the kitchen is PAINTED!

We bought some red and grey paint for the dining room and kitchen. We tested them. Way too dark.

We bought some white paint. It is called "restful white" (or something like that) by Sherwin Williams (they had a 40% off sale!). We tested it. It is yellow. We painted anyway.

Hopefully it grows on us.

Here it is is all it's *shining* glory. (We might be getting KITCHEN CABINETS SOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

(Our table is in the middle of the kitchen because we plan on sanding the dining room next!)

ceiling texture

I've been slacking. Much has happened around our humble abode and I haven't felt like blogging about it. It's gotten bad enough that one of my sisters said I had to post pictures as skype was blurry. (Yes I wander around my house with the laptop pointing it at various and sundry projects.)

Anyway. I figured I'd start with a before and after of our ceilings. Kinda boring. Unless you've had to stare at a bad drywall/old plaster job for a couple of months. The light would hit the ceiling and you'd see waves. Big waves. Like think crashing ocean waves. Aaron has told me that if he ever thinks he should tackle a drywall finishing job again that I need to stop him. at. all. cost. It is awful junk. So we bit the bullet and rented a texture sprayer thingy. Yes, that's the technical term. It involved spraying and then smoothing it out. Here are the before and after with the before taken about 6' away from the ceiling and the after about 1'. Oh- and the after has been primed and painted. (The before was painted too but I don't really want to talk about all that work.)

It looks pretty simple eh?! NOT! This is what had to happen to the house to do this: (1. standing in the living room looking into the dining room. 2. the den. 3. the kitchen. 4. looooove.)

This is why we ate out a bunch. We didn't really even have a place to eat pb&j's:P

progress

I'll post pictures later. If I posted them today Aaron would be like, "You had time to do a massive blog post?!!!????" We are alive though. Just busy. PAINTING!!!!!!!!!! I may use too many exclamation marks in general but in this case, there is no such thing as too many. All of our stuff is piled in the centers of each room with drop cloths over it. We figured we might as well attempt blitzing it. So last night we ate at Culvers and the night before at Pizza Hut. I'm suffering veggie withdrawal. Hopefully the kitchen will be back together in a couple hours and we can have something (anything) homemade.

Life is good:)

Pinterest and Snow

So a week ago Sunday it was 82 degrees F. It snowed like 3 inches last night. The kinda snow that is perfect for a snowball fight, snowmen and making dirty trucks. Did I mention I packed all of our winter stuff away? Oops. Seriously though? After EIGHTY TWO DEGREE WEATHER I STILL NEED TO EXPECT SNOW?!?!?!?!?! Where am I living?

On another note: I found the coolest website ever! It's called "pinterest". It's a place where you can pin any inspiration photos you find online. So rather than rightclicking and saveasing you just click "pin it" up on your toolbar and it stashes to this website. You can browse other people's boards and pins and repin them on your board. Anyway- check out my pins so far:

angelinalynn on pinterest.com

Mostly I have house ideas, but there are some gift ideas. (For instance- the baby mobile?? Not for me:P) The biggest thing we've been collecting is built in bookcase ideas for the den. So many cool ideas!

And! My sister had a baby girl:):)

in case my sister has a girl

So my sister was due some days ago. I think we all need to start cheering baby on so it'll come meet us all. I won't be meeting him/her until July so I guess it doesn't affect me but, poor mommy:( So I had this purse from a different sister that I got red pen all over and couldn't get the stain out. I thought I'd fix it by making something else. A wee shirt to wear with a turtleneck underneath and jeans. (Please ignore the lining that doesn't match. I wanted the inside to feel cozy and didn't.... ah.... like.... look at the combo before sewing.) Tada:

Yah. Unfortunately I forgot in my cutting frenzie to actually CUT THE STAIN OUT. So it's still there. AND I also accidently cut the fabric (sound familiar?!) so it has this weird zigzag patch. So, since I had made so many booboos I had to give it to someone understanding. So Carla gets it. Isn't that nice of me:P HAHA! Don't worry this isn't the real baby gift. That would be mean. If she has another wee boy it'll sit in Carla's closet until SOMEONE IN OUR FAMILY HAS A GIRL! Or we find someone else understanding. Here's the purse the fabric came from, I think it came from Payless?:

little boy gifts??

You can't sew a little boy a dress as a gift. So I wracked the internet and my brain for ideas. I first attempted some bow ties. My nephews vetoed that idea. "Too tight!!" I figured, what was the point spending all that time and energy making something that they didn't even like. One of my brother-in-laws also thought they were way too girly and not manly enough for his future business partner!)

I haven't solved my problem of finding things to make for big little boys but I did find a cute tutorial for wee boys (or girls). It's a goofball! I've seen them in stores but this took the guesswork out of sizing. There's a couple thing's I'd change next time but it worked out pretty well. You could also sew snaps, buttons or velcro to make the toy more entertaining. It's hard finding quiet toys for events/church gatherings so I thought this was pretty perfect. Oh- to stop an active kid from launching it as some old man's head??? Use a soother/pacifier clip to clip the ball to an item. I paired this with a burp cloth made out of two layers of flannel and voila! Baby boy gift!

Sorry this is an awful picture. I didn't have time to take one at home so I had to unwrap the present in the truck and take the photo on my lap. Oops. You get the idea though. (You can't see in the photo but I centered different animals in each section- a giraffe, monkey and lion.)

touring metro detroit

My mother-in-law has a year pass for the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn that is expiring soon. So the whole family got ourselves together and made a day of it. I love museums. This one was interesting but a whole lot about America the free, the brave, the beautiful etc etc. I guess I should get used to the patriotism. Kinda over the top though. Anyway, the chair Lincoln died in, the presidential cars back to when there were no cars, steam engines, doll houses, trains, airplanes, cars and much, much more. As most of you are likely shivering in anticipating of SEEING such a museum I will stop describing so as to not ruin any surprises. I know- I'm so kind. I will force you to look at photos though.

Next the IMAX to see a "Corral Reef Adventure". It wasn't particularly adventurous but it really made me want to head somewhere tropical. We then headed to Mexican Town for Lunch.

Just down the street was a pedestrian bridge across the highway. I have no idea what the point was, but we crossed it. (Please forgive the jacket. It was raining. I had to buy the rain jacket when I went to Africa. In January. I left it to a week before I had to go. The only jacket I could find in the city was two sizes too big. I hate it.)

Next we parted company from the in-laws and went over to the old train station. Surrounded by barbed wire, completely deserted and all the glass in the windows busted out. It was beautiful in a really wrong way.

John K. Books. They claim to be the largest seller of used books in Michigan. Four floors. They hand you a MAP when you go in! Aaron was drooling. He said the prices weren't that bad either.

Then to REI for some backpacking induced drooling. (I think we found our pot set! We have to make some test runs first though.) Some visiting with friends on the way home. Long, fun day:)

darning little lime dresses

You know that lime dress I made my niece? It was sitting on the ironing board along with two of Aaron's dress shirts. Not a big deal right? So I'm cutting some fabric for a burb cloth and I feel some extra thickness. Yes, I was cutting material on my ironing board. Oops. I cut the lime dress. I came about 1/2" away from cutting one of Aaron's dress shirts. Oops. Ohhhhhhh man. Now I need to figure out how to hide the cut. Right now I have some interfacing ironed on the backside but I think I might need to take the skirt off the dress and take in the side seam a bit. Fortunately the cut is about 3/4" from the seam. BLEH. Or I'll just darn it. That'll look pretty. Here it is the way it used to look before I attacked it:

why you look at the label on canned goods....

So I have this recipe (I was given it printed out and have no idea who to credit for it) for creamy tomato soup that I've modified and tweaked so it isn't as much, "if I eat this I'll gain a trillion pounds in one sitting".

Creamy Basil Tomato Soup
-2 cans tomato soup
-equal amount (or as close as possible) of stewed tomatoes
-2 tomato cans worth of milk (or half 'n half)
-cream cheese (this is where I cut back- the original calls for 1 package, I use 2-4 Tbsp depending on how fat I feel)
-2 Tbsp butter (again- this is supposed to be a whole stick!)
-black pepper and garlic powder to taste
-2 Tbsp basil (or italian seasoning)

Dump all ingredients into soup pot and use your Cuisinart Immersion Hand Blender to mix it all. (Seriously- this is the best invention for creamed soups. You don't have to transfer the whole pot to a food processor and end up dumping half the soup on the floor.) Cook on med until hot. Do not boil. Serve with mozzarella cheese and ritz crackers.

So good. Promise me you'll look at the cans before you dump it into the pot. The last time I made this I only had one can of stewed tomatoes (which are necessary rather than plain diced tomatoes) so I figured I go half and half and use some plain diced tomatoes. I accidently grabbed the diced tomatoes with chilies in them that I use for making salsa. It was HOT. Oops. Aaron ate it like a man though.

junkedy junk junk junk

Not much happening around here. Paid some bills, made myself another batch of dry scones, cleaned the porch off of all the junk, helped my in-laws, worked on my sister-in-law's bride book and cleaned up after working on her scrapbook (crazy how little bits of paper get everywhere).

I somehow have to gather up the energy to tackle the mess in our dining room that's a direct result of cleaning the porch. Bleh. All of Aaron's junk. Tools, ladders, shop-vac, old windows, a fan, buckets of some sort of gumbo, cement board, tile, plywood, drywall, pipe, lunber.... I could go on but that's all I can see from where I'm sitting in the living room. It's very inspiring (NOT)! Of course there is NOTHING over there that is mine. Nope. Nothing at all.

Just please don't poke your head into the kitchen.

Teaser: Aaron's working on our dining room table that we found for free on the side of the road and that needed to have a humpty dumpty done to it! It is so beautiful:) Soon. Very soon:)