loved it.  Pot roast meat normally has that stringy, flaky kind of thing going on, but this meat ended up being like steak.  Next time I make it I'll probably just use the same kind of meat because he loved it so much.  The problem is I can't quite remember what it was....shoulder something?  I do know that whatever it was, it wasn't cheap.

I tried my hand at skillet lasagna, and it was not great.  I did some tweaking without actually trying the original recipe, which may have been the problem.  The recipe gives directions for making a sauce, but I already had my spaghetti sauce in the freezer, so I just unthawed a bag of that.  Then I didn't really measure any of the cheese I added.  I think I went a little overboard on the ricotta.  It didn't turn out horribly, but I haven't mentioned trying it again, and neither has Jamin.

Yesterday I tried these biscuits, and oh man, they were good.  Next time I'll add more garlic (I'll be honest, I didn't measure, so maybe the recipe called for more than I used), but that's the only change.
They were super easy and they're already all gone.

I'm sure I've got other things to post about, but this is already a pretty long one, so I'll end it with the hope that I don't go as long in between posts next time!

Define: Fail

Last week I tried to make honey cloud pancakes.  It did not go well.

The recipe says to whisk the egg whites until "peaky."  I whisked and whisked and whisked and they never got peaky, so I thought the bubbly stuff I had was good enough.

Nope.

The pancake was fluffy until I put it in the oven, where it collapsed and never recovered.  I thought a flat pancake was no problem, but the problem ended up being that it just tasted like eggs.  I didn't use eggs to measure the egg whites, I already had some and thought I could just eyeball it.  I will not try to do that again.

I'm sure that when you make these correctly, they are delicious.  However, I did not, and my results were not delicious.

Tonight I'm trying french bread.  I already realized one oops, the recipe calls for instant yeast and I used active dry yeast, so we'll see how that goes.  I didn't even know that there were different kinds of yeast until reading through the comments while my dough was (not) rising.  Ahwell.  The comment says her dough didn't rise either, but that it still worked, the bread was just kind of heavy.  I can live with that.


edit:
Actually, the bread is really good.
:)

Define: Chevron

I have been meaning to post about this for a week now....

Since our second bedroom was already gray and yellow, we decided to just keep it those colors for the nursery.  They're also pretty gender neutral colors, and we're not going to find out what we're having. :)

The big project with this room is going to be the floor.  There was carpet when we moved in, but our pets....well, we took the carpet out, let's leave it at that.
There's wood floor underneath, but it needs to be sanded and refinished, which is going to just be time consuming.  We were planning to have it done when the floors were fixed from the radiator fiasco, but it was going to cost $600!  Ridiculous.
Anyway, we haven't really gotten started on that yet, but it's definitely at the top of the list.

Since we weren't ready to tackle the floor yet, I decided to spruce up the paint a little bit.  I wanted to do something to the walls in that room, and when I saw a chevron tutorial on Pinterest I knew it was meant to be.

I started out by measuring the wall, and dividing it up into squares, mapping it the design out on paper.  I don't know how I thought I was going to do this on the wall, but I ended up buying a chalk line.  I LOVE IT.  There is no way this would have turned out as well as it did without it.

It's a little hard to see the lines, this was my first time using a chalk line.

After making the squares, I taped my design.  The squares made this so. easy.  It was a little time consuming, but once I got into the swing of it, it really didn't take too long.

Before I painted the gray, I went over the edges of the tape with the yellow paint, just to make sure the gray didn't seep through.  This may have worked, it may have been a waste of time, I really can't say.  I can say that I have nice, crisp edges on my lines though.

There are still some lines from the chalk, I was too excited to wait to take a picture until it was dry enough to wipe them off.

I am so proud of the way this turned out!  I was telling Jamin before I did this that I was afraid I couldn't make gray and yellow gender neutral, because everything that I like in these colors is kind of girly, but I think that this helped man it up a little bit.

I let the paint sit for a few days before wiping off the chalk with a damp towel.  It came right off!

Now I just have to find other places in my house to do more fun paint things... :)

Define: Resolutions

Basically my only resolution this year was to try one new Pinterest recipe a week.  So far, so good!  I did leave out the week that we were in Greece, but I ate new food, so that counts, right?

The first thing I tried was this creamy garlic pasta.  Jamin is not a big fan of sauce on his noodles (he likes them plain, with salt.  boring.), so when I found out we had a friend coming for dinner, I was excited to finally try this one!
I won't say that it was a disaster, but it didn't come out the way I had planned, either.  I was also making chicken fingers, and it turns out that the pasta is not something you should multitask while making.  Not at the beginning anyway.  The garlic got a little too done, and I think it just got kind of bitter.  Is that a thing?  Does garlic get bitter if you burn it?
Anyway, Vicki said it was good, but I didn't really like it (owing to my errors, not the recipe).  This is one I'll definitely try again, and I think it will turn out much better the second time.

After we got back from Greece, I decided to try pierogis.  These were awesome.  Jamin was surprised how well it came out for being the first time (I don't think things go wrong that often.).
I made some of them with potato and cheese filling (I love making mashed potatoes, so I took some liberties with that part of the recipe.), and some with chicken and cheese.  Jamin is really picky learning to try new things, but he doesn't love potatoes (yet), so I made a few just for him.  I just cooked and shredded some chicken breast and added cheese.  Simple.
This is definitely one to make again, probably tonight.  Another thing I really like about this one is that you can freeze them!  I make huge batches of spaghetti sauce and freeze it so that all I have to do is defrost it while making the noodles.  So. Easy.  I'd rather spend a few hours making a big batch so that when I get home from work all I have to do is heat something up.
I will say that these are time consuming, but overall really easy.

Last night was a big night, I tried two!  I made this copy cat Pizza Hut pan pizza, and Olive Garden breadsticks.  Both were pretty good, I think I just need to make bread a few more times before I really get the hang of it (they both just seemed really heavy, any suggestions?).  I also wasn't impressed with the cheese we used, but that's an easy thing to change next time.

Define: Storms

Michigan is kind of making me bipolar right now.  When we left Greece, it was like 60.  When we landed in Detroit, it was 9.  Then yesterday was in the 50s? Right?  And today I woke up to snow and ice.

Ugh.

After Jamin and I got married and brought Joktan to our apartment, we discovered that he is terrified of thunderstorms.  I'm not sure how no one realized this until he was four years old.  Maybe living in a house you don't realize the difference between him hiding and just sleeping in a quiet place.  In the apartment, however, it was very obvious.  His favorite place to hide was under the kitchen sink.  He could somehow open the cabinet door and slip in.

The first time he did this I completely panicked.  I looked EVERYWHERE for him, and I couldn't find him.  Then I saw Haven trying to open the cabinet door.  We kept the kitty treats in there, so at first I didn't think much of it, but after you've been looking for a big cat in a small apartment for 30 minutes, you start to look places that you're sure he's not.  Sure enough, there he was.

This Monday night, I woke up around 4:00, and I thought I saw lightning.  But that didn't make sense, because it's January, right?  Then I saw it again.  I didn't hear any thunder, but we had a fan on, so maybe I just didn't hear it.  Then I thought, "Oh, I bet Joktan is freaking out."  We haven't had any storms since we've moved, and I don't think Joktan has really found his hiding place yet.  Right now we have a lot of stuff crammed under the kitchen sink, and there's no way he could fit in there.  "I wonder where he's going to hide," I thought.

No sooner had I thought it than I felt something pawing at my back.  There was Joktan, trying to burrow under the covers to hide.  I knew he was really freaked out because he really hates Jake, and Jake was already lying on my legs, about a foot away.  I lifted up the blanket and he scurried under and curled up next to me.  Perhaps feeling left out, Haven joined about two minutes later, and curled up on the other side of me.

It was really cute until I wanted to roll over and I had a deadweight dog on my legs, whiny cat on my right, and freaked out cat on my left.

I'm hoping for no more storms for a few months. :)

Define: Chalkboard paint

I bought chalkboard paint at Lowe's a few months ago, and just never got around to putting it anywhere.  Yesterday while I was cleaning I came across it, and remembered having seen someone use it on their refrigerator.  I thought about it for the rest of the day, and when this morning I was still thinking about it, I decided to give it a try.

I always forget to take before pictures, but I'm sure you can picture a plain old ugly white fridge, so here's an after.

(Don't mind the horrible unfinished wall in the background. I'm getting there.)

After wiping down the fridge, I used Valspar chalkboard paint.  At first I was worried about the drying time, but it actually dried really quickly, which was great because it needed three or four coats.

If I were to do this again:

- I would find a way to do it while the fridge was off.  I mean, I did turn it off, but there was still stuff in there.  It would be easiest to do empty.

- I would try harder to get the handles off.  I looked at them for a minute, didn't see a way to get them off, and gave up.  I think they might have looked cool white, but since I didn't have a brush at first, I accidentally got paint all over them with the roller.

- The rubbery seal part was weird. I left it white, but there's paint on it, and it looks weird.  I think I'll probably paint it black soon.

Overall though, it was really easy and I'm really happy with it.

Define: (everything is completely) Different (because I haven't blogged since 2010)

2010. That was a looooong time ago. And even my last post was a few months after the one before. And now everything is so different.

The first thing that happened since I stopped blogging was that I graduated from Douglas J and got a job at a salon in Chelsea. I have been working there for two years now, and I am still really enjoying it. Now that I live in Jackson (another change) a few people have asked if I plan to look for a job closer to home, but I can't say that I want to. After two years, I have started to build up a clientele, and I'm not "the new girl" anymore. I don't really want to start over at a new salon. The biggest reason, though, is that I really love the people I work with. I have been really blessed to make some good friends, and I am so glad to know each of them.

The next thing was getting married! Well, I guess getting engaged came before that. Jamin and I had our wedding at my dad's house August 27, 2011. He is my best friend, my favorite, my partner, my Jam. He is the best.

After the wedding, we moved to an apartment in Jackson. We took Jamin's cat Joktan with us, but a few months after moving in, we had another addition. This story is going to seem to go into pointless detail, but it's important.
One morning before a wedding, I realized I needed to run to Meijer to get a card, and since I was going, I thought I would get a new litterbox and litter. Joktan was, ahem, slightly missing the mark, so to speak, and we needed a box with a lid. I got to Meijer, grabbed the litter and box, and then realized that I had already gotten a card for the wedding (the night before! why did I not remember that?!), which was the whole reason for going to the store. Oh well, right? When I got back to the apartment, I had both of my hands full. I knocked (and by knocked I mean kicked the door a few times), but Jamin was upstairs, so I set everything down to unlock the door. I picked the litter and box back up, and out of the corner of my eye, saw a small white something come out of the woods near our door. I turned, and there was a little gray and white kitten running towards me. I didn't know what to do. The door, was open, my hands were full, I couldn't kick it, it was a kitten! So inside our apartment it ran.
"Jamin Jamin Jamin JAMIN JAMIN!!!!!!!"
I dropped the stuff and ran inside to grab the stray. I picked her up, and she immediately started purring (and then it was all over, haha). I called to Jamin, who came downstairs, and didn't even think of putting this cat back outside. Joktan was already at the top of the stairs, hissing at the intruder. I told Jamin we shouldn't keep this cat, we didn't even know if we could have more than one. I had to go do hair before the wedding, so I took the cat back outside with me and put it down. She followed me to the car (She is still pretty obsessed with me, actually. She follows me a lot.), and after I drove (sadly) away, she started crying. Jamin heard her inside, and his big loving heart couldn't take it, so he went and let her back in. When I met up with him later for the wedding, he informed me that we had a new cat.  We decided on the name Haven.

We're pretty sure that God had a plan to bring Haven into our lives (since the only reason I went to the store was for the card, which I already had), and since letting Haven into our house, we've learned a lot of things about God. Jamin says he wants to write a book about things he has learned about God from our animals, and I am very excited to read it.

In August/September of 2012 we moved to a house in Jackson, very near our church.

We're still getting things figured out with that, but a radiator exploding in October kind of hindered a lot of the progress. All the (hot) water that came spewing out on our main floor went right through the wood floor and came through the ceiling of our (finished) basement. We have just gotten all the repairs done.

In late September we adopted a dog. He is crazy. I'm not really sure how I feel about him right now. We tried to take him back to the shelter, but we just couldn't do it.

The biggest news is that we are having a baby! Our current due date is July 1, but we are going to have an ultrasound in the beginning of February, and hopefully we'll have a better idea then of when to expect. I'm not gonna lie, I am obsessed with the idea kind of hoping to have twins. I got pretty sick for the first few months (lost a few pounds, yay!), which I know is probably nothing, but still makes me not very excited to do it again.

As of right now, Jamin and I are in Greece with a group of others from 1208 Greenwood. We've been here since last Thursday, and head back Monday. It's been really cool, but I am so excited to see my cats and sleep in my bed. And our wood floor was refinished from the radiator fiasco after we left, so I'm excited to see that too.



I also promise to try my best to keep up with the blogging again.