Back with brownies

My counters are filthy, my sink is full of dirty dishes, I haven't posted in a year (?) and I took this poorly composed picture with my iPhone. 

There. All of my reasons to hold off on posting this.

But, I haven't posted in a year, and I really want to start again. I am still trying to figure out in what kind of capacity I want our newest addition to be featured, so I won't hit on that yet. 

But, I have been thinking and talking and talking and talking about homemade brownies lately and wanted to share my favorite recipe. Despite trying different types of "favorites" from my favorite blogs, I ended up going back to an old standby in my recipe book; the brownie recipe that I use to make brownie cupcakes, only to find that even in a bar form, this is an amazing recipe! 

For those of you that still use and love the boxes...they're great, right? But let me just make the case for homemade, from-scratch brownies for you.

They are: 

easy

quick (I would contend that they are almost as quick as the box mix)

made with pantry staples

so, so tasty

So, without further ado:

My Favorite Brownies

yield: 1-8"x8" pan 

4oz dark chocolate*

1 stick unsalted butter

1 c (8oz) firmly packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 t vanilla extract

1/2 t kosher salt

1/2 c (2.7oz) all purpose flour

1/2 c chocolate chips** (optional)

Preheat oven to 350° (325° if you have a convection oven)

1. Using a serrated knife, chop the chocolate

2. Over a pan of simmering water, melt chocolate and butter in a heat-proof bowl while stirring

3. Whisk the sugar, then the eggs, and finally, the vanilla and salt in to the chocolate and butter

4. Using a rubber spatula, fold in flour and chocolate chips. 

5. Grease and line an 8"x8" pan with a strip of parchment paper that covers the bottom and goes up two sides then grease the parchment

6. Pour batter in the pan, smooth, and bake for 20-30 minutes

7. Pull from the oven when a toothpick comes out allllmost clean (there will be just a few crumbs that stick) and allow to cool in the pan for 20 minutes before pulling them out with the help of the parchment handles

*Use a good quality here with a high cocoa content -- but, you don't have to break the bank; my go-to baking chocolate is the 72% dark chocolate pound plus bar from Trader Joe's. You can't beat $7.99 for 17.6 oz of chocolate.

**Mint chocolate chips is a favorite to add in our household.

RugsUSA.com Purchase Review

I posted this teaser about our purchase from RugsUSA.com a few weeks ago. Ok, more like forever ago, I'm a horrible blogger. 

The delivery packaging was a bit sparce, I must admit, but we did only pay $350 for an 8x12 100% wool rug, so I suppose I can't be too picky. And though there was a small hole (maybe an inch), I did rip it open a bit more to get a peek.

Thankfully, it was a nice sunny day when it arrived, but I was home anyway so it wouldn't have mattered in our case. Not everyone is lucky enough to almost always be home for deliveries though.

As you can tell the animals were obsessed with the off-gassing (which really wasn't as bad as I had braced myself for...reviewers can be really harsh on that topic). 

And when it is all put back together, the room looks a bit crazy but I expected as much. You see, the rug purchase is the first step in a nearly whole-room makeover. So, in the end, the chairs will be traded out for some smaller, solid colored chairs, and the couch will be traded out for a brown leather couch. In my dreams, this couch would grace us with its presence, but we'll see how much money we can save up for that purchase!

And while I love the restored antiques we use currently as a TV stand and coffee table, eventually I would like to replace them with some slimmer pieces and move these to bedrooms. 

The gray is a bit darker than I had anticipated and shows our white pet fur like nobodies business but that's not a fault of the rug. 

It is a looped wool rug that I was concerned would be a problem with our darling, un-declawed kitty but thankfully, he hasn't shown much interest in it. He is too set in his old couch-destructing ways, I suppose. 

And a few of the loops are a bit off in a few places where the two colors meet, but again...$350, 8x12, 100% wool. 

And it sheds, quite a bit at first. We're still filling up the Dyson canister every few weeks but it has tapered off drastically in the past few days. I am confident we are nearing the end of that issue. 

And the nasty plastic backing is covered with a nice layer of cotton burlap-ish fabric (pet-peeve from the old rug). 

On the whole, we are very pleased with the purchase (though I'm still convincing Michael of my eventual vision), and I honestly don't think we could have done better for the price. Even those at Value City Furniture that were comparable in size and price were made of horrible scratchy synthetics. No Thank You!

It's here!

The new rug arrived today just as I'm off to visit a friend and her darling baby.

I'll be leaving it in the wrapper until Michael gets home to stretch out the suspense. It's also kind of a joint valentines day gift so I don't feel right opening it without him.

There was a little rip in the packaging though...which I may have made a little bit bigger. So, here is a little sneak peak. I'm liking the feel and color of it so far but we'll have to wait for the full reveal for an actual review.

It's the little things

...that make all the difference. Am I right?

I showed you this picture a few weeks ago to highlight the beautiful work Michael had done carving down and installing the crown molding over our cabinets.

What this photo also highlights is how horribly unfinished the kitchen looks without window molding or a windowsill. (And believe me, it also feels unfinished without a windowsill to sit stuff on!)

I've been trucking along (...well, crawling at a snails pace), stripping the layers and layers of most likely lead laden paint from the original molding and it is finally all stripped, sanded, the seemingly millions of old nails hold have been filled and now it's (almost) all primed.*

 And up on the wall it goes!

How are we doing? Kidding...

I thought this would be as far as this update went; lots and lots of beautiful molding going up all around our kitchen. I was wrong though...

This apparently happened while I was at work** this morning. Granted, the window sill is just sitting there, unattached, and the lower molding is being held up with tape, but it's a start. It needs some further leveling and calking before being permanently fixed in place.

And this is happening now! Working with all the weird/slightly off angles in our house has been no picnic for the resident woodworker, but it's getting there.

Hopefully this week will be filled with lots of sanding, priming, securing, and painting!

*On a related DIY note: while I love, love, love my soy gel paint stripper (it works better and is much less smelly than other products I've used), this job would have gone much quicker had we tried our heat gun first (totally forgot we had that when we started out...oops!). About half were stripped with soy gel and half with the heat gun.

**Yes, I am indeed working again, 2 days per week in a sweet little bakery. I'm loving it but don't want to say much more for now. I am still there on a "trial" period...for 3 more months. Apparently the tight kitchen quarters (and I mean TIGHT) have caused many people to leave abruptly so they do a very extended trial to make sure everything is working out and everyone is happy.

Whoops!

I'm not sure if you all are aware of this, but we adopted this adorable puppy last year. 

Kidding...as if I weren't the one blowing up your facebook and instagram with photo after photo! 

Welp, over the past few weeks we started weening her off of her kennel while we were gone for quick trips out. 

2 Sundays ago we headed to the store on a supposed hour long grocery store trip that ended up lasting more like 3 or 4 hours. 

We were good and scoured the countertops for tempting treats before heading out, but I suppose that since having a pound or two of butter on my counter at any given time is not strange, that last 1/2 pound camouflaged itself into the woodwork. 

So, after arriving back at home and putting away the goods, I started searching for my butter. It was nowhere to be found, not even the bright red wrapper. 

Next thing I know, I hear Michael scolding Frieda in the living room. I don't remember the exchange exactly but this is pretty much how it went:

Me: Did you find the butter?

Michael: No, but I think I found where it was.

This, my friends, is what he found. Rather, he found it with 2 less holes, the other two apparently came through the week as the lingering butter tempted her more and more as I showered or generally left her unattended. (The rug has since been doused in bitter apple spray in this locale.)

 The proof that this was indeed the place of death for the butter was found on the slimy, greasy computer cord that lay nearby. Thank goodness she didn't decide to eat that as well! 

Ah well, we weren't planning to have the perfect puppy-hood anyway. And while we love and appreciate this (hand-me-down) rug, it has never been our living room style, really. We had been planning to replace it for the 2 years we've been here in St Louis. 

And this is what it will (hopefully, as long as we like it upon arrival) be replaced with:

It's not the greatest quality photo but my fingers are crossed that it'll be great in real life. And in reality, it won't match our current furniture that well either but those are also to be replaced in the near future with something in a brown leather. 

We found it on sale on a Pinterest popular discount rug website for $350 for a 100% wool 8'6"x11'6" rug. I'll be sure to give a review of the quality and company when it arrives.

And the old rug will go to live in a bedroom where it will fit in more and where it's poor holes will be covered by a bed.

Color coordination

No, this is not a style post. 

Coming from a colorful household, I never understood just how overwhelming it would be to choose a color pallet for an entirely white house.

I went through our choice of the chartreuse walls in the kitchen a few posts ago but essentially, we wanted a light and bright kitchen. There is a lot of stainless steel going on in that room so we didn't want it to look too "industrial".

The dining room was next and because of our very bright and eclectic dining room furniture (orange and french blue) we wanted to go with a neutral-ish color. We ended up going with Sherwin-Williams brand in the "Pewter Tempest" color. I love the medium tone grey because it is just dark enough to not feel bland but not so dark that you feel closed in and it has a slight warmness to it that goes with the wood molding nicely. 

In the living room we went for this, admittedly, dark indigo blue color. Michael has a thing for old, dark Victorian houses and since the mantle offers so much dark woodwork we decided to make it the theme of the room. The color is another Sherwin-Williams color (we will soon become their best clients...thankfully they are less than a block away) Indigo Batik.

The living room is also a good size so we weren't too concerned with the dark color making it feel cramped. 

We had to try hard to coordinate the colors since there really aren't hallways or "neutral" spaces between the room to act as a color buffer but I like the coordination of the three cooler colors. 

The next project will be painting molding in for the kitchen then we start our painting move upstairs with the entryway/stairway/upstairs hallway (this will probably be a lighter neutral, perhaps a lighter shade of the Pewter Tempest) then on to our bedroom where we are aiming for a plum or eggplant purple.

The kitchen in its current state

Yup, yup. It's been forever, I know.

I have no excuse. Ok, maybe I do and it mostly pertains to my own laziness in dealing with the fact that our photo library is on an external hard drive up in the spare bedroom that I never want to step foot in since it appears that a craft store blew up in there. 

Enter: new phone with easy blogging capabilities.

Anyway, we've been trucking away on the kitchen and making lots of progress. 

We both got iPhone 5s this past week and I'm still learning how to use it. The panoramic photo function is a great way for us to show everything that is going on in our tight little kitchen. Of course, I forgot to crop out the weird black parts on the top and bottom before posting. 

And please ignore the construction material that is currently taking up 1/3 of my large swath of counter space. It's the only way to stay motivated. 

Feel free to admire my new giant rolling pin purchased for $9 at the restaurant supply store. I love that place!

Not much has happened on this side of the kitchen. We need to put up some 1/4 round molding around the other molding and build out some new, wide windowsills both so I can fill them with plants and so Pepin has a nice place to sit while we cook. 

He's been complaining to us for months about his lack of lounge-space. Kidding, kind of. 

We're loving our new Overstock.com stools and even purchased an extra set so more people can squeeze in if wanted. And at a price of $80 for two, it wasn't too much of a stretch. Have you priced stools lately? Apparently spending over $100 on a single stool is not crazy! 

And they come in lots of fun colors. We opted for the fun, tangerine hue because at this point, why avoid color? 

The sink area has been one of my planning triumphs of this project. I was pretty insistent on an undermount sink so water wouldn't pool around the overhang and damage the wood. I also wanted to have access to all of the butchers block for oiling purposes. And while a little pricy, we manages to save a good bit by purchasing a "used" one from Amazon Warehouse (meaning that someone had it shipped to them then returned it, it had never actually been installed). The extra cost was totally worth it for two reasons: 1) The thick gague stainless is sturdy, soundproof, and doesn't vibrate the whole counter when using the garbage disposal. 2) The sink is extra deep (10" as opposed to the 7"-8" norm) which is so helpful to those of us with gigantic pots and pans but without the space to install a wider sink. 

And I am totally in love with the faucet. It is sturdy, the finish doesn't show fingerprints (a true triumph in our house!), and can be operated with a wrist when hands are messy. And the actual pull-out sprayer has an awesome momentary shut off button so we can pull it over to the stove to fill a pot rather than lugging it out of our extra deep sink after full (so maybe the extra depth is a mixed bag). 

Crown molding over the cabinets has been a slow, slow process.  The ceiling is nowhere near level and the area around the leftmost cabinet is totally out of whack. The stretch of ceiling where we pulled out the old soffit had some bulging plaster that had to be butted up against my drywall patchwork leaving a distinct high spot (or low spot?) that the crown molding had to fit around. So Michael was left with the task of planing down those two pieces of molding on the left cabinet for at least 10 hrs until it was a perfect fit. The middle cabinet's molding went up relatively quickly (only a few hours, maybe) but the last cabinet is going to be another pill, requiring a good bit of carving to fit.

 And as I knew would be the case, we are now faced with forcing ourselves to install the finishing touches (lots of tile and molding) while keeping ourselves from just cooking all day in our functionally complete, brand shiny new, kitchen. 

*sigh*

The blog post where start my catch-up.

 Alrighty.

After last month's (or two months ago...holy crap!) photo upload debacle, there is much to catch up on. So, to that point, the blog is going to turn into a major photo drop for the next 5 (or 10...or 20) posts while I play catch-up on all that has happened in the past month+.

Don't worry though, we've been so, so busy with the kitchen, the pup, a Reindl siblings visit, an amazing (and very scenic) trip to Alaska, the installation of our new stove, some first meals on said new stove and much, much more that I can't begin to think of at the moment that I am sure everyone will have something interesting to look at.

I'll start off with the pre-Alaska bit of the history:

The pup and kitty update goes as follows: they still love to play but Frieda has recent decided that she also wants Pep as her cuddle buddy. Unfortunately, Pep doesn't quite understand this since for all of his time with her, Frieda jumping up on the chair with him meant her very quickly en robing his head in her mouth.

You're a little bi-polar when it comes to the kitty, Frieda. I can't blame him for giving a pissed-off look and jumping off whenever you jump up on the chair with him to cuddle. Maybe one day.

 I rented a drum sander from Home Depot where I had not my first, but my second incredibly sexist encounter with a Home Depot employee. (HD -- you have some training to catch up on in this dept, at least at this store).

 And the next day we rented the edger and finished up the floor sanding. It looks purdy now.

 Frieda discovered that Michael is very helpful when it comes to her lack of opposable thumbs.

 And I discovered that Frieda is adorable, well, all the time, but especially when she is cuddled up on a down comfortor.

 My 26th Birthday was celebrated with homemade sushi. The tuna and salmon were delish but the real star of the show was the raw scallop sushi; it was incredibly sweet and just melted in your mouth.

 We started the waxing process on the floor which was, indeed, a process. This wax didn't end up working well in the end.

It looks good in this picture, it really didn't have enough of a solid layer on top. Every layer would soak right through the wood. It probably had something to do with how old and dry our wood floors were.

We ended up stripping most of the wax off the top after an unfortunate fall from the ladder while painting (It was me, and I am fine, although the floors weren't since they were covered in chartreuse paint) and in the end, put on a coat of paste wax which has given us a much better finish.

 See? Chartreuse walls.

Funny story: while we were in Sherwin-Williams trying to decide on a paint color that we had given absolutely no though to up until that point, I decided to Google "paint color for kitchen" since some colors can affect you psychologically (i.e. some make you hungry, some make you angry) and the first search result on Google said not to paint your kitchen green because it is horrible for resale. So, what did we do? We painted it green.

And what's that? A cabinet? 

Actually, quite a few cabinets made it into their place before we packed up and headed to the great north.

Yay for us! We may have a kitchen by Christmas 2013!

Tiding Over

I had intended to do a big update on the kitchen progress but we've been running a little low on storage space on the computer. So instead of uploading lots of photos and editing and posting, this is what my screen currently looks like:

We finally bit the bullet and purchased a 3Tb external hard drive so I am doing our first ever time machine backup while simultaneously clearing out a much smaller (128Gb, I think) portable hard drive that will solely be used for photo backup. 

And this doesn't even begin to touch on the Reindl sibling visit last weekend in which we (meaning all 5 of us -- it was a pass-the-camera sort of weekend) took at least 500 photos over a day and a half time period. 

Struggling to find storage space for all of my 16.2mega pixel camera photos is certainly what I would call a first world problem.

In the meantime, I'll have to get by with yet more smartphone photos. What was I saying above about first world problems.

Anyway.

House pics:

 The late night-ish floor sanding started last Wednesday with the large and relatively easy-to-use drum sander rented from Home Depot.

 I'm pretty sure I could have handled the machine but once Michael got in a rhythm, I just let him go with it. 

 This is what you call a brave kitty. The sander was extremely loud but his curiosity got the better of his concerns. He came in an plopped down next to me for a good chunk of the sanding.

On Tuesday (after the visitors left) we rented the edge sander which was much more unruly and difficult to use. We managed though and now we just need to finally purchase a palm sander to get back in the corners and we'll be ready to wax!

 In other news, a good knitting friend, Sharon offered up these lovely chairs for free last week. We jumped all over the offer thinking: "We'll finally have somewhere for guests to sit other than our super-saggy couch!" but as you can see here, the animals are of the thinking that the chairs are just for them. Don't worry if you visit though, they'll gladly share if you scratch their ears/cheeks.

As a preview of the Reindl siblings weekend visit I offer up this photo of three gigantic goblets of beer served to us Friday afternoon at the super-delicious Fuzzy's Taco Shop.

And now, I'm off to the mechanics to have my exhaust system strapped to the bottom of my car once and for all!

Moving Right Along

 The most difficult part of this kitchen renovation by far has been the somewhat level placement of drywall on these few walls. 

And I honestly don't know how we did it but they finally came together.

 

And now that they have, we have been moving ahead with full steam.

 

 Please don't ask me to explain all of the strange pieces of wood poking through the drywall. I honestly don't understand it all myself but what I am sure of is really the only thing that matters: when it is all finished, it will both look good and function properly.

 The bay widow walls were certainly a challenge but Michael did a great job of building some mini walls to support the drywall.

 Then came my part of the job: mudding. It really is incredible how similar mud and Italian Buttercream Icing are. And since I've been without an oven for the past 3 months, joint compound mud is filling a serious void in my life. 

I'll admit it, I love to mud drywall!

 The hole-less ceiling looks so pretty with the new canister lights.

 And the skim-coat over the old, textured plaster went much better than I expected. 

Finally, my lovely pastry degree is getting some use!

 Once the mudding was almost complete (I have one more coat before we start to sand), the floors were next to go. And the ugly laminate flooring in the entryway happened first since it was actually stapled on top of the laminate flooring in the kitchen. 

 Staples, staples everywhere! This find necessitated a 9:30pm run to Home Depot since we couldn't exactly have a minefield of staples in our path to bed.

 Look at that: Gorgeous! I will never understand why homeowners feel the need to "protect" their hardwood floors. 

 Of course, now we need to locate some 1/4 round molding that will bend around our bottom stair to fill the newfound void. Suggestions? Anyone?

 And the threshold didn't make it out in one piece. The new one is currently being stained and poly'd.

 Our new entryway.

 And, the rubble, dumped in a laminate-less kitchen.

 And a laminate-less side entry.

And here's where we are now, stripping section after section of laminate adhesive that was made to last a lifetime. Thankfully, we are nearly done with this step with only the section I am standing in to take the photo left to strip. 

Then we move on to the final coat of mud, and sanding of both the walls and the floors.