CURB APPEAL: POST ONE

The summer after we moved into our house, hubby built a fence out back to block our view of the neighbour's ahem - "English Garden".  He bought pre-made fencing from Home Depot, rented some kind of contraption to dig holes for the posts, and it was finished in a day.

Besides that, we haven't made any changes to the exterior of our home.  We've been running on one salary since always and though we have lots of ideas most of them are out of our price range.  This summer I've been thinking of little things we could do outside that wouldn't cost much and painting the concrete steps was first on the list.  The steps looked awful.  The paint was all chipping and flaking...the steps themselves are chipping away... It was a mess.  Hubby borrowed tools from friends and used a pressure washer, heat gun (a fancy hairdryer if you ask me), and an angle grinder (basically a sander with a wire brush on the end) to scrape off as much of the old paint as he could.  It was slow going but now all of the chipped paint is off and we just have to paint!  That might not get done for a little while because we'll need warm, dry days for the paint to dry.  Here is the "finished" product after all the scraping etc.

Here's a before photo.  We'll see if we make any other changes this summer.  It's always fun to have something to compare to.  If you look closely you can see Leroy looking out on the left hand side of the door.

BARBECUE CHICKEN PIZZA

We've been using a lot of shredded chicken lately and I've been thinking about making this recipe.  Have you ever shredded chicken?  You boil chicken breasts in water and then use two forks to shred it.  Very easy and it's kind of nice because you feel like you end up with more meat in the end.

I made this with this easy pizza dough recipe from Simply Recipes.  I've made it a few times and it's basically fool proof.  While the dough was rising I fried up some spanish onions in a frying pan with butter.  I used to hate onions and I'm just starting to like them but I find I have to fry them before I use them in anything.  I still hate that crunchy onion taste/feel.  I added red peppers and sliced mushrooms when the onions were soft and golden.  I drizzled BBQ sauce over the pizza dough before spreading out my ingredients and I also mixed BBQ sauce into the chicken.  We used a mixture of our dwindling cheese supply - swiss, tex mex, and cheddar.  A delicious, easy supper.  Hubby was a fan.  Me too, actually.

MASTER BEDROOM: POST FIVE

Hubby and I have never shared a closet.  In our apartment my clothes were in the spare bedroom, and in our house his clothes are in the spare bedroom.  We have a teeny tiny closet in our room and it only has one closet door so half the closet is hidden behind the wall.  You have to practically climb inside the closet to see what's hidden in the back.  This is very annoying to me - someone with a lot of clothing!  In an attempt to cut down on closet space, I switched out all my ugly plastic hangers for lovely, thin, suede ones last year.  There is no doubt these hangers take up less room, but the problem was not solved.  The plot thickens.

In a moment of frustration we went to Canadian Tire and found an incredibly inexpensive solution.  They have quite a selection of closet organizers.  A lot of them don't work for our closet because of the one door.  For instance, your typical fold-able/slide-able doors give you more access.  So we bought a simple organizer that consists of two vertical bars and one horizontal. 

This allows me to have an extra row of skirts/shirts in the bottom of my closet.  It kind of doubles up on the space at the front of the closet.  You clip the vertical bars onto the existing rod and the horizontal bar connects between them.  Super easy and made a big difference in my closet!  It cost around twenty-five dollars.

You can see here how the vertical bars "connect" with the floor.  You adjust them to the desired height and they just sort of push against the floor.  They really don't have to be that secure because they are hanging from the metal rod in your closet so it's quite stable regardless.  I highly recommend this as an inexpensive closet re-do!  It's much cheaper (and faster - and easier!) than ripping out part of the wall and installing proper doors.  In a perfect world full of money trees, that's what I'd be doing.  Hubby's things would still be in the spare room, though. :)

MASTER BEDROOM: POST FOUR

I've posted recently about our simple bedroom updates.  First, we had our drapes made and then we tore up our carpet and repainted the walls and trim.  Here's a look at the finished product so far.  We're missing a few things like toss pillows and artwork, but I'm happy with our cozy little bedroom as it is now.  I'm sure we'll add things here and there as time goes on!

This photo shows how our 'new' hardwood floors work with our bedding and curtains.  When we repainted I stuck with the original wall colour so I only had to paint one coat.  Miraculously the hardwood was in good enough condition we didn't do any refinishing.  The carpet had been stapled to the wood so we just had to pull up the staples!  I think it's a lovely shade.

Here's a little peak of our ceiling colour.  This was new to the room.  Previously it was your typical white and I painted it Behr Palatial.  It's a creamy tone with a bit of a pink hue.  Without the blinds on the windows the room gets enough sun that the tinted ceiling doesn't darken things down.  We do notice at nighttime with the curtains closed it is slightly darker with the painted ceiling.  We don't mind that at all!

Hubby's side of the bed.  Those are my two guys over there.  And that's our DIY lamp project.  The headboard?  We bought it off kijiji.  I think we payed fifty dollars or so.

That's my side of the bed!  Cute, eh?!  I found our nightstands at a consignment store (kind of pawn shop-ish) a couple of summers ago.  They were one hundred and fifty dollars for the pair and they really are more of a dresser than a nightstand.  I had to buy that little rug for Leroy once we tore up the carpets.  We didn't realize he really relies on the carpet to get a good grip when he's jumping onto the bed!!  We were shocked (and sad) once the carpet was gone he couldn't get onto the bed anymore!  Mama (aka me) bought this little "landing strip" at Winner's Homesense shortly after.  It's kind of strange because literally it is a landing strip... I don't have the money to pay for a large area rug at the moment.  I like the pattern of the rug and it serves a purpose so I don't really mind that it's a strange size along one side of the bed.

I found this little lucite (maybe?) tray at Winners Homesense, too.  It's kind of cute for a candle, some perfume, and a favourite necklace.  Most of my junk ends up on this too at the end of the day, but I cleaned it off for photos. :)

Last one.  I think our bedroom looks cute!  Add a couple of toss pillows and a couple more photos and we'll be all set.  I'm also on the lookout for a new dresser.  We have a Wal Mart special hubby's mom lent us when we got married, bless her heart.  Otherwise we would have had boxes of clothing on the floor, I think.  It's probably somewhat obvious I mainly like older furniture that is well built and always in style.  I tend to surf kijiji every couple of weeks looking for something to catch my eye!  I'll keep you updated!

CHOCOLATE HAZELNUT SHORTBREAD COOKIES

There's something you should know about me... I never stray from a recipe.

Even though I would consider myself at least somewhat creative, the other part of me is such a rule follower that I have a hard time adding a pinch of this or that if the recipe doesn't call for it.  So the other day when I had a brain wave for a new shortbread cookie recipe, it was a rare moment, let me tell you.

I had crushed a bunch of hazelnuts in our mini food processor earlier that morning and knew it was going to take me forever to use them up if I only put them in my smoothies.  I thought, "Why not mix some into shortbread dough?"  And then I thought, "Why not chop up some chocolate chips in the food processor too?  Make a day of it?"

Here's what you do:

Use a food processor to grind up some hazelnuts.  You won't need very many.  (You can always chop them up, too.  I used to do that before a kind soul gave us their old food processor.  You'll want to chop them up very finely if you are using a knife.)
Again, use said food processor to grind up some chocolate chips.  I used milk and dark chocolate.  Just a little handful of each.

I made my mom's shortbread cookies (and I actually halved this recipe because I don't like to have 50 cookies in the house all at once):

1 cup of softened butter
1/2 cup of icing sugar
2 cups of flour
Vanilla

Mix up the cookie dough, add the hazelnuts and most of the chocolate.  Leave some chocolate for the end.  Then, rather than roll out dough and use cookie cutters (like I would normally do for shortbread), I rolled them into small balls and made a thumbprint in the middle.  Bake at 325 for around 14 minutes.  When they are just out of the oven, sprinkle the remaining chocolate on the cookie so it will melt/stick there.

Voila.  A (simple) new creation.  I thought of that.  They were pretty good, too.  A nice little change from regular shortbread cookies.